We’re diving into what are standard operating procedures and how you put them into practice within your business.
IE 276: What are Standard Operating Procedures & How to Implement Them
We’re going to break these down over the next couple of weeks, talking about your SOP as the systems, processes and tasks within your business.
Processes are the everyday things that you do within your business, whether you are pinning pins, creating content, or doing email marketing.
I often tell you that you need to proudly be able to state when you’re working with brands, that these are all the roles that you play in your business.
Organization of Standard Operating Procedures
When you create your SOP, you need to find somewhere that is going to make it easy for you to be able to access these.
So a lot of people will ask, well, what do I have to write them out?
Do I have to do it in a spreadsheet?
Should I be using Trello?
You need to use what works best for you.
I will tell you that I am a simple girl. I am over 40. I did not grow up with a cell phone in my hand, so I am not extremely tech savvy and because of that I use the easiest system I can think of, which for me was using Google drive.
I do everything in Google. Everyone of my SOPs is organized in Google drive, using folders and sheets.
You should still have SOPs in place for your business, so that when the time comes for you to hire you, don’t fumble around trying to figure out how to teach them how to do processes within your business.
You’re doing these every single day in your business.
Why not find a way to be able to have those ready to go so that when you can hire or you can get creative and have an intern or a family member helping within the business that you’re able to easily hand that off?
Start with the system of organization that works best for you Google drive, Trello, Dropbox, whatever that looks like for you and start recording your processes.
Recording of the SOPs
I’m not asking you to write out every single step of what you do. Use loom, or I personally use zoom.
It’s just as easy for me to do a recording of what I am doing when I am doing it and walk someone through the process whether I have someone on my team or not.
I am still going to talk to them as if they are there present as the person that I’m talking to. So if you do have people on your team, don’t call them by name because if someone leaves.
You want this training that you’re about to do to be understood by a twelve-year-old.
I often tell clients, “it’s not that new hires suck. It’s that you suck. You suck at communicating at what you’re doing.”
Don’t Use Niche Specific Language
When I talk about email marketing, I use the term broadcasts.
Broadcasts are a Convertkit term.
When I talk to a client that doesn’t have Convertkit because they use Mailerlite or MailChimp, they don’t know what a broadcast is.
It is simply an email that you send to your list, but it is the lingo of our industry.
Instead of saying a broadcast, where they’re thinking you’re getting up and doing a podcast, make it simple.
So it’s in terms that they understand and can put into practice.
Why SOPs without a Team
SOPs help your productivity.
When you create your SOPs you’re going to see if you are wasting too much time doing arbitrary things.
When you go through and record this you’ll find that you’re focused on getting that one task done.
Having an idea of how long tasks are taking you will help with your planning even if you are a solopreneur.
The next step of creating your SOPs is understanding how you break them down into the system, your processes, and then your tasks.
Action Steps:
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