032: Clone Yourself & Scale Your Business Effortlessly!

Hey, have you heard there's a new style of CEO on the block. The modern CEO. And she is changing the way businesses are run. She's setting her own hours and her own salary. She's creating a business around what matters most to her. Freedom, family, and impact. And her corner office looks nothing like what you'd see on Wall Street. It's a kitchen t your grandma's lake house. A spacious home office, the living room floor maybe surrounded by kids and crayons or the local coffee shop. Your business, your way. This modern CEO is here to stay. Because when you embrace your role as modern CEO, you will have more freedom, more profit, and more fun. Most importantly, you'll fall in love with your life and a business in a way you've only dreamed. Trust me, this isn't a pipe dream reserved for only a select few. You are the modern CEO. You are creating a business and life you love because a better business means a better life. So this just might be the moment you've been waiting for if you've been following along in our how to Clone Yourself series. And you thought we were going to go deep and get down and dirty into talking about how to build systems and to do some hiring. Well, the moment has arrived and we are first going to dive into how to actually build out your systems. The technical, nitty gritty how to of what you need to think about when you are building out your systems. And I've got pages and pages and pages of notes on this, but I'm going to try and streamline it and pull it up and get out of the weeds for you and keep it simple so you can get in action on this right away. And of course, if you want to go deep on your systems and on hiring and on how to clone yourself from a time management perspective at any point in time, hop on over to howtocloneyourself.com and we've got so much more information on this for you. So as we think about building out systems and how you're going to clone yourself, it is a fact that we need more of you in the world. But you know, that does not necessarily mean you doing more. It means that you can have a bigger impact and still save time, not hustle so hard. You know, every now and then, everybody's gotta hustle a little bit, but it doesn't have to be pedal to the metal all the time. When you get systems in place and you do what you were born to do, that's us getting more of you in the world. And you are right on top time. So as you think about the priorities in your business and all of the systems you have to build out, which you identified using the Get Efficient prioritization matrix, if you've been following along with our how to Clone Yourself series, you've leveraged the time inventory to get to this place. And you might have even identified some new systems that you need to check out and implement based on what we discussed in our last episode, which is all about the customer life cycle. As you think about these priorities, remember the work we've already done and remember that you may want to focus on revenue generating activities. What's going to bring money into my business? Right. I want to make sure those systems are solid and fine tuned. What are the client facing activities I have in place because I want to wow my prospects and clients and then what aligns with my life? What's not working for me right now in my business and in my life that I want to implement some new systems and some new structures around so I can shift that and go through my days with more ease and more joy. Things will be streamlined and things will flow. So those are the types of things that you have already prioritized that you might want to weave into your operations manual, or what I call my Operations Playbook. Because Playbook just sounds a little bit more fun than manual. Running a business today, in this day and age online, with the pace that everybody is moving at, even if you're a team member in someone else's business, it may feel sometimes like you are flying by the seat of your pants. Well, that is about to change. Let's imagine for a second that you're an acrobat in Cirque du Soleil, performing incredible feats of balance, soaring high above an adoring crowd. I'm sure you'd feel a lot more adventurous and secure if there was a net beneath you. You know, just in case you happen to overreach, that safety net is your operations manual Playbook. What's more, a safety net is one of the vital functions that this Playbook performs. What if you get tired of all the acrobatics and want to bring in a couple performers to assist you? Yes, the Playbook is going to help you with that. You don't have to reinvent the wheel or completely stop what you're doing to train other people up on how things happen in your business. So up to this point in how to Clone yourself process. As we've gone through this podcast series, we've primarily been preparing when you Invest time in preparing. You accelerate time to implement more than 70% that is that you'll save 70% of your time if you pause to prepare first. So I really want to commend you for doing that. Thus far, systems give you a similar benefit. Systems can accelerate your results when you do something over and over, it's a repeatable task that can easily be turned into a system. Anything you're doing in your business or in your life right now, there's already a system in place for it. Again, it's whether you're intentional or not, and it's organically unfolding now. There are some things that you're not going to spend a lot of time on. It's organically unfolding just fine. But there are other things that are important that you do over and over again that you want to get intentional about. Having strong intentional systems will help you do those repeatable tasks faster. Take for example, quarterly taxes. You pay them often enough that they're repeatable, but not frequently enough to remember exactly where to log in to pay the taxes, what your password is, or how much exactly to pay after. Five times. Yes, you heard it five times. Paying my quarterly taxes. Entering a password reset button and forgetting what to click on for my specific situation, I realized I needed to leverage this how to clone yourself methodology. I was spending too much time on a very simple task. When I implemented a system for this process, not only did it take me less time to pay my taxes each quarter, but I was also set up to outsource this activity. Yes, building out systems can be tedious and time consuming. Thoughts of I'll just do this myself so I don't need to write it down or it takes too long to document may start to creep in. That's why I don't want you to document all systems in your business right this. Second, prioritizing is as key to building out your systems as it is to running your business. If you try to do this all at one time, other areas of your business that need attention might just go neglected. The last thing I want your systems to do is leave you stretched too thin. So you've already done the work to prioritize what needs to be systematized so you can get more efficiency yourself, or so you can prepare to outsource. Leverage that good work you already did, and we're going to build upon it so systems have a few key components in them, and we're going to leverage a very specific structure to break down how you build out your operations playbook for your Business again, you don't have to do this all at once. Piece by piece, priority by priority. It's going to add up. An ocean gets filled by one raindrop of water at a time. Just raindrop after raindrop. We're going to fill this operations playbook. The pieces of your operations playbook are systems, processes and checklist. So we've already talked about this idea that systems are the what, when, where, why and how of what you do. Systems define how everything works together and they're a collection of of processes and checklists. Anything that's done more than once, I cannot say this enough because these are like the easy, low hanging fruit in your business for you to get efficiency fast. Anything that's done more than once ultimately can be documented in your playbook, starting with the activities you already have observed. So a process is simply the step by step of how something gets done. Every process starts with an input. When a process occurs, something has happened that prompted and initiated the movement. In addition, you might have to collect certain information before the process can be completed. Those are other inputs. So one input, if we take the example of my quarterly taxes, is that there may be a specific date every year those taxes need to be paid. So let's say June 1st rolls around and that's the date to pay the taxes. That's an input. That's a process that occurs. Something that's happened, this date arrived, that is initiating the movement of this process. Now I also need some other inputs to pay this. I've got to go back to my taxes from last year and double check what my payment amount is. Right. So there may be some other information that needs to be collected. In another example, let's say a prospective client requested a consult by completing an inquiry form on your website. That process was kicked off by the input of receiving the inquiry form. Now the process is initiated and you take the steps needed to follow up with her and ensure she gets exactly what she was expecting. So as you build out detailed processes for your business, consider what's the process you are working to define? What is your goal for that process? What do you actually want? The person following the process? Maybe that's you, maybe that's someone else to accomplish. And when does the process start? With these questions answered, you can start to broad out into broader questions that reveal more about this specific process in your system. For example, you might ask, where is this process taking us? What tools will we leverage to execute on this process? Right. Do I need to have some tools handy like Slack or where will this process be done? Will it be done in a Facebook group? Will it be done in teamwork or your project management system? Is this a process that can be executed online remotely, or is it something that needs to be done on pen and paper, on a whiteboard, physically in front of you? What circumstances is this process going to be executed under? Clearly asking these questions and gathering quality responses is going to have a huge impact on your efficiency. And if you simply break down the whole what, where, when and why of a process, it's going to help you elevate and get out of the weeds. And it's important to do that from time to time to assess how a particular thing we're doing impacts the big picture and so we don't throw a lot of unnecessary steps into the process. I am the queen of the first time going through a system or documenting a process, putting too many steps into in there. On the flip side, you've got to be careful to put too little steps that a 10 year old can't sit down and do it. Especially if it's not rocket science. Right? You can break it down. I recently stepped into a role on my photography team that I don't usually play in our photography business. We have a role called Shoot Day Contact. It's the person who's on point for our shoots and who can take care of anything that needs to happen behind the scenes. So the photographer and the shoot stylist who are actually on site with the client, can focus on the client, which is their most important person at that given time. When I stepped into that Shoot Day Contact role, I pulled up the systems that we had documented and I gave them a test drive. I hadn't touched those processes in quite a while because I hadn't been in that role in quite a while, at least a year. And I pulled up our systems and processes with a fresh perspective. I got elevation and I was totally out of the weeds. And I saw so many opportunities for us to, number one, streamline and get efficiency for us to number two, support our photographer and our shoot stylist better. Because in that moment, the photographer and the shoot stylist became my client. If they were taken care of, they could take care of our end client better than they could if things were just going haywire behind the scenes. So while processes break down the who, what, where, when and why, I want to make sure we layer in checklists. Sometimes a checklist in and of itself is not enough for a process. So that's not the only thing that will be in your playbook however, simple checklists sometimes do the trick. Or simple checklists sometimes feed into a process or a system that you are executing on. For example, when I was in that shoot day contact role, I had a number of processes that I needed to be ready to execute on. I needed our billing process. I needed to know how to fix galleries if they broke right? But also at the start of the day, there was a simple checklist that reminded me to prepare for the day right? Are all of the galleries set up? Are all of our billing systems working? Is everyone who's scheduled to shoot today confirmed to shoot today? Right? So there are a few things that we're just in a simple checklist that might weave into a different process or support the existing process. Think about how easy it is to make a to do list. You can enhance your process documentation and systems with basic checklists like I just described. The simplicity of a checklist is so powerful when it comes to system documentation, because when you've got a big process or you've got a big system, even for the person who likes to execute and who likes to support you, it can feel like a drag to dig through it. It can feel overwhelming. It can feel like you're boiling the ocean. A simple checklist that helps you identify right? Do this first, second, third, and branches out into other processes potentially are your floaties when you're thrown into the deep end of the pool. So use the checklists just like you would use floaties to move through things quickly and to give yourself a little bit of a lift when you're stepping into an overwhelming process. Now, one question I thought of as I was preparing for this episode was can I copy and paste a system and process I found on the Google? This looks like similar system, similar process. Yeah. I totally encourage you to look at operations manuals, systems processes, checklists you can readily find on Google. Templates and samples that exist for public consumption will give you insight into things you may not have thought about before. In fact, we have some sample templates for you over@howtocloneyourself.com so be sure to join us in the how to clone yourself world so that we can hook you you up from end to end. That said, while you can and likely will look at those templates, you can't stop with a simple copy and paste from the Internet or even from my documentation. I am so sorry, it's not always that easy. Random processes and my templates, no matter how good they are, do not necessarily reflect your business, your brand promise, and your unique process require. Take them as inspiration, pull ideas from them, but make them your own. Processes and checklists will need to be personalized to your business, Your unique systems, login information, formatting requirements. You know the drill. For example, what happens if you like your blog post to be formatted in a certain way and want your images to be centered just so well, if you haven't documented how this works, I have bad news. You'll either be stuck doing it all by yourself, or you'll keep going in circles with feedback and direction and correction. And that's when you start to feel like a micromanager and you think, why didn't I just do this myself? I call it my don't shoot yourself in the foot delegation strategy. Document your systems, your processes, and offer up checklists to help people, including yourself, move through things easily in your business, and you will not be stuck shooting yourself in the foot. I don't know about you, but I can't think of anything more frustrating than hiring someone to format and publish my blog posts. And then once they're published, I end up having to redo them because the formatting is out of whack. No thank you. This is an example of something small that you might want to quickly think through and document so you can engage other people in the process and the system level at some point as well. So how do you actually create your operations playbook? Where do you put it? How are you going to build this out over time? Well, considering we're going through a podcast episode series on how to clone yourself, you might be wondering, do I actually have to create all of these things and go through all of these steps for every process in my business or my life? Well, you could, but that might feel somewhat masochistic. So we've already talked about the importance of prioritizing what you will systematize. First, you can leverage Clone Yourself principles from the start by recording yourself doing those most important things that you're going to systematize first, using a software like Camtasia screen record or QuickTime on Mac. All of these tools allow you to record what's going on in your screen while you narrate what you're doing. Once recorded, the job of documenting the process could then be outsourced. Right? Perfect solution. And you've been cloned. Now, this is actually a fantastic approach because with multiple people touching this process, you doing the recording and someone else documenting it, the person documenting the process is learning about the process and documenting it. So they're looking out for areas or needs of improvement or gaps that they could see that make that process more streamlined. It's especially helpful if the person doing the documenting is someone who will actually be executing the process being documented. Of course, you can review and test the process as a final step, just like I did when I stepped into that shoot day contact role. These layers of meta learning and documentation make your company more well rounded and ready to scale if that's what you're looking to do. The person documenting the process from your video gets to watch the video, document the process, use critical thinking to ask questions, and improve the process and implement the process. With these layers of learning and implementation, this person will ultimately become an expert on the process. Over time, they may even be more expert than you. So dream ahead with me here. Once someone else becomes the expert and the system is thoroughly documented, you don't have to be the go to on this process anymore. That means you've set yourself up to scale, have freedom, and expand your business beyond yourself. I'm pretty excited about that and I want to leave you there because there is so much more in this process that we can continue to go into. But for now, I keep saying that at the end of every how to Clone Yourself episode as we move through this series on the podcast, but I can't help it. It's true. You know it's true. There's endless number of systems and things for you to do in your business, so we could keep going, but we've got to stop from time to time and come up for air, do a little bit of reflection, do a little bit of implementation, and circle back to identify what is our next level of growth. Right now I want to invite you to dive in and document your first process. So take some time to map out that first thing that comes to mind, that thing that's giving you the biggest headache, that thing that you just did that is repeatable that you don't have documented yet. Put pen to paper and let me know how it goes. Of course you can find me at Amber McHugh on Instagram Amber McHugh on Facebook. You may have my email address if you're signed up to as a part of our community over@ambermce.com and definitely if you want to dig more into the how to Clone Yourself process, pop on over to howtocloneyourself.com where where we have a whole hub of resources set up for you to help you clone yourself. Because we need more of you in the world and you, my friend, are right on time. I'll see you in the next episode, where we're going to pivot a little bit and start digging into something new as we move through this process, which is all about you, you not diying it anymore and starting to build out your team. I can't wait.