It\’s the We Are Better By Design podcast, where small ideas become big actions, passing thoughts become life changing decisions, and you can be, do and have anything you want. I\’m Andrew Sharp. It\’s time to be better by design.
What is going on, everybody? Welcome to the We Are Better by Design podcast. I am your host, Andrew Sharp, and I am so excited to talk with you today. Thank you, everybody, for tuning in. We are going to be talking about why process is important and all the benefits it brings to you and your business.
So this past month, I had the opportunity to speak remotely at my kids school about podcasting. Kind of a unique opportunity that flowed into my path that I thought would just be super fun to do. So shout out to the Gloucester online schools. If you guys are listening, you guys are amazing. I had a ton of fun talking with you. They have been looking at what it\’s like to create a podcast, and I was excited to hear that they were doing this. My son mentioned to the teacher actually that I have a podcast and that turned into a couple of emails and turned into me, going ahead and talking to the class for a bit.
And so I love getting to do things with my kids and to know their classmates and their teachers better. And so I just I jumped all in. I was excited for it. In getting ready for my little talk, though, the teacher sent me a list of questions that the kids had put together in preparation for me coming in.
It was everything from \”how did you start doing podcasting\” to \”do you like dogs?\” And \”will you talk about video games in your podcast?\”, all the things that kids in fifth grade and fourth grade are interested in.
Any time I present, I feel very aware of who I am presenting to. And so I very much appreciated having some insight into what the kids were thinking about. Now, my intent is very much to keep things entertaining. I have sat through far too many business presentations where the goal was more to justify the person\’s talking\’s efforts, rather than to show how that info is actually helpful to me as the audience. Can you tell I\’m not a fan of a less than interesting meetings? Let\’s make them interesting, folks.
So in preparation for talking to these kids, I thought, what is it that they\’ve been working on? And so I mapped out kind of my process from start to finish all the way through from coming up with an idea to doing the recording like I\’m doing right now. This is a little bit meta all the way on through to when it\’s out and available for everybody and we\’re doing marketing stuff. And so what I did is put together this little flowchart and dropped it into a slide so we could see all of it kind of in one big overview shot. And I was able to show them what it was that they were working on and help them see the part that they were doing, but then also expand their understanding beyond what they knew to see all of the different parts that also can go into putting out a podcast for the rest of the world.
We, of course, included phone pictures and lots of answers to their questions. And if you actually check the show notes, you can see the presentation along with all those fun pictures and that sort of stuff in it there. Well, we had a ton of fun, got great feedback, and mostly I got a thumbs up from my son Colton. So regardless of anything else, I feel really good about that.
What I was reminded of, though, in walking through, getting everything set up is how important defined processes really are in our business. I want to talk about three ways how process can benefit your business.
The first one is that process creates ease.
I\’ve worked with clients to define onboarding processes for new employees and on the flip side, offboarding processes. When somebody leaves. Things that are really important and you often don\’t think about until they\’re really needed. I really like process for freeing up the mind to think clearly. You think about going on vacation, right? You deciding to go on vacation, where are you going to go? All of that detail stuff of just like figuring out the \”what\” can be so time consuming. Once you decide, though, suddenly all of your questions change. Now you start asking questions about how do you want to spend your time? What restaurants are you going to eat at? Are you going to meet up with any friends in the area?
The same goes for business decisions. And so if you are doing anything that can be defined by a clear process, oftentimes this is social media or email or blog posts or YouTube videos or sales prospecting or just general internal business activities, all of these things can have a defined process. Once the process is set. It allows us to have plenty of time because we now know how long something takes. So we know when we need it done by. And we can then simply focus on coming up with creative content. It takes away the need for decision, which is always rather brain heavy thinking.
The next way that process can really benefit us is that it allows for improvement.
So along with the ease, it creates the space to easily improve on things. I am a big proponent of measuring things in your business. When you define a process, you get to see all the different places and see what is working and what\’s not. When you\’re just doing the process each week without really thinking about it, your brain is treating what you\’re doing like it\’s new each time and the brain\’s goal is efficiency. So you, for the most part, won\’t naturally think of faster, better, bigger ways you could be doing what you\’re doing. When you create a process, when you map that out and look at it, you will then by nature start to find areas where you can improve.
The third benefit that process brings is that it creates expansion.
And this becomes even more so when we bring others into our process. One of the key abilities to be able to scale a business is the ability to create repeatable processes. When you have a clear process, you\’re making room for that expansion to happen. Think about that for a minute. Defining how you do something means you can hire someone to do parts of it or to do all of it. You gain clarity over what you need to do and the rest you can bring on somebody else to take care of anything else that needs to be taken care of.
Process really is a wonderful thing. It doesn\’t have to define all parts of your life, but it can create a framework for things to feel easier and more fun.
Of course, if you would like help creating processes in your business or refining them, those types of things, you can always reach out to us. There are links in the show, notes for those types of things. I challenge you and encourage you to take the time to define what it is that you\’re doing. You will reap incredible rewards from doing so. Well thank you so much for listening, everybody. I\’m always honored that you have taken this time to join in and have a wonderful rest of your day. Be blessed, everybody.
Thank you for listening. I love connecting with people and helping them elevate both in life and business. And this is just one of the ways I get to do that. Now, it\’s up to you to take what you heard, synthesize anything that resonated with you and choose to add it into your life. Because when we do that, we create a life that is better by design.
Show Notes
Think process is boring? It\’s actually a key part of the path to success.
3 ways how process can benefit your business.
- Allow Ease
- Drive improvement
- Create expansion
Podcasting Presentation
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1m-XLF2Wm_-ePWWj3r_3EZwCq5byLSjQrYsVchSXe_VE/edit?usp=sharing
Looking to create, refine or automate processes in your business
https://sharpteamdesign.com/easy
Connect with me on social media @sharpteambetterbydesign
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