Hey there, I'm Marisa, the Director of Client Services for IOI Ventures. Today, my exciting topic… standard operating procedures. I know I know. So exciting, right? I mean, who decides to become an entrepreneur, who says I'm going to open a business and because I am so passionate about standard operating procedures. Not many and I totally get that because it doesn't sound fun and it doesn't sound like something that you want to put your time into.

Today. I am hoping to convince you otherwise. I have two reasons for you today on why you should make standard operating procedures a part of your business.

Number one: time, we think it's very time-consuming to create these things. And yes, it requires an upfront cost of time. But time is our most important resource. And if you put it into things like standard operating procedures upfront on how you want things done in your business, so that your team can understand you and what's happening there. It will save you so much time later on.

We talk a lot about the idea of something being rinse and repeat. We have some spirited conversations here about whether or not ‘rinse and repeat’ is a bad thing.

And I would argue that no it is not.

I would say rinse and repeat on creativity. Yes, terrible. But rinse and repeat in procedures that you can do over and over and over again to free up mental space for you and your team creates more time to have in creative endeavors and less time in how do I do this again, or what's the best way that we should do this?

Stop reinventing the wheel and create a standard operating procedure!

It’s very easy to do. There are amazing tech platforms out there, many that are free to use, to create a video with a screen share and even build out a gif PDF for your staff so that they know exactly step by step what to do. If you are looking to find out what those programs are, shoot me an email (mmalts@ioiventures.com) and I will happily share.

The second reason why I think standard operating procedures are so important is for clarity, So as business owners, as entrepreneurs, how many times are we frustrated because what's going on in our head and what we think people should be understanding is not at all what's happening.

Standard operating procedures provide you an opportunity to share exactly what's in your head of what you want to see happen every single time. Your staff are not going to be mind readers- no matter how long they've been with you,  no matter how advanced they are in their skill set.

They can't read minds.

So the best thing that you can do is create step by step guides for things that you do in your business all the time.

This helps when you have new people coming on your company and employees stepping into new roles. It saves so much time when it's all spelled out for them so that your actual time can go into things that cannot be easily reproduced.

I hope you found this helpful. But again to reiterate, the two reasons standard operating procedures need to exist in your business is time and clarity.

So I hope that's what you take away from today's video. Have a great day!