Dan Martell - June 19, 2017


How To Create a Business Playbook™： How To Make SOPs


Episode Stats

Length

8 minutes

Words per Minute

208.7834

Word Count

1,862

Sentence Count

78


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.500 Repeatable, scalable document.
00:00:10.700 How to create a procedures manual for your business.
00:00:13.680 Some people call them SOPs,
00:00:15.880 standard operating procedures.
00:00:17.480 I like to call them playbooks, but in today's video,
00:00:20.000 I wanna share with you guys how to do this the right way
00:00:22.560 because maybe you're frustrated
00:00:24.140 that you've tried this in the past
00:00:25.680 and nobody was following the procedures.
00:00:27.680 Or you sat down, documented everything
00:00:29.800 and the documents are now stale,
00:00:31.460 so they're not even relevant,
00:00:32.980 or you actually did the work,
00:00:34.520 never distributed it to your team
00:00:36.020 because it never got finished,
00:00:37.600 or you just feel like you spent all your time
00:00:40.280 creating procedures versus having somebody else support you.
00:00:43.260 Here's what I think the future could look like for you,
00:00:45.680 is literally having your team
00:00:47.820 in a very structured, simplified, iterative process,
00:00:50.720 creating these beautiful, repeatable, scalable documents
00:00:55.160 and checklists so that your customers get the promise
00:00:58.640 that you made, they get delivered on.
00:01:00.600 So as a business, you make a promise.
00:01:02.280 That's what these procedures are gonna allow you to do.
00:01:04.180 And really get free from the day-to-day
00:01:06.420 of the firefighting in your business
00:01:08.320 so that you can spend more time being creative
00:01:10.680 and building out the business.
00:01:11.720 Now, I really had to learn this lesson over the years
00:01:15.400 because I used to be the person that wanted to do everything.
00:01:18.700 And I realized that I needed to start building a team
00:01:20.960 and having other people support me.
00:01:22.260 And that started with my company, Sphere.
00:01:23.900 And in the early days, we used a wiki tool called Confluence.
00:01:28.040 So it was a wiki software, if you've ever used
00:01:30.480 or been to Wikipedia, that was the tool we used.
00:01:33.280 And then my next company, we decided to migrate off Confluence
00:01:36.240 because it was a little too geeky
00:01:38.080 and used something like Google Sites.
00:01:40.120 And that kind of worked, but there were still the challenges
00:01:42.380 of keeping it updated, having documents in there
00:01:44.500 that were started that were never finished,
00:01:46.200 and really just not having anybody having the procedures open
00:01:49.300 while they were doing the work.
00:01:51.540 And it wasn't until my last company
00:01:52.940 that I really found the way, you know,
00:01:54.840 I've literally scaled remote teams from zero to dozens
00:01:59.220 of employees, have been involved helping set this up for a lot
00:02:02.840 of my portfolio companies as an investor.
00:02:05.620 And what I'm gonna teach you today is the 80-20 to get
00:02:09.320 something going today and have it stick and have it
00:02:12.160 continuously updated and really get you the freedom back in
00:02:15.360 your business.
00:02:16.360 So the first step that you need to understand is start by
00:02:18.640 defining a program.
00:02:19.960 A program is for every department in your business.
00:02:22.160 It could be sales, it could be marketing, it could be
00:02:24.040 operations, it could be the delivery aspect of how you
00:02:26.840 actually give the customer the value, either a service
00:02:29.220 business or a technology product, is document the high
00:02:32.680 level steps from the beginning, the input to that
00:02:35.380 department, to the output and the expected results.
00:02:38.180 And it doesn't have to be detailed.
00:02:39.520 Most people make the mistakes of feeling like every step,
00:02:43.060 checklist, screenshot, procedure, detailed labels and
00:02:47.600 naming and everything needs to be defined and that's not the
00:02:49.900 way to start.
00:02:50.900 Starting is really creating what I call a program overview
00:02:53.640 document to make sure that you at least capture all the things
00:02:57.340 that people do and it's really great if you have a team
00:02:59.340 because you can just say, hey, can you make a list that if you
00:03:02.180 were to hire somebody to do your job for two months because
00:03:04.560 you were going to go away on vacation, what are all the
00:03:07.020 different areas, either things you monitor, things you create,
00:03:10.460 collaborations you have within our business, input-outputs,
00:03:13.300 what would you want to review?
00:03:15.160 So not like writing out exactly how to do it but what's the
00:03:19.040 conversation topics that you would want to have with those
00:03:22.200 people, that is the first step in creating a playbook.
00:03:26.540 In my world, that's what I call it,
00:03:27.580 a playbook for your business.
00:03:29.240 Start off by creating a review.
00:03:31.680 Number two is set up in your weekly meeting.
00:03:33.840 Hopefully you're having a weekly meeting.
00:03:35.640 Every week you actually add an agenda item to review the new
00:03:39.760 or updated plays or procedures or SOPs in your business.
00:03:44.320 So every week you have people creating things,
00:03:47.100 updating it because there's, and I'm gonna talk about this
00:03:49.260 in step four, but you want to have the ability
00:03:51.960 to review and communicate the new documents within your team.
00:03:55.060 That's why you could literally start with one,
00:03:56.860 which I recommend the number one if you wanted it.
00:03:58.660 Which one should I start with?
00:03:59.900 Your recruiting process.
00:04:01.100 Your people at the end of the day is what's going to allow you
00:04:03.700 to scale the business.
00:04:04.700 If you don't have a predictable way to attract and convert and
00:04:09.080 retain incredible talent, start by creating your program there.
00:04:12.880 But number two is really getting the weekly review dialed in so
00:04:15.920 that as it's updated, the rest of the team understands it,
00:04:19.160 It's communicated and you can have feedback
00:04:21.420 and collaboration around it.
00:04:23.040 Third thing you need to get right is the team culture.
00:04:25.640 You need to be in a business where if there is a procedure
00:04:29.300 that it is a must, not a nice to have, not a suggestion,
00:04:32.400 not a maybe, it is a must that they have the procedure open.
00:04:36.780 Okay, so the third area that you need to make sure to,
00:04:39.380 even if you sat down and you hired somebody,
00:04:41.520 I've seen people hire really expensive consultants
00:04:43.960 to come in and create a business manual
00:04:45.720 or a procedure or a playbook.
00:04:47.220 And the challenge is that nobody referenced it.
00:04:49.920 Nobody had it open when they were doing their work.
00:04:52.320 So the biggest challenge is making sure that people
00:04:55.020 integrate it into the culture of how they do business.
00:04:57.760 So one of the roles within all my companies is that if there's
00:05:00.400 a procedure that exists for the work you're about to do,
00:05:03.840 you must have it open.
00:05:05.480 It has to be sitting there and you gotta reference it so that
00:05:07.680 you can actually ensure that each step of the work gets done.
00:05:11.540 And if there's an issue where you say go to this screen and all
00:05:14.540 of a sudden that screen changes in the software,
00:05:16.620 you can actually update it in real time, okay?
00:05:18.780 So this is super key.
00:05:20.460 And people are always asking me, what tools do you use?
00:05:23.020 Below in the comments, or actually in the description
00:05:25.220 of the video, I'm gonna put all the tools that I use,
00:05:28.360 because it might change over time,
00:05:29.900 and that's where it's gonna be updated.
00:05:31.260 So if you have questions around the technical implementation,
00:05:34.440 do it there, check out there.
00:05:36.640 Number four is the structure.
00:05:38.780 The way I create it, and this is the tool that I'll probably
00:05:41.520 use for the near future, is I use a spreadsheet.
00:05:44.740 And I use Google Docs online, use Google Sheets,
00:05:47.880 because it's a super lightweight of having a list of the
00:05:52.240 procedures in my business.
00:05:53.440 Now I have three tabs in that spreadsheet.
00:05:55.780 I have procedures, I have references, and I have templates.
00:05:59.720 Because in a business that's kind of the three different
00:06:01.620 things you're gonna have.
00:06:02.560 You're gonna have the procedure which is the checklist or the
00:06:04.900 how-to of getting the work done.
00:06:06.560 You're gonna have the references which is content or
00:06:09.060 information that you need to do the work.
00:06:10.960 So those things might be referenced in the document.
00:06:13.100 So if you have like an employee onboarding procedure,
00:06:16.000 you might have a spreadsheet which is all the employee
00:06:18.500 contact information and one of the steps is to add or edit or
00:06:21.840 update that reference document.
00:06:24.140 And then the third is the templates which might be an email
00:06:27.420 that you send afterwards to the new employee, the new hire,
00:06:30.120 or if you're terminating somebody, the email or the
00:06:33.360 documents that you need to produce.
00:06:34.660 All the templates are linked to in this spreadsheet.
00:06:37.560 So they don't live in there but they're linked to it.
00:06:39.900 And the beauty of this is that you're not managing a folder
00:06:42.160 structure. A lot of people, you know, they create these folder
00:06:45.220 structures on network drives and then they've got all these
00:06:46.900 documents. I literally would much rather have one reference,
00:06:50.260 one single point to go and say, here are all the documents in
00:06:52.700 my business that help us accomplish the business.
00:06:55.200 And where are the documents and references and templates that
00:06:58.700 exist, even if they're in subsystems, in your project
00:07:01.520 management software, in your Dropbox, wherever they exist,
00:07:04.520 but they're referenced in one place.
00:07:06.060 And that is the structure of setting up and creating an
00:07:09.260 incredible procedures manual or what I like to call a playbook.
00:07:12.860 So the number one tip that I want to share with you,
00:07:15.100 the last thing that I think if you don't get this,
00:07:17.760 it will change the game for you in building out your own
00:07:20.440 playbook is when you hire somebody and you're training
00:07:23.380 them, you can literally have them read all the different
00:07:27.580 documents that they have access to,
00:07:29.020 all the procedures, and you give them a test.
00:07:31.380 And the test is their understanding of the work.
00:07:34.280 So you might have a question in there like how much vacation
00:07:36.760 does somebody get after three years of working with us?
00:07:39.260 Those answers will tell you if they read the procedures.
00:07:41.960 So if you wanna onboard and train somebody,
00:07:43.800 you can have everything sit in your documents
00:07:46.660 and then have them go in, consume everything
00:07:49.000 for the first two days of working with you
00:07:51.180 and then have a test to be able to see if they understand it.
00:07:54.940 So your training becomes super simple.
00:07:58.140 Hope you understand how cool that is
00:08:00.320 because a lot of people are like,
00:08:01.240 well now I gotta hire all these people,
00:08:02.280 I gotta train them to make it effective.
00:08:04.120 Let them self-study, train, come to you with questions
00:08:06.880 and then give them a test at the end
00:08:09.380 so that you know that they've done it properly.
00:08:11.980 Hopefully this video finds you incredibly well.
00:08:13.980 If you want my templates for the structure I use,
00:08:17.320 click the link below in the description.
00:08:18.920 I'll give you access to my templates for my playbook
00:08:21.800 that'll walk you through the Google Drive
00:08:23.400 on the folder structure for the sheets
00:08:25.000 as well as several different procedures
00:08:27.440 like the how to create a procedures template
00:08:29.900 to get you going fast today.
00:08:32.180 As per usual, I want to challenge you to live a bigger life
00:08:34.400 and a bigger business and I'll see you next Monday.
00:08:37.000 If you like this video, please subscribe to my channel
00:08:39.400 to get other tips and strategies on how to start
00:08:41.400 and grow your business.
00:08:42.400 I'd also invite you to join my newsletter
00:08:44.200 for exclusive invites, free entrepreneurial training videos,
00:08:48.400 and other community contests and if you're ready to get going,
00:08:50.900 I've got two more videos queued up, ready for you to go right now.
00:08:54.100 I'll see you next week.