There are common operational gaps and patterns that I tend to see happen when working with a new client or having a conversation with a typical business owner.
This is not to shame anyone who does (I’ve done it and I’m sure I’m doing more things that I shouldn’t be doing), but if you happen to do any of the following, know that you are creating more difficulty for yourself in the immediate and long run when they are not dealt with as early as possible.
1. Using personal bank accounts for the business finances
Having clean and organised finances can save a lot of headache. But you mix up your personal and business transactions together, this can cause a major headache for yourself and your accountant.
This will eventually make you spend more time understanding your business’ financial status, claim expenses and can use a lot more of your time and cognitive energy than you’d think. Some accountants even charge more to do the extra work of differentiating personal and business transactions.
Getting yourself a separate business bank account is worth it. And most of the time, they don’t charge you, provided that you keep on top of it.
2. Using personal or unpersonalised email addresses for their client communication
On a typical day when I’m driving, I will likely see a vehicle that is either using a personal email address as their contact details or adding their brand name in front of @gmail or even @aol.com (old skool 😎).
Neither of which are an ideal way to create a professional image and a clean communication method. Nor is it an ideal way, from a data protection perspective, to have customers’ details stored in a generic inbox.
If you happen to own and host a domain, it’s a fairly straightforward process to create a branded email address.
3. Using the same passwords or saving it in browser/spreadsheet
A common practice for many when creating new login details is to use the same ones that they have used for their other login details, and potentially save it onto the browser’s password manager.
For me, this is a major problem when it goes wrong or it falls into the wrong hands. If someone has access to one of your login details, they will have access to all of them.
But aside from the security issue that you could face, it’s also a huge headache. If you don’t know what login details, you will attempt to type out your “trusted” list of login details one by one until you get it.
The easiest solution is to use a reputable password manager. I personally use Proton Pass*. Initially, it will take time to clean up your login details, but by doing that and then adding two-factor authentication, you have raised the bar in terms of security and efficiency.
4. Paying for subscription without using it
We’ve all fallen for a tool that looks like it can change our lives and make things better (thanks to good ol’ marketing).
So we leave it running in the background, the monthly charges hitting our account, acting as a gentle reminder that we need to use it.
This might sound weird for someone who claims to be a generalist, but my philosophy when it comes to managing subscription is to focus on being a master of a few tools rather than sign up to many and have a vague idea on how to use each of them. I find the ROI is much higher if I focus on the former.
For example, instead of paying for both ChatGPT AND Claude, I pay for the latter, stick at it and work towards mastering it. That’s a lot more efficient than touching the surface of both tools individually.
5. Spending time to manually create invoices
During one networking event, I talked to a travel business owner who said he manually writes his invoice out on a Word Document and it takes them around 10 hours a week to do so.
But when I explained that you could reduce that to less than an hour, the shock was clear.
A lot of the time, it will involve paying for an invoicing tool that can speed up the process. I know, this is right after I said to not pay for subscription tools needlessly. But if there are tools that you will use frequently, it will save you so much time, and it will raise the quality of your output, you would be wise to consider it.
My invoicing tool of choice is FreeAgent, but there are many out there to choose from. You might even find free tools that do everything you need without all the fancy extra features that come with it.
6. No documentations for the business processes
Many of the business owners I have come across tend to know how to get things done and what are the processes involved. And if you ask them, they will tell you that it’s all [taps my head] up here rather than written down somewhere.
This can be during the onboarding process, creating content, managing expenses, anything that it involves multiple steps to get it done.
This causes issues when it comes to managing quality control (you might miss a step accidentally), understanding what to automate (miss out on opportunities to be more efficient) and speed up the process of training new stakeholders within your business.
A simple solution would be creating SOPs (standard operating procedures) on your important processes. That way, everyone has exposure on how things are done, they are easily accessible (which means they are not taking up as much of your time) and maintain consistency across board.
7. No ownership to their online accounts
Similarly, if you have a number of people in and around your business, it’s so important to have full control of the important accounts. This varies from social media to website logins to admin accounts to the tech stack.
Imagine if you don’t and someone leaves the company, it comes with a big risk if they still have access to your online accounts.
This also applies if you work with other businesses, freelancers and contractors. If you don’t have ownership of your accounts and assets, it’s a worrying sign.
If we ever work together, you will always have full ownership of both. An example would be when using a Notion workspace together. It’s a tool that I use every day and with various clients, but I don’t claim to own the content. It’s yours, even if we don’t work together anymore.
8. No shared view of what’s live, what’s done, or what’s due
When I ask a client what’s currently in motion, I may get a pause. It’s not because they don’t know what they’re doing (if anything, they know it better than me), but because the answer lives in many different places. It could be an email thread here. A Slack message there. A partly used project management tool kind of updated. And a list that only exists in their head, which gets rewritten every Monday morning without anyone knowing.
If you are working by yourself, you could get away with it (though I would argue it’s better to set the foundation to fix this problem as early as possible).
But it’s the follow-up that could get messy: tasks slipping because nobody flagged it. A deadline remembered the day before instead of the week before. Two things landing on the same afternoon (or not) because of lack of communications between project stakeholders.
On the face of it, it doesn’t sound like a major crisis. But each friction adds up over time, which then costs you time and money. And it gets even worse the moment anyone else is involved: a new employee, a freelancer, a part-time hire, a collaborator. Suddenly, you’ve gone from having one head to now trying to fill the gap between multiple heads.
The fix doesn’t need to be clever. All it needs is one shared, current view of what’s happening and kept up-to-date. That will often be a project/task management tool of your choice (mine is Notion).
It doesn’t matter which tool you pick (ideally not a spreadsheet though). What matters is that it’s the one place you, and anyone working with you, can look and trust.
I used to be guilty of all the above. But gradually, I worked my way through it…until something else came up, which is inevitable when you run your own business. And that’s the deal with business operations: it’s an “evolving” door.
I see it as having a messy desk or office. You think you have everything in its correct place but technically, you don’t if you have to spend time, money and brain energy trying to find where everything is and how it works.
That’s why I have a Digital Health Checkpoint, which you can download below. It will help you to do a simple diagnosis of where you are at right now with regards to your operations.
It will look at areas such as your digital setup, how your business operates, your current processes and how your admin is managed.
And all it will take you is 10 minutes of your time:
