How to Build Processes for New Services in 4 Steps

Hello. Hello. We are live. Or at least I hope we are. I'm going to do the quick normal check here. If you are joining us on the replay, this live is going to be all about mapping the unknown, which I think is a really exciting title for maybe a rather boring topic of process mapping stuff that you don't exactly know what you're doing. I'm going to pull up the whiteboard today, give you that title. I'm just going to go into the Facebook group here. If you are watching this on YouTube, this is being live streamed into the ProcessDriven Collective Facebook group. If you haven't joined yet, join there so you can engage with this live. Yep, sounds like we are good. Awesome. In this video, like I said, we're going to be talking about how we map a new service or really anything new. If those of you who are on my newsletter, you've probably saw my teaser go out last week that I'm going to be experarint experimenting with a new service. And I've got a whole bunch of fears around that because it's going into a whole new service structure that I haven't played with before. So the idea of process mapping and designing processes for something that you don't really know yet is top of mind. So I wanted to share it here today just for a bit of background for those of you who haven't joined our Workflow Wednesday videos before. In these videos, I use the whiteboard here and we kind of map out a process. And once you map out a process, the idea is you can build out SOPs, instructions and templates to make that process easier to do by yourself and also your team. A lot of the times once you have that workflow and then you make that documentation so those instructions, all of that stuff ends up in a tool like ClickUp. Many people here in the Facebook group are ClickUp users and I am a ClickUp consultant. So we've got a little bit of bias. But the this content, this information, this structure can apply to any kind of tool that you might have. But that's generally the vision most people are going at. The reason we do workflow mapping in such a techie space is because I believe that the best way to actually have your workflows be streamlined and efficient is to figure out what you want first and then put them into technology. Rather than the typical approach of chasing shiny tools, chasing new features and trying to make your business fit into the box of whatever technology you're using or whatever new features were released. That's the vision for these workflow Wednesdays, let's dive in to this idea of mapping the unknown. The example I put on here first, because that's what I'm thinking about is mapping a new service. But I will say that this, this practice can apply to anything you are mapping that is unfamiliar, familiar. So over this past weekend, I finally got around to getting all of my adulting tasks into ClickUp. And I would share that. I don't have it up on my screen right now. I should have thought about that and I would have shared it with you. But it's basically, I have a ClickUp section now that is just for all of my adulting tasks and they're all set to repeat at a set interval. And all those little things that you know you have to do and you put off, I finally got them all organized and for me, that was kind of like this mapping the unknown area where I couldn't think of, well, what are all the things I have to do in a year? I'd never written them down. I'd never really thought through how often do I need to go and, you know, clean out the gutters? How often does that have to happen? And so I was in a little bit of this mapping the unknown area before. So let's just dive in to how exactly you do that. I'm going to go through four steps in what I think this process looks like. But before we get into it, back a few weeks ago, maybe several weeks ago, we talked about this structure of how you build out processes in your business mapping, which is the stuff I've been talking about. Workflow mapping, the flowcharts, prepping, which means you equipping your workflows with templates and structures and decision trees and things that make it easier to do the stuff that you've mapped. And then trying, basically doing the process and deciding, oh, this doesn't really work as well as I thought it would. Huh. Okay. All of the stuff I'm talking about today is in this mapping phase. So we're just kind of breaking down this section into four little sub questions you can do to help the mapping stuff happen. A lot of the times I talk about mapping is a combination of experience equals experience plus we'll just do xp, do the old gaming stuff, experience plus just thinking vision, kind of thinking about what you want. But when you don't have that experience, you kind of need to solve for X and fill in the gaps enough that you can create that map to at least start getting the experience. So that way you can Improve the process. If you get stuck and never start making your workflows because you're afraid you don't know enough, you're never going to know enough. So that's what the goal of today is, to give you enough to get started and to start that iterative process of getting you beyond mapping, into prepping and into trying your workflows. So what are the four steps? Let's pick a better color and let's begin. The number one thing I do when mapping a workflow or trying to figure out something that I just don't know enough about to map is start with what's the point? So this sounds kind of obvious, but it's easily overlooked. If you are designing a new service, what is the point A and the point B you're trying to get people between, then it's a lot easier to figure out the way to get there. But if you don't know where exactly you're going, you just know you want to have some kind of service that's you want a new service and you just want to be a retainer service of some kind. But you don't know what outcome you're trying to provide for people. It can be very difficult to start mapping workflow. Mapping works very well when you have two goalposts that you're working between. So, for example, one of the new services that I'm working on, teaser here, is I know that the point B I want is to have a way to deliver some kind of way that clients who have a system, they have a structure set up, they need help documenting their processes. It's a big. It's a heavy lift, it's a lot of work. And I know that at the end I want clients to walk away with, you know, a big stack of documentation that's done for them and they don't have to spend the hours trying to create it all themselves. That's my point B. I know point A in the process is someone's here and they probably have some systems set up that are all connected and they maybe have a few documentation, a few pieces of documentation ready. But it's really meager. Once I know point A to point B, I can start the next process and move through this area of process mapping for the unknown. I just need to know where I'm trying to get them to. So that's the example of a service. Let's change our colors here. So this is a service example. Another example might be just you're thinking about onboarding. We've talked about this A while we know the end state of onboarding is we want people to be ready to work with you. So they are, I don't even know how to symbolize ready to go. They've got like all the tools they need to start working with you. And when they start, all they have is some money. And they're like, help me. So that would be the example of if you're trying to map onboarding, knowing you're in and out, knowing your inputs and your outputs. What's another good example? If you're watching and you have any ideas of some good examples of areas that you're trying to get structured, that'd be great. Here's one actually that just came up for a client this week. Email newsletters. Obviously I don't do marketing, but it does come up that people are trying to create processes for marketing activities. And in this specific example, they were really concerned with wanting to have this email marketing. They're like, I want an email marketing process. And the first question myself and Jen on my team, we asked was, well, what's the point? And that's step one of this process, trying to pioneer a process that's unknown, is where are you trying to get them to? What is your point B? Where are they at now? So an example might be, you know, when they're on your email newsletter, they've already worked with you. Maybe these are always past clients and they just need some tips on how to stay top in their field. So then at the end of the email newsletter process, you want them to both trust you and trust you and also maybe have a little bit more knowledge than when they started. That is a point A and a point B and that would help us guide what that newsletter needs to contain. Now of course that's not taking into account all the marketing strategy that goes in there, but just at a basic point, what is the point of this thing? I mean, you could do the same thing with proposals, follow up methods. What is the actual purpose of the thing you're trying to do? And that is our step number one. Once we've determined what the point of something is. I like to, and this isn't saying this is the best way for your brain, is to move on to actually trying it. And let me actually say here, because I pulled this up, I do not know this person personally here, but if you are familiar at all with the four tendencies, this is basically, it's a book. It's about four different ways that you kind of digest information or how you feel about things that are Unknown. How do I get people to do what I want? And there's four different types. Questioner, upholder, obliger. Oh my gosh, Obliger, I can't read today. And rebel. And basically I am a questioner. That's what we need to know here. And that's probably why I skew towards. I don't know why I can't pronounce words today. I skew towards this. What's the point first, and even if you're not a questioner, I think for the process mapping process to be most effective, you want to take that questioner tendency that we all have somewhere down there. Questioner, Now I can't write and start asking what's the point? Before you dig in. All right, number two. So we've got what's the point? Number two is let's try it. Let's try to build something. So in this case, I like to call this a fresh eyes process. And I have a lot of nicknames for things. I'm sure there's official terms too, but we're small businesses, we need what works Approach. Okay, Fresh eyes approach. The. The point of this, step number two is let's just highlight these a little bit so we can see them better. The point of step number two is to actually, before you have any more information, before you are biased by the way the industry does it or by the way you see on Google, before you do any of that digging, I want you to just try to create something on your own of how you would get from point A to point B. So whatever that is for you. So let's say we've got A and we've got B. I use the example of a new service. I use the example of onboarding. What do I want to use for this time? Let's just keep using a service because that's what's on top of my mind. If anyone has suggestions as to what they'd like to see mapped, let me know. But let's use my own example because I'm selfish and it's something that I've been thinking about a lot. So if I know my end state, I want to have somebody who is having a bunch of stuff documented. All right? And then we're starting off with someone who has a few systems, but maybe not a ton of documentation gathered yet. It's on their to do list. It keeps getting put off. I want to think just, just from the armchair here, how could I get some. Someone to that point? And it might be a few different options here. So One of the things thinking about was like maybe this is oops, maybe this is a coaching program. So maybe I just teach people, teach people how to create it and that would be enough to get them to this future state of having documentation. And then I think about it and I'm like, is it really that they don't know over here? Do they not know? Is that true of their point A? And then they do know. Is that really the gap here? Thinking about it, that doesn't really make sense to me. It's probably not that they don't know how to document it. Maybe it's a little bit bad, but maybe it's more so they don't have time. So if time is the concern, that coaching model might not work best. And again, this is just stuff that I've been thinking about lately from the armchair of getting from point A to point B. So if time feels like more of the constraint, more of the pain that or more of the obstacle that we're trying to solve here, a few different ways I could get someone from point A to point B might be to provide labor so execution. So I could map out what kind of think of an agency model. What would a web design esque project look like for documentation creation? It would probably be a kickoff call. We'd define our standards, we divide and conquer where I'd create the documentation and we'd regroup every week to relook at it and then we'd get to that end state. So I'm going to call this more of a project that does solve for the timepiece and it does get them to the end state. So I'm going to leave that on there as a possible process. The other way could be in intensive. And this is where I give them a little bit of knowledge but also a good amount of time. And basically we do a little bit of prep or they book their call, we do a little bit of prep, then we have a big old intensive day where we work on stuff together that would get them to that end step I could also do, maybe it's a virtual assistant service. So maybe it's some onboarding, we do some prep, then it's a recurring and I'm breaking my own rules by drawing a recurring icon rather than spelling it all all out. Maybe it's a recurring monthly subscription retainer where we will turn your word vomit into documentation. Or maybe it's not even a retainer. Maybe it's more of a you call us when you need us, you send over some thoughts that you want to have documented. We document it and it's more of an hourly call center kind of vibe, hourly or maybe project rate as needed thing. So I started experimenting all these models and I started thinking about what feels the best. Now this is a service, so this is a lot more complex than just testing out follow up methods. But you're still probably going to come up with a few different ways and I like to brainstorm a ton of them. So all these either big thanks to my mother in law, I have a like a 5 foot by 4 foot whiteboard in my office here and I'll put all of these up, I'll map out all the steps or at least the themes of them and put them all up there to consider all the different ways to get from point A to point B. If you're just thinking about how do you want to send your welcome email to your newsletter, maybe that doesn't need as much thought. But how do you want to follow up? How do you want to design the service? These kinds of things warrant a little bit of experimentation. So that's what I would call the fresh eyes approach and that's how I would move. That would be my step two if I was mapping something that was unknown. Once we get beyond that, we get to step three of four. Now just to recap where we are here, we started with what's the point? What are we trying to accomplish? We went to, okay, if I was just to throw something at the wall, just, just do anything I could imagine, how could I solve this? Brainstorming basically. Now we're going to move to number three. Number three is a process or a step that I like to call stealing or outside inspiration. This is literally your Google stalking period. This is when you're going to go through people that you know that do similar services, looking at other people that solve this problem and start getting that outside inspiration. The reason I like to do this is after you brainstorm is because as soon as you start doing this, you're going to start being biased by what's the hottest trend Right now it's intensives and I would say probably five years ago it was retainers. What else is coming up? Membership sites a few years back were really big, is still pretty big with courses now it's also intensives and community models. Anyway, when you start stealing, you're going to put yourself in a position where a lot of people are going to be prescribing things. So it's nice to do this after you already have your initial brainstorm. So in stealing What I would probably do is just do some Googling. I would pretend that I have the problem I was trying to solve, or if I'm working on a specific topic, and I would just do a quoted search of, you know, if. How to adult. When I was doing my how to adult section in ClickUp. Oh, that is not how you spell that. I literally googled how do you adult or adult checklist. And I just started looking at all these examples of how other people had approached this problem. I was looking for, you know, what are the recommended intervals to home maintenance? Home maintenance checklists. Just pulling in all the information to see how other people Maintenance. Okay, we're just going to go with that. To see how other people solved the problem of adulting, of, you know, maintaining their home and their property. And what I started to do. Now, I'm giving you a different example here than what I did in step two. But this information just all gets dumped together. You start just having a running list. So maybe you have your initial brainstorm here. Brainstorm. This is. We'll just call this step number two, which is right here. And then when you start researching other things, you're gonna say, oh, I missed stuff. Oh, I needed to include a step here that this other person did. You might research onboarding, for example, and there are quite a few virtual assistants and different agencies that fully publish their onboarding process. You've seen that. I've actually done videos talking about onboarding processes. So if you were looking for onboarding, you might watch those videos and realize, ooh, they did a step there that I think would be really cool. I'm just going to add that into my process because I think that would help make it better. So you're going to start revising things, combining what other people do that you think is really cool, and basically open yourself up to things that you wouldn't have thought of without that inspiration. An example here is I actually sent an email out about an offer I was thinking about, and I was very much in this stage of that offer. It's kind of. I had my. My beta stuff, but I didn't do a whole lot of stealing. And I put it out there and I told people about it. I said, hey, I'm thinking about this offer. Do this kind of thing. And I had some people respond with some suggestions, and some of them were like, hey, have you considered doing it in this structure? Or, man, I think this would really, really be great as an intensive or really be great as a whatever. And those conversations can also be a great Way to steal where basically you're getting other people's thoughts and opinions in it. Again, you're doing all of this before you launch it. It's not this kind of private, secret process. It's a very public, in everyone's face process of building out whatever you're trying to build out, having those conversations about it. And this group, for example, would be a great place for that. If you have something that you're working on, leave a comment on this video and we can even process map it together. I can give you, I can give you some suggestions as to how others might have mapped that. So that is step number three, stealing or borrowing, however you want to look at it. Basically getting outside inspiration. Then finally, keep consistent my format here. Finally, number four. So we've figured out what we need to do. We've figured it out how we would do it just with no outside input. We did a little research to revise our original vision and now we need to do what I like to call the Zhuzh factor. If anyone watches Queer Eye, you're familiar with what I'm talking about here. Basically didn't mean to do that. Basically what we are talking about is judging up your process by making it a little fun, adding a little razzle dazzle, doing something that's going to make your process feel special, feel like you, and feel like something that is different and unique. So the Zhuzh factor is a lot of the stuff that we do here in these workflow Wednesdays when I, you know, if you watch the old onboarding ones, I map out the entire process and there's not a lot wrong with it. It's a pretty solid process. But together we'll talk through it and start saying, this could be a lot more fun if we added a video here. Or this could be a lot more personal if we added a GIF here. We start taking something that is efficient, correct, and we start making it fun and branded by adding a little bit of personality. And I like to do this at the very end because you know, you've got all the essentials covered. It's basically like if you think about steps 1, 2 and 3, 1, 2 and 3 are all about function, right? Like, what is going to be the functional way to do it. And step four is like decorating. So this is your decorations that make it fun and exciting. Maybe you've looked up the most effective way to build a funnel, but in the Zhuzh phase, you start realizing, wow, I am a really simple, silly person. I have a client right now who uses A lot of cartoons. And I love that, as you can imagine, because I love cartoons. And maybe for him, when he's building his funnels, he has a technically correct funnel, but on his pages, maybe his pages have a bunch of cartoons because that's what his brand is all about. That's the personality that he wants to convey. And so by having cartoon superheroes or whatever might be going on on his page, he's able to both be efficient and have a good process, but also be personable, be himself, be expressive, have all that brand positioning stuff that we want to have to stand out. So, something I harp a lot about in the System up process. If any of you have seen, some of you have gone through that, but some of you haven't yet. A lot of you haven't yet. The System Up. One of the things I talk a lot about is effectiveness. So when we think about processes in general, we want them to be effective, not necessarily efficient. We talk a lot about efficiency. There's some of you who have job titles that are efficiency expert, streamlining pro, process ninja, all that stuff. Cool. But personally, I don't believe efficient really is our goal. Efficient ends up making everyone feel like a cog in a wheel. But to really have a good process, we need to not only be efficient, but we need to balance that, counterweight that with personality. So that's that, you know, that personal touch, that feeling that you care. There's a balance between those two things that's going to be different for every business. We're just gonna do one of those. That's a scale, right. It's gonna be different for every single business. But we need to figure out what that is so we can actually build a process that is both efficient and personal, AKA it's effective. And that's what I think this process does. These four ways to just get started on a process that's unfamiliar. If you were starting a new business, if you were starting a new service, this is a kind of an easy framework to start chewing on. And at each step, you've got something tangible that you've done. You've got something on the whiteboard, something on your piece of paper that you can show to somebody if you're stuck at step one, show it to somebody at step one and they'll help you get to step two by mapping it with you. Maybe you don't have to do these in order, but I do think the order here is helpful. So what's the point? How would I do this knowing what I know now? Research a little Bit. Okay, how are other people doing this? What could I learn from how they're doing it? Or what could I learn from outside opinions here and then zhuzh it up. Get creative. Do something fun. Break the rules. Make yourself stand out with some brand positioning or just some creative ways to communicate or do those best practices. All of this stuff is just to get you through this mapping phase. Once you map your workflows, you're ready to start creating stuff around them. Create that structure and then try it. And then guess what? You're back at the mapping stage. But when you're back at the mapping stage this time, you have a little bit expanding experience to help you do it. And so you'll be able to dig in a little bit more. It'll be a faster iteration, and you'll be able to kind of just chew through and improve that process more easily. So that's pretty much it for this one. When it comes to mapping an unfamiliar or unknown service process, literally anything that's unknown that you want to give a little bit of structure to, this is how I would recommend doing it. And I'll add at this point, this is how I designed every service I've ever created. Every time I have to learn something new in the business, like hiring, like, you know, taxes in the US here, you know, even just figuring out how to use a new technology on the regular, whether it's a newsletter or whether it's bots or whether it's something else. Mapping like this is really helpful to help you learn an unfamiliar area while also creating a process to try around it. So happy to hear any questions. If you guys have any thoughts on this one, that is it for this workflow. Hello, Wednesday. And I will see you guys next week. I might also be doing a Q and A on more cookout focused stuff soon, so look out for that. Let me know if you'd be interested. And yeah, have a good one, everybody. If you want some more information about this stuff and you're tired of just trying to duct tape together YouTube videos to figure it out on your own, check out ProcessDriven Co, maybe book a call, check out some of our services. We do this stuff professionally and we'd be happy to help you out.