Nicole Smith
Welcome to Take Control with Nicole. As business owners, we experience first hand the fine line between our personal and business lives. 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.

Nicole Smith
Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Take Control with Nicole. Today, I wanted to share with you a conversation that I had recently with the fabulous One Roof community over there on the One Roof rooftop. So much fun looking forward to doing that in person. And we really took a look at SOPs. So are standard operating procedures. What are they all about? Why are they important? And how easily can you take some action and start to create these for your business? So grab a cuppa, sit down and enjoy.

Nicole Smith
We were talking about the purpose and the you know, the practicalities, the realities of why we create SOPs and standard operating procedures in our businesses. And I was starting to talk about that factor of mitigating risk. So where those non planned events happens, such as a team member decides to depart or is unwell for a period of time or in COVID land still, so you know, or you yourself as a business owner have to step away or even want to take some holidays, that’s a pretty important one. So having those documentations and you know, the SOPs created means that you can really easily transition somebody else temporarily or permanently into that role.

Frances Goh – One Roof
Amazing and hearing you speak about it, just you know, all these sort of light bulbs are going off in my mind about the importance of the sustainability and longevity of your business, you need to have SOPs, you know, for scalability, you know,

Nicole Smith
And the other thing really mitigating the risk in relation to when you are holding the IP, so that intellectual property in your own brain, it stays with you, right, so you leave, off you go walk out the door, it’s gone. So as a business owner, when we have team members who are experts in particular areas of your business, being able to capture that IP and transition it across to business IP, it’s a no brainer, really, to me, it’s something that we can invest a little bit of time for long-term gain. Because I’ve heard of stories where people have gone to sell their businesses in the future. And instead of it being just a business, it’s now a turnkey operation. So the new owners can walk in, off they go, everything’s ready to rock and roll. So from that point of view, it’s put some time in small actions get it done.

Frances Goh – One Roof
Amazing Nicole and do you have any recommendations for resources that we could use to find out about how to go about putting together SOPs if we haven’t done it before?

Nicole Smith
Yeah, I have one, on my website. So go to freebies, and you can find one there. I think it’s just honestly, as we mentioned, before we got cut off, it’s about documenting all the bits and pieces. So when we are creating our SOPs, write it in the mind frame that this person who’s coming to pick up this document has no idea what they’re doing. So literally micro it. Step one, click here, and then do this. So being able to pull that back means that whoever picks that documentation up will be able to really just take it and run. Now just want to say this does not replace training, actually investing time with our teams to have a proper induction and training schedule when they come on board. And whenever something new is rolled out is really integral, but this complements that. It means our team members can go off autonomously and have that reference point instead of going oh, hey, Nicole, what was that thing? What button do I press next, I just can’t remember. So you’ve got that extra point.

Frances Goh – One Roof
Amazing, such an important asset and so incredible to hear it from you the expert. I’d love to focus the conversation a little bit about you because I know you’re such an amazing individual. And this is one of the many incredible things that you’re doing. So can you share a little bit about what you know, a day in your life is like,

Nicole Smith
oh, goodness, yeah, so, I have a sort of a block schedule that I follow during my week. So Mondays are very much for me day. So my daughter’s not daycare on that day. So we spend that time together or with my family. Then we go Tuesday Thursdays are my clients session days, so my All That Jazz clients will come in and I’ve got two sessions on those days. And I’ve intentionally designed it that way. Because I know when I’m involved with my clients work, I also need the space in between to do those actions afterwards. And the other two days, Wednesdays and Fridays are left for my CEOing, my podcast recording, my on the business activities. So my days do look different this morning for instance, as I shared earlier, I was right in there designing a procedure that we mapped out together with one of my clients, ready for my team to go and create and build that into ClickUp. So that’s one idea or I could be yeah, connecting with fabulous humans. So lots of different things, or the members Lounge, which is my fabulous community.

Frances Goh – One Roof
Amazing. Can you tell us a little bit more about your podcast?

Nicole Smith
Hello, there, I’m just interrupting this episode, as I would love to invite you to come on in and join us inside the members lounge, my community have shared with me that they joined initially, because they really wanted to discover the power of ClickUp. They wanted to be able to design, build, and connect their click UPS within their own individual businesses. However, once they were inside, they really discovered how the power of looking at the foundations of your operational areas of your business. And designing those really to set you up for success is such a powerful element. And guess what else, we have a fabulous community inside. So once you’re in, you’re never gonna want to leave. So come on over, have a look. Go to my website, theartisans.com.au and pop up to the members lounge button at the top. And we look forward to supporting you as you discover how fabulous it is when you’re confidently striding down easy street. See you inside the lounge.

Nicole Smith
It’s called Take Control with Nicole, episodes coming out every Wednesday. So this morning, if you pop on over to all the places there you’ll find today’s episode it’s actually on tech, which is a fun one. I call myself a bit of a tech geek. So hop on over, have a listen. Yeah, we speak with these fabulous business owners. There’s no particular focus. It’s general business, making our worlds a lot easier, efficient, enjoyable. And I have to say this is one of the areas that I love creating. Every time I have a conversation. It’s just at that right moment for me. So the universe is working there.

Frances Goh – One Roof
Incredible. I love that. You’re learning, you’re sharing. You’re integrating it into your business. It’s a win win win.

Nicole Smith
Yeah, exactly.

Frances Goh – One Roof
Amazing. Nicole, and can you share a little bit about your members lounge?

Nicole Smith
Yeah, absolutely. So the members Lounge is a place. It’s a community of action takers. So all business owners who are at that stage where they know they’re fabulous at what they do. And they just need a little bit of support to really get the business systems in place and running and implemented. You mentioned that just before that is a really big thing of what we do inside the lounge is help you to design and create what you’re looking to build for your processes and your systems, but actually giving you the support to make it a thing. Because we absorb so much information out in the world. We join all the courses, all the programmes. And the one thing that I’ve noticed is a lot of us don’t actually do the doing and take action and get it done. So that is what we’re about inside the lounge and all of our community. It just makes me smile every time I’m in there.

Frances Goh – One Roof
It’s making me smile hearing about it and listening to you share it with such joy. So incredible. Nicole, I wanted to ask what are your grand visions for Artisans? And what’s next for you?

Nicole Smith
Yeah, right. So I call it building big. You’ll probably hear me if you heard me on the podcast or hear me chatting around I talk about instead of goals, their bigs and so sort of my building big, it does evolve and shift as we always do. But ultimately, the reason and the purpose of starting my business is to create freedom and choice in my world. So choice of what I want to be doing, who I want to be working with when I want to be working and the freedom to work wherever and whenever I want to. So that is the big grand plan. And every evolution, every transition is taking one step closer to that big.

Frances Goh – One Roof
I love that, great language, great vision, definitely resonates. Amazing Nicole

Nicole Smith
is right in my world with all my language so

Frances Goh – One Roof
Oh, that makes a lot of sense. I love that

Nicole Smith
Fun, isn’t it? I think the world that I sit in can be seen to be boring and like not important and all of that,, but we make it easy and fun, right? Like when I come in and have the privilege of being in the inner sanctum of my clients businesses, it’s really all about you. Right? You know how your business operates, you know where your big is. And so what we do is really help to move you to discover how the practical operational elements can support it. And I love it. So win win.

Frances Goh – One Roof
Yes, excellent. And you are like the least boring person I know. So it’s, it’s so interesting to hear about SOPs, which, like you say, traditionally can seem uninteresting but to hear you speak about it has definitely renewed interest, I feel and elevated this idea of what it can do for business. So I’ve got two more questions for you. My second last question is, where can people find out more about you and follow you and engage with what you’re doing?

Nicole Smith
Absolutely. So my website is theartisans.com.au so you can pop on over there and have a have a little squeeze around. I hang out primarily on Instagram @theartistsanssolutions. But I’m on all the platforms so also come and connect with me on LinkedIn, Nicole Smith, oh, and the podcast, Take Control with Nicole.

Frances Goh – One Roof
All the links, we want all of it, please, we need all of it. My last question is do you have an ask for the community here? The audience here, anyone who’s catching the replay of this? How can we support you?

Nicole Smith
I love this question. I never know what to ask. I’m one of those people. I’m sure there’s many people out there that asking for things has never been the forefront of what I do. But I am definitely wanting to branch out more into speaking opportunities. So I love talking. As you can see, you’ll hear it on the podcast. I love it. So that is where I want to be heading over the next 12 months. So any opportunities that where you’re looking for an engaged and exciting speaker to come and join you on stage? You may get a song I can’t promise you won’t. I’m your person. So please reach out and let me know.

Nicole Smith
So go on, tell me now how excited are you about diving in and creating your own SOPs for your business? This may have been something that you’ve been thinking about for the longest time, you’ve always known that you need to create some sort of process manual for your business, but really didn’t know where to start. So I really encourage you to take some action this week, create that document, turn on that loom video and press record and really start to create that document library that’s going to support you on your journey to building big. Whatever you’re doing out there today, I hope you have a wonderful time creating space and time freedom bye now.

Nicole Smith
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 socials yet? If not, please come on over, say hi, I’m on all the platforms @theartisanssolutions. 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’d 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