Google docs or Microsoft word to build SOPs?

Okay, thanks for joining me on today's episode, it's about 10 to nine, it's a bit late at night.

I actually wanted to do this earlier when I had just finished a training session with my brother.

And we were coming off that and we're talking business and I was like, dude, let's do a Facebook Live.

But unfortunately, my phone had been commandeered last night by my kids and had about a 2% battery.

And I was like, man, not good.

Let's not do this, the thing cuts out halfway through, doesn't look very good.

So we didn't do that.

But we had been discussing some of the challenges.

He runs a video, sorry, not a video, a real estate editing business called www.rapidedit.net.

And He was describing how He was having some problems with making sure that every step in the editing process was taken care of that somebody's relatively new had come on board, and they miss the alignment.

Apparently, in real estate, photography, they all need to be aligned in the sky needs to be done.

There's a bunch of procedures that go through every time a photo gets edited.

And it's just talking about the challenges with that, and how I had to speak to them and correct them and teach them and I was like, okay, cool.

Yeah, yeah, that's an interesting problem to have.

And we, we didn't get to this discussion, but where he's at right now, it probably doesn't need standard operating procedures.

But as his business grows, this requirement will be there.

And if you actually had that He could point to and say, hey, look, if you look at this particular standard operating procedure, it says align photo to vertical, follow this, and then remember to do it.

Now that's got its own challenges for sure.

Getting your team to actually use the instructions is a whole different conversation.

But I wanted to touch upon the importance of choosing the right tools to do this.

Now, the two major tools to build standard operating procedures are going to be either Google Docs or Microsoft Word.

Look, there might be some other rare third-party word processes.

But essentially, that's the two choices.

I have seen people recommending just videoing procedures.

But in my experience, that's something that really should be done later on when a procedure has been stabilized.

And it's proven that it's effective.

And it doesn't change much.

Up until that point, if it's changing frequently, or making improvements, then the video will become not so useful.

It'll have that error in it.

And so you'll need to do another video.

And suddenly, the benefit of the speed of video recording your standard operating procedures kind of loses its value if they're really easy to become outdated.

And so my thoughts are, well, let's get them dialed in, let's get them accurate, let's get make sure that they work because I've been amazed at how often I have built a procedure.

And it just isn't accurate.

It does, what my mind thinks should happen does not represent what actually happens.

But beyond all of that, we still need some way of documenting that if you're going to start out and say you don't want I'm just going to use a word processor to write down the instructions, which I actually think is a wonderful idea until it's stable, then you've got this choice between Google Docs and Microsoft Word.

And at the heart.

Look, these programs are essentially the same.

There might be some very small differences.

But the word is online.

Google Docs is online, Google Docs began online is only online, but word morphed into that to meet that demand.

But what I want to let you know is that there is a clear choice here.

And I discovered this when I spoke to the client who usually uses Microsoft Word, I was like, Cool, okay, let's stick with Microsoft Word.

But as I began linking to the online URL that represented that document, I found that word creates a single instance of that document in order for it to work on.

So it's got its chunk at the beginning of the URL, and then this whole other bit, that defines the instance of it, and Google Docs doesn't do this.

And the importance of this is if I create a link to that Microsoft Word document, it doesn't work.

When I come back to it the next day.

Like as soon as they close down that we know I have to go back to the file structure in Dropbox or inbox and actually click open and then it makes a new window with a new chunk at the end.

This sucks, this means that you have to always link to the file in the folder structure instead of being able to link directly to the file.

Like if I want my instructions, I want them to come up straight away like that extra click.

It's okay.

It's not the end of the world.

But it doesn't have to be done because I chose Google Docs, then, hey, Google Docs is the winner.

So if you're just beginning your journey into this requirement to create standard operating procedures and you're trying to even choose between, hey, do we use Word Online? Or do we use Google Docs, choose Google Docs.

It's clearly better because of the single fact that its URL always goes to the same document.

You open it tomorrow, it goes straight to the document open a week, it goes straight to the document.

This is a small but very important time-saving factor.

And it also means that whoever opens that file will always be going to that file.

Alright, I hope that was helpful for you.

Thanks for tuning in.

I look forward to seeing you.

On our next episodes.

We continue to explore these creation and utilization systems and procedures so that you can scale your business beyond the current hard ceilings that may exist for you to see that.