Whether you’re a service-based provider, coach or consultant, if you’re running a business where you’re in service to others, you have a process or a series of processes you follow to deliver that service.
Documenting these processes is often undervalued by entrepreneurs, especially solopreneurs. They often have so many things to work on in their business, that this type of documentation takes a back seat to other forward-facing tasks.
When you document your process, you’re capturing on paper or in an electronic format, the series of steps or actions taken in a specific order to create a particular outcome.
Processes can include everything from onboarding clients or customers to more complex business operations like marketing and sales funnels. The number of processes in any business will vary by business type, business owner, and team size.
If you’re an entrepreneur who hasn’t yet started documenting your processes, here are reasons you should start today.
When you have an operational blueprint, you free up a ton of mental energy when executing specific business-related tasks. This allows you to have more cognitive bandwidth to put towards more creative parts of your business.
Having an estimate of what’s involved, allows you to better set project timelines. This provides you with a better estimate of your capacity to serve and take on more clients. This prevents those providing the service from taking on more work than they can handle.
When you know how much time, energy, and resources are involved in delivering a particular service, you can have more confidence in setting your prices.
Quite often when you don’t have a process documented you’re often delivering the service by memory. This leads to skipping steps, taking shortcuts, and sometimes experimenting with new methods which can slow down your delivery. When the process is documented and followed you can guarantee the quality of your service and take pride in knowing that you will have a satisfied customer every time.
When we reflect on our process and write it down, we often recognize missed opportunities to increase efficiency and improve quality. It also allows others to give us feedback and ask us questions that lead to improvement.
As you scale in your business you will onboard various team members. Having documented processes will save you time training someone else on your business operations and increases the productivity of your team overall.
Often overlooked, taking the time to document your processes starts the process of knowing what you need to cover in a course or program you may want to offer. The process offers you the opportunity to intimately know your own process so you can teach it to others.
For more reasons and tips for documenting your processes, take a listen to this interview I had with Mallory Petersen on EP 12 of the Scale Your Course Podcast.
If you’re not already, I bet you’ll be inspired to get started documenting your processes and eventually saving more time and money in your business.
Tracy Sherriff is a Certified Director of Operations and Curriculum Expert who helps coaches, service-based professionals, and other business owners successfully scale their business online with high-quality, high-impact courses and programs. You can connect with Tracy by visiting her website tracysherriff.com, or finding her on Instagram @tracy.sherriff
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