How To Grow Your Children’s Activity Business with Systems

In this article I’m going to give you a practical guide on the key systems you need to embrace in order to grow your children’s activity business.

No one started their business so they could spend hours and hours doing admin.

Yet that’s exactly what most business owners do – replying to emails, checking and chasing payments, updating registers, updating websites, raising invoices, filling out tax returns, reconciling payments, writing content, following up with prospects…

It gives me a headache just thinking about it!

Not only is all this admin tedious and boring – it is hugely time consuming.

And all that time could really be put to better use – delivering more classes and activities perhaps, or just taking some time off. You know, the fun stuff J

All this admin does need to be done – but it doesn’t need to be done by you.

Yes, you could hire someone or some people to do it for you – but that can be a bit of a stretch for many children’s activities providers.

Instead, it’s much better to use technology to do it for you.

Not only can tech do the same job as a person for a lower cost, but it works 24/7 without complaining, and it gets it right every time.

I know it isn’t sexy or fun, but systems will transform your life for the better.

Imagine taking bookings at 2am while you sleep.

Or following up with potential customers while on holiday – whilst sliding down a waterslide.

Or submitting your VAT return or Payroll at the click of a button.

And at the same time, giving your prospects and customers a better and more consistent experience.

First Things First: What Are Systems?

Think of systems as the silent engines of your business, working tirelessly behind the scenes.

For the purposes of this article, I’m talking about digital tools that you can implement in your business to perform the tasks that you normally do.

By implementing these digital systems, you are systemising your business – which, as Michael Gerber taught us in his legendary book ‘The E-Myth’, is the key to growth.

Benefits of Systems – How To Grow Your Children’s Activity Business

By implementing robust systems, your business can enjoy:

• Streamlined Operations: Automated systems eliminate the need for manual entries, reducing errors and administrative overhead.
• Enhanced Customer Experience: Parents appreciate the convenience of easy online interactions, from booking sessions to receiving automated confirmations and reminders.
• Improved Scalability: With systems handling day-to-day tasks, you can more easily scale up operations, adding more classes or expanding to new locations without a corresponding increase in stress or staff.

Key Systems to Implement, and Why

1. Communication Systems

Your prospects and customers need to be able to contact you easily – it makes your customers happy and allows you to engage with them. Which leads to more sales.

In today’s world, parents have their own preferences when it comes to how they communicate, so it’s important that you offer multiple communication channels — email, phone, text, WhatsApp, Messenger — to ensure that they will get in touch when they have a question.

Tip: We’ve found that adding a WhatsApp chat option to our website (with WhatsApp for Business) has increased the number of enquiries from our website and helped us to engage with prospects quickly and efficiently.

2. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System

A CRM system does more than store contact information. It automates the entire customer lifecycle from lead capture and communication to conversion and feedback collection.

In a CRM system, you can create landing pages and forms to offer lead magnets and collect prospect details. You can then create a campaign which sends emails and text messages to automatically follow up with those prospects, deliver value, and build a relationship. Once they have become a customer, you can send feedback surveys to help you to improve customer retention.

Check out these CRM systems as a starting point

3. Booking and Payment Systems

Without a booking system, the admin burden on activity providers is intense. Not just that, but the booking process for customers is drawn out and frustrating – and unprofessional.

A booking system will automate critical tasks such as taking the bookings and payments, creating attendance registers, sending follow up emails – significantly reducing your administrative burden.

There are lots of booking systems out there for you to choose from, with different strengths and weaknesses, and you can now get booking systems that have been specifically designed for children’s activity providers, which makes a big difference to the functionality they offer.

I suggest you book a demo with a few to see which one best fits your business needs. Our system, Book That In, is a great option for most activity providers – both in terms of functionality and price – but others to consider include Franscape, Class 4 Kids or ClassBiz.

4. Accounting and Bookkeeping Systems

When my parents ran their own business back in the ‘90s, they kept a physical record of all their receipts and business expenses and did their bookkeeping in a massive paper ledger. I helped them to move their accounts over to Excel, which was genuinely transformative for them back then – but using Excel for your accounts now is just as archaic as paper ledgers were back then.

Modern-day accounting packages like Xero, Freeagent or Quickbooks do so much for you, for about £20 per month. Your bank transactions are imported automatically through Open Banking; your receipts and bills can be automatically created and stored by uploading photos to Hubdoc (free with Xero) or Dext; and they can process your VAT returns and payroll at the click of a button. They save SO much time and ensure accuracy and compliance at the same time.

Add to that the reporting they give you to help you understand the performance of your business, and – truly – signing up for one of these solutions should be a no-brainer. You can even get FreeAgent for free if you have a Natwest Business Bank Account.

Integrating All This Technology – How To Grow Your Children’s Activity Business

The real trick to automating your business processes comes in when you make all these different systems talk to each other.

Tools like Zapier or Make.com connect your different systems to create a seamless operational flow.

As a simple example, I recently helped one of our clients set up an automation in Make which sends a bespoke ‘Welcome’ email to her customers after they book, telling them what to expect from her classes, what to bring etc. – but it filters out existing customers, so it only goes to new customers. She was sending these emails manually previously – now it all happens automatically.

Another, more complex example is below. I’m just trying to open up your mind to what is possible here – because this really is a game-changer for so many businesses:

Trigger: You take a booking and payment via your booking system, which adds the booking to your register and emails joining instruction to the customer.

• à Zapier adds the customer’s details to your CRM, so you can send marketing emails later.
• à Zapier creates an invoice for the booking on your Accounting, logs the payment and sends an invoice to your customer.
• à  Zapier creates a post on your social media, welcoming your new customer and encouraging others to join the same class.
• à Zapier then triggers your CRM to send a follow up email to your customer with a link to the post, asking them to share it with their friends.

The key here is that tools like Zapier and Make enable you to do things like this and much, much more – while you’re sleeping.

One Step at a Time – How To Grow Your Children’s Activity Business

Systematising your children’s activity business can transform chaotic operations into a model of efficiency, enabling significant growth and improved customer experiences.

But getting all these systems set up can take time.

I recommend you start with just one thing: determine a particular pain point in your business – a repetitive task that sucks up a lot of your time – and start there. Find a system that will do that task for you, implement it, and then move onto the next one.

In this way, you can progressively build a comprehensive digital ecosystem for your business.

The setup effort will pay dividends by freeing up time, reducing stress, and allowing you to focus on expanding your business and enhancing your service offerings. Remember, the most crucial step is to start — once your systems are in place, they will revolutionise how you operate, letting you focus on what truly matters: creating memorable experiences for the children you serve.

About the Author

Tim Freed is the Co-Founder of both Toddle About and Book That In.

He founded the Toddle About Magazine in 2010, which is now a thriving franchise business, and went on to launch Book That In in 2017 with his business partner, Alec Wadey, which is now one of the fastest growing online booking systems for activity providers in the UK.

Book a demo of Book That In at bookthatin.online/demo 

Advertise your business for free on the Toddle About website at toddle.fun/free-listing