SOPs for Small Business: What They Are, Why They Matter, and How to Start

If you spend enough time in the small business or entrepreneurship space, you’ll run across advice that basically boils down to, “SOPs will solve all your problems”.

Except just like the boogie man, UFOs, and Atlantis - generally, we agree on what they are, but everyone has a slightly different mental image that comes to mind, and no one can specifically define for you how SOPs will “fix” your problems.

Don’t get me wrong, I agree with the idea that standardizing things and defining processes can make most things easier, quicker, and more reliable. But if you’re just starting out, it can get really confusing, so we’re going to go back to the basics.

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What are SOPs?

The most common definition of SOP is Standard Of Procedure (Other common ones are System Of Process, & Standard Operating Procedure).

In the simplest definition, it’s a step-by-step breakdown of completing a task.

The most common reasons this is worth the effort of doing:

Consistency - when doctors are performing surgery, there are specific steps they follow, and things that have to be checked before moving on - because no one wants a pair of scissors left in them after surgery - and we don’t want a simple distraction to mess up something we’re delivering to our clients.
Quality - most non-creative things that are repetitive oftentimes don’t get our full attention, and having a process in place enables you to ensure that everything is being done to a standard that you’re proud of.
Time Savings - decisions take time, even if it’s just deciding what to do next; a good process removes unnecessary decisions and allows you to rapidly flow through all the steps much quicker, or batch multiple projects together.
Removes unnecessary steps - Jimmy John’s can make a sandwich SO MUCH faster than I can, because they just don’t do a bunch of steps that I do at home (like opening the fridge 11 times just to look at what we have). They know exactly what’s needed for a sandwich from the start.
Automate & Delegate - turns out, you personally are not the special sauce for most of what your business does daily. But until you know exactly what’s being done, it’s hard to know what you can remove from your plate (freeing up time for what only you can do).

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What things are good to make SOPs for?

Not everything makes sense to have a defined process for, and in our experience, it generally comes down to the amount of creativity involved. Oftentimes, having a clear process for the things that happen around creativity allows you to be even more creative where it counts.

Yeah, that’s a confusing thought.

Let’s look at a common example for brand designers - gathering information from a new client.

With no processes, it looks like:

Manually writing another email for each thing you need (eg, vision board, what they like, examples, etc).
37 email chains by the time you even start designing for them.
Their feedback spread across sticky notes from a call, text chains, Insta DMs, and late-night email brain dumps.
The client feels overwhelmed.

With a basic process:

When the project kicks off, all the information you need is collected in one place (eg, questionnaire).
All communication happens on one platform/portal (eg, email or Voxer).
Every call or decision gets a summary documenting everything that was discussed/decided, so that both you and the client can go back and review it (eg, AI note takers & summaries for the win).
You eliminate days (or weeks) of back and forth, you’re able to deliver projects faster, and much more of your time is spent on the creative things you actually enjoy doing (oh, and clients think you’re way more professional).

The simple breakdown of what is good to make a process for:

Things that are repeated frequently (eg, email templates, scheduling meetings, client deliverables, etc).
Things that enable you to do your job better (eg, preparation, digital asset management for a project, detail gathering, delivery, etc).
Things you seldom do but have to re-teach yourself when you do them (eg, monthly bookkeeping, quarterly goal setting, etc).
Things outside of your specialty (eg, admin, sales, marketing, etc).

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How do I create my first process?

Processes don’t have to be complicated. Think about it like cooking - if you want to make spaghetti, the box comes with 3 or 4 steps to create an Italian dish from the comfort of your own home.

Start with something that you do on a daily or weekly basis that you have to think about each time. Here are a couple of common ones:

What to do once you get an inquiry
How to engage with potential leads (check out this blog post on how we genuinely engage with leads)
Planning out what you’ll spend your time on each week

Then break it down into steps so that someone who knows nothing about your business could follow.

Let’s take what a process for planning out your week could look like:

Step 1: On Friday before “logging off” for the week, write down all the remaining tasks & priorities you didn’t get done for the week, and what the 3-5 biggest priorities for the next week are.

Step 2: On Monday morning, before opening your email, social media, or looking at notifications, have a 15-minute scheduling party that includes a fun drink, and do these four things:

Look at your 3-5 priorities for the week from step 1, confirm or update them.
Set your personal boundaries that are non-negotiable (kids' events, date night, slow mornings, etc).
Time block your priorities onto the calendar for the week in order of importance.
Look at anything already on the calendar and schedule prep time to complete anything required before the calls/deadlines.

Step 3: Enforce your boundaries & availability - with both yourself when getting distracted, and with other people who are asking for your time

Pro tip: Creating the process the first time will take you more time than just doing the thing, but you will save time each time you follow the process after that.

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In conclusion

Processes are designed to help you.

Most processes shouldn’t be set in stone (unless you are a rocket scientist…). Try to iterate them over time to improve & adapt.

A good process makes your life better, a bad one makes your life hell. Oftentimes, the difference between the two extremes is a very minor change, so try not to throw away everything at the first hiccup - learn and improve.

Finally, processes are personal to you and your business. The most common reason we see people getting frustrated with their processes is that they tried to copy someone else’s “best practices,” and as the saying goes, they tried to put a square peg in a round hole. Other people’s processes (ours included) can be a good starting point, but until you personalize them to your own working styles & objectives, they’ll be uncomfortable at best and downright detrimental to your business at worst.

Creating your own processes can be rather cumbersome to many of us since it’s easy to see things other people can do, but pretty hard to see our own problems since we’ve become used to them. This is why we love doing mini audits for our coaching clients to “shine a light” on where they can make easy improvements to their processes that will make large differences to their businesses. If you’d like to hop on a free discovery call to chat about what coaching with us could be like and get a custom proposal of what we could work on to improve your business, you can use this link to schedule a free call.