How to Create Effective Workflows for Your Business With Sonaya Williams

Do you have an on-boarding client workflow? Do you know what to do next when some applies to work with you? Creating systems and workflows in your business should be your number one priority so you always know what to do next and have the confidence to move forward. On this episode, I'm chatting with Sonaya Williams all about how to create effective workflows in your business so you can successfully grow and meet your goals.

Sonaya Williams, founder of The CEO Partner®, a systems-driven, profits-obsessed, Digital Implementation agency that helps smart CEOs grow their business and meet their goals. Sonaya started her Digital Implementation Agency in November of 2011 while still working full-time as a Senior Financial Systems Analyst at TD Ameritrade.

Since then, she has built a multi-six-figure consulting agency and learned many good and bad lessons along the way. The CEO Partner solves the problems she knew so many business owners faced.

Her message is clear - When we create systems + gather support, we build incredible, successful businesses AND happy Lives – for ourselves and the people we love. 

Sonaya lives to help CEOs create an operational master plan for themselves and their teams, teaching efficient and effective systems and tools during the process. She was featured on Forbes, Foundr, and John Lee Dumas also interviewed her on the Entrepreneurs on Fire Podcast. https://www.eofire.com/podcast/sonayawilliams/ 

Originally from New Jersey, now living in Copenhagen, Denmark, where she runs her international business. She is grateful to be living her dream with her husband and young daughters by her side and has ambitious plans for the future.

Sonaya’s Links:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/theceopartner/ (company) https://www.linkedin.com/in/sonayawilliams/ 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheCEOPartner 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theceopartner/ 

Sonaya's website: https://theceopartner.com/

Episode Transcript:

[00:00:00] Lindsay: Sonaya, thank you so much for being on the Book Your Dream Clients podcast. I'm very excited to have you on today. 

[00:00:50] Sonaya: Thank you for having. 

[00:00:51] Lindsay: Why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself, tell everyone about what you do and who you serve. 

[00:00:57] Sonaya: Definitely. So my name is Sonaya Williams. I started the CEO partner in 2011, and essentially, basically what we do is we help service providers really create new revenue.

[00:01:12] We help them put systems and processes in place so that they're able to deliver a good experience to their clients while creating freedom in. Life as a CEO to have a business that they really dream of. 

[00:01:24] Lindsay: How did you get started with all of this? 

[00:01:27] Sonaya: Well, I bet. Computer information systems. And from there I went and worked in band and started developing different systems and operational processes.

[00:01:43] And through, I used to commute two hours each way to work two hours home from work. And, you know, there was nothing existed, eight hour Workday. So I after working so much, I knew that when I had kids. To be home and be there for them. In addition, I was raised by a single mom and later on he's told me that, like she only had the career she had because it provided it.

[00:02:10] Wasn't what she really dreamt of doing. So she was an accountant, but she always really wants to be a chef. I finished college that she decided to go back to culinary school and become a chef. So I knew that I didn't want to just be in a job because it provided for the family. I wanted to enjoy what I was doing, but I didn't know how else I could do that outside of the corporate world.

[00:02:30] So I started to just figure out what were the options and entrepreneurship was the thing that came up to me, but what could I do as an artist? So I, you know, started networking, started talking to people, seeing how I can help them seeing how, you know, I can help them in their businesses, from what I knew.

[00:02:46] And the first, the first client I had, I really, he was esteem sold like backing sheet in the copier school districts in New York city. His biggest frustration was his sales team took too long to close it. So my, because of what I did incorporate was create processes. I was like, well, do they have a checklist?

[00:03:07] Do they know what they need? Like, what are they going back for all the time? So after I worked with him for probably two months, we put some processes in place, create a, some checklists. And then within a year they were closing sales within like their first visit instead of having to go back through to.

[00:03:24] So I was like, oh, maybe I just do the same thing as you in corporate for entrepreneurs and, you know, take the processes out of their head and actually make their businesses work better. And that's how I got started. 

[00:03:35] Lindsay: I love processes and workflows. I feel like that's part of my personality. But you find it that it's missing in so many people's businesses.

[00:03:45] Why do you think that is? 

[00:03:47] Sonaya: I think people think processes like keep them locked in a box, like. Well, it's, step-by-step ideally, that's like what you want to do, but the processes are what gives you the freedom in your business to be creative, to start to think about how you can actually grow the business and be the visionary of your business.

[00:04:06] It gives you, it does give you freedom, but I feel people don't realize that until. So overwhelmed and they want to bring on team or they have team and the team still not working out. They then they're like, oh, maybe I should have processes in place, but I feel like it might be a little bit too late. Then I feel like be doing this when you first start.

[00:04:25] Even if you're a solopreneur, even if it's just you, you should be documenting what you do, because you're never going to be able to make it better unless you know what you've done. Yeah. So I think I wish people weren't so afraid of processes or writing things down because. It really gives you more.

[00:04:43] It 

[00:04:43] Lindsay: really does. I am always the first person to, to say document everything that you do for me. It's someday when you have somebody coming in to help you, or you have to revisit this again, you know what you'll be doing? I've been signing on clients for years, but I always go back to my workflow when somebody.

[00:05:03] When that first move is made, because I want to make sure that I don't miss anything. And I find a lot of times coaches don't want to put a process down. Don't don't even know that they, they don't even give themselves permission to do it and tell it actually happens. What's the biggest mistake let's use that.

[00:05:19] Let's lose a client. For example, you book your first client and you have no workflow, no process. What is a. Like a mistake that they could be making and some trouble spots that they could hit if they don't have anything documented. 

[00:05:34] Sonaya: Well, I can tell you I've experienced this firsthand being a client.

[00:05:39] So there was an event that no, I guess I was a speaker. I was speaking at an event at the beginning of September. And everything's virtual now. Some of the attendees, got a nice box with all of the things in them, everything they needed to attend the event and some attendance thing, because it arrived like after the event, that was because, and when, when the event owner producer went back to figure out what happened.

[00:06:06] Some of the new people on the team, weren't following the full process. And when the boxes are supposed to be mailed out, some people got left off the list because they weren't on the fulfillment list because one person on the team didn't follow the process. So it's like you are delivering when you don't have a process button down, you deliver different experience to your clients.

[00:06:25] And it, it it's really bad when it's at an event or it's been some sort of group and it's like, oh, I didn't get a book. I got a book, but I. And then was like a whole big conversation about why they didn't get the book. And maybe they're feeling like they're getting treated differently for the same thing.

[00:06:42] Lindsay: Well, yeah, it makes a very bad impression. First impression, especially when a lot of times that person's already made their first investment in you and you dropped the ball and you don't want that, that air to be around for the duration of your experience with that person. But I think there's like fear, like you said, there's fear of feeling boxed in.

[00:07:02] It's going to close up their creativity. Because this person might feel like, well, I'll just wing it and just let things happen. But I think that. That's not teaching the next person to do the same. And pretty soon, we're just going to have a PO we're going to create a multiple disaster because everyone is just kind of doing whatever.

[00:07:23] And I think that having that master plan for yourself is going to benefits when you bring on team members. So let's say you're, you're a solo preneur, but then you're thinking of bringing on somebody to help you in some area. How is that workflow going to help 

[00:07:36] them? 

[00:07:39] Sonaya: It will help you first identify who you need to hire, right?

[00:07:42] Cause once you have your process written down, you can see what skills are needed, what tools are needed to execute that process. And then you're better equipped to say, oh, I need this specific type of person that can do this specific type of skill to fulfill this role. Right? So it helps you. It helps you identify what, who you need to hire.

[00:07:59] And when you bring them on board, now you have something to train them with. Right? You have the process written down. They can get fully trained in executing that process. And it's not a, oh, okay. I did this first step now. What's next. Okay. Now what's next, right? Because you're bringing this person on to free you up and give you more time.

[00:08:17] So that one, you can get some ROI on this new member that you brought on the team, but if they're interrupting you every single step along the way, then you're really not getting any, any of your time back or that oh, that you're paying them. 

[00:08:30] Lindsay: I think that is that's something that's not paid attention to a lot is.

[00:08:34] Yeah. There's a lot of noise out there too. And bring in a team member, bringing your first VA, but people don't realize that it takes a lot of work to set them up successfully. So again, documenting everything right now, we'll help you do that in the future. When you do bring somebody on. Because you can always say, just refer back to the workflow.

[00:08:54] Everything should be there. And of course you can always fill things in and then that's going to make your new team member feel taken care of and not feel like they're on their own as well, or maybe they are afraid to ask. They don't want to take more time away from you. So building the workflow for yourself, building workflow for team members, what other kinds of systems are you finding are really helpful, especially for coaches in general.

[00:09:18] Sonaya: Yeah. I think one of the biggest systems that coaches need is how do you fulfill on your product? So, or your service? Like how, how does that look like once a month, week to week so that you're delivering a good experience for every person. And then as you start to grow your business or your coaching practice, you can see where you can outsource or delegate or train someone else to do some of those processes or some of that fulfillment.

[00:09:44] I think another big one is. So I know when I left my corporate experience to start business, I, you know, I didn't realize I would have to do sales, fulfillment and marketing, do all, do it all. But having my sales process down because I, it really helps me when I am in the sales process. Check all the boxes.

[00:10:07] Like I make sure they fill out the questionnaire. I then make sure that I reviewed that questionnaire and then it gets approved and, you know, I have a process to follow so that when I go back to that sales flow or that lead, it's like, I know where I left off and I know where to carry on. And that's what was better sales.

[00:10:28] Lindsay: And I, I suppose that builds a confidence level too, that you always know what's coming up next. 

[00:10:34] Sonaya: It does. Definitely because, I mean, my background isn't sales, I'm not, you know, the best sales person, but now I have this process is I know what to say. I know how to sell my service, but it, when I have this process written down, I can now.

[00:10:49] Be more confident in following process. Cause I know it works. It has closed many clients just follow the process and you will get more clients basically is what I say. 

[00:10:59] Lindsay: I like that. What are your favorite tools to use? When you're creating workflows and documenting everything. 

[00:11:07] Sonaya: Yeah. So I like to keep it simple.

[00:11:10] Right? I, we document everything in a Google doc. And then, so the age process processes documented in its own Google document. And then what we found over the years is Google drives can get messy. So we have multiple folders in there for like each department, but to have the workflow actually into our process, into my daily workflow, we've created this dashboard and the dashboard links to all of our processes.

[00:11:37] And it's a simple like dashboard that says it's by department. It says, here's the process who owns it. And when it was last updated and the reason that's important for us is because as the business continues to grow your processes, grow your systems grow, and you may outgrow your team, but. We're able to then see when things were last updated and who's responsible for updating it.

[00:11:59] So I had an experienced I would say. Where I lost a lot of money because I decided to take a vacation at the time I had met my husband and we went to France for a week and I had ever taken since I started my business. And at the time I had to retake 14 members team and you know, in my head they were all trained.

[00:12:23] They were all prepared and ready for me to take this time off. But when I was coming back on the, the, your train back to London, I got emails from clients basically saying. You know, things weren't happening as if you were here, you know, a lot of balls are being dropped, what's going on. And I'm like, how is this possible?

[00:12:41] And then it turns out that a lot of our processes weren't updated our tools that we use at that time, weren't updated in the process. So whenever the team had questioned, they were trained to slack me to get answers. But if I'm not there, they can't get these answers. It ideally they would go back to the process, but the process wasn't updated.

[00:13:02] So there was a lot of balls dropped and it was because our process, we had grown up with processes we had, and we didn't keep them up to date. So now we update our processes every quarter and there's a person responsible for updating them, like project processes, technology processes, like there's someone on the team that's responsible for updating them all and making sure they're where they should be.

[00:13:22] Okay. 

[00:13:23] Lindsay: That not having somebody to go to when you have a question. Yes. That that's a big trouble spot. Right? So I think we always learn from bad experiences, some for some really great lessons. So we have a lot of coaches who are listening, who are just starting, and they probably know that they should have workflows for discovery calls, bringing in clients, social media, their blog, all of these things, but it feels really overwhelming because that's a huge.

[00:13:50] Tasked to complete. Can you just kind of walk them through how to take some small steps so they can get started? 

[00:13:59] Sonaya: So I think the first thing you should do is start writing down just a list of the things that you do every day, every week, every month, just a simple list. And then as you're doing those processes, so sales, client fulfillment, all of those things.

[00:14:14] You can either record your screen, like using loom as you do it, because what you'll have then is you'll have a video library of how you execute your processes. The other thing you can do is in a Google doc, right? Step-by-step how you do it. Right. You can also take that video and get it transcribed because then you would have a video and a transcription of your processes and how you do that.

[00:14:39] But I think the best place to get started to get started is by just creating a simple checklist of what you do and then start documenting them. One-off we, like I said, we use Google docs to document everything. And then we do a lot of video recording in the room as well. 

[00:14:56] Lindsay: And so if so, no one has booked a client before and they don't even know what this process is going to look like.

[00:15:02] Do you recommend, they just assume they are and go through an ideal process or should they wait until they book their first time? 

[00:15:10] Sonaya: I think you should look at what you want your process to be. And then you can have something that you've tried like, or that you want to try, and then it will evolve, right?

[00:15:20] Cause I feel to work in your business and as you continue to grow in your business, your processes will evolve and you'll be iterating and doing them over and over and over for the rest of your life and your business. 

[00:15:32] Lindsay: Yes. I always say we're fine tuning everything at all times. 

[00:15:37] Sonaya: At all times we are, I feel like it's best to have something for you to get started with.

[00:15:42] So, you know, like I said, when you first start to sell, you might be so nervous and you're like, well, what do I do next? I don't remember write down the process to what you think you wanted to be, but don't that it's not in stone. You can change that and you will change it because as you continue to sell and get better, 

[00:16:04] Lindsay: Yeah, just start somewhere.

[00:16:05] Don't wait for it to actually happen because you're going to there, you're going to have all kinds of different feelings when it's actually moving and you're actually communicating with somebody and you're going to be like, oh my gosh, what do I say next? What do I do? And I think it's really important to follow us.

[00:16:20] And I, as advice of what do you want it to actually be in your mind? How do you actually want it to feel like when you're doing it? And it can be. Puts you in a different place, a different mindset because my mindset is everything right. And we don't, we don't realize that as we're, you know, working on the backend of our business mindset is an evil.

[00:16:40] Something that came to my head for years, but I didn't even know it was important. It was boring for me to think about mindset because it wasn't something I could actually do and click and create. But once we put ourselves in the space of we're, we're selling, we're booking clients, we're putting out content.

[00:16:58] We're already in that it really helps you put yourself in the space of a coach who is actually doing these things. And I think that's a great exercise to do. So your clients who are just coming to you because they don't have any processes or workflows and they're struggling, how long does it usually take to kind of get a good book of processes going for them?

[00:17:20] Sonaya: Oh, we usually work with our new client. And 90 day timeframes and we kind of help them put together sales process, fulfillment process, and like kind of onboarding and offboarding those bulk of processes. And we can get those done in 90 days. And the reason I say 90 days, cause I mean, you can sit down and do them in a month if you were that dedicated, but we want clients to actually go use it and.

[00:17:50] Back to us and say, well, this worked and this didn't work. And one of the things I like to stress is you want to have a processes, a documented process before you look at the problem, because if your process is broken and you put technology on top of that, it will completely show all the brokenness that you have.

[00:18:10] So we like to have our clients tried their processes before we then go and automate, figure out ways we can audit. 

[00:18:16] Lindsay: I think that's very smart because like you said, lots of things could happen. I like how you don't just set it up and then leave them. You actually want them to make it happen, test it out.

[00:18:27] I'm sure you fine tune things and then you automate it once. You're once everyone's happy. I love that. So when a coach puts something in place by themselves, And you run through it and you can edit it. I li I like the Google doc approach and I like how it's not, you need these fancy bells and whistles to actually do this.

[00:18:46] Cause I think there's a lot of, a lot of, a lot of that out there. You can literally just use a Google doc. I love that. Talk about offboarding, not a lot of people. Talk about that. Can you talk about offboarding clients? What's a, what's a process that's kind of used quite a bit with your company.

[00:19:02] Sonaya: Yeah. So off-boarding. It's like the opportunity to get referrals and testimonials. That's how I look at it. And also to get your clients to figure out, to get feedback from your clients and you can figure out how you can improve your service. So the way we offered our clients, basically we have a next best steps.

[00:19:22] Call is what we call it. And we review our scope of work from the original project we reviewed. And the milestones for the project. And then from there, we kind of say like, here's what we think is the next best step for you. And it can be something usually either that they can do on their own, or it's an opportunity for us to work together again, as an upsell.

[00:19:44] Here's what we can do with you. If you choose to have us do this for you. And then we also ask if they've loved this experience. Is there anyone else that they know that, you know, would enjoy the same experience? Like they would refer to us kind of thing. And then we also ask them for a testimonial and then part of our, like for us, our offboarding process, doesn't just end up that call.

[00:20:04] We then check in with them in 60 days and 90 days just to see how their processes are going, how things are working and if there's anything else we can support. Hmm. 

[00:20:13] Lindsay: I love that. And I like how you have it scheduled in to check on them. What do you use for your calendar for reminders in your office, in any of your processes?

[00:20:24] Sonaya: So we, that's a tricky question. Something like that. W the checkup 60 days and 90 day checkups, we add in, we have a project in our teamwork. So for project management, we use a tool called teamwork and we have an off-board. We have. Project. And inside there, we have the checkpoint of 60 days and 90 days for the client.

[00:20:47] For our calendaring, we use Google calendar and then for actually booking meetings, we use a tool called booklet. And that works because it allows us to have like different pages and we nurture, we can nurture people through their well, 

[00:20:59] Lindsay: interesting. I've never heard of that. I have to check that out.

[00:21:03] I L I love processes and systems and workflows, and I know so many other coaches do, and it, it always inspires me to revisit what I have to make sure that that's working. Because I always say if it's not in front of me, Ana, for example, for mine, if it's not there it's not happening. So I think it's so important as our plates get even fuller as the days and weeks and months go by to have those in place.

[00:21:26] It's going to free up so much time and give you so much more freedom in your business. So where can people find out more about your company and your agency, what you do and how they can follow you? 

[00:21:39] Sonaya: So you can find out more about me@theceopartner.com. I also have a free gift, which is called the get paid guide and I'd built my business through referrals.

[00:21:50] And part of that offboarding process is how we get that. But we also have different ways of getting in front of people. So they get paid guide really gives you resources of how to get in front of people online and offline. And it's a cheat sheet, a checklist, and a short workbook. And you can get that at an online CEO.

[00:22:06] Does. 

[00:22:06] Lindsay: Amazing. We will put that in the show notes. Of course. Sonaya, thank you for being a guest on the show. This was a very fun episode and it's inspiring me to look at mine, my workflows, and I hope this inspires everyone else because it is really important. So thank you for spending time with us today.