47 | The One SOP Everyone Skips (And Regrets Skipping)

Speaker A: You probably have a doc for how clients get onboarded, how the work gets delivered, maybe even how a client gets off boarded when it ends. There's one SOP almost nobody writes, and it's the one you actually need on the worst week. Not your best one. Let's dive in. Hey, visionary. I'm Christy, a system strategist in your go to guide for turning what's in your head into workflows that actually work. You're listening to Simple Systems for Service Providers where I help you free up your headspace, save you time, and fuel sustainable growth all through structure that works with you, not against you. Take a deep breath, clear your desk, and let's bring some structure to your day. Hey, welcome back to Simple Systems for Service Providers. I'm Christy and last week I told you I was changing up, uh, how the show works. This week I want to go a layer deeper. The actual business decision under that, why I think it's better and not just different and what it means for you. There's a concrete example in here too. For a specific SOP almost nobody writes, but that's one piece of a bigger story. Let's dig in. So I'm not taking one on one calls the same way I used to, and I want to walk you through why instead of just mentioning it in passing. One on one work is genuinely great. You get someone's full attention, you get real depth, you have real customization to their actual situation. But it has a hard selling built in as well. There's only so much of my time, which means there's only so many people I can help with that model. And the ones I do help end up paying for all that individual attention. At some point you have to decide whether you want to keep trading your time for dollars one hour at a time, or build something that reaches for further. I chose the second one and here's why. I think it's actually better, not just more scalable. Fewer people ever get access to the good stuff under the one on one model because the price had to cover my whole hour every time. Flip that though, into something more people can actually afford and more people get real help instead of a handful of people getting all of it. The depth didn't disappear either. It just moves into a room where you can ask your question in real time and and hear someone else's answers too, instead of paying for an hour you might not even fill with questions. Less of my direct time per person. More people helped, more affordable than any one on one package ever was. That trade is the whole reason for everything I'm about to tell you. The first piece of this is the Visionary Society, the community I've built on school. This is what actually lets me help a lot more people without adding a single hour to my calendar. It's not one conversation at a time anymore. It's a room. And I don't think this is just my shift either. A community isn't all or nothing. The way a, uh, one on one call was. You can show up live if that's what works for you that week. You can read the post, you can catch the replay, you can engage without ever needing to be on camera. Either way, you're actually getting access to me and to each other, not just something you bought once and never opened again. That flexibility is the whole point. Real connection, on your terms, not mine. The second piece is the Visionary Console, and it's solving a different problem, one I've watched small business owners struggle with for decades. It's never that people don't have the information, they do. They have the stats, they have the data. It's that it lives everywhere. One platform for tasks, one for, uh, finances. Notes are in three different apps and systems that only exists in someone's head. Nothing's actually missing, it's just scattered. So it never adds up to something you can see clearly or hand off to anyone else. The Visionary Console is the one place for all of that. And one concrete example of exactly what I mean is the SOP I actually want to walk you through today. Most service providers, once they start documenting anything, they document the happy path first. How clients get onboarded, how the work gets delivered, maybe how a client gets off boarded when the engagement ends. All of these are useful, all worth having. And if you've documented anything in your business, it's probably in this family. There's one SOP that almost never makes the list, though. Not offboarding a client, but offboarding yourself, at least temporarily, without warning. You get sick for a week, a family emergency comes up. You just need to be fully offline and nobody planned for it. It gets skipped for a very boring reason. There's no deadline pushing you to write it. Onboarding gets written because a new client's coming in on Monday. This one only gets written after the week you needed it and didn't have it, which is exactly backwards. If you're convinced it's worth having. There are a few real ways to build it, and they're not equally good. For every business, the minimal version is a single page. Who to contact. The three things that Absolutely cannot slip where the passwords live. This is fast. Better than nothing. But then if you're out for more than a few days, the fuller version is closer to a delegation of authority document, which would be who's allowed to decide what in your absence, up to what dollar amount. This is more protective, but it takes real time to build, which is exactly why most people never get around to it. The way I actually like best is build it gradually. As part of bringing on a team member. Every new person asks them directly, what would you need to know if I disappeared for a week? Their answers become a line in that document. It never feels like a big project, and it stays current because it's tied to real onboarding moments. Instead of a once of a year to do, you keep pushing off. That's the exact kind of document the console was built to hold. Not buried in general notes, its own dedicated space. So it's there when you actually need it, instead of scattered across whatever app you were in that day. All right, coaching moment for you. Picture Maya. Her delivery process is genuinely tight. Clients get a great experience. The team knows exactly what to do week to week. But if she got sick tomorrow, nobody on her team could tell you which three things absolutely have to happen versus what can wait. Because it's never lived anywhere except for in her head. Her systems aren't incomplete because of what she built. They're incomplete because of the one document she never had a reason to write until she needed it. And it's never lived anywhere central enough for anybody but her to find it anyway. So here's where all of this actually lands. I stepped back from one on one calls because I wanted to help more people, not fewer. And the society and the console are the two things I built to make that trade work. The society is for real connection at scale. The console is for bringing everything that used to live everywhere into one place, including the exact document we just talked about. Honestly, my favorite part of building this hasn't been the workshops or the tools. It's watching people show up in the same room and realize they're not the only one wrestling with a specific decision. There's something that happens when you hear someone else ask the exact question you've been sitting on or watch someone walk through the same thing you've been working through. That one on one call never gives you. You get to borrow other people's clarity, not just mine. That's the part I didn't fully expect to love this much. I don't want to be the only expert in the room and I think people have different experience experiences which make them experts in that experience and they should share it because it will help other people. There's more coming from me as well. I'm opening up the live topical coaching sessions I've only ever run for my one on one clients and the V2C program members. These monthly topical coaching sessions are turning into workshops and I'm genuinely looking forward to giving the public access. They'll be available in the classroom inside the Visionary uh Society community as a one time seat purchase for $27. Or you can upgrade to premium for 47amonth and get access to the monthly workshops, the replays plus all the other goodies. Uh, that's in the Premium tier. I'm also opening up the quarterly 90 minute 12 week CEO planning intensives. Also these are one time seat purchases for $39. Or you can upgrade to premium and you get all the access to all the premium perks. The next one's coming in September just in time to help you get ready for Q4. If you're interested in any of these workshops or intensives, go check those out in the Visionary Society community. Oh, I almost forgot to give an update before the end of this episode. The Visionary Console launch has wrapped and it went so well. I'm thrilled that I have our founding members settled in and they're already putting the software to work. Over the next few weeks I'll be rolling out a few new features and the one I'm uh, most excited about is the addition of the 12 week CEO planning hub. This will let you plan out your next 12 weeks, track your progress and check off tasks in real time, make live adjustments as things shift and stay on track to actually hit your goals every quarter. Alright, if any of this the shift, the SOP either project is something you want to look at closer. Check out the uh, show notes for the links and I want to give a thought for the day before we end the episode. Here's something to sit on this week. What's the one thing in your business that only works because you personally show up for it every single day, single time? And what would it actually take to build it so it doesn't need you? Alright, as always, you've got this until the next episode. Take a deep breath, clear your desk and bring some structure to your desk. Thanks so much for tuning in to simple systems for service providers. If today's episode sparked an idea or gave you a little clarity, do me a quick favor. Hit follow so you'll never miss an episode if you're finding these tips helpful, I would love for you to leave a quick written review. It helps more service providers find the podcast and it would truly mean the world to me. Thanks for listening Visionaries. Come back next week for another simple tip or strategy you can implement fast.