002: Building Value & Boosting Revenue with SOPs

Building Value & Boosting Revenue with SOPs | Money Maker Monday

In this episode of Money Maker Monday, host Sarah Beth Herman dives into building value with your audience and creating effective SOPs to save time and increase revenue. The focus is on developing foundational systems, embracing necessary mindset shifts, and taking immediate action. The episode also features information on the exciting live session with Jac from The Release Method. Sarah Beth discusses the importance of SOPs for consistency, efficiency, and scalability in business, and provides practical steps for organizing them using tools like Notion. Tune in to learn strategies for social media growth, setting goals, and leveraging accountability partners, all aimed at helping you achieve massive progress in your business.

Timestamps

00:00 Introduction to Money Maker Monday

02:02 Building Value with SOPs

02:49 Creating Effective SOPs

05:35 Organizing SOPs by Category

08:36 Developing SOPs for Different Business Stages

12:33 Scaling Your Business with SOPs

13:31 Keeping SOPs Updated

14:06 Social Media Strategies for Growth

18:04 Setting and Achieving Goals

18:54 Accountability and Support

19:48 Conclusion and Next Steps

This podcast episode is exclusively for members and accountability partners of Blueprint to Breakthrough®. All content provided is for educational and motivational purposes only. Results may vary based on individual effort and application.

For more information and resources, visit www.sarahbethherman.com.

If you have any questions or need support, reach out through the cohort connection channel in Microsoft Teams. Let’s keep growing together!

Transcript

Welcome back to Money Maker Monday. I'm your host, Sarah Beth Herman, and this week we are talking all about Building value with your audience and your SOPs. This episode is all about creating systems that not only save you time, but also, ultimately, increase your revenue.

We're going to kick off with a focus on getting out of your own head and prospering forward. This theme is designed to help you build that foundational system, embrace what mindset shifts have to happen, and then take immediate action toward results.

It's not about overthinking this week. We're just getting started. Executing. I've got an exciting live session this week with Jack, the founder of The Release Method. Jack is joining us on Tuesday at 11 a. m. for a live session that will be absolutely foundational and helping you break through your own barriers.

Her approach to releasing mental blocks is incredible. If you're listening to this episode after we've had our Tuesday session, I don't want you to stress out. I just want you staying focused on what this podcast offers to train you.

 This podcast is here for you, so you can keep coming back and re listening to it as a resource  as you move through this week. Now let's break down everything you need to know about this week here at Blueprint to Breakthrough. 

I want to take a moment to celebrate some wins from our community and set the stage for massive progress.  Let's first talk about standard operating procedures or SOPs. At their core, an SOP is a detailed document that outlines the steps for completing a task or a process in your business. 

They are actually a roadmap for consistency, efficiency, and scalability.  Now you might be thinking, I don't need to scale my business. It's just me. I don't want to worry about anything else, but you are not immortal. And one day there will come a time when you no longer can run this business.

So what are your plans? What if that happened tomorrow?  What if someone walked up to you and said I was willing to give you 10 million dollars for your business? Show me why I should give it to you.  Could you do it?  All right,  let's keep going.  An SOP is not just a document. So if you think it is, I want you to get that right out of your head. 

In my opinion, it is a future planned money maker because it creates four key things. First, it creates consistency. Every client, product, or service receives the same quality, experience, and loyalty from you. This builds trust, this builds loyalty, it's fabulous. Two, efficiency. When you eliminate the guesswork, you and your team save time, allowing you to focus on revenue generating activities. 

 Even if you're a solo show, you still have a team. You have third party people that work with you. You ultimately will have someone that comes in and works for you. 3. Scalability. SOPs make it easier to delegate, onboard new team members, and expand without reinventing the wheel. 

When processes are clearly defined, it reduces errors and miscommunication, keeping everything running smoothly. I want you to think of SOPs like a long term investment. The time you spend creating them now will pay off in the future with less stress, more productivity, and increased profits.

 I often get asked questions like, Sarah Beth, you want me to do all these things, but one, it's a waste of time and two, how do I do it to keep organized? Well, first of all, anything I tell you in this podcast or any future episode, they aren't time wasters. I'm telling you to do it because I've started without doing them and I know how much money you can make when you are organized, when you are detailed, when you have all your ducks in a row. 

I know the founders of several extremely large organizations  that have sold for eight figures or more. And I'm telling you they didn't sell them by just having ideas in their brain. You can't sell your brain to someone. You can't say, I want to grow 10x from where I am right now  without understanding exactly how you do it.  A great place to start creating your SOPs is with some sort of digital product. Now, for me, I have used Microsoft Teams, I've used Word, I've used Canva, I've used Notes on my iPhone.  The greatest thing you can do for yourself is develop systems that are going to actually work, and that means Figuring out the software as you can quickly understand.

You can get a free account with Notion. It is a versatile and user friendly platform. You can organize your SOPs by category. You can collaborate with other people in real time. You can also download templates right within Notion or even buy templates from their marketplace or Etsy. 

When you are setting up your SOPs in Notion or any other tool, I want you to consider organizing them by category.

And I have basically six categories that you could do this with. One would be operations, so this is , What are my standard operating procedures for daily tasks like managing emails, scheduling, or time tracking, office management processes, like supply ordering, or system maintenance, how often do we update our website, two, I would say marketing, so what are your steps for creating social media posts?

What are your strategies for engagement,  three sales, your standard operating procedures for prospecting, for lead followup, for sales conversion, workflows, templates for consistent communication, including email scripts, followup sequences.

What does that look like for you? Number four, client management. So your onboarding processes from initial sales call to service delivery, your feedback loops, your client retention strategies, five, your creative processes. So that's your podcast episode, production workflows, video workflows, audio workflows, your content creation steps for videos, blogs, visual media, And then six, your team collaboration.

So meeting schedules, agendas, follow up processes, communication standards, like  When and how to use tools like Slack, Teams, or even email.  When you start with categories, you actually break apart into small manageable pieces, creating your actual SOPs. Start with templates for each category if you want.

 For example, you can have daily tasks checklists outlining repetitive daily tasks for consistency, project workflow templates for reoccurring projects like launching a product or creating content, 

client onboarding checklists, simplifying the process from welcome emails to contracts.  If you're new to Notion, start by setting up a simple workspace and folders for the categories. This structure makes sure that your SOPs are easily accessible and adaptable as your business grows.  So don't overthink it. Just start with your categories and start writing a few things in each one.  I'm not asking you to carve out Mount Rushmore today.

What I want you to do is just start with the framework. What is it going to look like for you? And what are your basics in each section? 

If you notice that I'm talking about a section that doesn't apply to you, I want you to feel free to fast forward this episode or increase the playback speed. This way you can bypass anything that doesn't feel applicable and focus on the parts that resonate with your goals as a part of Blueprint to Breakthrough.

Knowing what's ahead can help you make the most out of what this episode will be about while staying efficient. In this next section, I'm going to talk about the framework for where you are at and blueprint to breakthrough and how to develop your SOPs. I'm going to start with those that are just starting a business for their first bit.

They're making less than six figures a year and they're really just in that startup phase. I'm also going to be talking about those that are launching a podcast and then I'm going to go into those that are scaling their business. So if one of those categories doesn't resonate, you can totally fast forward through.

 Though it is my belief that you can get something from everything and maybe something that I'm telling a different level or phase of business might not be where you are physically at, but maybe you didn't do that part when you were starting your business or maybe you want to start a podcast in the future and you want some insight on that.

So I'm going to go through each of those sections as we go through , but again, feel free to fast forward so you don't feel like you are listening to something irrelevant to your speed or your pace. 

 Let's break down what SOPs might look like depending on where you are in your journey. Let's start with starting a business. When you are starting a business, your SOPs should outline, I believe, these three core sections for new startups  or those that have not yet scaled to exceed six figures.

First, your client onboarding outline every step from the first inquiry to delivering your service or your product. Number two, daily operations, define your tasks like managing emails, tracking leads, scheduling appointments, and then number three, your core offer delivery. Step by step instructions for delivering your primary product or service, stick to those three, master those three, and then move on to the next.

If you're launching a podcast,  Podcasting is an incredible platform to grow your audience and establish authority in your niche. To streamline your process, I want you to build SOPs specifically for podcasting.  So what to include in your SOPs for podcasting. I want you to have four sections. The first one, episode planning.

This is where you're gonna brainstorm topics, outline your structure, and create a timeline for production.  Two, recording. This is where I want you detailing your setup for equipment, software tips for high quality audio that you've researched online.  Anything that has to go along with recording, write it all out. 

3. Editing.  In your editing section, I want you to include software tutorials, editing tasks, or timelines. If you're not going to edit your own content, who is your third party source that's going to help you edit? If you are editing, What software are you using? Start with the basic framework and number four promotion.

 This is your section that is all about your steps for writing show notes, creating social media content and scheduling out posts. Start with these four categories for podcasts specifically. This isn't a separate section, but these are things that I want you to be thinking of. If you're starting a podcast and your intro, I want to hear what your podcast purpose is, who is it for and a quick hook to grab their attention in your outro. I want to hear a call to action, subscribe, leave a review, visit our website, or join our community.

I want you thinking about what you want in your intro and your outro, but include those things this week. I want you to listen to other podcasts for inspiration. I want you to tell me what you like in their intros or outros. What you don't like. What yours could possibly be if it was like their intro or outro.

Maybe you go in and draft your own intro and outro or ask ChatGPT to generate it for you. Share it in the group for feedback. There are several podcasters in blueprint to breakthrough and so many people would love to give you feedback 

Let's talk about those that are scaling a business. Now, if you're scaling a business, I want you to have three separate categories that are your SOPs we're going to be working on. The first is delegation. So what are your SOPs for handing off tasks like social media management or customer service? 

What are your SOPs for team communication? I want you to define your protocols for meetings, updates, and project management. Three, sales processes. I want to see step by step instructions for prospecting. follow ups and closing deals. If you want to scale, these three things have got to be in place for SOPs. 

Even the best SOPs can go stale if they're not visited. Think about how quickly trends change on platforms like TikTok.  Business processes evolve just as fast. If you're not updating your systems every six months, you risk falling behind.  So here's how to keep your SOPs fresh. One, I want you to review them.

Schedule a biannual SOP review to identify any outdated steps or inefficiencies. Two, I want you to refine them. Adjust processes to align with new goals, new tools, new industry trends. And three, involve your team. Get feedback from those that are using these SOPs daily to make sure that they are still relevant and still effective.

This ongoing refinement will make sure that your business stays agile and ready to adapt to new growth opportunities.

 Social media is such a powerful tool for growing your audience.

And if your goal is to gain 20, 30, or even 50 followers in a week, here is a great strategy that you can start to apply as you start to scale and grow that platform.  I want you to learn to understand the algorithm. Social media algorithms love a balance of give and take. This means engaging with others is just as important as creating content.

Follow new people, comment on their posts, and start meaningful conversations.  Remember that consistency is really important. People that post regularly Get more traction. So whether it's daily or a few times a week, whatever you're choosing to do, you need to show up consistently so that your audience knows what to expect. 

A big factor in what you post is quality over quantity. So focus on creating content that provides value to your audience. Whether it's educational, entertaining, or even if it's just something inspiring and don't forget to engage. I want you replying to comments. I want you to DM your followers. I want you to start conversations.

Don't make your account a one sided broadcast. If you were to log in to one of my accounts, you would see that there's so much interaction going. Yes, I have a team that helps me handle this, but you've got to have a balance of everything. You can't just be looking for people to watch your stories.

You need to watch their stories. I once tested out my theory on this and I went in and started commenting, loving on sharing, doing all the things of people that were new followers to me.  just to see if they would then show up in my stories. And lo and behold, I started seeing those people in my stories more and more.

For a really long time, I couldn't get more than 300 people to watch my stories. And now I'm consistently around 1, 000. Thousand people watching my stories at a time, but it is constant work and engagement and providing value to them beyond me just wanting them to watch my stories.

I'm actually interacting with them. Now, of course, once you are a viral key player in social media, then things are a little bit different.  Right now you're likely at a stage where you need to grow your platform. So it's really going to be about what your deliverables look like in future episodes here at blueprint to breakthrough.

We're going to dig into social media and I've got a lot of content there for you,  but for now, I want you to stick to some pro tips that I use. First of all, I want you to realize that you can limit your social media use to one hour a day. Just one.

If you look at your phone in your settings of where you spend your time, I think you're going to find you spend a lot more than an hour, but I want you to stick to an hour. Just one. I want you to do these key things for one hour.  Comment on 10 posts, reply to five stories, and follow five new accounts in your niche. 

Now you might be thinking, Sarabeth, that's never going to take me an hour.  Well how long is it going to take? Is it going to take 10 minutes? Then you've got 10 minutes. But I want you to do this every single day for 10 minutes a day. Comment on 10 posts, reply to five stories, follow five new accounts in your niche, go fight win.

Let's get it done. Small, consistent actions, build momentum, and they help you grow.   

One of our members of Blueprint to Breakthrough added a new house to their real estate portfolio.

They announced a new service to their practice. And another one commented that their win was starting Blueprint to Breakthrough, knowing that they'll make huge strides in their business.  If you haven't submitted your wins yet, I want to encourage you to take a moment to do that this week.

Keep track of where you are. Know that you are putting everything into this program that you are expecting to get out.  Goals to focus on. Here are some goals that were shared by our members. One of our members here at B2B said that they wanted to develop a strategic plan for client acquisition, follow up on five potential clients, schedule five new patients for January.

If you haven't been setting your goals, Let this be your nudge. Defining your goals is about coming through for you. Think of this as your roadmap for success. And I want you to remember that there is no goal too small. Your goals are valid and they are worth pursuing.  This week's focus is all about scaling from day one.



While there is no live session with me personally this week, Jack's live session on Tuesday will help you break through your mental blocks and barriers that may hold you back from fulfilling your assignments this week.  This week, our accountability partners play a big role in keeping the momentum going. Here are a few specific tasks you can do if you are an accountability partner. One, test your partner's SOPs for clarity and usability. Provide constructive feedback.

Check in with them. Schedule a midweek check in for 15 minutes to discuss progress and any obstacles they have. If they're having a hard time, if they haven't gotten to something yet, be that encouragement. Send them a motivational message or a reminder to keep them on track. You can even choose this week to work on one task together.

So if it's brainstorming social media strategies or refining a workflow, work together. Accountability is a two way street and the more you invest in supporting your partner, the more you will both benefit.  Systems are the ultimate game changer. They allow you to focus on what truly matters while your operations run smoothly in the background.

When you build these foundations, now it will save you time and energy down the road. This is your week to take bold, intentional action. Get your SOPs done, set your goals, show up for yourself in a way that sets the tone for everything that you are building. This episode is packed with a lot, so I encourage you to listen to it twice this week.

Try listening to this episode at 2x speed just for content. Then again for context. Trust me, you'll always pick up something new the second time you listen to it.  Don't forget to watch Jack's video on the release method. This is listed inside of teams.

Her techniques are designed to help you clear your mental clutter and focus on what is truly important. Next week we're going to continue building on these systems, diving even deeper into aligning your mindset with your actions.



 My simple reminder for you as we close out this episode is I want you to know that I'm proud of you. I'm proud of you for showing up. I want you to remember that progress is not about perfection. It is about consistency. Take these steps, no matter how small they feel, because they are building the momentum that you need to create something incredible.

Let's make this week count, and I'll see you guys on Tuesday.  Have a great week.