Stop Explaining and Start Delegating: A Step-by-Step Guide with SOP Toolkit

The hustle of the entrepreneurial journey is a story as old as time. Only the strong survive used to be the motto of those who dared to start this path. Well, that is until the SMART came around. Solopreneurs, especially those with conflicting time requirements like families and spouses, have long struggled to balance getting the most bang for their buck and spending time with their loved ones. They’ve been walking this path alone, tackling their projects themselves and letting the SOP live in their head. Face it, you are scared to even think about hiring help because you don’t know where to begin to train them.

It’s true. The thought of training someone is so tiring to most solopreneurs that they would rather lose sleep than get help. The fear is due to a lack of understanding of how to train their helper efficiently. Here is where SOPs come in. Today, we will talk about the importance of standard operating procedures for even solopreneurs and their role in delegating tasks effectively as needed.

Picture this: the next time you want to onboard an employee or contractor, you log into your business’s information HUB, set them up an account, and provide them with a link to their training. They have an onboarding checklist to work through listing the training they need based on their role in the organization, and they have a thoroughly planned out schedule in front of them. These types of miracles can happen once proper SOPs are in place!

So, what are SOPs?

SOP stands for Standard Operating Procedure, and it is the process a business and its staff take to get from point A to point Z in any given scenario. SOPs document the way in which an organization is required to execute tasks. This ensures they are done consistently across the organization regardless of who does them.

SOPs are why it doesn’t matter if you go to a McDonald’s in New York or Kentucky; you will get the same products and the same service, and you will have a consistent experience regardless of the location. Having documents written out to the level of detail that explains that with each main food item, there will be 1 napkin with a printed McDonald’s logo placed in the bag for the customer is how you build consistent experiences across the board.

It also saves time in having to verbally reiterate the information to each employee you train. It’s trained in person, written in the SOP, and used as evaluation criteria for whether people are getting their jobs done to standard. This level of detail allows you to quickly bring on multiple staff members and delegate tasks without having to walk each person through it step by step every time. This time spent streamlining saves time and energy, which can be placed back into areas that deserve more attention.

Without SOPs, delegating is possible, but it is more complex, more time-consuming, and most times considered not worth it! Without proper SOPs in place, solopreneurs have to spend countless hours going back and forth with employees, making corrections, or clarifying information that has already been detailed. At some point, without an SOP in place, a solopreneur is almost guaranteed to be going back and forth in time-consuming explanations about what needs to happen, when, and how. A great deal of miscommunication occurs when tasks are given on the fly without adequate guidelines.

The lack of clarity often leaves employees feeling frustrated because they aren’t being used effectively or leaving the solopreneur upset. After all, you’re paying someone who needs to deliver. But how can they if they don’t have everything they need at the time the task is assigned? This creates enormous gaps in productivity and efficiency and is often a cause of employee turnover.

Trying to organize everything yourself can be a heavy lift, especially when you need help figuring out where to start. I’ve got something that can help, though. Because I’ve seen so many of my friends in life and business go for a ride on the rollercoaster of inefficiency due specifically to not having their processes in place, I created the SOP Toolkit.

The SOP Toolkit

The SOP Toolkit is a collection of guides, checklists, and templates to help you understand SOPs, their importance, when and how to create them, and then help you streamline that process through the use of examples and templates.

The toolkit is a quick win; the guides are all bulleted style, saving you time from reading through the fluff. The examples give you an idea of what and how to write it, and the template provides a way to organize your ideas. These tools together give you the ability to have your first SOP drafted in less than an hour.

How to Get the Most Bang for your buck:

Once you’ve launched the SOP Toolkit and built your first SOP, you can follow the strategies in the guides to help you implement, test, and review your results. Want to overcome your struggles with delegating and use the SOP Toolkit most effectively? Perfect, here’s what you do!

Start by assessing your current tasks and identifying those processes that can be delegated.

• Then, create an SOP for how you want the delegated task completed.
• Implement the SOP the next time this task comes up and clearly communicate the guidelines of the SOP and how to reach you for information that may arise that is not covered.
• Then, monitor and refine this process for continued improvement. If a situation occurs that needs to be covered in the SOP, update it to include the guidance given so the results are consistent across the board.

Seems easy, right? That’s because it is! Now you know just how vital SOPs are to small businesses, especially solopreneurs, how the SOP Toolkit can help you craft your first SOPs, and how to test and revise your SOPs over time.

I encourage you to grab the SOP Toolkit if you don’t already have it and reclaim your time and frustration from the delegating process while improving productivity and increasing efficiency within your organization. You can find the SOP toolkit here and start your journey to a more peaceful delegation process today!