A systems expert talks about her top strategies to help online businesses succeed

Most Valuable Lesson or Insight

The most valuable lesson from this conversation is that systems and automation are transformative for business efficiency and personal freedom. By consolidating tools, automating repetitive tasks, and leveraging CRMs (Customer Relationship Management platforms), business owners can save significant time, reduce costs, and focus on what truly matters—whether that’s growing their business or spending time with family. Luvyna’s story highlights how systems not only streamline operations but also create opportunities for scalability and work-life balance.

Top 5 Between-the-Lines Lessons

1. Outsource What You Don’t Know: Trying to do everything yourself, especially when it’s outside your expertise, wastes time and money. Hiring experts (like Luvyna) can save you weeks or months of frustration.

2. Small Savings Add Up: Eliminating small, recurring expenses (like multiple subscriptions) can lead to significant financial savings over time—sometimes thousands of dollars per month.

3. Automation Frees Mental Space: Automating tasks like email reminders or onboarding workflows not only saves time but also reduces mental clutter, allowing you to focus on higher-value activities.

4. Success is Personal: Success isn’t just about income; it’s about achieving your personal goals, whether that’s being present for your family, having flexibility, or scaling your business.

5. Community and Support Matter: Having access to a community (like Luvyna’s membership) and live support can make learning and implementing systems less intimidating and more effective.

5 Actionable Steps

1. Conduct a Business Audit: Identify repetitive tasks, inefficiencies, and tools you’re currently using. Write down everything that’s taking up your time or causing frustration.

2. Explore a CRM: If you’re not already using one, research CRMs like HighLevel, Dubsado, or HoneyBook. Start with a free trial to see how it can centralize your customer data, automate workflows, and save time.

3. Automate Email Workflows: Set up automated emails for onboarding, reminders, and follow-ups. This small change can drastically improve client communication and reduce no-shows.

4. Consolidate Tools: Review your subscriptions and tools. Look for opportunities to consolidate platforms (e.g., moving from Kajabi to HighLevel) to save money and streamline operations.

5. Invest in Learning or Outsourcing: If setting up systems feels overwhelming, invest in a course, membership, or hire an expert like Luvyna to guide you through the process.

Transcript:

[Speaker 2]

Welcome to business chats, you know the drill. I'm not going to be able to say what it is that we're doing while I look for the person that we are looking for. Basically, today we're going to be talking with a systems expert and she is going to explain to us what it is that we need to do to be able to set up systems in our business that allows us to be successful, pretty much.

Let's see if I can ask her to join because I don't see her in the list of people that I can send the invitation to. Where are you, Luvina? If you can, oh, there you are, awesome.

I'm going to load. Hey, come on. I got your request and I accepted it but it doesn't seem to be working for some reason.

And so, I'm just, I don't know, it's not taking the option to allow you to join me. This is weird. Hi, this is very strange.

I don't have any requests to join. And there you are again. I accepted it and it says that you cannot join for some reason.

I've accepted it again. There you are. Hey, how are you today?

[Speaker 1]

I am good, how are you doing?

[Speaker 2]

I'm great, thank you for asking. Instagram was playing games with me. It does it every week.

I don't know what's happening but I'm glad that you are here now. Can you please introduce yourself and what it is that you do?

[Speaker 1]

I'm Luvina Mantel. I own Mantel and Co. Basically, we are a CRM and workflow integrator.

We help business owners take all those different tools and platforms you're already using and kind of like DIY duct taping together and we put them onto one platform which is a CRM and we integrate everything together. You're saving tons of money on subscriptions and tons of money and time through utilizing automations and stuff like that.

[Speaker 2]

I love that. It feels like the dream for someone with a little bit of a talk to keep everything organized. Were you like that as a child?

You like to have everything organized and neat to end up with this business?

[Speaker 1]

Yeah, I'm the oldest of four kids so like having a plan and keeping things organized is in my blood. Like I've done it my entire life so now I get to do it for other people.

[Speaker 2]

It's so amazing. Living the dream, I love that. So I have to ask, do you consider yourself successful?

[Speaker 1]

Yes, I do and probably not to like what other people do but for me and my family and my business, I do.

[Speaker 2]

And what does that mean? What is success to you? Because it's very different for everyone.

[Speaker 1]

Yeah, the biggest thing for me was still being able to have a career and bringing money for our family and our goals and dreams but still being able to be a full-time mom and present with my kids and my husband and have flexibility. So with this business, I've been able to do that and I'm not making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year but I'm also getting to spend whatever time I want with my kids and my family and travel and do things.

[Speaker 2]

Most people that are making over 100k are not having time for their kids and their family. It's just a little bit of a give and take. So you create systems for people to optimize their processes and to help them free up some time and to make them more efficient and of course, make them more money.

Can you tell me because I love systems. Well, my systems are just to-do lists. Let's just call that a system.

So can you tell me what type of systems do you implement and maybe which ones have you found to be more successful for your clients?

[Speaker 1]

Yeah. So my favorite thing to do is when a client completely switches from duct taping everything together and to having an actual CRM. So that kind of is the big turning point for my clients, I feel like.

And a CRM is a customer management relationship tool. So the foundations of a CRM is to contain all your customer information. So all those leads that you're coming in, you're collecting all that information, it's all stored underneath their contact info.

You have your entire history with that client is all in one place. What I love about a CRM, and I primarily work in high level and it's white labeled versions, but I've worked in like Dubsado, HoneyBook, Kajabi. There's so many different ones out there, right?

But what I love about high level and having a CRM for your business is that your website, your funnels, all your membership areas, your e-commerce store, your email marketing, social media, everything can be held in one place. Another big one is like calendars. So instead of you jumping back and forth between different platforms, you can use like Zapier or those other tools to connect pieces of your business.

Everything's in one place and we can make all those pieces of a CRM communicate and work together using workflows and automations. And it can truly change the entire way you run your business. It's so cool watching people use it to its full potential.

[Speaker 2]

You set it up and then eventually people are like, okay, so what do I do now with all of this time that I have? What's happening? There must be something wrong with this.

I set it up with Moxie. Do you know Moxie?

[Speaker 1]

I've heard of it. I've never actually been in it, but I found that CRMs are very similar.

[Speaker 2]

Yeah, they usually have sort of the same functionality. I'm so in love with Moxie just because I guess they just started out and their customer service is amazing. So if you don't know how to do something, they will just jump in and help you figure it out.

But the automations and the whole just following through with one lead, damn, it's life changing. I really just sat down and wrote down the email templates for when I send out a proposal and only that. And now I'm like, what do I do with all of this time?

It's insane. Have you had crazy success cases with systems? Yeah.

[Speaker 1]

So I've had a couple. Probably my biggest one is so, and this has to do with moving and combining everything just in itself, because we have lots of different subscriptions and they're really low ticket, right? So it's like $10 here, 15 here.

It's not a lot of money, but I moved one client from Kajabi over to high level. And when she started counting up how much money she was saving a month, it was over $2,000. It was like $2,600 a month that she was saving by moving everything over, which is crazy.

And it was just all these little subscriptions of things that were adding up, but she didn't realize how much they're adding up because it just seems like it's a couple of dollars here and there, right?

[Speaker 2]

Damn, that's insane. $2,000 a month.

[Speaker 1]

Yeah. And a big chunk of that was Kajabi because she had multiple offers out there. So she was having to increase her Kajabi subscription, but yeah, we were able to save her a huge chunk of money by just moving her over.

[Speaker 2]

And have you had like crazy also, how do you say this? Like an increase of sales or I don't know, that type of thing with that client?

[Speaker 1]

Yeah. So she's probably like my favorite case study because she just had so many good stories in hers. She was also in a super unique niche, so that helped her too with her funnel, but she had never had a freebie funnel, never used a freebie.

She'd been coaching, but she'd never had to promote her coaching type of thing. So we built her a freebie funnel. And just in the first month, she had 800 visits to her freebie.

36 of those booked discovery calls with her, and she converted six of those into coaching clients, which was so cool.

[Speaker 2]

Amazing. Oh my God, I love that. When was that?

Was that recently?

[Speaker 1]

Um, that was back in probably like spring, summerish time. It was right before we moved. So it was like between probably April and June, sometime in the spring.

[Speaker 2]

I love that. I love that so much. So if you found someone that really doesn't know what systems are and what is it about and like how everything works, what would be the first thing that you would recommend for them to start setting up their things?

[Speaker 1]

Yeah. So my favorite thing is to kind of like sit down and do an audit with them and see where they are, what they have set up, what they don't have set up. I like like brain dumping with my clients.

And I literally just let them brain dump any of their frustrations and struggles and things that they were spending time on. Because a lot of times there's little things that we can tweak and turn into workflows and automations that'll save them a whole lot of time and frustration that like they don't even think of off the bat. But yeah, an audit is definitely like the first step because maybe you're not in a point where you need to move to a CRM.

Like that's completely understandable. Or maybe you already are in a CRM and you're just not using it to its full potential. And there's just minor tweaks that we can do to make you use that better.

And then when you're ready to move to something more robust, like high level or some of these bigger platforms, you already are kind of set up well, you know, like you can just move things over. But then, yeah, once we do an audit, normally my audits come back with like five to 10 actionable items with videos like how to do it. Because I'm a true believer, like I want people to be able to use their system.

I don't want to like do it all for them and then hand it over and then be like, Oh, this is great. But like now what?

[Speaker 2]

Yeah, then they're like, Okay, so what, what should I do? Like, yeah, how do I use this thing?

[Speaker 1]

Yeah. So I really like giving people actual items and like how to videos and descriptions, walking them through how to make some of those changes. And then from there, we kind of go, it's totally based off of them if they are at the point where they have like nothing in place, or they've only been duct taping, and they're ready to actually move into a CRM.

Like, yes. So excited.

[Speaker 2]

Yeah.

[Speaker 1]

Then we start talking about like, okay, this is what kind of the project scope we're looking at. This is our timeline. Here's all the amazing things we can do.

What you want to do type thing. If they already in a CRM, maybe they just need to do like implement those tips. And then they can continue running as they have been just slightly more efficient.

But yeah, it's customizable. And like based off of where you are in your business, and what your goals for your business are.

[Speaker 2]

And for someone that's starting out their business, maybe they are a service based business, and they started out I don't know, one, two years ago. And they don't really know where to begin. Of course, you would do this audit, what would be the normal, the most common things that they would need to improve or optimize to be able to be more efficient in their business?

[Speaker 1]

A lot of times, it's just getting rid of some of those manuals, manual tasks, like emails are a huge one. So you kind of already mentioned it, like automating your onboarding workflow, or even like reminder emails. I oh my god, yeah, and I'm sure my followers are tired of hearing this.

But I had a couple weeks ago, I was having major tech issues. So the Google server was down and wasn't communicating with high level. And none of my email reminders went out and I had a 50% show rate convert compared to my 90% normal show rate, just by not having reminder.

So those are like little things. There's just so many like little things you can automate that you don't even realize is taking up so much time. And like, you know, when you're like, no, you need to do something and you're worried about it, it's just taking up brain space.

There's so many little things that we can automate that are taking up brain space that don't need to.

[Speaker 2]

For sure, that that was a big change for me when I started doing everything like automating emails and just the actual process of from onboarding, I just had the client meeting, I'm sending the proposal, they can sign the contract, they can process the payment for the invoice, and then creating the project, the to do list, all of that, I was doing it by brain every single time. Like manually, I had to remind myself, what were the next steps that I need to take for that specific project? Or if it was like a brand project, then okay, the mood board and then this and then that and then the list of deliverables, it was in my head, it was not somewhere.

So now, I am sort of still surprised when I go to see, oh my god, what were the deliverables for this exact project? Or it was this, this, and then I remember, oh, I have it. It's done, I can just go and check, I don't have to suffer on this situation.

It's incredible how life changing it actually is. Do you have like an estimate amount of time that they have saved by automating all of this? Because I'm super curious to see, actually, how much time have I saved by having done this?

[Speaker 1]

So I haven't been like a specific case study. And maybe I just need to sit down and like actually do this because I get this question a lot. But really, one client that she was actually somewhat techie, like I've noticed that a lot of coaches aren't very tech friendly, which is like totally fine, because they are creative.

And like they have a personality to talk to people, which is not me. Like, I'll do your behind the scenes stuff, you do what you're good at. But she was actually kind of techie.

And she found high level, like started setting it up. And she spent over 40 hours the first couple months just trying to like piece things together. And yeah, and part of it was just because high level is one of those platforms where it does have a learning curve.

Like you need to have dedicated time to just sit down and like figure things out. And she was running multiple businesses. She's very, very successful.

She had lots of coaching clients, but she just didn't have she had like bits and pieces. She didn't have dedicated time to sit down and figure this out. But yeah, she spent over 40 hours trying to just get the basic stuff set up.

And basically wasting time before we met and started talking. And then eventually, I set everything up for her. And it did not take me 40 hours.

[Speaker 2]

Yeah, of course, you already have the experience to actually tackle it.

[Speaker 1]

Yeah, it's one of those like, sometimes big things are worth outsourcing when they're just not in your creative space. But yeah, that time saving and just how much money. I mean, think of what that's a whole week's worth of work.

[Speaker 2]

Yeah, that's a very difficult thing to learn when you're starting your business. Like in the beginning, you're like, no, I have to save money. I don't know if I'm going to have this many clients next month or the following year or whatever.

And then you're trying to do it all of yourself. And then eventually, at some point, your brain is like open to new ideas. And you're like, I could hire someone to do this for me.

Happens every time. I have so many clients that contacted me because they made their own website. And they were like, or they tried to make it.

And they got so frustrated in the middle of the process. And they called me like, listen, I didn't want to do this, to be honest. But I need help.

I don't know where what's happening. I touched something like, this is a mess. And I'm tired.

I'm done. I don't want to do this anymore. Just do it for me.

And just let me know later, how do I have to like edit something or like something simple. And then I go in and I do it in a week. And they're like, how?

It took me like three months and I didn't even finish it. Yeah, we have the experience to be able to help you with those tiny little things. It's incredible the amount of time and money that we waste in the beginning, just not outsourcing to people that are experts in that area.

I mean, just come on, just hire her. It's fine. Do you have any freebies or anything that people can or any kind of information that people can go to or a website maybe where they can go to find out more about your services?

[Speaker 1]

Yeah. So I have a website, of course, it's just mantelandco.com. Super easy.

I'm also really active on social media. And I try to post tons of very like informative and educational type content, especially when it comes to systems and CRMs and stuff like that. I actually have a freebie that kind of like walks you through all the steps of setting up your CRM.

So and it has a free 14 day trial of high level or the white legal version that I mostly work in. So feel free to check that out or like to that. And yeah, I have lots of resources.

So like I'm getting ready to launch a low ticket membership that helps you for like those DIY brand newbies to business that want a CRM but like can't afford to pay someone to set it up. That's kind of what this membership is for. I have office hours and I kind of like walk you through all my how to videos of setting things up.

So I have lots of resources. That's amazing.

[Speaker 2]

When is this membership launching?

[Speaker 1]

January 1.

[Speaker 2]

Oh my god. It's just three days. Three days.

Oh my god, you guys people you need to jump in on this like ASAP. Honestly, systems are just, I cannot even. It's life changing.

You can free up so much time and then you're like, okay, I guess I just need to get a new client because I'm bored. Like, what it used to take me so long. Now, I don't have anything to do here.

I love that. Oh my god, please send me the information of the link for people to sign up on the membership on Monday. So I can share it to some, I don't know, maybe someone is interested.

[Speaker 1]

Yeah, absolutely. Like, basically, you get my time twice a month to ask me any systems questions over Zoom, online and it's all recorded.

[Speaker 2]

I love that. That's actually genius because I hate freaking courses where you just go and everything is pre-recorded and then you have a question and then there's no one to ask the question to because it's just a video.

[Speaker 1]

Basically, all my videos that I've made over the last two years are in this membership for you. And the cool thing about high level membership areas is they have a whole community that you're automatically added to too. So not only do you get to meet me, but you get to meet all the other people that are in this community.

And there's a chat board and you can talk to them and ask me questions on the chat.

[Speaker 2]

And yeah, I'm really excited. That's so cool. I'm actually going to share your profile with a friend.

She is looking to, she's looking into Kajabi for her memberships and her courses, but she has a lot. She's a coach. She has a lot of memberships and like, there's a whole thing in there.

[Speaker 1]

Yeah.

[Speaker 2]

And it sounds like high level is more, more convenient for her.

[Speaker 1]

We definitely and some people don't agree with me, but when you're like trying to scale and grow your business long term.

[Speaker 2]

Yeah. Yeah. I think she's exactly in that moment.

I'm definitely going to attack her on this on this video so she can reach out. This is amazing. I love this.

Thank you so much for all of this information. I'm sure a lot of people is going to find it valuable. And I look forward to the details about the membership on Monday to be able to share it everywhere.

Thank you so much for joining me today.

[Speaker 1]

Yeah, you too. It was so nice to chat.

[Speaker 2]

My pleasure. Have a great rest of your day.

[Speaker 1]

You too. Bye.