What Processes To Document First

The first step is to figure out and answer the question, where do you start? What are the first 10 to 15 systems that you're going to document? That's generally the first question someone asks when they think, yes, I'm going to systemize. Well, what do I do first? And there's a misconception that you're going to need hundreds of systems when really a handful of systems can have a big impact in your business. The about applying the 80/20, figuring out the 20% of the systems that deliver 80% of the result and getting that right. I learned that from a friend called Mike. Mike and I used to share an office. He was an ex-EMyth coach, and I could look through my office into his office, and that's a photo of his wall, and he had systemized everything in his business, hundreds of systems. Each one of those sheets has about, 40 different systems on it, 'cause each line item is a system. And he thought, "I know, I'm gonna stick it up on the wall to remind my staff to follow process." Can you imagine how well that worked? Not very well. Very quickly, the systems got out of date, nobody could find what they were looking for, and it was really painful. And it taught him and I a really valuable lesson. And now that the tools that we've got available make it even easier to just streamline this process and focus on that 20% that delivers the bulk of the result. So that's why I developed this tool called the Critical Client Flow. And I wanna at least get you further along the path than taking the first step. The Critical Client Flow maps a linear journey that your prospect and your client goes through to deliver a core product or service. So underneath your seat or sitting on the table in front of you, there's a copy of the Critical Client Flow. It's empty at the moment. We're going to get you to fill it out now. It'll only take you a few minutes. The rules are pretty simple. Firstly, in the top left-hand corner, you list out what is your ideal target client. Who is the person who pays your advertised prices, refers friends and family, is a pleasure to deal with, and you'd like hundreds more of them? Write that one person in the top corner. Next, think about what is the primary product or service that you would sell to that person first. I know you offer lots of different services, I know you service lots of different people, but let's just pick one ideal client and one primary product or service, and we start there. Now there's a couple of rules for the critical client flow. One, we only capture what is most probable, what is most likely to happen. Don't go, oh, if we've got residential clients, we do this. If we've got commercial clients, we do that. If it's a rainy day, we do this. If it's a sunny day, we do that. Just pick the most likely. And the other rule is you only capture what you're currently doing not what you would like to be doing. It's okay to have empty boxes, and you can start scribbling now as I'm talking, but how do you grab someone's attention currently? How do people become aware of your products and services? Where does that inquiry come in? Is it through the website? Are they picking up the phone? Do they fill out a form? And only put 1 or 2 words in those boxes. By design, I've made the boxes really little, so you can't put lots of detail in there. You can only put 2 or 3 words to explain what that step is. How do you handle the incoming inquiry? Do you have a proposal that goes out? Do you have a discovery session? Like, what does that piece look like? Simplify it right down. When they're ready to go, do you issue out an invoice? Do you get them to pay half upfront or is it all on completion? Down the left-hand side there are just some prompters and ideas, but you map it to your business. We'll just go for another minute just because I want to get you started. And then think about for the onboarding, usually that's Onboarding and delivery is most complex. When it comes to delivery, everybody's like, "Oh, but I do this and then I do that and then I do this and then I do that." Just call it deliver product or service, and we can grab all of the details later. For now, high level on one page, I want you to be able to describe how a client moves through your business. Get something down and you can improve upon it later. My next question I want to ask you is, where in the critical client flow is the pain in your business currently? What's not working? You don't have enough leads. You don't have the team to deliver the work if you did sell them. You can't get that work done, you can't do the sales process. Where in the critical client flow is the pain? In fact, yell some out at me just so I know you're tuned in to what I'm saying. Where in your critical client flow is the pain? Getting the website, so something to do with lead generation and getting the attention. Anyone else got pain in their business? Wives changing their mind? Yes, yep, I think that's in the third box down. That'll give you an idea of where you're going to lean into to go to work first, because that's kind of like a critical piece in your business. You want to start inside the critical client flow. That'll identify 10 to 15 systems on where you get started. You have now started the journey of systemizing your business.