My friend, David Bullock, just wrote an interesting post this past week on how to set up processes in your business.  Although the example in his post was focused on developing a process for a software program, it got me to thinking.

One of the things that limited the growth of my business for years was my, to take a phrase from Michael Gerber, “working in the business” and not “working on the business.”  As Iong as I continued to work in the business I was really nothing more than a high-paid employee.

As I focused on growing my business in mid-2007 (and we are experiencing phenomenal growth), it became readily apparent that I had to change some things.  As a wise sage once said, “If you keep on doing what you’ve always done, you’re going to continue to get what you’ve always got.”

And I didn’t want what I’d “always got.” (How about you?)

The change I had to implement was to look at all the things I was doing (very few of them marketing oriented, by the way…I was just too busy “doing stuff”).  I had read all about this but I hadn’t done anything with it.  Over the next 3 to 4 months, I critically looked at all that I did (I even had to stoop to keeping track of my time in 15 to 30 minute increments – unbelievable what I discovered).

I wrote down almost everything I was doing and it became readily apparent that if I could find someone else to do a lot of those things, I could focus on “working on my business.”

The sad truth is that you can only get someone else to perform a business activity if you can outline all the steps involved (paper, software, etc.) so that someone else can “do what you did.”  I even found (and am continuing to find out) that using a screen capture software so that the person can “see” what needs to be done in addition to reading about it works well.  A serendipity for me was that as I brought people on board to help out (I’m not talking employees, by the way – another story sometime) they figured out better ways to perform the tasks than I had developed.  Fresh eyes do work.

Anyway, the downside of not developing processes for almost every part of your business will keep you where you are.  If that’s where you want to be, fine.  If you want to grow (and help other people to grow) so that you can spend your time on high-value activities, get started today on implementing this approach.

It will truly make a difference.