Episode 14: How to develop Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for Your Accounting Practice

Episode 14: How to develop Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for Your Accounting Practice

In this episode of The Wize Guys, Brenton Ward and Jamie Johns talk about the importance of having Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) in every Accounting Practice.

Find out how to ensure an efficient, smooth workflow and systems that will work best. Also, learn the step-by-step guide in creating and starting to implement SOPs yet commonly overlooked processes for practice owners. 

Timestamps:

0:57 Understanding Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)
2:59 The importance of getting the scalability and leverage of SOPs
3:11 How accounting SOPs have evolved throughout the years
4:15 How SOPs differ from each business model and client
9:59 The freedom in creating policies through digital technology
11:33 Different online video tools for recording SOPs
16:10 Why you should find the balance between your checklist and working papers
17:31 Learning the various umbrellas of SOPs
20:13 Tips for determining the SOPs that will work best for your accounting practice
24:54 The importance of your own ‘How-to’ section
26:31 The beauty and benefits of using Loom videos
33:07 Steps in creating instructional videos
34:24 Why traditional written instructional videos are already a NO-go
36:06 The impact of having 80% ROI with a robust and reliable SOPs
39:28 Defining that ‘quad to activity’
40:44 Why documenting is an act of leadership
43:46 How Microsoft Teams can help in recording instructional videos
44:12 The idea of focusing on progress and NOT on perfectionism
48:25 Some of the practical accounting solutions to-do
52:16 Jamie’s key takeaways for your accounting practice

Quotations:

“It's not about perfectionism, it's about progress.” - Jamie Johns

“Step closer to freedom. Like it's every standard operating procedure is one step closer to being free.” - Brenton Ward

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Transcript

Brenton Ward: Let's talk about one of your favorite topics to talk about standard operating procedures. Now I'd like to get into some of the nitty-gritty of it and how to build a good platform of standard operating procedures in a practice today.

But I wouldn't mind starting with a little bit of context to the conversation of building an extraordinary business, building a practice that runs without you. Where does this topic of standard operating procedures? Who is that eating that nice ice cream, then I'm just wondering, it looks good. 

Jamie building standard operating procedures as part of building extraordinary systems. But tell us, tell us the importance of this as a piece of the puzzle to having the practice from, without you. 

Jamie Johns: Yeah, it's critical Brenton. It’s creative to get scalability and to get leverage back in the early days when I started, I used to type up on how to do this or how to do that. That was sort of the basic thing, steps one, two, and three. I'm sort of going back, about 16 years now. So much has changed in that time, but essentially what we're talking about is getting scalability and getting leverage because the worst thing you can do is have all the knowledge of how to run your firm The question comes down to how do I get all that knowledge out of my head so that other people can do their job successfully and do their job successfully without referring back to you all the time without referring back to you as the Yara center all the time. 

It's a massive topic even when you're here on the internet and whether you're on Google or Facebook, whatever there's a lot of ads come up about this. Trying to scale your business with systems as there are products called triennial. There are all different sorts of things out there that you can use to get the knowledge out of behavior so that other people can do their jobs successfully.

Brenton Ward: How important has this been for you in the sky? Tell us a little bit about the journey that you've gone on to focus on because I know this is something that you've put a lot of emphasis on. As a result, everyone in Wize has benefited because they're getting a lot of the standard operating procedures that you've created over the last couple of years.

But tell us about how this has evolved in Scott. Like where did you start on the journey of starting to document everything? What did that look like and what does it look like? 

Jamie Johns: Yeah, it looks probably step back, even further. And to give it context, it was, it was about yeah. Business model, it was about right from the word to go when we got a new client or when we got a new lead.

How did we deal with that lead? How do we deal with that client? And what's the system and what's the process. So it goes right back to your actual business model and then progressing through the steps of winning a lead or a prospect and turning them into a client, how you onboard them, what's the onboarding process. And then working out what services you have to provide that new client, and then down to how to roll out, how to deliver that service. And so essentially that came down to what I call a guarantee. An add guarantee sort of has around seven steps, and one of those steps without going into it is.

Ideally, we want a client who's on Cloud. And then, I consider referred probably to the Wize Vault, Brenton around step six of the Wize Vault, which is all about systems and processes. And so if a revert referred to step six, it particularly for taxation, public practice accountant, the steps in there are fundamental, I think, with, with how to deliver the services and how to keep your firm highly organized, and how we systematized down to shoveling the work, collecting the information upfront, communicating with your clients, how your pricing model works. So, from a larger extent, it's those fundamental steps and the business model of how you deliver your services, then at a more detailed level, it's about, how do we deliver the bookkeeping, for example, how has a bank rec done? How do we, how do we conduct a tax planning meeting? 

So, in my travels that I've seen and I've been in this position myself, where I had a lot of documents, I had a lot of word documents, Excel documents that, that weren't organized. So there were all over the place. And so in my travels, I find a lot of that with firms as well though, they'll have a lot of policies and procedures, but now I won't be out of following them. And now that won't be organized in a, in a way that it's easy to fall on them Britain. 

Brenton Ward: Yeah. So it's making the platform and that depository in a way that it becomes part of the fabric of the practice. I, the very by with the why some of which we'll touch on.

Jamie Johns: Yeah. I was just going to say it and technology's a massive part of it. I think we all started back 20, 30 years ago, we all started with websites and then we had this thing called the internet. And then over the years, we moved to what we call an intranet, and any internet quite some years ago now became a real central part of how I ran my practice at the sky. And the internet became a central depository of, of how we do things of how we, of how we conduct all the steps that we needed to run the business. It's centralized on an intranet and then organizing all the SOP standard operating procedures of how we do things. So, and just probably falling Brenton. The thing to say is that you always used to say to me where there's not a policy where there's not a procedure, it creates a vacuum.

And what we mean by that is if there's a vacuum there, well, the question is, well, what feels, what fills that space? And often it could be anything. It could be what it could be, the way the clients want to do that particular task or that issue. It could be the way the team members want to do it or someone else. So you'll find that anywhere where you don't have a policy procedure, it creates a vacuum. The problem with that, that is it's not designed properly. It's, it's it any sort of goes in that space. So the more policies and procedures that you, that you can do, the greater the leadership is that's how we do things here. And this is while we're doing them and watch this video, this is how we do it.  It's about leadership as well. 

Brenton Ward: I love that because, and when it started talking about creating the vacuum, it makes so much sense because then it's an added incentive to build this into the culture of the business because the less unknowing that on certain things. There is that then it just creates a much more well-oiled machine even down to the small things like how the business card smoking. I know you've got your business card policy as well. 

So rather than having to ask 20 questions, each time a business card needs to be made to that procedure, which is perfect. So there's no task, big or small that doesn't evade sort of having being documented in the practice, which is great. But coming back to building that into the culture. Yeah. How have you guys tried to ingrain a successfully ingrain in the sky where, where the team takes responsibility for also creating those standard operating procedures? Is that the case, or are there certain people who are authorized to create a procedure? How have you guys determined that?

Jamie Johns: Across the board side, we sort of have the freedom for anyone to create a policy and then just have it checked off, by senior management. And that just gives you the lead. I think the most important, the most important video that you have for a stop is, is how to create a video and how to put it on the intranet. And we've got a video on how to create a video, That's it? So essentially your most important video is a video or a policy or procedure on how to create a video and then post it on your intranet where everyone can find it and then its brains. And it comes down to creating new habits from the firm. And it's got to start from the top. It's got to start with the owners of the firm to say, look, ‘Hey Joe, can you teach such and such how to do this particular task,’ but while you do that, can you video it?

You've sort of got to get over yourself and everyone has to get over themselves in terms of their voice being on a video or whether they got the law of video work as well. And then for example, if you've got a new, you're onboarding a new employee and you've got a new system or process or a new piece of software that you haven't, that you haven't used, it's important that in that eight hours with the training that you just hit the record button Britain, you're just like hit and I use and come down. The practicalities of it are you can use Loom or you can use Snagit these particular tools and just, and just do the video on the spot.

Like it doesn't have to be perfect. A lot of people think, no, I look silly. I sound silly. All my screen or whatever, you too many people get paralysis by analysis. And I, and I, I aim for perfection with the VDI, and yeah. Where they don't even get started. Jamie, one of the biggest issues is we're kind of in their way when creating a robust standard operating procedure library because we're concerned or fearful of those, those things now with technology these days, and you're going to show us how easy it is now to create these things that there's just no excuse to not have, have them documented now because the technology just makes it so easy. Most of which we'll get into some of the, yeah. I mean, for example, I was talking to our fem owner a few weeks ago, he just onboarded their first offshore employee. And he, he said that I did it, I did an hour session showing them, the US tax returns and all that sort of thing. And the first question I said, did you video that? Do you know? And he goes, ‘Oh, damn, I forgot to do that.’ That's where the gold is. The gold is in our backyard, that, that hour session that he had shown the person how to do the different our tax returns that that's where the gold is. And that's what you can leverage off.

The beauty of videos is you can, fast-forward them, you can rewind them, you can pause them and they are just gold. They're just gold. And the more that you can do that, it can create a culture where people say, ‘Hey, we should have a video for this the better.’ And then, just have a process of it getting approved and signed off on, and the way you go. And then before, before long, you will create a whole vault of videos and standard of writing for sages of how to do every task literally in your firm. 

Brenton Ward: Yeah. I mean, now in my financial planning business, we even had a documented checklist and policy on how to make clients' coffee. You think you wouldn't have something to those little things, but it just took questions. I took time off and put it back into the team. So let's get into some of the Jamie. And as I'm asking questions, guys, I'm going to fire questions that Jamie, but I'd love to see your questions start coming through.

I saw a comment from Steven there before talking about they subscribed to systematology the systematology approach using system hub, anyone else using this approach to organize SOP Jeremy, have you come across this in your travels or, 

Jeremy: Oh, I haven't Brenton, but as I said earlier at the start, there are that many different products that you can do, and I'll think you've got a full one what's right.

For you in terms of there's, there's a common one that I see called trainee. I haven't heard of that one, but there's this probably half a dozen products out there. I'll be saying people like me use SharePoint of seeing people. So one the other day was a fantastic site on Google, Google sites. I think it was, and someone within The SharePoint version Of the SharePoint version.

Yeah. So again, it's not about perfection. It's about progress. It's about getting something together in, in at least it's in one spot for all your team members. So obviously it's scalable, it's on the internet. It doesn't. It's, anytime, anywhere it's got to have tied down with the security of course, and then that's the logistics of it. You've gotta be able to have technology and systems and procedures so that you can scale and get everything that's in your head into a particular processor, technology, whether it's in an intranet if you like, and then that's the key. And then, it probably just comes down to the habits that you create in the firm. And then the practicality now, I mean, I had a week, how do we do it.

Brenton Ward: And Eddie said they we can use there, our practice manager for this. Probably not so much. You probably have documented policies around practice manager, but I don't think you'd be using it as an intranet. Jamie. 

Jamie Johns: Yeah. Thus there are certain links that you can put in as part of your process in Xero practice manager and well, not as common. Yeah. And we do that as well. You can have a quite detailed checklist in the Xero practice manager. It just depends on the level of detail you want to go to, and then a checklist for jobs working papers as well. So yeah, it's important to sort of finding a balance. And I think a recent Friday tip from ed Brenton was about being, The difference between a tradesman and a master craftsman. You've got to find a balance with your checklist in your working papers because if you sort of go down the perfectionism track and have a thousand working papers and that sort of thing like that's where you're losing sight of efficiency and profitability, and all that sort of thing. So there is, there is a balance with these things and checklists, and that's, that's important to find that balance. 

Brenton Ward: Yeah. And I think it's also important to define what we're talking about here because there are quite a few layers under the umbrella, I guess, of standard operating procedures. You've got your production, workflow, checklists, and action items for each piece of work, which would kind of fall under workflow in any case. But then you've also got your standard checklist for, for how you run things in the office, but how you use technology and then just documented standard operating procedure templates or anything and everything within the business. So there is, there are quite a few layers to it. Not I'd like to get some examples for me. 

Jamie Johns: And even for example, like your technology stack, listing what is your actual technology stack and how do you use each one of those. The quickest and the most efficient way our fan Brenton is I'll come back to it is doing videos on these things. And because we're in the video because we're in the industry that we're in, we use computers every day. It's so easy for us to document what we.

Brenton Ward: To watch a video than to read through a word doc, and then try and translate it back to the program.  And the thing is today as well, Britain,

Jamie Johns: We've some of the technology, you can get it like you, transcribed. It can as the person talks, you can see the words and, a way to go. We, as a platform called searching for all of our videos at Wize and in the Wize Vault, when you're in the boat, you'll see on the right-hand side there, you can search the entire vault of any word in all of our videos that are transcribed in the background. Now that's done automatically. It's not perfect, but I'll ask you the two from one media, we create several different layers to it as well.

I just want to say, Christie mentioned that she's going to have VA has a standard operating procedure template that she uses to create standard operating procedures for learning videos. And then we'll use Google sites as a resource center. That's perfect. So, and, and on that, guys, we've built an internet for you. So many people on here. There was already, but we've got an intranet sitting there ready, waiting to go for you to just upload your standard operating procedures, which we'll show you as well. If you haven't got it already. So, Jamie, I want to, I want to come back to some specific pointed questions just to help everyone to understand and a more methodical approach to how to develop their standard operating procedure.

How do you determine what should be captured in an SOP and when it should be captured many firms aren't entirely happy with how their systems are right now, which is one of the reasons I've come to why's, they want to implement better systems. So if their systems aren't in the shape that they want them to be right now. If it's not the ideal system shouldn't still be creating a standard operating procedure on that current system, as opposed to waiting until you've got the time, to improve the system or whatever it may be. That's in focus. 

Jamie Johns: Yeah. And there's no particular topic Brenton, and there's no time lock the present, whether it's Google sites or SharePoint or something, as long as you're making a star. Now, if you're a Wize member. We've, we've developed off the back of what I've done for years is the Wize Hub. So, the very first point is to make a start that, and, and choose a platform that has those two or three things, anytime, anywhere has the security built into it and is quite flexible in how to add videos to it, or how to add those side piece to it. So that's the first thing. So make a start. I think the next thing is to get the team in your team meetings, some training. To answer your question, the trigger point will be, when do we make these videos? And when do we make these policies? Now, the answer is any time you have to show someone how to do something. And I overpaid that anytime you have to show someone how to do something video or right.

So you just make a start. It's not about perfectionism, it's about progress. And soon as you've made that video, whether it's on a Loom or whatever it is put the second bit to this solution, Brittany's organize it, have it in one central spot, but organize it. And we love to organize it. across what we always talk about. Brittany's are seven business divisions. So board marketing, sales, production, and so forth where does it most likely, where does it fall across those seven divisions? And that's the philosophy of was from a helicopter point of view was the different areas or the different divisions of the business.

And that's how we like to categorize our videos. If you've got some other way to do it, I wouldn't get hung up about it. That these things must be categorized, I think is pretty critical. And also that you can search for them. So you can sort of, you want people to be able to find them quickly. Yeah. And, and the bigger you get, the bigger EFM get, the more you can scale. It's, it's easy to do a lot of these spa brute force. When you've got one team member to team members and so forth, but as you get bigger, you want to have this, your vault of SLPs. That's in the Wize Hub, that's where we've got that session called hail to how do I do this? How do I do that? What I love about it is when you've, when you've got a new team member, whether they're sort of experienced or an experience, you can just say, go and have a look at this video on the how-to, you can even have a video that that's a video of the entire internet, the different divisions and all that sort of thing. So it's never-ending. It's never-ending what you can do.

Brenton Ward: Absolutely. So I want to get a little bit practical here. So are you able to share your screen and let's start, let's start showing people what we're talking about? Not if you don't mind, I'd like to see how you guys do it in the sky. And then if you could show everyone how they can be doing the same thing in the Wize, whether it's the Wize Hub or it's Google sites or whatever platform you use, the premise of the process would be the same, Jamie.

Jamie Johns: Can you see my screen there? Yeah. Look, I'll just move that out of the way. So essentially, yeah. I mean, from a big picture point of view, I spoke about your launchpad earlier.

So, whatever system you use, you have your launchpad in your cloud stack. And then we always talk about the seven, the seven divisions Brenton that I mentioned earlier, and one of them is the how-to section. So you should build out your own, how-to section that suits your needs.

And again, we've got that broken across in all these divisions. And if I jumped back, just for example, to the, to the Wize Hub, for example, that hopefully, most firms have got that our members, you can design this up here. You like it, so it's, it's very flexible. This is a whole series of videos in the Wize Vault of how to do this brand. And so you can have the policy number, the policy name, the video, you might have a document, an Excel file, or a word doc, when it was recently updated, whether it's in a draft or not. So it could be a draft or it could be fallen lost.

Then, the author did it within the firm as well. So again, it's just coming back to the basics. It's one central spot on the hair too. And again, by all means, you can customize this. You can customize a bit at this, just organizes it nicely and neat. So is it it’s admin, you put it in the admin. If it's in the accounts division, you put it in the account. So the more that you build these faults, all your intellectual property is flowing into here. And if I just jumped back, for example, to say this section, and one of them, from a practical point of view, Loom is a fantastic product to use every one. It'd be interesting to see how many people have heard of loan, but time and time again, I will get an email from one of the crew, whether it's Wize Mentoring and, and whatnot now. And I'll just all answer that email with a looming video. And the beauty of Loom is it goes into its category.

It goes into its vault, and it has a hyperlink. And you can hyperlink that video straight back to your, how-to section. So just to give people a practical application, encourage people to get into the Loom. The benefit with Loom Brenton is it's, it's in the cloud. You don't have to, you don't have to like to download your video, MP4 file, and then sort of upload it from daylight to fall and then apply back to the board. Exactly. Yeah. It's very fast. I'd have to say it's extremely fast. So most of my time, these days is spent in the Loom. If I'm gonna create a video, the other one that I've just wanted to bring to people's attention that some got are what they call Snagit.

So, Snagit's another one, a video image capture and whatnot as well. And then they even a more powerful one is what they call Camtasia. Now, I haven't opened that up there, but there's one called Camtasia, which is probably the big brother. 

Brenton Ward: That's Hawaiian video editing. And we've used Camtasia Brenton a lot with our wives,m angering videos. For example, The campaign is when you want to get fancy and edit the videos and add intros and outros overlay, text on the video. 

Jamie Johns: So that's a great point, Brenton. So this one here, for example, is ale is all business card policy video. And the and I got our admin person to put an intro on this, for example. Now I'll just maybe if I can just turn the volume down, hopefully, it has gone through, but if I play that, you'll see here that it has the intro to it. So it depends how professional you want to get, but you can see there that it comes into our intro, there's a little bit of music and then it goes, and then it goes into the actual policy itself, and it talks, it talks the person through the word doc, or talks to them through the Excel doc. And this could be anything from a bookkeeping or whatever. So that's, that's pro and we use Camtasia to do that. And then of course we have the video of a video of how to do this as well. How do you put an intro in there and how do you put an outro and all that sort of thing. 

Brenton Ward: So Jamie, if you're using the Loom when you record your screen, then it gives you a link to that video, which is housed a Loom and it'll be the same for some other platforms, but then do you, do you just paste that link into your internet and send people to the learning videos on that site? Or do you download the video and then upload it? How do you, Yeah, with the Loom. 

Jamie Johns: So to answer the question with Loom, it just has a hyperlink, Brenton. So if you get that hyperlink, you can then put it straight in, like straight into here, for example. So there are your business cards.

Brenton Ward: Can we put you on the spot. Let's could we just show you how easy it is to create a standard operating procedure with a load of two seconds? And then, as if you're recording the business card and let's just do it on the fly.

Jamie Johns: It's got a fake to that technology, but yeah, you just actually hit record, and then you can decide which screen you're going to and away you go, it might get jammed because of, because of the microphone and whatnot, but any other, yeah. So that's recording, that's recording my screen right now. Then when you finish recording, if you can do, you can just go finish and then you can see it's copied the URL and it, and it's, you can say they, so that's, then that's, that's a copy of video link. So you go, you've just created your first video in a matter of seconds. Yeah. And then once you've copied that you can, pop that in of. I jumped back to the why's, however, for example, then you can just edit this and just to show the practical application of using these, you can just edit that and you can put in, clicky, for example, and then with this link, you can just pop it straight in, in a way to go. You can pop that link in there and say that, and basically, you're done. You just re-publish it. And that's like, you can, you can tell me how long that took to do written Literally minutes. 

Brenton Ward: And that there's, I guess, a couple of ways to skin a cat in terms if you recording your screen locally on your computer, then have a directory of a central directory of videos that you can then upload to your, your intranet there. In some of the comments, the chatter, Jonathan said, you just got to be careful using a Loom that you're not, you haven't got the video set to public. So, you can create a private room, so no one else could see the video. 

Jamie Johns: And that's the same with Vimeo. So we've used Vimeo a lot over the years. And also, I've off, a lot of people use YouTube as well. So you just got to yeah. Put the link on private and then people within your organization, use it. But another process Brenton is if you do get people posting things on there, a party, a policy, they can just go into the draft. And then, until you might have your weekly, senior client managers meeting and they sign off on it, that, so, yeah, just the process for it. But again, it's, it's about progress, not perfection, as soon as you might, as soon as you make a stop, you can, then you can, obviously, you can aim for perfection, but you can always just keep improving a system. And that's sort of.

Brenton Ward: Yeah. I mean, just in terms of the core ingredients for a standard operating procedure, do you guys have any particular criteria in that at the sky? Like does every SOP have to be attached to a video as well? Like you can't have just the document, you have to have an explainer video. How do you guys position that?

Jamie Johns: A lot more just on the videos Brenton, we've been down the path of Toronto put step by step in word documents, for example, like literally typing at me up and years ago. And I remember I did work experience at one accounting firm. Like, they had folders and folders of how to do stuff, but the trick, the tricky bit then becomes Brenton.

Well, what if, what if we changed systems? What if there's an update to that system? Do we have to go in and then update all that years ago, even, for example, I'll just give you a classic example? Like I've bought a lawnmower a while back and easy go, you'd get a massive manual with a lawnmower or the other day I bought an e-bike and I, so what's the first thing they do. You get a C you get either get a CD ROM with it that you can watch the video. Alternatively, I give you a, like you get a link in signup and I can't, and then you can, you can watch the video as a Bay, a bike. So the days where having texts is pretty much past now, it's, it's more about having that online platforms that you can access on how to do stuff. YouTube is a critical one. You can almost Google YouTube how to do anything,

Do you know? So we, the biggest advice I can give everyone is like, go down the video path because it's just so much quicker. And obviously, you can, you can share your screen, for example.

Brenton Ward: As you, as you innovate and change and improve the systems, it's not hard to, then re-report a couple of minute video as opposed to spending hours updating a procedure manual or whatever.

Jamie Johns: That's exactly right. And, and just the other thing is if everyone is using the Wize Hub, there's a set of, there's a set of videos in here and how to use it as well. So, there's an overview. So I think a lot of people will often ask for our support, how do I do this? How do I do that? So there's, there's a lot in there as well, just in the instructional videos, but, but even at a higher level, step seeks coming back to what I said earlier, step six is about your systems and processes. And there are some of the fundamental ones that people can have a look at that's actually in the Wize, in the Wize Vault as well. But again, that, that talks about, well, he goes so recording, standing, operating procedures. So you can have a look at 16.13, which has a bit more of a deep dive into, doing the SOP is as well.

So, yeah, it's all there. It's just a matter of focus and creating new habits in your firm. And sure enough, after a year of just continually adding to these, you'll get 80% off nearly everything you do in your, how-to section and creating a volt, of how you do things at your firm.

Cause every firm, it will be just for every single fan will be slightly different. Every fam has a slightly different cloud stack, different ways of doing things. So the important thing is to document it and get all the IP out of your head, into a place people can find it's from a bigger picture, it's, it's, it's like when all I made aid, Brenton knew and I said, did, how do we get all your intellectual property out so that we can share that with a world? Well, I think we're up to 130 videos now operating state 

Brenton Ward: Or it's mind, but I just think as well, as you've just seen how easy it is. This adds to, this is a balanced shape by, but it's a quad two activities, but I'm just thinking there, like, if it, if you were to record one standard operating procedure, per team member a day, which would take five minutes to do that's five a week, say 20 a month for 10 months, a year, that's 200 standard operating procedures documented in your practice a year per team. Your business would be completely documented within a year. 

Jamie Johns: Yeah. You've just got to, the question every time I have to show someone how to do something to stop and think, should I record this now because other people can benefit from this. 

And this is about leverage, people, how many times have I had new Wize members in the position I was in? Oh, ‘I've got no time.’ I've got no time. Why don't I have time? It's because I'm not delegating effectively. You're not, you don't want to abdicate, but how do I delegate give people the pale?

I give them the tools, give them the videos, give them a policy, a procedure on how do we order business cards? Like every film-watching here. Now, do you have a policy on how to order business cards? Or what about the uniform? And the question is if I need business cards or if I need a new uniform or a shirt, or if I need to order stationery, do they ask yourself, do they have to come to you? Do they have to come to you as the firm owner? Do they have to come to you to work out what to do? And if the answer is, is yes, they do have to come to me, come to me, then do something about it, create the policy because every time you create that policy or create that video, that's your time back. 

Brenton Ward: Step closer to freedom. Like it's every standard operating procedure is one step closer to being free. 

Jamie Johns: Yeah. It's one step closer to freedom. And it's one step closer to getting a firm to run where they are at you so that all the all pay is not in your head.

It's such simple, but we just forget it. We get, I think we get so focused just running on that treadmill. And, what's the next job that you. Aren't Brenton. It's what they call quad to activity. It's not urgent, but it's important. It's a bit like, Ed says, should I stop and service the car? Or it's a bit, the other analogy is like the guy who's, flat out in the woods, chopping wood. And the other guy comes along and says ‘Hey mate, why don't you shop?’ And you saw, and the other guy says, I'm too busy, Do you know? Sorry. 

Brenton Ward: Yeah. Has just raised a good point. Something I was thinking about as well as they call it. We'd like to think of it as in case of a Southern holiday, which is so important around having no one person being the retainer of all the knowledge of how you run your practice. So even if the person who's in charge of ordering business cards, if they were to leave tomorrow again, coming back to your question who and how to do the business cards, it's chances are it's going to come back to the practice side. Whereas everyone took the time to document that policy, the new person could step in and just run that problem. 

Jamie Johns: The critical thing is what is love. Because it probably causes a lot of it documents like document your process of how to follow up a new lead. Because Ed always said to me, if you're not growing, you're dying, but they, some of the key areas and there's this some standard.

There are some guidelines in the Wize Vault around the process, what are the exact steps to follow up a new lead and then have your sales playbook, do we do packages the more that you can document that it's just such good leadership because it allows other people to deliver the services. And if a new client comes in having a package like a box there that you can say almost like a menu of services as well, bring it just in pails, out of the people that deliver those services and follow up that prospect and not you. So this whole process is really about building, having extraordinary systems so that you can have ordinary people. And, and that's a cake is always, you say, I'm just an ordinary person. If I can build these SOP. 

Brenton Ward: Speaking of ordinary people, I've just spotlighted Michael who's one of our Wize mentors. I'm joking. You're an extraordinary person make, you've just said there, key person dependency is a real risk. Can you just highlight for us your experience and your journey of documenting pro books? 

Michael: Yeah. My SOP journey started a couple of years ago when I saw Jamie on a panel at an industry event. And he talked about how he had everything documented in the sky. And I thought I'd love to just have a look at this intranet one day here. I am living the dream now. So that's been good and it's certainly inspired what we're doing here. And asthma practice managers on this video, she's working very hard to document the admin side of it and then the production side of it as well.

And we have our senior production manager overseeing a lot of those videos and their creation to make sure that they reflect what we do at the moment and to make sure they're nice and accurate. 

Brenton Ward: So would you have any tips that may be based on how you guys do anything, would you do it any differently, or do you use any particular software or anything different from what we've talked about today?

Michael: Yeah. So when we're, when we consciously do a video and we set out to record one, we tend to use Loom 99% of the time, but then just touching on what Jamie's emphasized over and over those whenever you're training someone record it. And for that, we use teams because we use that as our video communication tool internally, and there's a record button there.

So we just hit the record on those sessions, then a national, or just exploring how we either rerecord that in as a polished version and whether or not we do a written version as well. 

Jamie Johns: Great point, making a lot of firms use teams these days and we do as well. And yeah, a lot of firms forget that using teams, you can record the session and the, and, the video gets embedded in the chat thread. And you can download the video as well. 

Brenton Ward: Makes a great point Straight into your directory from teams, just stop us and keep you in the spotlight here. But cause you can shed some light on this. A lot of sole practitioners on the line today who are looking to recruit the right staff under the deepen our team structure. I had a question yesterday. So for practice owners, looking to recruit staff at the moment, should you hold off on documenting your standard operating procedures until you've got that person in-house and then you can start to report and document it as you're training? Or should we just get started?

Jamie Johns: Just get started. Just make a start to focus on progress. Not perfection Brenton. Yeah. That'd be more of it. 

Brenton Ward: You just got to make a start and start, start recording today When they're out is when you do start training, the team members you've touched on a couple of times today is recorded every single session that you do with that team member, because then that can be used or for training. 

Jamie Johns: You can use it for Induction too. Like after you've had a new team member start, you can just say to them, as part of your induction is look, there's, there are six videos here. I'd like you to watch it as part of the welcome letter. 

Brenton Ward: Well, and that's a great, great point. Christie's just touched on as well. It's great to have for a new staff member, as part of that welcome series, a couple of videos to watch the staff, then that may be the videos that you record right now. And then you record all their training, which can be included, in future inductions as well. But the message there is you have to just get started straight away. There's no present. 

Jamie Johns: Yeah. Fantastic. 

Michael: Just one more example that we had, we recently were in this financial year, we swapped over to Zero from handy, soft, and like, that was just a huge project, but we recorded everything as we went and we set up a channel in our teams for policy and process updates. So every time somebody learns something about the new stack that we were using, we'd post the videos in there, and then we've had some new team members come on board since. And one of the first things we do is just point them to that channel and to so start watching some videos and that'll get them up to speed with what we're up to. 

Brenton Ward: Brilliant. That's perfect to get one.

Jamie talk. Well, I'm just trying to put in.

Jamie Johns: Yeah, I'll just stop sharing for a sec, but what else? Another hint I was going to say the rent was, I've seen some firms in my travels, they'll record, for example, like some, some firms won't send out like packages of tax returns or financial statements, whatever, and some particular, some clients want a bound hard copy, but I've seen one from, they got to iPhone and the video, that video and had a boy and the package up. And that was just another example. And they put the mobile video on there, how to on there, how to least as well. 

So it's not limited. I just wanted to say, it's not limited to what you can record on the screen. You can get your phone and if there was some sort of other videos that you, you needed to do as like how they opened the office back door? Yeah. Every, no one knows in an office how to use the printer.

Brenton Ward: No one ever knows that a voice comes back to one person. So according to you, how to use the panel on the printer screen is a perfect example of that. 

Jamie Johns: Yeah, Exactly. So it's not limited these days with technology and find, you're just not limited to recording the screen. You can use your iPhone as well.

Brenton Ward: Straight into the cloud and away you go, but it goes to the seven minutes to the hour. And I'd love to hear any questions that anyone has on this topic or anything else that you wanted to cover. I do have a couple of left-field questions from someone who, from Kevin who had emailed me before the session, guys would love to both of you to fill these in practice ignition slash carbon zero worlds, what times sheets solutions are you guys using? 

Jamie Johns: We use Xero practice manager for our timesheets. 

Brenton Ward: Yep. Sign me the Same. Cool. If anyone else wants to put a good timesheet solution in the chat, I'm sure have, would be appreciative of that second question from Kev, the org chart for small, would you start varying roles when turnover is just approaching 500,000?

So I'm not sure if that needs a bit more context to it, but Jamie, anything you could add there. 

Jamie Johns: Sorry, Brenton, just say the question again. 

Brenton Ward: Would you start sharing roles when turnover is just approaching 500,000? 

Jamie Johns: Yeah. Brenton the smaller, like the smaller the turnover, is, or the smaller firm is. The people within the firm have to wear more hats.

So I'll probably answer this question in reverse, but as the firm gets bigger, four hundred thousand five hundred thousand six hundred thousand, the more people that you can then hire and stop sharing the roles because in the early days, we all have to do everything, but so probably answering the question in reverse, but I would, I would move from stop sharing certain roles.

So I may have missed a context there, but yeah, I'll just add to that. Brenton recently, I'd put an answer in the Tribe, which was a question similar to this one. And in that particular case, he said that while you're small common roles that are shared are the assistant client manager and the senior production manager. So it's not hard and fast, but if you're going to share a role, that is one possibility. 

Absolutely. That's a classic one. Yeah. Another role. I just know my own experience as I had a particular person and they were doing all of the division six work and division seven. So they were helping with my internal books and also doing a lot, most of the admin as well. But then as I got bigger, we got individual people doing those tasks, so yeah. 

Brendon Ward: Okay, great. Some good comments here. Common. You just reminded me of a point. I want us to touch on and we all know that you love a good standard operating procedure, but you said it's, it's the McDonald's way. And it's just the perfect example of standard operating procedures put into action. Everyone knows who McDonald's is. Everyone knows that most, I think 80% of managers in McDonald's have a McDonald's restaurant. I like under the age of 30 or the age of 25. And the reason that they can do that is that down every single thing in that restaurant is systematized. How much led us to put on a burger? Like literally everything is documented in a standard operating procedure. So if it's good enough for them, it's good enough for us. So thank you for touching on that. And she also said that she loves a practice manager for timesheets, guys. I'm not getting any questions coming through. So Jamie, I just want a couple of parting points from you in terms of the next steps for everyone listening in, because we want to take some action on this and I'd love to see some account accountability around this in the Wize Tribe over the next month of everyone sharing at least one Loom video that they, that they record for their internet. So Jamie, give us a couple of takeaway action points on that. 

Jamie Johns: Yeah. Look, one of the ways to make this happen in terms of the implementation is either depending on what sort of, meetings you're having. But if you're having like a weekly catch-up with your key people, you're seeing the staff have a list of the most critical SOP, is that your need things that are pop up again. So make sure that you either have them in your meeting minutes, like your weekly manager's meeting, or even if they have to be at your board meeting if you haven't got them anywhere else documented, but they'll probably like, there could be a hundred videos that you need. So my advice is just to list the top three, just list the top five, and make them a priority so that every time your meeting rolls around, have we done that video yet? Have we done that video? And so Mike has self-accountable and just, doing that, having those agenda items and following that process of either your weekly or monthly meetings, it will keep your inbox down. And a lot of people complain about I've got my inbox and half the time people use their inbox as a project management system.

If it's in the inbox, it's like on my to-do list. So I encourage people to have your meetings, for example, we have a monthly office meeting per office. There are gender items there. We have a monthly board meeting, we have a weekly managers meeting. They are the places to put, all, we need these video guys because I had to show such and such, and I've shown this, I've shown three different people, three times how to do this. Can we get a video on that? And then work out, who's going to do the video. Who's going to do the draft. Who's going to approve it and all that sort of thing.

So that's our best takeaway Britain. 

Brenton Ward: Excellent. Thank you, Jamie! Mike your best takeaway for everyone listening. 

Michael: Yeah. I've found that I'm using Loom videos to give instructions to my team was a great way to break the ice of recording videos. If you're a bit to make a permanent SOP, maybe start with doing a couple of instructional videos for your team.

So, rather than spending 20 minutes typing out an email with every last instruction, just open up the Loom and share your screen and run around and show them the source documents and what they need to do and make sure he put a password on it or keep it private and then share it with the team member. And then they've also got that resource to go over and over again. So you don't have to repeat yourself so much quicker.