Over the past 6 months, I’ve spoken with more solo business owners than usual who are looking at their existing tech stack through a more critical lens. Between the rising costs of most platforms and a wider range of all-in-one (or most-in-one systems) entering the market this isn’t surprising.
It’s a great time to ask whether you actually need those 7 tools held together by Zapier and hope.
Making the decision to switch is one thing. And most business owners make that quite quickly; either it makes sense for your business or it doesn’t.
But the bit after the decision is where things stall – you’re standing in the mess of your current systems, you can see the lovely, tidy version of your business on the other side, and… you have absolutely no idea how to get from here to there.
So, as we often do when we’re overwhelmed, you do nothing.
Now I’m not going to pretend shifting or consolidating your tech stack is easy. But it is one of my favourite things to tackle (where my puzzle-loving brain meets the joy I get from creating cohesive, smooth systems).
Here’s the process I use, broken down so you can DIY it yourself.
audit
Before you begin, you need to understand:
- What you currently have
- What you use it for
- How your different tools and platforms work together
This is important because it will inform and guide the rest of the process: it sets you up to make smart decisions about what to keep, it gives you a specific plan of what you’re building and why, and you’ll be confident about what to switch and when.
This isn’t a ‘think about it for awhile then dive in’ exercise. You want to capture the information somewhere you can revisit at any time, like a Google Doc. And once it’s laid out in front of you, you might find you’re paying for 2 platforms that do the same thing. That’s very common, and exactly the kind of thing this step is meant to uncover.
Tip:
While you’re auditing, take a moment export or back up as much of your stuff as possible. It’s much easier to let things go when you know there’s a copy around if you do decide later that you need it. I love to use GoFullPage to grab screenshots of website pages before I make changes, just in case.
decide
It can be tempting to simply replicate everything you already have in the new platform but there’s an excellent chance that means creating more work for yourself than is necessary.
Most solo business owners have built their systems over time, which means they’ve also slowly accumulated a range of tools and platforms. It’s only once you look at the big picture that you find there’s overlaps and redundancies, and things you don’t want or need anymore – identified during the Audit step.
decision 1: what to keep
This is the time to make decisions about what it makes sense to keep so you can focus on building only those things.
For example, in your email software:
- Are there automations you no longer need? Maybe you’ve retired the lead magnet, or it’s a registration funnel for a past workshop.
- Can you clean out inactive contacts?
- Does your tagging framework make sense, or is this a good opportunity to clean that up?
decision 2: what to build and when
Once you’ve made decisions about what you’ll bring across to your new platform, the next step is to decide the order in which you’ll build those pieces.
Some factors that can help you decide are:
- Billing dates: if having the new platform means you’ll cancel other subscriptions, a simple metric is getting that piece built before the next payment date. One of my clients was using Kajabi and paid annually so we knew we wanted to finish that part of the migration well before her renewal was due.
- System improvements: you might decide to start with the functions that will streamline your operations by saving you time, manual work, or brain space.
- Ease of use: which pieces are easiest to set up? If you’re learning a new platform, this can be a great way to ease yourself in, get your head around a new system, and rack up some quick wins to keep the momentum going.
build
Now comes the fun part! (If you’re a tech, systems, and puzzle geek like me). You get to dive in and start building!
And rather than staring at a blank canvas and getting overwhelmed, the decisions you’ve made create your project plan so you have a clear starting point. This will likely take longer than you realise so be generous when mapping out your timelines for this step.
test
Once you’ve set up the pieces of your new platform, it’s time to make sure they work as you want and need them to. This is where we enter the testing phase.
Test everything as though you were a customer. That means signing up for your lead magnet, booking a discovery call, making a test purchase, joining your community, and so on. At this stage I test all of these things using native links (ie. the link that goes directly to your subscriber form). We’ll embed these on your site later.
Be sure to leave yourself a good amount of time for this phase too, because this is where you’ll shake out the bugs and discover what you’ve missed or forgotten to do. Make a list, go back and fix those things, and test again.
switch
Once everything is built and tested, I recommend you have one more look at the old systems and platforms to make sure you haven’t missed anything. Once you’re sure you’ve captured what you want to keep, built what you need, made a plan to build the rest later if you need to, and tested absolutely everything… you’re ready to officially switch platforms!
The key task of this phase is updating all of your public assets so they point to the new platform. This will include replacing or updating things like:
- Sign up forms embedded on your website (and test them again once embedded)
- Links to your booking tool
- Checkout links
- Intake forms in your onboarding sequence
- PDF links in your lead magnet email sequence (a client once copied the same download link without realising it was a Mailchimp link, and that link broke when she closed the account).
I recommend setting aside a few hours to switch everything over at the same time to reduce the chances of customers or new contacts landing in your old system. You might also like to give your audience a heads up that they might notice some changes coming soon, and ask them to let you know if they run into any issues.
There’s your process to get from standing in the mess to enjoying a smooth business back-end without losing your mind (or your subscriber list) along the way.
It’s not a fast process, and it might not always be fun, but every business owner I’ve walked through it comes out the other side wondering why they put it off for so long.
And one final tip: If you get partway through the audit and realise you can’t understand your tech stack clearly enough to make decisions about it – that’s normal, not a sign you’re bad at this. It’s hard to be objective about a mess from inside it.
You can tap into my puzzle-loving brain any time if you’d rather hand that bit over.
