Small Business, Big Mindset

7 Ways to Automate Business Critical Tasks

September 07, 2021 Muscle Creative Season 2 Episode 68
Small Business, Big Mindset
7 Ways to Automate Business Critical Tasks
Show Notes Transcript

In order to grow a sustainable business that won't have you pulling your hair out (at least maybe not every day), automating processes is critical. It saves you time, money, and your sanity. No matter if you're new to business, or an experienced entrepreneur or in your career, building systems that streamline what your business needs is key. 

 

Many people, whether employees or business owners, crave flexibility in their schedules and creating automation in your business or career can help make that happen. In fact, I know of multiple businesses that have turned to a four-day workweek, and automating aspects of their business made that schedule a reality. 

 

In this episode, I go over 7 specific areas of your business or role in your career where you can add automation.

Erin Geiger:

Welcome to the Small Business big mindset Podcast, where we dive into tactical strategies to grow your business. And to make an impact on this world. A huge part of success is keeping your mindset and vision on track. So this is a major part of our process. And this podcast, let's do this. Welcome to the Small Business big mindset podcast Erin here. nd this week, we're going to alk about how to automate tasks o grow your business. So nine imes out of 10, you'll find hat entrepreneurs that have rown businesses to aspire to ave created systems that scale y the way, I totally made up hat statistic. But it sounds ight. In order to grow a ustainable business that won't ave you pulling your hair out t least maybe not every day, reating Li so automate rocesses is critical. It saves ou time, money and your sanity. o no matter if you're new to usiness, or an experienced ntrepreneur or in your career, uilding systems that streamline hat your business needs is key. any people whether employees or usiness owners crave lexibility in their schedules. o creating automation in your usiness or career can help make hat happen. In fact, I know of ultiple businesses that have urned to a four day workweek in utomating aspects of their usiness made that schedule a eality. So here's a few areas f your business or role in your areer where you can add utomation. Number one, automated email responses for FAQs, you need to still include a personal touch, but you can create canned responses that take care of the common questions that you receive, right. So if somebody emails you and has a common question, you can email back a canned response. Number two, you can set up an auto response for times during the day that you won't be checking your email. I've seen this before, I'll emailed support at a, you know, at a certain business, and then I'll get an email saying like, oh, he just missed us, you know, we'll be responding to your inquiry, you know, between the Pacific, you know, California Pacific hours, nine to five, or, you know, we'll be responding within 48 hours, that sort of thing. So it allows you to cut down on the time you take to check your email. And then you can only check your email once or twice a day as everything else is handled. And then when I first heard check your email once or twice a day, that terrified me, because I'm one of those people that I'm like constantly checking my notifications or my email. And I really stopped checking it as much as I used to. Because typically stuff that comes in through your email is stuff that typically doesn't need to be handled ASAP. Or if it does, hopefully, you have a system, another system, you know, where you can tell your staff like, hey, put this in the subject line or you know, what have you to make sure that you know that it is needs to be looked at right away. But typically checking once or twice a day, depending upon your business will be great in order to give you that focus time on other things that you're working on. Because I used to just like work on something for a few minutes, check my email, work on something, check my email and work on something, check my email, and it was it's not very productive. So you know, obviously test it out on your own and see how many times a day you actually realistically need to check your email. Otherwise, it's great to kind of time block that and focus on what you're working on. And then as you as you end that time block before you move on something else, maybe check your email, that sort of thing. But if you automate other things to your email, then a lot of things will be handled automatically, and you won't have to check your email as often. Automating scheduling is number three. So this stops the back and forth. So I personally use calendly, especially when I'm booking guests on the podcast. But there's calendly there's acuity, there's honeybook. I think calendly and acuity are the two most most popular acuity maybe more robust. But for my needs right now calendly is the way to go. And then when I start booking one on one work with you sessions, I'll be using calendly as well. And what's cool about calendly is that you can have your clients pay when they book as well and I think acuity does that too. I did not see that with honey book though. So these give you ways to sync with your calendar and you only offer the days and times that work best for you. You can even personalize your link and you can put in restrictions like giving a buffer of say 30 minutes before and or after each appointment. You can you know say only allow the booking of that type of appointment once a day etc. So you can really customize the way that you you book your calendar and what you allow on your calendar. Okay, number four is batching your social media. So I do subscribe to social curators, that's Jasmine stars, you know, membership where she gives you 30 social media Be a prompt some story prompts and photos, like 30 photos for the month. And so that kind of helps, you know, jog, my, you know, my memory or a job, you know, a brainstorming session of like, Okay, what do I want to post honestly, for social curator, I use mostly the images, less the prompts, but I love the images that come along with that subscription. I also use unsplash and other free sources as well. But social curator, it's worth a monthly fee for me to get these images that you can't get other places. There's also native tools in Facebook and Instagram that let you schedule posts in advance, or there's tools like flannelly, later, Hootsuite etc. But be aware that you may be dinged by using a third party. So some say that they ding you because those platforms want you active on their platforms, they don't want you to set it and forget it. So like Facebook and Instagram, they're all about engagement. And so people have said they've tested it out. And it seems like when they use a third party tool, like Hootsuite, let's say that maybe their posts don't get seen as much. Whereas if you use the native tools on Facebook and Instagram, then they show your posts, more to more people and more often, because they see that maybe you're using their platform, you're engaging on it. And they want to reward you for that instead of just kind of like, you know, putting something out there and programming it and not really spending time with the actual platform. Number five batching your emails. So here's a little plug for my own membership, email ally, where members get 10, eight, sorry, they get for email templates, or plug plug and play templates that they can customize and personalize to their own business, they get 10 email subject lines, which is obviously more than they need for the month, but they can kind of like use use the subject lines and the email templates to inspire them use them as a jumping off platform or use them as is. And they get one video training every single month, right? So they can batch their emails, they can, you know, just set aside some time to write up all their emails for the month and program them so they're not having to do it every single week. Number six is standing operating procedures or SRP. So having a how to for every process and job in your business is super helpful. It's critical, especially as you scale your team, which brings me to the last one, number seven delegation of processes for each job. So it's a great way to streamline your hiring and onboarding, you might want to consider investing in a VA or a virtual assistant. So even if you just have someone for a couple of hours a week, it'll free up some time for you to focus on the areas of your business that need your expertise, and help you have time to plan for what's to come and the growth of your business. And we can talk forever about how to hire and that sort of thing. But I do recommend that people before you hire for position, know that position on your own, so that when you do you hire someone for it, it's not just you're just like blindly saying, Okay, do this for me, and you have no idea how it works or what they're doing. So a lot of people start off with a VA, they have someone helping with their social media, they already understand social media, they already understand the tone and the imagery, they want to use it, but they just need some help. So it's kind of good to start out with building your team that way. So incorporating automation, your processes can cut down on mistakes and human error, because you won't be spreading yourself so thin and your team will also not be spreading themselves too thin, you won't feel like you have to move too quickly, thereby making hasty decisions or forgetting important details that can lead to these errors that can be expensive, whether it's takes more of your time or money, and it gives you time to look at the big picture, right? Because I think so many times we get caught in the weeds. And we forget about to focus on the vision and where we're actually going and you're the one driving the ship in your in your business or if you're a leader in your career, you know, the company that you're working at You are the vision caster, right. And so it's it's sometimes it's hard to not get bogged down in the weeds. But if you automate some of your processes that gives you that time. So I recommend choosing one of these to set up within the next two weeks. I love to hear about which one you chose and how it's going. And you might say how why one you gave us seven, because I don't want you to get overwhelmed. You know, it's just baby steps. So choose one. Email me at hello at Muscle creative.com and let me know how it's going. I'd also love to hear what you have already automated maybe you've already done some of these and tips you want to share. So thanks for tuning in this week, and we'll see you next time. Thanks for tuning in to the Small Business big mindset podcast. To keep the fun going check out our Facebook group start and scale an online business For even more free trainings and resources from fellow entrepreneurs. If you haven't already, head on over to Muscle Creative calm and click subscribe and join our email list for weekly updates. If you've enjoyed this podcast episode, check us out on your favorite podcast platform to follow us and give us a review. As always be authentic bring an insane amount of value and keep crushing it