Every designer knows that they should be documenting their processes. Almost none of them are doing it. This episode of For Designer Business walks you through the documentation journey: what to document, where to start, and how to build it in a way that actually works for you.

If Shayna had to start all over again, knowing what she knows now, she would begin with templates. Email templates, presentation templates, FF&E spreadsheets. Every client-facing deliverable that has a repeatable structure. The goal is to stop reinventing the wheel every time a new client walks in. This is step one of the journey.

From there, Evelyn walks through the good, better, best framework. Good is a numbered checklist. Better is a checklist with linked templates. Best is the full textbook with screen recordings that instruct someone more in three minutes than ten pages of documentation ever could. You do not have to start at best. You just have to start.

They also make the case, backed by a real story of invoices going out without sales tax and assignments being made to people no longer on the team, for why the SOP has to live in a Word document and not inside a technology. This way, when people come and go, the process stays. That is the difference between a business with a foundation and one built on whoever happens to be sitting at the desk.

The episode closes with a simple truth: this is a weekly commitment, not a one-time project. There is no right or wrong order. The only wrong move is not getting it done.

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