How To Build a SOP and Stop Doing Everything in Your Business

What is a SOP?

You may or not know already, but a SOP is a “Standard Operating Procedure.” It’s a series of steps for any given task (or tasks) in your business about how to do various things. It’s an instruction manual for all the little parts of your business that you don’t think about or take for granted. Packing boxes for OA? There’s a SOP for that. Responding to customers who want a return? SOP. Answering your emails? You better believe there’s a SOP there.

Why do you need a SOP?

Well the short answer is you don’t, really. Not everyone needs a SOP (or two, or ten). If you enjoy doing all the small or large tasks in your business or are an insane control freak, SOPs are probably not for you. This is mainly because the idea of outsourcing jobs seems insane to you (noone can do it as good as me, I tell ya!)

For everyone else, a SOP is freedom. It’s freedom to write a blog post, learn new sourcing tactics or explore private label strategy videos. Writing a SOP and offloading a task to a VA or a trusted employee is the only way you’ll ever get yourself out of your business and the only way your business will ever have a chance at being sold. The idea is that if you were to remove yourself from the business day-to-day tasks, it would keep right on going. Wealth isn’t money. Wealth is freedom to not have to worry about money. Get going and build some SOPs!

How to get started with SOPs

Step one is to figure out how exactly you’re spending your time. How do you really know what it is that is taking the most time in an average day? Take a week and write down everything you do in your business (yes, really). Write the task you are doing, the time you started it, and the time you ended it. Then when you start a new task, repeat. At the end of the week tally up the tasks and the time allotted and it will become very clear where most time is spent. From there you can begin to think about what needs to be outsourced first.

Alternatively… Have you heard of the 80/20 rule (The Pareto Principle)? It asserts that “80% of the outcomes (or outputs) result from 20% of the causes (or inputs). Consider in your business what products are bringing in 80% of the profits. There’s a good chance that it’s only 20% of your products. Find those products and double down on them. Is there a way you could outsource some tasks you are currently doing to either a) sell more of those 20% items? or b) find more of those 20% items? Probably you could. We could also make this work for the tasks that are highest ROI versus lowest ROI (i.e. 80% of your income comes from 20% of your tasks)

How to make a SOP the right way

If the idea of making a SOP gives you stomach cramps, I’m going to tell you the easiest – and actually most effective – way of doing it. Ready? Record a video. Use Loom or one of the umpteen video recording software programs out there and actually record your screen doing the process (obviously this would be a bit different for packing boxes, but still possible with a cellphone video). Not only will this be more effective than a written SOP, it’s quicker to make and often easier to understand. We’re running small businesses here, not a multi gazillion dollar company with thousands of SOPs. Just record a video and give it to your employee or VA. Yup it’s that easy. Uh oh, the process changed or Amazon made an update? Just record another 3 minute video and you’re done.

Actually go through the task as if you were doing it. It might take a few tries but it’s super easy once you get the hang of it. If you so choose, writing things down is acceptable, but this is about getting people to start making SOPs and cataloging the entirety of your business processes and systems in written format only will appear like a mountain of work.

You can do this in video form or written form, but here is a basic outline for you:

1. Purpose: Why are we doing this task? Why is it important?
2. When should the task be done?
   1. Instead of saying “Filter my emails every day,” say “Please have my emails filtered and read by 8 AM PST Monday to Friday”
3. Start going through the steps (1,2,3,4…etc)
4. Done!

Perfection is the enemy of Done

So you mess up speaking or aren’t completely clear. Don’t worry about it. The main idea is to just get going and begin outsourcing your tasks by writing SOPs. Avoid wasting time making the punctuation or grammar perfect – just. get. it. done.

Have something to do with the extra time

This happened to me when I started writing SOPs and hiring out certain parts of my business. I already had someone doing my bookkeeping (No SOP required there, certain tasks in your job will be hired out by professionals who bring their own set of skills), sourcing, graphic design, etc. But my next big task was to hire out Inventory Management. This took a while – a few months and lots of SOPs and back and forth with my new hire. But it was worth it. Now I’m in the nitty gritty of my business a lot less and I have a lot more time.

One problem – what the heck do I do with all this time? We’re often so preoccupied with being busy and think that busy is good for your business. It often isn’t. I could be busy all day packing boxes but that wouldn’t be the highest ROI thing I could do. I should be doing higher, business-growth tasks like learning, exploring new markets, launching new products, etc.

It took a while for me to re-train my brain and just get out of the way. I still struggle with it sometimes and find myself packing boxes again. SOPs can help you gain time and grow your business rather than just keep the lights on.

If you are looking for a course to help you with this, Outsource School is one I used along the way.  Chick here to check it out and see if it might work for you.

Have any questions? Reach out!