Rob Schaller

Rob Schaller Public page where I share business, AI, small business growth, and pieces of real life.

I help small businesses and parentpreneurs use AI, automation, and practical tech to grow without burning out.

05/29/2026

SOPs matter.

But they’re only one piece of the foundation.

For a small business, documenting how things are done helps with training, consistency, and getting important information out of people’s heads.

But the bigger opportunity is clean, organized business knowledge.

AI by itself can help with a lot.

But AI connected to your actual business knowledge?

That’s where things start to get interesting.

Because so much of what makes a business work is scattered everywhere:
phone calls
emails
virtual meetings
websites
flyers
random documents
customer questions
employee conversations
things people just know

Most of it never gets captured in a useful way.
But when that information becomes digital, organized, searchable, and usable…

it can support way more than training:
customer service
hiring
marketing
sales
operations
employee support
decision making

That’s the bigger shift I’m paying attention to.

SOPs are part of it.

But the real opportunity is turning what a business already knows into something it can actually use.





05/27/2026

Even if we get better at creating SOPs…
there’s still another problem.

Most people don’t want to read them.

And honestly, I don’t really blame them.

If someone is new…
or they’re in the middle of a shift…
or they’re dealing with a guest, customer, or problem in real time…

they’re probably not thinking:
“Let me go read a three-page document.”

That’s why I don’t think the goal is just to create SOPs.

The goal is to turn what we know into something people can actually use.

A clear process.
A short training lesson.
A quick video.
A searchable answer.
Eventually maybe even an AI support tool that can point people in the right direction.

But none of that works if the knowledge isn’t captured first.

That’s the part I keep coming back to.

The SOP might not be the final experience.
It feels more like-the foundation.

The raw material.

The thing everything else gets built from.

So yeah, documentation still matters.

But not because I want people sitting around reading manuals.

It matters because it gives us something to build better training and support from.

That’s the bigger picture.





05/21/2026

Most small businesses don’t avoid SOPs because they don’t matter.

They avoid them because they’re fu**in' annoying to make.

SOPs have a branding problem.
They sound boring, corporate, and painful.
And honestly, I get why most small businesses don’t have them built out properly.
Or built at all.

We don’t really have them in the way we probably should either.

A lot of our process still lives in people’s heads.
Someone knows how to handle this.
Someone knows what to do when that happens.
Someone remembers the little details.
And that works…
until it doesn’t.

But as training systems, AI support tools, and better operations become more realistic for small businesses…
documentation starts to matter more.

The problem is…
I don’t want SOPs to become another messy thing.

Because if every process gets written differently,
in a different format,
with different levels of detail,
by different people…
then you don’t really have a system.

You just have a pile of documents not doin' s**t.

So the part I’m working through now is how to make SOP creation more consistent:
same structure
same format
same questions
same way of breaking down a process

Something that helps me make them faster…
but also helps other people contribute without starting from scratch.
or me being the only one that makes them.

Because the goal isn’t just to “make SOPs.”

The goal is to build a repeatable way to capture how the business actually works.

That’s the part that matters.





05/20/2026

A lot of small businesses run almost entirely on tribal knowledge.

Important information only exists inside certain employees’ heads.

How to handle situations.
How certain things are done.
Little details nobody ever documented.

And everything works…
until somebody leaves, calls out, or isn’t there.

Then suddenly nobody knows what’s going on.
The more I think about it…
the more I realize that’s not really a people problem.

It’s a systems problem.





05/15/2026

One thing I’ve been thinking about lately…
training probably shouldn’t be completely manual anymore.

And I’m not saying people don’t matter.

They absolutely do.

But when the same questions keep getting asked over and over…

or important information only exists inside certain employees’ heads…

that becomes a problem.

Especially when things get busy.

So now I’m thinking more about:

how to build better systems for:
• training
• support
• consistency

without relying on someone repeating the same thing forever.





05/14/2026

I've said this before.
I made a bad assumption for a long time.

I assumed people on the team would naturally think about improving the business…
the same way I do.

But the reality is…

most employees are focused on:
doing their job
going home
and living their life.

And honestly…
that’s normal.

It made me realize that if I want:
• consistency
• better performance
• better customer experience

…I can’t just assume people will figure things out on their own.

The business has to support them better too.





05/08/2026

I spend a lot of time trying to improve things in my businesses…

systems, processes, how things run.

But at the same time…
Life outside of that doesn’t really slow down.

Kids, home, everything else…

It's all happening at the same time.

Still figuring out how to balance both better.





05/07/2026

𝗧𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲’𝘀 𝗮 𝗯𝗶𝗴 𝗱𝗶𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝘁𝘄𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝗮 𝗴𝗼𝗼𝗱 𝗮𝗻𝘀𝘄𝗲𝗿 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗮 𝗯𝗮𝗱 𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗱𝘂𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗻 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄.

A weak answer sounds like:
“Yeah I’ve dealt with customers… I just try to stay calm.”

A strong answer sounds like:
“I had a customer upset about a billing issue… I walked them through it step by step and made sure they understood what happened.”

One is generic.

One sounds like real experience.

You can hear the difference immediately.





05/06/2026

After listening to a lot of responses…
you start to notice patterns.

A lot of people:
give vague answers
-talk around the question
-or say what sounds right instead of what they actually did

And sometimes…
you can tell they’ve never really been in that situation before.

None of that shows up on a resume.

But you hear it immediately when they speak.





05/05/2026

𝗜𝘁’𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗽𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝘀𝗮𝘆.

𝗜𝘁’𝘀 𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝘀𝗮𝘆 𝗶𝘁.

When I listen to responses during an interview, I’m paying attention to things like:
Are they actually answering the question…
or just talking around it?

Are they specific…
or giving vague, generic answers?

Do they sound like they’ve actually been in that situation before…
or just saying what sounds right?

You can usually tell pretty quickly.
And that tells you way more
than the answer itself.

This is what I want to develop more in our AI interview screener.





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