SOPs, Loom, and Delegating

Business Brain, episode 536 for Casual Friday, March 29, World Marbles Day 2024. Greetings, folks, and welcome to Business Brain, the show where we dissect several ideas every episode so that we can each tune our business brains every time we get together. Sponsors for this episode include shopify.com businessbrain, where you can go to sign up for your $1 per month trial. We'll talk more in depth about some fun things you can do with Shopify in a little bit. And of course, ChatGPT writes all of our ad scripts. And I tell it to make me say funny things. So go ahead and listen. Even if you know about Shopify, I change it up every week so you're always going to get something new. And I try not to laugh when I'm recording the ads, and sometimes I succeed here in Durham, New Hampshire, at least when we're recording this. I'm Dave Hamilton.

Yeah. And I'm still out here in Lafayette, California. I'm Shannon Jean. Glad to be here on Casual Friday.

Yes, we are recording a little bit early this week, Shannon, because I'm heading out to Los Angeles for a conference called Podcast Movement. Actually, this one's called Podcast Movement Evolutions.

Oh, okay.

And they do. It's. It's great to be able to get the podcast industry together.

Is that now, is it. Is it just anybody who has a podcast or people on another level, like advertising agencies or both? What is it?

It. All of the above.

Okay.

It's. It's for the podcast industry, whether you're thinking of starting a podcast, whether you've been doing one for 20 years, or whether you've never done a podcast and don't plan to. But you have other business interests in the podcast industry, right? Like, like you said, advertisers and. And, you know, people that manage advertising and all of it.

Okay.

Like, yes, that gets the industry together and that is super valuable.

Like, this is. Is it the biggest one out there or there are other ones too?

Well, let me get there. That's a great question.

All right, all right.

The answer is yes, yes and no. And also, I don't know. But I. I've always enjoyed going to podcast conferences. Like, the first one was, I think 2006. Like, it was early maybe. Yeah. Called. And it was called Crap. I don't even remember what it was called. It's called. I think it was called Podcast Expo or the New Media Expo or something. And that happened in Ontario, California, which is like, there's nothing there. Which was great because Everybody that was there was like a brand new podcaster hung out. We were all new. Yeah. We was like going to camp and. And then that evolved and everything. And then, I don't know, eight, ten years ago, maybe these folks started podcast movement. And they've had them for every year other than Covid years, you know, in. In various locations. They move around and it's great. However, there's. I have one problem with it, and the problem that I have is that they started doing it once a year. Right. Like most conferences are.

Right. Yeah.

And it'd be a big one. It would be for everybody, creators and industry folks and all that. And then they. They added a second one every year that they called Evolutions. And that was, at least from my perspective, geared towards just the industry side. So not so much for creators, but. But for like, you know, you said ad agencies and facilitators. The facilitators, the business. And when that started, it was fantastic because it was like, all right, this is great. We can get without there being like the distraction of creator sessions and all that stuff.

More specialized.

Yeah, more specialized, more focused. It would happen at a smaller venue. It was all kind of in like a little hotel in Los Angeles where everybody could just sort of be together. And there was, you know, if. If the main one had, I don't know, somewhere between three and 5,000 attendees, this one maybe had like 800 or something. Right. And it was easy to just go. And you could like, be super efficient about it. And it was great. And then things started to get cloudy because I, and I. This is my assumption that the organizers said, well, if. If we can have two conferences each year that had 3,000 people at em, wouldn't that be great? Like, they're making money. Like, I get it.

Of course.

Yep. And. And so it got unclear which one, and it's still unclear which conference is the one that we, as the industry. And of course, I sit in both of these camps. Right. I'm obviously a podcaster here. I am. But I also run one of, if not the oldest podcast representation firm. Right.

Like, we've been running back with Backbeat Media.

Yeah. Backbeat Media has been selling ads on podcasts for other people's shows, including our shows. But, you know, for 20 years, almost 20 years.

That's amazing.

Right. So, you know, but we've been doing that for a long time. So there's that side of it too. And that's the part of the industry that's confused. And it's not just me. There's there's lots of us that like to be able to get together once a year. We don't need to see each other every three months or even every six months. Like, we're emailing each other constantly. But it's nice to, as I say, remind one another that we are humans once a year. Right. Because you're doing, you know, it's very transactional. I'll get an email from someone, they'll be like, hey, Dave, we have a, you know, a proposal for Shopify. And it's like, great. And we, you know, pounce on it, and our team will go and vet it against all of our shows and find out who's interested. Then we put a proposal together and we deliver that back. They crunch it through. They talk to Shopify about it. They say, all right, great. Of the shows you submitted, Shopify selected, you know, these six shows. Here's the dates we want. Give us dates. And it's this very, like, harried sort of transactional thing, which is what business is. Like, that's totally fine. It's easy to lose sight of the person, the people.

So at the show, you get to connect with those people, have those.

Yeah, we're just hanging out, having drinks, like, whatever. You know, it's. It's nice to again, remind each other that we're humans, but once a year is enough. And so. But right now, because this show happens twice a year and because the organizers have either intentionally created this blurred perception of what these are or unintentionally, it sort of evolved, no one knows. And so everybody goes. Everybody thinks they need to go to two shows a year is one on.

The east coast, one on the West Coast.

Well, no, this one that happens in the spring, February, March, ish. The one called Evolutions has traditionally happened in Los Angeles. It is happening there again. They did one year Detour in Las Vegas, which was the wrong place for it, but, you know, so we're back in la, which is fine, but the other one moves around, and I actually like how they move the other one around. They find. They find a hotel where it can be all in one. A conference center, plenty of restaurants, hotel. Like a resort.

Yeah.

And they'll. You'll go to resorts. Like, you know, going to a resort in Dallas in August is not the best time to be in Dallas. But you spend all your time in Dallas.

You're at the resort.

It's fine. It doesn't matter. Right. And so everybody hangs out. And I think the industry is trying to move to only going to the Summer one and not caring about this one. That happens in LA every year. Well, we'll see how it evolves.

That's great. That's interesting. Yeah, there's a. We've done shows about the importance of trade shows and conferences and how to get the most out of them. So if you go to Businessbrain show, you can look for those.

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Oh, I love it. It's great.

It's such a Great show.

He's got a great voice and his topics are terrific. And it's so obscure. A lot of obscure things that you learn. Oh, that's amazing.

He dissects the stories behind sounds, sounds that we know, sounds that we don't know. Like the Netflix, you know, swoosh sound. He talks about that, like, things like that. Right. And so I had him on Gigab. We both are kind of were aware of each other, but we never met. And the episode is mostly us getting to know each other by telling stories to each other, which was a departure from the way that show usually goes. But I found it really interesting.

Nice.

He started that show because eight years ago, because 14 years ago, he created his own sound design studio called De Facto Sound. Right. So he. They build sounds. I think they do a lot of Netflix's sounds and like trailers and like they'll do all of that stuff. Right. And then they have downtime where the studio is, you know, staffed, quite employed people, but not billing any hours. And so that's when they started doing the show. And as an aside, I'll let you listen to the episode. But they spend 300 hours per episode. Yeah, 300 man hours, which is great. But he talked about how he's someone who knows that he wants to start things and figure out processes, but then it's really important to buy back his time by delegating. But in order to delegate, you got to be able to train people how to do the things that you have figured out how to do for your business.

Right.

And then hopefully, you know, if you train them well, they can do it at least as well as you're close to. As well as you're the 80% rule that we've talked about on the show before. Right. And then eventually, hopefully, they do the job better than you. Right. Which is often how that's going to work out.

Yeah.

But the trick of training them is something he really focuses on. And he uses loom to document all the procedures and essentially mind dump everything that's in his brain. That's how he trains his staff. Is he. I mean, there's other ways, but primarily.

It'S a great way to do it.

Yeah.

If you've never used loom, you know, basically it's. It's a bunch of ways to use it. But I think the way you're talking about is you can. You're recording your screen.

Yeah. It's a screen recorder. Yeah.

You're recording your screen as you're doing some task and you're down in the corner with a little circular video, you know, blurb.

Yep.

And you're talking them through it. Okay, look, I want you to do this. I want you to fill out this. When you get to this point of the screen, you should do this. And this is how we handle these situations. So you're walking them through.

How to do. It's you training them. It's a way. It's a webinar builder, if you want to. You know, they probably wouldn't like me when I said it that way, but. Yeah, but that's kind of what it's doing is you're building these webinars and.

It'S asynchronous, so people can ask questions and it gets posted there, and you can go up and answer them, and it stays there. They can post a question, a video like, hey, hey, Dave, I don't understand when you got to this point, do I press this or do that? You get an alert. You can go up, answer that question, and it stays as part of the SOP or the faq, whatever it is you're creating. It's a great service. I used it for a few things.

I've used it before, too. I never realized the question thing. I used it basically to be this simple way to record a presentation that I wanted to just deliver, but.

I see. Yeah, me too. That's kind of the way I did it. But then I noticed when I pushed it out to my audience that I guess I had left that question thing on. And so they started, you know, posting questions back and forth, and then you could choose, oh, do you want to leave this question in? You know, that kind of thing. Which is. Which is great. And that, you know, I think I've mentioned on the show before, you can.

Start loom for free, by the way. I'm just digging it. They. They are not a sponsor of this episode. I know. Yeah. Yeah.

There's a. One of the guys I follow on X Gurdley is his. His handle, or whatever you want to call it. He was talking about, you know, you. To. When you. I forget. Well, paraphrase. Basically, to be successful, you either need to delegate or automate. And if you're really good, you do it.

You do them both.

Yeah, do it both.

Yeah.

And I think it's a great idea. And I. There's a. If I think of it, I don't know his. His. His URL, but there was a guy that recorded a specific set of looms all about making sops for your business and how to use loom to do it.

So very meta.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very meta. I'll. I'll look it up after we're done recording. I'll put it in the show notes.

Okay.

His first name is Colin and. But.

All right.

I thought it was pretty good.

Those show notes are at BusinessBrain show. And if you want to send us feedback, if you have thoughts, if you're using loom, if you have any questions for us, whatever, send us whatever you want. Feedbackusbrain show. We'd love to hear from you. It's our fuel.

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

Thanks for hanging out, everybody. Make sure to check out shopify.com businessbrain. You sign up for their $1 per month trial period and that'll help you lead the charmed life. Hopefully the episode has helped you you increase the charm of your life. Have a great weekend and we'll see you next week.