[Offer Grid] 📬 | Process, Not Panic: SOPs > Cloning | Issue No. 16

Hey there, maestro of mayhem‑turned‑method!

Last week we un‑masked the magic trio of Team, Systems, Automation. And I got some DMs asking…

“Cool, Amy… but systems feel like alphabet soup. Where do I start without spending the next decade documenting stuff?”

Perfect timing. Today we zoom in on the simplest, fastest way to craft Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) that help you to create your team, train up future contractors, and even teach your slightly tech‑phobic cousin to follow.

I don’t recommend hiring your cousin… but that’s just me.

Let’s make “process” the friend that is the next best thing to cloning yourself. Because if you remember, cloning wasn’t so great for Dolly the Sheep. (Google that.)

Why SOPs = Freedom

Think of SOPs as the recipe cards for your business. When the batter is fool‑proof, anyone can bake the cake.

This is the beauty of systems.

Systems are good. They’re really good.

It’s systems that keep me from losing things. It’s systems that keep my house clean. It’s systems that get me to meetings early.

SOPs are in place to guide humans. Please realize that some people will inject “creativity” (as in, not following directions) where none is needed. Adaptation is just part of the process.

I’ve found that where SOPs are placed there is a certain amount of checking required.

But the checking doesn’t take nearly as much time as the doing would have taken.

You’ll be front-loading your investment of time.

Creating the screencast video and narrating it is a one-time activity.

Reviewing the task worker’s results the first few times takes more time. But you’ll do less of this as time goes on.

Over time you can do less checking.

Then, if you’re like me, you start looking around to see what else you can create an operation video for!

The 3‑Step SOP Sprint (10‑10‑5 Method)

Total: 25 minutes. Result: one “ready‑ish” SOP that saves you hours every week.

Step 1: Capture (10 minutes)

Open Loom (or Zoom, QuickTime. Whatever video creation tool you like). Perform the task in real time and narrate what you’re doing. No pausing for perfection. No editing. Pretend you’re sitting with your new-hire or contractor, explaining how to do the thing.

End goal: A raw 5‑ to 7‑minute screen‑share video.

Step 2: Chunk (10 minutes)

While replaying the video at 1.25× speed, jot down timestamped bullet points: Prep → Action → QA → Publish. Think chapter headings in a cookbook.

End goal: A quick written outline plus any links (templates, login URL, Google Doc, etc.).

Step 3: Polish (5 minutes)

Drop your outline into Notion, Google Docs, or a shared folder. Add a checkbox list of “Done Criteria.” Bold anything mission‑critical (“Double‑check price before hitting ‘Publish’”).

End goal: A living doc anyone can follow. Even if they joined the team this morning.

Voilà! Your one-person brain dump just became a repeatable task for another person to do. You just magically created TIME.

The Birth of a Podcast Producer

True story: I hired a contractor to help me with podcast production when I was doing a weekly edition.

Actually, I hired two contractors. One for post-production on the audios and videos, and the other for promotion work for the podcast.

Using the system I listed above, I created SOPs for the promotion contractor. And within about a week she was on-task, posting updates to social media and the rest of the list of places on her own.

I spent the first couple of weeks checking her work, but she was doing great after that and sailed on fine for the rest of the season!

The SOP‑First “Hiring Hack”

I’ve interviewed hundreds of job applicants in my career. But I never felt full confidence in my hires until I learned how to create these procedure documents to guide people in their jobs.

You can even use SOPs as part of your interview process.

Build out one procedure document.

Before you contract or hire a human, hand them one SOP. 

You’re not asking them to do the work at first. But review the document and video together. Ask them to tell you how they’d do the work.

When you get the hiring pool down to two or three people, you can ask each person to follow one SOP and complete a simple assignment.

This is not an out of bounds request. When I was freelancing there were many gigs that I bid on that required a sample of work.

This is that sample.

Bonus: Ask for feedback after completion. 

By doing so you refine the doc and audition the hire’s attention to detail. That’s two birds, one Loom link.

Where We’re Headed

When I started this newsletter I began writing about ecommerce business topics that came out of my own experiences with clients.

My audience was intended to be people, likely like you, who own or run a small business. You’re a “many hatter” and you have 36 hours of work to pack into a 24 hour day.

It’s been fun. But four months into this project I’m feeling the call of my true interest: information security for small, privately held companies.

I first got interested in cybersecurity when I helped my clients stay safe in the midst of somewhere around 200 different phishing attacks over the course of about six years. We had a 100% safety rating: zero breaches.

That’s a stat I am really proud of.

It’s a stat that I didn’t reach alone. 

We, my clients and I, achieved that zero-breach status together.

Information security happens when everyone communicates and plays on the same team. Security is a team sport.

When I realized how important cybersecurity is to small businesses I started learning more about how to deliver security as a service to clients.

But there was so much to learn. 

What I learned is that there are frameworks that larger corporations and agencies follow. And there is more nefarious activity swimming around in the deep waters of the internet that most business owners don’t know about until it’s too late.

I have some solutions. I have some learning. Every time I speak with a business owner I find myself teaching some aspect of information security.

And so, I’ll be shifting the focus of this newsletter from marketing and business strategy topics, to cybersecurity and information security topics. Risk and compliance topics. How to stay safe online. How to keep your business safe.

The internet should be a place for everyone. And it should not be a place run by criminals.

I spend enormous amounts of time learning about safety online. And I want the businesses that don’t have their own cybersecurity departments to benefit.

So in upcoming issues, starting next week, the newsletter will still be the Offer Grid. With new meaning. With new purpose. And with new ways to work online to stay ahead of the safety curve.

I want my readers to put their offers out to the grid, the internet, the world, and be safe doing it.

I guess I can also point out that developing this newsletter is a business model in itself.

Businesses must serve a niche. And in this big, fast-paced world, you really have to drill down categories to get niche enough to do well.

I’ve spent the past 17 years serving small and developing businesses. I started in content and SEO. I shifted (niched down) to ecommerce. 

Drilling down further I’m getting nichier by getting into information security for these small businesses.

Serving in this market isn’t just a hot button topic right now. It’s a truly needed niche to serve.

In today’s day and age, business security is information security.

When it comes to security, danger is a matter of “when”, not “if”.

See you next week,

Amy