Today we’re talking about how workflows can help you to breathe ease into your everyday and help you to save time in your business.

We dive into:

• What is a workflow
• How to plan out a workflow
• What is a trigger and why it’s important
• Mapping out your customer journey
• Deep diving into the blocks in your process

Connect with Nicole on Instagram.

Visit Nicole’s Website.

Get the Action Takers Guide to ClickUp here.

Join the Take Control with Nicole Facebook group here.

Join the waitlist for The Members Lounge here

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Full Episode Transcription

Nicole Smith 0:02
Welcome to take control with Nicola. as business owners, we experienced firsthand the fine line between our personal and business life. During our conversations, we will look at simple hints and tips to create time, reduce, overwhelm, and help you to navigate through your journey to where you want to be. If you’re looking for smarter ways to work, and create space and time freedom in your day, then you’re in the right place. All right, let’s go.

Hello, hello, and welcome to this week’s fabulous episode of take control with Nicole. Well, here in Melbourne, we are in a snap lockdown for five days. So by the time this come out, I am hoping that we will have those doors open again and a little bit of freedom back. However, at the moment, we are in a lockdown or lock-in as I am now calling it. I had a conversation with Kathy the other week from the capital linguist geologists who’s been on my podcast before and when we’re looking at different words and how they make us feel. So lock in, makes me remember the time when I used to live in London. And we would go out and do the London thing after work or on the weekends go to the local pubs or bars. And in particular, the local old school English pubs, it came to that time of the night where they didn’t ring the bell, call that last order for drinks. And if you were maybe a frequent at the establishment, it was your local on the corner down the road as ever in London has a local, you would be invited to stay for a lock in. So that means when all the other patrons left for the evening, they would lock the door and you would stay until well until you really wanted to go home. And so I am going to think about lockdown as a lock in for the moment. Think about those fun times that I had with karaoke and all of my my girlfriends and my friends over in London. And I don’t know for me that makes it feel a little bit more. There’ll be more nice, there’ll be more fun.

But however you are feeling right now whatever you’re going through right now, just know that you’re allowed to feel all the fields, it is absolutely in your space you are you and if you need someone to chat to, if you want to connect with someone, if you’re just feeling like you just want to go out and scream to the world because you’re just sorry, frustrated about everything that’s going on. Please know that there are we are out here to hear you to listen to you. So please don’t do this alone. If you need support, we are here for you.

In today’s episode, we are going to have a look at one of my favourite things to do planning and workflow. I know I know I get a little bit excited about these topics. But honestly, when they’re done beautifully, well when they are executed sorry, fabulously. It just brings so much ease into your every day. So how many people have heard about workflows sort of understand what it’s about, but maybe not really dived into it before? Well, guess what, grab your pen and paper, because this is a great opportunity to actually sit down and have a look at what you’re doing and how to actually build a workflow out of fun.

So let’s start at the beginning. What is a workflow. So it is basically a plan your plan of repetitive actions that’s going to take you from a all the way through to Zed from where you’re starting through to the achievable actionable items that you are wanting to get to to complete that particular process or that particular action in your world. It can be created, however you would like to there is no right or wrong with workflows, you basically are identifying where you’re starting. And then you travel the journey. Now remember that we want to capture all the little bits and pieces as we go through. And you might also come to a junction. So if this happens, then we’re going to do this. If that happens, then we’re going to do that all of these things as part of a process development will really help to bring those consistencies in board, to your business to your world to the way that you’re running each and every day.

So have a think about a process currently in your business, that maybe it’s feeling a little bit a little bit icky, a little bit like oh, you know, like it’s kind of working, but I know that it could be doing better. I know that there is some simplicities in there. I know that it feels like we’re repeating ourselves or we’re doing so many manual things right now, starting at the workflow level, and actually mapping that out. It’s such a fabulous process to go through to become aware of what how, why, what, what is actually working, why are we actually doing that thing? And what do we want to be doing going forward? Is this going to be the way that we really love to run that particular process? Or is this something that we can be doing a little bit better?

Hey, they’re just interrupting this episode to like you know all about our exciting new membership. The doors to the take control with Nicole members lounge and now open, and we are ready to welcome you to take your share as one of our fabulous foundation members. The members lounge provides a safe space to learn and implement productivity and organisation or techniques for creative small business owners. We offer a unique approach to breathe in your everyday by customising strong foundations that save time, money, and sanity. how fabulous when you are able to confidently strike down Easy Street, would you walk through door A or B, hop over to https://academy.theartisans.com.au/members-lounge to join us in the members lounge. I look forward to welcoming you very soon. See you later. Bye.

Once you’ve taken the time to actually think through all of those steps you take in the journey from the start to reaching the fabulous, successful end of that process. You can have the opportunity now to actually build out your templates or your automations. To start to again, bring in some more simplicity and more ease into the way that you run your that particular process. So I don’t know, let’s have a look at say the onboarding process. If you think about it, onboarding is the first step two, the real clients actually working with you that client experience journey. For me, it’s actually one of the key things that we need to get right in our businesses so that it works seamlessly, it really sets that expectation of what it’s like to be working with you ongoing and how that is going to feel. Does your client feel loved and supported from that? First go? Is it easy for them to provide you with the information? Is it easy for them to sign their agreements and have that all sent back without you know having to lift a pen? And basically, what is it in your process that you love? Or what is it that you really would like to adjust? This is actually something we will be diving into next month as part of the client experience topic in the members lounge. So if you’re interested, pop along over to the website and come and join us. We’d love to see you there.

So let’s have a chat about onboarding. So let’s start right at the beginning. Because as you know, as Julie Andrews always seems it’s a very good place to start. So what is the first trigger that will set this process in motion? Yes, client agrees to work with us. Fabulous. The client also has decided which package or which service to go through. Fabulous. So what do you now do? What is your What are your next steps in that process? I know for me, I in click up, I have my CRM in there. And I make the notes within the client card and I change that status to onboarding and bang, bang, bang, what’s happened exciting. Over she goes on to my client list. Not only that, I’ve got some automated triggers set up to launch different things make things nice and easy are it’s just actually I love my process. So there’s also communication, what do we need to do in that regards? All of the things are totally gone off workflow topic, but important. Jot down all the things have you got them in the right flow of order of execution? Do you have, for instance, signing your agreement at the start of your engagement, so you know that they’ve signed the agreement, you’ve paid the invoice and then you actually go and start to set them up as a client. It’s really interesting because, you know, sometimes you have those conversations with clients and you know that they’re ready, but when it actually comes to that, taking out moment, they go a bit crickety, they go a bit silent. And so if you have already invested all of this energy to set up, create all the things, and then they go quiet. Maybe we should have waited to the trigger to set up that next step on in your workflow is contract agreement signed invoice has been paid and received.

Honestly, whatever your journey is, take some time now to just sit down and map that out. Do you like what you see from your experience working with your clients? Is that actually what happens? If it’s not, take this opportunity to have a deep dive and see what are the blockers that we are finding in this process? Are they intentionally put there by you? Or is there something that’s just a bit disjointed in your workflow that needs a little bit of a tweak? radio, please let me know how you go. I love talking about this. And as I said, onboarding is such a passion topic for me. So please pop the comment. Come into my DMS on Instagram come and say hi, I’d love to hear all about what you’ve explored and discovered as part of this journey.

Alright, everyone. Well, that is it for today’s episode. And I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day, and enjoy creating space and time freedom by now. Well, there we go. Thank you so much for joining me today. It’s been such a pleasure having you on board. Have we connected on social shares? If not, please come on over. Say hi, I’m on all the platforms at the artisan solutions. So I’d really look forward to seeing you over there. And if you enjoyed today’s episode, don’t forget to tag me and I would love it if you could leave a review. And of course share this with others so others can come and join us next time. All right, then everyone have a fabulous rest of the week and until next time. See you then.