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After 11 years, Tanya’s business hums. She's got warm leads, proven offers, talented contractors. And yet… projects that should take two weeks stretch to two months because she’s the translator between client and designer. In this live diagnosis, we map a transition from “Tanya-as-critical-path” to a productized, reliable service with automated coordination, a structured client-feedback loop, and clear handoffs. We also unpack the fear behind delegating client trust - and why productizing increases value rather than commoditizing it.
What You’ll Learn
- How to design a Coordination Offload System so delivery runs without you in the middle
- A simple, automated client-feedback flywheel (template email + form + status trigger)
- Why productizing raises reliability and margin without lowering price
- Where to add a copywriter or coordinator—and where automation beats headcount
- A tiny, 90-minute action that can save 3–4 hours every month (and unstick cash flow)
Connect with Tanya
- (00:00) - Introduction: The Bottleneck Dilemma
- (00:47) - Meet Tanya Moushi: The Expertise Trap
- (01:39) - Identifying the Bottleneck
- (04:24) - Strategizing the Transition
- (08:08) - Implementing Systematic Solutions
- (40:03) - Conclusion: Creating Reliable Systems
Grab the Calm Service Design + Delivery Swipe File here
Creators and Guests
What is Engineering Calmer Agencies & Consulting Firms: Calm is the New KPI?
Can you build a business based on… “calm?” Host Susan Boles looks beyond the usual metrics of success to help you build a business where calm is the new KPI. With over 15 years of experience as an entrepreneur, CFO, and COO, Susan shares the business strategies that lead to a business with comfortable margins—financial, emotional, energetic, and scheduling margins. Join her and her guests as they counter the prevailing “wisdom” about business growth, productivity, and success to provide a framework for making choices that align with your values and true goals. Episode by episode, you’ll get a look at the team management, operations, financials, product development, and marketing of a calmer business.
You've spent a decade building expertise, systems, a team. Clients come to you organically. Your contractors handle most of the work. Everything should be running smoothly. So why does every project still need you in the middle, translating between one team member and the client, coordinating feedback, making sure nothing falls through their cracks?
Susan Boles:And why does the thought of creating content about your expertise, content that could bring in more leads, actually fill you with dread? Today we're solving for calm one KPI, one bottleneck, one business at a time. I'm Susan Bowles, and this is Calm as the New KPI. Today, I'm chatting with Tanya Mushi. She runs Moushi and Co.
Susan Boles:And after eleven years in business, she's become the thing standing between her current success and her next chapter. She's got the knowledge to share and the systems to grow, but she's trapped by her own competence. Every project gets bottlenecked at the same place. Her. And that bottleneck isn't just slowing down delivery.
Susan Boles:It's keeping her from taking the risks that could transform her business. It's keeping her from selling more projects to more clients. Now today we're going to pull the business design lever here a little bit. Looking at how to move coordination out of your head and into systems that actually work. Because when you are the critical path for everything, you can't scale, you can't rest, and you definitely can't experiment with new directions.
Susan Boles:All right. So we are here today to talk about your business and a bottleneck that you are facing. So give me kind of the high level who you are, what you do, and then what are we gonna talk about today?
Tanya Moushi:Yes. So thank you so much for taking this on, by the way. I super appreciate your time. But, yeah, I'm stuck, Susan. So this is a good time to come to you.
Tanya Moushi:So I've had my business, Moushi and Co, for eleven years, which I'm super grateful for. We've crossed that milestone. It's been amazing. So for ten years, we've been a featured Squarespace expert. And so Squarespace literally has just featured us as an authorized trainer and an expert.
Tanya Moushi:So I've done workshops really around that platform, and it's basically just helping nontechnical people get online and build a presence online. That's been the business for years. And then around the six year mark, it sort of transitioned, and I started to play this, like, ratio game of, like, some website builds and systems builds and then some advisement. And it's been great. I really enjoyed that.
Tanya Moushi:Now I'm in a place, like, you know, year 11 where I'm like, I need to do something with all this experience. I am very clearly the bottleneck in the fulfillment process. Getting sales has, thank god, knock on wood, been great and fairly easy. You've got, like, ways to get warmer froes coming in, but I projects that should be taking two weeks I'm dragging them to two months and I have hired contractors which is great and they have really helped this process but now I'm in this place where it's like okay I've done this service world thing I've really enjoyed it I have a lot to share around it, and I want to. I want to put content out there around service design and building a business that actually feels really good and helping people that you want to help.
Tanya Moushi:This is like a core tenet of my philosophy. And then I want to do some more writing and manifestos, things like that. It's basically all content oriented but my fear, the real fear that I have, is that I'm gonna put content out there and people are gonna come to me for help. And I have no streamlined process for that anymore without me being like, yes, let me help you and then me diving into that. And so in the past what I've done for clients, which is like, you know, some kind of application process or like something that sort of funnels people through things.
Tanya Moushi:But for some reason, I'm stuck. So if you can help me with this fear and maybe help me see what the actual funnel might look like, if there's a funnel or if there's a process or some channel, I feel like you are the person to see this.
Susan Boles:So I guess how you are thinking about this new direction, are you thinking about it as you've got the agency still doing everything that you have been doing for the last decade? And then this is something is this a side project? Is this a second business? Is this your personal brand? Or are you thinking this replaces?
Susan Boles:Like, how are you thinking about, I guess, old business, new business, both things?
Tanya Moushi:It's a great question. We're in such a funny time in the industry where it almost feels like with websites right now, it feels like instead of, like, trying to build a faster car, people are, like, going to need airplanes. This is what I don't know how else to describe this, but it's, it the industry is changing so fast. So I'm in this really interesting place of, like, maximizing opportunity while I have it, which is what the agency piece does. I do want to replace it.
Tanya Moushi:But to be totally real, that is the service side of things is what makes everything possible. You know, that is the bread and butter of the business. And so in replacing it, I would like to do it in a strategic way where eventually long term, it is more content media that's making money, but not without a line of service. I think that's what it is. I do want a line of service.
Tanya Moushi:Think I it just makes sense. And I've always been, like, helping a few people at at once. I want to have that line of service, but have the content stuff replace a lot of it.
Susan Boles:And when you are thinking about the future version of whatever this ends up being in terms of ideal revenue mix between content side revenue generation, so like sponsorships, affiliates, ads, whatever on the content media side of the house, and then services, maybe like digital products or however you're thinking about revenue, what would the ideal mix be for you?
Tanya Moushi:I love this question. That's so good. Naturally, I think affiliates and sponsorships are actually gonna be like the big game in the future. We have really close partnerships with the different software companies that we work with. So it, like, makes sense.
Tanya Moushi:I would say, like, the ideal split for me realistically is 80% sponsor affiliates and 20% services.
Susan Boles:And of those services, what do you see those services potentially being? What are you playing around with?
Tanya Moushi:You would be proud, Susan. We do have this down. Actually, I spent the last few months productizing this and, like, sort of playing with it, but it I have productized it a little better now at least. So there's something called a digital foundation. It's basically just the you're having your site up and running, having a custom email address, having a presence online.
Tanya Moushi:So it's a digital foundation for people that don't have one and it's really well targeted. So it's usually experts that are in their field that are nontechnical. They have some good ideas and they just have no way of sharing it. There's a sort of natural organic funnel that happens. But, yeah, it's a digital foundation.
Tanya Moushi:That is basically the product. I have that process down. The sales process is down. The fulfillment process, it goes to, like, 60%, and then I'm the bottleneck. And I'm, like, coordinating things.
Susan Boles:So you had mentioned at the beginning feeling a lot of things. Fear in some of these areas. Talk to me a little bit about that.
Tanya Moushi:So the fear is essentially that we get the project, and then 60% of the way through, I have stalled. Either I have not coordinated something, I've not communicated something, there is something happening at that, like, 70% mark that doesn't close out the project. And I don't know if this is a weird emotional problem as Barrett Brooks will say this is a emotional problem that I'm having where there's like just the issue of closing the loop. But I like I can see from a strategy standpoint how it makes sense to close the loop and sort of funnel people through content that makes sense for them because these clients are fairly similar as far as the challenges they have. But the fear is really forgetting the clients is that I'm stepping in at that 60% mark.
Tanya Moushi:And if I don't step in, the project does not close.
Susan Boles:So when you are stepping in, what are you stepping in to do? Or where do things get bottlenecked?
Tanya Moushi:I think it's because I am the connector between my designer and the client. I used to design everything myself, but 300 websites later, I have a designer, which is amazing, and she's amazing, and she's better than me in so many ways. And I come in really strong as an editor and a strategist. And so I'm really translating why design choices were made to the client and then communicating what the client wants back to the designers, which is management, which is just something that is not strong for me. And I just haven't had maybe the level of trust to delegate that because I'm I work very closely with my clients.
Tanya Moushi:Like, they feel like they don't have to explain a lot. I can intuit a lot, which is nice. But of course, that creates a bit of a bottleneck there.
Susan Boles:So for you personally, ideally, picture work look like? What would you ideally want to be spending your time doing?
Tanya Moushi:The last few years, I've made a couple small investments in companies that I love. I think long term, what I would love to do is build this portfolio of business where I have a couple small investments and I have some say as an adviser as to how they go, and I would love to do that long term. I think it's so cool. It's very like the brown female version of Andrew Wilkinson long term. It's how I picture that.
Tanya Moushi:That is like the long that is the long game, I will say. But it's hard to do that when I'm in the weeds. And the problem is I also like being in the weeds sometimes. And I very, very much love the clouds and very much love the dirt, but I am not great at coordination and the management piece. And I definitely have sped up the process by hiring contractors, but I'm still blocking it.
Tanya Moushi:So
Susan Boles:if I were to posit a solution, which is what happens if you treat the services side of this more like an investment and less like your baby. So meaning maybe you hire somebody to replace you in that coordination. Maybe that's a client coordinator. Maybe that is a high level CMOE kind of person. Maybe it is just an operations person.
Susan Boles:What comes up for you if that's the direction?
Tanya Moushi:Yeah. Terror comes up for me. I think asking for help is so difficult. Even the fact that, like, I'm on here
Susan Boles:It's so hard.
Tanya Moushi:On this podcast with you. It is so hard. I'm so used to showing up and just like pouring out and like giving. To ask for help is so difficult. There's certainly an aspect of trust with the client that's huge that I that I think that's probably the thing that scares me the most.
Tanya Moushi:It's like the idea of being like, hey, I know we've worked for each other for the past ten years. However, this person is gonna come like, I still want those close relationships and maybe it's something where like, if I do focus on content and we do have, you know, more warm leads come in, maybe it's something where, like, they just take the new people.
Susan Boles:There's lots of ways that could look. Right? So it could look like thinking about it in a longer term transition plan. Right? So instead of, hey, one day you're out and one day this next person is in and handling everything, More about, like, maybe it's an eighteen month transition plan where this person comes in and is alongside you.
Susan Boles:And the plan is for the first year or however long, they're actually just shadowing you right they're under starting to understand how you think about things and how you strategize and how you build that relationship with the client and what that looks like and maybe they do take on the new clients and ease in the old clients by having this person shadow you and building up that same relationship with your clients. So that's one potential path that you know could be a long term you playing while you are producing content, while you're experimenting with the new direction, the new ideas.
Tanya Moushi:That's helpful actually just to even think I think I always think of like think so fast that it's alright. Things are so quick. Yeah. That's a that's a good that's a good point that it would be gradual.
Susan Boles:Moving slowly here makes sense. You you do have very established relationships with long term clients. And, yeah, nobody wants to be like, hey. Peace out. Yeah.
Susan Boles:This is Jim Bob. Enjoy doing right? Like
Tanya Moushi:He's a nice guy.
Susan Boles:Thinking about how do we actually slow things down here because it doesn't have to be tomorrow. This is still how you're making what 100% of your revenue right now longer term as like a two to three year shift of what could this look like. Let me gradually transition revenue from services to media company. Or maybe it's the services doesn't need to get smaller. It just needs to get more consistent.
Susan Boles:You know there are other options here. You could bring in a partner. You could productize the crap out of what is in your head. And then have somebody or even technology do a little bit more of the hand off the lifting, right? So by that I mean maybe communicating with the client becomes something that's more automatic.
Susan Boles:They have access maybe to your project management thing to be able to see where the project is or what stage it's at. Maybe it is you turning how you think about building a website into a decision tree. Maybe there are decision trees that allow you to potentially train your designer to handle more of the direct client communication or to build those relationships.
Tanya Moushi:Yeah. I always thought that if you productize something that it would just by default lower the price point. And I don't think that's the case anymore if you have a solid streamlined service.
Susan Boles:Yeah. So to me, productization of a service is there, a, to make it just easier execute. So really lowering decision fatigue, really lowering like the lift to deliver the service. And it's there so that like it's easier to train people to take over pieces of this service. It's easier to consistently deliver the same quality service with a little bit less effort on your part, which I think can lead to the service being more profitable because you and your team are spending just less time, energy, effort.
Susan Boles:But the point is to make it a lower lift, not necessarily to make it lower cost. Because for most services you're actually delivering the same value right? They still have the same website. Product. You're just making it a little bit like lower lift for you so you have more margin built into your business to do other things, to be able to do more things, to take more rest.
Susan Boles:But you're not actually changing the end result. Most of the time you're making the end result better. Right? Because you are making sure that all the pieces happen in the same order with process. And both you and your clients then benefit from having done this same process a whole bunch of times and figuring out all the different places that it can completely go off the rails and then putting in more guidelines to make sure it doesn't go off the rail in that specific way.
Susan Boles:Again, it'll go off the rails in new and Yeah. Different Yeah. But it won't Definitely. Whatever happened that one time, you've tried to prevent it happening just that way again. So the actual end result product ends up being significantly better and more valuable with the productization.
Susan Boles:Not it's not less valuable. It's just easier to put out a really good product.
Tanya Moushi:I think you just you just broke my brain a little bit, Susan, because I have I realized I realized how how much I have tied like bespoke and custom things to, you know, to the value. It's like, you're still getting the deliverable is the same, but to make it lower lift, it's like, there's almost this permission that needs to happen of, like, it could be easier, and it doesn't make it less valuable.
Susan Boles:It doesn't make it less valuable. It makes it more valuable. Like one of the things when we are, I mean, this collective we, when we as service providers design services, we tend to think that the more stuff we put in that, the more valuable it is. When almost always, if you think about how you feel when you are the client, the less you have to do or think or commit to this project, the the more you like that surface. Right?
Susan Boles:Like, you can develop a really solid intake process where I only have to give you thirty minutes of my time and you can execute that site where it feels custom, that's more valuable. Like, really being able to understand what pieces do you need to get this transformation or produce your service or produce your deliverable. How focused can you get that? Because it's better for everybody.
Tanya Moushi:Yeah. And I think we have like the we have to be getting part down in the sense of like the consult's always really good. It's a twenty minute consult. It's really clear what somebody needs by the end of it. I definitely pride myself on, asking good questions around this.
Tanya Moushi:So it's, we have the information that we need, and then I have a pretty solid process of, like, content gathering or creation, you know, and then we're doing, like, the design side of things, and then we're actually doing the build. Like, it's a pretty streamlined part, like, process there. I I feel like I made it very easy for the client in the beginning, but not at the end. Like, the beginning is streamlined, beautiful. Someone else can execute that.
Tanya Moushi:But it is the it is from the middle to the end that I'm like it's either perfectionist tendency that's coming in that I'm like, I think that could be easier internally where it's like we're either working off of our best, you know, templates. There's always a handful in the 300 some websites we've created. There's always a handful that people just love. Or, you know, figuring out which parts need to be actually customized and how. And I gotta, I think, just think about that, like, on the fulfillment side.
Susan Boles:So the place I would focus if we're you know the on the front part is really solid. Other people can execute that. And it's getting you all the information you need in the onboarding process to then do your work. Yep. Let's talk about where and how logistically things get stuck.
Susan Boles:So when it gets to the point where you now have to step in, are you stepping in and making decisions? Are you stepping in and reviewing? Are you stepping in like, what happens when you step in?
Tanya Moushi:We'll basically get all the information. I'll come in. And usually the very first thing I'm doing for the designer's sake is looking at the copy. And I am editing the copy on behalf of the client almost always. And then I'm giving that copy document to the designer.
Tanya Moushi:They're doing their thing. And then the first iteration, I am coordinating that review that, literally, that that design with the client. And so I'll send a link, and they can make comments on different areas. And then I'm literally gathering that feedback and then giving it to the designer. And then she's doing her thing.
Tanya Moushi:Like, I feels like I don't need to be here. That's what it feels like.
Susan Boles:So some of those are really good instances for technology. Think about how could you collect that feedback more systematically. So that could be something like developing a feedback form with some of the questions that you would ask or something that would allow them to give you more effective feedback. So like as somebody who I've worked with a lot of designers, sometimes they'll say, hey, here's the thing. Give me some feedback.
Susan Boles:And then I'm always like, I don't I don't quite know what kind of feedback or how how to give you that feedback in a way that's really effective. Like, do I record a video just talking through my impressions? And then you can take information from that. So, like, being more systematic and saying, here's your initial design, and here is a worksheet to help you give us the most effective feedback.
Tanya Moushi:Oh, I love that, Susan. That's awesome.
Susan Boles:And then you could do, you know, the email that goes out depending on, like, what project management system you are you're using. You could even do something like, hey, when this task moves into client feedback, it sends a templated email with a link to the form. And all you have to do is, you know, write out the template one time of, hey, here's the yeah. Here's the blah blah blah. Here's your design.
Susan Boles:Here's the link to the design. We'd love to get some feedback from you here's the link to the feedback form to help you give us the most effective feedback and if you use tools like zapier all you have to do is in whatever project management tool. So if you're using Notion or ClickUp or whatever, you can use something like a a data field to say, here's the link to the demo site. Interesting. All you have to do is drop the link in.
Susan Boles:Honestly, all your designer has do is drop in the link to the site and move it to the next status. You can trigger it so that then the client gets the standardized delivery email that you can write in a really human way that feels like it's custom to them.
Tanya Moushi:But it's utilizing the data field.
Susan Boles:Yeah. So you utilize a data field to have basically create a variable that the link goes into the variable. The link to the feedback form is probably the same every time. And all your designer has to do is drop the link, move it to the next thing. The client gets the email, and you aren't in that process
Tanya Moushi:at all. So so nice. And then even, like, the email, would it be too much to have that email go directly to the designer?
Susan Boles:Yeah. Once they get the feedback form, if all you're doing is taking that and giving it to your designer, absolutely. Either have it go one thing you could do is have it go back into the project management system so, like, everybody can see the feedback. And then like tag your designer to say, hey, they've submitted feedback, move it to the next step and do your thing. The other thing you might think about in this process is bringing on a copywriter so that they can do, you know, a review and edit of the copy.
Susan Boles:If that's something that you think is really important to the process, bring in a copywriter who can review and edit and make it good, and then send it to the designer. And then you have been lifted out Yeah. Of all of
Tanya Moushi:those steps
Susan Boles:outside of, like, train the copywriter maybe with what you are specifically looking for. But if you hire somebody with a decent you know copywriting expertise they know what they're doing especially at the beginning maybe you don't need a client contact maybe you need to sit and think about like what are you actually communicating and when does that happen and is there an opportunity here to make that a template that either can be sent automatically using custom data fields, or is it something that you can template the email for your designer to be able to edit and send? And then maybe at the very end, you come in to review everything and have one last look to look for any problems.
Tanya Moushi:Yep.
Susan Boles:And send it on. And I don't think it hurts your relationship with the client. Normally, I see when people start, like, automating client communication is actually like our the way we think about it is, oh, I'm not touching it. So it's not going to be the same experience for the client. But what actually happens is you then more consistently are able to stick to your timelines.
Susan Boles:You're more able to actually communicate when you intend to communicate. Right? Like, all intend to send an email or send a check-in or keep the thing on track. But a lot of the times when that's manual, we delay doing it. We forget to do it.
Tanya Moushi:It just goes. Exactly.
Susan Boles:Yeah. So the automating of that communication process actually results in a more timely delivery, which clients always like, and more consistent communication about what's actually happening during the process. Because when you're thinking about taking yourself out of it, you put all of that in the template email. You might even link to an FAQ page about here's how the process works, here's how the timeline works, here's all of the questions that we get so that when you get a question from a client instead of answering it everywhere or answering it a 100 times you just put it in the FAQs.
Tanya Moushi:Really the only the only other last step is literally just like invoice.
Susan Boles:Yeah, you can either change status or if you think about productizing more on the front end, the onboarding piece, you could use a like a proposal tool that has automatic payments in it. So you are doing milestone invoicing. Either you're doing regular payments that you can set to automatically pull at the right time where it, like, automatically sends you an invoice and automatically pulls the payment on the due date, which I love because it drastically improves cash flow. And you don't have to worry about when is that person going to pay my invoice. You have already captured that information at the beginning of the process when they are most excited to work with you.
Susan Boles:Yeah. They don't have to remember to do it. So you're saving them time, energy, effort, because everybody knows that, like, it's a pain in the ass to go pay an invoice when I could have just given you the information at the beginning and you just charge my stuff. You tell me when.
Tanya Moushi:Yeah. And under a certain threshold we do that where it's like you're just paying upfront and if it's over a certain amount that they'll do the 50% deposit then 50% on delivery.
Susan Boles:A lot of the automation tools where it's like automatic proposal and payments you can still do milestone billing. Then you could do, hey, when this project moves to this status, trigger the milestone. Nobody's manually having to remember to do that. Stuff like accounting is one of the best use cases for automation because it's always the same thing.
Tanya Moushi:Yeah so one of the things that I think makes us really different is we really empower the client to manage the site on their own and it's basically like you can always hire us for support, but it's never out of necessity. It's always out of convenience. So it's not because you can't or don't have access to your site, it's because you just want support, makes sense for you to spend time doing other things. And so with every project basically comes a training on the site. This is how you do this.
Tanya Moushi:This how you add a blog post, how you swap an image. Normally, we do that on every single site. It's a big value add. I mean, doing a blog post in one site is the same as doing it in other sites. It's just on the training video, the difference is that you see your site versus another site.
Tanya Moushi:Do you think that makes a big difference?
Susan Boles:I think there are two ways you could go about doing it, and I think it depends on how you feel about this. Do I think that customized videos with their specific site has a psychological benefit to the client feeling like it's custom?
Tanya Moushi:Yeah.
Susan Boles:I do. But I also think I think there are two ways where you could make this as efficient as possible. The first is just create a training that is generic, that says here's how you would do this, and you send it as part of your, like, offboarding email. Here's the link to the training. Everybody actually gets the same training.
Susan Boles:That's probably the most efficient. It's the lowest cost. And you're probably not going to lose much. Like, you can still get the same vibe. Alternative number two is if you think the psychological value is really important to you and the client experience because you know that people just love this with their own thing.
Tanya Moushi:Sight. Yeah.
Susan Boles:What I actually would do is if that's really important to you, write a script. Right? Like, write a here's the script for the walkthrough video. We are gonna show them how to do a blog post and how to add a page to the site. And so the content is still the same.
Susan Boles:Everybody is getting a very systematized like, it's super systematized, but also still custom because all you're doing is recording that video with their specific site. But the actual, like, here's what you say, and here's the order, and here's the section. And that script basically is at the point where anybody can record that script with the walkthrough including your designer right so part of them delivering is read the script and do a walkthrough or honestly at that point you could hire a VA. Read the script, do this walkthrough. Here's the site that you're going to do this walkthrough and the script has click on this page, read this script, click on this page, read this script.
Susan Boles:And you could even do something like a combination of both. Right? So there's a standard FAQs that everybody has access to the same FAQs, but the pieces where you think it's the most valuable to have somebody see what's happening, put that in the script.
Tanya Moushi:Yeah. That's what I was thinking about. Like, a general sort of training, but see your site for the more specific things.
Susan Boles:But all you need to do is write the script and the walkthrough of, like, here's what we cover in this piece, and here's what we cover in that piece. And then you can hand off that recording of the script with the walkthrough to anybody. And the, you know, FAQs, the generalized piece, you just update as you add stuff to it and then all of your clients get to benefit from that FAQ.
Tanya Moushi:That's very helpful. Can I ask you, Susan, what is the biggest barrier mentally for doing for systematizing?
Susan Boles:I actually think there's probably two pieces. There's the one which is most of us come to this from some sort of creative perspective. Right? So we are all out there being special snowflakes and spending a lot of time on the creative piece, right? And we have this idea that creativity only happens if we have complete freedom.
Susan Boles:Right? It's the same as like all of our services need to be custom because the value's in the custom. For the most part, the value is not in the custom. The value is in you do this thing all day every day, not in the customization. So I think like the we want to be creative people, and we feel like constraints will hamper our creativity when almost always everybody says constraints enhances creativity.
Susan Boles:Like all evidence is there that like the more constraints you put on something, the more creative work, the more good work comes out of that thing.
Tanya Moushi:Totally.
Susan Boles:And I think the other piece is just kind of generally around operations and processes, which is, I don't like it. It's boring. It's more work for me to do. I'm not really big enough for that to matter. When almost always just taking a few minutes to put this process in place, right, means that you're creating so much more margin in your business for a very small payoff.
Susan Boles:Right? Like, I can almost guarantee that you could probably book off ninety minutes and go create that feedback form. Right? Like just thinking about like, what feedback, how do I help people do it? Block off ninety minutes, make a feedback form, write the email.
Susan Boles:And in two hours, you have solved a huge bottleneck and you saved yourself probably two or three hours per project. And when you count up those two or three hours per project, just on that one that one piece
Tanya Moushi:That's a great point. Yeah. Because I when I think about it, I'm like, oh, man. So I need to block off a week.
Susan Boles:Not to mention, like, the decision fatigue. Like, it probably would take you two hours and would probably save you over the course of a year, three to four works weeks of work on the low end of the estimate. So when people ask me about like, oh, how do you create so much margin? Like, how do you work three days a week? It's stuff like that.
Tanya Moushi:Yeah. I think, you know, that really helps me because there is this mental, like sometimes the motivation doesn't really happen until I can see the other side of, like, what can I do with this? Yep. You know? And then and then when I see that, I'm like, okay.
Tanya Moushi:I'll it justifies, like, fine. I'll spend two hours doing this, you know? But without that piece, I'm just like, oh, it's just more work. It's just extra work. I don't see what the benefit is.
Susan Boles:The payoff is you can go find one another business to invest in. You can go write other content. You can explore a different idea. You can Play. You can go play.
Susan Boles:Like, that's it's it's a different fill in the blank for everybody. But the payoff of just optimizing, like, one or two processes, especially if it's something that you're doing all the time, or in this case, something that is genuinely bottlenecking your client process, which means it's impacting your ability to take on more clients. And so that's directly impacting your revenue as well. That's a real ROI.
Tanya Moushi:Yeah, you're like, that's measurable. Like someone else would measure that.
Susan Boles:Yeah. I do measure it when I do it. But doing little tiny optimizations like that is something that one makes your your services more reliable so you don't have to be afraid.
Tanya Moushi:Yeah yeah I love this the aim of that the aim of like making your service more reliable is such a it like helps with the fear of because there's a trust thing. Right? You're like, will this be reliable? The only reason I'm in it is so that I can have yeah. Is so that I can make sure all of this.
Tanya Moushi:And so it's kind of like removing that uncertainty, but I think that's a great aim of just just how do I make this more reliable?
Susan Boles:When I think a lot of the like move this thing along the tracks is such a great use case for automation tools because you then have confidence in the fact that they're not going to do it incorrectly. It's going to happen exactly the way that you have designed it every single time. You don't have to try and outsource it to a person that you then have to trust is going to do it your way, your time, at a specific point in time. All of the people in your business are doing things that people can do and are really valuable. Like they bring valuable skills or thoughts to process, the moving the project along the track, it is one of the most powerful things I think you can do to make your business calmer.
Tanya Moushi:I love that. That's really helpful. You have settled my soul a little more.
Susan Boles:What we focused on today wasn't just about fixing a project management bottleneck. It was about designing systems that let you step out of the weeds without losing quality or compromising client relationships. We focused on two key levers from the Calmer framework. First, business design, specifically moving from default ad hoc coordination to intentional systems that can run without constant input. And second, margins.
Susan Boles:Not the version where you cram more in, but the kind that creates margin by removing decision fatigue and repetitive tasks. The real insight here is that productizing your services, it's not about making them cheaper or less valuable. It's actually about making them more reliable. When you systematize the coordination, communication, and handoffs, your clients get a more consistent experience. Your team knows exactly what to do when, and you stop being a single point of failure.
Susan Boles:If you're listening and thinking, yep, that's me. I'm the bottleneck. Here is a tiny action to try this week. Pick one recurring task that you're manually doing and spend a few minutes, no more than ninety, creating a template, a form, or some sort of automated process for it. Whether that means client feedback collection, project status updates, handoff communications, that ninety minutes will likely save you three to four hours every month.
Susan Boles:The goal here isn't to remove the human touch, It's to make sure the human touch happens where it actually adds value, not in moving information from point a to point b. Thanks to Tanya for being willing to troubleshoot her business in real time. That takes guts and I know that other business owners will see themselves in this conversation. Until next time, remember your expertise is the asset. Don't let coordination be the thing that keeps you from sharing it.