SOP for Small Business: The 30-Minute Version (With a Free Generator)

Why SOPs matter even when you are a one-person show

Standard Operating Procedures sound corporate. For a small business, they answer one question: 'how do we do this here?' - so you never re-explain, never re-decide, and never lose the process when a key person is away.

They also matter the moment you want AI to do the task: an AI agent can only automate what is written down. No SOP, no automation.

The one-page, 5-part SOP

Forget the 40-page manual. One page per task, five parts:

• 1. Trigger - what starts this task
• 2. Steps - numbered, one action per line
• 3. Tools - where each step happens
• 4. Done means - the exact finish condition
• 5. Exceptions - the 2-3 things that go wrong and what to do

Write one in 30 minutes

Pick your most-repeated task. Record yourself doing it once (voice memo), then type the steps as you listen. You already know the process - you just have never written it down.

Do the three most-repeated tasks first. That covers most of the daily chaos. Everything else can wait until it hurts.

Generate the first draft free

The SOP Generator turns a task description into a clean first draft - answer a few questions about the task, get a structured one-page SOP to edit.