When you have a plan-a system-in place, you're positioned to grow your business both over the short term and long. A system removes you from the time-consuming operations tasks and lets you focus on growing your business. By putting a system in place, you can focus on those activities that will earn you at least your desired hourly rate, while leaving other tasks to your employees or outsourced help. Stop and think for a moment about how much your time is worth. You really do need to look at your income and break it down to an hourly rate. So the marketing system, in our case, deals with the end-to-end system of marketing, profit centers, and ROI. Everything that can possibly affect the three ways above to grow your business (and the reverse: keeping your business from shrinking) is part of the marketing system.