I imagine a lot of other small business owners also feel like their businesses run on the memory of their team. Someone remembers how the invoicing works. Someone else knows which spreadsheet controls the marketing budget. A client calls with a question and you think, who’s the person that remembers this bit?

That’s how most businesses run. A web of habits, hunches, sticky notes, and meetings.

But lately I’ve been circling a different thought: what if a business could be written down like software?

Not just documented in a manual that nobody reads. Not just processes scribbled in a Google Doc. I mean expressed in a way that a system could run. Repeatable. Testable. Reliable.

From Recipes to Pilots’ Checklists

We already trust codified systems in other parts of life. A recipe gives you the same dish every time. An IKEA instruction sheet (frustrating as it is) gets you the same bookshelf.

But I keep coming back to airline pilots. Every time they fly, they follow a checklist. Not because they don’t know how to fly, but because checklists make sure nothing gets missed. They take memory and ego out of the equation.

Why don’t we treat business rules with the same discipline?

The Holy Grail of SOPs

For years, standard operating procedures have been the holy grail for small businesses. Write down the process once, make it repeatable, and you’re free from reinventing the wheel every day.

The trouble is, SOPs are still highly variable. They depend on who interprets them, how well they’re followed, and how quickly they’re updated. They sit in a binder or a shared drive — useful in theory, patchy in practice.

I’m not looking to remove the human element. Quite the opposite. What I wonder is whether we can get everyone working on the business, not just in it. And maybe the way to do that isn’t another binder of SOPs, but a code base for the business.

Imagine it: a living system of instructions that can be iterated, improved, and redeployed. Post-project reviews wouldn’t just create insights — those insights could be patched into the system before the next job. Like shipping an update to your operations.

From Tacit to Explicit

In my business, it’s easy to see how much “tribal knowledge” we carry around. One developer knows how a client’s hosting environment is set up. Another knows the quirks of a WordPress plugin we’ve used on three different sites.

Business as code is about turning “the way Ben does it” or “the way Sarah does it” into instructions that anyone — or anything — can follow.

It’s not about replacing people. It’s about freeing them from repeating steps that could be automated, so their attention goes to solving problems, creating better solutions, and working with clients.

Tech already does this with infrastructure as code — servers, networks, and databases described in files that can be versioned, tested, and deployed. I can’t help wondering: what happens if you extend that idea into the whole business? Marketing as code. HR as code. Finance as code. Even culture as code.

Where It Gets Uncomfortable

Of course, this idea makes people nervous. Does codifying a business risk making it too rigid? Does it strip away the human side?

But the paradox is: codification creates freedom. Pilots don’t use checklists to turn themselves into robots. They use them so they can focus on what really matters — the unexpected, the contextual, the human judgment calls.

It’s the same in business. If you can trust the basics to run reliably, you create room for strategy, creativity, and connection.

The real challenge isn’t technical. It’s cultural.

Imagining the Possibilities

Here’s what it could look like in practice for a business like mine:

• A marketing campaign defined in a GitHub repo, deployable like a website release.
• An onboarding process that doesn’t rely on someone remembering the steps, but runs like a script: accounts set up, tools provisioned, induction booked.
• A monthly financial report that generates itself, checks for errors, and lands in your inbox the same way code gets tested before it ships.

The specifics are up for debate. But the possibilities are exciting.

My Next Step

For me, this isn’t just an abstract idea. I don’t want to leave it as a thought experiment.

My next step is to take one part of my own business and codify it. To write the first “recipe,” the first “checklist,” and see what changes.

That’s how business as code starts for me. Not as a manifesto, but as a practice.