Document your processes – Small Business Blunders vol. 8

Hi. My names Adam, with Adam Lowe Creative, and I help small businesses just like yours overcome the challenges and obstacles that we all face. Today I’m going to talk about processes. Most of you who know me, know that I’m a process nerd and that I absolutely love processes. So, sorry you’re gonna have to listen to me geek out a little bit.

https://youtu.be/MVHn7nEELdE

But here’s the thing. I see too many businesses out there of all shapes and sizes that don’t have documented processes. The problem is, that makes it so that whatever you’re doing, isn’t quite as repeatable as it could be. It makes onboarding new employees difficult. And it makes it so that the customer experience from one person to the next, isn’t always the same.

This doesn’t have to be anything difficult. This can be just documenting or outlining things in a simple Excel spreadsheet. Or this can be something more complex like using a tool called Process Street.IO. You can get as easy or as complicated as you want here.

Just make process checklists that say, okay when I bring a new client on, here’s the email that I send them. These are the general steps that a buyer takes throughout the entire journey. Just make sure that whatever it is that you’re doing, that you can repeat it from one time to the next.

It’s gonna make your life easier, and it’s going to make it so that your customers see consistent service so that you don’t have one customer rave about how well you treated them and then the next person say, “Oh my gosh he did everything wrong.” Having those processes documented is really gonna be a great thing for your business.

The other advantage of having your processes documented is that you can start to see where they’re falling down. So maybe you’re hearing complaints about certain things. Maybe you’re not delivering your product or service on time. Taking a look at those processes can help you understand where some of those bottlenecks exist.

Also, if you’re having a hard time scaling your business, looking at your processes, just seeing it all laid out there on paper, can help you understand where those bottlenecks are and help you find ways to free them up.

Whatever you’re doing, again, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a small one-man business, or you’re a medium or large size business, document your processes. Even if you don’t want to get into something as detailed as writing down each individual step, just start with something high level and then as life goes on, you can start to flush out the details. It’s gonna make a world of difference, and you’ll thank me for it.

Until next week, take care.