March 12, 2019

10x-ing output with a simple SOP

Sent by Jonathan Stark on March 14th, 2019

Todd Tresidder recently came on TBOA to talk to Rochelle and I about creating leverage in your business to maximize your wealth.

One of his six leverage types is “systems leverage” which basically involves creating a standard operating procedure (SOP) for anything that you do on a regular basis. This is something that I’ve dabbled in previously by creating checklist-style SOPs for things like:

Even from just this short list, I’ve been amazed by how much easier and less stressful these recurring multi-step processes have become. Most of the SOPs that I have created so far have been inspired by a sense of desperation. They are things that would be almost impossible to sustain without having a procedure in place.

But speaking with Todd got me really excited about the idea of systematizing more pieces of my business. Started wondering:

“Where else can I create SOPs for things that I do on a regular basis?”

So for the past couple weeks, I’ve been looking for other places where I could define processes for things that I’ve kind of just been winging for a long time. Hoo-boy, did I find some!

For example:

Just this week, I created an SOP for producing videos for my YouTube channel. Once I had it written down, the areas for improvement became obvious. A couple iterations later, I had defined a video-first content creation workflow that also plugs into my podcast, which in turn plugs into my social media scheduler.

The result?

Even with this rough draft SOP, I produced 14 videos, 14 podcast episodes, and roughly 75 social media posts in about four hours. This is probably close to a 10x improvement over my previous tactic of winging it every time I recorded a video.

Once I get this process down to a science, I predict that I’ll be able to outsource a bunch of steps and cut my time investment down to about an hour for the same output. Only time will tell, but conservatively this could represent a 20-30x improvement in just this one area. W00t!

Here’s the thing...

Since I don’t trade time for money, each improvement works out to almost pure profit for me. If I was billing by the hour, I wouldn’t have much reason to think about systemizing like this. Sure, I could probably make some improvements in non-billable areas like email processing, invoicing, or time tracking. But any efficiencies created in billable areas (i.e., my actual work) would only serve to decrease my income.

Nuts, right?

Yours,

—J

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