Hey!

Chris here. Welcome to Blueprint—the newsletter to help you build a winning engineering team.

A few weeks ago, I missed two meetings. I was deep in problem-solving mode, building technical solutions for our customers.

While some founders might consider this time well spent, it's a red flag for me.

It's exactly the warning sign I tell other founders to watch for. When you start missing meetings and urgency becomes your default mode, your business is trying to tell you something: it's time to build systems.

I literally help other companies solve this exact problem. We go into engineering organizations, watch how they build and ship software, identify where they're losing time, and write the SOPs to fix it.

Yet here I was, the cobbler whose children have no shoes.

Let me show you the 5-step framework that gets you out of the chaos without killing your momentum—the same one I had to remind myself to use 3 weeks ago 👇️ 

📒 DEEP DIVE

The SOP Framework That Saved My Sanity (And My Business)

Here's how I build SOPs that allow me to offload repetitive tasks and focus on the work that matters (and how you can do the same).

The overwhelming lack of sanity you're experiencing means you're doing something right: growing.

But here's what most founders don't realize—this problem never fully goes away. 

At every phase of growth, you'll run into this wall again. It'll just look a little different.

The systems that got you here start breaking. What worked when you were doing everything yourself won't scale when you need other people to execute consistently.

Most founders resist building systems because they think it means bureaucracy and red tape.

But that's far from right. What you're building is a way to clone your decision-making for the 80% of tasks that don't require your unique judgment.

Judgment Vs. Process Work

As a founder, you start with what I call "superhero mentality." You have the best judgment. You can do everything better than everyone else—and early on, that's actually true.

But if you continue operating this way, you'll start drowning IN the business instead of working ON it. You become the bottleneck that prevents your own company from scaling.

Not every task in your business needs your unique judgment. In reality, your work falls into two categories:

1. Judgment-heavy work: Setting strategy, making critical decisions, inventing solutions that don't exist yet, solving problems that require your specific expertise

2. Process work: Repeatable, systematizable tasks that follow predictable patterns—things like onboarding clients, handling customer service issues, managing routine operations (read: judgment-light work)

Process work can be documented and handed off. Judgment work is where you add irreplaceable value.

But most founders haven't learned to distinguish between them. They hold onto everything because they haven't built the systems to trust anyone else.

But most of the time? You're just scared to let go.

And that fear makes you the bottleneck in the end.

The 5-Step SOP Framework

Here's how I build SOPs that stop me from being the bottleneck (steal this process):

Step 1: Always Start Manual

I'll say this until I'm blue in the face: Never automate something before you get the manual process right.

I've seen companies waste months automating broken processes. Then they have to tear it all down and rebuild when they realize they automated the wrong thing.

You have to do the work manually first. Make sure you've validated it's good and that the customer experience is solid.

Then—and only then—should you proceed with systemization.

Step 2: Record Everything

When I need to solve a critical problem—even one that needs to be fixed in the next 30 minutes—I fire up Loom and record my screen while talking through what I'm doing.

This doesn't slow me down more than 1-2% because I'm thinking through the steps anyway. It's like having someone looking over my shoulder while I work.

Since I have to do the task anyway, I might as well capture the process. Once I've recorded it, I have most of what I need to hand it off.

Step 3: Turn Videos Into SOPs

Many founders get stuck at this point. They think they need to write some massive operations manual from scratch. But that's not helpful for anyone.

Instead, take the walkthrough video you recorded, hand it to the person who'll own this process, and tell them: "I want you to make the generic SOP."

Today's tools make this incredibly easy:

• Drop the Loom transcript in AI

• Prompt the LLM to produce a clear step-by-step SOP

• Carefully copy edit the output

The result should be generic steps, not a word-for-word transcript of your rambling video. The goal is something clear enough that anyone can follow along.

Step 4: Transfer Real Ownership

This is where so many SOPs go to die.

You hand someone a process, but true ownership doesn't go with it. For this process to work, you have to be willing to let go.

Because when someone truly owns a process, they take pride in making it better.

Yes, this means they'll have the power to change the process. But documenting those changes and updating the formal documentation accordingly must be a strict requirement.

This also protects you against the people who hoard information to make themselves indispensable. (If you ever find yourself working with someone like this, fire them immediately. There are few worse cancers in a company.)

Step 5: Make SOPs Living Documents

The best systems I wrote 10 years ago for onboarding clients look completely different now—but they didn't change overnight. They evolved through small iterations over time.

Use your 1:1s to review SOP changes. Any updates, questions, or edge cases should be discussed and documented.

As new people take ownership of these processes, they'll bring their own skills and often make them better than you ever could.

The Real Goal

Sometimes you really are the best person for a specific task. And sometimes you've just gotten too far removed.

That's why the goal shouldn't be to remove yourself from everything. It's to remove yourself from 80% of tasks that don't need your judgment, so you have capacity for the 20% that do.

That's why I look for people who operate as close as possible to how I do. That way, I can trust that they'll fully own the 80% I don't have time for.

Especially at the executive level, the people I've hired to own major processes are now far better at their jobs than I would ever be.

That's exactly what you want.

Don't Wait to Get Started

The process never ends. At every phase of growth, you'll feel the chaos creeping back. But now you know what to do about it.

Don't try to systematize everything at once. Start with the task you can write an SOP for in 5 minutes. Not the most important one—the simplest one.

Like Dave Ramsey's debt snowball method, you want the easy win first. Build momentum with small victories, then tackle bigger challenges.

The next time you do something that someone else could learn, record it. Turn that recording into an SOP and hand it off to the right person.

Your future self will thank you when you're inventing the future instead of drowning in daily operations.

🎙 EPISODE OF THE WEEK

This week on Build Your Business, Matt and I walk through the exact strategies we've used to move from cash burn to consistent profit.

We dive into Profit First for Founders—the strategy that finally gave us control over our business finances. You'll learn how we built financial dashboards, implemented lean budgeting, and made tactical cost cuts without sacrificing growth.

Whether you're bootstrapping or scaling, this episode gives you an actionable framework to take the stress out of money management and create a business that pays you first.

Check it out: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube

BEFORE YOU GO…

Give yourself massive grace here. Everyone deals with this at every level of business.

The fact that you're feeling overwhelmed by growth is actually a good sign. It means you're succeeding fast enough that your current systems can't keep up.

What separates successful founders from those who burn out isn't intelligence or work ethic. It's recognizing when chaos is your business, telling you to systematize, then actually doing something about it.

The business that eventually runs without you starts with documenting one process today.

Talk soon,

Chris.