Why Your Business Needs a Visual Brain

A Brain Dump

April 26, 2025

This will be an ongoing series. Every once in a while, let’s say every couple of months, I’ll just brain dump. These posts will be raw, a bit chaotic, and the sections won’t flow completely. But they’ll be packed with honest insights straight from the trenches of running (and starting) a business.

Without further adieu, see for yourself

Ever feel like your business ideas are bouncing around your mind with nowhere to land?

Yeah, me to.

Today I want to talk about that messy gap between the chaotic, idea-filled entrepreneur's mind and the structured world of business execution.

It's exactly where most of us get stuck, including me.

Our brains are terrible at storage.

"Your brain is for having ideas, not holding them," as David Allen puts it.

Yet how many of us try to keep entire business systems locked in our heads. The mental equivalent of trying to organize your taxes using only sticky notes stuck to your computer screen.

The Bridge Your Business is Missing

About a year into thinking about and building Simple Flo, I've become obsessed with what I call "business visualization” because I see how it will transform the way small businesses operate.

Here's what happens when business ideas stay trapped in your head:

  • You forget crucial workflow steps

  • You can't see connections between different systems

  • You struggle to explain processes to others (or AI assistants)

  • You waste mental energy trying to remember rather than innovate

Think about learning a new skill.

Would you rather read a dense instruction manual or watch a YouTube video showing the process?

The video wins every time because visual information requires less mental processing. Your brain doesn't need to translate text into mental images, it can immediately grasp what's happening.

Research backs this up: humans are highly visual creatures. We process images up to 60,000 times faster than text and remember them longer thanks to the "picture superiority effect." This isn't just intuition, it's how our brains are wired.

So why do we insist on running our businesses through only text documents and spreadsheets?

The Power of Visual Thinking

Studies show that solopreneurs who externalize complex ideas into diagrams or visuals can more easily spot patterns and priorities, leading to faster, more confident choices. In one case, simply improving a cluttered dashboard's design boosted decision accuracy by 18%.

Think about what an 18% improvement in decision accuracy could mean for your business over time. That's not just better choices—it's also faster execution and fewer costly mistakes.

By the way, I learned this from running a deep research report (highly recommend trying it. Oh, and here’s the full report.

From Functions to Workflows: Seeing the Full Picture

Before we go further, I want to be clear on how I think about things.

Functions are the big categories of what your business does:

  • Marketing

  • Sales

  • Finance

  • Operations

Systems are repeatable processes within each function:

  • Lead Capture (Marketing)

  • Invoicing (Finance)

  • Onboarding (Client Delivery)

  • Hiring (HR)

Workflows are step-by-step breakdowns of how a system works:

  • Invoicing Workflow:

  • Create invoice

  • Add pricing

  • Send personalized message

  • Track payment

  • Follow up

When these exist only in your head (or scattered across various tools), you're limiting your business's potential growth. You can't improve what you can't clearly see.

The FloBoard Solution

This is where digital whiteboards, what I call FloBoards, come in. They serve as your business's visual brain, allowing you to:

  1. Dump scattered ideas into a space where they can be seen and organized

  2. Connect different elements visually so you can understand relationships

  3. Include multiple media types (text, images, videos, documents) all in one place

  4. Navigate quickly from high-level strategy to detailed workflows

  5. Share knowledge with team members without lengthy training sessions

When I was building my food business, Tuckedito, we hit a wall trying to coordinate kitchen processes. Preparing sauces while cooking carnitas, timing different elements of meal prep—it was chaos trying to keep it all straight in our heads.

Putting it all in a FloBoard was an eye opener for me. Suddenly, we could see entire systems in one canvas. Even better, we could attach videos showing exactly how each step should be performed.

The Future of Business Building

Looking ahead, I believe this is how one person + AI businesses will scale to $100 million companies. As AI becomes more integrated into our operations, it needs to understand how our businesses work. A visual representation gives AI the context it needs to make meaningful contributions.

Think about it.

Would you rather explain your complex marketing funnel to an AI assistant through paragraphs of text, or simply point to a visual canvas where every step is mapped out with examples?

Here's what fascinates me: visualizing your business is a forcing function. It compels you to truly understand which systems are core to each function and what workflows make up those systems.

Once you understand these, you can more easily dissect your business and pinpoint what isn't working.

The Outsider Test

Ask yourself this question: Could someone from outside your business come in and understand how everything works well enough to take over in a couple of weeks?

If your answer is "no," you've identified your vulnerability.

This isn't just about creating pretty diagrams, it's about building a business that exists beyond the limitations of your memory. It's about creating systems that can scale without requiring your constant mental energy to maintain them.

Why Don't More Businesses Do This?

If visualizing business processes is so powerful, why isn't everyone doing it?

Simple, because it is never an urgent matter. As small business owners, we're constantly putting out fires. The thought of pausing to document and visualize systems feels like a luxury we can't afford.

We prioritize today's urgent tasks over tomorrow's important ones. We see the immediate cost (time spent creating visual systems) but struggle to value the future benefit (time saved through clarity and efficiency).

Sound familiar?

This is precisely why I started Simple Flo. Most business owners know visualization would help, but they're already running at full speed. They need someone to build these visual systems for them while they focus on their core business.

What Your Business Brain Needs

Whether you work with us or create your own system, your business needs a visual brain. Here's how to start:

  1. Choose a digital canvas tool that allows free-form organization

  2. Start with one business function that causes the most headaches

  3. Map the systems within that function

  4. Break down the workflows within those systems

  5. Add visual elements (images, videos, color-coding) to enhance understanding

  6. Review and refine as you use the system

Remember, this isn't about creating the perfect visual system overnight. It's about starting the process of getting your business out of your head and into a format where it can grow beyond your mental limitations.

The Question That Matters

So here's what I'll leave you with:

How much mental energy are you wasting trying to remember how your business works instead of focusing on how it could work better?

Your business deserves a brain of its own. Give it one.

Until next time,

James

This will help you organize your mind and bring calm to your business, check it out.

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