These 5 Steps Will Stop You from Trading Time for Money

I get it. It's your business. You've invested countless hours of blood, sweat, and tears. It's your baby and it needs you. You've built it up from absolutely nothing to what it is today. But you're also exhausted. How can you possibly take time off And still have the business run itself. And that's coming up next on Marc Haine Live. Welcome back to Marc Haine Live where small business owners and entrepreneurs pick up core skill sets to help them work on their business, not just in their business. I am your host, Service Expert, Master of Experiences, and the guy obviously with the rented lips, Marc Haine. And today, I will be speaking with Business Strategist and Coach Yvonne Weld. And we will get to her in just a minute. But before we dig into our show, I just wanted to invite you to subscribe to this channel. By doing so, you can join the thousands. Okay, you can join the hundreds You can join the select group of passionate entrepreneurs who enjoy building their skills and being the first to know when I bring you some new fresh content. I also invite you to be part of the conversation. Feel free to post comments, start conversations. This is a two-way street. And of course, I invite you if this content that you hear today is valuable to you, please go ahead and share it to the people you know could use the information. In a past episode, we talked about the difference between being a business owner and being an entrepreneur. We've talked about the need for business owners to adjust their strategies. Today though, I want to take the conversation a step further. And that leads us to our Question of the Day. So, I have to ask you honestly, when was the last time you took a vacation? Were you able to sit back and relax? Or were you connected every minute of every single day? Why don't you put your comments in the comment box below? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. I know how tough it is for business owners to be able to sit back and just cut loose. from their businesses on vacation. And this is what we're going to be talking about today. In fact, as I mentioned, my guest today is founder of The Weld Group, business strategist, and coach Yvonne Weld. Yvonne works with business owners to help them navigate the entrepreneurial world. She shows them how to stop trading dollars for hours, find work-life balance, and build a healthier cash flow. Welcome to the show, Yvonne. It's so nice to have you.

Hey everyone! I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for inviting me, Marc.

It's lovely to have you. And you look great, by the way. I love the color on you. It looks fantastic.

Good stuff. Well, I like to be bright, so.

There you go. So, to kick us off, why don't you tell us a little bit about what you do for your clients?

Yeah, absolutely. So, I work with what I call accidental Entrepreneurs. So these are people that had a skill set, a trade, whatever you want to call it, and they decided, I don't want to work for someone else anymore. I want to make my own hours. So they started a business, and what ended up happening is that they actually created a job, if you will. So their clients are still making all the rules. They're still working endless hours, and you know what? Honestly, they're probably bringing home less than. than they were when they worked for someone else. But they're determined, they want to create a business, they wanna still do this on their own, and they're tired of trading those dollars for hours. They see other people in their industry that are doing these really great things, having these really successful businesses, and so they know it can be done, they just don't know how. And that's where I come in. I show them how to get to their vision. So we look at their vision, we step it back, And a big part of that is by creating the teams that are going to support them. And before you can create teams, obviously you need to create the systems and processes they can follow. But the biggest problem is most of us, we have it in our head. We just don't know how to get it out of our head and onto paper so that other people can follow. So that's what I do is help people get it out of your head and onto paper.

Awesome.

And it really is a simple process once you know how to do it.

Yeah, yeah. So, you and your company deal with some very specific challenges that business owners have. Maybe you can delve a little bit deeper into what some of your clients have faced as far as this idea of not being able to break loose.

Yeah, absolutely. So, a lot of what I hear is, my daughter had a dance recital and I missed the dance recital. Or my son had a baseball game and I was stuck at work. I really wanted to go but I was stuck at work. Or Clients who are calling them late at night when they should be with families, and their families are getting really tired of the broken promises. The, I promise I'll be home for dinner tomorrow, yet tomorrow they have another fire that needs to be put out, and so they're not coming home. So those are the types of things that I, I'm working with my clients to show them, you know, there is a different way. You don't have to constantly break promises. If you will. I think one of the biggest things, Marc, and I know I was guilty of this, is this belief that no one else can do it as well as we can, right? And as soon as we let go of that belief and we start to understand, you know what, there honestly are some people who can do it better than us, actually. You know, when I started to realize, you know what, I don't have to dredge through the bookkeeping and the administrative, I can hire other people to do that kind of stuff and I can just do what I love doing. That's when my business really started to take off.

Yeah, it's also— I've known being a business consultant myself, I've seen business operators who absolutely adore what they do. And you're absolutely right. There's this fear of delegation. But there's also this idea that this is their baby and they figure if they let it go, even if they back off and let— they're afraid of what's going to happen to it. Is there steps that these business owners need to overcome in order to start kind of grounding themselves in this to have this almost what sharing mentality rather than this ownership mentality?

Yeah, and you know what, Marc? I think it all comes back to many entrepreneurs have been burned, if you will. So, they've had an experience where they've hired someone And they were the wrong person. And so it might not even be them that had this experience, but they've heard of other people who have had that experience. And they're like, you know, like you said, this is my baby. These are my clients. I love them like family. I don't want to afford losing them. So they hold back and they don't hire someone. It's not till you hire that ideal person and you give them the systems and processes to follow that are based on how you want things done that— You start to see, okay, this could work. This could really happen. I've got a really good example for you of how this can work. You know when you go to Tim Hortons in Canada or McDonald's or wherever you go? It doesn't seem to matter whether I go to McDonald's in London, Ontario, in Vancouver, British Columbia, or even anywhere in the US. It's always the same. It's like my Big Mac comes exactly the same. You go in the location, it looks the same. When you start to think of your business the same way, okay, that's because of processes that these people are able to do that. They can hire someone, give them the procedures, and everybody could learn how to make a Big Mac. And that's the biggest thing.

Yeah. And again, this is about this whole idea of teaching people how to fish, right? It not only helps Helps feed them for life. But it helps you from having to do all the work yourself.

All the work. Absolutely.

I'd love to delve into some of the solutions that audiences could take right now to evaluate their current situations and then take immediate steps towards working towards freeing themselves. But first, I'd like to remind everybody that this episode is brought to you by my brand new book, Lights! Camera! Action!, Business Operational Excellence Through the Lens of Live Theater. It tears down what it takes to put on a great show for your customers no matter what business you are in. The book has just launched and it is available for sale on Amazon and at your favorite online bookstore and on my website. You can get more information about it at marchaine.com/lightscameraaction. The link will be in the show notes. It is a work of passion. I'm so glad to be able to do that. And that, Yvonne, is— That's the end of my shameless plug.

It's all good. What's a show without a shameless plug?

Exactly. You got to throw it in there every once in a while. Hey, so before we get into the steps business operators can take, I understand that you've actually worked out a system for yourself. You faced situations where you had to step away from your business. What can you maybe tell us a little bit about how you came across this idea of being able to put systems in place to free yourself from your Yeah, absolutely.

So a long time ago when my dad was 50 years old, which happens to be about the same age as I am now, he was a solopreneur. He had a construction company. He was working in the field from sunup to sundown. And then he'd come home and he'd work in his office. And he ended up having a heart attack because of all the stress of everything he was doing. And it was that heart attack that was his wake-up call. Hey, I need to change my life. That's a great story. I've got to step back and I've got to, you know, do something different. I left my corporate job and went and helped him in his business and we set up every procedure, documented everything because of course, I didn't know the construction industry. That's a man's, typical man's world, right? So I had to learn from scratch. Like, I didn't know anything when it came to that. So there was a lot of questions I asked and a lot of documenting. And the nice thing was, Marc, when he decided he wanted to retire a few years later, we were able to give that procedure manual to the people who bought his company and they actually had something tangible to buy. It was the step-by-step of actually how to run his business and everything that he did. And so when the time came for him to retire and sell his business, I was kind of like, now what do I do? And I was like, you know what, I helped him run a business, I'm going to start my own business. So in the beginning, I started documenting everything I did. I was by myself. There was never going to be a chance I was likely going to give it to someone, but I knew how much easier it was. You know those times when you do something and you haven't done it in a really long time and then you're like, oh my God, how did I do that? It was nice to pull out a binder and go, oh yeah, that was like last year around this time. This is how I did that. And it just started to save me so much time. And then there was something that happened, Marc. In 2014, I received a text message no one ever wants to receive that said that, you know, tell the kids that I love them, I just can't do it anymore. And thankfully, we were able to save my husband. But what ended up happening is we also owned a business together. And because he was in the hospital fighting his own mental health And getting himself well, I had to go run that other business because it was a retail business. You do not tell a retail business, oh, sorry, we're closed for business, and it was a franchise. So I couldn't tell the franchisor, oh, you know, we're just going to close the doors for a few days. And so I still had my own business, which at that time was a virtual assistant business. And it took me one password by text to my virtual— to a friend of mine in the virtual assistant industry to open my entire business to her. And I don't know if any of the rest of you, if something happened tomorrow, because we never know, would you too be able to give one password to someone and it open your entire business to them? And the best part was that while I was off running my husband's company is my company not only survived, but it thrived during that time because this virtual assistant that was working with me had everything documented. So she even knew how to handle an inquiry when it came in, and someone inquired while I was off, and she took the sales conversation, ran with it, and I came back to even more clients than I had originally. And that's what I show my clients is how they too could create something where It's like one password could open their entire business to someone.

Well, it's so funny that you mentioned that because, you know, the TV show Bar Rescue, many, many episodes start off talking about how this person opened up a bar and was doing so well, but then they got sick or something happened in their family and they had to back out and they just left the business run itself. They figured, oh, you know what, it's simple, everybody can take care of it, and they just left it be. And then of course, months and months later, Now, they need rescuing. And in a past episode, we talked with somebody from ActionCOACH. And they were talking about this need to build these systems so that not only do we have value in our business but it also does exactly what you suggest is at some point, God forbid, we might have to walk away from the business temporarily because of things in their family, things going on with our own personal health, and so on. And so, this is really great information. And I'm sure people watching this, anybody who's in this could understand, oh yeah, there was that time I had the flu and no matter what, I still had to work. And it was a horrible, horrible week. And they have this sense of what this is going to look like. I get a sense that this is not just about delegation. I get a sense that you rely a lot on systems.

Oh yes. Absolutely. I'm like the systems junkie, I guess you could say. I just absolutely love systems. So to me, it's like everything's a system. We don't even realize how many things in our lives are a system. If you get up in the morning and you brush your teeth, we all have a system to how we brush our teeth. It might not be the same. Like Marc, you might start on the left, I might start on the right. You might go in circles, I might go up and down. But everything we do has a system. There's a system and a process to it. The biggest problem is, is once we've done it a few times, it becomes robotic. So it's like now we don't think about it. So there may be a system to brushing our teeth, but I tell you, I don't put the toothpaste on in the morning and go, left or right? Which way? You know, like it's a natural thing that we do, right? So what systems and processes do is get those natural robotic things that you're doing in your sleep They get them documented so anyone can come in. And, you know, I have been talking to a lot of entrepreneurs even during COVID where all of a sudden their team that was in-house all had to go elsewhere. So now I've got team all over the place and how do I know that they're doing things? And even more importantly, I need to add to my team because I'm one of those fortunate people who COVID was beneficial to my business. And now, I don't know how to train from afar because I'm so used to, okay, you stand here and watch over my shoulder while I do this. And there are a lot of tools that I've discovered over the years that are like someone standing over your shoulder. So, those are the things that I've been working with my clients over the last year showing them how to do.

Nice! Are there some best, like for those people listening and they're saying, geez, I really need to get some systems like there. Are there some best practices for putting some of these systems together?

Absolutely. So one of the biggest things is don't take anything for granted. So document absolutely every step. Think about a recipe. When you have a recipe, you have like all the ingredients that you need, then you have the steps that you need in order to create that, and they even give you a picture so you can look at it and you can go, okay, it looks somewhat like that. I don't know about you, Marc, but when I make recipes, they never look quite as good. As the picture, but it kind of gives you a process to look at to create that, and it's very simplified. It's step by step by step. That's what you want to do in your business. The other thing that is important to note is you need to write it in 5th grade language, if you will. So simplify it. I always say the simpler the better. We get so stuck in technical jargon. I can give you a really good example. I was working with a company that did retail and so they had all these retail operations and they were talking about how in the warehouse they would put it in a container and send it off and I was like, okay, what's a container? And they're like, what do you mean, what's a container? And I said, well, this is a container and, you know, like a box is a container, like there's so many things and those are the problems. It's we get so stuck in— understanding what we do that we forget, okay, if I had to explain this to someone else, how would I explain that? So one of my clients even jokingly referred to it as her alien abduction manual, like, okay, if I get abducted by aliens and they come down here and they have to run my business, how can I explain it in such easy language that an alien could understand what I'm doing? And I absolutely love that terminology.

Yeah, you know, you bring up a good point, this idea of making it simple, but it can be a challenge because if you're embedded in your business, like the person who wrote the word container, they have a picture in their head of what that means. And so is there a way to test through assumptions when you're putting these kinds of processes together that you're able then to test it against what other people perceive? Because to me, that's, you know, you read it and you go, oh, that makes perfect sense to me. But to somebody else, it might be Greek.

Absolutely. And I always used to say testing is the biggest component of your processes. So you can create a process and think it's perfect, and it's not until someone tests it, all of a sudden you're like, holy, I missed an entire step that I totally took for granted. So I always say that testing should be done, absolutely. I used to have my mom read things and say, Can you understand this? Is there anything? 'Cause she wasn't in my business. If she could understand it, then I knew anybody else could understand it. Now, I'm not saying it has to be someone outside your business. It could even be an employee. It could be anyone that reads that process and says, okay. The other thing that I do is when I actually create processes for my clients, I give them to them and then I say, have your employees follow this step by step. They're not allowed to do something Unless it's documented. So what will happen is sometimes we'll have a procedure and when we test it ourselves, we go, okay, and we convince ourselves we're actually looking at the procedure. But again, back to that brushing of the teeth, it's still so robotic that we forget, okay, right, I have to follow each of these steps one at a time. So it's really about being honest to what you document.

And you know, it's so beneficial. My background, of course, being in hospitality, the one thing we had to do all the time was we had to document our recipes and our procedures for putting meals together. Like you said, like a recipe book, we had pictures of what the plates were supposed to look like. And the one thing that I've always realized is everything evolves. Everything. Behavior evolves, recipes, everything evolves.

Yeah.

And without having something to fall back to as the root creation, if you will, things will evolve past your standard operating procedure. And then, you have nothing to call people back. I see owners going into operations and it's like, well, that's not the way it's supposed to be. We've never done it that way. How come you're doing it? And it's like, we've been doing it like this for like 15 months. And the owner's just blown away by the fact that his processes get changed. Now, it's up to them to decide whether or not it's a better process or a worse process. But having that root document or that root process is always going to be something that they can fall back onto. Is there like how often should once they define the standard operating procedure, how many times, how often should they revisit it?

Yeah, absolutely. So, I always say that processes are only as good as the people who are using them, right? So, if you get to that point that, hey, I've got a better way to do this, and you start doing it a different way, I'm not saying that your way is not good. It's just, if you start doing it that way and now I come in and you've been doing it this way for so long and I don't know that way of doing it, I'm gonna do it this way, right? And now all of a sudden your clients are getting a different experience. What I always say is you should assign someone in your business to be in charge of the operations.

Right.

And I always say, do a complete audit of your operations at least once a year. And so it doesn't become a huge process because it is a huge undertaking to first create the processes and a big undertaking to review them all the time. I break it down. So when I'm working with my clients, there's typically 7 areas that I'll cover in their business. And I say every month you should be picking up one of those areas and going through the manual in like with a fine-tooth comb to make sure, okay, yes, nothing's been changed. That means every 7 months you're reviewing a different area of your business and every 7 months you repeat again, right? So the oldest something is going to be outdated is going to be 6 to 7 months. Right.

And so, is there any kind of checklist or something that they could get to be able to help them along this route? Because I'm thinking in my head as you were talking and you're completely frozen on my screen. I don't know why. So, I'll apologize for that. Is there anything that people can do to tear down their business in these operational areas That now, especially during COVID where some of them might be closed, that this might be an ideal opportunity for them to start looking at their operation, looking at what ails them and be able to start putting those standard operating procedures together?

Yeah, so as I said, Marc, I break it down into 7 different areas. So, a listing of those 7 areas, I've actually created a video series. See, this is going to be my shameless plug now. I've created a 5-video series that walks them through how to actually start to document their business. And it sets out those 7 different areas that I'm talking about.

Nice. And so, but this is— so now, this is about a system. This is not necessarily about this idea of delegating, which is to me is the next phase of this idea of how do you break loose? How do you not— how do you keep your business from relying on your participation? in order to be successful. What kinds of things can get delegated versus automated through a standard operating procedure?

Yeah, absolutely. So, here's where I see that businesses make a lot of mistakes is they throw people at tasks and they don't stop to think, okay, is there an automation tool that could take care of this? Right? Like, there are so many programs that are out there that can do these things. Like, if we think way back when, We had things like our social media. It's like we actually had to go out and post on our social media every day. Now we've got those nice tools that do it automatically for us. There are a lot of different things within a business that can be automated. I mean, look at how many things we get now. We get like those automatic phone calls that come to us from different companies. We've got text messaging that comes to us. There are automatic invoicing that can happen, all kinds of different things.

Yeah, yeah.

So what I always think about is, first off, is there a software tool that can handle this? Is this a repetitive process that happens over and over and over and over again that a system or a process could make it faster, easier, simpler? I mean, there are some things that just never should be delegated, and to me, that's the face-to-face interactions with your clients. Those should definitely be 100%. Customer service needs to always be a person who does it unless there's the behind-the-scenes type customer service. Like getting feedback from a client can be automated.

Right, right. And in past episodes, we've talked about the importance of succession planning. We've alluded to it here when it comes to health, when it comes to family obligations and crisis that might happen in our family, immediate personal life. But at the same token though, some of what you're talking about, having these processes in place can actually help the business's valuation.

Absolutely! Every single time that I've talked to someone who has taken the time to document their processes, their business is valued by a valuator higher than someone who doesn't because you actually have something tangible. Take for example our business. We're a consultant. Both of us are consultants, right? If we attempted to sell our business, we can sell our client list possibly, but the minute that you can say, here's the exact way that I work with my clients step by step by step by step, someone else has a process to follow. They can step in, they can do that, and now we've got something that's more tangible. My dad was a prime example of it. Like, He owned a construction company. Other construction companies were for sale at the same time, but because my dad had that procedures document, he had something tangible to sell. So not only was he selling his client list, but he was selling exactly how he does business.

And what a great way to keep the customers. All too often, I see businesses change hands, but because there are not processes in, the way that you're describing, the customers automatically notice that everything has changed. And they'll turn around and they say, well, that's not the way Paul did it. Well, Paul doesn't own it anymore. I own it. And so, you end up with this big issue of all of a sudden now your customers are turning over because the experience that they're getting is completely different than what they got with the previous owner.

Oh, and not even when you sell it, Marc. Look at how many companies have that issue With their employees. It's like, I want to deal with Bob and I will only deal with Bob because I like the way Bob handles things better than Mary, or vice versa. Or, oh my goodness, Mary just left and I do not like Sue and the way that Sue's doing it. Why doesn't she know the way that Mary did it? Or even I'm the owner and it's like, well, Mary always did this for me. And it's like, well, Mary wasn't supposed to always do that for you. And now I've got to stand behind it because to me, customer service— Is more important. Those are all the things that you want to make sure, whether it's Bob, Mary, Sue, Jane, yourself, whomever's dealing with your clients, it's all being done the exact same way so it's a seamless experience. Whether it's Bob helping you this week or Mary helping you next week, you know that they've all been trained to the way that you want it done, so then it's all the exact same.

And to me, that's the magic word. I can't tell you how many times I've gone into organizations where this idea of training was just— it's just so foreign. And it's not that the concept of training is foreign. It's just that the owners look at it and they go, gee, if I train them, they might leave. And my response has always been, well, if you don't train them, they might stay.

That's right.

And this idea of kind of having different services, delivered different ways is an absolute poison or a cancer to the organization because the exact same— that happens day in, day out in many, many different industries.

Or have you heard this one, Marc? I don't want to give them my trade secrets because they'll take them down the street to the competition. So, you hold everything back, not sharing with people exactly what is needed, right?

Right, right. This is really interesting. I love discussing this. And I'm so sorry that on my end, your screen is frozen. But we can definitely hear your passion in your voice. Could you let everybody know how they can get in touch with you?

Yeah, absolutely. So, you can go to my website which is theweldgroup.ca. And there are 2 things you could do there. The first thing is you could download my 5-video series that we talked about. And that would give you lots of tools, first steps for starting to document the processes in your business. And the second thing that you could do is I offer a complimentary discovery call. So if you're someone that says, this is great, but I don't have the time to do this, I don't know how to do this, I don't know where to start, we can have a conversation. And whether it's you determine you're going to work with me— I also, as I said, I'm working on a do-it-yourself series that's going to be coming out in 2021, so that might be an avenue that's best for you. It really starts with a conversation. And so you'll see on the page that there's an opportunity to do that. And so really the best thing they can do is go visit that website.

That's awesome. To those who are participating in this broadcast today, I hope this is making sense to you and is of value to you. Please feel free to give it a thumbs up and share your comments or questions in the comment box below. I'm more than happy to keep tracking the comment box and make sure that if I don't have the answer towards something, I can ask Yvonne for her feedback. And again, if you know somebody who is struggling, somebody who is exhausted, somebody who just doesn't know what to do next in the context of their business, please share this broadcast. Maybe they'll get something out of this of value so that you can help them overcome this burden as well.

Yeah.

Yvonne, building a culture of trust. You mentioned something before about before COVID-19 hit and how everybody had to adjust. And in a previous episode, I was interviewing Michael Kerr, and we were talking specifically about trust. You know, part of this thing of creating a standard operating procedure and a system for it is one step. How do you create a culture of accountability and a culture of trust within the context of these systems?

Yeah, absolutely. So, in the beginning, I believe that Trust needs to be earned. So what I do with anyone that I'm working with is we start out with some accountability where it's like, okay, on this day, here's what needs to be done. Here's the procedures. You have any questions, come to me, talk to me. I'm going to check in with you Tuesday as an example because it's due on Friday. So on Tuesday, it's a simple, hey, how's it going? Any questions you might have? How are things? It's just a general check-in. I'm trusting that you're using that documentation to come to me. Now, if I come back to you on Friday and you've told me on Tuesday everything's fine, and now on Friday things have have an issue, that's going to be difficult for me to continue to trust. When I give someone that rope that they can, you know, find their own way. If you will, without me standing over someone's shoulder, 9 times out of 10 when I go to them on Friday, they've made the progress I want them to make. Then the next time I might put that deadline out further. So now instead of checking in on Tuesday, I'm checking in on Wednesday, and eventually I'm not checking in until the Friday when things are due. It's about building that trust slowly so that you can understand that they have to trust. There are some people that they can build trust a lot easier than other people can, and they're, you know, those are the people that I always aspire to be because like you, sometimes it's like, it's my baby, I've got to learn to grow this trust, and it really is a tool that you have to practice.

Yeah.

So practice makes perfect. So that's always worked for me is giving them a little more leeway each time. I mean, if you break my trust, I will have a conversation with you. If we get to Friday and you haven't checked in with me before Friday and now you're not done, well, now we're having a conversation.

Mm-hmm.

I trusted you to get this done. Why didn't you come to me? It's a learning lesson at that point. So maybe the next week is still the same process until they get it down pat. The worst thing you can do for someone is pull them back in where it's like, okay, I don't trust you now. I want you to check in with me every hour, every minute. As soon as someone feels they haven't been trusted, I mean, I give someone every opportunity to build trust with me. I want to trust that they're going to do what they need to do. It's like a prove me wrong thing, right?

Absolutely. And you know what I love about that system as well is I talk a lot about coaching in my book. And I talk about the importance of doing the check-in with people and being open to being there to say, hey, how's it going? Do you need anything? And so, in your system, you're opening this level of trust where you're checking in with people and then you're slowly rolling it back. But I'm sure you still have that humility and that kind of groundedness that you'll go to the people and say, hey, you know what? I'll check in with you on Friday. If you need anything between now and then, please feel free to check in with me.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

So, it's not just that I'm just going to abandon them for a week and see what happens.

Right, exactly. And you also have to have that open, open door too, right, Marc? Like, the worst thing you can do is when someone comes to you and they've opened up the conversation, like, okay, I'm struggling with this right here, the worst thing that you can do is knock them down at that point.

Yes.

It's like, okay, so, you know, what have you done to this point? How can we figure this out? I'm big on Modeling the behavior that you want them to follow, right? So if you come up with, you know, here's what I'm looking for, right? In the interview process, I always end the interview with a whole statement where it's like, this is what you need to know about working with me. I'm a rule follower, so I expect you to follow the rules too. I'm big on systems, so you need to follow systems, and so on and so forth. And then I ask the question, What do I need to know about you so that I can always go back and go, remember in the interview when I said I was a rule follower? Here's a prime example of where I'm a rule follower.

Yes, that's— and this is so— through this broadcast so far, we've kind of really pushed the level of content. This is to me, this is like drinking from a fire hose in that we talked about systems and operations. Now, we're talking about actually How do you become a good leader? And how do you root your leadership with the team members? As people listening to this, this can be super overwhelming. Do you have any strategies that we haven't talked about today that audience members could use right now to start the process?

Absolutely. And you know what? I think you've hit the nail on the head there, Marc. This is great information and people go, yeah, that's great. I would love to do that. But that just overwhelms me. And we all know when we get overwhelmed, we tend to shut down. So here's the best part of what I teach my clients is systems and processes doesn't have to be extra work, especially when it comes to the tasks that you do. So there's 2 resources that I'm gonna tell you about. The first one is if it's something that you're doing and it's screen related, meaning you want that person who's sitting over top of your shoulder looking down at you, Mm-hmm. I always turn on Zoom, but there's lots of other programs that you can use. I share my screen and I screen record. I simply talk out loud as I'm doing the process. So it's like, for example, if I was doing a blog post, I log into my website. Here's what the website address is. Here's how you find my username and password. Then on the left-hand side, you'll see blog and you're going to go on to that. Actually, I think it's called posts in there. So you're gonna go to posts. Here's how you add a new post. And I'm talking through the entire process as I'm doing it. But the key is, Marc, I'm still doing the process. So I'm still writing my blog. I'm just talking it through. Maybe I'm telling them how I come up with ideas and how I like to write as I'm writing it. It doesn't matter if there's pauses and everything.

Mm-hmm.

And then you save the recording as exactly what it is that you just did. And now when I go to delegate it, They can open that file up. They can watch the video. They can press pause as they need to find the things. They can rewind when they want something. How many of us have gotten frustrated because we're showing someone and then they ask a question? Oh, now I gotta step back. I gotta show you. So when we're training people, it takes us 10 times longer than if we could just do it ourselves. There's where it comes down to. It's faster, easier to do it myself.

Mm-hmm.

So once you've recorded this, Now you've got the recording. They can watch the recording. Then they can take it one step further. They can take that, they can send it somewhere like an otter.ai, and that's otter like the sea animal, .ai. You can upload that recording and now you can have it transcribed. Now you take that transcription, you can put screenshots to it, and guess what? Your process is done. And it's not even you that needs to do it. You can hire a virtual. Assistant to do that, you can get a team member to do it, but it really is you walking through the process. For anything that's not visual, you can still use Zoom, maybe you're not recording, but I always use my smartphone. And the other thing, the voice recording on there is awesome because sometimes when I'm driving, I have mine set up so I can say, hey Google, do a voice recording. Oh, just a second, I wanted to do one now. So it's like, okay, so now while it's doing it, I can be driving somewhere And I can be talking out loud. Oh yeah, this is how I do this or this is how I do that. And it's not taking me any additional time to start to get those processes documented.

And you could do it if it's something physical. If it's a piece of machinery or something else, you could do that same process. Just take your cell phone out, create a recording and talk as you're doing it. And then like you said, send it up to a service, get the transcription down and Bob's your uncle. You now have a procedure.

Absolutely.

Yeah. Would you trust your employees to do procedures for you?

Oh, absolutely. I always get my team members involved because they're the ones that are doing it. They're right there in the muddy waters, if you will, doing it. So, I have them documenting everything. So, as they're using one of the processes, if they notice or they have a question, okay, you just questioned something. Now, we need to add an extra step in the— So, they're always evolving, always changing.

That's great. So, as they go through this, obviously, people can get really super excited about pulling something like this off and wanting to do it. And I could see people running into their team members now and saying, okay, I want you to document everything. Are there any cautionaries to what we're talking about when it comes down to creating standard operating procedures and And this idea of being able to create systems so that the business doesn't rely on the ownership.

Yeah, so one of the biggest things is having some fluidity to it. So, I don't want you to come to a point where, did you follow the procedures? Like there has to be a little bit of fluidity. There has to be some room for humans, if you will. So, when you become so stringent to follow the procedure, Go back to the procedure, check the procedure. Like, there are some days where it's like we just gotta think outside of the box, put the procedure aside. How can we solve this problem? I don't want it to become a point where, you know, you're saying to your client, well, the procedure document tells me that this is what I'm supposed to do. You need to give your employees a little bit of freedom to make those on-the-spot decisions that might be outside. And the best way I've done that, Marc, is I've always said to someone, I appreciate that you think outside of the box, so I will always back you up no matter what you say or do for a client. However, we may have a conversation later about, that's great that you handled it this way, this is the way I think we should handle it in the future.

Right.

And then have that documented. The other thing is to remember, as I said, it's always a living, breathing document. So if you create your processes today and put them on a shelf, They're not going to be the same in a year because just as technology always changes, everything changes because of humans. Because, you know, we might come up with a better idea today and now we want to implement it into our processes.

Yeah, this is really great, Yvonne. This has been so great. I've so enjoyed this conversation. Could you remind everybody one more time how they can get a hold of you?

Yeah, absolutely. So the best way is to visit My website, which is theweldgroup.ca. And there's a few different things you can do on there. We can have a discovery call. You can send me a quick email through the contact form that's on the homepage, or you can even download my free video series.

And they should check out your blog because your blog is awesome.

Thank you.

I unfortunately fell down a rabbit hole one day reading your blog, and I literally was going one to the next. It's like, oh my goodness, this is so good. This is so true. Oh my goodness! So definitely, to those watching and listening to this, do check out Yvonne's blog as well. Lots of great information in there and beautifully themed as well. So, check that out as well.

Awesome! Thanks, Marc!

That's really all the time that we have today. Again, Yvonne, thank you so much for sharing your obvious passion with us today. I'm sorry that the majority of the interview happened on a frozen screen. But your passion and your energy for this topic and for this process, this whole idea of being able to do standard operating procedures and systems to free up owners so that they don't have to be a slave to their business is blatantly clear. And so much fun. Like, I imagine that you're probably a lot of fun to work with as well.

I would hope so. That's what I do hear. I do hear that from my clients. So, I'm glad.

Yeah, I'm sure that people are taking copious notes at this point, making tons of notations of what they could do to take this home to their own business. As you're listening to this, why don't you give me a thumbs up if this was of value to you? As always, my offer stands as well. If you would like 30 minutes of my time to brainstorm your business with You and your team, please feel free to book yourself on my online calendar. The link is below. It's the link that says meetme.so/MarcHaine. As always, I am at your service. And if you haven't done so yet, why don't you hit the subscribe button and ring the bell? You can be part of the gazillion people who follow. Okay, the few people who follow me. But by subscribing to it, you will get notification when I bring fresh content. To help you work on your business, not just in your business. My name is Marc Haine. I hope you stay safe, stay healthy, and dare to be the exception.

Thank you.