"SOPs" Are Out ❌ "SOUPs" Are In! ✅

Introduction to SOP and SOUP

An SOP is a Standard Operating Procedure. It's used in business operations. 

It's essentially a checklist, and it enables you to delegate to other people or entities like AI agents, for example. An SOUP is a Standard Operating Unifying Procedure, which is just a ridiculous acronym that I made for the purposes of recording this video because it's kind of a dry topic.  And I'm gonna pronounce it as soup just to make it more confusing.

 Let's start the video with what is a SOUP in an operational sense, right?  So it sounds smarter than it really is. It's basically a checklist. I know. Wild. Right? And there are three components of good SOUP, simplicity, template-ability, and salt.

The Importance of SOUP in Delegation

Why do we need SOUP? SOUP. I made this phrase myself. It's not AI generated SOUP is the fuel for your delegation engine.

It's a pretty cool sentence, isn't it? Before I unpack that, let me introduce you to the concept of four ways to do anything. I've actually just read this in a book earlier. The book is called Source Amnesia. That was an example of completing is a way that you can do things, so just actually doing the task, deleting deferring.

And delegating, and delegating and completing is what SOUPs help you with. If I open this up, you can complete recurring tasks a bit easier. So, you know, every, month or so, you've got to do a, a boring, repetitive task. If you wanna make sure that you complete it in full and don't let certain subtasks fall through the cracks, create a SOUP for yourself, ping it into your Notion and then you make sure that you do the task right on time.

Delegation Strategies and AI Agents

As it's supposed to be done, but the superpower here that I want you to really focus on is delegation, right? If you're a leader, you should be delegating more. All of us should be delegating more, and a really interesting mantra or rubric that you should be considering if you are a leader and you want to delegate more, is if my delegate can perform this task, 80% as well as me is worth delegating.

I want you to think about that because we often let perfection be the enemy of progress. So just if somebody can do it almost as good as you, 80%, the 80 20 Pareto principle, just lean on that and let go of this concept that you've gotta do everything yourself and watch your business grow and watch your to-do lists get checked off way quicker than you would've ever thought.

So delegate more than you think if you're a leader. Obviously some things are tricky to delegate, like buying your spouse an anniversary gift, although not impossible, especially if you create some cool AI agents that know you and your spouse really well. You know, there's plenty of ways to do this if you're not a leader and you start there thinking, Tony, I'm not a leader.

What are you talking about? I'm, you know, I'm an employee at a company. I just wanna know about SOPs. I don't have any subordinates or anyone underneath me. Then, I hear you. But we have a new guy in town. He's called Mr. AI agent. You may have heard of him or scrolled past him on your LinkedIn feed.

Everyone and their grandma are talking about AI agents. And this is going to be incorporated into modern work more and more as we go through the next decade or this decade I should say. And so if you don't have any subordinates or people to delegate to, then guess what? You have AI agents nowadays. The easiest way to delegate is to do that using Notions, new AI agents, which not only let you interrogate your workspace and you know, essentially have a chat GPT within your workspace, but they enable you to.

Give and delegate tasks because they can now actually perform actions in your workspace. So if you're interested in Notion AI agents, maybe this is the first time you're hearing about them. We have a video on them in my channel, so just click somewhere. I don't know. They'll put it in in post editing or we'll put it in the description below.

I'll go over it for about 10 minutes, maybe even 15 minutes. It's a long one. and YouTube. Education town, and we go through what these things can do for you, but they're an absolute game changer. There's a massive upgrade coming to agents in Q1 2026. So yeah, get on board and learn to start delegating to non-human entities, wild times that we're living in.

Okay, so delegation class over. Let's get down to the tactics.

Creating Effective SOUPs

How should we cook our SOUPs and making sure that we reduce friction in an operational sense as much as possible. How to cook SOUP. So I've tried every method under the soupy sun for how to create a SOUP. This is my recommended method. Loom, which is basically a tool that enables you to record video and it records the transcripts of what you've said.

I recommend recording the Loom, just going over the thing. So let's say it's an onboarding practice, right? That you want to have everyone know, store a knowledge base and give to somebody on your team as a SOUP. So record the loom. Go through it, keep it short. Five minutes 'cause you wanna use that video as a resource as well, that we'll attach to the SOUP.

And then what you wanna do is you wanna create a Notion template in your database. If you're organized, you are using databases. Have an SOP database or put it into your docs database and just tag it with SOP or SOUP. Record that Loom. After you finish recording it, copy the transcript, then open up a Notion page if you're on the right plan for using Notion AI.

Then open up a Notion AI agent. Pass the agent the transcript. Refer the agent to the your SOP template, which hopefully should be structured and then say, listen, using my template and the transcript, mix these things together and cook me up in a tasty, tasty SOUP. And it'll just do it in two seconds.

Batta bish batta bosh! If you don't have a Notion of AI and you're saying, look, I don't wanna pay for Notion AI one, you should, it's really cheap in comparison to like having a plethora of tools. But if not, then you can go on the ChatGPT free version, no money at all, and give it the transcript.

Maybe you take a screenshot of your template and say, look, give me a structured SOP or a SOUP, and then two minutes has passed and you created an amazing SOUP. Add that to your knowledge base and you're creating an ongoing, growing knowledge of everything that needs to be done in your company and a really centralized way of delegating certain tasks so that you as a leader or you as an employee can get more done and feel less stressed at work.

Storing and Utilizing SOUPs

Speaking of that, where should I store my SOUP? Like I just said, store it in a knowledge base. So every time you create a new SOP, put it in a knowledge base in a wiki, in Notion or in a specific database, however you like to structure it. So each freshly cooked SOUP becomes. An extra synapse in your company's organizational brain, so to speak.

And then if you're in Notion AI, you can then just pull up the AI helper and even just start chatting with it about your SOPs. You don't even necessarily have to dig through to find SOPs. You can just ask him, give me this one, or tell me, remind me how to do that recurring SOP that I made last month, everyone's world and everyone's working workflows should be a lot easier with

using SOUPs for the backbone of your company's structure and company's brain. So yeah, like it says here, feel free to title this The Fridge or Not in Notion I would I think it's a great name and I hope that was a lighthearted and fun journey through the world of SOUPs.

Conclusion and Further Resources

And if you've got any questions, I'm sure you do.

Then pop them in the comments below. And if you wanna watch any more videos, check out the channel. We've got a bunch of other ones. Some more serious, some less serious, depends on what you're into. Click through, have a go. And if you wanna work with us again, there's information in the description. We are the number one

rated Notion consultancy worldwide. So you're in good hands here. We can help you level up your business, level up your Notion, workspace. Alright, that's it for today. This week's video. Stay tuned. We're gonna be dropping videos every week on I think it's Wednesday, so, alright, peace out.

Ciao.