In this “self-regulating” episode, Khadirah Muhammad, Founder of Succeeding With Systems Academy, shares how she fell in love with systems and automation while helping her clients.
You will learn the value of human touch in every business endeavor.
Episode Transcript
Scott Ritzheimer
Hello, hello, and welcome once again to the secrets of the high demand coach podcast and I am here with yet another high demand coach. And that i Khadirah Muhammad, who is a systems implementation engineer, a marketing automation expert and founder of succeeding with systems.com. She went from breaking into the entrepreneurial world at 18, with a goal of retiring her parents to falling in love with systems and automation while helping her clients. Her notable projects include taking a two person operation get this from 15,000 to $80,000 in revenue in just 60 days. She then went on to help them triple their team in eight months, it’s amazing, I hope we get to hear the rest of that story. But Khadirah helps solopreneurs create six figure systems so that they can gain back the time freedom and develop the lifestyle freedom that they want, using marketing automation and systems. Well, Kadir I’m so excited to have you on the show, folks don’t know. But in the world of podcasting, we kind of live and die by our schedules and my calendar, it just wreaks havoc on this process. So it feels like it’s been forever in trying to get you here. But you’re here. And I’m so excited to have you. Now before we jump into systems and marketing and you know, building businesses, I’d love to just take a step back and hear a little bit about your story. Tell us a little bit about what you were doing before you got into coaching and why you ended up making the leap.
Khadirah Muhammad
Awesome. The first one, I gotta say Thank you, Scott. And again, I know we had our scheduling mishap, but I’m super excited for this. I’m looking forward to being on a podcast and hopefully being a very valuable year, or valuable voice to the ears of your listeners. But yeah, so how I got started in this, you know, just as you kind of read, in my bio, when I was about 18 years old Swiss Army went to college. It was the first time I’ve actually ever had a job worked there for a week, I was like a desk clerk at a dorm and I was like, this is probably not gonna be good long term. And it wasn’t even just the job itself. But it was actually just, you know, the concept of it. And like, the things that I want to do, probably won’t like, just being at a regular job really isn’t going to help me. And especially as after a couple of years, I’m in this college towns full of people, you know, 20 year olds and whatnot. But all of a sudden, I just kind of woke up and I started to pay more attention to what’s around me. And specifically, I noticed everybody that worked at my local Walmart, everybody that worked at Tim Hortons, even people who worked at Starbucks, even people at different grocery stores. Everybody was in their 50s 60s 70s. I’ve seen the 80s. And I started to question I’m like, what’s going on? Because I’m thinking at my grandma’s ages, they were both retired in their 60s, you know, they weren’t working anymore. Saturday, I realized, why are they working? That doesn’t make any sense. There’s plenty of 20 year olds, you know, looking for a job, a part time thing. I did my research and I realized, oh, most people can’t really retire. Most people, even if they’re on like Social Security, they actually had a timeline of when it was supposed to expire. And I you know, especially because most recent events, that expiration is even one year earlier than it was supposed to be. So I’m like, Okay, I’m an only child, you know, and I’m at that time, I’m about 20. And I see you know, my parents jobs, and I’m like, You know what, I gotta do something different. Because they’ve taken care to me, they’ve done so well for me. And I just could not imagine, you know, them having to get another job after their political supposed to retire. So that was the catalyst to me just even thinking about entrepreneurship. Yeah. It was a it was a long journey. after that. I did a lot of different things. I will have ecommerce stores, I did side jobs, I tried to do anything to sell something to figure it out. And then all of a sudden, I kind of landed into this world of digital marketing. And with digital marketing, it’s paid advertising, it’s Facebook ads before people really, really doing doing Facebook ads, in my opinion. It was Google ads, it was even Twitter, just stuff that I had no idea about. And I just had a side job, I was able to make a little bit of money. And so I just use that to buy courses and try new client get clients and try to figure that out. And then when I actually graduated in 2019, by actually right before I graduated, and I’m trying to actually apply for jobs, because you know, entrepreneurship thing is has ups and downs. So I’m like, let me try to be a bit more stable. And when nobody was calling me back, I’m like, well, maybe this is my sign. So just try it and just try to figure it out. That was 2019 It was 2023. It’s been up ever since.
Scott Ritzheimer
That’s awesome. Amazing. So fast forward a little bit. You’re now doing coaching with six and seven figure businesses you’re helping folks to to get control of their life and also grow their business and for many, especially solopreneurs or folks that are in the kind of early struggle stage early fun. They’re there They can feel stuck in this trading hours for dollars and II, there’s this moment and every entrepreneur experiences it in some way, shape or form. But it’s like, wait a second, I love my job working 4050 hours for someone else, I’m working 80 hours for myself, and for some reason is less than the bank account what’s going on here? So tell us a little bit, what would you say is the most important work that you do for your clients?
Khadirah Muhammad
Oh, the first thing I have to say is that the mindset of realizing that, number one, you don’t have to do everything. Number two, you shouldn’t be doing everything. And number three, just because you could do it, that doesn’t mean that somebody else can’t actually get it done. A lot of us entrepreneurs and CEOs, when we started businesses, you know, we are doing all the hats in the beginning, because you have to I mean, unless you capital, unless you are partnering with a lot of other people, you likely have to take that on yourself just as a solopreneur, you know, by the name of it, that’s what you have to do. But then that’s when our egos get a bit built up. Because you start to see success, right? You start to see, okay, I can sell, I can bring in clients, I perform a good service to them. So they keep coming back, you get a little bit of success, and it kind of works out for you. Now you’re in this trap where you know, you’re doing a lot of things you shouldn’t do. But then you don’t really want to take the time to figure out how to get out of it. You don’t or you feel like Well, nobody’s going to do it better than me. That’s the like, the number one thing somebody tells me, I do this, and nobody else can do it. What’s this thing you’re talking about that you’re doing? Oh, talking back and forth with clients trying to get your calendar set up? That’s what you think nobody else can do other than you. That’s not the secret sauce of your company. Why do you think you’re the only person that can take take on that? Yeah. So the first thing I have to help him with his understanding. When you work the job, you had a specific job? Not sure did you have to do certain other tasks and other people’s jobs? Okay, yeah. But you had a very specific job with specific roles and responsibilities and tasks that you needed to do. So if the CEO of the job you used to work at isn’t doing your job? Why do you think as a CEO of your business, you need to be doing a position that clearly somebody else can be doing other than you. So the very first thing is, is helping them with that mindset. And being able to think big, really thinking out of yourself, and really realizing it’s a service to be able to provide a job somebody else, and figure out how to put yourself in your zone of genius. So you can grow the company in the way that it needs to grow as the visionary. You can’t do that, if you’re doing all these other little things that are especially outside of your wheelhouse.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, that’s yeah, so good. So one of the challenges I know that folks are having, and oftentimes it’s perceived as much as it is real, but they’re thinking another person like I can barely pay myself, how do I? How do I even think about bringing someone else in? So particularly for that person? Who’s doing it all themselves? And and how do you get out of that? How do you get to where you’re not the only one doing everything?
Khadirah Muhammad
So the first thing we have to do is we got to note down? What are we actually doing? So I have all my clients, I’m like, hey, look, you need to start journaling. And I give him a specific spreadsheet and like I want this or I want you to type in so we both can be looking at it when we have our check ins. But you first need to be noted on what are you actually doing every single day. Because we will be surprised at how quote unquote, productive we are in our day to day activities. When we think we’re doing a bunch of stuff. And in reality, you’re just doing a bunch of stuff, but you’re not really completing anything. You know, you’re not really getting something done that actually will move your business forward. So let’s note down what are those actual activities you’re doing every day. And you just have to do it for a week you’d want to do from Monday, you know, we’ve I know how people are like the one other thing I got to do just a week, it’ll take you five minutes at the end of your day. That’s it. When you do that, now you’re going to start to categorize, okay, is this a revenue generating activity? Was this a co activity? Was this something I absolutely had to do? Because I’m the person, I’m the leader, I have to do this. And then was this something that, oh, I shouldn’t have to do? You don’t have to figure out already? What’s the position of the title? You know, the title position of the person who’s got to take it on and just categorize it? Do you need to do or do you not need to do it? And then we take all those things that you don’t need to do? And then that’s when we start to figure out okay, what’s the job title of that person? Right, is that a specific individual is is multiple different people, right, multiple different positions. We have to figure that out first, before we even start to bring in other people. And then after that, now we have to start creating what are called standard operating procedures for those tests that you’re doing. Right. So I think if I can give a really quick example Let’s say you’re managing your own calendar right now, right? You’re going kind of back and forth, you’re booking with your own clients that you service, right? What if there’s somebody who can actually take that on for you? Or could you just send people a link? And then maybe that’s easy enough. But you probably wouldn’t know that you’re doing it every day until you’re writing that down, and you’re journaling? What’s going on? This is how you create data. So you can figure out what’s actually happening in your business on a day to day basis.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, yeah, it’s so so true. One of the things that I do coaching with clients who are solopreneurs, who want to stay solopreneurs, at least for the foreseeable future, maybe not forever, but that’s just that’s where they’re plugged in. For them, what I found the biggest metric for success isn’t really revenue. It’s not really, you know, your expenses, expenditures, or necessarily even profit, its profit per hour. Right? And so when you’re looking at it, okay, you can you can get into this rat race, so just trading time for dollars and just more time for more dollars. And that’s what a lot of people do when they chase the revenue game. It’s just, it’s more and more and more, but we never have a critical eye on what should we stop doing? What should we get rid of? What should we have someone else do? And so I love what you’re talking about? Because you’re talking about these things that are low dollar per hour tasks, right? How much do you make scheduling, right? When, when that could be automated. And, and I’ve found it really helpful for folks, when they recognize, hey, the most important thing because there’s so many things to keep track of, but when you’re in the States, the most important thing is that one metric, what’s the dollars per hour, because then you can look at the activities in this log, and you’re this is exactly what you’re doing with your clients, and saying, Hey, what are the highest value activities that you’re doing? And the lowest value ones into Okay, do we get rid of those are? How do we automate them? Or how do we how do we delegate them to somebody else? So I’d love to kind of step into that a little bit, because I know that you do a lot with systems and automation. And so tell me a little bit about how, again, you take those initial steps for somebody wanting to start getting stuff off of their plate, and then to automation or process.
Khadirah Muhammad
Yeah, so when they want to take that next step, because, you know, they’re already convinced they know, they have to, if they want to grow, they got to do something different. And after we’ve kind of journal things out, after we’ve created some SLPs. Now, it’s just kind of the discussion of, are you going to hire a person? Or do you need to hire some tech? Right? And what’s that sequence? What does that really entail? Because sometimes you don’t really need to hire other people. And I know that kind of scares people that are like, how am I gonna put somebody on? You know, how do I find are they going to match me, that’s, and that takes time, it takes time to find somebody. You know, one of my mistakes in the very beginning of me in my business was just hiring people, because I felt like they could do a task. And I didn’t have the environment set for them. And they really weren’t good fit with me, but I kept them on because like all they’re just kind of take care of this and you get stuck there. And it’s like, Y’all don’t really get along, it doesn’t work, or they may be good for right now. But they aren’t really good fit for the future if you’re thinking long term. But that can be something special. Right there. But when it comes to actually utilizing technology, we have to first understand what what is actually going to do. And can you scale with this. So I’m big on sec, it’s very easy for me to figure out anything, at least online, you are aware it, I’m gonna be a little different. But if it’s online, I can pretty much figure it out. But personally, I’m not a fan of tech just for tech sick. Because why I also see a lot of solopreneurs do is you get that lifetime subscription, you get that $97 per month software, you’re paying all this money, but you don’t even know how it’s really supposed to help you. And you haven’t chosen something that’s actually going to scale with you in the future. Because what most people don’t consider is the cost to migrate or transferred to a new technology once you’ve already built a bunch of stuff, you know, on one particular technology or you know, a bunch of software and whatnot. So what we want to figure out is, is this actually going to help us today? Does it match what we need? And can it scale with us in the future? Does it have other features we may potentially need in the future that we can access without having to transplant but it really all starts with understanding what we’re doing every day just to kind of get those initial activities done. Right, those low dollar activities so we can focus on our higher dollar activities. And you know, have a higher as you said profit per hour.
Scott Ritzheimer
I love that. Now is one of the things you just brought out. I love technology, but it’s not technology for everything. So how do you know when? How do you know when it’s a person or technology? How do you discern the difference?
Khadirah Muhammad
To me, I think it’s the activity requires any level of nuance to it. Or any real intelligent decision amongst it, you likely need an actual person. So I’ll give you an example. Everybody is a big fan of AI. Nowadays, everybody’s trying to figure out how to use chat GBC, and all these other little, you know, tools or whatnot. And I think it’s going to replace everything and think is going to replace all customer service and whatnot. And I think while it may replace a quite a bit of it, I think at a certain level, you still need a human being that call you about something, right. And so I’m thinking of like an executive assistant, right, who needs to be setting up, maybe they need to be setting up meetings with other executives, for you, on your calendar, were talking to those people, you really shouldn’t just send them a link, right, they need some extra care, these are really high level individuals, you need somebody that can work with their assistants. So just sending a link may actually not be appropriate to do for them. But you probably shouldn’t be doing it too. Right, you still need to have an individual in between their semi to talk to other people. So mine is set schedule somebody to inquire you know, about maybe you’re doing anything around your city, or you’re trying to do speaking or you’re trying to organize, organize schedules, like a lot of that can be more nuanced. It may require more than just, you know, looking up something on on online and taking it from there. Another example of that is when you get into something more technical, right, so if there’s any level of troubleshooting software, he’s not gonna really be able to troubleshoot itself, to a degree it can. But sometimes it’s again, more nuanced. With it, it may have a problem, it doesn’t, you know, have a solution in his support articles, it doesn’t have a solution, you know, even sometimes the customer service for our software just is not very helpful. But to be honest, he is not is not very helpful for you, it’s not getting back to you. Maybe you need a tech assistant that can just figure that stuff out. Because they understand it better than you they know how to ask questions to the support staff better than you lap people don’t consider that. But if you don’t know technology like that, if you need a support question, you know, you want to ask their team, if you don’t know what you’re talking about, you may not be able to give them what they need in order to fix the issue for you. Yeah, so that’s why that’s why having an assistant or some I don’t want to call them assistant, they’re a specialist really, because they just know it, they understand terminology, they understand how to look at something below the surface deeper than you in a way that even again, the software supports, you may not be able to help. So when it requires more thought, if there’s any level of advanced thought or intelligence needed, that’s what you need a human being in technology just isn’t gonna cut it.
Scott Ritzheimer
Got it? Got it. Got it. Great advice. Now, what would you say is some of the lowest hanging fruit? What are the things that you find it entrepreneurs you’re working with, or it’s the quickest things to kind of get off their plate, and by some, some free time.
Khadirah Muhammad
Oh, easily anything to do with scheduling. Most of the time, if you’re trying to schedule with leads, you’re trying to get people on the phone, that’s a combination of a calendar booking link. And it’s also a person that might need to just call, you know, your leads and get them on the calendar. So scheduling booking calls with leads, any customer service related things, and that also includes account management. I think one of the first things if you’re a service based business, if you’re a consultant, if you’re a coach, and you provide support to your clients, and they meet with you like on a monthly basis, unless there’s like, you know, you know, a part of the package is for them to speak to you any support related things, you need to get them their own client account manager. Right. And that needs to be a person that can’t just be you know, some AI software that you think is going to replace everything. That’s not going to be the case, anything to do with scheduling anything else. So not just necessarily with clients and booking them on your calendar, but also with actual like, you know, other individuals other not least necessarily, but if you’re just having a conversation getting booked on a podcast, you know, do you have somebody who can do back and forth that, again, that’s more likely to be a person than it is to be just a software or anything like that. Yeah, those are really administrative activities. Another good one is if you are not really checking client with anything, you definitely want to hire a specialist. They don’t need to work for you full time. They can be super part time, or just kind of standby as you have questions, which you probably want to have that person around. Because while technology can promote you while it can automate a lot of your activities, it still requires maintenance. You know, things happen, you know, zaps, get broken and Zapier. stuff doesn’t work, right connections get disconnected. And you’re just like, I don’t know how this happened, but I need somebody to fix it. I have somebody on standby Hey, can you take a look at this? Let them do what they do for a couple hours and be fixed issue for you. That’s yeah, don’t worry about it.
Scott Ritzheimer
If you’re thinking zappy, what then Khadirah is going to be tremendously helpful for you. Okay, so here’s a question that I love to ask all my guests. And that is, what is the biggest secret that you wish wasn’t a secret at all? What’s the one thing that you wish everybody listening today knew?
Khadirah Muhammad
Oh, my goodness. Um, the biggest secret to me is that automation isn’t everything. I like the questions that you’ve asked, got in terms of like, when do you put a person in there, other than just technology? I like I said, I love automation. I love technology. But it’s not the solution, every single piece at a time. And you’ll talk to other maybe systems engineers, you’ll talk to other automation specialists. And they’re going to do automate, automate, automate, automate. But the real secret is, sometimes it’s just, you need a person that’s in a day, you know, again, I know we want to figure out how to put an AI and if I could just get a bot and they could do everything for me, then then I’m going to be fine. You sometimes you’re going to need a human being that’s to me, that’s the biggest secret that really shouldn’t be a secret. No, the human race isn’t going. They’re not going anywhere. They’re just going to be able to do what they do better. And they’re going to be able to other alternatives. But sometimes you aren’t just going to need the person. Yeah, that’s so good. All right.
Scott Ritzheimer
So we’ve talked a lot about kind of the work you do for clients and how you help them. But I’d love to kind of turn things around a little bit have you take off your your coach, you know, systems engineer hat Have you put on your founder CEO hat, talk to us a little bit about what the next stage of growth looks like for you and your business? And what challenges you think you’re gonna have to overcome to get there?
Khadirah Muhammad
That’s, I love that question. Because, to me, the answer is a little bit scary. The biggest piece of growth I have to do is coming from behind the scenes where I work on everybody else’s stuff. And you know, I do great work with them. And it’s actually teaching this other people. And, you know, specifically showing people how systems and automation technology does not have to be scary, nor does it have to be overwhelming. Because I noticed majority of clients, when they come to me, you know, they’re overwhelmed by it, they have all the options, but they don’t have the necessary skill set. And obviously, they don’t have the time to figure out the necessary skill set, nor should they be doing that anyway. And it takes a while for people to get to that point, I’ve learned, you know, a lot of times, people come to me, and they’re already at six figures, even closer to seven figures, and they’re just trying to figure it out. And that’s where they really need somebody like me to come in. But I also want to speak to people who you know, are at six, and are growing there. And I want to say, hey, you can get there faster, and you can do it without being overwhelmed. This is how you should be thinking about systems. This is how you integrate this in your everyday life, and really is just showing them that they can integrate it and that you already have a system, you already have a routine, you’re just kind of refining it. So it’s getting on podcasts with wonderful people like you, it’s speaking on stage, it’s going out of my little bubble of where, you know, I’m just on my laptop, figuring stuff out for my people. And it’s actually going out and meeting people in person, which is scary to me, because I don’t speak on stage. And I don’t do a lot of interviews. So like it gets a little nerve racking for me. But people need that information. So it’s just sharing my knowledge with more people, it’s that’s going to be the biggest help from my self, you know, in my company, was also gonna be the bigger help for the actual community that would like that I would like to build around.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. So good. So good Khadirah. Well, it was tremendous having you on the show. Thank you so much for being here. Before we go, though, I’d love to find out. How can folks connect with you learn more about your work and contact you directly?
Khadirah Muhammad
Oh, absolutely. If you would like to learn anything about me, personally, you can always look at my content on Instagram and YouTube just at Khadirah S Muhammad. I make a lot tutorials about how to create different automations how to create different systems SOP stuff like that, that you can definitely utilize for yourself. And then if you actually are interested in kind of learning how I can help your company, especially if you’re at six figures you’re trying to get to seven. But time isn’t a way of you that you can go to omnipotentconsulting.com/book And you can check that out. You can see the testimonials and you can call myself and we can figure out how to take you to that next level together.
Scott Ritzheimer
Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for being here. To everyone listening your time and attention means the absolute world to us. I’m so honored that you’re here and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.
Contact Khadirah Muhammad
Khadirah Muhammad is a Systems Implementation Engineer, Marketing Automation Expert, and Founder of SucceedingWithSystems.com who went from breaking into the entrepreneurial world at 18 with the goal of retiring her parents, to falling in love with systems and automation while helping her clients. Her notable projects include taking a client’s 2 -person operation from $15,000 to $80,000 in revenue in 60 days and helping them triple their team in 8 months.
Now Khadirah helps solopreneurs create 6 Figure Systems so they can gain back their time freedom and develop lifestyle freedom using Marketing Automation & Systems.
Want to learn more about Khadirah’s work at Succeeding with Systems? Check out her website at https://succeedingwithsystems.com
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