Where to get started with SOPs for your Business

[00:00:00] Okay. Okay, okay, okay, okay. Yes. I’ve been preaching Standard Operating Procedures now for a couple of videos, and I know it can feel really, really overwhelming when you start all of this. So today, I wanna show you how I have gotten over my own hurdle of, oh my God, I need an SOP for this, and I need an SOP for this, and I need an SOP for that, and I don’t have the time to do all of this.

[00:00:24] Yes, you do. Today, I’m gonna show you the process, how we create SOPs. Yes, I might have wrote an SOP, how to create SOPs. But more on that later. Okay. For some reason, when we, as humans, look at the things we know we should be doing, eating healthy, working out, creating Standard Operating Procedures for our business. Who among us goes into complete procrastination mode and finds all of the excuses to not do? Guilty. Totally guilty here. Why [00:01:00] am I preaching? Get your Standard Operating Procedures for your business down. Why? Because I’ve been guilty long enough for it myself. When you’re just starting to get into this rhythm of creating Standard Operating Procedures for your business, it can feel overwhelming.

Being proactive instead of reactive

[00:01:14] It can feel like Yvi, I am gonna be spending hours and hours, but I actually need to take care of your clients. Halt. First of all, let’s start being more proactive than reactive. We talked about this schedule time every week, even if it’s just an hour to work on your business, not just in your business. Cool. Now that we got that out of the way, let me show you how we manage to get me out of this overwhelm in this procrastination mode of having to create all of the Standard Operating Procedures in my business.

[00:01:46] I don’t. Yes, I might hand off more and more work and need operating procedures for this. And I am the only one who knows how to do this right now.

How to make things easier for the NEW person

Yes. So let’s make it really easy for the [00:02:00] new person to learn how to do it and for you to stop writing everything yourself. Now, the first thing, two ways, especially when you, you’re a solopreneur, you are not working with a team yet.

[00:02:09] You are just getting to the point of, okay, my brain can’t remember all of these things. That’s usually when I recommend writing it down. Literally just pen and paper. Whiteboard. Use your Good Notes on your iPad. I don’t care. Just write down the things that you need to get done to get this workflow done. That’s all it is.

[00:02:29] When you are actually having gone through this and you have optimized and clarified your processes a little bit more, just Loom record them. I literally just walk through this. I screen record. I talk through every single step, how I’m doing it, why I’m doing it, and I do not care how long or intense this might be because when I explain something, I can get to the point where I’m like, did I just say this three times in a row?

[00:02:56] It’s entirely possible because I wanted to make sure you get the point. [00:03:00] In this video, do not worry about this becoming a Standard Operating Procedure in your business. Don’t worry about it. It’s supposed to be nice and tidy and great for existing team members while just having all the information. That new team.

[00:03:16] Don’t worry about it. All you need to do at this point is record the video. Now, here comes the point. This is where you are handing it off. Hand it off. Who is the person that is going to handle this process moving forward? That person. Let them work through it. Give them additional time to run with the process more than you.

[00:03:33] First of all, they’re running the process for the first time. Second of all, you want them to look at it out of a different point of view. You’ve ran this process for how long? Maybe a couple of weeks. Maybe a few months. Maybe a few years. You know, all of the ins and outs of this process. That VA, that new team member? Doesn’t.

[00:03:50] So they’re looking at it from, I’ve never done that. I have no idea how this thing works. Let them walk through it. Just grab a Google document and then, [00:04:00] while they are going through this process of doing the thing that you are teaching them to do, have them take bullet points, have them extract the information they deem needed to get this process done. Just have them write it down on, on a Google document.

[00:04:18] Now, you can collaborate and add additional information. They can ask questions. They can ask for clarification. They can ask for templates and all the things.

Get Started with SOPs and Polish Them

Now, once you have this done, and I am really happy, I have a specific VA for that. Jeremy is amazing. He has an eye for detail. If you can find somebody like that, that is really process-oriented, that has this capability of taking you, chatting through all of this and your VA’s notes and really concise this in a nice manner. You are golden. Don’t ever let that person go. And what Jeremy then does for us, he gets the video from me [00:05:00] so he visually can see everything that’s going on. He gets the notes from my VA, and then plucks all of that into our SOP template. This is how this is gonna look like. This is how I want Standard Operating Procedures to look like in my business days.

[00:05:15] Thinking behind this, if you haven’t watched the SOP video yet, I will link it for you at the end. And he really extracts all of that information and follows my layout. And then I just do a run over, talk through why is the setup important, where can people find the assets, where the automation’s happening, and all of that kind of additional information that we need in here.

[00:05:37] And now suddenly we have an SOP ready. But as you can tell in this SOP, you hardly ever see any images in this SOP, because we are actually doing wikis alongside with this, and if you want to know why I am doing it like this, I have an SOP video right here for you that talks you through how to set up [00:06:00] Standard Operating Procedures for your business and how to make them work for existing team members and new team members without overwhelming them all.