Full show notes for this episode can be found at https://jakehower.com/how-to-create-systems-and-processes-in-your-business-with-owen-enaohwo/

Hello, and welcome to episode 26, today's episode

guest is Owen from Sweet Process.

Owen, how are you?

Doing good.

Doing good.

I'm happy to be

here, Jake.

Oh, fantastic.

Your company is something that I come across from a previous guest, Dan Norris,

who's a mutual contact of ours, and you're solving a real problem, which there

aren't many elegant solutions out there.

So it's a, I thought it'd be a really interesting to get you on.

We all know how important processes and systems are in business.

So I thought we'd get you on and we'd run through exactly how you can go through

and break it down and use processes in your business to help you maximize the

value you can get out of the company.

Thanks for

having me.

I'm happy

to be here.

Fantastic.

All right let's get started on why don't for the benefit of our listener

if you run through a little bit about your background, who you are, and

what has brought you to where we are

today.

Okay.

So my name is Owen McGabinow and what I do right now is I run a virtual

assistant agency where I provide entrepreneurs with virtual assistant.

And basically the virtual assistants have enabled them to do their work

because they delegate the bulk of the work over to the virtual assistants.

And as we started doing this years back since 2006, what we realized

was that, in order to make sure that the virtual assistants always do

the work correctly, the way that our clients wanted to get done, what we

realized is that we had to document step by step how they currently do the

work that they do in their business.

And what I, what we used to do, we used to like, hack a bunch of different

tools together to make that happen.

And so it's always been in the back of my mind, you know what, there has to

be a better and easier way to document procedures on how tasks get repetitive

tasks, how to get done in a business.

And so I always put it in the back of my mind and say, you know what,

when I have some time, I'll build.

This tool as a software for entrepreneurs.

And you mind if I tell you how we even got started with SweetProcess?

Can I go ahead and tell you the story behind that too as well?

Yeah, that'd be fantastic.

And so what happened is I did an interview on Andrew Warner of Mixergy on.

He wanted me to come on his show to talk about outsourcing and delegation and

how entrepreneurs can delegate properly because, of my background providing

entrepreneurs with virtual assistant.

And on that interview, I actually got to meet my co founder, Jervis

Whitley, who is actually in Australia based on that interview.

So he watched out the interview, he watched the interview and he reached

out to me and said, Hey, I like the idea of delegating work to people virtually.

I'm actually working on this idea right now of, in order for you to

document to delegate work properly to people, they need to know exactly

step by step what needs to be done.

And I'm actually working on building a software.

To do that, because he's a programmer and he has his own programming

developer agency in, in, in Australia.

And I said to him, I said, it's just a coincidence because I have always wanted

to build the same software myself.

It's not me just answering questions.

I want to come in and get involved with this whole thing

of, of solving this problem.

I can bring my insight.

You can bring your insight and we solve this problem together once and for all.

And during that process of trying to, interview potential users of,

how do, how would they want the software suite process to work?

How would it, how would they want it to solve the problem

of documenting procedures?

We got introduced to Dan Norris, who actually introduced us to our

third co founder, Brian Brian Castle, who is the one who's working, who

is the lead designer on the site.

And he also had the same problem where he had a design agency and he wanted to,

basically systematize how work gets done.

And so he was working on building his own software as well.

And I said, you know what, we all come into this from different angles.

Also, they need to build a software that enable entrepreneurs to literally

take themselves out of their business.

Why don't we put our heads together and build sweet process?

And that's a nutshell of how we got started.

Fantastic.

Fantastic.

So I know in my business here, I do as you said, hack together a few different tools.

So I use a Trello for project management, and then I use Google docs for some of

my processes and some of them are in Trello and then others are in email.

And I've got videos over here.

So who are your competitors in the marketplace?

Is there anything else doing what you guys are

doing?

There are different ways different competitors out there.

There are those who are on the enterprise level where it's like the

big enterprise fortune 500 companies.

They use tools like this, like a SharePoint quick base buying to it.

These are like tools that cost a lot of money.

It wouldn't sign up in the first place and literally it's more advanced than.

What we're trying to do, and then there are other tools on the low end of the

spectrum that could even be free, but they were not initially designed to

help entrepreneurs document procedures.

So we're in that sweet spot in the middle where we are trying to solve that

problem for, the small to medium sized entrepreneurs who, you know, small to

medium sized businesses who need to get started with documenting procedures.

And when we look at it from two different angles.

The first one can be someone who literally they're tired of being a

bottleneck in their business, and they feel like they're the only

one that knows how stuff gets done.

And so now they realize that, hey, it's time to get everything that is in my

brain and put it down into a system.

So everybody knows exactly step by step how to handle different

repetitive tasks in my business.

So that's the first case of the potential person I'll find

benefit from using sweet process.

On the other side, you have someone who's already documenting procedures

in their business, but what the problem they're having is the doc, the tools

they're using are too complicated.

So they want to come out from the enterprise tools that they're using

and actually use a tool that they know.

Not only will it make it easy to document procedures, but

their teammates will actually

use.

Yeah, that's a big one for me.

I have a number of staff here.

I own a travel agency and then I've got a team around the world

for the marketing side of things.

And I guess that one of the biggest things that I have trouble with is getting

people in and actually consistently using the same piece of software.

So I'm sure this is a problem for potentially not yourself, but it

will be for some of your users.

How do you get around that issue?

So how do you get around the issue of getting

started with documenting procedures?

Is that a question?

Yeah.

Yeah, the thing I've been telling all our users that, anyone who, you know,

regardless of whether you want to use sweet process or not, but you want to

get started with documented procedures.

The thing I've been telling everyone is what is currently taking your time?

Other things you're actually doing.

So if we will, that's the assumption that if you only something is only

taking your time in your business because you actually doing it.

Then let's look at what is the biggest bottleneck of your time right now is

all trying to document everything in your business because just thinking

about that alone will be overwhelming.

So let's start by looking at if you look at your each day that you work, what

is the biggest bottleneck of your time?

If you start by documenting that repetitive tasks that very bottleneck

of your time, the very single.

bottleneck of your time right now.

The biggest bottleneck.

You start by documenting that one.

What you do is you use, a tool like sweep process and document step by step how

for that very biggest bottleneck, how the tasks get done in that bottleneck.

The next thing you do is then you delegate after you finish documenting it, you

delegate the task to someone in your team.

And now the person knows how exactly to handle that bottleneck, right?

And so by delegating to the person, you free up more time because you started

with the biggest bottleneck, you free up more time now to say, okay, what is

the next biggest bottleneck of my time?

And you do that process over and over again until you get to the point

where literally every task in your business has been documented and then.

You've also gone through that process of delegating the work

to someone else on your team.

Yeah.

Okay.

Let's look at format.

You've got obviously written format.

You've got the visual in terms of images and screenshots.

And then you've got video as well, or screencasting.

Is there one particular format which works better

than the others?

And I like the fact that you mentioned that because we realize

that sweep process that, people learn

in People learn by listening to it, auditory learning, we have people

that learn by actually doing the work, they call it kinesthetic

learning, and then you have people that learn by reading and writing.

So what we are saying is that because we know there are different

four main models of learning.

And what we want to do with sleep process is allow the person who the owner of the

business who is creating the procedures be able to document the procedures using all

these four different models of learning.

Basically, we have a means where when you create a procedure, the procedure

is made up of different steps.

So you write the name of the procedure and then you label each step.

Step one, do this.

Step two, do that.

Step three, do this next thing.

And in between each step, you can actually write text.

Of what needs to be done and also you can also embed pictures or

screenshots of stuff that you need.

The person who is working on a task screen, you can embed

screenshots for them to see.

And on top of that, you can also embed videos in cases

where you want to demonstrate something you can embed videos.

And so you can now see how we are appealing to all styles of learning.

And finally, we each step as the person who's handling the task.

is having the going through the procedure, we have check marks next to each step.

So as they go through each step, they checking it off.

Oh, I'm done with this.

It gets checked up.

I'm done with step two, it gets checked up.

And so now at the end, when they're done with the task, the entire procedure has,

been checked off and that task is done.

So we, we try to create a sweet process in a way that appeals

to all four styles of learning.

Yeah.

Cool.

Cool.

For the benefit of our listener, what I'm doing here is I'm going through, all

the different barriers that I have for actually going out and systemizing things.

And one of the big ones as a business owner is the lack of time,

but the perception of lack of time that I have now, it can be quite.

Labor intensive to go out and start documenting systems and processes.

How do you get around that with some

of your users?

So the first thing I mentioned is how you go through the thing of, start

by documenting the first biggest bottleneck of your time, right?

What is taking the most of your time?

But the next thing besides that too, is you can actually empower your teammates.

Hey, now that I have documented giving like a foundation of, step by step of how

to do this work, take it to the next level as you do the work using sweet process.

As you go through the checklist using sweet process, if you come across

a specific step, maybe it's a task, repetitive task that takes 10 steps

and you find out that because you're doing the work, you're the one on the

ground doing the work as you realize that instead of doing it in 10 steps, I

can get this work done more efficiently and effectively in just five steps.

I'll tell you to empower your teammates to basically come back into sweet

process and let you know why the tool that, Hey, these are the steps that

I don't think should be involved.

And I think that instead you should use the steps instead to do the work.

And what now happens is that you empower your teammates to get

involved with helping you create your procedures for the task.

And they now become like a living, breathing tool.

So it is no longer on just only you, the owner of the business.

To document procedures, but by empowering your teammates, they can do it for you.

You build and improve the procedures over time.

Do you get

how that helps?

Yeah, I do.

And that's certainly is covering off on the next question I was going to ask.

And that was really, it was about.

Not necessarily versioning control, but how do you keep processes outdated?

I guess it to almost answer my own question, I guess it comes down to

reinforcing the message with your employees that if they're going through

the steps and they're not right, or if there is a better way that they need

to, that they are empowered to change

them.

Definitely.

And you can make it fun.

People are incentivized by different reasons.

Some people can be incentivized by money by say, okay, if you see

a better, in this example, I just mentioned there were 10 steps in this

particular repetitive task and the person comes up with five steps that get

it done quicker and more effectively.

It could be that person is incentivized by you giving them

a bonus in terms of a check away.

I'm giving you a monetary bonus for finding that solution.

And improving the procedure.

But some other people might not be incentivized by that.

Some people might just want to be recognized amongst all the other employees

or teammates that, Hey, this person is one of our leaders because they're thinking

of how to help us build the business, by helping us improve the procedure.

So you have to figure out what is the culture of your company and what is

the thing that, that that basically motivates each of the individuals.

So once you know what it motivates the individuals.

In your company, then use that as the means to incentivize them to

help you build your procedures.

Yeah.

Okay.

Cool.

Cool.

All right.

How are your users benefiting out of this?

Have you got any case studies of results from people using or systemizing

their company using sweet process?

So

one of the users that we have, and we're glad to have

him is Michael Hyatt from michaelhyatt.

com.

And I think he blogged about specifically how, because I think he

has a podcast, like just like yourself.

And people think about, oh, podcast is just something where I just show up to

the podcast and I just have an interview.

But you know that podcasting takes quite a lot of work.

Not only do you have to research the questions, you

have to, schedule the guests.

You have to prep for it.

And even after that, there's back end work.

That needs to be done to prepare the podcast video or whatever.

And then behind that too is this back end work that involves you,

putting the podcast on the blog.

And on top of that, there's promotion.

You see how podcasting now involves a bunch of different steps.

What Michael did is he used switch process to basically document the steps

involved in the, in his podcasting steps, and he's continuously working over time

with his teammates to improve upon them.

And so now they all have a starting point that anytime there's a

new podcast, we go through this series of steps to get them done.

And one thing I know is that he and his team, they're continuously improving

upon it and building upon it as they go.

So that's just a real life example of someone.

What most of the people listening might know is how they're using SweetProcess.

Yeah,

cool, cool.

All right.

Here's another one that going through a lot of the tasks, which I do each

day, it's not necessarily linear in the way I actually do tasks.

Is there an easy way to, break down complex tasks into a nice

linear step by step process?

So you're asking me if...

There are situations where a procedure does not go from point

A to point B, so start to stop.

Essentially,

that's it.

Yes.

There are so many tasks which are a little bit more complex, and they rely

on thought processes which I'm going through while I'm completing a task,

and they're not necessarily linear.

In the way that I complete them.

So can they all be broken up?

I think I get what you're saying.

So basically, if you're working on a time for the most part, most brochures

will always have a starting point a and end with starting with the end point

B, but then they are just task where as the person is doing the work that

comes like certain points where it's like a decision point where if this is

the condition, you do something else.

And so you write out what those steps will be.

And if the condition is a different condition They do something else.

So I see what you're saying.

It's not necessarily linear all the way straight all through, but there's only

certain points where it breaks apart.

And so the goal with sweet process is that you will also be able to, when

you come to those decision points where they're not necessarily linear,

like you said, you'll be able to say.

Let me make use an example to say to make it more concrete.

Let me think just on, on my feet.

So let's say for instance, if you, as a, you have a a hospital and you're a doctor

and you have someone in front desk who is the office manager and every day they, the

people who have appointments and your job.

Is to call everybody who has an appointment to make sure that

they come in for the appointment.

So in this case, the person, the doctor, can document a procedure using sweet

process and say, okay, if the person whose time is at 1:00 PM today is not

able to show up do this certain task.

But if they are able to fo if they confirm on the phone that they're gonna show up.

Do something else.

So it could be like if the person confirms that they're going to show up

and let the doctor know that the person is coming in, let him make sure that

he's prepped and ready for that patient.

But if that patient is not going to be able to come in, see, this is a

different decision, a different route.

Now, you can say, for instance, if the person is not going to be able to come

in, make sure that you set up schedule an appointment for a different day,

like two weeks down or whatever, based on the schedule that we have open.

But on top of that, make sure that the next person.

You reach out to the next person who was looking for an appointment to see

if they could come in on that day so that appointment slot is not wasted.

But what I just did by explaining that is basically when you come to

that decision point, you can outline what they should do in each scenario.

Okay.

Yeah.

Great.

That makes a lot of sense.

And I guess at this stage, the tools that I've used to, you have

to turn that into a linear process.

And if this happens, skip to step.

10, if this doesn't happen, continue on type of thing.

So what's in the pipeline for suite process?

Like where can you see improvements in creating

procedures and managing procedures?

So

one of the things that, we're asking ourself, first of all,

we had this initial problem of, Oh, people need to be able to document procedures.

People need to be able to, if the conditions for the procedures, basically

if there's decision points, whatever they need to be able to document what

to do, if this is the condition, if they need to be able to document what to do,

if this is another condition, but at the end of the day, we have to ask us

really, as a co founders, like, Why are people trying to document procedures?

It's just, that's not just the problem.

We have to go several steps behind it to figure out what is the real problem.

Okay.

They want to document procedures so that basically their teammates

know how to do the work.

Why did, why do they need their teammates to know how to do work?

Because they want to make sure the teammates are busily working, get

done without them having to be there.

When we start asking ourselves these questions, why are people trying

to document, and we go several layers deep, we realize that people

want to be able to take themselves literally out of the business, and

make sure that their business runs.

Automatically without them being there.

So one of the things that moving forward that we plan to do with SWIFT

process is to say we want to go beyond just the procedure Documenting step,

but actually be able to assign the work to the people after the procedure

so that you had the first layer.

The procedures have been created now.

That's the first layer.

So you mapped out the procedures of how repetitive tasks

get done in your business.

But in the next layer on top of that.

Would be to say, okay, now you assign the work to people in your team and

also be able to track that the fact that they did the work based on

procedures that you have mapped out.

And basically literally now with sweet process, the goal is that

you'll be able to literally take yourself out of your business.

It becomes your business operating system.

That's what we, that's the goal of sweet process.

Fantastic.

That's great.

Owen, thank you very much.

It's a nice, short, sharp, sweet episode.

Where can people find out more about you and about sweet

process?

So to check out sweet process, all you got to do is go to sweet process.

com.

And that's like sweet like candy.

S W E T process.

com.

And one of the things we do is we have a blog where we continuously talk about the

importance of productivity systemization.

How basically, you can automate tasks, delegate tasks to machines.

But when you cannot delegate the task to a machine because someone on your

business, a human being has to do it now, this is where systemization

and documentation comes into play.

And we continuously blog about stuff like this to make sure that you can

do it in your business, whether you use sweet process or not, we want

to be able to educate you on this.

So we have a blog, which you can get at.

Sweetprocess.

com forward slash blog.

That's fantastic.

Owen, thank you very much for coming on to explain a little bit about how

you go about documenting procedures.

I have learned a lot and I certainly know our listeners will.

So on behalf of all of our listeners, I'd like to

thank you.

And if you have any questions, if you listen to this, you have a

question, feel free to email me.

My email is Owen at sweetprocess.

com.

I'm easy to get a hold of.

So he certainly

is.

He certainly is listeners.

He'll respond very quickly.

So that's a one thing that's I really appreciate a good service.

And that's something that Owen delivers.

Thank you

very much.

I appreciate it, Jake.

Thank

you very much, Owen.