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Outsourcing on Steroids: 3 Simple Steps To Teach Anyone Anything In Your Business (1)

10-01-2019 08:36 AM #1 lyhras (Member)
Outsourcing on Steroids: 3 Simple Steps To Teach Anyone Anything In Your Business

Hey everyone! In this post, I want to quickly go over how you can easily start outsourcing various tasks in your business, without spending hours and hours of your own time creating a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP)..

First, let me introduce you to a concept I call LOA:

Learn
Optimize
Automate

This is the premise, and for most activities incorporated into the business, either my partner or myself go through this process.


  1. Learn
    The first step is obviously to learn the process. What is the new thing you want as part of the process?

    Depending on what the actual task is, learning it can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few days. It also depends on the frequency of the task, ie, how often you need to perform the task.
  2. Optimize
    The second step is to optimize the process. Before you pass the task on to an employee, you should try and figure out the most efficient way of performing the task.

    Now, the key here is imperfection. 80/20 that shit. Get it 80% optimized, and let the employee do the last 20% when they take it over.

    Optimization is not only about finding the most efficient way of actually performing the task, it’s also about incorporating tools, spreadsheet tricks and Zapier integrations into the workflow. So in a way, there’s a step between optimization and automation where we’re merging the two.

    Example:
    At the end of each month, all costs should be collected in one place. Costs from running ads, from various tools, from whatever pertains to this area of the business.

    All costs should be entered into a spreadsheet in the currency DKK.

    Some costs will naturally be paid in $, others in €, and maybe a third in £.

    Spreadsheet trick: Instead of going to a currency converter every time, choosing the right currencies and then putting that converted number into the sheet, we can use the formula =AB11*GOOGLEFINANCE("CURRENCY:EURDKK")

    Here, we’re utilizing Google Sheets integration with Google Finance to automatically convert the currency.

    In this example the timesave is rather miniscule, as this task is generally only performed once a month. But I want you to think about how to apply this to other processes in your business.
  3. Automate
    Now, this is where we start handing off the task to our VA’s and employees.

    But how do we do that in the most effective way possible?

    Disclaimer: You need 3 people to use the following method.

    The method consists of 4 elements:

    Record
    Write
    Review
    Rewrite

    (Say that quick 5 times)

    Record, means to record a video. You’ll be doing this. Basically just a video of you performing the process and explaining while you’re doing it.

    For free and easy-to-use screen and video recording, try out Loom: https://www.loom.com/welcome

    That’s what we use in-house for all screen/video recording

    Now, you could just call it here, and say that this is the SOP. But it’s much more practical to have it written down, not only for quicker reference, but also to edit the process if improvements are made along the way.

    Which is why you’ll have your VA (or someone else) Write it down. Let them go through the video, and write down the entire process step by step.

    Lastly, have a third person Review and go through the checklist and try to perform the process. This person should preferably be completely unfamiliar with the process, as we want them to find all the holes in the checklist.

    You’ll most likely leave out a handful of little details in the video, due to “process blindness” (aka not thinking about certain, smaller parts of the process due to having performed it so many times). This third person will likely find all the little details that you missed, and they can then write them down when they, or person number 2, Rewrites the checklist.

    Doing it this way, you should be able to basically bring in anyone from the street and have them perform the task efficiently, as the task has been optimized, and all the little bumps in the SOP has been cleared.


Alternative Method:

This alternative method is useful if you:


  1. Only have 2 people available
  2. Don’t like recording yourself

I’m way more comfortable writing than recording myself, so even though this method usually takes a bit longer, I like to do it this way from time to time as well.

It’s basically the same as above, the difference is just that:




I’m a big believer in saving as much energy possible and reduce decision-making fatigue. So when I feel a resistance to recording a video, and can feel that it takes a lot of energy for me to get started on the task, I usually opt for method number 2 and just write it out myself (as that's way easier for me to get started on).

I could write an entire post about saving energy and reducing decision-making fatigue, but I have no clue if it’s just me that finds that stuff interesting lol.

Let me know if you’d like to hear about it. Otherwise the next post will likely be about how we’ve approached hiring and got a rockstar VA (after hiring a pretty terrible one)

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