196: Creating Systems that Work for Your Design Business

Michele  00:00

Hello, my name is Michele, and you're listening to Profit is a Choice. With me on the podcast today is Owen McNabb Enaohwo. Owen is the CEO and co founder of Sweet Process, an easy to use software that enables company executives and their employees to collaborate together to quickly document and or improve the standard operating procedures, processes and policies. Today, we're going to dig into where to start with this, how to monitor and improve processes, and then how to engage your team in the collaboration.  Every day, empowered entrepreneurs are taking ownership of their company financial health, and enjoying the rewards of reduced stress and more creativity. With my background, as a financial software developer, owner of multiple businesses, and the interior design, industry, educator, and speaker, I coach women in the interior design industry, to increase their profits, regain ownership of their bottom line, and to have fun again in their business. Welcome to Profit is a Choice.  Hi, Owen, and welcome to the podcast.

Owen McGab Enaohwo  01:13

Hi, and thanks for having me. Michele,

Michele  01:15

You are so welcome. I am excited to chat with you about all things processes. And before we start, and we get into kind of the weeds and the details around operating procedures and processes, I would love for you to share a little bit with everybody on how you got started, why it became such an important avenue for you to tackle and then tell us a little bit about the company that you started to do it. And then we'll move into answering some of the questions.

Owen McGab Enaohwo  01:47

Great, great. So Michele, I'll go back to there was a time when I used to run basically an agency that would provide entrepreneurs here in the US with staff, basically to come in and do their back office work right now those you know, repetitive tasks that you know, you will need to get to get done. But you know, you were looking for an opportunity to get a much more affordable labor. And so that's what I was doing back then. And this was also the time when I think The Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss had come out. And so everybody was really into like, oh, virtual assistant, and they realize that they can actually do this, this was not just only limited to like, the big companies like the Verizon and all of that, right. So it now became a thing people understood that even they themselves smaller companies can do it. But what and this was, you know, pretty 2013. So, you know, one of the things I realized that happened was that, you know, yes, we got this surge of people interested in working with us. But they all came with the wrong mindset thinking that, you know, they will magically just, you know, hand over the work to us, the agency, and then our team will go in there and start doing the work and delivering the results they wanted, which the reality is that for that to happen, they actually had to be, you know, documentation in place in terms of standard operating procedures, or some might call it checklists on how work is done. And a lot of times we're coming to us not even having that. So we had to, you know, develop a process in which where, when they come to us, we will determine if they had, you know, this news already documented, and if not, basically became, you know, copy your brain machines where we're saying, okay, sit down with us, talk to us, walk through us, walk with us through how you do this stuff, we'll record everything. And then we'll turn that into checklists, so on and so forth. Right. But one of the issues we run into back then when I was wasn't running the agency was that there were not that many good tools available to do this very thing. As matter of fact, it was added to tools were enterprise level tools, where it was hard to use for the person who was our client, we even had to use my own agents, my agency, so obviously, if it's hard to use the words, going to use it, or it was basically us, you know, hacking together a bunch of different tools that, you know, we're not necessarily made for this very prior thing. And, you know, we're trying to get things done. And we and we got by, but embed back in my mind, I was like, you know, Owen, you got to build a software that will you know, take all the learnings you have learned and do this in a much easier way. Well, lo and behold, years forward, I was invited to a podcast interview by the host, Andrew Warner, the name of this podcast is Mixergy. And so he has where a thing where he does interviews, and another thing where he does like courses for his members who are, you know, paid members. And so the courses were more like come in there and teach something specific. And I was invited to come and teach his members how, you know, they can document procedures and how they can basically operationalize what they do and be able to get results. Predictably right. So I came on day and that just basically discussed all I was doing an agency you know, setting up my new clients and onboarding them and getting them to, you know, get their information quicker into SOP. and stuff like that. And lo and behold, my co founder Jervis, Jervis Whitley. You know, as a member of, you know, the Mixergy audience. He's a programmer based in Australia, he listened to it and was like, listen, he reached out to me. And this was the second or the third quarter of 2013. And he will talk to me after listen to this saying, Hey, dude, I am a programming I'm based in Australia. And I have this idea to build an app that basically is what you're talking about, can I share some ideas with you? And by the time we, you know, we met, we had this conversation, maybe in Maryland, here in the US, I was like, dude, instead of just taking advice from me, let's go ahead and build this together. Because this is something that, you know, I actually need, let's go ahead and build this together. But before you start programming and creating anything, why don't I spend maybe this next month just talking to a bunch of a bunch of potential clients to see you know, what is the real problem when it comes to this very issue, so that we can take all the learnings and basically come up with a situation where we summarize all the different learnings and the key root issues they were having, and then build a software that is based on the you know, the overall root issue and basically simplify because we didn't want to become like the other software that was hard to use. And so this was, we started this, this, the fourth quarter of 2013, the company was started. And since then we've we have over 2000, companies using our software, the typical company has between 20 to 100 employees, we will have some basically some customers who have way more than that. I mean, we have law enforcement agencies isn't the process, we have churches using screening process. I mean, banks using it, I mean, it runs the gamut on as to the kind of people that are using our software. And at the end of the day, you regardless of the specific industry you are in or the specific state, you do need to have a way in which you can communicate how work is done, have one single place where people can go find his instructions, and also be able to know that you know, you're collaborative with your employees so that it is a continuous improvement, and is not just dependent on only us. So that's what we processes is making that easy for employees. And, you know, the managers and the executive team talk collaborate together to improve their procedures, processes, and even policies,

Michele  07:12

So many talking points in that. So it's interesting. So thank you for that awesome description. I certainly have been podcasting on and teach and share all the time about delegating, and outsourcing. And I even have blog posts and all about when to hire a VA and when to hire and how to delegate and not dump is the actual podcast that I have. Because a lot of times what they do is exactly what you just have, they don't the work. They don't think they're dumping the work. They think they're handing it off. But yeah, and we talked about the difference between what does it look like to delegate and to dump?

Owen McGab Enaohwo  07:48

Abdicate versus delegate.

Michele  07:50

That's right. And the abdicate just the dumping, right, yeah. Anyway, a lot of people are getting to the point in their businesses. Now that we're all working from home, you and I kind of had a laugh about that, before we started about trying to find a quiet spot. Um, you were hiding in your home to find a quiet spot, and I'm Skyping my husband is upstairs, don't let the dogs beat on the door, walk them in a few minutes, I'm going to be recording. But because we're at home, I think there is an even more open idea to outsource and to work collaboratively. Or even if you're not outsourcing, we're not necessarily beside each other anymore the same way. And so that that communication to understand a process or what we're doing, where we could have less say in the past, turned our left and asked our co worker, that co worker is not there anymore. So we have to find some way to get that information. If we want to hire, we have to find some way to educate and to train, you know, this just so important for us to document these things. And the challenge comes in knowing what to document how to document when to document and even if we got all that right, how to organize it and put it into a place that we can look at it. And then you hit on the mindset at the end of the continuous improvement. We called it you know, iterative process, and you got to go through it over and over. And that's hard. That's really, really hard to win. Because sometimes when we do this, we're like, Okay, we're done. I mean, I'm guilty of it, like wiping my hands, moving it to the side, I'm done. And then we come back, we have to go through it again. We are my operations person and I are walking through three or four different processes and writing them back out again and documenting some different things and then asking ourselves, is that still what we want? Does it still meet the need? Does it still serve the client? Does it still do what we intended it to do? Or now that we have new information, do we need to improve it? Do we need to change it? Do we need to adjust it? So so many questions and challenges come into that? Let me ask you this if somebody has never docked Minute, anything? How do they even get started?

Owen McGab Enaohwo  10:03

That's a great question. That is the main question that a lot of people, you know, always look, where do we get started? And for me, you know, there are several ways to look at it. Some people might say, Okay, you might want to start documenting stuff where those activities actually generate revenue for you, or, versus those activities where you find your time is being bottlenecked and bogged down, right? Well, either way is fine. But I feel like in order to really think of those activities, where you're generating revenue, and do it justice, you do need to free up time. So that's why I feel like figuring out okay, what is that? First of all, you have to be recurring. Because if, you know, if a task is not recurring me that is happening over and over again, then there's really no need to document how the work is done. Maybe like a one time project. And that's it. So as long as this task is, is recurrent as the first step. Now, the next thing is, okay, it's bottleneck in my time is taking a lot of time for me to do this. And I can free up my time, because I'm actively involved in this stuff. Right? Over and over again. Right. Okay. I will start with that very task. And yes, the thing is, people try to think or think that, you know, you have to, you know, on your first goal of this, that it has to be like an encyclopedia where you have all the instructions and everything. And I'll say, get rid of that thought, because the most important thing is to have the mindset that it is going to be a continuous improvement thing. That's the first thing and a thing where you're going to collaborate with your employees, or your staff or your contractors who are working with you to build this. So once you get that mindset that you know that okay, it doesn't have to be perfect from day one. So we came up with this term called the minimum viable procedure. And what basically that means is documenting the procedure that from the very beginning does not have as much detail in there. As a matter of fact, if you use our software suite process, all you got to do is just going to give the procedure a title, title of the procedure, make the title be relevant such that anyone in your company sees the title, they know exactly what they can accomplish when they go through the steps in that procedure. Now, give it to the procedure title, and then jump quickly to the part where it was so good tells you on a step one, if that's step, a title step two, discuss step a title. Keep doing that until you've basically outlined all the different steps in that document and save it that is your minimum viable procedure, then you get to invite your employees who, no, you probably have thought verbally how to do this task, maybe your managers or you know, your contractors who have worked with you on this before, to come in and say okay, now, this is a document, I have documented the minimum viable procedure or version 1.0 of this task. Now let's go ahead and collaborate to fill out the details. Now with the software like Sweet Process, we enable that collaboration back and forth. And what happens is you can actually have your employees passively go into the software and start entering comments saying, hey, for this very step, I think we need this, we need that, or they could be that proactive employee that we all need. Where are we all like where, you know, not only do they want to tell you give you comments on what you need to do, so that you now take the comment and go do it yourself. But they go in there, they jump in there consequences and empowers them to go into the document and actually start building out the details themselves, while at the same time giving you management oversight, that even when they make changes to the document, now notice that adding text is that add in screenshots, they start adding, you know, if maybe like this specific step needs like data to be gathered back in terms of you can add forms, and so on and so forth, then whatever they do, you are able as a manager to approve the changes they make, because they don't get the right to approve the document, it goes in there as a draft. And they are basically requesting your approval, you go look at the document, you see, okay, I like this new changes and everything, you go ahead and approve it. And voila, that document has gone from version 1.0. It was a minimum viable procedure with just the outline to where now you've solicited feedback from your employees who have an idea of how the task is done. And they've gone in there and put in an additional information. And now you get to approve it. And now it's version two, it has gone from you know what it was to this new version. And now, people can leave it there at that point. But one of the things that happens is what we did was we posted we said, well, we don't want to just be that place, we just come to document how work is done. Because what we realized is that, as a matter of fact, as work is actually being done there opportunity for insights to be gathered on improvements. So we now said the app should not just only be all about documenting, it should also be a place where people can actually do real work. So that if at any time they come across a snag where something is wrong with that documentation, and it doesn't make sense. Or there's this insight where oh this this step we don't need or this new step we should add because you know something is different or maybe based on a specific decision. Now we got pulled down a different path. Now these employees because you actually assigning the tasks were worked for people to do based on what you've documented, they can pass that feedback back into the software. And you as the manager can go ahead in real time and improve that step, because they were working on a real task that was assigned to them based on the procedure or process that they documented. And now you can, in real time, update that task, because the way it works is that in order for you to assign a task to people, it needs to always be based on an underlying procedure that you have documented already. So the procedure just basically is how the work is done. But then now you have situations where you actually have real work to do, let's say you document a procedure on how to cancel orders or how to place refunds right? Now that tells people how to do it. But now, customers that come calling and say I need to refund this other one, I need to refer to whatever. Now this actual tasks that needs to get done. So you can assign tasks to your contractors or your employees say, hey, this task is based on this underlying procedure, refund the order for this customer, that customer and so as the employee is going ahead to do the work,

Michele  16:10

They've got an app in front of them, showing them while they're doing.

Owen McGab Enaohwo  16:14

And how they're doing it. So as they're checking off the step, and actually doing the real work that they

Michele  16:18

Can actually catch and they're comparing, like on one side, here's the document, and over here, here's what you're asking me to do, and they're not lining up. So here's what we might need to change, add or delete to make them align

Owen McGab Enaohwo  16:29

Yes. So by marrying this, documenting and collaborating tend to get together with the actual doing the work, you are seeing all sides of this and that document keeps being improved and improved. And for you know, you start documenting the first task that was the bottleneck for you know, you start documenting next one. And before, you know eventually gets to document all those bottlenecks, you freed up your time, because people can actually do the work, you can now start documenting the exciting stuff in my view, which is tasked to actually bring money. Imagine if you document tasks that bring money, right, and it's tested, and it works, you now start bringing on people to come in and do those tasks, we can multiply the outcome, well, more money.

Michele  17:09

To make more money. So in software development, you know, we always have minimum viable product, it is what is the minimum that needs to go out the door to meet the need. If we think about it, in all of our businesses that do design, what is the minimum design that we need to do to meet the need of the client, right? Everything else is a layering process. On top of that this is the same thing. So I want to break down what you said just a little bit. Because if there are people listening that either their business is so tiny, or they're not ready to invest in something as big as Sweet Process. And that this moment, what you're telling them is still extremely important for them to implement in whatever system they're doing. And that is start with a very high level. And just document the steps almost as if I'm going to go as far as almost just as a quick checklist of here are the steps, step 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Then go back and layer into each step with more detail with screenshots with words with video, with whatever you need to support that particular step, right? Yes, then what you're also saying, and I love to do this as well, I usually say it's easier to document what's in front of you than what you're having to hard, think about in a very difficult way. So if the next thing that you're doing is in front of you pull up Sweet Process, pull up your document, however you're documenting, if that's not it, and as you do it, it's going to take you a little bit longer that one time, but do it and document it as you go. Because it's going to be so much more in alignment with what you're doing. If you're doing the task while you're writing it or thinking through the task while you're writing it. So gather it. But then the nice thing about Sweet Process is having that task management up at the same time that you're looking throughout the site continuous process improvement, right? Because you've got that task in front of you. So even if that's not the way that you have it set up, you know, for our listeners to sweet process, have your people on occasion, open up their task list with it and monitor to it every three months, every six months, every time you think something shifted or changed. Because what I also see a win. And I think this is something that sweet process has addressed is it is so easy for us to create a procedure, a system a process and walk away from it and never touch it again. So then we never really captured the changes. We never captured that we don't have to do step two anymore. Unless we're really thoughtful about that. We're not capturing the idea that the screen changed for the product that we were using. And so where we said, click on this button on the top right, it's now on the bottom left, like we never update these things. And if we're the ones always doing the task might not be that big of a deal. The challenge comes is when you want to hand off that task to anybody else. And the directions do not align. I'll give you a prime example. So I I have a support person that does all of my podcast information. And back in 2020, right at the beginning of COVID, my prior administrator moved into a different direction. So I had to hire quickly, I had to hire like on a Saturday to start on a Monday to get ready. In the middle of all the COVID. It was crazy. But what we had was we had standard operating procedures. And I was able to pick up that document and give it to her. And she walked through it. And she found a couple of small things where I use Libsyn, had shifted some things. So she was able to go in and modify it just recently Libsyn shifted again, and she's gone in and she keeps those operating procedures updated. But if I had not had that, it would have been impossible for me to take the information that I had handed off a year and a half earlier to somebody, I had not done that work in a year and a half, I would have had a hard time stopping and rethinking through a year and a half worth of work to hand it to her. And the way that it worked was I hired her on a Monday. And by Tuesday, she had operating procedures, and she was able to pick up by the next week, and we moved without a hitch. And so they're just that important. And that makes me think about the fact that when we hand them off, especially as the owners or as the principals and the CEOs and the executives in the firm, when we hand that work off, we actually are delegating that work for that other person to take ownership up. Yeah. And so there, they will become owners of that work, and hopefully improve that process and change that process, which means that the process that I handed might not be the process I get back in two or three years, it's going to be much improved. But I am trying to reduce my brain space so that I can work on something else. So if I hand it off, and it's not documented, and that person walks away, we're in deep, deep trouble. But if I hand it off, and they improve it, and they document it, and then they walk away, I've got a a piece of something that I can hand to somebody else who hopefully can jump in and interpret it. And that's what sweet process also allows to happen. That continuity of service and continuity of client interaction and continuity of revenue generation, because there are processes that have been built over time.

Owen McGab Enaohwo  22:22

Yeah, and I'm so glad you mentioned that. So there's something I want to also make clear, because although we have the documentation collaboration thing, very, and we also have the task management we realize that some people might not want to use the task version of our software, right. And so they might, you know, have links to the instructions whenever, you know, whenever they doing a task on a different task management tool. But one of the things we do to make sure that there is always this continuous improvement is that whenever you have a document documented, you can also set a review reminder that, yes, you can set a review reminder saying that, okay, for this great document, I want to, I want to set up a cadence where every two months, three months, whatever, that the owner of this document, the manager has to come at that time in the future, whatever cadence you said, to review that document and make sure that in that time in the future, this document is correct as per that time in the future, because the reason we do it that way is because we realize that you know, not everybody's going to use our software for the tasks. And ideally, we want you to use your code for the documenting and the tasks, because that feedback keeps coming into the document is improved. But in a situation where you decide to use a different task management tool for the tasks itself, you are can have the rest assurance that okay, at least because you have this review requirements already set in the documents, your managers or the owners of the documents must come to that document, review it. And so at a time in the future, when that document is required to be reviewed, it's going to be like, highly noticeable that, hey, this document needs you to come and look at it and they need to go look at it, review it and Okay. And now you always have that thing as well.

Michele  23:59

I love that. Yeah. And I put reminders, tasks, reminders, and I use asana and I put task reminders in there. Every three months, I need to look at this process every six months, or the other thing that I have learned to do over 20 something years is to create these almost flags, if you will, for example, I used to do I teach a lot about pricing custom work. Well, when raw materials change in price, we have to change the price that we unless we've changed the process to reduce time, we have to change the price that we're charging. And so I created these little flags that every time I got a reminder from one of my vendors that says we're having a price increase, it meant I needed to stop and go check all of these items that use that vendors, raw material, right? It's the same kind of thing. Go back and check your pricing process because the raw materials changed. So there's one thing about updating and changing just because we've hit a timeline, but also those, what is something that's happened that causes us to change it, like, for example, Libsyn, sending out an email that says we've changed our screens, and we've changed the way that we're going to be handling your podcast, immediately made us go, Okay, we need to go check our operating procedures to see if what they're doing matches what we're doing, to see what's changed. And they did have some changes that impacted our process, and needed to be addressed. And so I think that's the beautiful thing about it is once you at least have it in your mind of this is going to be continuous improvement. You know, this is meant to support the company and doing the best work in the best way in the most profitable way. But also enjoyable, there's, you know, here's the other thing that I hear as a channel here two things is the challenge sometimes one is, when we write that process, we write it. So what's the word I want to say, narrowly, that there's no room for creativity? And my answer is always we want to write it enough, that it allows you to have the outcome that you desire in the transformation, but not so narrowly, in some cases that for example, design, right? That it ties your hands, but you can create a process that gives you space for design, it doesn't have to tell you how to design, it can give you space for design, do you do you ever run into I'm sure you run into here, the 5000 reasons writing a process won't work for my company, the truth of the matter, we all have a process, whether we document it and say we do or not. I'll have people who say I don't have a process. And I'm like, Yes, you do. Every morning, you get up, you get out of the bed, you go to the bathroom, you brush your teeth, you get a cup of coffee, you have a process, you just don't have it written down. But if you get out of that process, it could throw off your home running.

Owen McGab Enaohwo  26:49

Yeah, and sometimes people who are creative, and you know, the design type might think, Oh, by documenting stuff I'm getting away or getting, you know, preventing myself from being creative. But I would argue that as a matter of fact, by having documents in place for your work is you actually are allowing yourself to be creative, the mere fact of studying the document, and then continuously improving upon it, that is creativity. And then you don't you don't you don't spend mind cycles of your brain, trying to remember how something is done. Because even just the mere fact that you so let's say you do something quite often, let's say every six months, right, and you're not done in six months. You did it six months ago. Now you want to do the same thing, again, the time that you're spending to turn, well, how do I do this now that is taking you away from the actual execution of this task, and even trying to figure out new ways to do it. But if you have that one place, you could just go and oh, I want to do this task. I did it six months ago, here it is. Now you have the ability to say okay, you don't even have to waste time thinking how it's done, you can only do two things now, either getting it done or improving upon how you've already done it in the past, which in my view is creativity.

Michele  27:55

I agree with you I agree, the more that we can get these things off our plate and clear them out or even know what the next steps are. Because, you know, you and I both I mean, I'm sure most of our listeners know, we fight so hard to keep so much in our head. I don't even remember the numbers, I win. But it was something like these days, we get as much information in one day, as like in the 17 1800s people got in a whole year. And we have that amount of input in one day between the media, what we read what we studied what we do what we listen to just the way that our world currently works. And it's a lot. I know that if that's why I have a task management system, I write down everything in my Asana, it is in there sitting there in project is in there and task it's in there in some way. Even if I'm talking to somebody and I'm like, oh, I need to do that. I go make a note of it. Because what it does is it allows my mind to stop and free up in that moment to keep being in that moment. Otherwise, it's the spinning that you mentioned, of trying not to forget it or what did I do? I remember when I used to do my 401k and I had to do it every three months. Well, it's not something I did all the time. And I just remember every three months, what should have taken me 10 minutes took me an hour because I'm trying to remember what I did. And finally I was like, Okay, this might not be something that happens that often but it does happen repetitively enough. But far enough away that if I don't write it down, I'm wasting my time. And then writing those things down. And once I started doing it, man, it goes so much faster, it becomes something I don't dread doing anymore. It becomes something that doesn't feel overwhelming to me. I can look at it and go Hmm, that's going to take me about 15 minutes and then I just go do it. Or like, it's like the favorite family recipe that everybody's afraid they're going to forget, just write the thing down and do it right. And then you every time you make it, if you follow the recipe, you're going to get the same outcomes.

Owen McGab Enaohwo  29:55

Let me even poke that even more so that you know yeah, you have a wound that you're poking into it's going to hurts more. So imagine like, I'm sure most of the listeners actually are the owners of this, you know, their own company. Initially, they're wearing multiple hats, right? Doing many things, handling different roles within the company. So imagine now if you don't have documents in place, and you're you have to do multiple things in a day. And each time you come across something, you have to now spend time to remember how it's done. And then you go to the next thing again, to spend time to remember how it's done. There's so much distraction going on in your head, right? So yeah, but if on the other hand, any new thing you have to do, because wear multiple hats, initially, you know where to go find out information, how it's done, you're not been distracted by remembering how it's done.

Michele  30:39

Right? It is, it takes up so much energy that by the time, here's what I also say, by the end of the day, we've done all these five, seven tasks that we've had to relearn and reteach ourselves in the moment, just so we could do it. And the relearning, and the re teaching took longer than the doing. And by the end of the day, we marked off a couple of tasks, but we felt like we get nothing accomplished. Yeah, I mean, that's the way it feels like alright, so I want to talk about one other big piece here before we wrap up. And that is getting buy in from employees for team members. I love that you talked about the collaborative process, I sometimes have my if I've got owners that have already handed off the work to a trusted employee, I will say to them, instead of that owner taking their time to go in and set up that initial high level list, give an outline of what they want it to look like. And just go ahead and hand it to the employee, or to the contractor, whoever's doing the work and just say, outline it, and then bring it to me and sit. And what I usually say is outline the way you're currently doing. And please make notes of any improvements or changes that you think we need to address. And then let's get together and kind of have a collaboration meeting, or, you know, the or something that could be done through sweet process, of course, but having that meeting that says, hey, let's all talk about this process. I like to talk about communication flow workflow client flow, and you know, what are the flow throughs in your business? And how do we look at them, because sometimes, a process in one part of our company can affect something Well, most of the times way downstream. And if we can update this process, it is going to be so much easier. By the time we get down here. I'm especially in the area of bookkeeping, and keeping up with all of the invoices in the POS and all those details, you know that all those little design pieces and parts? And so really thinking about what information do we need, not just here, but all the way down. And when you have this collaborative meetings, and everybody comes in, and we all agree that this is what we currently do, here are the holes are, here's where we get caught downstream. Here's where the bottleneck shows up. Where here's where I'm wasting time trying to find something that you already have, but maybe it didn't put into place, then how do we go about fixing it. And it actually brings everybody together, when they understand the outcome is to actually make work easier? Instead of making work harder? Do you find the same thing with those that that your accompany works with to be collaborative and to work together?

Owen McGab Enaohwo  33:10

Yes, I find that you know, you are actually empowering your employees, if they have a say, in how the work that he do, how the fact of the work being done, you know, they get a say in in creating improvements to it's insane, insane, insane, okay, maybe we need to make changes here and all that, as a matter of fact, what you will find is, by them being involved in the creation process by them being able to actually make changes and stuff like that, I can also where we keep track of who does what. So that, you know, imagine as an employee, you know, you're going there, you make changes to a document. Now all those changes are saved. Your name is right next to the update, as you are the one who made the changes. Imagine now your colleagues coming in and seeing that documents, oh, look at the changes that, you know, my colleague made, this is nice, I want to new jump in there and make those you know, the next changes. So now becomes a fun thing where people are always looking for improvements to make so that, you know, it goes into the system saying that they were involved in making these changes, I don't see any other way of empowering people, by giving auditing by by giving them say, Hey, this is your work, you are empowered to make changes into how the work is done. Now, obviously there are people who don't want to be involved in that, or maybe you know, but I feel like if your employees don't want to be involved in improving their work, maybe that's not the right employee for you. But you will identify the ones that enjoy that process of improve because at the end of the day is for their own benefit by them going in there and having their say on improving the work that they do. Who benefits from that is they're the ones who do the work.

Michele  34:47

I teach them I call it the five E's and it's educate this is like when we're working with our employees or contractors. We educate them. We empower them. So you know we add educate them first by telling them what to do and how to do it, we equip them, which means we give them what they need, you know, either hardware, software, whatever. So we educate them, we equip them, we empower them to do the work. We set clear expectations, so they know what the work looks like, what it should be what the deliverables are. And then we encourage them, because we're not going to always get it right. But we want to encourage them to follow a process. We want to encourage them to improve the process. Process improvement should actually be something that celebrated instead of why are you changing it. But I'm going to say this, I heard a friend mentioned this on another podcast. And it really struck me I went and I think it was Ron Howard, who was being interviewed. And he was talking about being a director. And they were asking him, how do you handle all this input from all these other people, like when you are directing a movie, and everybody wants to change something? Right? And his comment was that he would listen to what they wanted to do. And he would ask himself, is this going to really make it better? Or is it just another way? Yeah, because some things are just another way. And if that's the case, and it's not really creating an improvement of some type, either with time savings, money savings, client improvement, then it might not be worth the changes needing to be made at that time, right. And so that is what I think is beautiful about the suite process, ability to document what I think the changes are and then to go in and and improvement is that you can look at an ROI on those suggestions. And if there is no ROI, it's just a, here's just what I think we ought to do. You can either choose to implement or choose to bypass it and keep going. We don't want to stop the conversation. But when we teach our employees and we teach them to think, is it just a different way? Or? Or are we truly creating an improvement somewhere, then we want to look at it a little differently.

Owen McGab Enaohwo  37:03

Yeah, and that's why I said from the very beginning, when we're talking about where to start, I said, it's also important to have the mindset of this is a continuous improvement. We're also going to add it now that it's also good to educate your employees that day two needs to have the mindset that it's it's continuous improvement right now, continuous change, not continuous state or finding new ways know, the key word is continuous improvement, it needs

Michele  37:27

to work together, right? Because some people may easily think the more I can change the process, the more that I am holding on to my job. And really, that's, that's not the mindset, the mindset is to improve something in the company. So I love that I went, is there anything else that you think you'd like to share with our listeners about building processes and systems, anything that you think that could encourage them as they either are starting this in their business or along the path of doing it to keep going.

Owen McGab Enaohwo  37:59

So one of the things I realize this, you know, even though we've tried to make it as easy and as simply as identify where to start, some people also want kind of ideas in terms of templates of other SOPs or standard operating procedures. So one of the things I always like to do is offer people, you know, some templates that they can at least ideas of where to start, right. So what I, what I love to do is offer your audience a gift and say, I think 52 templates, standard operating procedures, they can check out for different things in your business. And they can go to and make it as unique to you. So sweet. process.com for slash profit is a choice, all one word. So that's the name of your podcast. So profit is a choice, just no sweet process.com forward slash profit is a choice. And obviously, Michele will also link to that link, I'll provide a link and you guys can get access, you click on that link, it will just take you to a page where you can download all 52 templates and operating procedures and have it enjoy it.

Michele  39:00

That's awesome. Thank you so much. Oh, and well thank you for sharing your journey. I love hearing about how you saw a true problem in the marketplace and challenge to translate what we do when we hand that work over to someone else. And then creating a solution that allows companies to jump in document those processes and procedures, update them, keep up with them and actually make them usable. I want to say this one last thing, because I teach a lot of these types of things along with even creating strategic plans. I'm always of the opinion, I would rather us create something that is usable, even if it's not as beautiful. Then if it is beautiful and not usable. It is really about creating it at a level that that it becomes empowering is like you said and that we use it. So thank you for also creating application that allows us to make it as easy as possible to have it at our fingertips. So thank you for being here today.

Owen McGab Enaohwo  39:59

Thank you So for having me and I look forward to questions that the audience might have for me, feel free to reach out to me. I am at owen@sweetprocess.com, it's really easy to find me.

Michele  40:09

Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you so much.

Owen McGab Enaohwo  40:11

Thank you very much.

Michele  40:13

Thank you Owen for sharing your thoughts on documenting processes and for your free download with templates for the 52 standard operating procedures. Learning to delegate well is so very important. Recently, a former client sent me a text that said this, I've finally relinquish having to control every single detail myself, I've finally learned to delegate before I feel wrung out and depleted. Finally, I feel like a business owner instead of an employee. And this is exactly what I helped my successful clients do become even more successful by properly managing their resources. If you think we could be a fit, apply for a discovery call on my website at scarletthreadconsulting.com and go to the work with me page. Choose to be profitable by documenting your work because profit doesn't happen by accident. Profit is a Choice is proud to be part of the designnetwork.org where you can discover more design media reaching creative listeners. Thanks for listening, and stay creative and business minded.