E57 Process Mapping Should Be as Routine as Brushing Your Teeth

Speaker: 00:00:00

Welcome to begin as you mean to go

on where we help black women with

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mission-driven service-based businesses,

grow your income and impact while

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creating a more peaceful, profitable

business by strategically automating

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your critical business systems

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Kronda: My name is Kronda Adair.

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And I went from making $500

websites to becoming a certified

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automation service provider.

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Doing multiple six figures per year,

while working part-time wrangling

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to high energy dogs and having some

of my highest revenue months while

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taking completely off-grid vacations.

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Thanks to strategic

automation and a small team.

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Inside my million dollar system service

and my automation club membership, we

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help you create a cohesive software

stack and automate one new thing per

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month in your business resulting in a

compound interest of time, energy and.

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peace So you can build your business

without the patriarchal white

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supremacist hustle and grind.

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If you're ready to work hard once

and hire and employ technology to

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execute proven marketing strategies.

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So you can get back to the rest

of your business and your life.

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You are in the right place.

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Let's get it going.

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Speaker 2: Greetings from the

Lower Maclay Trail in Forest Park.

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I came here a little over a week ago

in the morning, and it was such an

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amazing way to start the day, and I

realized Forest Park is right here.

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It's the largest park

inside of a city in the us.

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It's right here.

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Why don't I use it more?

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So I'm back.

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And now that I am on my way

back on the downhill, decided to

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have a little chat with you all.

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I've been thinking a lot about

normalization because as I pivot to

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focus on process mapping full time.

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I really want to normalize that we

map things out as business owners.

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We map out our processes, if not before,

at least after, so that there is a record

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of what's happening in your business.

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And it's astonishing when

you think about it, how many

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business owners don't do this?

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Because when I give the example of

say, an architect, if you were gonna.

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Hire an architect and you went to them and

you said, Hey, I wanna build this house.

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They said, great.

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And then you asked to see the plans

and they said, oh, it's all up here.

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it's all in the dome.

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You would look at them like they're

crazy because it's crazy to think

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about an architect that doesn't

map out what is going to be built.

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That's the whole point.

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And.

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I know that most business owners come into

business because they're good at whatever

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it is they're good at, and they don't

even necessarily think that much about

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the business side until they're forced to.

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But eventually you have to decide,

I'm gonna build a real business

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versus just continuing to wing it.

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And so at least at that point,

you should start to think about.

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Writing down how things

actually work in your business.

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And as I talk about this more, I

am finding people who do have that

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mentality and do value that I think

about other things that weren't

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really normal, that got normalized.

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And it usually happens

because of regulations.

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The first one that comes to mind is.

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SSL certificates for domains.

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So if you're not familiar, when you go

to a website and you see that little lock

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in the browser bar, it means

that whoever owns that site has.

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Made it secure via SSL so that

their site doesn't get hacked.

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That you know the site that

you're going to is really the

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site that you mean to be going to.

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And for a long time, this was only normal

for like banks, credit card companies,

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places where it was really high stakes.

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And then it got to the

incentive phase where Google.

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the biggest search engine in

the world said we are going to

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prioritize serving results from sites

who have their SSL certificates.

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And then that encouraged a

few more people to do it.

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And then it got to the point where

Google said, we're just not, we're

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just gonna require you to have SSL.

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Like it's non-negotiable.

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And then everybody did it.

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The same thing happened a couple

years back with email marketing where

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it was good practice for you to.

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Validate your domain with things

like SPF and DKIM and DMARC,

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which, if you don't know anything

about those things, that's fine.

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No normal person should know about

those things, but it's the way that

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you validate and say, Hey, this

email really came from my domain.

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And it keeps people from being

able to spoof your domain and

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send fake emails that aren't you.

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And so for a while it was like

a very obscure best practice.

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And then a couple years ago, Google

and Yahoo both said, we're not

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gonna deliver your emails to the

inbox if you don't get this done.

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And so all of a sudden,

everybody had to get it done.

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That was right around the time

I started Automation Club.

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And so I got a huge influx of

members because I let people in

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for, super cheap founders price.

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but one of the big motivations is

that people knew they had to get

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this done and they weren't gonna be

able to do their email marketing.

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And I was guiding people through that.

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I was showing up, doing office hours,

making tutorial videos, like all these

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things, and eventually, because it

was a requirement, the email marketing

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company started making it easier and

easier to do Now, if you start up a new.

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Active campaign account or a new Kit

account, they make it super easy.

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They're like, tell us which registrar your

domain is hosted in and click this button.

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And then they just do all

the magic behind the scenes

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all this to say, I think where we

are when it comes to process mapping

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for business is maybe a little bit

past the obscure best practice.

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When I talk about it, people

know what it is, they agree that

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it's a good idea, and before.

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Maybe two years ago there weren't

really tools that made it any easier.

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There were tools like Lucidchart

and Miro and Whimsical that are what

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Brian calls everything, whiteboards.

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Brian is the CEO of Puzzle.

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the tool that I use for process mapping.

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And it's really true.

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It is a big, old, infinite blank

space that you can do anything with.

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And the problem with those is that there

is so much mental overhead just deciding

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like, how am I gonna map this process?

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Should I use this color

box or this color box?

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What shape should it be?

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I really hope you can hear this little

stream that I'm walking next to.

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It's so nice.

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Where was I?

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Mental overhead.

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And I experienced this as someone who

has been process mapping for a long time.

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I know that people need to

see what's happening in a way

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they can visualize and follow.

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And so I've used all of those tools and

I did things like I spent hours searching

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the internet for logos of all the tools

that I was using so that I could have

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little icons to put next to the steps.

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And then I had to come up with an

index because if I had a team member

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map something out, they might come

up with a totally different way of

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mapping, and then everyone's confused.

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So when we found Puzzle, the

first thing that hit me is that.

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All that mental overhead was removed

because every step looks exactly the same.

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There are

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four different sets of

icons for each step.

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You've got

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an icon to represent the tool.

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You have an icon to represent.

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The status of the step?

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Is it a draft?

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Is it in progress?

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Is it testing?

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You have an icon to represent the role

associated, most closely associated

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with that step, and you have an

icon for the type of step it is.

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Is it a payment, a form, a task, an email?

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And so once you learn that language,

it is very easy to zoom out and see

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big picture exactly how a process

works, what tools are involved,

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how finished that process is.

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And there's never been anything like it.

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And I used to think.

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This is a weird level of excitement

to have about a tool, right?

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But I don't think so.

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I think I'm just early.

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I'm in the pre normalization phase because

no one's ever made this easy before.

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I'm sure at some point in

history it wasn't really routine

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to brush your teeth, right?

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But now you wouldn't think, oh,

I hope you wouldn't think of not

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brushing your teeth every day.

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But there was probably a time when

people really didn't do that or

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didn't have access to the tools,

and so they just went to the dentist

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to pull out the rotting ones.

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But at some point we

learned more about health.

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we learned more about maintenance.

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And that allowed people to

take better care of themselves.

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And then the dentist

just became maintenance.

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And I really believe at

some point in the future.

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Process mapping will become normalized.

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People will think you are

weird if you don't do it.

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You don't have to use Puzzle, but

I don't know why you wouldn't.

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If you're gonna do it, you may as

well use the best tool for the job.

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And I know a lot of entrepreneurs

are quick starts, like we have the

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idea, we go and execute the idea.

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But even if you're doing that, you

still wanna go back and say, okay,

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let me write down what I just did so

that Future Me six months from now

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remembers what the heck I was thinking.

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And just like it got easier and

easier to do SSL certificates and.

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Email domain authentication, it's

gonna get easier and easier to

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map processes, and I know that

there are already some AI tools.

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Inside of Puzzle, you have

the ability to generate notes

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inside of your steps with ai.

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But I know that Brian is working

on the next level of being able

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to dictate a process and then have

Puzzle create the first draft.

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And man, when that happens, that

is going to really change the game

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because it's gonna reduce the friction.

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I know a lot of people.

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One just straight up,

don't like process mapping.

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And a lot of people think, okay,

I know it's necessary, but man,

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this is taking a long time.

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But that's why people like me exist who

weirdly love process mapping and love

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digging into your stuff and displaying

it all for you in a way that makes sense.

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If you wanna be ahead of the curve, but

you're one of those people that just

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shudders at the thought of actually

doing the process mapping, come and

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talk to me, hit me up in my Instagram

dms or on LinkedIn, or, oh my God,

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even go to my website and book a call.

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it's so easy.

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It takes five minutes and we

can talk about what it will

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look like to just let me.

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Have access to your business and to

your tools, and you go away for a

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couple weeks and come back and be

able to actually see what's happening.

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I'm almost at the end of my walk, so I

think this is a good time to wrap this up.

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But I am really enjoying

these walk and talk podcasts.

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It allows me to actually get them

out and also have some time staring

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at fall foliage instead of a screen.

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and this environment was some

lot less noisy than my last

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episode, so I hope you enjoyed it.

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I really wanna know your thoughts, so

if you made it all the way to the end,

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please come hit me up in the dms of

your choice and let's talk about it.

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Or better yet, take a screenshot of

this episode, post it to your stories,

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tag me, Karvel Digital, and let me know

what you took away from this episode.

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Kronda: Thanks for listening

to begin as you mean to go on.

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If you like this episode, show your love

by leaving us a five star rating and

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review, share it on your favorite social

media platform or in your newsletter, or

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hit me up and let's have a conversation.

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Send me a DM on Instagram or LinkedIn

or hit me up on threads and let

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me know what you liked about this

episode and what were your takeaways.

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Until next time, don't forget

to begin as you mean to go on.

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