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If you’re a business owner, manager, or systems junkie, you’ve probably faced the agony of building SOPs that no one actually reads. Yvonne understands this pain all too well. Despite knowing the importance of SOPs, many of us put off documentation simply because the process is tedious and overwhelming.
The truth is, SOPs are one of the most essential components of business scalability, yet they’re often treated like a burden.
Between juggling client work, team management, and never-ending to-do lists, sitting down to document processes just feels like another thing to procrastinate.
But what if SOP creation didn’t have to be so painful?
What if it could be fast, simple, and—most importantly—effective?
It turns out, creating high-quality SOPs doesn’t have to be time-consuming or overwhelming. With the right approach, you can streamline your documentation process and build systems that are clear, actionable, and actually used by your team.
Let’s explore how to make SOP creation simple, efficient, and effective—without the usual stress.
Why SOPs Are Crucial for Business Freedom
Before diving into how to automate SOPs, it’s vital to understand why they are essential. SOPs are the bridge between doing everything yourself and having a business that runs smoothly and profitably, even when you’re not around. Without SOPs, tasks get repeated inefficiently, team members rely on tribal knowledge, and scaling your operations becomes nearly impossible.
But here’s the good news. SOPs don’t have to be massive 20-page documents collecting dust in your drive. The key to effective SOPs is clarity, consistency, and real usability.
The Modern SOP is Clear and Actionable
Yvonne stresses an important point: an effective SOP is clear, concise, and actually gets used. Think of it as a helpful walkthrough, not a dense manual. An optimized SOP should clearly outline:
The goals and expected outcomes of the process
The roles involved and tools required
The steps of the process, ideally broken down and supported by visual aids
Forget complex jargon. A truly valuable SOP is one that a new hire—or even an outsider—can follow without confusion. It’s a roadmap, not a puzzle.
The Game-Changer for Fast SOP Creation
Here’s where the game changes. Instead of typing every step by hand, Yvonne recommends recording yourself as you complete the process. Use tools like ClickUp Clips, Loom, or your favorite screen recorder. The trick? Narrate everything as you go—even the smallest clicks, the image sizes, or links you normally take for granted.
The more detailed your video, the better the AI can extract and interpret your workflow. Even if you forget a step halfway through, just say it out loud. This over-explaining makes your SOP draft significantly more complete.
Once your video is done, grab the transcript. Then plug it into an AI SOP builder like Claude using the MAGI interface. With Yvonne’s custom prompt, you can feed the AI your expectations for SOP structure, and let it generate a draft that includes goals, assets, steps, automations, and even quality checks.
From AI Draft to Polished SOP
While AI can give you a solid head start, it’s not perfect. Yvonne is refreshingly transparent about this. The first draft might include vague phrases or overly formal language, like “inconsistent image dimension will cause display issues,” instead of something practical like “wrong-sized images won’t show up right.”
To finalize a strong SOP:
Bring in someone who has never run the process before to read through the SOP. If they get stuck or confused, you know where clarity is missing
Replace complex phrases with plain, simple English. Clarify all steps and remove filler text
Break larger tasks into subtasks so team members understand time and effort involved
Highlight any warnings or recurring issues. For example, remind users to double-check image sizes and ensure compatibility across desktop and mobile views
By treating your AI-generated draft as a starting point and adding a human touch, you ensure your SOPs are not just technically accurate—but truly usable.
Pro Tips for Building Better SOPs with AI
Yvonne’s approach is all about practicality. Her top advice for using AI to streamline SOP creation includes:
Always review and tailor the AI’s SOP output to fit your brand, tools, and team
Store all SOPs in a centralized, easy-to-navigate workspace like ClickUp so your team knows exactly where to find them
Schedule regular reviews of key SOPs. Aim for quarterly updates to keep processes relevant and up to date
Most importantly, don’t wait for the perfect SOP. Get a draft created, get it used, and refine it over time. The power is in iteration.
Ready to Level Up Your SOPs?
With Yvonne’s method, SOP creation stops being a dreaded chore and becomes a powerful business tool. Your team gets clarity, your processes get streamlined, and you free up valuable hours every single week.
For extra help, grab Yvonne’s free ClickUp SOP template HERE to jumpstart your documentation. It’s built to integrate smoothly with the AI method and helps make SOPs a natural part of your business workflow.
Video Transcription:
Yvonne Heimann [00:00:00]:
Are you tired of spending hours creating.
Yvonne Heimann [00:00:02]:
SOPs that nobody ever actually reads? What if I told you AI could.
Yvonne Heimann [00:00:08]:
Create your perfect standard operating procedure in less than 10 minutes? Not kidding.
Yvonne Heimann [00:00:14]:
This method has saved me and my clients countless of hours. And today I’m showing you exactly how to do it. Hey there. If we haven’t met yet, I’m Yvonne Heimann, aka Yvi from askyvi.com as a system strategist and ClickUp specialist, I’ve helped hundreds of business owners transform their chaotic workflows into streamlined systems that actually free up their time. And let me tell you, the resistance to create standard operating procedures is something I hear about every single day. Even I’m guilty of it. My team will tell you how often they’ve heard me say I really need to update that SOP. Here’s the thing.
Yvonne Heimann [00:01:00]:
SOPs are your bridge between you doing everything yourself over and over and over again and having a business that can run without you being involved in every single little mini detail. SOPs are essential if you want freedom in your business, but they don’t have to be this massive time consuming project that you dread every single day. The method I’m sharing with you has literally transformed how my clients approach documentation. Making it simple enough that they actually want to create those SOPs so they can hand off the work. So before we dive into the AI method, let’s quickly clarify what makes an.
Yvonne Heimann [00:01:51]:
Effective SOP in the first place.
Yvonne Heimann [00:01:54]:
Because even the best AI tool won’t help if it doesn’t know what we are aiming for. An effective SOP is clear, concise and.
Yvonne Heimann [00:02:04]:
And actually gets used.
Yvonne Heimann [00:02:05]:
Not a 20 page document collecting digital dust somewhere.
Yvonne Heimann [00:02:10]:
With that, I did do a little prep today because this is completely interactive. Today we will literally build an SOP for my company. What I did is I recorded and I did not name this ClickUp by the way named this for me. I recorded a clip yesterday for a specific process and this is literally the process you guys went through to come to this webinar. These are all the steps that need to happen for this webinar funnel to work. I used clips because love what they’re doing now. And clips are also funneling into your ClickUp AI. So not only do I have a complete walkthrough of the process on video right now and I literally can just copy that link and say cool, awesome.
Yvonne Heimann [00:03:06]:
Here’s the video that walks you through exactly what I did. So we’re starting to create this standard operating procedure. Manager would be Luby, Process expert right now would be me. Tools Used in this process. Go high level. Then we also have. What do we have? We have ClickUp. We also have askyvi.com which is WordPress.
Yvonne Heimann [00:03:39]:
Do we have anything else? No, I think go ahead. Level is actually everything in there. Last time the process was reviewed is actually today because we’re updating it. And then I literally just plug in the clip recording in here. If somebody wants to walk through and watch the whole process, go knock yourself out. However, most people don’t want to do this, right? So with that you want to record your process. Don’t overthink it and be precise. Coming back to the comment of yes, I want to give all of the information but not too much.
Yvonne Heimann [00:04:18]:
In your recording process, you want to give too much information. Think of it this way. When I record sops, I talk through everything I do and I literally even say hey, you need to click on the button up on the top right that says this. You want to be as precise and detail oriented as possible. Describe what you are doing as if somebody does not have the video. And as you can see, it’s like I walked through in this standard operating procedure and recording that workflow. I walked through the images we need right in there. Multiple images for each webinar.
Yvonne Heimann [00:05:05]:
I walked through setting up the ad event. I walked through duplicating automations, duplicating landing pages, duplicating forms. There is a lot that is happening. As you can tell this is a huge workflow. Regular standard processes often usually have a maybe like two or three minute video. This is a multi step process and a full on workflow with which is why I chose it. So we have a nice big collection of data and now we are making it really really simple. Copy the transcript, pop over to Magai.
Yvonne Heimann [00:05:42]:
You are getting from me this specific prompt, I will give that to you. It specifically lays out exactly how an SOP is supposed to look like. Now I personally love to use Claude 3.7 because I tend to be really to the point A to B. I love my people and everybody knows how supportive I am and how passionate I am for what I do. I sometimes though in in doing things are more focused on the doing things than how I make people feel. Claude really brings a little bit of this emotion back that in the process of writing sops I can potentially forget. Hence the using cloudsonnet and I actually use my own personal Persona so it knows hey, it’s running. It has additional information about my NLP background and all fun stuff.
Yvonne Heimann [00:06:37]:
I plug this in here. As you can see it Knows exactly how that SOP is supposed to look like. And it tells me, hey, I’m ready for you to give me the full transcript. Which, by the way, here is the full transcript. And if you have not seen Magai yet, Magai is a interface that gives you access to, I don’t even know, 30 different text AIs and 20 different image AIs. And then here is the link to the recording. So we plugged in, the AI knows how this thing is supposed to look like. Yvi just talked for 11 minutes, jumping.
Yvonne Heimann [00:07:23]:
All over over the place.
Yvonne Heimann [00:07:24]:
We have the recording, we have the transcript, and I give it to AI and let it do its thing. So now what we have done is you record your video, go as detailed, go as sometimes even crazy, right? When we talk through a workflow, when we talk through a process. Oh yeah, I forgot this. Oh yeah, I forgot that. Just say it in the video. You don’t have to perfectly showcase the process or the workflow. Just talk through it and be precise. So in this process of recording this video and you are like, oh my God, we forgot that we need this image.
Yvonne Heimann [00:08:03]:
Hey, by the way, don’t forget you need to create this image in canva of this size versus this size 1920 by 1080. Or we need a story image. Or oh yeah, I forgot to step in here. Just speak it out loud and precise enough that somebody could follow it even if they don’t see, see the video. And with that, AI just finished writing a whole bunch of stuff and it took that 10 minute video and concised it down. Now again, it is AI. It is not perfect. However, it finally tells Yvi to cut down all of the nitty gritty and get to the point.
Yvonne Heimann [00:08:47]:
And now simply, you can either way do it yourself or. What I like to often do is have somebody on the team that has never run this process. So not even Luby, I would bring somebody else in that now takes this on the way of copying and pasting over. We have everything in here pulled out of your video. Bring somebody in that has never run this process to build out the sop, to actually create this final sop and double check. Okay, so we have the goal of to create a comprehensive webinar funnel that efficiently captures registration, delivers automated communication and drives attendance, enhancing the ability to connect with and convert potential clients. And it’s done pretty good. Because I didn’t say that in the video, to be honest.
Yvonne Heimann [00:09:41]:
What is the outcome? What did it bring in on the outcome? Again, it’s like I literally have not run this process You’ve seen this is one run of the AI fully functional registration landing page correct with branding for us. The full email automation sequence for you guys to get the updates and hopefully the proper ad event link. The tracking for the webinar specific tags. Every contact in our webinar funnel gets a tag specific specifically to the webinar they joined. Updated website. I would, I would update this a little bit. An updated website featuring the latest webinar promotion, consistent branding and messaging and over all over the funnel touch points. So here’s the first thing we are running into and this is why I would have again somebody that has not run the process write these and double test them.
Yvonne Heimann [00:10:39]:
Because somebody that has not run this process would be like what are you talking about here? An updated website featuring the latest webinar promotion. What it’s talking here is actually the askyvi website has a page that has all of the master classes and this is where this needs to be updated. So this outcome is not as clear as it could be and should be adjusted it then Cool. What kind of assets do we need again? Bringing that over. Cool, awesome. Double check it. We just went through this with the outcome. I don’t need to keep you around to really get all into the nitty gritty with all of this.
Yvonne Heimann [00:11:18]:
Automations in this case could be really really simplified because most of the automations is actually a email funnel. So we don’t need to mention the three day reminder, the one day reminder, the 20 minute reminder reminder. It would literally just be email automation for updates and reminders. This is also where you would put any kind of ClickUp automations that might be running on list or folder level. And now we are getting to the really nitty gritty. This is where we are coming to the actual process. Cool. So step one get your assets ready and I like to make this actually bigger.
Yvonne Heimann [00:12:05]:
There we go. Prepare all necessary assets meaning get ready to actually build this thing. Right. Cool. Awesome. Full assets. Create the funnel. Pop that in here.
Yvonne Heimann [00:12:17]:
Now you can see if I would have only have a toggle menu here that says prepare all necessary assets. So imagine all of this down here would be hidden. Somebody even without ADHD wouldn’t be able to tell. Holy cannoli. I need this image and I need that image and I need that image and I need to actually set up the calendar event which needs the title, the time, the zoom link and I need AI to generate description and email content and call to actions. For me it would look like oh yeah, I can get this done in five minutes. And believe me, my brain has done this, what now, five, six, seven times, it still thinks all of this. I can just go on the fly and get it done in 15 minutes.
Yvonne Heimann [00:13:01]:
It doesn’t go that fast. And that’s where you really want to pay attention on writing these standard operating procedures and be able to deliver the impact of what this work has. And somebody that doesn’t make the connection between I know the process and I know this takes 15 minutes that needs to see all the things they need to do to understand the time commitment that comes with this. And then there is a warning actually happening in here. So what we want to do is we. You can copy and paste it from the bottom or you can just do a red banner that says inconsistent images will cause display issues across platform. So that means, hey, by the way, make sure you don’t screw up the sizing of the images. There is a reason the HERO image for the landing page has these weird numbers.
Yvonne Heimann [00:14:04]:
This written when I read this inconsistent image dimension will cause display issues across platforms. This is like okay, cool AI you just used fancy English again. Get to the point. So that’s where sometimes we go back and tell AI and use simple English and skip all lingo. AI has the tendency to just give you all of the lingo and huge transformation and all of these fancy words that nobody actually uses. Clean up for it. You repeat the process for each one of these steps. Repeat the process and whoever is creating that final document on the split screen can double check to ensure what is there, makes sense and is easy.
Yvonne Heimann [00:14:57]:
Follow, followable can easily be followed. As you see, there is the different steps with sub tasks to it. Now the nice thing in here is AI already has set this up perfectly to become tasks and subtasks. Tasks right there. Configure each step. This needs to be clear which step. So this, you want to have this a little bit more clear because if you just read this out of context, it’s like what step? I know it. It’s the steps in the webinar funnel.
Yvonne Heimann [00:15:30]:
But what does that mean? You really want to skip broad terms. In this case, rather than configure each step, I would say control figure each page in the sales funnel steps and go high level, be precise. And then with that we have all of this going on.
Yvonne Heimann [00:15:51]:
Perfect.
Yvonne Heimann [00:15:52]:
You literally just rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. Get the steps in, get the tasks. And now let’s see what it did as quality control. There we go. We are all the way on the bottom, which sometimes we just want to Check. Not these. Where is my checklist? There it is. Just mark them all turn them into a checklist.
Yvonne Heimann [00:16:18]:
Complete test registration Yes, I didn’t say that in the video by the way. I did not say go test the form and make sure the thing actually works. Confirming that the welcome email is their correct information and working calendar links. As some of you might have seen, the ad event was at the wrong time zone. Double check for desktop and mobile views. That is actually one issue and that I haven’t done for the next webinar yet. So thank you AI. Especially because sometimes your desktop view is different than your mobile view.
Yvonne Heimann [00:16:50]:
So if I go into a go high level it shows everything building on desktop view but we did some resizing on the mobile view so sometimes those things don’t update. And remember how often are we using phones? We want to make sure this goes clear. This is a part of our automation. Every time somebody signs up we get a slack message and ensure the links are right. So AI did actually really great on these quality control checks that I did not even mention in the video.
Yvonne Heimann [00:17:24]:
Now that you’ve seen how I use AI to create our SOPs, let me share three quick tips that make this.
Yvonne Heimann [00:17:33]:
Process even more effective.
Yvonne Heimann [00:17:35]:
First, always review and personalize what AI creates. It’s a tool, not a replacement for your expertise. Second, keep your SOP in a central location within ClickUp where your team can easily access them. And third, remember that good SOPs evolve. Set a reminder to review them quarterly and don’t do what I do and say five times. I should be updating this sop and here’s your permission slip for today. You don’t need to create the perfect SOP from scratch. It is completely okay to leverage technology to make this process easier.
Yvonne Heimann [00:18:17]:
The goal isn’t to have the most.
Yvonne Heimann [00:18:19]:
Detailed standard operating procedure.
Yvonne Heimann [00:18:22]:
It’s to have SOPs that actually get used and free up your time and mental space. And if you found this helpful, hit that like button and subscribe for more systems and automation tips. And I’d love to know what’s the first process you are going to document using this AI method. Drop it in the comments below. For more help streamlining your business systems, check out my video the ClickUp workflow that saved me five hours every week right here. And before you go, I’ve created a free ClickUp SOP template that works perfectly with this AI method. Grab it in the description below and you’ll be creating effective sops in no time.
Yvonne Heimann [00:19:03]:
See you in the next video.
