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Lesson Info

Creating a Company Manual

here are the three steps to creating your company manual. I want encourage you right now. In the next slide, you're probably gonna be like, Oh, my gosh. Does he really want me to do what he's saying? Yes, I dio. And yes, I did it. And yes, it's a lot, right? The process so right the process down. You engineers are gonna love this. By the way, you know all the engineers and I'm like, Oh, you're something for me. I feel so beaten down to the last segment. So this is the engineer segment, if you another process in metric. Exactly. Engineers are gonna love this, right? The process, even the word process makes engineers excited. It makes us want to crawl in a hole and shoot ourselves. So right the process. I'm talking about every single thing you do for your business. Every executed, All you have write a process for it blogged post, calling a wedding, calling a first time inquiry. I mean, the list just goes on posting images after after an event to your image host paying quarterly taxes, ev...

erything you do, right, the process and right every single step. Don't gloss over them. don't say. Log into WordPress se logging a WordPress user name, password website. Say go to the upper left and click this. But I'm talking right the process. Write it all out. Write it so that if you had to urgently go away for the day and your business had to run, you could hand it to someone with no training. And they could they could execute it. That's what I mean. When I say right, the process, right, the process down. You know, we will sit down and do this. Something will be like, Well, block post. Okay, well, block posting involved. Get the image is ready. Go into WordPress. Post images, write the article and Okay, good. Awesome. Let's move on. That was great. Well, if you were to hand that to someone and say I have to go today, I have a family emergency here. I need you to three block post and then leave. They'd be like, get the images. Okay. She I don't know where. Where are they? Where do I get him? What size do they need to be? Do they need to have a watermark on them? Do you need be okay? How do I put it on the website. Okay, Log into the block. Okay. How do I log in to block? What's the Web address? What do I do once I'm in the block? Where do I go? Do I press a new post? Oh, I do. Okay. What's the title? What's to set? What? What's one of the category mean when I say right the process, you have to be very, very detailed. And then here's a fun thing. Simplify it. Because if you're like me, it is way too long. Most of us have way too many steps. When I first rode out the process for my blawg post, it was 147 steps long, 147 steps. Kidding you. And so that was just ridiculous. And many of our manuals, many of our processes were that long. It was like You have got no, Never do you feel like more of like an inadequate business center. When you're like it's 147 steps to do a block post. That's awesome. No wonder it takes an hour to do that. It takes an hour just to count 247 let alone actually do any of those things. And so you get to go through and you have to simplify it. And so once you really embrace this, I would go through and try to pull every step I could out. How can I make this? 140? Okay, 140. Okay, good. How can I make this 100 25? We're getting close to 100. Do you think I could get this under 100? How can I get this under 100? Removes steps, combined steps? Go guy. That's kind of an inefficient. Why are we doing it that way and again the whole while you're writing out the process and you're learning a lot about your company. You're learning a lot about the things that you do. In many ways, you're sometimes defining things that you've never done before. You know, sometimes we have things we do, but we don't even really know how we do it or why we do it. And you're putting. You're putting words, Teoh, what you're doing that's also very powerful because you're actually defining the steps you're going through in your business and your making sure that you understand everything that's going on in your business, and you have to understand everything that's going on your business to build improve upon it. And then, you know, again, a tip is a practical tip is you're going through when you're simplifying. Try to think about every opportunity to remove judgment, to remove judgment steps. One of my judgment steps is things that require you so something like pick the block images and then you hand that to them. And then they picked the wrong images, and then you fire him and what we really are going, that is. You hand it off. You trust someone, you write a manual for you. You are building your business toe where it systematized. But you didn't really systematize it enough. You didn't set up the person you're gonna trust to succeed. And so when they failed, it's your fault because you didn't set them up to succeed and you gave them a judgment. You gave them a step to take their involved judgment. They made a judgment. They made the best judgment they could probably they probably went out to get you, But you didn't set about to succeed and so they failed. So how can you help them? By removing steps that require you and by writing out systems that don't require you? You can't grow a business if every single thing requires you to be the one to do it. And then lastly, you assigned the process and it might be you that gets assigned to do it. By the way, when you're just starting out, you're probably gonna be the one assigned to everyone of processes. That's okay, but guess what. As you grow, you can assign these processes out to different people, outsource partners to people that you hire, even if it's just a nen turn or someone you bring him for 10 hours a week to help. When you have the process defined and you have it simplified, you can then assign it whenever you're ready. And if you want to take it back over, you can. You can do whatever you want when you have the process laid out and a question always becomes okay. Now I have all the process laid out, and I know I can't do all of it. What do I let go off? And I think there's four questions. You can ask yourself on how to determine what to let go of and what to keep, where to go with what you assign to others and what you dio Number one is what takes what takes up the most amount of time. Just go ahead and take everything you have a process. Foreign ranking. What takes up the most one of time? Number two. What do you hate the most, right? Get in order of what you hate. I think it's very likely that cause I hate doing things I hate. Imagine that Number three. What costs the most for someone else to do. Give it a ranking in terms of what costs the most for someone else to do. A number four. What can on Lee you do at this point? What are things that only you can do? So we have those four questions, and honestly, you could even give them a number ranking. So if you have, let's just keep it simple. You have 10 processes you could ranked in order of what takes you the most about it. Time gets a 10 and what takes at least one time gets a one, and you could rank them one through and just put it in order and give you want to score? So block posting the seven. So it takes you a while. But it doesn't take you as long as editing a wedding. Any No wedding takes gets a 10. What do you hate the most? Give it a 10. Give what you hate the most. Attend. Give what you like doing the best of one. Go through and go through these and give these all numbers. And honestly, if you really want to be super engineer, but you can just add up the numbers of the end and figure out what you What's the worst thing for you to be doing? What has the highest number? That's the worst thing for me to be doing. Or if you're like most of us photographers, you're kind of well, just I'll just stick with looking at it and kind of feeling it out, you know? But those are the four questions to ask yourself, as in terms of what do I do versus what do? Maybe I assign what do I start to let go off and again? Just to review those four questions because I know that I was going kind of fast that the four questions are what takes up the most amount of time. What do you hate the most? What can what costs the most for someone else to do? And what can only you do now? Obviously, the things that only you can dio you only need to be the one to do them makes sense. I know it's probably most the most important thing I've said so far today, right? Glad you showed up for that one. So if you have things that only you can dio, you can't let go of those things. But hopefully, as your business grows, those things dwindle. You are the only things you have to do. Maybe you are the one are shooting the events, being the photographer, meeting with the clients, whatever the things that you bring your business, which, by the way, all goes back to the purpose of why your businesses around and he goes back to what you're doing with your business. And again, why are we talking about this? My goal for you is not necessarily for you to build a business that just assigns everything out and you sit at home and, you know, you get Teoh just checking along and all your minions they're working on their different little tasks and life just kind of idols by That's not the purpose. The purpose is to avoid what we talked about in the beginning, getting overwhelmed, overworked and burned out. The purpose is to have a system for a business that could be flexible. So if you want to go on a one week vacation, your business is ready to support you. So if you want to bring somebody on to help you because you had a baby, because life changed because you moved because something needs to give, then you can do that. Having the process having the system dialed in gives you that ability, and it gives you the ability to adjust, to adapt and to grow any questions. Of course, the Internet always has questions for you. What you're saying is so powerful world. It's kind of like hanging on every word right now and you're speaking Kathy's love language of they were like bringing up a spread Chief Teoh. But, uh, K his some photography is wondering what things would you absolutely never outsource to a partner as a photographer and entrepreneur. That's a great question, and that brings us to our next slide very well. What are some things that I would never ask us? Well, here is what I do right now. Here is what Obama photographers the things that I was doing all the way up until the point, and even now, as I still continue, shoot for the company quite a bit. There are things that I can't let go of now. I've managed to a sign almost everything out because I love being entrepreneur and we'll go back to more of my purpose and we keep going back to that. But I want to be a photographer, helps other photographers, and I want to. You know, I have a lot of different reasons for all those different things. But what I know about my business is that for me, I was able to let go of a lot of different things slowly. But surely I'll take you guys on my path in a minute, show you guys all the different things I did and when I let go, but you're going to see that it doesn't have to happen all at once. And that's the key I want to give you. The freedom to understand is that you don't just have to flip a switch and all of a sudden let go of everything. You can do this slowly. So right now I shoot, I shoot the wedding. I don't trust anyone else to do that. I can't let email so that they book me. They want me. They want me there and they interact with me the whole way through. I call the wedding a lot. That might shock a lot of you, considering I could just send it a shootout at it. But I believe for me, that is how I go through the images and kind of learn from what I did wrong and what I tried. And I am really good at the cool. It takes me about an hour and 1/2 to 2 hours. So again, going back to that chart, what can I do really quickly? What doesn't take much time? What do I get out of it? And that was something that stays in there. Even though I could let that go, I keep it because I love going through and seen. I tried that. I totally failed it. That dragging the shutter? Probably a good idea, but oh, man, putting that light up there in that tree the way I didn't do a night off camera lighting that really worked well, if the image I got from it, marketing, that was something and is something that I feel like I'm very good at, and I feel like I'm better than anybody I would trust to do that. I feel like I've been taught that trained that by going to school for it. I've flex that muscle for the many, many years, and so market is something that I hold on to, and I think it's very important in a solo producer business that you're the one doing your marketing. Networking is something that I felt I had to do is the owner of the business and as the guy who would go out there and meet people, that was something I thought I had to hold on to, and I loved doing it. I love being around people. Um, it's so funny. My wife, my wife and I differ in this category. We different lot of categories, actually But in this one, specifically, when I get home from a trip, when I get home from being out for work, you know, if I've had a couple of long days at work, I want to be around people. That's how I unwind is being people. And she's like, I do not understand Like when I've had a long day. I want a bubble bath. I want to paint my toes, some music, some candles and I don't know if I want you around. You know, like I want to be alone and for me, I'm like, I just want to be around people. I love it. I just loving around people on that energizes me. So networking is a natural fit for me. I'm good at it. I feel like I'm in a good place. So these are some things that I don't let go of these other things that I do that you know, Obama photographers the things that I trust my team to help me with. Color correction, you know, retouching. That's what she did. It is therefore album designed print bind. I don't touch any of that. I don't I don't specialize in design albums. I suck at it. I'm terrible. I really am. I I don't have that I there and so I I don't have I don't touch that process. Blawg posting on social media. You know, we've We've written out all the processes that go to that, and we've assigned that out. Um, email management. You know, that's something that shoot cute, takes care of me takes care of for me, managing my email managing win emails need to go out keeping and correspondence with my clients bookkeeping and taxes. I told you guys earlier a little bit about 99 beans. That's what nine beans does for me. And so and this list could go on by the way I try to just kind of keep it is top level is possible. But what do I do versus what I have my team dio and that's been a process for me over the years.