A little bit about me for a second to help set the stage here.
I’m not great at following rules. In fact, I never have been, which has served me well in business. I tend to do things my own way and do my own thing regardless of what anybody else thinks should be happening, or what they think I am supposed to do. I absorb information and knowledge, but I don’t ask a ton of people for their opinions. I ask trusted sources, I read about a book a week, but I very seldom ask a lot of people for their opinions of things.
I like doing what I want to do, when I want to do it.
Now, this does not mean that I am irresponsible. In fact, I am overly responsible, but I just really do not see a connection between what “has to” happen and what I want to have happen. If I see a connection between what has to happen and what I want to have happen, then I will do it. Otherwise, I just don’t care.
With this in mind, one of the things that I have always thought I have been horrible at doing my entire decades-long career has been following processes. I always thought that following processes was something I just could not do, as if it simply was not in my DNA to be repetitive in my activities. In fact, the 8-million different personality profiles that I have taken back up these assumptions about myself, that I am ridiculously highly goal driven, I’m a very interpersonal influencer and extrovert who loves talking to people, and I don’t follow rules or processes.
But it turns out that even though I know myself very well, I was wrong about my interpretation of my relationship with processes.
For most of my career I’ve been connecting “rule follower” with “process follower” because to me, following a process feels a lot like following a rule. But now that I look back at different jobs and different companies, what I have realized is that I am not good at following rules or processes that do not make sense and that do not move things forward.
Throwing Out the Rules and Embracing Processes
As my business grows I am so grateful to have finally figured out that following processes and following rules are two different things. I have no problems with business owners throwing out the rules, because in my opinion, rules create average results. And I don’t want to be average, I want to be the exception to those rules. And I want you to also be the exception to someone else’s rules.
Now, obviously I am not talking about rules like IRS rules, or other legal rules. That is an entirely different type of rule. There is a huge difference between recklessly ignoring laws versus the rules of how society expects you to do something.
The rules that I want you to ignore are the societal rules and those rules of “but that’s how it’s always been done” that lead to average results. And while you are throwing out those rules, I also want you to embrace processes, and the idea of turning as much of your business as you can into repeatable processes.
Anything that happens in your business that is predictable and repeatable is a process. Whether you realize it or not, your business likely has processes in place already, even if you do not realize what they are. Whether it’s paying bills, posting your online content, preparing and sending a newsletter, invoicing clients, or doing the actual work that you do with clients, or any of the million other things you do in your business, you have a process for how that happens. In fact, even getting new clients is a process.
Sometimes processes are all in your head, you know what to do each time that processes has to be done, but it’s not written down or automated in any way. And some of your processes might not actually be helpful, are actually unnecessary, or are downright sabotaging your business.
Creating Processes Reduces Stress
As you grow your businesses, these processes can start to feel as though they are literally, physically bumping up against you. When all of the decisions and questions about how to do something have to go through you, it feels like standing waist deep in rough water at the beach, with waves slamming up against you and about to knock you down.
When you can document, predict, and schedule your processes, though, it feels more like standing in calm waters, where the waves gently ebb and flow past you. Your business becomes process dependent instead of being people dependent, whether it is just you or you have a team.
Documenting your processes becomes even more important as your team grows, as it makes training new team members much easier. As you onboard more and more team members, without processes you are at risk of an entire part of your business being in someone’s head, and nobody else knows what to do if they go on vacation, become ill, or leave the role.
The more you can document and optimize the processes that run your business, and the more your business becomes process dependent instead of people dependent, the more of a pressure relief you will feel. Less pressure on you means freeing up mental and physical space to focus on growing your business. It also means less stress worrying that the one team member you have that does help you get things done might get sick or do something crazy like take a vacation!
Creating Processes Saves Time
Creating processes around what has to happen turns actions into habits, meaning they happen with very little thought. You can start to get to the point where more and more of the things that NEED to happen in your business happen automatically. The more you can create your business into a system made up of processes, the more of your business will happen by habit, or with very little thought, and you will save time to focus on the parts of your business that help you grow your list of clients and scale to the next level of success.
In fact, if you don’t have processes for how things are happening in your business, you’re going to be much slower to be able to identify problems or respond to them because you’re recreating the wheel every time there’s an issue. When you have a process in place, and a problem happens, it means you can tweak and improve the process, instead of reinventing the whole process all over again.
I used to feel as if following so many processes was sucking up my extra time. But I recently read Atomic Habits, and although it took me a while to embrace this, I now realize that while getting used to a new process might take a minute, once following the process becomes a habit, I am saving massive amounts of time.
Processes Make a Business a Business
When someone buys a franchise, they are purchasing two things: brand awareness, and the processes to run the business. Many people do not realize this, but when you buy a franchise, you basically get a gigantic operating manual of how to do all of the things in the business.
Although your business may not be a franchise, it is the same in that the two things that give a business value to an external entity like a bank or someone interested in buying your business, are brand awareness/market share, and dialed-in predictable systems and processes that can be duplicated.
If all of your business operations are in your head, you cannot sell that. There is no exit strategy to that because you cannot sell that to someone else. If your business is entirely dependent on you instead of repeatable, scalable processes, and all that you have is brand awareness, you cannot sell that business to someone else.
Systems and Processes in Business Create Value
Nobody was more shocked than I was at how I have embraced having a process for everything in the past few years. My Chief Operating Officer laughs at me now when I’m the one who asks, “Do we need a process for this?” because when she started working with me, I would do an eye roll every time she and my assistant would start the conversation about processes. In fact, they were creating processes despite me instead of because of me.
My definition of how to stay flexible, and to be able to respond, and my association of processes with rules, was messing everything up. Processes are now non-negotiable. In fact, everything you’ve seen in how my business has grown in the past few years has at its base the fact that I’ve embraced turning as much of what we do into a repeatable, documented, predictable process.
Everyone’s job is easier, including mine. We now have the mental space that we need to focus on making difficult decisions for figuring out the hard parts about doing business, instead of all of our time getting sucked up just taking care of business. These processes create the time for my team and I to have massive flexibility in when we work and how we work. And I have peace of mind because I know that everything is being taken care of, so I don’t have to ask. I just know it’s all taken care of, and I can just check to see if the box has literally been checked. It is the base foundation of how we are able to scale.
Creating Systems and Processes in Business
Before you think, “”I need to turn everything in my business into a process” it is important to know that you cannot and should not create all of your processes all at once. If you try, you will get completely overwhelmed and end up doing nothing. Creating processes is like that proverbial question of “how do you eat an elephant?” The answer to that is one bite at a time.
It can be harder to create processes when just working theoretically, versus when you have a tangible example. One of the things that we do is that we create our processes as we are doing the work. We document what we are doing as we are doing it. You can keep a document open on your computer, or just keep a pad of paper and a pen on your desk, so that as you are doing something, just jot down what you are doing. You can choose one aspect of your business to document, and then move onto the next. There are a lot of moving parts to getting everything in your business into a system, but it is a complete game changer.
If you think you do not have time to do this, I would argue that you don’t NOT have time to do this. You can use me as an inspiration if you want, because if I can embrace this, anybody can. If I can feel this way and get this way in my business, anybody can do it, because I started off all the way at the other end of the spectrum, thinking that I did not need or want my business to be full of processes.
In fact, this is one of the biggest hurdles that I see when I am working with clients. I am watching people make money despite themselves instead of because of themselves. A lack of processes is actually the type of thing that puts the entire business at risk, especially if client acquisition is one of the things around which you have zero processes in place. I have become so serious about this that we have created part of our business to help our clients solve this exact problem.
Systems for Success from Conquer Your Business
Our solution to help you get over the bridge and become a true business owner is called Systems for Success. Knowing that most business owners are out of hours in the day and days in the week to do this for themselves, we start where we start everything, with strategy sessions. Based on those strategy sessions, we go about creating your systems for you. The same person who put all of my systems in place for Conquer Your Business will put your systems in place for you and then train you and your team on these processes.
If you are anything like me, you should not be the person creating the processes for your business. You should create the outcomes that you are trying to achieve, while letting the people who are better at creating processes work on how things happen in your business. When you allow us to do the heavy lifting for you, you can work on needle moving activities like sales, marketing, and doing the work that people hire you to do.
If you’re interested in speaking with us, just go to the Systemize Growth page, where you can learn more about our Systems for Success and you can also reach out to us from there. Let’s get your business running like a well oiled machine!
