Ep.50 Create Flow in Your Business with Automations

Get ready to be blown away at the ease you can create in your business when you tap into the power of automations.  Fair warning - I tend to geek out on this stuff 'cause that's how my brain works baby! 

I get pretty fired up about automating processes in your business to create flow and efficiency not to mention more productive and profitable! 

If you're looking to work smarter, not harder, then this episode is a must-listen!
Click here for full episode show notes.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

So chances are if you're a coach or a podcaster, you got into this business because that's what you like to do. You like to connect with people, you like to share your gifts, you like to do the things that only you can do. But what happens is the more you grow your business, the busier you are, then you find yourself doing less and less of the parts that you actually enjoy doing. Like the parts that actually light you up. Hi, I'm Jamie Renee, and I'm your host of the Perfection That Required podcast. And just like you, I'm working on building a business around sharing my gifts. On this show, we talk about building a business from the inside out, and that means not just the inner workings of our minds and all that good stuff, but also the inner workings of our businesses as well. So today we're going to be chatting about one of my favorite topics, and that is creating flow in your business with automations. Welcome back, friend. I am so glad to have you here. And I just want to give you a fair warning that I can get a little geeky about this stuff. Like anything that has to do with efficiency and automations and working smarter and not harder, that is my jam. I can totally geek out on it. And so I wanted to share something to start off with because you know how you always hear as you're building your business, you don't know what your thing is going to be just yet. You hear the phrase like, oh, well, sometimes you're just too close to it. You don't understand. Like it's really the thing that lights you up. And so whenever I first started my business, I thought, oh, well, that's cooking. This is what I really like to do. And then of course the pandemic came and all I was doing is cooking. And then I'm like, hell no. So there's that. So like I struggled and then I thought, well, it's mindset. I really like to talk about mindset. And yes, that is all true. But the thing that like really geeks me out and like I can just go on and on about it is automations. And if that makes me like a super nerd, then so be it. Because I am really close to it. That is my full-time job. That's pretty much what I do 80% of the time is create tools and automations and take processes that take six or seven hours just for one client and turn it into something that can be done in five minutes. Like that, like nothing better. Like that just excites me. So I want to, that was a sidebar as to what we're talking about, but I want to just reiterate that thing that we hear all the time is sometimes you're too close to it. And I have been meeting with one of my friends now. Like we weren't friends whenever we started. We were put together in the same pod squad because we all took this course together. And we've been meeting like every other week for almost a year and a half now. Like I've really gotten to know this group of girls, and it's something that I really enjoy. And so whenever I heard that my friend was like, Yeah, I want to go back. Like she posted every day last year. She got the challenge that, oh, you should be on Instagram every single day. And unlike me, she took it to heart and she started posting literally every single day. She is a career coach and works with resumes and helping people find their career and all that kind of stuff. I will link her information in the show notes. But anyway, so we were talking and she's yeah, I've got all this great content, but I'm having to go back and copy my post out of Instagram and I'm putting them in this spreadsheet. And I she's like, I've been working on it for hours and I've got like 20 done or something. And I was just like, wow, okay, so that sounds like a lot of work, and that sounds disgusting to me because, like I said, work smarter, not harder. And I was like, Yeah, I'm pretty sure that there's a way to automate that. And so I started looking and it did take me a minute, but like within 15 minutes, I had messaged her back and I was like, hey, there's a way to do this. I will, we can connect, I'll show you how all of this good stuff. It does require Excel. So make sure you have that. It like you can't do it on a Mac. Anyway, so we met and during that time, so within an hour, we were able to get all of her captions exported from Instagram, converted into a file that anyway, converted into a file, imported into Excel, blah, blah, blah. There's a whole process. And not only that, we were able to set up two automations going forward where she is collecting not only just her post information. So she's got captions going to a spreadsheet and she's got her images going to a folder on Google Drive. We were able to do all of that within an hour. And I was so excited to be able to share my knowledge in that way. Like it, it just lights me up. And then so I got to thinking about it between the conversations I have had over the last couple of months with my podcast guests, with my friends and my pod squad, like all of this stuff. Like I'm finally seeing what I can bring to the table. And the thing that only I can uniquely do, which is translate all of this gobbledygook that people see whenever they hear about automations and tech and that sort of thing, and make it into something that is completely easy to understand and easy to grasp the concept. And it's not that what I'm like teaching people to do is even necessarily hard. It's just a shift and thinking that I have cultivated over years and years. And so this is why it's exciting, is because this is exactly how my brain works with no effort at all. So I wanted to share that kind of backstory about how you can be super close to something and not realize that could be your thing. And so, because this is how my brain works, and this is I see these opportunities all over the place. I have created a guide with like minimal effort. I that's not, I spent a lot of effort on it. Okay, so I have created a guide with two-step automations, like literally, if it does this, do this. And I've got nine different examples in this guide that I created where I walk you through basically what can really take a lot of the admin work off of your plate if you were to implement this. So I want to walk you through a little scenario to set it up because the way that I want to talk about it, how I'm like naturally want to talk about it, is like in a really geeky way. And so I'm trying to use more story and concrete examples to really bring this home for you guys. So somebody has reached out to you to be on your podcast. And so you send her a link to your calendar. If you have Calendly, something like that, like you send her a link and she schedules. And as part of like her intake, part of your intake process, you have asked three or four questions on your form that really like sets the stage on how you want to work with this person. So whenever you do that, your podcast guest automatically goes to your email list. And so now she starts this email series of what she can expect as a guest on your show. You have a folder created where she can drop all of her pictures and her assets, and you can put your notes and you can put your um audio files and video files, like whatever it is, the million little things that come with each episode that we produce. So you've got a folder that houses all of that. And then a couple of days before the interview, you get a text message with a recap of your guests' answers to the questions that you asked, a link to her social accounts because that's one of the questions you set up. And then that way you can have, oh yeah, I just want to refresh my memory. It's on your text. You can pop over to Instagram, be like, okay, I know exactly what we're gonna talk about, all of that's good. And then 20 minutes before the interview, you get another text message that pops up and says, Hey, here's the guest, here's the things, your interviews in 20 minutes, because we're not always sitting at our computer. Like those things, whenever you're in the middle of stuff, like that's the kind of stuff that can get away from you and very quickly make you look unprofessional if you're not showing up to meetings on time and that sort of thing. And so after you do your interview, this podcast episode added to the Google Drive, and then an email can go out. If you have a podcast editor or something like that, you can let them know that there's an episode to edit. And then if there's not images in your folder, like your podcast guest can get an email that says, hey, don't forget to send me the pictures to use for social media. So then you're either creating, once you've got the images, you're either creating the graphics for the episode for sharing on social, or you're having somebody do that for you. And then whenever it comes to actually post the thing, you're posting it on Instagram. You've got something set up to where your Instagram captions and images, they're all being added into a content bank that you don't have to worry about maintaining or anything like that. And then you can have somebody go in and repost things that were popular, repost things and mix up the pictures, mix up the text a little bit to where you've got this content bank of things to really just keep you going. And then you can get new clients from a post you wrote three months ago because you're reposting this stuff and like you're starting to get people on your email list because you've got a way to reach them. And then your email list is set up to take people on a journey. You've got your workflow set up to where they can really get to know you and really appreciate all of the content that you're putting out and everything that you've done. And then whenever it comes to pay you, you can get your payment details like added to a spreadsheet that goes to your bookkeeper every month, all of those things. So, like 85% of that, like making the graphics, editing your podcast episode, those are not things that can be automated, but they can be outsourced. So you have all of these opportunities for touch points that you can actually automate for your customer. And the automation can honestly provide a better level of service than you can as a solopreneur or somebody who is also working a full-time job. It allows things to stay on track without the effort from you. If you notice, out of that whole entire scenario that I told you, the only thing that only you can do is record your podcast. Or if you're a coach, it is coach your client. Like those things are unique to you. You have to show up in that area. Everything else can either be automated or outsourced. If you were just to implement some of these automations, just think about the way that your business could really change and grow and adopt. And this is also how people can start to scale their businesses. As you start to take one-on-one clients, you will realize very quickly that okay, great, like this has been the goal all along, but when am I supposed to do them and keep up with all these other things that I've committed to? And this is how you do it. So this is how my brain works. This is what I love talking about. This is what we're gonna be talking more about. It seems like hearing Emily today talk about how like she didn't even think that she could automate something until I had said something and she was like, oh yeah, okay, this makes sense. Anything that is a repetitive admin task, anything that is predictable in nature that you're doing on a weekly basis, that is the prime candidate for automation. So if you want to learn more about these, you can check out the guide that I created. It is free, it's 50-something pages, but it's got like screenshots step by step. There's a total of nine automations detailed in it. They are all two-step automations, so they're very basic, but it also allows you to use the Zapier account. So Zapier is an app that we go into. It's the APIER. All of this is detailed in the guide. So go to jamyrenee.com forward slash guide that is in the show notes as well. And learn how you can start implementing these things in your business. If you need help, I have a couple of options to where we can do a one-on-one session or we can do voxer support, which by the way, I didn't realize that people didn't know what Voxer is, and that makes sense because it's something that I didn't know about a year ago. But anyway, Voxer is just an app and it's like Voxer, but with a V. Anyway, it's basically like a walkie-talkie app. And I didn't get it at first, but I get it now. Anyway, so there is Voxer support if you need some accountability in actually implementing this. And also, I haven't fully thought this through, but I'll share it here in case it's of value to anyone. And I have thought about done for you services to where I just we meet and talk about everything that you want to do, and then I just take it and do it. So I'm throwing that around if that's something that you might be interested in as well. Or warning, I don't know how that will work, but we'll figure it out. Anyway, so I'm excited about this. I'm excited to have a clear direction with an offering. So that's always fun. Head on over to jamyrenee.com forward slash guide to grab your automations guide and let me know if you need some help. Until next week, talk to you later.