Episode Transcript
[00:00:06] Speaker A: Hi there and welcome back to the Confessions from the Home Office podcast. I'm Wendy Hill, and today's episode is for you. If you've ever realized your business is running beautifully, but only inside your head, you know the feeling. You're the keeper of every step, every password, every workaround, every. Oh, yeah, I'll remember that. I don't need to write that down. And for a long time, that was me. My brain wasn't just thinking, it was storing constantly. It was like a hard drive filling up.
A few weeks ago, we talked about how dangerous it is when your entire business lives in your head, but no one else lives there with you.
Today is the follow up to that confession, because I finally did something about it. I told you I was working on my standard operating procedures, or SOPs, as I'll call them for the rest of this episode.
And I'm just here to announce I finished them ahead of time.
I know I barely believe in myself. And the truth is the thing that pushed it out over the finish line wasn't, oh, I'm just so disciplined. Or I just have this magical motive, motivation, or I'm drinking more Diet Coke, which is. That's a true statement. It was bringing on a new team member who actually needed these systems. So you know when you have a meeting, so you work really hard getting ready for that meeting.
That's kind of what happened here. Suddenly, the one day or I'll get this done soon became right now.
And I got the documentation done and I got it done before I'm taking off for Christmas.
So let's talk about the trap of I know how to do it, everything's fine.
I've used Trello for years as a project management tool. I talk about Trello on just about every episode. I know there's people who are tired of hearing about Trello, but stick with me.
I've had it for years. I've had boards, I've had lists, I've had cards, I've had things color coded. I've had recipes, meal planning. I have planned my wardrobe on Trello, so I never wear the same thing twice to a client's office. I know that's really psycho. And it's worked in the sense that it helped me keep track of what needed to be done.
But here's the part that I didn't realize until recently. Even though the tools were organized, everything's in there. I've got boards for each client and all this type of thing, the knowledge behind the tools was still in my head. My Trello Boards were full, but my processes weren't truly documented. In a way, someone could pull up the Trello board and just go, the boards are doing their jobs, but the systems really weren't working together. Trello was the map. The directions, the turns, the steps, all the logic was still stuck in my head. So yes, I had systems, but practically I didn't have systems someone else could pick up and step into.
And that's where the gap was.
So bringing someone on changed the entire structure. The moment I added a new team member, everything shifted. Suddenly, Trello wasn't just my the command center, it needed to be our command center. It's where you could go back and refer to things whenever you needed to.
[00:02:57] Speaker A: So my mental shortcuts, my. I'll remember that. I don't really need to write that down. My unwritten rules, they could not stay unwritten anymore.
I already had the bones of my SOPs documented, and I had bought SOP Trello board templates from people before. But walking through them as someone else seeing them for the first time really showed me all the missing pieces.
How to access things, how to get to different folders, how to start things, what to open first, how to where things go when they're finished. All the parts you skip writing down because they feel too obvious. Why don't I do that? Anybody would know how to do that. No, that's not true until you hand the workflow to someone else and realize none of it is obvious.
And this is where Trello finally became what it was always meant to be. For me, it's not just a task tracker, it's the hub where all the SOPs, the workflows, and all the people can really connect. The moment someone else stepped into the system, the pieces started coming together.
[00:03:54] Speaker A: So let's talk about the power of walking someone through it. I walked my new team member through each process and it helped bring everything into focus. I explained the steps out loud, and that forced me to slow down and notice the gaps and the places I need to refine something or the parts that made perfect sense in my head, but needed another sentence or two, or something needed to be reworded when someone else was actually reading and going through them.
Her questions so my new team member is a. She helped strengthen the SOPs, not because anything was wrong, but because explaining a process in real time makes you aware of how much you've been carrying mentally. There's so much in my head. It makes you clarify, it makes you simplify, it makes you systematize instead of just improvising did you like how I made that rhyme?
And then suddenly the sops weren't theoretical anymore, they were being used. That's the moment everything became real for me.
So now let's talk about the brain space I didn't know I needed. I always think I can just keep cramming more in there. I've got a big head. Just keep cramming more in there. And once the systems were documented, truly documented, and trello became the springboard instead of the whole system itself, I kind of felt this mental relief that I didn't know that I needed. You know when you finish a big project or if you're in school and you finish a big paper or test and you're just like, now everything can decompress. It was like my brain went from being like this big, you know, I don't know, external hard drive to being. Well, it could be a brain again and things could actually flow through. Well, I wasn't trying to remember steps or processes or login sequences anymore. I wasn't juggling so many admin tasks in my head, I wasn't rehearsing. Don't forget this. Go write this down. Don't forget this, go write it down all day. And all that extra mental space didn't just make me feel lighter, it made me feel sharper. I felt like I was getting my prem causal brain back. The brain that I had 15 years ago.
I've been able to think more strategically. I've been able to look at numbers more clearly. I've been following my whole profit first planning, which I've kind of gotten off track with. I've been planning ahead instead of reacting. And yes, having an extra set of hands has taken the pressure off of me in the best possible way.
It wasn't just about documenting processes, it was about freeing up the mental real estate that lets me run the business instead of constantly running inside of it and just working, working, working and being tired.
So here's the truth.
Systems are living creatures. Just because I have this SOPS done, I know there's a version 2.0 coming, not for everything, but for some things. I even talked to one of my contractors yesterday over the weekend and talked to him about video editing and the files and going from this step to this step and that I need him to create several looms and drop those in to the SOP board. And once that workflow is lived in, refined, you go through the whole thing, start to finish, things are going to shift a little bit.
So systems are definitely living creatures.
They evolve as the business evolves. So, you know, if you're telling yourself, well, if I just have to do this, I know I'm going to make some more changes to my business and I'm going to have to do it again. No, go ahead and get something started. If you're going to do this, go ahead and get it started.
You're not going to have to change everything. And then you're going to have a good foundation.
So my foundation is there and it's solid.
So that's today's confession. And one little thing I was going to mention. My new hire is actually my daughter. And if any of you know my daughter, Perry, she does not sit still. She is a nursing major, she's in college. She is a server in a restaurant. She loves her customers.
Um, she wants to be on the go all the time. But she decided she wanted to make some more money. I've been offering her a job for a couple years and she would always say, no, I'm not doing that. I'm not sitting in front of a computer.
And then we talked some more and she realized with her course load and everything, she was going to need something that she could actually just do some tasks, get ahead, get things done, not have to drive and work as much. She still, she's still a server.
[00:08:10] Speaker A: And she is a very checklist oriented person and she's a whiteboard and dry erase marker person.
And she likes to be on time and she likes to know what the plan is. So Trello is her jam. So that is a great thing. So me putting all my SOPs in Trello and her being someone who really thrives on that, I think this is a good match and she is keeping me on my toes. So that is a good thing if you are a client at Market Momentum. So that's it. That's it for Today's confession. The SOPs are done.
They're starting to function in the way that I always intended. And now I feel I can actually breathe and work on growing the business more and just making things better.
And if you've been relying on memory instead of documenting everything, or you've been using tools without putting the full system behind them, just know you're not alone. Just about everybody's out there winging it. Just, just know that. But you don't have to be one of those. You can be winging it less and have your SOPs good to go.
Let me be, let me just give you a gentle nudge.
Get the business out of your head.
That is the way to start moving your business forward so you can scale.
So that's it. Thanks for joining me today. I will see you soon for another episode of Confessions in the Home Office. Make sure you subscribe and follow. We're everywh all the major podcast platforms in YouTube and I hope to see you again soon.
