I’m a course of fiend. However more often than not, the “how this works” data exists solely in my head. As a solo business owner, this was principally advantageous… till I wanted to collaborate with other people.
Most solopreneurs deal with course of documentation as a sometime job. There’s all the time one thing extra urgent—like a shopper deadline, invoices to ship, or a proposal to ship. Plus, writing documentation isn’t precisely probably the most thrilling job. Definitely not a revenue-generating one.
However odds are, in some unspecified time in the future, you’ll be on the lookout for outside support. Whether or not it’s a bookkeeper, a social media supervisor, a digital assistant, or another kind of contractor, you’ll want to clarify how issues work in what you are promoting. And if nothing is written down, you’ll be ranging from scratch on the worst attainable time. Right here’s how one can keep away from that lure.
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Begin with the following course of you’re employed on
Don’t attempt to doc all the things directly. You could sit down with the intention of writing out each workflow in what you are promoting, however the scope of the mission will overwhelm you earlier than you even begin.
A greater method is to select your most-repeated duties and doc them the following time you do them. In case you ship shopper invoices each two weeks, doc the steps the following time you ship one. In case you schedule social media posts each Monday, write down your course of subsequent Monday.
You would additionally put aside a small, recurring time block every week—like 15 or 20 minutes—to seize the week’s course of at one time. That is how I tackled my documentation mission at first. Over a couple of months, you’ll have a rising library of documentation with out it ever feeling like a large mission.
The true take a look at is the handoff
Whenever you’re the one individual in what you are promoting, you possibly can wing it fairly simply. You realize the place to search out issues, and also you bear in mind the quirks of how you utilize your instruments. You possibly can skip steps since you simply know how issues work.
That modifications the second you usher in exterior assist. Undocumented data will rapidly develop into a bottleneck as a result of the individual has to return to you needing a proof.
Your documentation needs to be comprehensible to somebody who has by no means touched your techniques earlier than. Which means together with:
- Hyperlinks to the instruments or paperwork you utilize
- Screenshots of how issues get carried out
- A transparent step-by-step course of.
Quick movies can work effectively right here, too (and typically it’s simpler to point out somebody how one can do one thing than to put in writing all of it out).
I’ve additionally discovered that I want documentation for processes I don’t have to the touch fairly often. Even when it’s simply me, if it’s one thing I solely do as soon as a month or as soon as 1 / 4, I would overlook the way it’s arrange. But when I doc my course of, I can pull it up and comply with the steps.
AI eliminated the largest excuse
The most typical motive solopreneurs skip documentation is the work concerned. In case you cease what you’re doing to put in writing all the things down, it feels prefer it doubles the work.
However AI can deal with the tedious job of writing documentation. Display screen-recording instruments like Loom and Scribe can flip a recorded walkthrough into written, step-by-step documentation routinely. You do the duty as you usually would, report your self doing it, and the software generates the written model for you.
I’ve additionally used Claude to put in writing normal working procedures for me. Claude connects to completely different instruments I exploit, after which I’ve Claude write a recap of how I exploit the connector. I save the recap to my Google Drive, so it’s obtainable the following time I must repeat the method.
You continue to know your processes higher than anybody. AI simply handles the half that used to make documentation really feel like a chore—sitting down and writing all of it out.
Whenever you want it, you’ll be glad you’ve got it
Final 12 months, I needed to step away from my enterprise for a number of months because of medical points. When that occurred, I relied closely on documentation for individuals who have been serving to me whereas I used to be away. A whole lot of my day-to-day processes have been already documented, which made the handoff a lot simpler.
Your record of processes will solely develop as what you are promoting does. Every new software, shopper, or workflow one provides one other course of that lives in your head till you’re taking the time to get it out. The sooner you begin, the much less you’ll need to do later.
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