How to Document Business Systems

Hello, hello and welcome. I know there's two of me here. Don't be concerned. We're going to be starting on the hour with how to document business systems faster. If you're joining us on the replay, go ahead and just skip along to the timestamps below to when we actually start this party. For those of you who here live though, thank you for joining us live. I really want to hear your questions and engagement as we dig in. We'll be starting at about five minutes minutes. So sit back, relax, get all your stuff ready, start putting some questions in the chat. We'll be starting soon. It Sam, if you are just joining us, hang tight. Be starting in about four minutes or so once the hour arrives. In the meantime, get cozy. Let us know where you're joining from in the chat. Make sure you can see and hear okay all that good stuff. If you're watching on the replay and are still watching this, just feel free to skip forward a few minutes. We'll have timestamps below by the time the replay viewers are watching this so you can skip to when we start in about three minutes. Sa foreign we are reaching that point where my second face needs to fade away. And hello, welcome to another live stream on the channel here today. We are talking all about how to document business systems. Now I'm going to break down some of those terms as we go through here today. But if you are one of the lucky ones, one of the kind ones who are joining me live, please, I want to hear your questions, your comments in the chat. I saw some of the comments coming in so far where we've got Joe here and Kendra and Alina and blastoff Labs and ZA1 rook, I'm not sure how to pronounce that one. And so many other folks joining us from all over the world here. I see India represented, Charlotte represented, Fort Myers is here. Nevada's in the house. It's really good to have you guys here. And hey, some folks from Philly back in my old neighborhood. Really great to have you guys joining me here live. And if you are here live, please be active in that chat. Interrupt me with questions. I want to hear what's on your mind and what you'd like to get out today because I got a little bit prepared. But you know me, I love my rabbit holes. So today I have this little teaser here for the early birds. If you haven't checked that out, you may want to cool little fun resource we launched this last week but today we're talking about documentation and what that means Is that I need to stop the background music and break down. What do we even mean by documenting business systems? Well, this whole concept and the reason we're making a presentation around this is because a lot of folks talk about the power of building systems in their business. They talk about ways that you can organize your business by building process. But the thing that we don't talk about enough is how do you actually do that? How do you actually accomplish that outcome? So let me just go through some common phrases. You might have come into this presentation thinking in your head maybe why you're here today. Some common ones are, you know, quotes from the book, like the E Myth. How many of us here have read the E. Myth? Actually, just let me know in the chat. Write yes, if you've read the E Myth or listened to the E. Myth. Audiobooks count. In the E Myth. They have this quote of to become a successful business owner, you must learn how to work on your business rather than in it. This has become almost a business cliche. And whether you're a business owner or a manager, the idea of building business systems is something that's probably been hammered into your head already. In the book Traction that anyone here who's practicing EOS probably knows quite a bit about. There's this quote that says there are three stages in documenting your way, your way of operating. First, identify your processes, then break it down to what happens in each one and then document it. Finally, compile the information as I draw onto the screen into a single package for everyone in your company to understand. So once again, we've got this mention. Oh, yeah. Document your processes, document your systems. And then scaling up here from Vern Harnish, we have the line routines set you free. And how many more chapters around the power of execution and process and procedures. And in all of these great books, which I bet many of us here have read, we're always left to just kind of piece together what it means to document a business system. The E Myth teaches us the power of establishing what we do. Traction does the same thing. And once we establish what we do, we're charged with documents documenting those things. And how do we actually do it? That's what we're going to break down throughout today. So we're going to be going through five different steps for how to build out the systems that your team actually needs in order to operate effectively. The way we're going to do this is by just going through one after the other after the other will go in order. And if you have questions as we Go along. Please do. Feel free to let me know as I delete my little notes here that are messing up my display. Ah, go away. So let me just check in on the chat real quick, make sure there's no questions as we go into this here. It looks like that one's not going to go away. Yes, yes, yes. We're all good. Okay, wonderful. We're going to start documenting our business systems, writing down what we do at step one, which is identifying the need. This is the step that will save you the most time, but most people skip it because they don't realize this is even on the menu. Identifying the need is referring to identifying the moments where writing down, recording, documenting how you do things could be helpful. The way we can do this is by looking at moments in our business and figuring out, aha, here is an area, here is a thing I do that. If I wrote some stuff down or recorded a video or took a screenshot or made a jig, this would be easier to do next time. That's all this stuff means process systems. It's just ways of doing things. And when we're documenting them, we're just recording the way to do things. The metaphor that you've probably heard me use on the channel before, which I'll just reiterate here now, is to think of these as recipes. Right? Recipes. When you're making pancakes, when you identify, ah, you know, making these pancakes was pretty hard. I'm not going to remember how to make these pancakes this good in the future when I write that down. That's me documenting the process in that case of making pancakes. So our first step of documenting our systems is identifying this need, catching the moment in real life where, wow, a little bit of writing, a little bit of records would help us here. An example of this in real life is actually one that actually faced this team just last week as we were kind of getting ready for the Doors Open campaign that we're currently in. Because our main program, if you don't know, process driven foundations, the main way we work with clients, we're currently enrolling students and we only do that a few times a year. As part of this, we have to do a price increase. So we're changing the prices of our offer at a certain point in the campaign. And every time we increase our prices, we need to go through a series of steps, change prices in certain places. It's surprisingly manual, even in today's day and age when we have this moment occurring. This is a moment where I can identify a need where writing Things down would be helpful. And when you're in your own processes and systems, when you're doing your day to day work, if you find yourself remembering things or making mistakes or thinking, wait, did I miss something? Second guessing yourself or find yourself repeating something you've already done before, creating a folder structure, creating a template, rewriting that same email, any of these moments where you're using words like remember manual work, anything like this, this is your identification point and step one of documenting the procedure. Most people think identifying the need means sitting down in the armchair and looking at their business and thinking, ah, what could I possibly document today? And they think that is what identifying a need is about. I really want you to get out of this mindset. We don't want to look at process building and documentation as something that we should be doing based on theory and oh, maybe that could be useful. Your time is valuable. So when we're trying to identify a need, I want you to connect it to a real thing that is really happening in your business. In this case we have a price increase. We realize, oh wow, this is something that's being memorized. Now we're going to identify the need for that equipment to come in for that documentation. Are we on the same page so far? I know I've used the word process and system a few times, but hopefully that recipe metaphor helps us all be on the same page. Just let me know with a yes in the chat if we're on the same page here so far, if you need me to slow down at all, that's okay as well. And also I'm sick, so this possible. I'm just like brain fog today. I also want to give you some resources to dive deeper into this first step. So if this identification feels like a mind melt and you're sitting here thinking, identify the neat. What when would. I'm never going to be in my day to day thinking, gee golly, this is a great moment for processes to be added. If that's you, there's two resources I have for you here. The first one is a SOP topic resource. This is a freebie that we have here at ProcessDriven where you can actually look up 109 examples of SOPs that most teams have. Let me break this down a little bit. It's basically 109 areas that many businesses find it helpful to document. This is not saying that you need to document these exact same things, but it does give you kind of a jumping off point on the types of things you might want to consider adding equipment for, well, as we'll talk about later, SOPs are just one format we have available to us, but it's something to check out. And the other resource I want to put here, which is a little bit small on the screen, but we'll just crank that UP, is a YouTube video we actually have that kind of goes through the big picture of this. The funky thing about this live stream is we're kind of zooming into a specific part of process building. Documenting is something you do after you realize, okay, here's my business, here's what I'm doing, and I want to make it easier to do the how we do thing. I want to make how we do things easier. That's when we get to documenting. But it's part of the bigger journey we might be on of systemizing our business, which this other video covers in detail. If you need a little bit more of a refresher. So I'm going to move on over here now. We're going to go to just a quick tip for this one. When you are in this first step, try to have some discipline around identifying a need versus doing things. Now, this is a task management principle that many of us struggle with. And it has the same challenge here with documentation. When you identify an area that says, ah, you know what? I need a checklist for changing prices because prices are going to increase and if I miss a step, that would be bad. Just because I identify that need does not mean I need to drop everything I'm doing, skip out the conference I'm attending this week, not record this YouTube video, doesn't mean I need to cancel my whole plans in order to do that one task. Our goal with this step is to identify it. And just like you would for any other task, write it down, but give yourself permission that it might be tomorrow, it might be next week, it might need next month that you create that piece of equipment. I see way, way, way too many people, especially the perfectionists, the type A's out there, the overachievers who identify a need for a process, they're like, ah, that template would be great. Ah, I really want to make sure I have a calculator for that. And then they drop everything, go down a whole rabbit hole. Creating that equipment, that is not system building, that is distraction. And just like every other task in our business, we want to separate ideation from execution. We want to give ourselves some time to decide, is this the best thing I'm spending my time on right now? And by separating when we think of something from when we execute it, we're going to be more likely to be matching how we spend our time with how we actually want to save. Spend your time. Sorry, I need some tea on this one. So that is my tip on this one here. I don't know if anybody else is guilty of this. Let's just do a quick check on the chat. Is anyone else here guilty of maybe having an idea and immediately dropping everything to go work on the shiny new idea? Please tell me that's not just me. No. Oh, gosh. Maybe it's just me. All right, if it's just me, I'll move on to step two and we will move over to the second step, which is picking equipment. Once you identify a need, we need to figure out how can we actually make this need satisfied. In the case of the price increase, it might be a little bit clearer. And I'm going to try my best to delete this little checkbox. There we go. Yes. And we need to pick what kind of equipment we want to make our process easier. I'm going to go back to the same examples before. If I have that price increase, I need to do for process driven foundations next week. If I want to avoid memorizing all of those places, a checklist might be a great form of equipment for me to employ. Now, keep in mind that. That there are so many different types of equipment. There's so many different ways you can document a business system, and I'm actually going to go down that whole little rabbit hole, speaking of rabbit holes right now. But before I do, I want to highlight some of these points on the chart because thank you guys for letting me know I'm not alone here. Alina. Swirly. Jet. Kendra. Sarah. Gordon. Yeah, Gordon. Never. Never happens. Well, we'll all bow down. No, I know, I know, Gordon. That definitely happens sometimes, I'm sure. Um, and I think just seeing that in the chat is a good reason to make sure your team is aware of this as well. Because how many of us here have this challenge? But then we kind of don't highlight this to others, especially as leaders or managers. If you're struggling or you have struggled with separating tasks and ideas, make sure that's something you're talking about with your team. Because all of us here, it makes me feel a lot better to see that I'm not the only one who's had this challenge. Let's make sure we're spreading that love as well. But moving on to some examples, I want us to break down what kind of options we have to choose from when it comes to picking our equipment type. Now we have a whole module on this inside processor and foundations. I know we've got some of our members here in the chat, so you guys already have the rundown, but I'm going to give just a quick summary for folks who are not inside PDF prostrated foundations. Not. Oh my gosh, I don't know what PDF actually stands for. Someone can help me out here. Not the file type, but PDF refers to our program name. But what are the types? So common types of equipment. We kind of break them into three categories of delegation equipment, documentation equipment, and development equipment. Essentially different ways to make a process, a thing you have to do, easier to do. Some examples of equipment you could consider would be things like standard operating procedures, SOPs. I've talked about them earlier in this presentation and because I am not functioning at full capacity, I didn't define that. Sorry about that. SOPs are just those recipes kind of even rhymes. In addition to that, some other forms of equipment could include templates, task templates, email templates. They could include AI prompts, especially for like a prompt based tool like ChatGPT. You could have a standard prompt that you use every time to perform a certain action, like taking emails into social posts. Other examples of equipment could be things like in a physical space. I use this one a lot, but if you're a carpenter like my spouse is, you might have a jig set up to help you cut pieces to the same length every time. These are just templates essentially in a different form. Checklists are example. Automations are examples. There are so many different ways you can equip a process. Just like sports equipment, right? If you're going to place I shouldn't use a sports metaphor. I don't know sports. Let's do motorcycling. If you're going to ride a motorcycle, there's so much different equipment that you can put on to make your riding easier and safer. You can have the digital display. You can have armored shoulder pads, you can have armored knee pads. You can have a helmet. Same thing with our process. Not everything is a piece of attire. Not everything is a written document. But it's all things that make you safer and easier to do what you need to do. Thank you Gordon. I knew someone had my back here. I appreciate it. Keep in mind that the way you develop your equipment should also be respectful of your time. Just like we talked about for step one, I see a common mistake around this second step of folks hearing the word standard operating procedure and they Picture that being the way to make equipment. It's kind of like if we're talking about riding a motorcycle, the only type of stuff, safety equipment people think of for motorcycling is a helmet. So then they just buy 40 helmets. So they think that's going to make them safer. Well, I don't know if any of you ride motorcycles, but I think you can imagine going down the road with a helmet on each arm, a helmet on each leg, two helmets on your head, one helmet on your steering wheel. That's probably not going to be that safe. And that's the same thing when it comes to these procedures. We don't want to have the same type of equipment for everything unless we just enjoy wasting time. Actually, hold on. Let me grab something. I don't plan this stuff out too well, but I did. I found this, actually, at a thrift store here in Salt Lake just. Just the other week, Alex actually found it. And it is a policies and procedures manual. And I bought it because I just thought it was hilarious. But this is what most people think of when they think of building equipment. Everything is a policy or procedure goes in this giant handbook that collects dust on a shelf that no one ever reads or updates. This is a waste of time, and we want to get out of this habit. Just like having 40 helmets isn't going to keep us safer on our motorcycle, that. That. That's not gonna stay there. All right, put it here. Moving on to step three. Before I do, how are you with me on the chat? Does this make sense? The equipment type stuff? Do you need me to dive any deeper into that? For anyone who's here live, does this bring up any questions for you? I'm gonna flip to you as I sneeze. And we're back. Okay, it sounds like we're in a good space on the chat. We'll move on to step three once we've identified what format of equipment is going to be best. Do we need a helmet? Do we need armor? Do we need an sop? Do we need a checklist? What's going to be the real thing that helps us? We need to actually draft that equipment. Now, I see a question here in the chat of equipment, types of documentation, delegation, and what else? Let's just review that one development or develop is the third one. I believe we have another video on the channel. If I was quicker on the draw, I'd have that ready for you here. That kind of breaks down this 3D approach, but that's kind of the three categories we think of at ProcessDriven for equipment building. I'm trying to think if there's another great resource we have for you, Bella, but I think that's probably. Those are the three main categories. Some of the examples that I gave earlier fall into those categories and some different ways you can strengthen a process. Okay, we're going to move on to step three here before I lose my voice, and we're going to start talking about drafting equipment. Once we understand, you know, document delegate and develop those three different categories, we figure out what category is going to help us most. We need to actually do the thing, execute the task. In this case, it might be writing an sop. It might be creating a checklist. I actually have an example of me in real time practicing this. If anyone would like to dig into this further, Let me just scroll down a bit with this video here. SOP example, how to write standard Operating procedures faster. It's the exact way that I write sops. Even to this day, our formatting's changed just a little bit, but still the same approach. And that would be a great video if you want a live demo of what this looks like. When it comes to drafting equipment, the pieces you really want to have in place is a standard template, a standard way and location for each form of equipment. So, for example, if you want to start writing standard operating procedures like these, if you have a spot to put them, that's awesome. Like in this case, even though it's a binder no one's ever going to read and it weighs like five pounds, I have this spot, which is fantastic. If we go into a team and you're like, hey, go write a policy, and they say, okay, start writing it in their notebook, that's not going to be very helpful. In order to draft this equipment, the resource your team really needs is a place to put that material. One thing that we do in Process Driven foundations, I know many of you are members here, is we help you build out these databases. So you have a library shelf essentially for each area of equipment that you'll need. So that way, when you create more equipment, you just put the book on the right shelf. There's always a spot to put the information. And that is actually something I think a lot of teams underestimate. The amount of confusion and uncertainty and fear that happens. When someone's told, go write a procedure and they don't have a template, they don't have a place to put it, they don't understand what a procedure even should be. For your company, you are going to waste a Lot of time. And so some resources I would suggest, besides, you know, of course joining us in our program to get those library shells built out in your team would be these two things. We have a video here that I think I. No one liked this video. You know, this is just like a sad YouTuber thing. But a lot of times the videos that I enjoy the most, nobody else likes. And that was the case for this video. So I'm going to shamelessly promote it here in case we find one or two more people who like it. But when it comes to creating equipment, there are a lot of different formats. You can use different styles between interviews and boot camps and you know, there's different ways to use your skills to create equipment in different ways depending on what you are good at. So in this video I actually broke down based on disk personality profiles, the different ways to write standard operating procedures. This same process, the same approach will also apply to other types of documentation. So whether you're creating a checklist, whether you're creating and automation, it is the same. It's kind of the same piece. And Sheila, thank you. You're the only one. You and me are the only ones that like this video. But I really do think it does have some helpful content in there. So check that out if you're looking for some strategies here. Writing this documentation should not feel like a painful process. The drafting of the equipment should be the easiest, most effortless step in this whole journey. The other resource we have with you which actually ties in to what we talked about here, is that process driven. I actually once a year we host a like process documentation workshop every year. It's part of our monthly or, sorry, annual event called SOP Timber every September. English is weird. So if you'd like to have an example and have your team rally around all together and help you write standard operating procedures so they get accountability and direction as to how to do it to prove that it's not scary. That's also an event you might want to consider because a lot of the times the challenge that comes up here with drafting equipment is people not knowing where to put it, not knowing how to do it, and in many cases having this disproportionate fear of oh my gosh, I'm not going to do it right, it's all going to be failed. And that anxiety prevents them from realizing, oh no, this is actually a five to ten minute task. I'm going to be a bit of a broken record on this next tip. Let me move into some of these chat questions Joe, this is one of the first videos that you watched, and it got you hooked. Yes. Okay. So, Joe, Sheila, the rest of you, you're done. No, I'm kidding. So I'm really glad that at least some of us, it resonated with is a bit of an experiment. So it's always, always funny how those videos work out. But the. The next piece I want to hit on here, just a bit of a repeat of what we talked about before, but worth exaggerating here more than anywhere else, is a lot of folks at this drafting stage spend a lot of real time now in the hopes of saving potential time in the future. I just kind of made up this quote, so hopefully that makes sense with you. Actual time now to save potential time in the future. We don't want to do this. Your time today is real. It's finite. It's in front of you. It's happening. Once it happens, it's gone. You're done. So we want to make sure we're spending that time on things that are actually going to provide value. Not every process or procedure you build is going to provide value in the future. I'm sorry. It's true. I'd love to sit here and like many other folks on YouTube, say, just document everything. It'll be great. That's baloney. We all live in the real world where we have finite time. So much to do. I don't want you to spend your time on anything that's not going to provide value. So the way I'd like you to take this message with you is when we're drafting equipment, think draft, and not Mona Lisa. Okay? So when we're writing our documentation, we practice this in SOP in a day. That event I host to actually go to guide everyone through this. But we want to do things in small little sprints. So if we're writing a checklist, we're going to write the checklist and challenge ourselves to write it in 30 seconds. Or if we're writing a standard operating procedure, challenge ourselves to Write it in five to 10 minutes, then be done. Don't do anything else, because whatever you wrote in that first five to 10 minutes is what you think is the most important thing that you need to remember the next time you do that task, which we'll hit on in a second. If you realize, oh, man, I really need more detail here. I really need more screenshots here. By all means, expand. But what I see so many people do is the opposite. They jump right to. Let me take a screenshot of Every button. Let me create a video of how to click on that button. Let me write four paragraphs explaining why that button is really helpful. And all of a sudden we have a 35 page one of these for a process that takes five minutes to do and once again is overkill for the amount of documentation you actually need for your business systems to work. You can see an example of this in a later video. I'll talk about actually in the next step. But that is a real time waster here. We want to keep this lightweight focus on things you know will help you or whoever does this task next. And anything you think might help hold out. If it is indeed something that's missing, it'll be noticed when someone actually does the task. We are not aiming for perfection here unless you find yourself with nothing but free time, which most of us don't have. All right, moving on to step four. Step four here. Our goal is to make things exceeding accessible. This is the reason why I am not the biggest fan of process documentation software. The proprietary kind especially, and unfortunately many AI SOP writing software right now and process documentation tools, they really fall short in this category by making accessible. What I'm trying to get at is make sure that that instruction, that documentation of how the system works is great connected to where work happens. People can find it, they can edit it, they can access it, it's secure. The ACEs check is what we call that at process driven, accessible, centralized, editable and secure. But it's right where you need it when work happens. It's not a separate login, it's not a separate page, it's not a separate user account we have to pay for. It's not a proprietary software that we have to have an extension installed to enable use. It's right there. And so that's what the successful piece is here. Let's go into an example of what this looks like, but let me actually check on the links here in the chat or the chat. Oh my gosh, links in the chat. Oh, I warned you guys, I'm not fully here today. Words in the chat, whatever we call those, the chats in the chat. Nicole says the time challenge is gold also because the more you produce, the more you'll have to maintain. Exactly, exactly. Especially with screenshots, people get really gung ho with that. Gordon says it will be interesting to find out how well AI will summarize those over complicated SOPs. Yeah, I think AI and SOPs in general is going to be a huge area for many of us here, but it really comes down to like you're kind of hitting it here, using it intelligently and making sure that the AI themselves isn't over complicating because right now the technology is not fully there. Kendra, my favorite video is Reasons why no one uses your SOPS True Eye Opener. Yeah, I'm so glad that one resonated with you. That's another one that I really liked that other people don't really like. Little small tier, but I think it's, it's a big challenge for team members when you're investing time in something that doesn't then get used. We can't afford that as smaller teams. We're not many of us, we're not Fortune 100s. We need to be judicial in how we spend our time. So let's talk about what accessibility means. Keeping things simple. The first example I have here is just continuing with that pricing example. I might create a checklist for the things I need to do to update pricing and I might connect that to my task. If I'm using ClickUp or SmartSuite might just add that right to the record that says change prices. If I'm using a sticky note, I might just put the checklist on the back. That simple. I might just take a picture with my phone and say here's the steps I need to do and then my task. And ClickUp just says check the picture on your phone. Doesn't matter how I connect them as long as they're connected. Personally I prefer to have everything in one software, but you can use whatever works for you. Just make sure that they are truly there. And even if you have a physical binder, we want to be able to connect in the sense that my task says go to page 35 boom and read the process documentation. We don't want to just say see the policy and procedures handbook. We need as to close close to a hyperlink or an embed as we can get some resources for this one. Is this video here that kind of teased earlier on. I think tasks are a great way to bring process into your real life. If you do not have a task manager of some kind in your business, this would be a great time to consider adding one. I am not opinionated really on which task manager you use. Obviously you know we have our favorites around here, but we have a video on the best task manager for your personality type. That's a great place to start for anybody that's just getting into this world. But if you do not Already connect your SOPs, all of your documentation, all of your equipment with the tasks that people are looking at to get work done. What are you doing? Our tasks are our what, who and when, our SOPs and our equipment is our how, how should always hang out with the what, when and who crowd. They're all buddies. I know it's W's and H's, but we can all get along. And having these things connect is going to be a powerful way to make sure that your process actually get followed. Moving on to the tip piece. My tip for this one is that the smaller the equipment, the easier it is to mix and match. So I, I like metaphors and I'm hungry apparently right now I'm like at that point of a cold where I just want to eat everything. I don't know what that is, but I remember at one point we were visiting Detroit and in Detroit there was this restaurant where everything that you bought there was like a dollar. It's just like one dollar. And you get this tiny little portion of something. And so if you were hungry for a sandwich and a pizza and a pie and a drink and this and that, everything was a dollar. So you could just make your own entree with these $1 things. It's a really cool concept. And that kind of stuck with me because I think when it comes to process and equipment and documenting business systems, the same thing can apply. We want to build ourselves a menu, a library, a very simple, small, little dynamic processes. Each one covers one little thing. It's the french fry, it's how to send the email, it's how to proof the email, it's how to make sure a link is working. They're all little pieces. So that way if a process needs us to both check a link and send an invoice, we don't need to create a brand new documentation for that. We just connect the two that already exist. We make our own menu item essentially through the ingredients we have in our process library. So if you keep your process equipment very detailed, it actually will make your life a lot easier. I see a lot of folks try to create equipment at the system level. How do we onboard clients, it's a 20 page document with everything that they do or could do, or might do, or sometimes do. And then when they have a client for their new service, they have to create a completely different document with completely different steps, even though half the steps are the same and we're repeating ourselves and retyping things and we have duplicate data instead. If we had these things in smaller pieces. How to invoice a client, how to invoice a client. These are the same on both services. So we just have one documentation. Then maybe the first email is a little different. So we might have two pieces of documentation for that. But we want to keep everything small, bite size. We can build our own meal just like that restaurant in Detroit. Kendra asks hyperlinks and reference pages instead of 125 screenshots. Yes, yes, yes, yes, exactly. We talked a bit about task managers before, but one of the things I really love, and you use this, the term reference pages here is having reference pages having, I know this word can trip people up, but databases essentially collections of things, folders of information that connect together. Rather than retyping how to send an email into every one of your sops or how to send a newsletter, how to send a sales email, how to send a personal email. Let's just keep it simple. And again, yes, reference things have one source of truth for each piece. Y' all with me on this one. Sometimes people get tripped up on this. The zoom in advice on this final on this fourth step. Okay, I'll check in step five. Our final step here, which I'll go back here so you can actually see my screen. Sorry, it's small. Is to use and update. This is where the magic happens. This is where you're actually taking that equipment that you've created and you're starting to use it. Oh my gosh. It's almost like just having a policy and procedure binder on your desk isn't going to actually fix anything. It turns out to actually get benefit out of processes and systems, people need to be referencing the processes and systems. Crazy, right? Yeah, the sickness is making me snarky. But that is exactly what we want to do in step five. We want to make sure that the people we expect to have using each piece of equipment is actually using them. If we created that checklist and no one's ever checking it off, well, odds are it's either the wrong checklist, people don't know about it, people are reluctant to use it because they're not sure how to use it, there's something off. And so we need to address that. We need to ask questions, lead with curiosity, not top down commands and solve that issue. Or if people are using it and they notice something's off, they kind of like what we hit on with Kendra. Maybe they want a few more screenshots. Maybe they want a little bit more video content. Fine. We want to use this step five to actually practice using this equipment. Just like motorcycle safety equipment. It's there to keep us safe. But if I buy new knee pads and I fall down off my motorcycle, which happens every freaking time I ride out outdoors, it seems like, and I, you know, eat crap, I end up in the dirt in a sand dune or something. If that knee pad moved, didn't protect my knee, and my bike ended up on top of my leg, well, that's not a very good piece of equipment. I need to shake something up, I need to try a different size, I need to adjust something and that's what we're observing in step four. And you can probably guess at this point where this goes next, but I will take a pause here before we go into some of these examples and check in on the chat because I know there's a bunch of stuff coming in here. So Gordon says the video on Mastering ClickUp Templates was great for showing how to do smaller sections and in a simpler form. Thank you, Gordon. That's a great reference to something we can definitely have for folks watching on the replay. Hopefully we can get those info cards up above, but for the rest of you, we'll add them to the description as we get through the post production here. And amazing. Cole says you're online. I am online. Good to see you. Glad to have you here. Sheila says I'm visual, so I have a problem with links telling the whole story. Oops, sorry, I clicked on the wrong thing and people actually clicking on them. Tell me a little bit more about what you're facing here, Sheila. It sounds like we might be talking about the accessibility issue back in step four. Trying to figure out a way to make sure we're not retyping information, but also to make sure people aren't just skimming over stuff. Is that the situation you're up against here? I'll wait for your clarification, then we'll dive that in. Mariah, let's make sure we get this one pulled up for the Q and A and Blast Off Labs Asks why do you use the term equipment? Likely a beginner question. It makes me think of physical equipment, but no doubt you're using the term for a reason. Yeah, so oops, sorry I had to go the other way. That's a great question. I actually, I kind of developed this term because I felt like there wasn't a great term in this space to really describe the all encompassing category I'm trying to hit on. I'm using equipment because it felt like the right word to describe something that makes a thing easier. I wasn't sure what a better term there would be in, like the old school policy binder approach, people would just use the word documentation. And I hated that term almost for the reason that you're hitting on Steve, where it made me think only of written equipment, of written information. And we're in a day and age where almost nothing is written anymore. It's all recorded or a listenable or, you know, written format is incredibly dated. And especially when working with physical storefronts, oftentimes the way we equip a process is actually with physical equipment. It's with physical jigs for cutting carpentry. It's for templates that we use stencils we use for painting onlines. It's for clipboards we have hanging on the side of the screen or on the side of our whiteboards. Equipment is both digital and physical. And I couldn't find in my brain, at least at the time when we started using this term, a few years ago, I want to say three years ago or so, I started introducing this. I couldn't find a better word to capture that whole area. And there really wasn't one that I could find in the space that wasn't so biased towards these behemoths. So more feedback on that. If anyone has ideas, I would welcome to hear it. But that's kind of the story on that piece. All right, so there's some questions here as well. So let me actually go through these examples and then we'll just open it up to a Q and A, because I think, Sheila, your question will really dive into some of the other things that other folks are going to be working through as well. So let's make sure that stays flagged. And I'm just going to go through this final step five, and we'll open it up for Q A fully. So, final step, use an update. An example of this would be, next time I need to update the prices, I will preferably have somebody else execute it. Maybe with my help, maybe without. But the goal is that they would use my checklist and I would then check once they're done. Hey, did they miss anything? Then I would add whatever they missed to the checklist for next time. That is kind of a really great way to battle test any equipment. If it's like a carpentry jig, I would have somebody else try to make the cut. Does it line up perfectly? Yes. Okay, then the jig probably works. I'd have someone else spray on the template. Does it work? If not, I need to cut something else. The idea is having somebody else do it will eliminate the fact that you might be self correcting or self aware or just knowledgeable of certain things that are not written down. And so that's why if we have somebody else, that's great. If we don't have somebody else, I could also just execute it myself and make sure the results line up. Resources for this one, this is actually about hiring, but I feel like it's actually relevant for even if you're not hiring, hiring without SOPs. A video that I. This is actually one that I think did okay and I also liked. So a rare exception here, but this particular one talks about ways to work together with other people to write down sops. It talks about the hiring and training process, but it really applies to anybody that's working with other human beings. So this will help you with that kind of continuous improvement piece if you're stuck on that one. The final tip is that cooks in the kitchen are a good thing here. Like we want that. In a lot of times we would say, you know, the American phrase of too many cooks in the kitchen means that there's too many people butting heads and it doesn't work when it comes to documentation. Our goal, especially if you're looking to grow your people based business based on hiring more people, the more people you plan on having your organization, the more cooks you need in the kitchen. For each piece of equipment, you want to make sure that that standard operating procedure, that checklist, that template, that stencil works for as many people as possible. I'm talking, you know, neurospiciness, I'm talking reading level, I'm talking first languages. I mean, you want something that's so clear that anyone that could possibly start working in your company or currently working in your company could read it or receive it or watch it or whatever it is and use it to make life better. The ultimate level of systemization for this, which isn't something we often talk about here, but it's something that's lately just kind of fascinating me as I learn more about this space, is the disposition. So if you're looking to sell your business at some point, you're looking to get acquired and so on. The ultimate proof that your business is systemized enough would be that any cook in any kitchen could use your equipment so that you could then sell your proven policies and procedures and become a franchise to sell your business to somebody else, to open multiple locations, to sell your proven way of doing things to somebody else. All of these different models for growth and exiting a business, which don't worry, I'M not planning on doing that. I'm just learning a lot about it because I find it interesting. But all of these things are strengthened by having more cooks in your kitchen, making your documentation more and more universally useful. Now, once we are at step five, you probably know which step happens next. I know I'm a broken record on this, but you go back to step one. Yeah. After you use it, you identify. Wow, I really could use a video here as well. Great. How does that work? Okay, let's create it. Let's make it handy to use. Let's use it. And there we go again and again and again. It becomes this looping cycle of keeping these pieces up to date, just like we talked about in the chat. Now, I want to go into some Q and A here. Let me just check in on where we're at on the chat. Mariah, do we have any questions that we want to tackle before we move on to some final thoughts? Okay. Question from Zawan Rook. How do we align people to follow systems on their own? I know the answer is obvious, but getting that to happen smoothly in large teams is a drag. I don't think this answer is very obvious. It doesn't feel obvious to me. So I. You might just be smarter than the average person because I think this question can actually be quite challenging when you're trying to get people to follow systems on their own. Generally, there's a few ways to kind of go at this. First, get co authorship. So when you're developing the system, the more people you have involved in it, we're going to have better chance of adoption. Really what we're hitting on here is almost the challenge of change management. You're applying a new thing. You want people to be bought in and using it. How do we make that happen? Change management strategy. One of them would be to have co authorship of having people help create the system with you. That will help people be more likely to use it. Others is to align incentives. I mean, there's a lot of them here, but here's another one. A lot of teams will have incentives around turnaround time, but then they have a system to maintain quality. If all the incentives in compensation and performance reviews around doing things faster. Why are we surprised when quality dips when the only thing we're actually measuring is how fast people work? Aligning incentives is another tool we have for kind of aligning human beings. The other piece I would put in here is kind of more of the finer detail. Sometimes it's how we actually build a culture around process that's the problem. There are so many, you know, angles here. But the video that we talked about earlier of why people don't use your SOPs, I know that's around standard operating procedures, but it's kind of the same deal. If you have any form of equipment that you believe is helpful but people aren't using it, that video breaks down. I think it's seven reasons why, multiple reasons why people aren't using it. From it not being useful, from them not feeling, you know, part of the system for it feeling forced down their throat. There's so many reasons why. And that video kind of breaks down what the cause might be. Ultimately, your goal in this stage is figuring out why it's not happening. Once you know why it's not happening by asking questions, leading with curiosity, asking your team member, hey, Bob, why didn't you follow our proofing system here with curiosity, not judgment? That answer is going to tell you what you need to do for Bob. It may not be the same answer for every person, but Bob might say, I just not comfortable opening two tabs to read the procedure. Great, solve that for Bob, then go on to the next person. But from like a system wide perspective, we're typically working on change management strategies at this point and it really depends on what exactly you're seeing as to which strategies we want to do. Okay, next one. I feel like I'm missing some context on this one, so let's go to the next question. Maybe I'll skip through it. I've been trying to systemize things and automate. Nope, next one. I'm visual, so I have a problem with links telling the whole story and people actually clicking on them. Okay. And then there's a part two somewhere, maybe. Okay, okay, Let me just try to figure out what this question is. I think there's supposed to be more, but it didn't come through. So I have a problem with getting links to tell the whole story, people actually clicking on them. I think, Sheila, this probably connects to what we just talked about with the last person's question of having just the challenge of buy in. So if there's a lot of buy in, clicking a link is generally not a big ask. But there are some things you can do to make it easier. So if you have a lot of things connecting to one another, here are some practices you can try to make it easier. I'm sorry, the rest of your context isn't coming through here for me, but some things you can try is making sure that when you're linking to things you are linking to them at the beginning and the end. So having one story, step one, two, three, after three go here, next link to the next part. Sometimes I see folks getting very, very link happy and every step is a link out. If this, then go over here, if that go over here and then there's 40 links to click through. That is more going to make it more likely that people skim over your connected documentation. Little thing to try. Another thing to try is to make sure that when you're creating your documentation or your tasks that everything is results oriented. So for example, if I have the SOP of to do do the step, let's say of pull up analytics report, something like that. Pull up analytics report for whatever. If that's my step one in my sop, when I go inside that SOP and I add more context, maybe I add links. This is where I want to explain how to get the result of pulling up the report. But the way we design our instructions and our tasks should be very result oriented. So as long as they pull up that analytics report, it should not matter how they do it. That in itself is the result I want. If that's my step one in my sop, when I go inside that SOP and I add more context, maybe I add links. This is where I want to explain how to get the result of pulling up the report. But the way we design our instructions and our tasks should be very result oriented. So as long as they pull up that analytics report, it should not matter how they do it. That in itself is the result I want. The details are how to get that result. If you're stuck. If you find that people aren't opening the hyperlinks, but they need to, we might want to rename our tasks or our steps to explain why they need to. For example, if it's a specific report that they have to open a specific link, then you need to tell them open the analytics report found in the comments below. Otherwise, if they can get to that outcome without following your sop, it's not necessarily a problem if they don't click on the hyperlinks. You know what I mean? So we have a little bit more on this in the SOP writing video that I mentioned earlier, but I hope that's at least helpful. Again, I'm sorry, your your context isn't coming through. That could help me out a little bit more, but we'll move on to the next question. Feel free to clarify some more if there's other pieces next. One I've been trying to systemize things and automate tasks for years. Wondering if you have a suggestion. Give yourself a break is probably where I would start. Don't, don't feel like this is a battle of you versus the years. I went from Trello for project management to Notion self built, added a CRM to it, this then switched to Asana to get better automations before Notion updated. Okay, so I think in general when it comes to building out any kind of task manager, the biggest thing that's going to help you is sticking with one. I know that's really frustrating and a lot of the times it feels and marketers make a lot of money trying to make you believe that you need to switch from one to another to another to another in order to have the best system. I don't believe that to be true. If you really want to automate a project management structure, stick with one tool a especially all the ones you talked about here, all the ones you talked about here are, are great tools. Trello Notion, Asana ClickUp talking about here. They all have their strengths and weaknesses and all can be automated to a large degree using third party tools and built in automations. Trello is actually an extremely accessible automation wise tool to use even though it's quite basic. I would say to really start would be to pick a tool and lock yourself in for the next two years just in your head. You know, don't, don't pay, you know, pay anybody for this but just in your head be like I'm going to stay here for the next two years. Then once you're in there regularly, you'll be able to benefit from the step one through five loop that we talked about throughout this video a lot more because what happens when we switch tools and why project management is such a area people investors love to invest in because it's so sticky when we're going through this loop. This works as long as we don't delete all of our equipment and when we're using automation, specifically ones that are related to a software that we have, when we switch software we're basically often deleting basically all of our equipment, all of our built in automations, they go away, we have to rebuild them, restart them, reevaluate them. We basically restart from scratch in the automation arena when we switch core software. So in terms of picking the tool, I would try to find one that you're willing to stay with for two years. ClickUp is a great hub I think for kind of the catch all. I think you said you're currently in Notion or you're currently in Asana, I forget which one it is now. Either of those would also work. I don't think at this point, switching a tool is going to have a meaningful change in how systemized you can be. I know. I really like ClickUp. I think it's really a great tool to use. But I've seen people build the same level of systemization in every tool out there. I. I've seen Trello setups that more advanced than Monday.com setups that are more advanced than notion setups. I mean, it really comes down to how you use it more than the features of the tool when it comes to automation. Like if there's a specific thing you needed, like I need to have a detailed database of 40,000 SKUs that I need to organize, then maybe we'd start, you know, having to narrow it down. But where you're at, you have so much good fortune because you can really use any tool out there and get so much benefit because you have really the core use case, the, I would say basic, but the core stuff, stuff that every tool has and can do really well. That's what you need. So any tool is going to really serve that purpose. And yep, we're seeing some folks talk about ClickUp here. Awesome. Okay, Abby, I have someone on the team who thinks SOPs are busy work and it's quicker to Google it. So I see the argument for this. And actually one of the business ideas I had before I started ProcessDriven is I was like, man, I really want to start a help desk software that integrates with other software's help desks. And the whole idea is it just aggregates other people's help docs so that you can build your own annotated help docs of other people's stuff, kind of agreeing with what your person said here. Short of us starting that startup someday in the future, who knows? I think there's two challenges we might have here. One, there may be just a little bit of discomfort around using your SOP library. I just not be sure how to use it. And two, Google's familiar. We're having like a familiarity bias here. A lot of folks say, you know, something's not intuitive, it's not easy, and often they just mean it's not familiar. So I think getting those sops to become invaluable would be the place I would start. So I'd look at what that person does and it's just, it's so funny to me. Googleable. If the way Abby, your business operates Is googleable. That's remarkable. That means you are so standardized that the whole Internet does everything the same way. That is just so un unlikely. I. I wish your person could hear me say this, but I would start with whatever that person does and make sure that something that's very useful to them for what they do is in the SOP area. So for example, if I don't know what role this person does, but let's say they are a thumbnail designer for some reason, Abby, they're a thumbnail designer. They think SOPs are poop. They don't care. How do we get that thumbnail designer to see the value? Well, I would build something for that thumbnail designer or with them. Where we have an SOP that has the link to the canva file, it has the specifications for what the export file type needs to be. It has a template file name so they don't have to name it from scratch. All in one SOP that they can just copy and paste. That takes something that used to take them six minutes to do manually and now is takes two minutes to do. When they use the SOP and they can copy and paste, that's probably where I would start and I would show this to them or create it with them and say, hey, could you have googled how we name our files? No. Huh, funny. Could you have googled what we need to see in every thumbnail for it to be Abby pain approved? No. Oh, funny. And just kind of highlight the ways that your SOP goes beyond what is a googleable result. Because in some ways if Google searches are able to replicate our SOPs, maybe we don't need the SOP. Maybe if the SOP says create a new tag in activecampaign, maybe we just do link out to a Google search result for that piece. But for everything else, the stuff that we really want to capture is the knowledge that cannot be googled. And I think we need to show this person in their own language, in their own work how that can come to life. Pre made words copy and pasteable is usually a great way to do that. Any other questions before we wrap for today? Anything else? Sheila says great idea for links, linking before and after and telling them why the link is helpful. I'm starting to implement SmartSuite. Oh, awesome. Yep. So SmartSuite is going to be a great one for that. Really making sure it's clear why it's helpful for them to click it. And do they not need to if they need to make that clear as to why they need to Cole says thank you. I'm constantly watching your videos. Yay. I am really glad to hear that, Cole. Keep us posted. If you have any challenges on this, if you end up getting into the ClickUp bandwagon, let us know. Obviously, we're here to help. I think the thing to remember, Cole, for you, if there's one thing I could. I could give to you, is just to remember to invest in your systems. How you do things and treat that as the top priority for your team. How you do things, not where you do it, but how the stuff that's going to be with you. Even if ClickUp goes out of business or Asana, you know, merges with Wrike, whatever happens in the weird Silicon Valley land that the rest of us really don't want to have to worry about, whatever is going to stay with you after that, that is your system, not your software. And that's really where the power is. That's where your asset value comes in. That's where you want to spend your time. And I think. I think you're focused on the right things, but I really hope it goes well for you. Variety Attractions asked Do we ask that question with snark or without? Which question was this? Do we know from context, but probably with snark, I don't even know which question it was, but knowing me, probably full snark hashtag snark team. Next up, I see some other comments here. Don't confuse the system with the software. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, I think system and software. I just did a speech to a group of therapists who became business owners, and I was just doing like a System 101 training. And that's kind of where I started it, because a lot of folks think system and they think, okay, kajabi asana Clicka is like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. These software companies want you to believe that they are your system. And you know what? You can never replace your systems. You're stuck with them forever. AKA you're paying them a subscription forever. But you are wiser than that. You know that. The stuff that's with you even when the Internet crashes for some reason and you have to work offline, the stuff that stays with you, that knowledge, that information, that way of doing things that makes your team saf special, that is your system, your method to the madness. And it doesn't matter whether you're using Obsidian or Notion or this beautiful binder that I found for $2 at a thrift store. What matters is that the way this happens, the Way you operate reflects what you view to be important. And you record that in a way that you can continue to live out whatever your values are, whether you're using any software out there. Okay, so hopefully this all makes sense. I will just wrap up here with a recap. Oh, and there's one more question. Thank you, Mariah. Nicole asks in it, people are overconfident with their memory and brain capacity. I would argue that's probably not just it. Does anyone else here have this issue? Just writing in the chat, just give us a yes, help Nicole and I feel less alone. Does anyone else have issues where their team might be overconfident, that they're just going to remember it? Just let us know. But I myself became a fan of SOPs only after Covid's Brain Fog. How do I make people more aware of this? Ooh, that's a great question. I think this. This is funny because the people who are worse at system building are general people with good memories. They're the ones that take a lot of convincing. And generally you really have to prove to them logically. Showing research and whatnot of how, you know, brain function doesn't necessarily hold up. I think the argument I sometimes use for folks that may be useful to you, talking with it and so on, is that there's a reason that memory is a liability. Is one of the rules of process we have inside foundations. Thank you, Abby. It's that human brains are meant for processing information. If I'm talking to IT folks, I might try to use some kind of memory and RAM metaphor here, but we essentially have really, really good processors where we can take information, spit out the right result. I'm losing my mind today. And that's what we're really good at. That's where we're going to be. That's where our magic is. But the only thing we absolutely 100% know for sure about the human brain is that it will not always be there. Like that is indisputable, right? Whether we want to cite the COVID brain fog, whether we want to point out, you know, mental conditions that fade over time, whether we want to just highlight the fact that we're all probably gonna die, as far as I know. Let's go into that angle of things. It's pretty much indisputable that your brain is not going to function the same way every single day of your entire life, assuming you are always working in your business in the same exact role and have the same exact amount of brain power each day. Usually. If I would Be talking to someone in it. I would again use like a ram and memory metaphor or maybe emphasize some of these more nihilistic views of we're all going to just disappear at some point. You might as well have your butt covered. Another angle to take on this, depending on the types of personalities you have in the room, is to put it into terms that they do understand. Oftentimes people that have very good memory are also a more anxious personality type. Just broadly making assumptions here. Not always true, of course, but folks that are kind of in this space that may be more anxious or maybe more introverted, you can take this same work and put it into those lens that they understand. I think that's called. Oh, I know we've got Sarah here in the chat. I forget the teacher term for it. I think it's called scaffolding knowledge, where you basically take a concept they're familiar with, attach your new meaning to that scaffold so that they can make the connection, the bridge between the two concepts. So I might say something like, well, hey, you know how when you're really introverted and you have to go to a party and you have to think of what you're going to say, and that feels really exhausting. And when you have to do that hundreds of times, you're draining yourself with each and every interaction. Yeah. Well, that's what's happening to your brain every time you have to remember how to name this file, you are taxing your brain in tiny little ways, whether you feel it or not. Every time you have to remember something. And you know, Bob, I'd really rather you use your brain solving this next major problem we have in the business right here. But I can't do that when a hundred little paper cuts is taking away all of your brain power every day on basic things like memorization, scaffolding. I got it right. Thank you, guys. I was. I was trying to remember the term for it. It's been a while since I read about that, but. All right, so I think we've got some great stuff in the chat. I'm going to leave with some round. Roundup. Oh, my gosh. Final thoughts. I know how to speak, I promise. Let's just round this out with some final thoughts. Everything that we talked about today. Yeah, here's what I was supposed to mention is included inside our program. So I know we had a few folks here that said they're working on things. They're trying to piece this together. I gave you a ton of videos in this video. Yeah, that makes sense. A ton of videos in this video where you can dive deeper. We've got blog posts, we've got free resources. I mentioned probably a dozen different items in this video that you can go grab, start diying, piecing it together. For some of you here, though, you're. You kind of want the easy button. You want to go faster through this journey of building out your library shelves and then filling those shelves. That's what our program does. We don't just make YouTube content for a living. We actually work with teams to do this. We have a course and resources and support on that journey. So check this out if you need any help. And then the other thing I mentioned at the beginning here is sometimes a great challenge that we've seen folks face is figuring out where they even want to start. So we have this free toy. Speaking of little distractions and so on, this is something we just whipped up last week that I, I don't know. I think Mariah, if I can quote you in the backstage here, Mariah said something like, this is the coolest opt in I've ever seen. And I agree because this is kind of, this is what I wish I would have been able to take back in the early days. It's a free assessment that we've created here at ProcessDriven that essentially asks you the questions that as you go through foundations, you would have the answer for and you can kind of score yourself on how systemized you are. I, I hate to find out that people, you know, don't join process driven foundations because they don't think that they're systemized enough to even get benefit out of it. And I also hate when folks say, wow, I waited way too long. I'm already way past all of this and it took me three and a half years, but if I just joined this program, I'd be done right away. That's what we created this quiz to kind of help you do. So you can check this out on our website. I think we've got the page somewhere around here. Yeah, down here. Super fun quiz. Even if you just take it to just see where you're at. I designed this so that way you can take the quiz now and then in a year or two after you start practicing some of this how to document your system stuff, or a few months if you join foundations when you have some big transformations, take the quiz again. The idea being, I want you to be able to prove to your CEO, your coo, to yourself, ah, okay. What I did to build systems made us stronger. I have my before number and my after number. One of the greatest challenges around documenting business systems is the fact that we don't have a way to measure it often. So it feels like this overwhelming problem. And we're hoping that the snapshot will be a small way to help you kind of quantitative that quant. Quantitative that. Oh my gosh. I have a little bunny on my mug. And that's, that's the speed I'm speaking today. Okay, well, thank you guys for bearing with me on this weird brain foggy livestream. I clearly cannot speak, so I think I'm going to wrap it up here. I really appreciate you guys joining me. If you have any suggestions or requests for future live streams like this, I've been really trying to do more of them here on the channel. Please leave a comment below while you're here. A like subscribe a comment. Sharing this video with somebody you know who's system curious or whatever you want to call that would be so appreciated. But I'm going to go take a nap and sneeze. So thank you guys so much for joining me. And until next time, enjoy the process. Have a great weekend. Bye everyone. Bye.