Work Less, Earn More: How to Systemise Your Business

For years, I built everything from scratch. Every client. Every project. Every deliverable. Custom. Bespoke. Unique.

And the result? I was working until 11pm. Weekends too. Waking up at 2am thinking about what still needed to be done. Burning out while telling myself this was just what happened when you hit consistent five-figure months.

Turns out I wasn’t a hard worker pushing through the grind. I was just bad at business.

Here’s what changed everything. And how you can make the same shift to cut your hours, scale your output, and triple your effective hourly rate.

The Custom Everything Trap

I used to do a lot of sales page copywriting. Client one would come in and I’d build the whole thing from nothing. Hero section. Problem block. Solution section. Social proof. CTA. All crafted from a blank page.

Then client two would come in. And I’d do the exact same thing. Different words, different business, but structurally? I was solving the same problem with the same approach. Starting from zero. Again.

It was like having amnesia. Every single project, I’d sit down with a blank document and try to come up with something clever. Instead of getting the work done, I was burning time reinventing a wheel I’d already built ten times.

The consequences were predictable. Way too much time per project. Constant burnout from doing the same work over and over, just inefficiently. And a hard income cap, because my revenue was directly tied to my hours.

If you’re providing services, your income ceiling is determined by how many hours you can work. When you rebuild everything from scratch every time, you’re guaranteeing that ceiling stays low.

The Numbers That Changed My Thinking

Let’s run some simple maths. Say you charge $100 an hour and take on a project that takes 10 hours. You earn $1,000. Not bad.

But the value you’ve created for that client is worth $5,000 to their business. You can’t charge them $5,000 (they need margin too), but you’ve delivered far more than you captured.

Next client comes in. Same thing. Another 10 hours, another $1,000. You’re capped because every project takes the same amount of time, and your hourly rate stays flat.

Now imagine you had a template. A proven starting framework that handled 80% of the structure. Instead of starting from zero, you start from step three. That same $1,000 project now takes three hours instead of ten.

Your effective hourly rate just went from $100 to $333.

Same quality. Same outcome. Same client satisfaction. One third the time.

That’s what building a system does. It doesn’t reduce the quality of your work. It eliminates the wasted effort of rebuilding foundations you’ve already proven.

The 80/20 Pattern Hidden in Your Best Work

Here’s how I found my template. I pulled out my ten best performing sales pages. The ones that generated the most revenue. The ones clients raved about. The ones I was most proud of.

Then I looked for patterns. What did they all have in common?

Every single one followed the same core structure. The same sections in roughly the same order. The same psychological flow. The details were different. The businesses were different. But the underlying architecture? Identical.

That’s the 80/20 principle at work. 80% of the results came from the same structure. The same approach. The same framework. I’d been rebuilding that 80% from scratch every single time. For no reason.

Once I spotted it, the fix was obvious. Take that common structure and make it my starting point. Template the 80%. Customise the 20%.

Why Templates Don’t Mean Generic Work

The first objection is always this: “But won’t every client’s deliverable look the same?”

Yes and no. The 80% that stays consistent is the proven structure. The psychological framework. The architecture that works because it’s built on how humans make decisions. That part should be the same, because it’s been validated across dozens of engagements.

The 20% you customise is what makes it specific to that client. Their voice. Their audience. Their unique value proposition. Their messaging angle. That’s where the real skill lives.

Think about it this way. Russell Brunson published his “Perfect Webinar” framework and thousands of businesses used it for the better part of a decade. Some still do. That framework is more than 50% templated. But every business that uses it customises it for their market, their offer, their audience. Nobody calls it generic.

Every good sales page follows a proven formula. Every effective email sequence follows a tested structure. People copy ads that work. This isn’t cutting corners. It’s applying what works and focusing your creative energy where it actually matters.

From Service to Product (Without Starting Over)

Here’s where it gets really interesting. Once you’ve built a system that delivers consistent results efficiently, you can sell the system itself.

I built my sales page templates for my own client work. They made me faster and more profitable. Then I packaged those templates and sold them as a standalone product. The same frameworks that helped me deliver $5,000 worth of value in three hours became a product that other people could buy and implement themselves.

This is the deep not wide approach. Instead of creating separate offers for separate audiences, you go deeper with one core transformation at three levels:

Do it yourself. The system, the templates, the frameworks. They take it and run.

Done with you. The same system, but with your guidance. Coaching. Check-ins. Accountability.

Done for you. Full execution. You implement the system on their behalf.

Same expertise. Same underlying framework. Three entry points at three price levels. The DIY product becomes your front-end offer. It brings in buyers at scale, demonstrates your methodology, and naturally feeds your higher-ticket services.

The person who buys your $47 template pack today becomes the $5,000 done-for-you client in six months. You’ve built a natural ascension path without needing a completely separate funnel for each tier.

How to Find Your Template

If you’re still doing custom everything, here’s the practical roadmap.

Step one: Pull your best work. Look at your five to ten most successful client engagements. The ones that got the best results. The ones where everything clicked.

Step two: Find the patterns. What do those engagements have in common? What structure did they share? What approach appeared in every single one? That common thread is your template.

Step three: Build the asset. Take those patterns and formalise them. Document the structure. Create the framework. Turn it into a repeatable starting point that gets you from zero to 50% complete before you even start customising.

Step four: Implement and refine. Use it on your next three clients. Note what needs adjusting. Improve the template with each use. Within a few iterations, you’ll have something that consistently delivers results in a fraction of the time.

Step five: Productise it. Once the system is proven across multiple clients, package it as a DIY product. Use it as the entry point to your ACCER funnel. Let it do double duty: generating revenue on its own while feeding your pipeline of higher-ticket clients.

The Compound Effect of Systems

This isn’t just about saving time on individual projects. It’s about what you do with the time you reclaim.

When a ten-hour project becomes a three-hour project, you’ve freed up seven hours. You can serve more clients. You can invest time in your own marketing. You can build out your lead generation system. You can finally work on the business instead of just in it.

And each improvement compounds. A better template means faster delivery. Faster delivery means more clients. More clients mean more data on what works. More data means a better template.

It’s a flywheel. But it only starts spinning when you stop rebuilding from scratch every single time.

Stop Reinventing the Wheel

The secret to scaling a service-based business isn’t working more hours. It’s not hiring a team of ten. It’s not some complicated automation stack.

It’s building systems from what already works and applying them consistently. Template the 80%. Customise the 20%. Triple your effective hourly rate. Then package the system and sell it as its own product.

Every bit of great marketing and great service delivery is built on basic human psychology. The frameworks don’t change. The principles don’t change. The underlying structure that works for client one will work for client fifty. You just have to be smart enough to capture it instead of rebuilding it from memory every time.

Not sure where your business system is leaking the most time and money? Take the free growth diagnostic. It maps your business against all five ACCER stages and shows you exactly where to focus first.