Episode 61: Simple Systems Every Small Business Owner Needs to Reduce Stress

You’ve heard it a thousand times: “You need systems.” But what does that actually mean when you’re busy, stretched thin, and running on mental sticky notes? In this episode, Jennifer Kok breaks down Pillar #5 of her Nine Pillars of a Profitable Business—Systems—and shows you how to build them without overwhelm, fancy software, or 100-page manuals.

You’ll learn why your brain shouldn’t be the storage unit for your business, how simple tools like checklists and routines can reduce stress, and how systems protect your energy, your profits, and your growth. Through real stories from a chaotic bakery counter to a costly delivery mistake. Jennifer shows how systems create freedom, consistency, and confidence for you and your team.

If you’re tired of feeling overwhelmed, forgetting things, and being the bottleneck in your business, this episode will help you start building systems that actually work.

Episode Outline
You Already Have Systems (You Just Might Not Like Them)
Your systems already dictate how your day starts, how decisions are made, and how clients are handled—whether you built them intentionally or by default. The real question: are they helping you grow or quietly draining your energy and profits?

The Mental Load of No Systems
When everything lives in your head, your brain becomes the storage unit for emails, follow-ups, decisions, and loose ends. That creates stress, decision fatigue, and eventually burnout. Systems move that weight off your mind and onto something you can trust.

What Systems Really Are (and Aren’t)
Systems are not always expensive software or massive SOPs. They can be:

• Checklists
• Routines
• Decision filters
• Expectations
  They exist so your brain doesn’t have to fill the gaps.

Systems for You as the Owner
Your habits are systems too. Jennifer talks about:

• Blocking time for strategy, not just tasks
• Choosing 3 weekly priorities (not endless to-do lists)
• Using a “Best Yes” filter for decisions
• Creating a simple financial rhythm so you’re not avoiding the numbers

Signs You Need Better Systems

• You’re busy but don’t know what you accomplished
• You replay decisions in your head
• You answer the same questions repeatedly
• You feel more chaos than peace

Systems Create Calm, Focus, and Profit
From using a CRM to organizing contacts and follow-ups, Jennifer explains how having everything in one place removes mental clutter and opens space for growth.

Related Episodes & Additional Resources

The Nine Pillars of a Profitable Business – Overview of the framework that includes Systems as Pillar #5 

• Tools Mentioned: CRM systems like FG Funnels: 

Host Name: Jennifer Kok
About the Host: Jennifer Kok is a business consultant and former 20-year bakery owner who helps service-based small business owners earn more and stress less. Through her Nine Pillars framework, she teaches simple, sustainable ways to grow profitably without burnout.
Website: https://www.nextwavebusinesscoaching.com

Contact the show: https://www.nextwavebusinesscoaching.com/contact

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You’ve Built a Business You’re Proud Of -But It’s Time for It to Work for You. You’re still wearing all the hats, working long hours, and not paying yourself what you deserve. You know there’s more possible. More profit, more clarity, and more freedom to enjoy the life you’re building.  The Earn More Stress Less 9-Pillar Blueprint helps women entrepreneurs with families create profitable businesses that finally pay them back. 

Transcript

Jennifer Kok (00:01.612)
As a small business owner, I'm sure you've heard it many times. You need systems. You know, we run around going, systems, systems, I need systems. True, but also incredibly unhelpful, especially early on, because early on we sit there and we put so much pressure on ourselves. We think, I don't know how to

create the system. I don't have the right technology. I don't have the resources or the money to make the system. know, systems for small business owners can sound overwhelming, very technical, like something we should have already figured out by now. But the truth is, you already have a system. You just might not like the one you're using. Systems already dictate. How does your day start? How your decisions are made? How your clients are handled? How the follow-up handled?

But the real question is, are the systems you have on autopilot or that you've created helping you grow? Or are they quietly draining your energy focus and profits?

So for this episode, I am diving into pillar five of the nine pillars to build a profitable business. And pillar five is all about systems, why they matter more than ever, how to build them without the overwhelm, how to use them once you've built them, and that they actually do reduce stress and help you scale. So welcome to pillar five.

Jennifer Kok (01:31.052)
Happy New Year. Are we still allowed to say that? I know we're kind of here in mid January when this airs and you know, what's the customary length of time you can still say Happy New Year? Well, anyway, for small business owners, I know 2025 was a little bit tough. We had a lot of challenges and you're not alone. I heard that from a lot of different businesses.

But we're looking forward to 2026. And I'm excited to dive into 2026. And where we left off was pillar five of the nine pillar system. And pillar five is all about systems.

You know, there's, when we start out as a business owner in the first few years of owning a business, there's this invisible mental load that we carry. And it can feel really heavy. There's this exhaustion that we can sometimes carry around that doesn't go away when we sleep or rest. You know, we're walking the dog and we're replaying client conversations.

I'm vacuuming and thinking about invoices. did I send that invoice? You wake up in the middle of the night and you go, boy, did I forget to reply to that email. You know, our body's resting, but our mind is still working. And this happens because our systems are our mental, they're in our brain. And our brain becomes a storage unit for orders, emails, follow-up, decisions, loose ends. And what this tends to do is it creates stress.

It prevents our growth, and over time it's going to prevent burnout. And at some point, something's going to drop because you cannot remember everything in your head. And so this is the real cost of running a business without true systems that are getting followed. Memory, multitasking, we start saying yes to everything, we wing it. And

Jennifer Kok (03:17.034)
This might work for a little while, but it's not going to work over time. And my goal is to teach you strategies that are going to help you build a business for years to come. So we don't want this to lead to poor decisions and forgetting important things. And we all feel that we're overwhelmed. That's a word I hear a lot with small businesses. I'm overwhelmed. I'm overwhelmed. I wear too many hats. Well, you're overwhelmed because everything relies on you and that your systems

are not supporting you. You I owned a cookie and cupcake bakery for over 20 years. And one morning I walked into the bakery and there were pieces of paper all over the order counter. You know, little notes and emails and voicemails. And the opening employee was just waiting. She was overwhelmed. She was just looking at this pile because she was waiting for me. I was the system.

I was the one that would walk in in the morning, assess what was going on, prioritize and say, okay, this is what we have to do. This is what has to happen first. And then at the end of the night, the closing employee would just walk away and leave and that would even add more stress for the opener the next day.

And you know, all we needed was a system and looking back at it, it was so simple. It seems so silly. I created a laminated checklist. That's all it, all we needed. An opening employee now had an automated checklist that she could refer to. And what this did is it did a lot of different things. First of all, it built consistency. So now every morning things flowed well. There was no more chaos. We didn't forget things. Things didn't get forgotten because we knew exactly what to do.

it empowered the staff and gave them some pride and confidence and allowed them to not wait for me to sit there and babysit them. You know, I was the system, which doesn't work long term. And then for me as the owner,

Jennifer Kok (05:21.919)
It gave me freedom. If I needed to run and go get a coffee or wanted to, I could do that because I didn't have to rush in the door to open the store. And I knew everything would be consistent. Our clients would be taken care of and our orders would be taken care of. So something as simple as a checklist is a system. And it worked whether I was there or not. So what are systems? And let's kind of talk about what they are and what they're not.

know, systems can feel heavy because we overcomplicate them. A lot of times we hear standard operating procedures. We need to create SOPs, they're called. And yes, standard operating procedures are great because they're a tool that you can use to train your staff so that everything is consistent. We are operating consistently, whether it's opening a bakery or answering an email. The way something gets done is consistent. Systems do not have to be expensive software. They do not have to be a

120 page SOPs, they just need to be something that we can reference and we can use, whether it's a checklist, a routine, how we make decisions, expectations. And when systems go missing in your business, your brain fills the gap and you start reacting and you're not being proactive and this is where stress comes in.

So let's start with a few different systems that I love. This one is an important system because it focuses on the owner and how you're operating. You know, we all bring our habits and the way we operate at home, in our personal lives, into our businesses. And when we start without focus and intention, what happens is we end up with scattered energy, we start reacting more, and we get decision fatigue early on. So how are you focusing and building

habits as the owner. You know, are you blocking off your calendar for those important things that are going to actually move your business forward, not tasks? Are you finding time for strategy? Are you making your weekly priorities on a Friday for the following week? Not to-do lists, but priority strategies of what's going to move the business forward. What about how you make decisions?

Jennifer Kok (07:37.538)
Are you saying yes to things reactively without looking at the big picture? That's a system too, how we make a decision. Are we running it through what I call the best yes filter? Does this move the business forward? Does this align with the current focus? Is this the right use of my time? And then what about a financial rhythm? Sometimes we tend to overlook at our finances.

Sometimes we tend to bury our head in the sand when it comes to our finances. So what is your system for that? Is it monthly? Is it bi-weekly? know, making sure that you are not avoiding what you don't want to see or don't want to deal with and that you have a system. So these are your habits. And it's interesting because as an owner, there's so much that goes into this, your mindset, how you like to operate if you're a morning person, a night person. So I'm really going to encourage you to think about, you being

intentional with your time? Are you coming up with three priorities a week that are going to move the business forward? And I don't mean to-do lists. And are you blocking time and protecting that time so that you can get it done? How do you know when you might need a better system?

Well, I'll never forget when I owned the cookie business and cupcake business, we had a really large order that came in one day. And it was for a 60th anniversary party. And they had hundreds of people attending. And they ordered brownies and cookies and cupcakes and a little cake.

And I took the order, because that was my role at the time, was to be the front man for those big orders. And I took the order. I had it all figured out. All was good. Well, about two weeks prior to the order, they called because they moved to the venue. They decided to change venues. I hung up the phone, you know, before I hung up. No problem. We'll get that for you. We'll have it delivered at noon for that anniversary party. No problem. Well, guess what? I got disrupted.

Jennifer Kok (09:38.767)
I got distracted. I never went to the order board. I never made the change. That Saturday, our delivery driver did what she was supposed to do, picked up the order, delivered it to the venue that was on the order, which was the wrong one. So that lack of system, everything living in my head, cost me a lot of money. It created a lot of chaos, not only for our staff, but also for them at the party.

I lost trust, I lost a reoccurring client. It was a really costly mistake. So moving forward, the new system was anytime there was an order change, we were to put the customer on hold.

and go immediately or if we were the one to open the email before you went to the next email you had to immediately make the change and then we had a 48 hour rule where 48 hours prior to the order going out we would call the customer just to reiterate everything and make sure we had it all together. So a lot of times systems happen because of a costly mistake. But what are some other ways that you know you need a better system?

You know, one way is you're just feeling really busy and at the end of the day you're like, what the heck did I get done today? You know, that's a sign that maybe you're doing too much as the owner and that you are not focused on the right things. Or you replay decisions in your mind. So that's a sign that you don't have a system for making good decisions.

Or maybe you're answering the same email question over and over and over. That's a system for writing an email that anybody on your team can copy, personalize a little bit, and send on your behalf. These aren't failures, always, that dictate that you need a system. They're more just your habits and the way that you're operating, and if you're operating at a pace of peace or if you're operating in chaos.

Jennifer Kok (11:40.163)
You know, when systems are in place, we can experience, our client gets a better experience. Our staff feels calmer. We're less reactive. Our profits increase. You know, when I started my consulting business, I had a mail, email platform. I had a social media platform. I had a calendar. I was using Google Drive. And what I was finding was that I couldn't find anything.

So that was a red flag that I needed something to change. I had outgrown all these separate platforms. I was getting too busy and had too many contacts. So that's when I chose a CRM system, which is a customer relation management system, where everybody I meet, you when I'm out networking, everybody I meet goes in here.

And I can organize them if they're a lead, if they're a customer, if they're a strategic referral partner. My calendar's in there. When I send out a quote to somebody, I can save it in there. So everything is in one place. And I was losing out on opportunities because I wasn't following up enough. I was losing out on opportunities to collaborate with others because I couldn't remember who I met.

six months ago, and now it's all under one place and things are so much easier. I'm able to focus. I don't worry when I'm walking the dog. I'm not sitting there thinking, OK, shoot, I got to go send that email to so-and-so. So that is one. And I use one called FG Funnels. If you're curious about it, reach out to me. There's lots of different ones out there, but I have found it to be very useful. I can do on my social media through it. So that's how you know when you need a system. So I want you to think about.

Like, take the word system out of the equation and don't make it the scary thing that needs high tech and a 20 page standard operating procedure. You know, nowadays, record on your phone.

Jennifer Kok (13:39.211)
something that you do over and over so that you can train someone else to do it for you. And then just save it, and they can access it in the database. They can search for it. They can easily look for it. You can store it in Google Drive or anywhere in your CRM system. And it just makes life easier. And when we do this, we're protecting our energy. We're taking

off the mental load so you're no longer thinking of every single thing. You're reducing the stress. You are no longer the bottleneck in your business, which is huge, because if you are the system or you're the bottleneck, you are stopping your growth. So I hope this helps you take the scary

out of systems. I hope it helps you just kind of organize and think about what your day looks like and maybe what needs to change a little bit. Do you need to be more intentional with your calendar? Are you trying to do too many things in a day? Do you need more help in certain areas? Is it time to create a few standard operating procedures or do you just need a simple checklist?

Those are all symptoms that can help systems, not symptoms, systems that can help you reduce stress, protect your profit, and create momentum. If this is something you want to dive deeper into, reach out. Let's have a phone call. I work with service-based business owners. I help identify what is your next win in your business. And that often can be hard to see when you're in the weeds. So reach out. Let's have a conversation. I'm happy to help you improve your profits, build out a system so that you too can earn more and stress less.

If this resonated with you and you feel like someone else could benefit from this, please share this episode. And of course, I would love a five-star review. Until next time, keep building and we'll see you then.