How much of your business depends on you personally?
If you took a step back tomorrow, would everything still run like clockwork – or would it all fall apart?
In this episode of Exit Insights, host Darryl Bates-Brownsword and regular guest Kevin Harrington dig into why systemising your business – capturing your key workflows and documenting repeatable tasks – is one of the smartest ways to prepare for an exit and boost your business valuation.
Read more: From Chaos to Control: The Exit-Boosting Power of Documented Processes with Kevin HarringtonIt’s not about red tape or corporate bureaucracy. It’s about freedom.
“The only way to show you’re in control of your business is if it’s written down. Otherwise, you’re just guessing.” – Darryl Bates-Brownsword
When buyers look at your business, they’re asking one question: Can this business keep running without you? If the answer is “yes” – and you’ve got the systems to prove it – your business becomes far more attractive.
???? Episode Highlights:
- Why systemising isn’t just for tech or manufacturing firms – and why service businesses need it just as much.
- How mapping your primary workflow – from lead generation to invoice – unlocks clarity and confidence.
- Why processes don’t kill creativity; they enable it.
- When to start (hint: once you have 6+ people, it’s time).
- A simple, sticky-note method to get started today.
“Systemisation gives your team confidence, reduces chaos, and lets you focus on what matters most.” – Kevin Harrington
Whether you’re planning to exit in the next 3 years or just want your business to run smoother and scale faster, this episode is packed with practical advice to make your business more valuable and less dependent on you. ???? Listen now to learn how to scale and exit like a boss.
Topics Discussed:
- The importance of documenting workflows
- Why processes are an intangible asset
- Using systems to eliminate owner dependence
- How documented processes help in hiring and training
- When and how to begin process mapping
- Common tech traps: Why not to start with a CRM
- How systemisation impacts valuation and buyer confidence
Tools & Resources Mentioned:
- Sticky-note workflow mapping
- Primary workflow definition (lead to invoice)
- Freeman Clarke (for fractional CIOs)
- Advice on choosing the right platform after process clarity
Transcript
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (00:44)
Welcome to the podcast that’s dedicated to helping business owners prepare for the next step. This is the Exit Insights podcast presented by Fabric Business Solutions. I’m Darryl Bates-Brownsword and joining me today is my good friend, Kevin Harrington. Kevin, how are you today?
Kevin Harrington (01:02)
Very well, thank you, Darryl. Looking forward to another podcast. We’ve been covering so much ground lately. And I hope people have been listening to the last couple because it kind of feeds into this one. But this is a standalone subject, isn’t it the one we’ve got today?
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (01:17)
standalone in its own right. And yeah, like you, I’m enjoying doing this series on the intangible assets and how you can influence ⁓ the sellability of your business, the realizable value of your business, ⁓ setting up your business and creating your business so that it gives you more options on your transitions and in terms of succession and exit. So let’s talk about systems and processes.
Ta-da, ta-da. This is the one that entrepreneurs love getting involved in because systemizing and documenting and capturing the process of your business is such a creative activity ⁓ that they just love getting involved in it. In my experience, Kevin, what’s your experience?
Kevin Harrington (02:05)
Yeah, I was thinking of starting a minor career as a stand up comic as well. You you’re dead right, your point you’re making is very, very valid for so many people, especially entrepreneurs, mention processes, automation, systems, procedures, policies, whatever. And before you’ve got those words out, some people have corpced out on you. ⁓ And other people are thinking, do I really need to be listening to this and so on?
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (02:11)
Okay.
Yeah.
Kevin Harrington (02:32)
So I suppose one of the things we need to do is explain why they’re valuable, explain why they’re not such a bad toxic thing. Some people seem to think they are. And then spend a bit of time talking about how our mentality can get these things integrated into business to start realizing the value. And it can be enormously entrepreneur friendly.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (02:56)
Yeah, I think, you know, acknowledging that most entrepreneurs, this sucks the life out of them, just even thinking about documenting and having a process. I think we need to start by right upfront going, look, here’s the value to your business. Here’s the difference it can make. Here’s why you want to do it. And then we’ll dig into what it is a bit more.
Yeah, let’s get the good front, good stuff out up front before we put everyone to sleep because it’s not our intention in this podcast to have it as a cure for insomnia.
Kevin Harrington (03:30)
Exactly. OK.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (03:32)
So why
you want to have a standard process for repeatable tasks in your business?
Kevin Harrington (03:43)
Okay, let’s start from explaining the intangible asset and move into that. So the intangible asset here is something that is not tangible and typically doesn’t feature on the balance sheet. So if you…
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (04:00)
Yeah, that’s what we
mean by intangible. It’s not appearing on your balance sheet.
Kevin Harrington (04:04)
Yeah, but when I’m when I’m looking to buy a business, the balance sheet where I start, and it’s when I’ve read the balance sheet and got to understand the business through the financials, if then I start to look at the business and go so okay, if I took that business over, could I carry on running that business and achieve the same numbers or better? And so the type of things I look for are going to be consistency of
delivery to the customers. If a customer orders something, do we have to reinvent the wheel every time that customer pays the money or we send them an invoice? Or do we have a level of capability to replicate things so that we can get a consistently high and predictable service level to a customer, either services or product? And then we’ve got something that is potentially quite scalable.
We can decide from the systems and processes and procedures and so on. We can decide where to inject more resource, money, people, whatever, to help us grow it and we can monitor it and report it and we can make our business go up threefold, tenfold or whatever if it’s a nascent business just getting started. That’s the initial point we need to get on.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (05:24)
Yeah,
it’s a good point, your mate, because as you say, buyers are looking at your business and they’re going, hey, look, the business has been generating this much revenue, this much profit year on year, and it’s been growing at this rate. What’s the likelihood of that continuing without the current owners or founders being involved? And do we need to keep them around to make sure that we learn what they’re doing?
Well, hang on a sec. The whole business model is documented here. All the processes are documented and everyone who has a job is trained in that process. So it’s not dependent on the owners at all. The owners, the founders can step back. There can be a transition in ownership. There could be a transfer in leadership in the business and everything’s just going to keep running because there’s a tried and tested business model.
in terms of processes and systems, then everyone’s following the systems rather than remembering what they have to do because they’ve been doing it for so long.
Kevin Harrington (06:26)
Yeah, so if anyone’s thinking this isn’t for me, because you’re talking about increasing the value of the business if you exit and so forth. If you’ve got no intention of selling your business in the foreseeable future, it’s still worth understanding this and employing these concepts, because it makes a business easier to run. It makes it easier to resource with staff because you know what they’ve got to do. It makes it more fun. Customers get a better experience, which ultimately is one of the most important things.
And therefore, you can end up with a more profitable business with slightly less effort.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (07:03)
Yeah, if they’re not making it up all the time and again, and everyone knows, hey, look, here’s the first action or the first task in a series of events. I know exactly what to do. I’ve got a process to follow and I do it this way. There’s a bit of ⁓ muscle memory, if you like. ⁓
And the process has been designed by fine tuning over years and years and years. So that means that everyone in the organization who does this task or this process is doing it the same way. So we’ve ideally got less rework. We’ve got less mistakes being made because we figured out the best practice and what good looks like in our business. So ultimately, this is the most efficient way of
performing that series of events or those series of tasks, and therefore the most profitable for the organization. And a business that’s running smooth and sleek, think of it like a production run in a factory, even if it is a service business, a business that’s running at about 60 or 70 % of capacity creates a fulfilling work environment, believe it or not. And I didn’t think we’d drift here, but if you’ve got a… ⁓
a work environment where everyone feels that they’re putting in a productive day and they’re doing a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay, it’s just a much more enjoyable workplace to be in.
Kevin Harrington (08:26)
Yeah, and the converse of that is people talk about bad days in the office or wherever they work and because it’s being chaotic and it’s going from one problem to another. And that often is around the fact there is no process or workflow that’s being followed where quality control can be introduced and things can be monitored and problems can be avoided. So these are really important things and we…
we see it in industrial manufacturing on large scales and we understand it, it’s the same thing for a professional services business. It’s the same thing for us doing this podcast. If every week when we’re recording something, we go now then which software are we going to use to do this? How do we make the screens look right for what we’re doing? How do we going to edit it? Et cetera, et cetera.
It would take us five, six times as long every week to do a podcast. Whereas now actually we’re able to, because we’ve got a process, we’re using automation, we’ve got a platform that we use. What we’re able to do is have a consistent quality that we can improve on and we do improve on, but it takes us less time.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (09:28)
Yep.
Yeah, it’s really good point because if you’re watching this podcast or you’re seeing it, we’ve got a template that we use. We’ve got a template for producing all of the materials from this podcast that we share. So that speeds things up. And you know what? It allows you and I to focus on the actual episode. So we’re not constrained by the ⁓ structure of having to put together the podcast.
It’s actually liberating because we know all the mundane stuff is done. It’s all automated and templated and that’s all done. don’t even have to think about that, which means that we can think about, okay, what are we going to talk about in this episode? What are the key points we want to make? What are the, what are the, highlights? What, you know, just, allows us to focus on the important parts, which is, is the bit that why people listen to the podcast.
And it’s a really important point because a lot of people say, well, I don’t want to introduce systems and processes into my business because it just creates too much rigor, too much bureaucracy and ⁓ it’ll stifle the creativity of my team. And just this example that you’ve shared, I think it just highlights how it actually liberates the creativity.
Kevin Harrington (11:02)
Yeah, it’s it’s creating an environment in which we can be creative, and with no worries about how this ends up being broadcast because it’s all pre sorted. And if frankly, we wouldn’t be doing this every week if, if we had to start from scratch all the time. And that’s just one example. But ultimately, you know, I keep most things I end up in talking about the end customer, a business or consumer or whatever.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (11:20)
Yeah.
Kevin Harrington (11:31)
This is actually about looking after them better as well. And you know, once you’ve won your customer, which is an expensive thing to do, it’s not a bad idea to have customer attention and look after them, because it’s easy to keep hold of the customer and find a new one. And if we if we know we’re delivering consistency, if we know there’s a workflow, customers tend to stay with you. But if there’s anything going goes wrong,
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (11:47)
Yep.
Kevin Harrington (11:58)
Usually, within that workflow, there’s an opportunity for you to step in and work out what’s gone wrong and put it right within the systems that are there. So actually, problem resolving is quicker and more efficient.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (12:13)
Yeah. And you can determine really quickly then, is it a skills level? Is it a training level issue? What are the issues that are causing the problems? there a gap in the process? Is the process not documented in a way that people know what to do? Did the person not trained in how to use the process? Did they not have the skills required to follow the process? So once you’ve documented,
your business, I call it documenting your business and your workflows. But once you’ve documented it, you’ve got control. You know what’s going on in your business. then the ideal next step is how much ⁓ monitoring are you doing to make sure that the processes are being followed? Because that’s when you can find out the issues and if the processes need updating, or if you’ve got a training issue, it just helps you so much.
Kevin Harrington (13:10)
I remember working in a business where we had a customer service team where things were going fairly badly. They struggled to keep up with the inbound calls and resolving problems. And we hired someone that was not cheap, but a lady who I really learned a lot from. And she joined us from a major bank, one of the original big four banks. And she had run
teams with three figure numbers of people doing customer support handling and so forth. And what’s the first thing she did when she arrived? She talked to everyone. She listened to phone calls. She started to map out what was going on. That was the start point to say there’s some common issues here, but also everyone’s doing things differently. There’s lots of really talented people in the team. Wouldn’t it be great if we could learn all the best things from everyone?
and put it together in a process or procedure, whatever you want to call it. And she set about doing that. And in all seriousness, it took her less than four weeks for the numbers to be turning around dramatically on the time it took to receive calls, that less than three rings business and so forth, resolving them during a call, ⁓ everything about it, all the metrics started heading in the right direction. And the team that were doing it,
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (14:10)
Yeah.
Kevin Harrington (14:36)
started to enjoy themselves. Why? Because they were getting happier customers out of it and they felt like they were doing something really positive because they were given a platform from which they could do great things.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (14:49)
And they knew exactly what they were doing. They knew what was expected of them. They knew the measure of effectiveness and measure of success. They knew what good looks like. ⁓ In an environment like that, you can step up. When you’re constantly questioning, am I doing it right? What’s the right way to start this task or this process? ⁓ Who do I ask for help? In that environment, you’re constantly questioning yourself and you’re never really sure ⁓ if you’re doing a good job.
you
Kevin Harrington (15:20)
Yeah, absolutely the point. And ⁓ again, that’s just one component part of a business that was a technology business as it happens. And every part of a business can be mapped out as to how it works. And one of the side benefits that we established across the whole organization doing those sorts of exercises was it meant we hired better people for the job. Not necessarily better people intrinsically as individuals, but…
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (15:46)
Yeah.
Kevin Harrington (15:49)
people that are more suited for the roles we had available because we knew exactly what needed to be done. And so we could look for people that wanted to deliver those things and work in that environment. So we ended up with round pegs in round holes, having a better life and helping our business be successful.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (16:08)
Yeah. And you’ll notice that everything we’ve been talking about so far, we haven’t been talking about technology. We’ve been talking about process, workflow, how tasks effectively flow from one step to the next in getting a job done or delivering a project for a customer or a client. The next thing that people start talking about is, well, what systems, what
IT platforms, do we need to help with this and to automate ⁓ workflow from one step and to control and forecast and do our workflow planning?
And once we start having that conversation, we create a whole new can of worms because of cost and complexity and everyone offering to promise the same, ⁓ it’s gonna solve all your needs. So whenever we have this conversation with a client, going, okay, well, I reckon the best thing to do is to go get on top of, get in control of your process first. Understand in your business how you do process.
And the easiest way that I’ve done that with clients is get a whole lot of post-it notes, sticky notes, and just stick them up on the wall and just start with a task. And I like to do a workflow from, I call it your primary workflow, from the moment you get an inquiry or a new lead or a prospective sale, what triggers that to what do you do next? Do you put it ⁓ in a database? Do you make a sales call? Do you qualify it? What’s the next step?
and just create a new Post-it note for each step. And the reason we’re using a Post-it note and stick it in on the wall is because we’ll recognize as we’re going through the workshop, the exercise, that we’ve missed a couple and we’ve skipped a couple of steps. So it’s so much easier to insert additional Post-it notes and get the whole team involved. Get everyone who’s involved in the workflow.
And we’re going to map out the workflow process from that first lead, that first got a new name and opportunity, whatever you call it in your business, all the way through to that person being invoiced. And I call that your primary workflow. So from a functional perspective, you’re covering from marketing through to sales, through to pre-production, to production, to…
to delivery through to client engagement, through to finance and invoicing and that’s your primary workflow. And I think if you had one of those mapped out for each product, you’re really on top of your operations because that maps out your whole operation side of things. So there’s a really quick two seconds on how to do it and asking what happens next, what happens next, what happens next. But the big question I think is,
When do we start mapping out my operations? When should I start mapping and documenting the operations in my business? Is it when it’s just me? Is it when I’ve got 10 people at one of my inflection points? Do I wait till I’ve got 30 people? At what time, Kevin, do you think is the right time to start documenting your business?
Kevin Harrington (19:23)
Right, here’s little tip for those entrepreneurs that are going, I don’t like having to do all this stuff, is the first thing I’d say is get the people doing the work to start mapping it. And so, you know, when you’ve got one or two or three people, there’s probably little reason at that stage to be mapping it out. But when you’re starting to look like you’re four, five or six people, a top level view
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (19:38)
Yeah. ⁓
Kevin Harrington (19:52)
of who does what, when, where and why helps us understand who’s going to be doing the jobs. And once you’ve got people doing the jobs, you can start to say, look, what I want you to do is spend the next week or two weeks while you’re working just to scribble down the different activities you do and where the flow is. Then what we’ll do is we’ll do a little exercise altogether one day, and we’ll stick it all up on the post-its and we’ll start to map it.
So I’m saying you should start it if you’ve got less than 10 people in your business. There’s so many benefits that are derived really quickly. If you think you need a CRM system, what’s it got to do? What functions must that CRM system have? Well, if you suddenly just go out and buy the technology platform, you rent it, and there are some that are cheap, but they’re cheap for a reason as well. But you don’t actually know what you need it to do yet.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (20:21)
and
you
Yeah.
Kevin Harrington (20:50)
So why not do the poster exercise, the mapping it out on bits of paper, and then you’ve got an idea of where you need to spend the most time automating or finding a platform to run things, because it might be more than one. It’s so easy to go for the big, need a HubSpot or Salesforce installation, and you probably don’t need it if you’re 10p.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (20:51)
That’s good point.
Thank you.
Yeah.
You’ve hit on something that I’ve seen many times and that’s when a business owner is identified that they’ve reached a point where they need something like that and they start shopping around and because they haven’t designed their business and got on top of their processes, they don’t know what they want the system for. They just know they need a CRM. ⁓
If you’ve mapped out your workflow and your processes, then when you’re shopping around, you can go, right, well, I need the system to do this, this and this because I know what I want it to do because I’ve got control of my business. The other thing that I don’t think we have touched on yet is that when you design your system and you map it out, and I’m with you, I reckon you need to start designing it around six or so people.
Because if you do it at that stage, it forces you to understand what’s going on in your business and how things work. And it’ll help you to see some of the bottlenecks and where people are getting stuck and where they’re doing things ⁓ in a way because they’ve always done them that way. And you go, hang on a sec, we were doing it that way four years ago because we had this constraint at the time. We don’t have that constraint anymore. So we don’t need to keep doing it that that step anymore.
in the process. So what we need to do is start mapping it out as early as possible. That gets us to really understand how things flow through our business. It’ll help us identify training requirements and training plans and form job descriptions and new people joining the business. I’m just running out of reasons why not to do it. I’m just talking myself into it even more as we’re going through this, Kevin.
Kevin Harrington (23:03)
I’ve got a couple of little things to add.
The entrepreneur that gets put off by the notion of doing these things, we’ve already said, know, get the people doing the work to start mapping out the workflow and so forth. But the next thing for the entrepreneur is that once these things are being mapped out, entrepreneurs can be entrepreneurs, they can be curious, they can ask intelligent questions. And that’s where their strength lies.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (23:06)
I’m sure.
Yeah, keep going.
Yeah.
Kevin Harrington (23:31)
but they’ve got something to ask a question about, rather than just talking to an individual and it ends up wandering off at tangents, you’re looking at a work. Yeah, it’s, you know, have you considered this or why don’t we do it like that? And the entrepreneur can actually add more value to the business. And the other little point at this stage, I would add is that it even has a side benefit of helping you talk to your bank manager in a better way.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (23:35)
Yeah, good point.
Why are you doing it that way?
Kevin Harrington (24:00)
When the bank manager says, what are you doing? What’s happening in your startup business? You’ve got these loan facilities or overdraft facilities, whatever, and you’re looking to renew them and you have a meeting with someone that used to be called a bank manager. You’re able now to explain to the bank manager how your business has moved forward, where the efficiencies are coming by putting in workflows and platforms and so forth. And you’ll stand out from your competitors.
in the eyes of the bank manager and they will support you more because it’s fairly obvious it looks like you’re taking control of your business rather than going around firefighting.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (24:37)
Yeah. Yeah. And the only way you can demonstrate you’re in control of your business and your workflows is if you got them written down. Here’s what I know happens as opposed to here’s what I think happens. Because whenever you’re just trying to remember it, you’re bound to forget a step or two.
Kevin Harrington (24:56)
So we’ve talked in the past about why people don’t do these things. One of them is, we’ve mentioned it, I think earlier on about losing control. The reality is, if you think back to what we’ve talked about in the last 20 minutes, you’re gaining control. Because what you’re doing is you’re asking your expensive resources of people to do things in a particular way, because it works. You’ve gained control.
Whereas in the past, you might not have even known exactly what they were doing and didn’t have the ability to ask the intelligent questions because you didn’t have anything substantial to explore. So actually you gain control. So if you’re an entrepreneur that’s a bit of a control freak, not an uncommon thing, can be a real asset as well. This will enhance your ability to have control over what’s going on. But on a higher level, you have a better understanding about what’s going on.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (25:54)
Yeah. And if you’re an owner of a business and you want to get out of the operations and you want to remove the dependence of the business requiring you to be involved and having to make decisions and having to be involved in every step of the process all the time, if you want to eliminate owner dependence in your business, this is one of the key things you need to do. Document what needs to happen in your business. Train people on how to follow the process.
Create tools and templates to make life easier so that they can focus on just being creative where they need to be creative. It actually gives people freedom and it’ll give yourself freedom as the number one person. So that’ll allow you to step back and allow other people to follow the processes. And as you were saying, Kevin, you can then observe where they get stuck and that will allow you to mentor them and guide them rather than having to be the person to step in and do it and take over yourself.
Now there’s more involved to eliminating owner dependence, but this is one of the big steps that’s gonna make a big difference to you.
Kevin Harrington (26:58)
Yeah, I totally agree. If you don’t do it, how on earth are you going to be able to step back? And when you do have these processes in place, you can step back with confidence and you can grow your business and reduce your handicap on the golf courses at the same time.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (27:15)
Well, if that’s what you’re looking to do or ⁓ allow you to get involved in other areas, it’ll add ⁓ valuation to your business in other areas. But it’ll even just allow you to get involved in the projects that you’d like to get involved in rather than just having the business suck the life out of you and always fighting fires because things are slipping through the net and you have to jump in and ⁓ pick them up.
Kevin Harrington (27:41)
One of things I’m most pleased about with our conversation today, Daryl, is we haven’t been spending loads of time talking about the various platforms that keep trying to sell your stuff. They exist and there’s loads of really good ones and we’re not going to today, please, talk about which ones you ought to use. We don’t know which ones people should use because we don’t know what they’re trying to do. What we have talked about is how simple it is to get started. And if you’re a small business,
You might easily be able to do all these things on a paper based system and perhaps using Excel or whatever. Job done. That might be absolutely idyllic for you. Let’s not worry about the technology. Let’s worry about doing the right thing first and then find a way of automating it if it’s appropriate.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (28:19)
Thank
Yeah, look, and there are people out there who are experts in understanding this and a chief information officer is the type of person and there’s companies out there like Freeman Clark who have got all the expertise in-house that do it on a fractional basis. So they’re the sort of people you need to be talking to. What we want to work with you on is to get your processes in order, understand your business workflow.
document and model your business so that when the time comes to update your system or platform and you know because we’ve talked in the past around every time you’re triple in size you need to rebuild your systems and platforms this is just one of those platforms that you’re going to have to rebuild and getting some support and help and get the right type of platform at the right size of your business is you want some specific expertise to help you with that.
Kevin Harrington (29:23)
Indeed. Yep. That’s good points and well made.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (29:27)
Brilliant. Right, so what do we need to do? We’ve talked about, hey, what are your intangible assets? Why you want to document your system and the workflow through your business as an intangible asset, because ultimately it demonstrates to someone outside your business that the business doesn’t require your involvement on a daily basis in an operational role.
And that’s the biggest win to you as a business owner. If you can eliminate yourself from an operational role in the business and demonstrate the value and the process and how things are done around here, that’s an incredible value kicker to your business. And that’s what an intangible asset is.
Kevin Harrington (30:08)
Excellent. some people might be going, I didn’t really understand that, or I want to talk about it more. Well, we’re here. If people want to have a chat with the contact information will be on the podcast notes and so forth. And always happy to have a chat with people about how to introduce these things and see where it goes.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (30:17)
Where do I start? Yeah.
Excellent great idea and that’s yeah, it’s what our business architects and sell it excel in Because they’ve all been there and done that so You may as well tap into that expertise Kevin as always thanks for sharing your exit insights with us today
Kevin Harrington (30:49)
Thank you, Darryl. Look forward to the next one.
Darryl Bates-Brownsword (30:52)
Cheers.