How to Build Systems in Business like an Expert

Chuck, please tell me you are not trying out that composting toilet in my office.

Oh, no, no. I was just trying to think of my policies and procedures.

Okay, good. Wait, you're doing what?

Well, I've been meaning to build new policies and procedures for the business. So I grabbed this here empty binder and a pencil. My thinking cap, and I figure I sit here, just gonna think piece by piece through every area of my business and come up with all the processes and procedures that my business could ever need. It's just gonna take a while. Why are you making that face? Am I doing something wrong?

Well, it's not like you're doing it wrong. I mean, that's a perfectly valid method. But if you're trying to create a bunch of systems from scratch, there are easier ways to do it that process consultants and operations experts. Teachers intend to do.

I know your team at ProcessDriven has helped a few hundred folks with this stuff.

I mean, technically, it's a few thousand. Just saying, right?

Tomato, tomato. But do you have any ways that I could make my policies and procedures and systems and processes without blowing a gasket?

Sure. I could geek out about this all day. Let me steal your whiteboard, though.

Well, I'll put this back here and. Yeah, take the whiteboard.

All right, Chuck, I'm just going to do a little doodle here to capture our current reality. So this is you with your hyper realistic beard, and you're just sitting there trying to think about every possible business gear that you need to turn. All right? Pretend those little things up there are gears. You're sitting there in your armchair thinking, what could I possibly do to have my onboarding process work? What could I do to have my billing process work? And this strategy, it can definitely work. Especially if you're trying to capture a process that you've already been doing for years, but you've just never written down. But as great as this is, it can become a bit of a strain if you're trying to use this strategy to capture every process, especially ones that you may not have a lot of expertise in. Actually doing this can feel quite strained.

You're telling me. I barely finished one department. I thought it was gonna change into brown trousers, if you know what I.

Brown. Wait, brown. You're wearing blue jeans. Ew. But. But still, you're right, because with this approach, everything is coming out of your brain. Your creativity, your time, your energy is what you need to create every single process. And when you do that for hundreds of processes, that would make you feel a Little bit strained. And we don't necessarily want to do that, especially since our brains are usually also doing other things in the business, like coming up with new recipes and leading teams and so many other things that we don't want to rely on our brain to be the only thing we're using to create the processes that guide how our business works.

Yeah, and managing a small team. I got enough to keep track of as it is in this old noggin.

No, that's exactly right, Chuck. And that's why, if we wanted to make you professional, Chuck, if you were an operations consultant, a process person, put the tie on you here. The way you would do this is not by relying on your own brainpower. You'd have a metaphoric library of processes and systems, systems that, you know, work. And you wouldn't use your brain power to come up with them. You'd use your brain power to actually apply them, the right ones, in the right way to the business you're working on. And while this whole idea might feel a little fancy to have some kind of process library, it's actually something anybody can and probably should do if they're looking to get ahead on their processes and systems. Hey, quick reminder here. If you're enjoying this video even a teensy bit, be sure to click, subscribe and share this video with a friend. Those things don't cost you anything, but they help this video show up to other human beings, which in turn allows me to creep. Creep creating, keep creating. Because I'm a professional, it helps me keep creating this video. You know what I mean? I'm done.

So tell me, what is the expert way to build processes that's easier than approach these things?

Yeah, they're mostly just stolen.

Yeah. Don't we all know Silicon Valley is crooked?

No, I'm actually serious here, Chuck. These processes are usually kind of discovered by an operations consultant or process person. By working with a client, they see how the accountant manages all of their bookkeeping expenses, and then they work with a lawyer later on, and they say, wow, you need to organize your bookkeeping expenses. I know a really good way to do that because I saw it inside another business. Why don't we do this? So basically, a lot of operations and process consultants, all they do is, is experience what's really working in other industries, record it in some way, and then when they spot another opportunity where that strategy could work in the future, they just apply it. They steal it from one industry or one business, they apply it in another business.

So they just steal what other people are doing and make it work for themselves. That, that, that just sounds illegal and not very creative.

No, no, no, Chuck, we're not actually stealing in that way. I'm just using that term. One, because you'll be more likely to remember it and two, because there's this common phrase, steal like an artist. And that's really the mentality we're going for here. We're not trying to copy and imitate and steal people's secrets. We're more so trying to find inspiration from other people. Trust me, as someone who gets my content, my work, ripped off way too often from strangers on the Internet. That's right. I do know who you are. I definitely want to make sure that if we are stealing inspiration from other folks processes, we're taking it and making our own in some way. We're not just blatantly copying other people and committing ourselves to just always being a copycat of other people's services, offers, and content.

Amen.

One hack for this that will keep you from becoming a hack is to seek inspiration outside of your industry or business model. That's usually a really good way to make sure that you're not copying anyone too directly.

Oh, I get it now. So it's kind of like when I went to that flea market in Florida and I noticed that all of their peach tea candles had sold out. And so then I was thinking, oh man, I should make a peach tea soap here at Chuck Suds. And it became our bestseller too. That kind of thing.

Exactly. For example, I took a short about relationships in psychology and the format of the short I thought was so cool, I actually turned it into my own video inside the process space. So totally separate industry, different medium, different type of content, but use the same concept to get the point across. You can actually watch that video up here. It's pretty, pretty cool.

All right, well, I'm getting what this means on the product research and inspiration side of things, but what does this have to do with process and policies and procedures?

That is a great question, Chuck. Let me, let me take some time to draw some things. Hey there. Just a quick reminder that if things, this process and system building stuff is stressing out you or your team or your business and you really just wish you had a step by step way to actually systemize your business not just through these videos, but step by step. Be sure to check out my business, the one that creates these videos here. ProcessDriven. We're a small team and a small business trying to pioneer a new lightweight and easy to apply approach to how to systemize your business. And our main program, Process Driven Foundations, guides you step by step through how to build a foundation of process for your business. Now, at the time of recording this, we also have a more advanced offering in the works, so stay tuned on that. But if you feel like you're watching these videos and thinking, wow, this would be really cool, but I don't even know where to begin. Spare yourself watching another 50 videos. I mean, you can, but why? Just join us inside the program and we'll guide you just through what you need to know to actually see real results in a few days rather than a few hundred hours on YouTube. So check out the link in the description below. Thank me for sponsoring my video. I don't know if that counts. And we'll get back to the content. All right, so I got some examples up here. First one is the follow up process. Most small businesses are terrible about talking to customers when they're done working with them, my own business included. We have room to improve. But when it comes to this, if you want to have a better follow up process, steal from realtors. If you start following up half as thoroughly as a really good realtor, you will be better than the majority of other soap makers that you're competing with online. Rather than trying to sit there and think, oh, how could I possibly follow up, spare yourself the headache, just go grab a book on how to be a realtor. Start following up like the most average realtor out there. You'll blow everybody else out of the water.

Well, that does make sense.

Next one, repeat bookings. Let's say you were a business, like a professional organizing business and you have a one time service, you have other things people could book you for, but most people just buy one thing and then they're gone. You want more repeat bookings? Start copying from dentists. Yes, that's right, dentists. Dentists are really good at repeat booking is because the playbook for every dental office out there is before you leave that chair, they book you for your next appointment. Now, just like a dentist, a professional organizer before they leave someone's home could ask for on their way out. Hey, would you like me to book a six month refresh session for your space? Nothing pushy, nothing aggressive, just giving people the opportunity to repeat book just like our dentists do. Again, proven process from a different industry. You're just copy and pasting, applying it to your own workflows in your own space.

Well then good.

All right, next one. The next one is writing volume. A lot of folks might Be struggling with. How do we write longer blog posts? We're so used to writing 800 words, our SEO person says we need to write 3,000. How do we do that? Once again, we don't need to reinvent the wheel or think and hope and try to figure out frameworks. No, we can just copy people who are really good at writing really long things. So how do we do it? We copy business books. Read any of these books and you'll find about 50 pages of really, really good content and about 300 pages of examples and fluff and analogies and academic studies that confirm a point that you didn't need convincing of. If you ever need to figure out how to make a blog ten times longer, just read one chap of these books and you will figure out exactly how to do it. That's not a real one. All right, that one does not count. But let's say our third example, our real example here is customer service. Let's say you want to have a more inviting feeling when people come into your retail store, Chuck. Well, a way we could do that is look at who does a really good job in their retail environment. In your normal world, especially when we look beyond the soap and decor and home goods space, who does a really good job? Well, one that comes to mind for me is Trader Joe's. I remember reading an article about how they train all of their employees to compliment people when they come in. And kind of strange, but if I was looking to have a more warm and inviting vibe for my store, I might look at their training manual and figure out, hmm, what could I steal inspiration from and apply in my soap shop. So in a nutshell, this whole strategy is just figuring out what result you want or what area you want to improve, finding somebody who's already done it and learning from them.

Layla, you and I have always been friends, but I'll be honest, I always thought that stuff you did over at ProcessDriven felt like frou frou frah fry. Just boring. But seeing all this, I'm starting to see the process stuff is actually pretty, pretty creative.

It's actually a super creative and fun space. But no one believes me.

Uh huh.

All right, Chuck, now that we understand that there are really two ways to get process information. One is from your own creativity, great for processes that you're very familiar with. Or two, from outside sources. Let's try an example here. Is there any process in your business that you'd like to improve?

Well, actually, Marge has been on me. We gotta hire a new front desk person, and that's been rough.

Oh, I can appreciate that. So hiring it is. Have you hired before, Chuck?

Well, yes.

All right, perfect. So in that case, we actually could use a little bit of that thinking time and capture what you already do. So we could outline here what are the steps you go through in order to hire somebody? Step by step by step. We're just going to break it down. You can actually go through my process mapping tutorial up here if you'd like. A step by step of how to write this down. Are you good to write this down? Yeah, good. Okay.

Okay.

All right. So now that we have your current process for hiring written down, do we have any known areas that fit. Feel problematic? Any areas that you know are not good? Like this one here. This one here. Any specifics? Okay, whatever specifics, we're just going to note those, and then we're going to think about who has the type of hiring result you would want. Like, for example, is there a team that you really look up to, someone who maybe you follow online or. Or, you know, from a networking group that has a really awesome team? They have a great end result of their hiring?

Well, no, because the main people I talk to about this stuff, they're other soap makers. And. And from what you said, I don't really want to copy how other soap makers do their hiring process, because then I'd be a copycat and a ripoff, and I wouldn't really have any competitive edge on hiring. So I need to find something different.

Bingo. That's why it's really important, Chuck, that you get into circles with people outside your industry, so you could have some peers for this. But, you know, short of having those let's. You know, I made some jokes about some business books, but there are certainly ways that we could use books and online creators resources to actually get you some best practices on hiring, even if you don't know the person personally.

Shit, that'd be great.

Maybe we could do a part two video on that if you guys are interested.

Well, hey there, friend. I'm gonna need to request your help here. I know you've been mainly just in the spectator mode, but I. I'm gonna need to put you to work on this here part of the video. So if you could head down to the comments, write the word hiring, I would really appreciate it because Marge is gonna kill me if I don't get our hiring process down, and I don't know what I'm doing to get that all organized. So if you write the word hiram below, Layla here will make a video where we go through how to capture a really good hiram process and then copy that. In my business, and it's not that I'm begging you to make sure we can make this video. Although if that would work, I would do that. But more so, if I don't get my hiring process down, I'm pretty sure Marge is gonna kill me. And you know how that goes. Happy wife, happy life, unhappy wife, die. I don't know what happens next, really. Finish that rhyme for me. Alright, Write higher and below. Thank you.

I'll wait for those votes below to decide whether or not we produce this Part two video. But in the meantime, if you'd like to learn more about how to spot and fix problems in your process that might not be so obvious, be sure to check out this video at the end screen somewhere around here. And until next week, enjoy the process.

You know what they say, Happy wife, happy life. Well, unhappy wife, months of strife. All right, so I just man to man here. Can you do this right? Let me try that again.