In this instructional video, Ryan Deiss explains why many entrepreneurs mistake SOPs and checklists for complete business systems. He argues that SOPs are isolated task lists that lack the interconnectedness needed to drive results. To create true systems, he advises first zooming out to map the entire customer journey—from acquisition to post‑sale processes—using sticky notes to visualize each step. Once the end‑to‑end flow is laid out, each individual step can be broken down into its own checklist or SOP, but these operate within the larger, connected system that ultimately delivers outcomes.
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Does anyone come to you ever and say, I've tried systems and they haven't worked for me? Yeah, usually when people come and they say they've tried systems, what they mean is they've tried documenting 50 billion SOPs, and those aren't actually systems. What's the difference? Checklists and SOPs are just a list of how to do independent tasks. But the problem is, is that people want to build checklists and SOPs around 15 different things, but because there's no interconnectedness around them, because they're, they're these like disparate things, your people don't know when they're doing this why it's connected to this other thing over here, this other thing over here, and that's when they get lost. But a system is a combination of things that, that get a result. Yeah. And so you have to first zoom out and say like, what do we even do here? Like, so you have to start with the most basic questions of business, which is how do we get customers? And then what do we do with them once we got them? And then, I mean, we literally will get sticky notes and we'll write down like, how do you do it? And then we run ads and then it goes with we close a sale and you just go from, okay, then what happens? Then what happens? And then what happens? And then you visualize the process of how customers happen. That's an actual system. Mm-hmm. Now, each of those little sticky notes, that can be a checklist, that can be an SOP.
