Here's how you can start to save 10+ hours a week

Transcript

Hey, my name is Mike from Lone Wolf Unleashed.

And today in this episode, we’re going to be walking through a process from start to end on how to map it and all the things that go into identifying automation opportunities, your templates, your procedures, how you do all those sorts of things. So you can start to systemize, to free up time so you can have afternoons off.

So let’s break it down first, I need you to go and sign up for a free account at comunda IO so you can go to modler m o d e l e r.comunda c a m u n d a dot IO you can sign up there, put in your email address. This is a task engine or a workflow engine. Different SaaS platforms can use it, et cetera, et cetera.

But we’re basically just going to be using this to model processes. You can literally do it for free. The modeler component is free. So you can get started here.

Now, this is in a notation called bpmn, that’s Business Process Model Notation.

And basically what it does is it allows us to model out what a process looks like with all the different elements, how things start, what is happening within a process, the things that differ each task.

Now, because this is a podcast, it’s hard to show you what this looks like, but I do have a video on my website, which I’ll point to you towards the end of the episode that will walk you through how I’m basically doing this with the assistance of Claude.

It will basically mean that you can generate your process diagrams with just verbal commands, which is very, very helpful because it means that you don’t have to necessarily know how to model up processes, but you can end up with a process that demonstrates the type of thing that you’re talking about and need to document within your business. First things first, go to their website, Modeler Commander IO log in, create an account, and then create a project super straightforward.

And then you can create a brand new diagram and you can call that whatever you want. Right now we’re going to walk through a process called Qualify Lead.

So that is the first process off the rank when you’ve got a new lead in, and I’m going to walk you through now the types of elements and things to start to model up.

What you need to understand is being able to see a process that you are involved in come to life before your eyes as you’re having a conversation with someone is mind blowing. It’s even mind blowing today in 2025, I’m still working with teams. We’re just like, wow, you can model that up as we talk and all that sort of stuff.

It’s very, very useful to be able to point to things and have discussions about different aspects of the process while the conversation is happening. That’s a little different for you because you’re a solo operator. So I’m going to walk you through this now.

The different elements, how to make it look nice, and then I’m going to walk you through how the prompt actually will work if you’re going to be using an AI engine to help you generate these models. Number one, some technical stuff. BPMN is a notation, but really the back end of BPMN is called xml. It just uses XML code.

So if we’re able to generate XML code and we’re able to have all the shape, dimensions and placements and all that sort of stuff baked in, then we’re able to generate code which will then show us a visual diagram. The first thing that we need to think about is who is doing the job. This is where our pool comes in. It’s like a really big rectangle.

Think of a swimming pool. A swimming pool has multiple lanes. So we have a pool and we have swim lanes. The swim lanes demonstrate the role that’s involved.

And the pool is just contains all of the lanes. It’s usually a higher order of magnitude than what the roles sitting within are.

So typically you’ll have multiple roles under a department or multiple departments under a division, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Your business is not that complicated. It’s literally going to be one lane.

It’s going to be you, because you are the only one in your business doing stuff. Now, if you’re outsourcing to contractors or you’re doing outsourcing of some kind, like I do a little bit of.

You might want to bring those people into their own lanes instead of having it out to external parties and things like that. But we will get there as we go along. The second thing is we want to think about why this process is important.

So before we start to model anything up, we want to think about what is the result that this process is going to be driving. Just keep that in the back of your mind as you start to talk about the elements and the activities that go into it. Right.

So then we want to start at the beginning. What kicks this process off? We’re dealing with the qualify lead process. And the qualify lead process kicks off when. When a lead is received.

So there’s a start event. It’s a thin circle A circle with a thin outline.

And you’re going to want to throw that on your page and call it Lead Received and then you can put a task on there. So you want to think about what do I do when I receive a lead? What’s the first activity I do?

So the first activity in my example here again video coming later, is Log lead in CRM. So this is going to be connected to a system. I use the database icon, which is like a big cylinder.

So call that CRM or the name of the CRM that you’re using. If you’re using one, you might have a really simple setup. It might just be in Google Sheets, in which case just name it Google Sheets.

Attached to that might be a form that is used to collect that lead information. And you use the data object, which looks like a document with a folded corner.

And you’re gonna wanna put that on your model and connect it to that task. So you’ll have a task called Log Leading CRM and it will be connected to the CRM of your choice along with a data object called Lead Intake Form.

So now we’re starting to paint up a picture about what this task is. We’re utilizing a form, the Lead Intake form, and we’re putting it into Google Sheets.

When you go to improve a process, you want to be able to see what types of impacts and different changes might have on that process.

So it’s really good at the moment to be building up a baseline so you can start to paint that picture in your mind about what that is supposed to look like.

Also, if this is a new process you’ve never done before, or a new process that you’re trying to build and ideate, then it’s really, really helpful to think through the types of systems you’re going to be using, especially if you’re going to be setting up automation. This is pre automation, right? This is just understanding what the process is supposed to be. So you don’t have to build the plane as you fly.

This is just planning what the plane is going to look like once it’s in operation. Okay, so you’re going to have a circle, which is the start event.

So lead received into a task, which is a rectangle, log lead in CRM, which is going to have an arrow, then to another task called check Referral source. So you might be really interested in knowing where your different leads are coming from, whether they’re coming from referrals.

You might also then have another task called Research Prospect, which happens in a system. In this case LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

You might Google your contacts, you might search for them on socials, you might do whatever you have to do to understand what you need to understand about that lead or that prospect. And so you might even come up with some sort of sheet there about what their profile looks like.

Or you might be utilizing your CRM to document what you find, etc. Etc. So make sure that you attach your system to that task as well. Then you might set up a call with them, or you might try to reach out to them.

When you finally get on that call, you’ll have another one, another task called Assess budget range. So you might reach out to them, might be by DM or phone call. Do you have budget for this type of thing?

You know, if you’re following the Bant framework, what is it? Budget authority, need timing. And you know, if all those things are true, you might be a good fit. So assess the budget range.

And then after assessing the budget range, you’re going to want to find the diamond. And the diamond is what we call a gateway. There are different types of gateways. One has an X in the middle.

So the X is basically saying that it’s exclusive. So now we’re going to split the process. There’s going to be two paths coming out of the X diamond gateway, the exclusive gateway.

And it can only follow one or the other because it’s exclusive. So it can only follow one path or the other. And there’s going to be two tasks that come out of this gateway.

Each arm is going to be labeled with the condition on which the process will follow. Okay, so one of them will be the budget is greater than $10,000. And then we have a task after that called evaluate problem fit.

The other arm coming out of that gateway will be budget is too low. So there’ll be a second task that then happens if it follows that path, which is just to politely decline. You know, I don’t think we’re a good fit.

Thanks for reaching out. Really appreciate your time, et cetera, et cetera. Might just be in an email.

If it is, then, you know, attached to that will be another document called email templates. It might be a script that you have to write, in which case there’s another artifact that you have to generate or think about just so it’s consistent.

Now we have two branches of a process that are coming out at the point of sending that decline to a customer. You might want to have an end event. So it’ll be a circle, which is like the start event with a Thin one. The end event has a thick border to it.

So if we go back up to where the budget was greater than $10,000, there’s going to be another task now called evaluate problem fit. This is where you figure out whether the prospect really has the problem that you solve.

And if you don’t solve for it, then again it’s going to be, oh well, you know, maybe there’s some alternatives that we can send them or maybe it’s another decline or it’s not a good fit. Or it is a good fit. There’s another gateway there, the problem fit. It’s a good fit. You know, we’re branching off. Is it a good fit, is it not?

It is a good fit. Let’s calculate their lead score. So maybe there’s a qualification scorecard of some kind of.

Maybe they have really high budget, maybe have really low budget that will affect their score, things like that. So there’s another artifact or a document there called the qualification scorecard if they are qualified. So we’ve got another gateway.

It’s another question. Could one condition be true over another? It will determine what activity you’re taking on.

You’re going to have now whether the lead is qualified or not. And if they are, you’re going to schedule a full, full discovery call.

Then there is another gateway which is within 24 hours or there’s a delayed response. It might be another one that sort of. You schedule it again or you might go off to another process now which is conducting the discovery session.

Then you’ll lead into another process with its own set of activities called conduct discovery session.

Now, if any of these branches aren’t right, it will just mean that the lead is not qualified and that we just need to change the status of that lead in our CRM and that’s it. Now you can see that you’ve got a process end to end and you’re able to see the tasks sort of laid out.

So we’re just going to go with the happy path for now. So I’m going to reiterate. Okay. Start event done by consultants or sitting in the consultant lane.

Log, lead and CRM using the lead intake form, Check referral source, research prospect, assess, budget range if they’re a good fit, evaluate the problem fit if they’re a good fit. After that, calculate the lead score if they’re qualified, schedule a call if they’re scheduled a call, conduct the discovery session.

Now, how do we automate this? How do we make this really fast? I can already see that there’s Going to be some opportunities here for systemization. What are those?

First of all, we have a log lead in CRM, there’s a lead intake form.

So we’re going to assume here that there’s a form somewhere, maybe on a website that someone has filled in to express their interest or, you know, contact me, et cetera, et cetera. So we have a form. What we want to be able to do is we want that form to inject directly into the CRM.

We don’t want to have to get an email with those contact details and then have to pick up that email and then enter them into a spreadsheet or a database. What we want is for the form to go directly into the database. So that’s automation point number one. How do we make that happen?

There’s a lot of solutions. CRM should be able to do this out of the box, basically.

But you might have a Google form that does this into a Google spreadsheet that is totally appropriate for a small operation. So don’t worry too much about your software stack at this point. Then we’re going to check the referral source.

The referral source might actually just be a field that you have on that form.

If we’re going to check this referral source here, we might just delete this one and you just go, well, we’re just going to include that on the lead intake form. Where did you hear about us? You know that is the referral source, right? It’s where did you hear about our business?

So you could totally just delete this task off and fix it with that. Okay. Then there’s research prospect. So what details do you need to research that prospect?

First name, last name, maybe a link to their account or LinkedIn account, things like that. How do you research them? Do you research them at all or do you wait for a discovery call to do that?

How much information do you need to be able to conduct and land a sale? I highly recommend that you still do this.

Although there is now a whole bunch of AI stuff going on out there now through the use of N8N or other automation platforms that allow you to basically send an agent out on the net to gather information.

In this case, if we’re looking at LinkedIn profiles, then they might be able to scrape some information off there to feed back into a document or your CRM. I totally think that that’s possible. Definitely something to consider on that one.

Now we’re assessing the budget range, so can this person afford your services? The only real way to do that is to ask and you might actually have to wait for the discovery call. Here again, this is just an example process.

So how are you finding that out? It might be initial phone call, it might be an email exchange. How are you doing that? How do we evaluate whether they’re problem fit or not?

You could combine these tasks. You could ask do you have budget for this and is this a problem that you’re experiencing? Then you can move through.

So you might combine those tasks and go, well, we’re going to hit that in one go. We’re not going to have two tasks for that.

We’re going to hit that with one task and we’re going to evaluate the prospect essentially then we have a lead score. So based on those responses that will go back into the CRM. That’s fairly straightforward. And then you have a schedule the discovery call.

So how are we doing this? At the moment there’s no system allocated to that task. But you might do it through something like calendly.

The Microsoft Stack has a way to book that. You might just do that manually. You might just do that on the phone.

If it’s value adding and people are showing up to meetings that you book manually versus sending out calendarly links, it might actually be worth doing that. Have a think through your numbers.

Is it more effective to be doing this myself or is it acceptable enough for me to be sending out a link that people can book into? Okay, so definitely be thinking about that. Have a think about your numbers as you’re going through as well.

Could this positively affect the outcome of this process which is really to book a call? Right? We really want to book a call in this process, but we don’t want to put that at significant risk.

If sending out the link is going to deteriorate people from signing up or booking a meeting. There’s definitely things to consider there in terms of how successful the process is versus how much time we’re saving.

Booking the call could be a five minute job, but if you automate that and you put it in the hands of the prospect and you don’t book five sales meetings a week, that’s not actually worth that. If your conversion rate’s 20% now, just because you saved 25 minutes in that week on those five calls, you’ve lost a deal.

Think about the numbers that you’re going through to make that worthwhile. Then there’s, you know, where it’s not a good fit. How are we actually updating the records?

You’ll go into your CRM, you’ll update the record to, you know, not qualified or not a good fit or not suitable, those sorts of things. So now we have a process. We’re thinking about how we’re automating that. We have a lead form.

It’s punched into your CRM directly without you having to do it manually. How much time has that saved you already? This month, this year, within the next 12 months? How do we evaluate it?

Might be an email that’s sent straight away. Once it hits your CRM, there might be an email that goes to the prospect. Thanks for your inquiry. Would like to know more about xyz.

Can you give us more details about ABC that will determine whether or not they have the budget, whether they’re a good fit, that sort of stuff, or it might be a phone call. You have to think through what each one of these things looks like. So now we have a process scope. We’ve got a little bit of a scope for automation.

We also now have identified some artifacts that we can go away and standardize. Okay, so we have email templates.

If we’re sending an email to decline a lead because they don’t fit, write it up, save it, use it, reuse it all the time. You can then pick up that when you go to automate it, you can pick up the template. It’s already done for. You don’t have to write it again.

It’s standardized and you know it works because you’re already using it. You’re already doing it. There’s also the systems that we’re using. Okay, so you standardized it. Where can I find the information for this, etc. Etc.

Just because you’ve decided not to hire today does not mean that tomorrow you’ll be in the same boat.

Circumstances change over time and having this stuff ready for people to be able to see and use when they get hired into a business, I mean, it reduces training, onboarding costs, etc. Drastically. You can also then go through and start to document how you do each thing. So how do I research this prospect?

What’s the type of information, what’s going through my head, all that sort of stuff. Document that into a procedure. You’re going to go, well, Mike, I’m a solo operator. I know what I’m doing. You might. A lot of people don’t.

And if you’re one of those people who doesn’t do the same thing every time, don’t be ashamed of that. It’s normal. That’s why we document what we do, so you can check against the procedure as you go.

Am I doing What I said I was going to do, am I doing this to the standard that I would expect anyone else to do it to? Oh my goodness. I’ve got so much time, I’m spending so much time on this stuff. I don’t have enough. Time is a common thing.

And you rush through it and then you don’t get good results because you rush through it. Document it, check your work against what you expect against that procedure for those tasks. So we’ve got several things.

We have a process, we have tasks, we have documents that we’re going to template. Those tasks are going to have their own procedure and those systems we’re going to connect to each other through the means of automation.

You can see now that the process map is not useless. It is scoped out for us. A pathway, a roadmap for improvement so that we can start to free up time. What are we going to do with that free time?

I have customers that have used that free time to make more sales. I have customers that have used that free time to take more time off. The choice is yours. As Captain Planet said, the power is yours.

You can go out and you can start to improve your processes, systemize your business so you can start to free up that time to take that time off or do whatever it is that you want to do with it. What is the thing that you said that you were going to have when you started your business? Was it freedom, flexibility, all those sorts of things?

Systemizing, understanding how your processes work is going to really make it so you can have those things. Without this stuff. You can’t do that. You’re going to continue working the 60, 70 hour weeks that you’re doing now. You don’t want to do that.

I’m going to leave you with that. On my website, Lonewolfunleashed.com my first map. That’s Lonewolfunleashed.Com forward slash, my first map.

You can find the prompts that I use with Claude. I’m using Claude. You can try it in ChatGPT. I cannot guarantee results. What it does is you can brainstorm a process with it.

You can put in the prompt, it will generate a BPMN diagram that you can then import into Commander and you can start to use that. You can move the things around on the screen, you can save them, you can xyz.

There’s also a documentation part where you can type in, you know, if you select a different task, you can type in element documentation into each element. If you’ve got a procedure or you Want to make some notes against things you can do that in the system.

And then all I would do is just take up, say your document template.

I’ll create a Google Document or a Word Doc with that title, save it in a documentation folder and then simply take the link about where that is saved and put that in your documentation off your process map. So they are connected.

So you might have your process map open while you’re running a sale and you’ll click on your thing and you can go to that document and it’s all linked through and you can sort of see how it all connects. There’s traceability there. So I highly recommend you check that out. Go to Camunda, sign up for an account. It’s free.

I’m not affiliated with them at all. It’s just a free tool that you can use to get started.

If you want to just try out BPMN for the first time without having to worry about accounts or anything like that. You can literally do that at BPMN IO and you can just create models there. They do not save to the cloud or anything.

You have to download models that you create there if that’s the way you want to go. But doing it through the Camunda account means they’re just saved in the cloud so you don’t have to worry about that.

That’s a way you can get started. I haven’t covered off on other tools like Obsidian that I use today. They are generated in a different way through JSON.

I’m hoping to create some resources for how to do that because that’s where I’m keeping all my maps and my notes today. But if you want to get it started in a free tool to today, you can absolutely do that.

Feel free to listen to the episode again to go through the process that I did. Have fun. And if you have any questions or need any help, just feel free to reach out to me.

You can do that at [email protected] thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate your time.

You could have been doing a million other things, but you decided to hang out with me instead and talk about how to map some processes in bpmn. And for that I’m very thankful for you and your time.

If you want to join a community of like minded solopreneurs who want to systemize their business and help each other understand how to systemize, automate, use AI, all those things to create efficiencies so you can free up time. I am running an expression of interest to join the Lone Wolf pack. You can do that at lonewolfunleashed. Com. That’s lonewolfunleashed. Com.

And you can sign up for an expression of interest there to join. Yeah. Thanks, everyone, and I’ll see you next week.