The Method Every Small Business Needs to Use in 2025

If you want to build business systems, there is no skill more helpful than learning to process map. I'm going to explain how to do process mapping on this simple whiteboard here. Then, I'm going to show you how this active process mapping that we can do together in about 10 minutes can actually lead you to systemizing your entire business. What I'm about to share with you is an overview of the process I have been running for the last seven years with around 2,000 small business clients. So, I know this approach really works. I will try to keep it very simple today. If you have a whiteboard and some kind of marker of choice, or even just a piece of paper, you'll be able to follow along.

So let's get started. To use the simple approach to process mapping, we want to get a few symbols down right off the bat. An action, which represents our observable reality and something that happens, is depicted in a box. The next symbol is a diamond, representing a decision point where you choose between multiple paths you could follow.

The paths you might take are connected by arrows. Arrows indicate the direction of flow. Many people choose to skip these, but when things get tricky, these arrows will become your best friend. The next icon is a rounded rectangle or an oval, which signifies our start and stop. It simply lets us know when we're beginning and ending. This isn't as important when you're on a whiteboard because you are likely going to run out of space, and that's probably going to be your stopping point.

The fourth symbol, which is quite important when you're working analog with a whiteboard, is this one here. It technically represents a predefined process, but I want you to think of it as almost like a folder. So, all of this information can be combined and placed inside this folder, which represents the predefined process. The reason this is helpful is that when you're in a physical space or working on a whiteboard, you may run out of space. Having this type of container that you can reference back to can be very beneficial.

So, as you go through all the steps, you reach a point where it's like, "Ah, we have a quality assurance step." There are a ton of things involved in that. When you're not focused on it, breaking down all the steps of QA on the whiteboard can be overwhelming. Instead, you could simply say, "This is my predefined QA process." Later, on another whiteboard, or at another time, you can go back and break down what that means. This is kind of like shorthand, a saved block, or a module—whatever you want to call it. But for whiteboards or physical mapping, it’s very helpful to have.

All right, so we've got the shapes down. Now, what are we actually mapping on this whiteboard? That is our next decision. There are two ways to get to this answer. If you're working with my team or you're involved in one of our programs, we will have you start with a process org chart.

This is kind of a holistic exercise where we start to figure out all the things your business does. What this allows us to do is see everything we have in front of us and then start systemizing one by one. It's very helpful. Now, if you're not yet working with us on your organizational chart, or if you want a more piecemeal approach to dip your toes into systemization, my suggestion for you would be to start in one place—a place in your business that has both value and pain. For most small teams, which is our focus here on the channel with teams of fewer than 30, you probably know off the top of your head which parts of your business are valuable and are producing value for your stakeholders, your investors, and your clients.

You probably also know which areas are a pain in your ass because you’re unable to delegate them, they’re not getting done right, and they’re causing mistakes. You know both of these areas, so all I want you to do is ask yourself: which areas in your business have both of these things true? They are both valuable and a pain in your butt. Whatever those areas are, pick the most painful and the most valuable, and we’re going to start with that for process mapping. Once you pick your area, the next question is: what is the scope we want to focus on? What is the start and what is the stop of what we’re looking to map today? For me, I might know that the area that’s really valuable but also really painful is around the negotiation of a sale and the onboarding process. Once we have the project plan set, things feel pretty good. So that’s my indicator; that’s probably where I want this process to stop.

So for me, I want to focus on the process from booking a call to creating a project. That is the area that is producing a lot of value but can be quite painful. I’m just going to refer to this as the sales to onboarding area in my business for one particular service. Now, the distance between these two points is what I’m going to be process mapping today, and that distance will determine how detailed I need to be. In general, when you process map for the first time, we want to break it down into measurable, delegatable actions.

So, let me give you an example. As we go through the process of booking a call, having a sales call, following up on the sales call, and sending your proposals, we want to keep our process map at that level of detail. Each step that I've mentioned here is a discrete action that could be its own task and potentially owned by its own person. That is the size of the box I want to create. Let me show you an example of what that might look like.

A good step in this process might be to attend the sales call. Okay, that is a step. What we don't want to have broken down is saying hi on the call, then establishing rapport on the call, and then asking questions on the call. You know what I mean? We don't want a minute-by-minute breakdown.

We don't want a click-by-click breakdown. What we want is observable actions that will take about one work session, which could range from 20 to 90 minutes. That is the level of detail we seek in the actions that will help us bridge this gap. But anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself. We'll see more of that as we get into the example.

We've established our start and our stop, so we have our scope. We have our name for this as "Two." This is going to be our sales and onboarding, combined flow for one service. Now, once we clear off our board, we're ready to start actually process mapping.

Woohoo! To get started, we are going to write our first step inside a circle, which is "Book Call." Now notice I am not writing "Client Books Call." I'm not writing "Susie Books Call." I'm not saying "Book Call on Calendly."

I'm suggesting we book a call because technology and people are layers we can add to the process map. If it bothers you not to have that information written down and you want to get it out of your head while you're here, it won't hurt anything to jot down a little bullet point, like "Client does this" or "Calendly does this." You can add these additional notes, but that is not our focus right now. We're just trying to get the actions down. In our case, we know this ends with the project plan created.

So we've got our start and our stop. We're ready to begin filling in the process map, which is simply the act of asking and answering one straightforward question: What happens next? That's it. So, the client books a call; what happens next?

From here, the confirmation email. And again, I don't need to write who is sending it, who receives it, or anything; just that there's an email. If I want to leave a note to make sure I don't forget something, I can write it here. Once we have this step, we want to ask ourselves again: what happens next after the confirmation email? Are there reminder emails going out?

If there is nothing, guess what? We move right on to the next step, which is when the call happens. Voila! What happens when there's a delay? In some schools of process mapping, you’ll see a half-circle icon appear to indicate a delay, or that we need to wait until certain moments.

My approach, and what I would suggest you do, is to keep it a little bit simpler. Rather than introducing more symbols, I want you to think about the purpose of the delay. Is the delay itself a valuable action? In the case of baking bread, the delay of waiting for the bread to rise is an important step in the process. Similarly, we need to ensure that the delay or waiting for the dough to rise is incorporated here. Now, in the case of a sales call or most other processes, is there value to be generated between the confirmation email and that call? No, the delay is there. Yes, we could start to worry about that if we wanted to, but right off the bat, on our first process map, if it is not an active effort, I would not bother mapping it. Instead, my next step will be to call, not wait for a call—just call. Now, once we have our call documented, we will return to our question of what happens next.

And at this point, we might arrive at a decision point. We may have one of two outcomes depending on how the call went. Therefore, we need to write down the question that will help us determine which path we are on. In this case, the question could be: Is this person a good fit? If the answer is yes, what do we want them to do?

We want to make sure we're writing the word "yes" here. And if "no," what else would we like them to do? "Yes" and "no" are going to be the most common paths you see off a decision point. However, in your business, it's okay if there are other options as well. The only rule is that they are mutually exclusive, so there cannot be any overlap.

Once we have this decision point in place, we want to ask ourselves what happens next in each scenario. I like to follow the “yes” or preferred path and keep working on that until we reach the outcome. Then, we can come back to our deviations and discuss those. I prefer my “yes” path to go straight across, if possible, on a whiteboard, or at least upward. The deviations that take me away from my desired outcome I like to show going downward, to remind me that this is not the path I want to take.

So, that way I can see the desired action and non-desired action visually on the map. Again, it's nice to spread these out, but when you're on a physical whiteboard, just make do with the space you have. It's okay if it's ugly; what matters is you get it out of your head. Now, for the sake of example, I'm going to fast forward through completing the rest of this map. All right, so fast forward, I finished my process mapping.

For this very simple process, you can already see how there are a lot of arrows going all over the place, which can feel a little chaotic. However, if you are someone who enjoys using a physical whiteboard, I'm assuming you somewhat embrace that chaos, because that is the beauty of the whiteboard. What I want to do now, now that I think I'm done, is to perform a few checks. Number one: do all my steps connect to the endpoint in some way? So, on the preferred path, if I have all the desired outcomes, do I reach the final outcome?

Start to finish. Yes. Check. Second check. Do all of my diamonds have mutually exclusive paths that are labeled?

So let's just look at this. We see an error right here. Are they a fit? Yes or blank? Now I could assume that "blank" means not yes, but let's be clear.

We're going to change this to "no." Check the other ones here: "yes," "no," "yes," "no."

That one's good. Yes. No. We want to make sure that all of our diamonds have these details added in. In step three, we want to look at this map.

Go through the steps in our heads as if we're doing it and say, "Hmm, is there anything that I am doing or the client is doing in this case—which is client-facing—that is not reflected here?" So, let's go through the steps: one, two, three. Yes, client-facing aspects that are not reflected here. So, we need to go through the steps.

One, two, three. Yep, nope, okay, this looks like everything. If we do catch something like, oh, we send a reminder email, add that baby in it. It is okay that this isn't going to be a beautiful map; it will be by the time we're done. What's important is getting it out of your head and adding those steps in. Now, the next thing we want to do is look at this and start to identify anywhere we want to dig deeper. Now, you can see I already have some spots flagged on my map, like this one here where I have this kind of double box icon. We talked about that at the beginning. This double box icon refers to a process inside a process: an area or a folder where we could zoom in. If we could double-click on it, we could see more details. Because we are process mapping on a whiteboard, any of these "zoom in" moments should be noted. My suggestion to you would be to grab a notebook and write down the name of any of these double-click areas. So, for this, this could be my "No Fit" process. I want to eventually write this down.

I don't want to forget about it, so I'm going to write it in my notebook. All of these items that we're writing down are just things to add into the running list for future process mapping. For our next map, we also want to prioritize by pain points and value. If these items happen to be more painful and valuable than the other areas we had in mind, we could certainly map them next.

There's really nothing else we need to do for this particular process map other than take a picture and ensure that in our photo, we can clearly see the start and the stop. If at all possible, we might want to use our whiteboard marker to write a name for this map. We could name it "Sales to Onboarding" for example. Yours might be "Fulfillment" or "Testimonial Capture," or whatever you want to call it.

Doesn't matter at this point; just get it on there. We have started to define the major actions. Now that you have this process mapping journey down, you will repeat this exercise for as many functions in your business as you would like to start getting them out of your head. Let me take a pause here and show you how this will connect to where we are going to take this information in the future. As I mentioned at the beginning, when we work with clients, we tend to map out their entire organization first—all the processes and functions—and then, from there, we start filling them in.

What you're doing with this self-directed approach is focusing on filling in the pieces first, which is perfectly fine. There will be pieces you miss, and we’ll catch them. Those missing pieces are what we will fill in when we work together, or as you go through this exercise, you might catch them yourself. But that is where we're at. Regardless of how you get there, filling in these steps and process mapping is you defining what your business does. Once we fill in all the gaps and ensure they work together, we'll move on to uncovering why we do what we do.

That's kind of our order. We've got "what" here, "why" here. Once we have the "what" and the "why," the third place we're going to move into is the "who." So, who is responsible for each of these "what's"? We know why they matter now to the business overall.

We know how they support the broader vision, but who is responsible for each of these "whats"? Supports the "what." Who's in charge of them, in other words? This will be the doer, the actor, the person who is going to be responsible. That will be our third step: defining who that person is. From there, we're going to try to make it tactical.

Because if we stop here, all of the "what" and the "why" are going to live inside this person's brain. And that is great until that person leaves the team, gets hit by a bus, gets old, dies, quits their job, or experiences any of those other possibilities. The only thing we can guarantee about human beings in your business is that eventually, they will not be there. To avoid the potential crisis of losing that person unexpectedly, we're going to move on to Step Four, which is the "when." By the way, this whole framework I'm teaching here is something we work with clients on in our Foundations Program.

So, if you'd like help going through this full exercise and you're ready to finally systematize your business, go ahead and find the link in the description below. We can work together and take care of this whole thing. This is when we're going to start breaking down the ownership into tactical actions and delegable units, using what you've already defined. For example, in my case here, I was talking about sales calls. Well, when are the sales calls?

When booked, you might have created a process map for shipping orders. Well, when does that happen? That might be on a daily basis. For other people, they might have completed their annual process of tax preparation.

When does that happen? Annually. In fact, most processes in your business will be a mix and match of seasonal triggers and triggers from outside events. What matters is that we write that down because already just having it recorded will make the lives of your team easier. Now they don't have to memorize when they need to prepare the annual report; they know it's the second week of November. They don't have to memorize when to give a client a status update; they know it's every Thursday at 12 p.m. We are already reducing the pressure on the team and making their jobs more sustainable by getting this information documented. But we are not done because there is one more step, and I've got a marker on my right.

The "how." And this "how" is when we achieve full brain freedom, meaning if this person goes on vacation, it's completely okay as soon as we get this "how" piece down. The "how" is where we start talking about instructions. So if you remember, when we were process mapping, I told you, "Hey, don't write too many details. You don't have to make too many bullet points."

Write in English language. Keep it high level, because what I want you to capture is what happens, and by capturing it, you'll probably also tell us a little bit about when and why. We'll start capturing all these pieces, but I don't want you to go into the details of how on that process map, because frankly, there's no whiteboard big enough. Once we go through all this, we're going to loop back to the how. For this how step, we'll focus on instructions, templates, examples, playbooks—anything we need to enable anyone to achieve the what in order to understand the why. This is starting to sound like a Dr. Seuss rhyme!

But one thing I want to shout out about this "how" part is that this is not stuff created by you. We've talked about process mapping, right? I want you to process map. Wonderful. But unless you are the person responsible for this process long-term, you're done.

You don't have to do anything else here because it is your "who" that is responsible for defining the "how" and "when." So, this is kind of your handoff point. Once we define the "who," they will take the rest of it from here. The "who," your assigned owner, will be in charge of creating the SOPs, the instructions, and the templates. Your job is to provide them with anything they don't already have, and that's it. If your "who" is a super junior team member who has never done this before and this is literally the first time they've heard of it, this is what that might look like. Oops, as I drop my marker, this is you right here.

You are talking to and educating your audience on how to do each of the tasks they need to complete. You are telling them everything they need to know, and they are writing it down along with the intervals. They are diligently doing that. You are providing them with the information, and they are applying it to tools for their future selves.

If your team is already quite knowledgeable and they know everything they need to know, congratulations! You don’t have to be involved at all; they can take it from there. However, if you are in a situation where you own this process now and into the future—such as in strategic planning—then you are the one who should lead that effort. Now, consider one more scenario: what happens if you have a process that is important, someone is in charge of it, but no one knows how to execute it? It might be something new, like a financial regulation that you have to adhere to, but no one has experience with it. Well, just as you would train your team on something to empower them, there are many experts available online who can provide valuable insights. If you lack the knowledge in-house, you can find it externally through consultants, YouTubers, books, and any other resources available. These will serve as inputs to equip your team with enough information to tackle the "how" and the "when." Now, at this point, you might be thinking, “All right, this sounds great—having someone else handle these tasks. But what if they don't do it right?”

And I'm going to be honest with you—you are whispering in the ear of your who. They are taking on a new area. There will be instances where you tell them things, they write them down, and then they do them, yet something still isn't right. But that's okay because what we have established, I don't know how this happened, is this cyclical process of information—information going into a person and informing a process of when it happens and how it happens. So the new information, at first, is you teaching the person the thing.

Awesome. That feeds into the cycle. In the future, however, the information being fed in might be you catching an error. You might say, "Hey, Johnny, you packed this order. You totally screwed it up."

Here's what it's supposed to look like. Here's what it looks like now. Fix it. So Johnny is going to take that information and say, "Hmm, okay, here's what I meant went wrong, so I need to change my instructions, and I might need to change my interval of doing the activity to make sure that information is incorporated." You see how we're building a process for building processes.

We’re empowering Johnny to take ownership so that you, the universe, YouTubers, or whoever else can be involved. All we need to do is establish a vessel for capturing information. We need to ensure that Johnny sees the metrics, hears our feedback, and recognizes mistakes. As long as we have that input continuously flowing, the steps for improving the how and when will also continuously improve. This continuous process cycle is something you will be able to measure and observe because all of this activity—especially if you work with us—will be at your disposal, all within one tab of your browser. We will make sure of that; it’s one of the things we prioritize in every project.

And so you'll be able to see this whole process happening. It all starts with us understanding what actually happens. By the way, if you're enjoying this, please like, subscribe, and share this video with your network who could use a little help building business systems. Thanks for watching, and enjoy the process!