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Running a business is a lot. Like it can be full on — am I right? There’s so much to remember, but that doesn’t mean it all has to stay in our heads. The best way for you to get and stay organized is to create a centralized hub where you keep all of your standard operating procedures (SOPs). Not only does this help you save time when doing recurring tasks, but it also helps you prep your business for taking on new hires.

 

 

Want to listen to these tips? Here’s a podcast episode for your AirPods.

So today we’re going to work on how you can get those things out of your head and into a system where you can hand more things off and get back to doing the things that you really love to do.

 

Where you can store your SOPs?

Start with where you will store your SOPs for easy access to you and your team members. I want you to think about the things that you already use every day, on a regular basis. Google Docs is a great place to start.

If you have your folders pretty organized, you can utilize everything in your Google Suite. That’s a good place to hold your SOPs. If you have the business edition of G Suite, you can create shared drives and it will be the same for everyone across your team. Making it easy for sharing your documents.

Another thing you can use is your project management tool. What do you use for project management? These include Asana, ClickUp, Trello, Wrike or Teamwork, those all count as project management tools and you can very easily set up your standard operating procedures within your account. If you have a lot of different team members or departments, you can then add due dates to some of the items, create task templates with subtasks that you can duplicate and use continually.

Also, one other place you can use is a Google site. Google sites are free. It’s just like creating a little website. They’re hosted with Google servers and you can easily go into a Google site, create it, name it, and create the different pages as your sections or your departments and just add your SOPs in your procedures within those pages.

 

What departments should you include in your SOPs?

Once you’ve figured out where you’re going to keep your SOPs, then you want to go ahead and sit down and decide what you want in there. How are you going to separate everything out? The first step will be creating departments — what departments do you have in your business?

Sales, marketing, operations, admin. Let’s go through some of those. If you have an executive or a CEO department, that’s basically the area where you keep all of your annual project timelines, your goals, goal tracking metrics, everything related to those tasks.

Your sales and marketing department is going to be anything related to your social media, webinars, traffic, upcoming events. Think about blog posts or YouTube templates. All of those templates are going to go in that area.

Next, I want you to have a products and services department that’s going to be anything related to products and services that you sell. If you have a client based business you’re going to put your client related tasks in there, and this also includes things like your podcast. You’re going to keep your templates, files, launch calendars, launch schedules, etc.

You also want to have an operations department that’s going to be your business hub. Keeps everything from your affiliate, links your important info, your brand guidelines, your brand colors and fonts, and your accounts that you have.

 

What processes should you include in your SOPs?

So once you’ve got your departments laid out, you’re going to want to make a list of all the processes that you need in each department.

Write out each step.

An easy way to do this is as you complete the task. For example, the next time you write a blog post, open up your your SOP files or your folders and document everything as you’re doing it each step. Or if you do it often enough, go ahead and do it from memory and then you can fill in the blanks later.

You want to fill in the details enough so that someone can do the exact same thing just by working through those steps. And they would not have to reach out and ask you what to do next. So this includes checklists, and links. Maybe you can include screenshots or videos for things that are more visual.

While you’re doing this, a good way to think about it is using the two year rule. You want to make sure that two years from now, if you read it, it would make sense. No acronyms or short hand that might be confusing to a new employee.

Once you’ve finished writing out your process, give it to someone else on the team and have them go through it to see if they can complete the task without asking you questions. If they have questions — those are the blanks you need to fill in.

That is the basic structure for creating your SOPs. The more you do it, the more you will mold it to fit your company and your processes. Tweak and update them every so often to make sure everything is still relevant.

Are you using SOPs in your business?