When you take small steps, you may not be able to measure them immediately. You may not be able to see the value in taking the steps until you look back to where you started and really see how far you’ve come. This is especially relevant when documenting your processes. You can’t see the value of one process because the measurement is so miniscule to the overall picture.
Small step #1 – It’s just a penny…
One penny isn’t that much. So many people disregard pennies as ‘worthless’.
I knew a guy who saved his pennies each year. Every day he would pay cash for things, save the change, and take that change from his pocket in the evening and put it in a large bottle by his TV. Then sometime in January he would start rolling those pennies and stack them to exchange for cash at the bank. Once that was done, he packed up and headed to Daytona Beach for the week to watch his favorite sports event, the Daytona 500.
That jar of pennies paid for his yearly vacation to Daytona … EVERY YEAR. Those pennies added up.
Yeah, one penny isn’t much, but it’s a move forward. And each process you write and implement is a move forward for your business.
One process a week
What would happen to your business if you wrote one process a week?
Next month you might not see much happening, but next year you might have that Virtual Assistant you’ve been longing for and they’re doing the 52 things you’ve documented. (One process a week = 52 processes a year…penny, penny, penny)
Can you imagine the 52 things you’d like to get off your plate?
You probably can’t even think of 52 things you do because you’re SO BUSY DOING the things. You start to think of all you do and come up with one or two (ok, maybe 10-15) but then you get lost in the pile of things you do EVERY DAY just to keep the business running. (And if you can, you’re ahead of the game!)
52 items off that pile would sure help out with the overwhelm!
- 52 things you don’t have to think about anymore.
- 52 things that are taken over by someone else.
- 52 things that are no longer crowding your brain for attention.
I use the metaphor of a business as a house. Each department is a room within that house. Let’s take that a little bit further.
If you wrote out one process a week for your home and handed it over to someone else, what would that look/feel like?
- Week 1 – Laundry
- Week 2 – Grocery Shopping
- Week 3 – Clean Kitchen
- Week 4 – Cook Meals
- Week 5 – Mow Lawn
That’s just one month (give or take). If you didn’t have to do those things, what would that free up for you?
Small step #2 – Getting Started
Starting is usually the hardest step. Momentum is not there. You have to create it. You have to decide that your time and effort is worth the payoff.
Is spending one hour a week writing a basic process worth freeing up 52 or more hours of your week at the end of a year?
If it is, do yourself a favor and download the First Step to Cloning Yourself and learn what you can do TODAY to build the momentum and start the journey to a systemized business that works FOR you, not BECAUSE OF you.