Before You Automate Anything, Do THIS One Thing

Transcript

Today we are talking about templates. Yes, they can be very boring templates, but I’m going to tell you why you should get excited about them. G’day. My name is Mike.

You’re listening to Lone Wolf Unleashed, where I help you switch off sooner and live larger. So in my work with companies and with individuals, one of the main outputs of what we produce are templates.

Yes, we have our process models and we have our procedures and things like that. But the thing that is tangible, that will save you time every day of the week is the template. It is the thing that you use operationally every day.

You will only look at process maps every now and then. You will only look at procedures every now and then. Your team will only look at procedures every now and then, if we’re to be honest.

But your templates are things that are used operationally every single day.

So in this episode, we’re gonna walk through what is a template, what makes a good template, the types of things that we can be getting out of templates and the results that we can see from using the templates.

So results first. Yes. I’m working my way backwards. The results that templates can give us. I’ve just been working with the team recently.

There is a larger team, not necessarily solo operator level, but this will give you a sense. Right. And I’ll use percentages here to give you an idea, because obviously dollar figures can raise.

As you’re dealing with more and more people, the savings are bigger. There is a team that I’ve been working with, we documented their processes.

The process map identified the artifacts that we needed to produce as part of that.

So what documents we were using, which ones of those we could standardize that we could make templates for, parts of those would be things that need to be filled out. Obviously, it’s not just copy paste, it’s fill in these sections. But parts of those documents were standard.

So there were standard clauses, there were standard paragraphs.

And one of the benefits that have come out of that is that when the manager is now reviewing these reports, in this case, the template was for a report. That meant that the manager only had to review the part where the custom information was input.

So they didn’t have to review where all the standard clauses were. They didn’t have to review any of that anymore because it was standard. It wasn’t different every single time that the team produced it.

They didn’t have to write it every single time.

They only had to put in what was different about each case in this report and the savings for this ended up being a 422% increase in productivity, which is astounding. For their caseload, it has meant an amazing return in terms of the amount of time that people are spending.

The types of feedback that I got from the manager was I get to spend less time in the evenings reviewing these reports now because I don’t have time during the day. That has meant that they’ve been able to significantly reduce.

They’ve taken it down from an hour to 15 minutes as part of that process improvement journey. They’ve also reduced their overall caseload by 22%. Incredible result. Now, this is just from using the template.

I’ve taken you through some concepts in just describing that. So what does that mean? What needs to go into it?

Well, when we review a document, we want to be able to make sure that we decide and we agree on the types of information that can be standard. Because obviously we don’t want to be typing out a new email or a new letter every time that we have to send it.

So the idea is that we standardize those components and then we only change it based on what is different for the case that we are managing in that specific circumstance.

So I’ll give you another example. In a previous episode, very recently we talked about a DISC agent that I’d made and the example there was of a letter that one of the people in my program wants to be able to send politicians.

Now, in that there is a standard template that goes into that communication and we’re only changing the things in that template that apply to communicating to that particular politician. The same goes to your customers. Okay. The same goes for the other people that you know, your suppliers.

Even, for example, when you make a purchase order to a supplier that’s standard, all the same information is on there. The only thing that you’re changing on that purchase order is the item that you’re ordering.

You don’t need to put in all the other information like who your business is or who their business is or who their contact is, all those sorts of things. That stuff there can be standard.

Have a think about what that means in your business, because I’m sure there are templates that you’ve already developed. Right. It is a standard thing to be able to logically come to conclusion that is beneficial. But there might be other things there where you go.

Actually, there are more and more. I can now have a better idea about how to go away and develop those. So have a think about that for your business.

The idea here is that we’re going to reduce those time consuming tasks. When we talk about reducing admin, it doesn’t necessarily have to be about automation.

If we’re talking about automation, then what does automation need? It needs a template. But automation is not the only way to go about reducing those time consuming tasks. It can literally be a copy paste template.

It can be a document that you have open as you do your emails where you just copy paste those particular phrases, those clauses, those things like that.

Recently, a shout out to James Rose on LinkedIn. He shared a post about using hotkeys. There’s a hotkey solution out there, I’ll put that in the show notes that you can go and check out. Just about being able to put common phrases, common paragraphs, common things that you put in onto hotkeys on your computer.

There are also other solutions out there that can help you with this, such as a Stream Deck where you just click the button and the macro executes the command that it’s being programmed to do those types of things.

So if you find yourself continually writing the same phrase or using particular shortcuts on your computer, things like that, that can be a beneficial way of going about it as well.

The template is there to help you save time on those time consuming tasks. It is also a stepping stone to automation.

So when we automate something, we are basically automating the inputs and the outputs of a process. So at the moment your input will be a template as well as what other information you’re managing.

At that point in time, the automation puts those things together automatically. So the template is a requirement for being able to execute the automation.

So just developing out the template. Yes, you might go, oh Mike, I’m still doing this task manually. Like I just want to get rid of this damn thing. At the end of the day, the template is going to be a stepping stone for you getting there anyway.

What it allows you to do is if you use the template manually for a little while and not automate straight away, what it allows you to do is to learn more about using it. That will then enrich what you do with an automation.

So it’s nice not to be able to have to go straight to automation because a, you may not have the capability to do that, which is fine, that’s why you hire other people to help you with that. But also you might not have the money to be able to invest in that or you might, you know, X, Y, Z.

So it’s nice to be able to save that time immediately. Templates can be really quick to do up. These days, you can literally spin one up in Claude or ChatGPT, those types of things.

Pick your AI engine of choice. All you’ll have to do is go, here’s the information I’m collecting, here’s what I need to be able to say, here’s what I need to be able to input.

Put some placeholders where you need to input custom information, and ChatGPT and Claude will be able to do you up a template, relatively easy. So then you’ll be able to go and modify that, massage it a little bit, sort of mold it a little bit into what you’re hoping to get out of it.

At the end of the day, those things are really, really important.

So with a template, you’ll have your standard headings, you’ll have your standard phrases, and then you’re going to want to be able to highlight on there. Maybe not with literally highlight, but bold. You might want to use square brackets for all your placeholder information.

The reason why you might want to do that, particularly I use square brackets because I’m able to Control+F and find the square bracket really easily. So I can go to the next one, the next section that I need to input. So that might be something that you can think about.

Simply just highlighting something can make it. Yes, it stands out on the page as you’re manually scrolling with your mouse, but it can mean that certain things are missed or it makes it difficult to search certain things, depending on. Because there’s no standard, right? You’re just looking for the next highlighted section.

Those are some tactical ways you can sort of put on to the template that might be beneficial for you to use that template quickly because it’s not just about having sent information. Right? We want to make it as quick as possible for you to fill that document out as you go about your day.

The whole goal here is that we’re saving as much time as possible so you can make better decisions about what to do with that additional time that will benefit you. Not just your business, but also you and your life. And that’s why we’re doing this, right? That’s why we’re unleashing you. All right.

That’s why this podcast is called Lone Wolf Unleashed. We’re unleashing you from a business that’s owning you.

So go have a look at some of your tasks where you’re using documents all the time. Pick out something to templatize. Go and create your first one. Standardize whatever documentation or whatever phrases you can in that document.

Put in your placeholder text, engage with your AI agent to be able to go and do that. If you have any questions about how to do that, you can reach out to me. [email protected] Be happy to answer any questions there.

Make sure you head over into my website and join my newsletter. There will be tips for how to manage these things going out to my audience. And yeah, thank you so much for joining me today.

I really appreciate your time.

You’d have been listening to so many other podcasts today, but you decided to hang out with me and learn how to save time in your business by templating those documents. And for that I thank you and I’ll see you next week.