There are few things more annoying than realizing I’m figuring out something I’ve already figured out before.

Not doing the same task again. That’s part of running a business. I’m going to send another client email. I’m going to categorize another transaction. I’m going to onboard another client. I’m going to sit down and create another week’s worth of content. The repetition itself doesn’t bother me. What bothers me is getting halfway into something and realizing, Wait. I’ve done this before. Why the heck am I starting from scratch again?

For a long time, that’s exactly what I did with emails. Someone would book a consultation with me, and I’d write an email telling them what to expect. Then someone else would book a consultation, and I’d think, I know I’ve written this before. So I’d dig through my Sent folder, find the previous email, copy it, change the person’s name and whatever needed to be personalized, and send it along.

Same thing after the consultation. I’d written some version of the follow-up before, so back into Sent I’d go. Eventually, I found wording I really liked, and that became the email. Not officially, of course. It wasn’t sitting in a nicely labeled template document somewhere. It was just the email I kept digging out of Sent because Past Lettie had already figured out how I wanted to say it.

Pricing wasn’t much better. I didn’t have one document that clearly laid out my services and what I charged for them. I was figuring out the language as I went, tweaking things here, explaining something differently there, and generally making the entire process harder than it needed to be. I do not recommend this particular business strategy.

Last summer, I finally pulled the whole consultation process together. I created one document with the series of emails I regularly needed: You’re booked, here’s what to expect. Your call is tomorrow. Great call, here’s my recap and what I suggest you do next. I had two slightly different versions of that follow-up depending on what came out of the conversation, and my pricing and service language was finally consistent.

It was wonderful. I didn’t have to remember how I’d worded something three clients ago or search through Sent hoping I could remember enough about the person to find the right email. I had already done the thinking. Now I had somewhere to start.

And then this spring, I pulled up those templates, read through them and thought, I don’t like this anymore. The business had changed. My services had changed. More importantly, the way I talked about the business had changed. The emails weren’t necessarily bad, and they’d done their job for months. They just didn’t sound quite right anymore.

So I changed them.

I think that’s where I started to realize there was a difference between having a process and being stuck with one. I’d created those templates specifically so I wouldn’t have to start over every time someone booked a consultation. Changing them didn’t undo that work. I wasn’t back in my Sent folder searching for an email from six months ago. I already had the bones. I just needed to change what no longer fit.

Some things I’ve created have barely changed at all. My client onboarding process is still pretty darn close to what it was when I first formalized it. Billing hasn’t really changed. The way I actually work through a bookkeeping client’s accounts, categorize transactions, and get to their P&Ls is largely the same because those processes work. I’ve adjusted the frequency as my client load has grown, but I haven’t felt some burning need to reinvent the actual work just because I’ve been doing it the same way for a while.

Other things have changed a lot, and this weekly content is probably one of the best examples.

Last summer, I started with a 12-week content plan. There was a process. There were topics. There was a general idea of what I wanted Backwoods Consulting to sound like and what I wanted to talk about. If I pulled up those first posts and compared them to what I’m publishing now, you’d absolutely know they came from the same person and the same business. But you’d also see the progression.

We’ve figured out what works. We’ve figured out what doesn’t. We’ve gotten much more specific about voice and tone. The graphics have developed their own identity. And these weekly…articles? Essays? Blogs? Whatever the heck we’re calling them…have developed a process of their own.

That process didn’t appear one afternoon because I sat down and decided exactly how every future piece of content should be created. It developed because I kept doing the work. Something worked, so we kept it. Something sounded weird, so we changed it. Something technically worked but made the process harder than it needed to be, so we stopped doing it that way. I’d realize I needed more time to think through an idea before drafting it, so we’d adjust. I’d read something and think, Nope. That doesn’t sound like me at all. We’d figure out why and adjust again.

Over time, all those little decisions became a process. And the process is still changing.

I think that’s the difference between reinventing something and improving it. I don’t need to start from scratch every time something could be better. I can keep the parts that already work and change the part that doesn’t. Sometimes that means rewriting an email because I’ve found a clearer way to explain something. Sometimes I’ve gotten the same question from enough people that I realize the template should answer it before the next person has to ask. Sometimes the new version is quicker or easier. Sometimes the business has simply changed enough that the old language doesn’t fit anymore.

And sometimes I look at something and think, Nope. This works. Leave it alone.

It really does depend. Does the change make sense? Can I maintain it going forward? Does it actually make something easier? Can I explain something better or quicker than I could before? Is it solving a problem I’ve encountered more than once? If the answer is yes, I’ll probably make the change. If I’m changing something just for the sake of changing it, I’d rather leave the darn thing alone.

The funny part is that I don’t always recognize something needs a process until I’m already irritated that I don’t have one. Usually I’m in the middle of doing something I’ve done several times before when I realize I’m once again figuring out the same steps, looking for the same information, or trying to remember how I handled it last time. That’s about the point where I start wondering why I never bothered to create a process in the first place.

Because if I’ve done something enough times to be frustrated that I’m doing it again, I’ve probably done it enough times to know at least most of what the process should look like.

That doesn’t mean I immediately drop everything and write an SOP. Sometimes I don’t have time. Sometimes I have the time but absolutely do not have the mental bandwidth to sit there and document a process while I’m trying to finish the actual work. So I make a note: Come back to this.

Then, when I’ve got the time and the brainpower, I can look at what I’ve already been doing and decide what deserves to be saved. Maybe it’s an SOP. Maybe it’s a template. Maybe it’s a checklist. Maybe it’s taking the email I’ve copied out of Sent twelve times and finally putting it somewhere I can find the darn thing without remembering who I sent it to six months ago.

I don’t need every process in my business to be perfect, and I definitely don’t need it to stay exactly the same forever. I just don’t want to keep paying for the same lesson. If I’ve already spent the time figuring out how something works, I want to keep that part. I can tweak it. Rewrite it. Add to it. Strip out something that no longer makes sense. Let it evolve as the business evolves.

But I don’t need to throw away everything I’ve already figured out just because the next version might look a little different. I’ve already built the wheel. I’m perfectly happy to keep tinkering with it. I just don’t want to keep building the darn thing from scratch.