The Secret Power of Documenting Processes as You Go

In this episode of the Happy Client Show, Andrew and Ben dive into the benefits of documenting processes as you go.

For most parts of agency life, there isn’t anything new under the sun.

You start seeing the same issues coming up over and over again.

If you’re just encountering a problem for the first time though, it can be a challenge to solve. You spend a lot of time troubleshooting, on support, testing what went wrong too and figured out how to fix it.

After solving a problem, most agencies wipe their hands and consider the job done. Or they plan to go back through later to document how they solved it.

This is a BIG mistake.

Most people will never go back and add it in, and all your hard work and effort entirely disappears. If it comes up again, you will have to start all over from scratch or try to remember what you did.

That’s why it’s so important to document the processes as you go.

Once you’ve gotten through it once and the same obstacle shows up, you’ll immediately be able to know what you need to do to solve it.

This means much less hassle and time for your agency, and you look like a rock star for your client.

Documenting processes makes your agency more efficient and profitable!

You won’t be stuck investing the time and money like the first time solving it. It also allows you to help the rest of your team and take the burden off one person. You can hand it off to someone else to go through the process with a client if need be, and it’ll help your team deliver results across the board.

Documenting processes is tedious, but it will transform your agency.

It’s also easy to say you and your agency need to be doing this, but it’s tough to get everyone to stick to it. You need to make sure you engrain a documenting processes mindset in you and your team.

To get the most out of documenting processes, you need a central file management system and a project management tool.

Centralizing this information makes it accessible and straightforward for all team members to solve the problem.

Often times in business, especially when starting out, we spend a lot of time consuming content and learning what we SHOULD be doing but aren’t.

We’re convinced we’ll get to it all eventually and everything will be running smoothly. However, we often don’t take action on many of those items on our list. They get pushed back until we have time. We become heavy consumers of content and information.

This episode from Andrew and Ben was short but very actionable and can be transformative for a new agency owner.

It’s a simple but powerful tip that can change the way your agency operates.

All it requires is a mindset shift and at the very least, pen and paper by your desk to write down what you do as you solve something.

There are often many hurdles for smaller agencies to find time to do things.

Everyone is wearing a lot of hats.

You’re sales, marketing, content creation, and the finance department all wrapped up in one.

Many agency owners know they need to document processes but they don’t have enough time to do it.

Documenting as you go solves this issue.

It doesn’t require that much more effort but typing or writing a few words down as you go and it can pay huge dividends in the future. You don’t have to set time apart.

While you’re working in your business, you’re at the same time working on it.

A lot of the other nuggets we learn from podcasts and blog posts can be difficult to implement, involve more hurdles, and need a lot of time.

Documenting as you go requires minimal time investment and can quickly give you momentum to building your processes out.

Once you get started, you’ll discover how big the benefits are. You can take a client request turn it around just by following step-by-step instructions. The stress of feeling there’s a client fire or overwhelm disappear.

You and your team can be confident you can solve the issue and do it fast.

Agency life can feel like you’re busy scrambling for another person’s demands. It is the first small step to freeing up your mind and time.

Documenting as you go saves you lots of time, money, and stress and will help you build your ideal agency.

As always, if you enjoyed this episode, go ahead and subscribe to the podcast in iTunes and YouTube!