SOPs: Your Business Spellbook

Tired of reinventing the wheel every time you tackle the same tasks in your business? In this episode, Lauren transforms those boring Standard Operating Procedures into magical Sacred Operating Pathways that will revolutionize your workflow, protect your energy, and bring more flow to your business.

In this episode...

🪄 How to shift your mindset from seeing SOPs as dusty binders to viewing them as your personal business grimoire

😌 The nervous system relief that comes from getting processes out of your head and into tangible form

❤️‍🔥 Why SOPs are actually the "manual side of automation" and how they create more space for your creativity

💫 Creating rituals and pathways that make your unique magic repeatable without draining your mental energy

🗝️ The secret to building a scalable business that maintains your essence even as you grow and bring on team members

📖 Practical steps to create your first SOP and begin building your business spellbook today

This episode is perfect for spiritual entrepreneurs who resist structure but crave more ease in their business. Learn how creating Sacred Operating Pathways can be a magical act of self-care that honors your time, energy, and vision while making your business processes more efficient and enjoyable.

🎙️ Brought to you by Lauren Poppins Raye

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Transcript

0:58

This isn't just business, it's rhythm and flow, a living system where momentum can grow. You've heard it as SOP, all structure and steps, but here it's a path that maps what you do next. Not rules in a binder collecting some dust, but rituals spelled out to anchor your trust. Your sacred operating path makes it clear, the steps to success are already here. It's step-by-step wisdom, a soul coded map that frees up your brain from the energy trap. For witches and weavers with visions to form, these spell books bring structure where magic is born. So gather your tools, a pen or a screen, and write down the magic that lives in between. Because power is process, not something you solve, and it's shaped as you grow and designed to evolve. In case you've never heard of an SOP, it classically and traditionally, and actually stands for Standard Operating Procedure, and this is something that I geek out on so hard. I'm actually fresh out of a rework with my podcast workflow SOP I was feeling especially connected to the magic around it. And that is why this episode is born today because just like how I teach people to be in relationship with their money in a way that feels very aligned with their magic essentially, and those deeper unseen layers that animate and inspire us, so that they're able to overcome resistance that many of you have before coming to me around your money stuff, right? Because you see it as this very linear, logical, boring side of business, and one that you have to do. And so a lot of my work and your work when you work with me is to reframe and reposition yourself so that you can have a different relationship with money that actually feels aligned with all the parts that you like best about business and life in general. And that is what this episode is aimed to do today for you if you don't already love and have and maintain SOPs. So basically they are a guide of sorts, and I'm still for a moment here gonna speak to the traditional language to anchor into what you likely already know about them, before we transition to the reframe that I have for you today around them. And so traditionally, classically, the way that you've probably heard them talked about, they're a set of rules, boundaries, steps, protocols. It's like a list of for all the things that you do in your business that are repeatable, or that other people do for you in your business if you have a team, it's a list of the steps, right? It's like a quick reference of exactly. What your expectations are, exactly what you want done for any given task. So if this is how you learned them, you likely have a very common aversion to them because that doesn't sound fun. That literally, as a callback to the wrap that you just heard, sounds more like a stuffy, like, you know, a binder collecting dust. When you think of this maybe for some job that you worked for, right? That had this manual that you had to study and learn and reference, or likely it was something that existed that nobody actually even looked at. It was a dead document, collecting dust, dying in a binder somewhere. Why would you want to embrace and engage that in your own business? That sounds awful and pointless and like there's a million other things that 1, you would rather be working on and putting your attention toward, and 2, that are gonna move the needle forward. And so because this is a prevalent attitude, just like how it is my pleasure and my sacred service to support people in rewriting their relationship with money, to actually embrace and engage the pieces that are your role to be able to maintain a sustainable channel of abundance, so too are SOPs critically important for the success of your business, for you being able to scale for you getting to work with a team, which is such a next level experience as a business owner, makes it so much more fun, and a million more benefits that I will continue to speak of in this episode. But for all these reasons that you might not even be aware of, of this huge gaping hole missing piece, if you don't have living, breathing documents that are your SOPs, I am here to reframe them so that you are biting at the chomp to create your first one after you listen to this episode. With that, I have the reframe... Firstly, let's just switch the acronym to a whole new way of thinking about it. A whole new name to anchor in this new way of thinking about it, and that is Sacred Operating Pathways. I love this because in a reductive way it really does say it all, but of course we are going to unpack it further. If you thought SOPs were boring, I want to also offer the reframe of a new definition, which is that they are enchanted instructions that make your magic repeatable. They're how you don't have to reinvent the wheel every time you do something. They're how you're able to track and document what has worked so that you can do it that way again next time without having to expend precious mental energy to remember and re-figure out what that way was that worked for you last time. You know how it goes when you're in the flow, which doesn't happen every time that you work on something, but when you do get into the flow state with a task, you end up doing things in ways that just are time efficient in almost a magical way, right? They warp time. It's like a quality piece that makes the quantity of time it takes you totally shift. They aren't things that we really think about them with our brain, but it's more like you come across them, right? Again, when you're in the flow state, you just notice yourself doing things in a way, just like when someone's in flow playing an instrument. Everything just works and fits together, and often when you have that experience, you've probably told yourself,"oh, I need to remember that. I need to do it like this next time". And you probably have lots of little versions of those, when things click into place. Your SOPs are like a grimoire or a spell book to hold all of those. So just like a spell book, where you are tracking and documenting what works... Think of it, it could be like your recipe book, right? The recipes or the, measurements that made it just, ah, chef's Kiss, right? Or whatever those pieces are where you're like,"that's the way". And it ends up being this living, breathing, evolving thing. It's not like all of a sudden you get the download of everything that's going to make that workflow work best. You get it in pieces. And so having this place, which by the way, I recommend using Google Docs, it's such a great way to organize and especially, lately, with their new feature of being able to have multiple tabs in a document, you can literally have one SOP document, and a tab for each workflow to put your SOPs into. I'll circle back later to some really specific, practical advice on how to structure these so that they work really well, but the point is you are getting steps, procedures, processes, pathways, details, different pieces, links. Oh my gosh, having to go and search for a link when you need it, right? You're getting everything that you need and need to reference to be able to complete a task where you don't have to think about any of that stuff because it's right in front of you, and so you get to focus on the creative piece or the genius piece or whatever the actual task it is you showed up for, without having to bog yourself down with all of those other details of trying to re-figure out or re-remember what you're even doing in the first place, or how you're doing it. So you get this stuff out of your head and onto paper or a screen, I highly recommend, but you get it into form, physical, tangible, something you can see and look at and reference and oh my goodness, I cannot even tell you. The nervous system regulation that this is for a business owner of knowing that you don't have to worry about thinking about these things, or trying to remember them ever again is one of the biggest mental loads you will take off of yourself. You can't even imagine what the relief of that is until you actually put these systems in place. You're getting this stuff out of your head and into tangible, physical, referenceable form. This is such a big use case for visibility is power. Having this stuff in your head and not being able to see it in front of you is not only a huge mental load that you should not be carrying, and you should absolutely be offloading. Another reframe that I want to add to this or sort of encase this inside of, that is also going to be super helpful for you to embrace something else that you may have resistance to, which is the idea of automation. So typically when we think about automation, we think about tech tools, right? I want to make the connection for you that SOPs are like the manual side of automation, if that makes sense. And it probably doesn't, so let me explain. Automation is a complimentary step, but it's kind of a next step too. So a lot of the process that we're talking about here with SOPs is getting your process, your magic, the method of your madness... out there, something tangible that you can see and tweak and share, so that you can make it more efficient. And a lot of times the step to efficiency is you see, oh, I could automate that. That's a topic for another time. But I want you to know that this is absolutely in tandem and an integral part of automation, not just because it makes the actual automated steps possible, because you can see where to put them, which ones would be supportive for you, but also because it's the exact same mindset. It's the idea that we don't wanna have to repeat anything, really. Anything that's repeatable, we want to automate. And the way that we automate for the tasks that we actually have to do manually, is by creating an SOP and following it. So just like how we can give an automation tool a script essentially, and say when this happens, I want you to do this. We are doing the same for ourselves with SOPs. We're doing it for our brain. We are telling ourselves, when I want this outcome, I'm gonna do this, this, and this. And then we are able to show up in an automated way to achieve that outcome. So think of the umbrella term as more like automatic. So whether it's actual automation with tech, or it's SOPs with you and your workflow. We wanna make the what to do as automatic as possible, so the how you do it, has even more space to fill the room. When you're able to see it all together instead of having these various thoughts come and go, and pass through your awareness, you can see it all in one place and it becomes this superpower where naturally and effortlessly you can see things to tweak. You can see what's not as efficient as it could be. You can see where there's energy leaks and where there's things you can refine in that workflow to start to tweak and play with and experiment to make your workflow even more efficient. This reframe is to think of your SOPs, your Sacred Operating Paths, as spells that ground your vision into something real, empower you to be even more efficient and to be able to focus on what you're actually passionate about, and ultimately to protect your energy and your time. It's how to make your magic repeatable. It's how to take something that is just part of your inner world in the dark, invisible places of your mind and make them tangible. And turn them into a format where your magic can be repeatable, where you can iterate on it effortlessly. Just like a spell, it's a list of ritual steps and resources, remember putting links in there is so helpful, to summon your desired outcome with clarity. It's not like doing the same thing and expecting different results. It's doing the same thing and knowing that you're gonna get reliable results and consistency. It ends up, again, the nervous system piece. You can just chill out knowing that you have what you need that is essentially your essence coded into something that you or other people can see and follow as well to be able to achieve the goal of your repeated tasks over and over and over, without any stress or, I don't know about you... i'm a mom now. Mom brain is real. I loved SOPs before becoming a mom, but they have become straight up necessary now. The mental bandwidth that it takes for me sometimes to remember something that I didn't take note of is extreme. Also, knowing exactly where to put things when I get that inspired idea, right? So I'm not just dropping it in a message to myself or a note that maybe will make it into practice so that I can actually implement it, but probably won't. Having these SOPs in place, I know exactly where those gems go for each of my task sets or workflows. Just like how a spell loses its power if you forget the words, your workflow loses its power if you forget the steps, or the links, or the little details that make everything flow so much more smoothly. So think of SOPs as a way to externalize your magic so that everything's not trapped in your head. Now we've been talking about the value of this for yourself. It is absolutely invaluable to be able to see your processes in front of you, to be able to tweak them to be guided by them, but it's also an absolute requisite, a total must if you're gonna build a team. But here's the thing... even if you don't have a team now, you should be doing this for that cause, because then when the time comes where you wanna start bringing someone on, you don't have to worry about the stress at all of creating them then. You already have them. It becomes so easy and seamless to transition into bringing people on. I mentioned that what inspired this episode is that I just went and did a pass on my podcast workflow SOPs to support bringing on a new team member. And let me just tell you from my experience and example how this process has gone down. And I actually had a really good friend, a business bestie... I was telling her about my initial process with this, and she was so inspired by how much I prioritize my time and energy through these things that I'm talking about right now. By taking the time to do this, I am ensuring that my energy and my time is honored as much as I am capable of honoring it. And that is a whole nother level of self-trust than most business owners know. Knowing that you've got yourself because you're doing these things to make sure that your time and energy is as precious and protected as possible, is a game changer when it comes to how you feel inside your business. So it started out with season 3 of the podcasts coming into form, and I had all of these new ideas of the structure of the episode, how I was gonna repurpose content. After taking a long break from the previous version of the podcast as Boss Cosm, it was totally back to the drawing board, right? I started over and created a whole new workflow, got back to that visionary space of what was possible. And as I did, I had this living, breathing Google doc that was the SOP for all of the different pieces. And let me tell you, besides the specific more nuanced benefits that I've been talking about, that are made possible by having SOPs in place, there's also just something so powerful, it reminds me of when you have a new idea to start a new business and you make the website. All of a sudden, it's real. And your relationship to it changes. It almost takes on a life of its own. It becomes an entity. It becomes a thing because you made a website for it. I feel like SOPs are that in a big way. I had this inspired idea and yes, of course I made new graphics and there was new publishing on my platform. But for me, the biggie for this, because it was so workflow intensive to maintain it, was the visionary space around this workflow that I was creating. And the SOP was this version of it, this asset that I created that made it real, and that got me really excited in the way that a website does for a new business venture. Okay, so I made the SOP to see and get out of my mind what I was envisioning all the pieces were that I was gonna repurpose it into and then what I was able to do next, because again, I got to this place of efficiency. I knew that I was gonna be able to be as efficient as possible. And so from that place, the next step was to start timing myself. I wanted to see, I started logging hours, to see exactly how much time it took me to process an episode, following the steps of this new SOP. That in of itself was so fun. I love that process. Moon's in Virgo. If you haven't been here long, you might not know that about me... a big part of where this part of me comes from that nerds out on all of this. What came next felt really obvious of okay, now I'm ready to hand this off to somebody else. And I kind of knew that from the beginning that this was gonna prepare me to do that, but I didn't realize how aligned that would feel as soon as I got to a point where it evened out. At first, it took me a little bit longer to get the hang of it, but then it was smooth repeat, taking about the same amount of time every time. And I was like, okay, now that I can see. See it first, I could see the steps and I was able to easily repeat it. Then I could see how long it was taking me, and then it was obvious of okay, well how much would it cost me to pay somebody else to do that? And does that make sense right now? The empowerment around making business decisions and business moves, through prioritizing these things is also just unparalleled. So remember when you're making these, that you're absolutely making them for your future self to either maybe follow them, but definitely iterate on them and refine them, but also you're setting these up eventually for future team members. So wherever you are on your timeline, whether it's to relieve your time and energy by making your processes more efficient, or eventually to delegate and hand off the tasks altogether to somebody else, it is all for the cause of protecting your time and energy. The piece about being able to see it and return to it and refine it.... I have to point to my Virgo because I feel like this is such a big part of my creative process in general, is I've always been a little bit intimidated by a blank canvas, right? You've heard of blank canvas syndrome? If I see something that's already done, I can see immediately exactly what I wanna do to tweak it to be more ideal. This is the Virgo superpower of looking at something, but that something needs to exist, and be able to see the gap between what that next step is to bridge that gap. So it's why Virgos are such great editors, right? We see something and we're like, no, that's not right. That's not right. That's not right. And it's also why"done, not perfect," it's such a good idea to make the first version of anything, just put it out there, and know it's gonna suck because then you have something to look at and iterate on and edit and refine and get closer and closer to perfection. SOPs are such an incredible place to show up for that kind of creative process, because you get to refine the spell every time you look at it, and if you're using that as a guide, if you don't have a team yet and you're the one following that SOP, literally every time you do the task, you're going to refine the spell and get better and more efficient at it for every future time. And this is the part where, if you thought about it as being boring or a chore to have to do this, when you actually engage it with this mindset and engage it regularly and understand what it's for, the purpose that it's serving for you, it is absolutely not a chore. It is a creative act every time you look at it, and it actually inspires and opens your creativity to engage it. We're talking legacy stuff here. This is a living, breathing, evolving spell book of your magic inside your business, that gets more and more awesome the longer you're in business. On the topic of bringing people in and bringing on team members to eventually have this spell book to be able to step inside of your business... people talk about the keys of the castle. It's not giving people login credentials to your apps. It's your SOPs. And not only does having them make the onboarding and scaling and bringing on a team super seamless, when you have enough to worry about like meeting and vetting new people, you're not at that time gonna want to figure out creating SOPs for them. Not only that, though, once you actually bring them on, it empowers them to be able to succeed in your company without you having to constantly supervise them or micromanage them. You've already created the steps for success and your expectations in a way that they can reference without having to constantly come to you. And that is the difference between bringing on team members taking you 10 steps back or 10 steps forward. This is some of the most magical kind of structure that I know. So much of what we do is taking the invisible visions that we have and making them tangible, bringing them into form through our offers inside of our businesses. This is the backend version of that. This is taking your inspired visions and ideas for what's possible with how you move energy and manipulate and use time well. Some of the most fertile spaces for your magic and innovation to be applied. This is how you do that same magic, bridging the invisible to the visible, the formless to the realm of form. This is how you do that in your internal systems, your business backend. And this is how you make your business something that you actually want to show up for and inside of every single day. SOPs are like scaffolding for you to lean into and grow and climb up, up and rise higher. It truly is what you build on top of the foundation of establishing your business entity. This is the inner workings. This is the machine that you liberate yourself to drive like the ghost within it. I mentioned the mental load that this offloads. It is a whole new world when you don't have to constantly be in decision fatigue, because you know exactly what to do and lean into next. You know exactly what tab to open. You know exactly what to click. You're not constantly second guessing yourself. You know confidently what that next move is to make, which ultimately reduces the possibility of overwhelm. Those little micro fatiguing moments that happen throughout your workday. Those create momentum. And a lot of times those are what ultimately add up to the experience of overwhelm or burnout, whereas the absence of them, because you've created these guides, not only created, but continue to maintain and evolve these SOPs, these Sacred Operating Paths, so that you always have that tangible, clear guidance for you or your team, creates an environment in your business where overwhelm is actually really uncommon. The other thing is, it makes your business scalable, both through your ability to show up more efficiently, through your being able to eventually bring on a team, and to continue to free you and those team members up to be able to make an even bigger impact without making it soulless. And here's why it is important that you start SOPs right now, no matter where you are in your business. Because you want those SOPs to be a reflection of what matters most to you, of that creative process, of you and your essence infused into your workflows. Now, wherever you are, whichever ones you have, because that will continue to grow and evolve into the scaled version of your company. It's almost like infusing the seed of your essence into whatever else it will become, no matter how big it gets. So you get to be the spellcaster and the system designer from day one, or day whatever this is for you. Okay, at this point I'm sure you are dying to go create your first SOP, so let me give you a little practical guidance to take your first baby step in this direction. Pick one task that you do over and over, something that you do weekly or at least twice a month. The next time you do it, document the steps that you take as you're doing it. Do it in a Google Doc. And as you are documenting those steps, if there is a link that you have to access, drop it in there. If you made a graphic for it, duplicate that graphic. And make it a template version. So for example, if you had a title in it, replace the title with the word"title". Basically make a placeholder version of it that you can access next time to make another version of it. And then either put a link to that in that SOP and/or you can also put the actual picture. I like to make my SOPs look as beautiful and as aesthetically inviting as possible, just like I do with my journals. You also might wanna add screenshots from various parts of the process. Really be keeping in mind a lot of what we talked about. This is for you. This is also potentially for somebody else to be able to retrace your steps. That said, the simpler the spell, the more likely you are to reuse it. So don't go overboard. You're gonna find that sweet spot that really works for you of how much do you put into it to make it full and complete and beautiful, but how little do you put into it to make it really simple, and easy to follow as a guide.. That's your first SOP. And then next time you go to do that same step, follow your guide, pull it up. You can even do a split screen so you're looking at whatever you're working on and your SOP at the same time I guarantee you are going to have some ideas of how you could tweak things to be a little bit more efficient, feel a little bit more aligned for the way you like to work, and make those edits as you go. If you do have a team and you're gonna wanna be passing this on to somebody else, I would also recommend eventually making a Loom video. Where somebody can watch for the first time and actually see you go through the process and then have that more written version as like TLDR easy reference. That said, I recommend doing it at least three times, because you will go through a creative process of making it better and better. Get to a point where you really feel like it's in its best current form. Then go record the Loom, because you won't wanna have to go rerecord that. And when you get to that point too, please reach out. By then, you will surely have connected with the magic that is SOPs, and I would love to hear your experience around this. I. Share this episode with a friend. Anyone that you've heard complain about stress or overwhelm or burnout inside their business, that are magically thinking people send this to them so they too can reframe their relationship to this critical piece of business that is actually one of the most fun to maintain and continue to evolve and show up for as part of the magical evolution of your scaling and growing business.