Effective SOP

Episode 63: Effective SOP, with Juliana Marulanda

Effective SOP — Streamline operations,  and enhance efficiency to achieve your goals. Effective SOP: Your path to success.

I am so excited to welcome back Juliana Marulanda for an encore interview on this episode of Sell With Authority. If you’re meeting Juliana for the first time, she is the Founder of ScaleTime, a renowned agency consultancy with an impressive track record. Juliana and her team have helped over 500 agencies transform into lean, mean, profitable machines.

Juliana was our guest expert on the podcast just a few short weeks ago, and as we came in for a landing on episode 60, I asked her immediately if she would come back for an encore. I totally put her on the spot, and she said yes.

Effective SOP implementation ensures that businesses have a standardized and efficient approach to their operations, leading to increased productivity and streamlined workflows.

In this episode, we dive deeper into Juliana’s S.C.A.L.E. framework, which we began exploring in our previous conversation but needed more time to cover fully. We will also explore how AI tools like ChatGPT and effective prompts can supercharge your efficiency, incorporating the principles of effective SOP.

For additional context, Juliana was one of the experts at the Build a Better Agency Summit in Chicago that my team and I attended in May. She led highly attended breakout sessions where attendees were captivated by her insights and hands-on experience in using AI to streamline the process of recording standard operating procedures (SOPs) by a staggering five times faster. By mastering SOPs, businesses can eliminate repetitive tasks and focus on scaling their operations.

What you will learn in this episode is about effective SOP:

• Why implementing effective SOPs will streamline operations
• Focusing on an effective SOP within Juliana’s S.C.A.L.E. framework involves navigating through the outlined steps.
• How to go from operator to owner
• How Juliana and her team teach leadership differently than other consultancy firms
• Effective SOP  importance and how Juliana and her team teach leadership differently than other consultancy firms. Juliana’s recommendations for effectively leveraging AI tools for SOPs

Resources:

• Website: www.scaletime.co
• Learn more about effective SOP by tuning in to this podcast by Juliana Marulanda: Tackling common project management challenges
• LinkedIn Personal: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julianamarulanda/
• LinkedIn Business: https://www.linkedin.com/company/scaletime/
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/scaletime/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/julianamarula
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/scaletime
• The ScaleMap Diagnostic: https://discovery.scaletime.co/scale-map
• Delve deeper into effective SOP by visiting Juliana on this website as she discusses “Driving Success: Mastering Agency Management”.

Additional Resources:

• Predictive ROI Resource Library: https://predictiveroi.com/resources
• SWA Episode 60: Free up 30 Hours Using an Agency Management System, with Juliana Marulanda

 

Effective SOP: Full Episode Transcript

 

Welcome to the Sell with Authority podcast. I am Stephen Woessner, CEO of Predictive ROI, and my team and I created this podcast specifically for you. So, if you’re an agency owner or a strategic consultant, and you’re looking to fill your sales pipeline with a steady stream of right-fit prospects and get the app bats the leads, the opportunities to be in front of your right-fit prospects so that you can build and scale within, you’re in the right place. Do you want proven strategies for becoming the known expert in your niche and attracting all the clients that you need? Yep. We’re gonna cover that. You wanna learn how to step away from the sea of sameness so you actually stand out from your competitors and own the ground you’re standing on. Yep. We’re gonna cover that too. You want to future-proof your business so you can successfully navigate the next challenge that you know is coming your way.

 

Well, absolutely. We will help you there as well. I promise you each episode of this podcast will contain valuable insights, tangible examples, and best practices, never theory, from thought leaders, experts, and owners who have done exactly what you’re working hard to do. So, I want you to think practical and tactical. Never any fluff. Each of our guests has built a position of authority and then monetized that position by growing their audience, nurturing leads, and, yes, converting sales. But all the while, they did it by being helpful. So every time someone from their audience turned around there, they were with a helpful answer to an important question. So the RightFit prospects never, ever felt like they were a prospect. I also promise you every strategy that we discuss and every tool we recommend will be shared in full transparency in each episode so you can become the known expert in your niche and fill your sales pipeline with a steady stream of RightFit clients who, again, never ever were made to feel like one of your prospects.

 

Learn more about Effective SOP by reading this article by Juliana Marulanda: Staying On Track: Project Management Checklists

 

Effective SOP: Juliana Marulanda’s Introduction

 

So am excited for you to meet our very special guest expert today, Juliana Marulanda. So if you’ve, if you’re meeting Juliana for the first time, she’s the founder of ScaleTime and has helped over, this is such an impressive number, helped over 500 agencies uplevel into lean, mean, profitable machines, and Juliana was our guest expert on the podcast just a few short weeks ago, which is something we don’t typically do. So back on May 24th for episode 60, and as we came in for a landing on episode 60, I asked her, like, during the recording, I asked her straight away, Hey, would you come back for an encore? So I totally put her on the spot, and she said yes. So episode 60 was great. So, if you haven’t listened to it yet, I would highly recommend that you do. Okay, so before we dive into what Juliana and I are going to cover today, I’m gonna set the stage here,  just for a minute, with some additional context.

 

So last week, our leadership team here at Predictive attended the Build a Better Agency Summit in Chicago, which is hosted by the Agency Management Institute. Juliana was one of the experts at the summit, and she led a couple of rock-solid, awesome breakout sessions. And I will tell you, her breakouts were packed full of attendees. Why? Well, because Juliana was sharing with attendees her in-the-trenches insights and expertise around how to use AI to record standard operating procedures. So, SOPs are five times faster. Yeah, five times faster because when we get our SOPs right, you can stop repeating yourself over and over again and instead get down to the hard work of scaling your business. So, for today’s encore, Juliana and I are gonna loop back to several of the steps within what she calls the scaling framework that we started working through last time and then candidly just ran out of time.

 

Learn more about Effective SOP by tuning in to Our “Seed & Open Loops” Framework

 

Effective SOP: Accelerate Efficiency and Crush BizDev Challenges

 

What is an effective SOP? We’re going to layer in some of Juliana’s AI wisdom on how you can accelerate the process even further using tools like ChatGPT and the right prompts that will help you crush your efficiency. So I promise you, if you take and apply what Juliana shares with you during this episode, you’ll improve your agency’s operations so you can have the time, the space, and the capacity to get serious about fixing the feast and famine of BizDev that plagues so many agencies. And the excuse that we use is, oh, I just don’t have the time. Instead, you’ll be able to take that time and apply it to Biz Dev so that you can have that steady stream of RightFit clients who are eager to work with you flowing into your sales pipeline. So, without further ado, welcome back to the Sell With Authority podcast. Juliana,

 

Thank you so much for having me here. I love your audience and am excited to hang out with the Baba team.

 

Yeah, Baba was pretty amazing. I mean, anytime you get 350, 400 crazy awesome, wicked smart, super generous agency owners in a room together,  and they’re all looking to collaborate and share and just help each other be better without any of the competitive nonsense that typically goes on, what an amazing, amazing community,  a MI represents. So, it was lovely. You know, you and I obviously got a chance to record episode 60, and then afterward, I’m like, oh my gosh, you totally need to meet Megan on our team. And then, and then being able to meet,  meet you in person Sunday night before the summit, and then hang out for several days,  you know, during the actual summit. It was just amazing. So, thanks very much for the time that you spent with our team. I’m grateful for that.

 

Oh, I am so grateful for your team and for you. So, all right. Let the love fest continue.

 

Learn more about Effective SOP by tuning in to Our “Seed & Open Loops” Framework

 

Effective SOP: The Scale Framework for Agency Success

 

Effective SOP — Okay, so let’s do a quick recap about what you call the scale framework. So I know there are five steps, so let’s just go to the high level if you want to just mention the steps. Mm-Hmm. I wanna dig into step number three because this is where I feel like we just ran out of time last time, more for me because I was asking I wanted to get through the entire process, and then I kind of elongated it a little bit. So I really want to spend a little bit more time on step three, the amplify part, and then connect that into the AI that you were teaching,  at the summit. So, if you wouldn’t mind, let’s go to the high level. Give us a high-level view of the scale framework and each of the steps, and then we’ll do a deeper dive into step three.

 

An example of effective SOP is the scale framework,  which also has a bunch of different methodologies within it.  so if you’re listening to the last episode we went, we went deep, deep, right? So ’cause we’re really nerdy, and it’s like a square is a rectangle, but it’s a rectangle, not a square, right? So the framework, alright, the first step on the S is to see what’s happening, right? Like, we really wanna be able to know what’s happening in your company, in your organization,  because you might have blind spots, you might not.  and we’re really doing this with,  our scale map, right? And so that way, we’re able to detect all of your operational gains and gaps so that you can create, standardize, and optimize each part of your process and systems in the operations, right?

 

Okay. Then we have the C, which creates a baseline. And we are really before you’re going into and like, oh like, like you can see what’s happening, but we need to kind of figure out, okay, like, where are we starting? Yeah. Right? That’s to create a baseline piece.  And then also with baselines, where am I starting based on my maturity level of the business? I often talk about the operations and resources that you’re using.  if you’re 500 K versus 5 million versus 15 versus 50 million, are gonna be different, right? You know, and here, I’ll often joke that our cash is queen.  we have different resources, cash, people, and technology, right? We need to figure out where we’re at, in reality, like our business, and also where we are in the maturity of our business.

 

Learn more about Effective SOP by tuning in to Our “Seed & Open Loops” Framework

 

Effective SOP: Amplifying Agency Success

 

Effective SOP in economics? In the economics of like where we stand in the business, both on a macro level with everything else that’s going on this year and next year. So that’s creating a baseline. Then we’re gonna get to the A, which is amplifying how you’re doing it. You’re running a business, you’re doing it right, you got your baseline, but now we wanna make things run better, faster, leaner, more profitable, right? So we’re gonna amplify your process, your performance, and your profit, right? And we’ll get into the AI here in just a second. Cause I know that’s a hot topic for tons of people.

 

Okay? But hang on just one second, though, because you just, you just mentioned three P’s there that I wanna make sure that I capture. So, as part of the amplified step in the overall process, you mentioned process performance and profit, right? Did I get all three of those? Correct? Yes. So those are really, really significant. So, if our audience nails step three, then the process is gonna be smoother, more efficient, less time-consuming, and maybe free up time like I mentioned in the intro. So they could invest more toward business development, but then the performance of their team theoretically is gonna go up too, because everybody’s more capable. Everybody may ask fewer questions just because it’s clearer. Steps one, two, three, and so forth repeat. And then, if we knit those first two together, then a result outcome of really being able to nail three is more profit to the bottom line, right?

 

Exactly.  and with more profit comes more power, right? Like your power to invest and make decisions around the business, right? You have the power to really own your genius and own your decisions on what you wanna do, right? So many people talk about freedom, and I love the idea, the concept of freedom, but I know you’re all about practical and tactical, right? It’s, for me, it’s the freedom of choice, right? Like, so I think that’s really important,

 

Freedom of choice. Oh, that’s great. Absolutely.

 

Learn more about Effective SOP by tuning in to Our “Seed & Open Loops” Framework

 

Effective SOP: Leading and Delegating for Agency Success

 

Effective SOP? Now, step four for me is to lead and delegate. Okay? I think this is really important because we are owners, right? We want to go from being operators to owners, right? And in order to do that, we need to be able to, and for anyone who has children, who I think be, let it go, let it go.

 

Love the Disney reference, too.

 

Yeah, absolutely, right? Like if,  you know, if Frozen was ever on your TV 24/7 like this.

 

Bring troops. You’re making Drew and me happy with a little frozen reference, so that’s great.

 

So, a delegation is not abdication, right?  Like absolutely having high-performance delegations so that your team can also own the processes, performance, and profit so that they can start making decisions, right? So you can truly trust that the business is running without you. Like, that’s, that’s super important, right? Because so much of it is, I truly believe that if you can trust your processes, right, then there’s, you don’t have to get so hung up on whether or not you trust your people to be able to do the right thing.

 

Okay? So, Juliana, in my enthusiasm for this piece here, I wrote in my notes about operators to owners and/or operators to owners. And the reason why I got so excited about that is because we’re talking about this, this cohort, and that you and the team are starting. Hopefully, that’s okay. Is that okay that I mentioned this? Okay. and we got super excited about it. And that night at dinner,  Monday night, and Megan was like, oh, this cohort. And I’m like, that sounds fantastic. and so when you said operators to owners, one thing I don’t think I shared with you is that Megan and Hannah, they’re both on ownership tracks here at Predictive. I know we’ve talked about career paths and so forth, but they’re on ownership tracks. So when you said operators to owners, I’m thinking, okay, this is, this is fantastic. Like, if Megan is able to really master the five steps that you’re talking about here in the framework in that cohort, this is also going to help her step into the owner’s seat at some point, right? Am I thinking about that correctly?

 

Learn more about Effective SOP by tuning in to Our “Seed & Open Loops” Framework

 

Effective SOP: The Natural Evolution in Agency Operations

 

Absolutely. This is really the entry point, right? Where? I’ve seen this happen so many times, right? For example, at skill time, we don’t teach leadership the way that other people teach leadership, right? Like, we’re not a leadership consulting firm, right? And I know people that do that, and they do it spectacularly. Hmm. However, what I have seen time and time again is that it is a byproduct of people participating in putting in processes for the organization, right? So, like we, we call anyone who’s sort of an ops lead a gladiator. Cause we like to have fun with it, right? And so we’re like, these are your gladiator’s boots on the ground. So, is anyone really starting to do that? And get their hands into it, like it becomes their baby, right?

 

The process becomes their responsibility, and then that starts to create true ownership of the process. Ownership reads leadership, and it yields naturally organic leadership because now they are responsible. Now they’re making decisions.  I have seen the crankiest of gladiators, who were pulled into doing this now kicking and screaming, like, why do I have to do this now? I have to do more for my job, blah, blah, blah.  And then they’re like they’ve created something, whether it’s their project management system or their project management dashboards or management systems or CRM systems, and they’re like, do not touch this, this is fine. Obviously, we make sure that they document everything for to, in case there are handoffs or they have to go on vacation, but they’re like, so they’re so proud of the work that they’ve done. Yep. They became that subject matter expert in the business because now they’ve got the capabilities, they have ownership, and people come to them, right? So there’s this organic yielding of leadership with individuals who are implementing change in an organization. And I’m an ops nerd, so I think it’s one of the most beautiful things.

 

Well, it is because when do we get step four? And I know we’re gonna step into step five, but when we get that right, and let’s say we help it, or, or you, I say we, you help an operator step into the owner, right? Then, that makes step five possible: exit and oversee. I’m sort of giving away step five, but, like, unless we get to step four, right? We’re going to get stuck, right?

 

Learn more about Effective SOP by tuning in to Our “Seed & Open Loops” Framework

 

Effective SOP: Unlocking Growth and Leadership in Your Business

 

You get stuck and stuck, right? Stuckness, I’m gonna say this in quotation so that you guys listening can kind of like picture me saying this in quotations.  stuck. Like, I mean, so many different things. Right? You’re stuck at a certain plateau in the business, right? Like, I often talk about this like weird 1.3 ’cause everyone dashes to a million,  where they get stuck in and then three and then 7 million.  you get stuck in a job that you’ve created for yourself that you don’t love, right? Like you could be a total creative, like a total innovator, but you’re stuck doing sales and like, that’s not your jam, or you’re a total rainmaker, and then you’re stuck trying to create a funnel. And so, like, stuckness could be part of, like, okay, like now I’m doing something I don’t love stuckness.

 

It could be I wanna retire, but I can’t because we don’t have an exit strategy. Whatever that looks like. Or a succession plan stuck could be like, ah, there’s all these opportunities out there to either do a nonprofit or start a second business or a fifth or 10th, right? Or be part of a SaaS opportunity, and you can’t because you still have both feet in, even though you have like one pinky toe out the door,  try to go to another opportunity, but you can’t, right? So, so stuckness means so many things to different people. And if we don’t get step four, right? Like it’s a self-fulfilling stuckness.

 

Yeah. Right? You know. So one of the great groups that’s out there, with respect to leadership and scaling and so forth, is a group called Elite Entrepreneurs. We’re big fans of what Brett Gill and his team have built there. They talk about it, and they’re a spinoff from Infusionsoft, now Keap, and now they’ve been an independent company for maybe six or seven years. But, some of the research that they did while they were still part of Infusionsoft was that, and this was a project at Clay Mask, CEO of Infusionsoft, were the companies get stuck to your point at the ones and threes they get, they get stuck at 300,000. How do we hit a million? They hit a million; they get stuck there. How do you move from a million to 3 million? They get stuck at 3 million. How do you move from 3 million to, let’s say, 10 million? And so all the things that you’re talking about, I mean, that shows up in the data. and it’s like if we don’t get past step four, we’ll never step into step five, and we’ll never realize the dream of stopping being an operator and stepping into truly being an owner. So, take us through step five because I want to get into the AI and the SOP brilliance that you shared last week. Cause it truly is brilliant.

 

Learn more about Effective SOP by tuning in to Our “Seed & Open Loops” Framework

 

Effective SOP: Mastering Exit Strategy

 

Thank you.  yeah, absolutely. And then step five is being able to exit and oversee. Right? Now, exit means a lot of things to many people, right? Like exit is,  I am exiting my computer nights and weekends for Realties, right? Like, I’m off for realties. That’s awesome, right? So I mean, that’s a very significant exit for some people. You know, I’m getting eight hours of sleep,  you know, exit can look like I want to sell this business for a five x multiple, right? Like, that’s an exit. And the exit is, okay, well, now I want a succession plan for whoever is going to take this on in the future because I want to retire. You know, I wanna stay on the board, I wanna start a new thing, right?

 

Exit is I am now only going to work on strategic partnerships, and everything else is handed over. Like, I’m like, that’s the only thing I’m doing, right? So exiting means a lot of things to many individual owners, depending on what type of owner you are and what it is in your freedom of choice, okay? Now, in order to really do that and do that effectively, we have to put in metrics and dashboards, and we have to be able to oversee the business, okay? So, whoever is taking it over, right? Whoever the operator in the business is going to be,  truly, whether that’s your COO, your ops manager,  you know, the holding company that’s buying your agency, like whoever’s going to can actually be able to see, okay, is this business effective?

 

Learn more about Effective SOP by tuning in to Our “Seed & Open Loops” Framework

 

Effective SOP: Leveraging AI for SOP Success

 

Effective SOP —  Can it grow, right? You know, can it continue? Can it grow without you as you are exiting, right? And so that’s gonna increase your chances of all these different exit opportunities, right? Whether you’re trying to hang out with the family,  and not check in on the team so that you can see if everything is working well or if someone’s gonna take it over and they need to see if it’s working well, right? So, that’s the piece that I think is also really important for the efficacy of an exit.

 

I love that, too, because it’s not just exciting and forgetting about it and putting it on cruise control. You mentioned exit overseas, and then you broke down the how. So it’s not, let’s just now be happy right off into the sunset. And then a CRA’s behind us when you mention the metrics and the dashboards, it’s like, yes, okay, now we can have the freedom of choice because we’ve exited yay in whatever exit means to the particular owner.  but then also it doesn’t mean you completely take the hands off the wheels, or excuse me, hands off the wheel. I said I put the plural on the wrong thing. Anyway, so, so let’s go back to amplify because,  you know, it’s the middle of the process, and then it really hooks into, again, this ai, SOP, how you link those together, the brilliance of, of last week’s,  breakout sessions,  that were just absolutely packed with attendees. So I think you really hit a nerve,  you know, with this topic that you put forward. So, take us in, sort of behind the curtain here, into how you would recommend using AI for SOPs as part of the overall step three, amplify.

 

Why effective SOP is important in modern business? So when we’re thinking about amplifying pieces of our business, right? Okay.  and I just wanna like all overarch it, and then we’ll deep dive, okay? You know, whether it’s our technology, right? Like you might have a tool that you know that you’re paying for, and people are using it kind of,  you know, consistently ish,  participation somewhat, right? So, getting a tool to get amplified right is a big deal.  getting your your templates done is a big deal.  figuring out your workflows is ’cause we all have these pieces of the business, but we want them to work harmoniously together so that we have really strong systems. and as you’re growing, right? Your different business functions are growing and scaling effectively. Okay?  so when I say amplify, right, I’m talking about all these different pieces.

 

Learn more about Effective SOP by tuning in to Our “Seed & Open Loops” Framework

 

Effective SOP: SOPs as a Team Sport

 

So that’s part one. Now, when we’re talking about documentation, there’s tons of buzz around AI, and I love talking about AI. My husband’s a data scientist, so it’s a very nerdy household. Like, no doubt. Wow. Yeah. We’re chatting about tokenization and the news zaps, right? So, and I’m like, no, but you can’t do that yet. Right? He’s like, well, Morgan Stanley has been, right? So, this is the kind of conversation we’re having, and I don’t believe that AI could replace a human, at least not yet. Like, not even someone who’s super junior, right? I think that it is a part of the workflow. Hmm. and I think it’s a really,  awesome part of the workflow.

 

Effective SOP? I think right now what’s going on with learning language models,  you know, there’s tons of conversations with marketers about how do we’re using it for generating content, da da da. I have tons of opinion about this that is not this episode.  What I do think is that it’s really great, right? It’s like what it was originally created for in terms of synthesizing data, classifying it, and labeling it. And so what that creates is a massive opportunity in operations,  especially in documentation, because we’re giving it the thing that it’s good at. And so this is actually really excellent at, hmm, now I have to talk about documentation as a team sport, right? Like, we want to have the subject matter experts in your organization download their break,  figuratively. Cause we can’t plug them in just yet.

 

So we want them to be able to say, okay, here’s the expertise. And that expertise might be in you, the owner’s head, or someone in your leadership. You’ve got someone, you know, doing media, and you know, they’ve got like really specific strategies on how they’re doing that. We wanna be able to download their brains so that tribal knowledge stays within the business, right? And before you’re even amplifying how you’re doing things, we wanna document how you’re doing it so that we can amplify it. And I think that’s a really important piece. So when it comes to creating SOPs, I have to talk like we used to, right? Way back when, five years ago, right? Like, way back when in the olden ages.

 

Learn more about Effective SOP by tuning in to Our “Seed & Open Loops” Framework

 

Effective SOP: Revolutionizing SOP Creation

 

You create a video, then you take the video, and you send it to a human to get it transcribed, right? It used to cost somewhere between 60 cents to a dollar a minute for transcription overseas. Yep. Right? Then you take that transcription, and you turn it into an SOP, right? You have a step-by-step instruction. Everyone may have their own flavor of like how they want this to be done, but the basic instruction of a standard operating procedure is step-by-step, right? So now we have that, and then at some point, maybe one day, you update it, right? Depending on how big or small your organization is, you may or may not have tons and tons of SOPs; you may have nothing, right? So the new way that we can really do this is you take that video Mm-hmm, right? Now, we can use AI and technology every single step of the way to scale this and five 10 times how quickly we can do this, depending on how complicated the SOP is and then, and I can share the cheat sheet, if you want, with your audience so that you can share.

 

That’d be awesome. Okay. So, where can they go, like on your website, to download the sheet?

 

Yeah, I’ll put it in the show notes.

 

Secrets to having an effective SOP? Yes. Okay. For you guys.  and I’d like to tell everybody more about where they can get that later. Okay. You know, just so in case, like, you’re like, well, show me exactly what you mean, well, that way, you can literally just copy and paste the prompts. But so when you’re creating a video now, there are tons of tools that you can use that will do automatic transcription, okay? Right? And some of them are very inexpensive, and some of them are free, right? Top ones right now, right? And I’m gonna say,  we’re like mid-year 2023.  there are new apps that are hitting the market every single day. So, just take this as a point of reference in a little timestamp. Yeah.  So great ones are, you know, free ones like Fathom, which is a great one.

 

Fireflies are one. Zoom, if you have the business version of Zoom with a big team, like if you’re if you’ve got a big sales team and you wanna like a great thing is like if you’re trying to capture objections, right? So Zoom’s business plan has it embedded, right? Yeah. They actually use Otter. Otter is another one.  So there are tons of them that are pretty inexpensive. My favorite right now is grain.  and the reason why I like it is because you can go on the backend and actually do awesome reviews. So I could geek out on that with you guys later, but you know, there’s all of these, so we’re taking the step of transcription and just completely automating it, right? Because most of them will do the transcription live.

 

Learn more about Effective SOP by tuning in to Our “Seed & Open Loops” Framework

 

Effective SOP:  Transforming Transcriptions into Actionable Procedures

 

Effective SOP — like right now, Migraine is doing the transcription live, and so that’s pretty awesome. As a sidebar for this, if you have anyone who is hearing impaired in your organization, this is great so that they’re able to see what people are saying live as well, right? So it’s an added benefit, right? So now you have the transcription. Now, we’re trying to get to the actual SOP of the matter. Okay? There’s, and you can do your SOPs. I like ChatGPT for this. I think it’s the simplest way to do it.  However, if you’re using any sort of AI-enabled tools, like now, I think there are something like 2,500 AI tools that came out last week. Holy,  yeah, it was insane. So the rate of acceleration is huge, right? So, like, if you’re using anything like a notion,  or, or anything that is basically using a language,  model, you can,  you can use these prompts as well, but if you’re just inserting it into chatGPT, there are three basic prompts that we want for SOPs, okay?

 

One is to create a sop from the transcription. The second one is to merge SOPs. Okay? So, if you are an organization, you’ve been around for some time, right? And then everyone has decided that they have their own special way of doing things, okay? And you have like five SOPs for every actual thing that you’re doing. This is a great time to start merging. Right? So that’s one way to do it. Okay? Then the third one, which is a little bit of a different SOP, but I think it’s, it’s more of a prompt engineering hack, I would say, is to ask for a decision tree. Now, the fascinating thing about asking for a decision tree is that,  if you have an SME, right? Who’s maybe not the greatest explainer,  and is like talking all over the place when they do that video, which is okay, ’cause I would rather them do that than try to get it perfect, and then we have like perfection getting in the way of progress.

 

Learn more about Effective SOP by tuning in to Our “Seed & Open Loops” Framework

 

Effective SOP: Simplify SOP Creation with AI

 

 Ask it for a decision tree, and it will usually be able to go through all of the ramblings to see if it works or if you’re doing any analysis, right? If you have an SOP for reporting, if you have an SOP for,  you know, strategy, if there’s anything that is like, if this, then that, right? If you’re like, well, if the cost per lead is this, if the cost per acquisition is that da, da da, then a decision tree is actually a much better prompt to create an SOP that has analysis embedded in it.  which is often hard to get out of the brains of people,  who have been doing this for x amount of years, right? They’re like that whole, like, I’ve been doing this for so long.

 

Unconscious competency, right?

 

Absolutely. That decision tree from a transcript is excellent.  Now that you’ve got your SOP, we need a human to go ahead and review it and double-check it. Then, I recommend that you’ve got good document hygiene. Yeah. So that you’re updating it, at least twice a year when you’re seasonally slow.  And/or if you have an event, like an algorithm changed, you’re hiring someone new, and you’re trying to fire somebody, right? Something like that. Like that’s a good time to go in and make sure that everything’s cleaned up.

 

Okay? So let’s do a quick recap here as we need to come in for a landing landing, but high level, or not high level, this is more granular. So, subject matter expert records, the video then gets transcribed using some of, or one of the options that you,  generously shared with us as well as your favorite. So, subject matter experts record the video that then goes through and gets transcribed by AI. Then,  that transcript is put into ChatGPT with the command to create an SOP from the transcript.  And now you, you, then will go and review the SOP to make sure that it’s accurate, that nothing was missed, that kind of stuff or whatever. But that obviously takes a whole lot less time than trying to create an SOP from scratch staring at a flashing cursor in a blank word document, right? 

 

Learn more about Effective SOP by tuning in to Our “Seed & Open Loops” Framework

 

Effective SOP: SOP Creation Cheat Sheet

 

This is amazing—really, really amazing. Okay. And so then, the link that we’re going to put into the show notes in this episode—what is that link going to take them toward? You mentioned a cheat sheet. So, here are some additional details about what our audience can expect when they go to that link.

 

Yes. So it will give you guidelines for general prompt creation. Oh, wow. Okay. Just because, you know, everyone right now is playing with prompts. And so, I have some general guidelines that I think will be good guardrails as you’re thinking through this. Amazing. And then, just because I have this now for a bunch of people, I have slides on the actual presentation that I did at Baba.  so in case anybody wants those,  they’re there as well. Okay. a worksheet for a bunch of different procedures to help you kind of brainstorm what SOPs you may or may not have. Yeah. Then we have about five or six, and I think it’s like five or six, and I’ll keep growing it with a time of prompts for the actual prompt language and visual examples of how I have used this, with either clients or myself.  you know, with the merging with the labeling,  for that merging for the creating, for the actual like analysis and decision tree. So you can see, in real life, what this looks like within a window, right? So I wanna make things very real for people. And then there is also a prompt to create prompts. 

 

Yes. So, if you are thinking about making prompts for something else in the organization, then there’s a pretty decent prompt where you ask your language learning model to basically be a prompt creator for you and be in it with you to help you create prompts for other things. So that’s kind of a fun one to play with.

 

Learn more about Effective SOP by tuning in to Our “Seed & Open Loops” Framework

 

Effective SOP: Accelerating SOP Creation with AI

 

This is really exceptional, and that’s huge value because, as you well know, the prompts are where it’s at. Like, like if we’re not asking the right questions or the right input in, in this case, the transcript and then the correct prompt, the output isn’t really all that helpful, or it’s not on point the way that we really want it to be. So what you’re sharing with us now is exceptional. So that link, everyone is gonna be in the show notes. And Juliana, thank you for your generosity,  in sharing that. That’s hugely valuable. So I know we need to come in for a landing because we’re quickly running out of time, but before we go, before we close out and say goodbye, anything you think we might have missed? And please tell our audience the best way to connect with you, Juliana.

 

Yeah, for sure. I think we covered a good deal. Yeah, we did.  I’m excited about what we covered today. And if you know, running a business is hard, right?  It could be GRU as you’re scaling. And it doesn’t have to be that way.  So, I have tons of resources, and I will put them in this episode as well. And the last one, in scale time.co/podcast/wa. You know, you can sign up for the newsletter, and if you, we’ve had tons of people use the newsletter for little micro-actions to make sure that they’re on the right track, which is pretty phenomenal. We will also have our scale map there. So if you’re interested in diagnosing the agency, if you wanna see a heat map of your gaps in your gains for 50 different kinds of operational pieces and get a score, then absolutely do that. And if you are at the point where you heard something and you’re like, Ooh, it really resonated, and you just wanna hop on a call, feel free to book that and get on the calendar so you can find that at scaletime.co/podcast/swa.

 

That is just awesome.  Okay, everyone, no matter how many notes you took or how often you go back and re-listen to Giovanni’s words of wisdom, I sure hope that you do. The key is you have to take these five steps. You have to take this breakdown that she gave you for AI and be able to accelerate the process for your SOPs. You have to take all of that generosity, all of those smarts that she just gave you, take it, and apply it because when you do, you will accelerate your results. And Juliana, we all have the same 86,400 seconds in a day. I am grateful that you said yes to coming back to the show so quickly for this encore, which was absolutely brilliant because you’re helping us move our businesses onward to that next level. Thank you so much, my friend.

 

I am honored to be here and spend those minutes with you and your audience. Thank you for having me.