to build Business Systems using the advice that you see all over YouTube will take you hours to implement but if you use the tactics inside this video you can systemize any part of your business in 35 minutes or less I know this because unlike the general business gurus weighing in a process all over YouTube I'm an actual process consultant I've been specialized in this work for the last 7 years and worked with over 1,00 small businesses to systemize their operations I'll be boiling this all down to six steps but to get us started let's review the traditional approach to Building Systems you can Spot the Difference and of course you can't really make fun of traditional Business Consultants unless you use a bad PowerPoint template with clip art step one of the traditional approach for Building Systems is to make a diagram of everything your business does you might hear people use value stream mapping or a business model canvas whatever method they choose to use it will be convoluted big picture and often in a one-time diagram something you'll create once forget all about and throw back in your drawer step two of the corporate approach would be to then zoom in pick an area of your value stream map for your business model canvas and figure out all of the steps involved in doing that thing this will typically involve you using some kind of proprietary whiteboarding software using specific icons with specific meanings to map out every single dudad and Gizmo that you might have in order to do whatever the thing is you're trying to do in my experience small businesses will have anywhere from 200 to 500 things you do AKA 200 to 500 proces when you're done learning how to process map and creating a process map you'll have a diagram of what you do that's so complicated that no one else on your team but you understands what it's for but that's okay because in the next step you are going to grab your hands put them on a keyboard and type out instructions for everything you just already put on that map but don't worry this is definitely more intense than just a copy and paste exercise because this is when you want to start creating work instructions these instructions spell out piece by piece by piece every step you need to do to accomplish a process so for example your process might be sending an invoice your work instruction will tell you every single step you need to click on and open and review in order to send that invoice in the traditional approach work instructions will typically be a 15 to 30 Page Long Word document that will take you anywhere from 90 minutes to 3 hours to create and you'll need at least one of these for every one of those 300 proces in your business are you starting to see the problem now once you've documented your process so thoroughly with such detailed instructions that you basically want to call it your Mona Lisa go grab a stranger or a small child and have them try to use those inst instructions our goal is to have instructions so clear even a small child could follow the steps to achieve the desired outcome if you have failed which is the normal expectation and your work instructions do not work for your 5-year-old uh you need to go back and fix this system you're going to keep working and working on perfecting those work instructions until anybody can follow them and then you're finally done and can get back to your actual job this traditional approach is not wrong in fact at a very basic level this is what you're going to see Consulting companies do for to the Fortune 100 it's what you're still going to hear taught in MBA programs I think that's also why you'll hear so many business gurus go on YouTube and talk about this approach as if it's revolutionary because it happens to be what they learned inside their NBA program back in the 80s but here's the thing we are not in an MBA program we're in the real world most businesses out there are small businesses Like Yours Like Mine we don't have time to kill so I think it's time we acknowledge that even though the traditional business system approach might be what you learned inside a textbook it's not what actually works in the real world so we need to stop treating it as if it does so what's the better way let's head over to the Whiteboard and find out step one of this new way is to pick a needy area yeah I know I told you this was going to be simpler to identify the needy areas in your business you can go through a 32-step prioritization exercise it all I can't even keep it straight face did I get you did you believe we had a 32 step exercise for this little don't be so gullible we're trying to keep this simple uh pick a needy area of your business so what I'm talking about with needy is I want you to think about a part of your business that is generating value you know it's valuable there's no doubts and it is a giant pain in your ass okay so for one reason or another it hurts right now and you know it can generate a lot of value for stakeholders some common examples of needy areas to start with would be things like onboarding delivering your service the sales conversations that happen before onboarding uh maybe your content marketing you just want to make sure you're picking something that you know will have a ton of value for your business but something about it isn't quite working right now and it's kind of painful now this is the beauty of small teams in a bigger corporate environment you might need a 30 step exercise to be able to go through this but in contrast I'm guessing small team operators like you could probably name the neediest part of your business in about 30 seconds you know what else just takes seconds liking and subscribing this video just funny coincidence there to translate this into process jargon these areas are going to be called your systems now once we've picked out our needy area AKA a system we're ready to move on to the next step which is when we're going to pick out our needy activity basically what I want you to do is think about the system you identified in step one and start to figure out the actual actions that happen to make that system hum for example if our system was focused on how we deliver trophies for our sign shop pretend that looks like a trophy with a little bottom on it God that's so bad if our system is how we deliver these orders the question would be what activities what actions happen to make this possible so in the case of the sign shop it might be ordering the parts it might be designing the plaque it could be engraving the pack assembling the pieces putting it in a box these are all activities that happen within the area that we're focused on make sense okay good cuz I'm going to throw one more piece of jargon at you if you figured out these activities what you've really figured out are what business Geeks will call process and what I want you to do now is when thinking of all of these activities which of these Hurts the Most and has the potential for giving the most value okay so you see some parallels here we're prioritizing every step of the way in the case of this trophy shop my most painful but most valuable activity is around ordering I know that's an area I want to focus on and if I just make it a little bit better it'll feel a whole lot better because of that I'm going to focus on step step two for my process gave my activity for ordering materials for step three we're going to start clarifying actions words defining tasks another way to think about tasks is defining what is happening when is it happening and who is in charge of it okay what when and who it is normal to have many tasks for each process or many actions for each activity so if we're focused on ordering materials we might have a task of checking all upcoming orders we might have a task of calling our suppliers we might have a task of checking in on the status of new shipments we might have a task of receiving orders that came in to make sure there's no shortages or overages all of these tasks fit in under this activity while doing the step I would suggest that you write out as many tasks AKA what when who's as you can so we might have task one here task two here test three here there could be a few of them write them all down so you have this information for step four by the way it's really hard to talk about process without talking about task because this is where all of your processes come to life if you'd like me to go deeper on task management and create some more videos about managing capacity due dates or prioritization for a small team uh write the word task in the comments below that will act as a vote to let me know you'd like to see more content like that but for now I will spare you that nerdy tangent I was about to take us on and let's move on to the next step which is talking about delegation now just having this step in place with systems processes and tasks you have already built a business system news flash it's this simple tasks are usually the step that most people leave out but this is the real trigger that allows this whole thing to work because now we have a Cadence a reminder a frequency for when we want to check in on these things and make sure they move smoothly but just having a system isn't the same as building a business that can run without you because ultimately who's in charge of these systems if you're like most people the answer is is you and you know what having a business system that only you can run is kind of like having a Netflix account not sharing your password with all of your family members it's just not the best way to do it so what we want to do instead is add on a few additional steps here where we're not just building the system because you've already done that we want to start delegating the system so it's not your problem anymore so to demonstrate that sharing is caring in step four we are going to assign an area so up here at the very top these systems we defined we want to give that responsibility to somebody else on our team and by the way if you have a very junior level team and you don't think they can handle responsibility of an entire system you can also delegate an activity AKA a process either way we want to start giving away everything we defined in number one and number two to connect this back to business jargon we would call this creating roles but Leila what if I don't have a team in that case congratulations your team now consists of two people you to today and you in the future make you in the future happier by doing this step your yourself yeah when we're assigning areas of ownership we're including three things in that the person responsible is going to be in charge of all the tasks in that area they might not be directly doing them all but they're responsible for making sure they all get done they're also in charge of improving that area making it better over time and any mistakes that come up in that area it is the responsibility of that assigned person now this concept of delegating ownership of a system can really trip people up so I want to give you a metaphor to help it sink in think of your systems and processes as little babies okay they're babies you have that you have to take care of if you were to do like most people do and you just delegate tasks you hire a freelancer you have a VA you delegate things here or there that's like getting your baby a babysitter they'll do the bare minimum they'll keep everyone alive hopefully and when you come back nothing's really different than what it was before you got what you need to get done done and nothing more that is what task delegation is and if you have a team of only Freelancers sure that's where you're going to be but for the rest of you who are building a company who build a team who have employees we want to delegate areas and unlike hiring a babysitter just to fill in for a few hours assigning areas is like giving your child your baby in this case a mentor kind of like the spoiled princes in those fantasy movies we want to give your baby process someone to guide it through its growth not only now and in the short term but in its Evolution over the future that way just like the absentee parents inside the fantasy novels you can come back and check on your prince in 5 years and it'll be grown up better than you expected and hopefully not want to kill you okay that's not a good joke when we're assigning ownership we're looking at not only getting tasks done that's a given we also want to see improvements and mistakes handled with that person in charge so for step five we want this assigned person to start capturing our method in other words how we do what we do you might hear me call this Sops standard operating procedures or recipes but there are so many different tools that fall under this toolbox this might be things like templates to show how we send emails this could be work instructions which are basically just Sops but super detailed this could include examples of how you do what you do so people can get inspired this could include software this could include Ai and so on and so on and so on all we want to do here is start capturing how we do what we do gather all those tools in one place so that way if your assigned person is out sick changes jobs gets hit by a bus this all doesn't end up back on your plate that is what step five is about and it's the responsibility of your assigned person so if we add up the time estimates for each of these steps we have a grand total of 35 minutes or less in order to systemize one area of your business and here's where the real magic happens because unlike the traditional approach doing this one section of your business at a time and we're prioritizing in the first two steps when you get through this in 35 minutes you will immediately start getting the benefit so if I go through this the first time and I fix the biggest problem I'm having which could be ordering materials it takes me 35 minutes but if ordering materials takes me about 30 minutes a week I'm going to make my time back almost in one week and all weeks after that it's just going to get easier and easier cuz I'm getting a better return on my investment then I can use that time I saved to reinvest in fixing another process which will also save me more than 35 minutes a week if you did this piece by piece for each area of your business and kept reinvesting the time you were saving your business would be unrecognizable in 6 months meanwhile the traditional approach will still be working on their process Maps but earlier in this video we talked about writing work instructions as these 15 to 30 page documents how could you possibly write these in 15 minutes or less well I've already taught this method to over 2,000 companies and my personal average using this framework is about 12 minutes per sop don't take my word for it though try it yourself and remember to enjoy the process