Unknown Speaker 0:03
This is the smooth operator Podcast. I'm Adam Liette, director of operations for a seven figure online business and eight year veteran of Army Special Operations. On this show begin with the tactical, nitty gritty of what it really takes to run a thriving online business because at the end of the day, operators lead the way. What's going on smooth operators welcome to today's episode, we are going to be unpacking the amazing SOP. I love SOPs, I'll be perfectly honest. They just worked so well in a business. And there's really no Right Place Right Time to start creating SOPs, except for now. Like, if you've don't have SOPs in your business yet, you need to start. SOPs just work. They work from the very beginning. In my own business that I've started here, I started creating SOPs on day one, because I knew how I wanted things done. I knew how I was planning on doing things. So I just started creating my SOPs, how I was going to be do them doing them. We should be doing that at the earliest stages of our business and doing it continuously. You're never done creating SOPs, because things evolve, things change, we add more things to what we're doing. platforms change, I mean, you're never done. But I think if you add it as part of your rhythm as part of what you just do, and you find ways to do it easily, well, it becomes rather doable, doesn't it? I love having it as part of my rhythm. As part of my long term rhythm, what I do is really, it's like a quarterly thing for me where I'm going to review all the SOPs that I currently have, and just take a couple of minutes to go through them and see if they're still up to date, see if there are ones any that need updating, but I'm not gonna just gonna drop everything and update it right then and there. I'm gonna wait for the next opportunity to update it. And I'll get to that in a second. How to use those opportunities to update them. So it's not like an additional task we're doing. But we're creating SOPs while we're actually doing the task. What do SOPs do for us, though, I mean, biggest thing more than anything. It ensures stability, and quality of a process. If we're working from an SOP, things are done the same way every time. We're just done in doing mode. I would think if you had to think of the most basic tactical tasks you have to do. So just for an example, I'm recording this podcast and then gets edited. It goes through a couple of other things before it gets uploaded into the platform. And then there are a couple of things that have to be done to publish it. If I had to, like think about that every time I go, Okay, well, next, I need to normalize the audio, I need to check my levels. I need to make sure I do the tagging. Where do I upload it again, if I had to do that every time. Like what kind of brain power are you using for that versus just following a checklist? We as humans work really, really well from checklists, we just do. It's part of our part of our programming. Part of how many of us have been really geared towards working, why not take advantage of that. And work from that place of just doing versus having to critically think about anything, when or critically think while we're doing those tactical level tasks. It also positions us for growth. If we have a library of SOPs, things that are built out, you have the ability to start considering how to offload those things. How to teach someone else, how to bring on new team members or cross load. So if you have a team member who needs additional hours, who has some extra capacity, you have some tasks that are SOP lead. That's the stuff that is already ready and primed to handover. SOPs mean we don't need to hire the person that already knows how to do something. We bring on the person that knows how to take direction, which is a far different skill set. There are a lot of people that know how to do that don't know how to take direction. They're so ingrained in doing what they do. Being able to hire based on that, based on being able to take direction well I don't know about you. But I'd much rather hire someone, especially if we're talking about a part time or full time team member versus more of a technical role like a media manager, you know, paid media manager or something like that. I'd much rather hire someone that can take direction. Another thing is that when we're creating SOPs, we find areas to optimize the process. Because we might be doing things that don't really make sense, in hindsight, but it's only by approaching the task through the lens of having to teach it that we uncover these things. Teaching does a lot for us. You know, there's the old adage, those who can't do teach, that's bull, those who can teach, teach.
Unknown Speaker 5:54
But the amazing thing happens when you have to teach a subject, you get really good at it. Really good at it. It's why I love this podcast, be honest, it really, for me personally, purely selfish reason.
Unknown Speaker 6:09
I love having to prepare these lessons to talk about them. It makes me better at them. Now, I want to circle back to when I talked about creating SOPs while in flow. Because we tend to overthink just the whole SOP creation process. It does not have to be complicated. I know there's different software suites out there we can use Yeah, yeah, we'll get to that. But for now, I want you to focus on the doing. Okay. If we focus on the tools, focus on the output of what an SOP actually looks like, at the end state, we're actually thinking with with a different part of our brain, we're in a different mindset. When we're doing that. While we're trying to do it, I mean, it's it sucks, like, believe me, then on both sides of this. And here's what I found to be the most effective way bar none. To create an SOP, do the task. Except this time when you're doing the task. You turn on loom, or Screenflow or Camtasia or quick time, it doesn't matter. Whatever tool you have at your disposal. And you record yourself doing that task, every step of it. you narrate the process, explaining what you're doing, and why. So if it's something like putting in tags on an audio file, why are you doing that? The why helps answer the bigger question. And it helps us clarify what we're doing helps us with the optimizations that we can make. Because the amazing thing that happens when you're doing this, when you're actually filming yourself, narrating the processes, or you're teaching it, you find areas that don't make sense areas for optimization areas that say, Gosh, I could take this shortcut to here. I could take the shortcut over there. And so then you need to do a version two, right? So to do version one, you find your areas of optimization, and you redo it. You now have a video walkthrough as the baseline of your SOP. From there if you're not ready to offload, stop, stop there. Upload that, that video file into your Google Drive or your Dropbox, whatever you have. And then start a central bank, basically a library of your SOPs and the direct links to all of them. categorize them, you know, marketing SOPs, content, SOPs, payroll, finance, whatever. You're gonna be able to figure out your own categorizations really quick. The point is, we're creating a hub to quickly reference back to that and see the SOPs that we have in place. And that's for the most part, when it's just something that I'm doing. When it's not an SOP that I'm intending to offload. I tend to stop there. I don't take it any further. I don't operationalize it, which I'll talk about in next week's episode. Making SOPs work for you. So we can look forward to that. But for the most part, I stopped there. I'm just focusing on having things catalog to position myself For when I look to offload, I've done a lot of the work already, it's already done. And I can focus then on the actual offloading process, hiring if you need to, I mean, that's a lot of work in itself, like we don't need to add to that plate. Instead, I'm just creating SOPs as I'm doing work. Because actually, when I'm then onboarding someone, what I have them do, I'd have them take that video SOP, and turn it into something operational. And the reason I do that is because the person is then going to watch that video, watch that SOP, with a different mindset, they're going to watch it with a different framework, because they know they have to create something tangible out of it. I don't know how many video courses you've taken. But the longer videos I do that don't require me to actual do I actually do something, I don't know about you, I space out. But if I'm actually doing something, I'm engaged in an output from those videos. While I'm more engaged, I'm actually learning more. So enable that into your own system. Most of us know that if you're a course creator, or, or a coach, you're working with people helping them teach something, like you've probably done something similar. Make that part of what you're doing on your own team. That formal written process being done by the person taking over the task from you. And they're gonna end up having a greater understanding of the SOP, a greater clarity over the why. And be able to then turn to actually be able to do it with greater ease. And just the the timeframe to actually getting someone into that seat becomes so much quicker, you're shortening your onboarding time by weeks to get them into that seat, performing the duties just as you did. And many times at a higher level, because they're new, they're fresh, they're gonna see things from a different perspective. Okay, well, I hope, if nothing else, you see the value of SOPs. And if you haven't, start creating the creating them yet, with some kind of trepidation or fear that creating SOPs is this big thing. It's not creating SOPs is one of the easiest things we can do. And when you make it part of your rhythm part of something that you just do, you will just do it, you'll just do it all the time. Because you're going to find different things that need SOPs. And just take a couple of extra minutes out of the actual tactical doing of that task, to do it once and know that you're good. And do until you have to renew it. But that happens with time. And it doesn't really happen until the process changes or until the platform changes. So I hope this helped. Do join me on the next episodes, we have some great interviews coming up. And while you're here, let me just ask to please go to iTunes or to Spotify, or Google and go ahead and give us a review. Give us a rating. It always helps to get us more visibility within the algorithm. And until next time, hey operators, go out there and bolding your team, talk to them about SOPs, and then do them yourselves because what do operators do? We lead the way. I'll see you next time. Okay, before you bounce out here, I have a free strategy session available exclusively for my podcast audience. In this 30 minute phone call will unveil the immediate steps you can take to operationalize your business and put you back in the driver's seat. Just go to www dot Adam liette.com and click Start Here.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai