85 - 5 Ways to Automate Your Business to Save You Time and Allow You to Make More Money as an Entrepreneur

5 Ways to Automate Your Business to Save You Time and Allow You to Make More Money as an Entrepreneur

Automation - the key to saving two of the most important things as an entrepreneur - time AND money!

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE HERE:

As business owners, we have so many different hats that we wear and it can feel super overwhelming to do it all!

Dani has admitted in this podcast before about the times (especially when she first started her business) that she would work around the clock, burnt herself out, and then ultimately end her days feeling uninspired, exhausted and always feeling like she didn’t have enough time or hours in the day.

She also shares her journey of how she’s been able to scale my business, and put systems in place and automation to be able to have so much more freedom and flexibility.

We talk about 5 Ways you can automate your business so you can save yourself time doing the tedious task that will ultimately allow you to make more money as an entrepreneur as you’ll be able to focus on the growth of your business.

The things we’ll be discussing today are things you can set up ONCE in your business that will save you so much time & energy in the long run!

The Importance of Automation

You might be thinking that you don’t really waste much time in your business, and that you don’t need or you can’t afford automation! Even if you don’t waste time, there are tasks you can save time on with the power of automation.

For example, before setting up an email automation, Danielle would manually send out reminder emails to Mastermind members and Clients - it didn’t take very long, so it wasn’t a big deal. But, in reality, it took about 15 each time she sent an email out and she would send a minimum of 5-10 reminder emails a week. 

Have you done an audit of your time lately, to see what you are actually doing on a daily, weekly or monthly basis? 

How to do a Time Audit

  • Write down all the tasks you are doing in your business.

  • Then ask yourself “Is there a way I could simplify, automate or create a system for this?”

So think about this, if you have a task that is taking you on average 15 min a day If we do the math on this:

  • 15 minutes a day x 5 = 75 minutes a week

  • 300 minutes a month = 5 hours a month 

What could you do in an extra 5 hours a month? What if you automated just 5 more tasks that took you approximately 15 minutes a day? What if you could get back an extra 10 hours a month? What about 25 hours a month? 

  • Could you start a passion project you’ve been thinking of?

  • Could you spend 5 extra hours with your kids or your spouse or friends?

  • Could you start that YouTube channel, or podcast or blog that you’ve been wanting to launch? 

How to Automate Your Business

Today, we’re going over five ways you can automate your business:

  1. Scheduling

    Use a scheduling software or app! Two that we use:

    Google Calendar: We host regular calls inside of Action Takers Club which we have recurring on our google calendar that members can subscribe to. We set it up once, and don’t have to ever schedule it again.

    Calendly: Calendly is great for scheduling events like discovery calls, coaching calls and podcast interviews. You can set up your availability and clients & guests can book open slots in your calendar. It also sends follow up emails to you and your client! You can also set up questions that they answer within calendly to help prep for the call!

  2. Email Marketing 

    There are endless ways to automate your email marketing! Here are a few examples: 

    • You can set up an automated welcome sequence when someone first joins your email list.

    • For product based businesses - You can create “abandoned cart” follow-up email sequence to connect with customers to remind them that they can continue with their incomplete purchases. 

    • You can set up automated emails sequences when someone purchases a product or service OR 

    • A sales sequence following a free resource or workshop.

  3. Task Management

    You can save SO much time and make your task management more efficient by betting up workflow and recurring tasks for yourself or your team. We use ASANA and we have set up multiple workflows for all of our ongoing projects - the Podcast, our events, Action Takers Club, the Mastermind etc. 

    We offer a bonus, in-depth training on creating a profitable workflow inside of the Action Takers Club as well! Check it out!

    You can also check apps out Monday.com Smartsheet, ClickUp, and more!

  4. Create Templates

    This is a powerful way you can automate and save so much time on your business is to create templates for everything you can in your business. You can create templates for your blog posts, your social media posts, for graphics, for your emails and so much more.

    If you find yourself starting from scratch for each thing you do in your business- always ask yourself, is there a way I can make a template for this to save me time in the future?

  5. Bills & Payments 

Do you have bills that you pay on a recurring basis or do you have clients that pay you monthly? Having automatic payments for both your clients and the payments you make on a monthly basis saves you SO much time and stress! 

When Danielle started working with an accountant for her bookkeeping and account needs, they would bill her twice a month she had to pay them manually. She asked if she could pay them via credit card and set up automatic payments. This saved SO MUCH TIME and all of her payments were made on time. How could you do this with all of your payments? 

We also have automatic payments plans set up for clients, whether it be Mastermind members, Action Takers Club students, so we don’t need to spend time chasing overdue payments.

If you can get rid of all those tedious tasks that have to be done on a daily, weekly or monthly basis, you can focus on the tasks that actually bring your business profit! This will leave more room for joy and growth in your business. 

Systems & automations can feel overwhelming to implement, but slowing down to speed up WORKS and these systems will pay off in the years to come.

Our Top Business Resources to Support Female Entrepreneurs:

Connect on Instagram:

Connect with Danielle Wiebe @danilivinglife

Connect with Business Babes Collective @businessbabesco

Have a Question & Want to be Featured on The Podcast?

Ask us a Question

Apply to be a Guest

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Danielle: Welcome back to the podcast. I'm super excited to be here today. It is the start of a new month and we are about halfway through the summer. I hope you guys are having an amazing summer so far. I know that summer can sometimes feel a little bit weird as an entrepreneur, because, I know some people, it's like their busiest time of year, so they feel super overwhelmed and they're just so crazy busy during the season.

[00:00:25] And then for other people, this is when their business actually really slows down. And it's kind of the calm before the storm of the fall and winter months, which is sometimes some of people's craziest and busiest times of year. So whatever season you are in right now, I think this episode is gonna be extremely valuable to you, because as business owners, we have so many different hats that we wear and it can feel super overwhelming to do it all.

[00:00:51] And I completely understand this feeling of only thinking about the things that you didn't get done or accomplish that day. And I've admitted on [00:01:00] this podcast before that, especially when I first got started in my business, I would just work around the clock. I would burn myself out and then ultimately I would end my days just feeling so uninspired and just feeling like I didn't get accomplished what I wanted to get accomplished that day. And I've also shared my journey of how I've been able to actually scale my business and then putting those systems in place and putting those automations in place to be able to have so much more freedom and so much more flexibility in my schedule.

[00:01:33] And honestly, it's been such a game changer. As you guys know, we started our family last year and Rosie is now just over a year, and so it has been so game changing to have those systems, to have those automations in place now, because it gives me so much of my time back to spend with my daughter to be able to spend time on the things in my business that I actually know are moving the business forward that are growing the business [00:02:00] instead of just the tedious tasks and the day to day things that just take up really small pieces of time, but they all add up. And that's what we're gonna talk about today.

[00:02:09] So the things that we're gonna be discussing in this episode are things that you can set up once in your business, and that are going to save you so much time and energy in the long run. So grab a notebook and pen, get your favorite summer drink, and let's go ahead and jump into this episode.

[00:02:26] Welcome to the business babes collective podcast. I'm your host, Danielle Wiebe. In this podcast, you'll learn tangible business tips and strategies on how to grow successfully and sustainably. We'll also interview season entrepreneurs, so you can listen in on their stories and see behind the scenes of what it took to grow and scale their businesses. Let's dive in, as we discussed the wild, exciting, crazy, challenging, rollercoaster ride of entrepreneurship.

[00:02:55] So before we dive into the five ways to automate your business, I [00:03:00] wanted to share something really exciting. And this is something that is really exciting because you are going to be able to be involved in this. So let me ask you a question. Would you like to be featured on this very podcast? There is a very, very simple and easy way to do that. You can actually go ahead and go to businessbabescollective.com/ask, and you can ask me any question you would like, and also share a little bit more about you and your business name, and you can get featured on this podcast.

[00:03:31] Starting in the fall, we will be choosing some of your questions that we're gonna be answering live. And it's gonna be such a cool way for us to actually communicate. Usually what I do is I talk to you guys or you send me a DM and you ask me questions and I'm like, oh, that's a great idea for an episode. And so that's actually how I think of a lot of the topics for these episodes. However, I would love to actually have that conversation with you where you can ask me a question and I will directly answer your [00:04:00] questions live on the podcast.

[00:04:02] So if you would like to leave me a question, go to businessbabescollective.com/ask. And I can't wait to hear your question and I can't wait to promote you and share your business on this podcast. Okay, let's talk a little bit about time. Now. You might be thinking you've started this episode and you're thinking Danielle, I don't really know, like, I don't know what in my business I could potentially automate or streamline because I don't really waste much time in my business.

[00:04:31] And I don't know what I would automate. I don't know what I would simplify. And maybe you feel like everything in your business that you're doing right now needs to be done manually. Well, this is why I recorded this episode because I wanna actually encourage you to challenge your own thoughts and challenge your own beliefs.

[00:04:48] So what I would like you to do, what I would like to challenge you to do today is take this week, take the next couple of days and audit your time, audit yourself and [00:05:00] write down each tasks, task that you are accomplishing each and every day. I did this personally and I actually was really shocked at how many little tedious tasks that I was doing in my business.

[00:05:12] And what I didn't realize is that a lot of those tasks could have been automated or systemized to save myself so much time in the long run. So I encourage you to do this, write down all the tasks that you're doing in your business, and then ask yourself, is there a way I could simplify this? Is there a way I could automate it or is the there a way that I could create a system in my business that would save me time on the back end.

[00:05:38] Let me give you a little example of something that I did in my business, and I think it's probably now almost a year ago. Which is crazy to think about, because I can't believe I was doing this for so many years without this automation. So before setting this up, I would send out reminder emails to my mastermind members, my clients, and other people that I would book calls with [00:06:00] manually.

[00:06:00] And I told myself that, you know, it didn't take me very long. It wasn't a big deal. And the reason why I sent out these reminders is cuz I'm doing all of these calls over zoom. So I would send them the zoom link. I would remind them whether it be the day before or the day of, or even 15 minutes before send them the link, all of that.

[00:06:18] And that was all done manually. But when I really thought about it, every single time that I sent out one of these email. It took me about 15 minutes, probably 10 to 15 minutes minimum each time. And so when I actually think about how many of these email reminders I was sending out, I was probably sending out at least five to 10 email reminders every single week.

[00:06:42] So when you break this down and you actually do the math on this, so think about something that you might be doing, a tedious task that you might be doing in your business. Maybe it's not booking calls. Maybe it is sending out invoices. Maybe it is delegating to your team. Maybe it's creating to do lists, whatever that [00:07:00] is.

[00:07:01] Let's say it takes you 15 minutes a day. So 15 minutes a day, times five, right? Five days a week. If you're working for Monday to Friday, is 75 minutes a week. That is, if we're doing like about a four week per month on average, that's 300 minutes a month, which equals five hours per month. So think about it this way.

[00:07:22] What could you do with an extra five hours in a month? Now let's go one step further here. What if you automated just five simple tasks that you did pretty much every day that took you about 15 minutes a day, five days a week. I did the math on this before this episode, and that would give you an extra 25 hours a month, 25 hours a month.

[00:07:46] What could you do with an extra 25 hours? Could you start a passion project you've been thinking ? , could you spend those 25 hours playing with your kids or your hang with your spouse or your friends? Could you start that YouTube [00:08:00] channel or podcast or write that book or start that blog you've been wanting to launch?

[00:08:04] There's so many things that we could do within that time. So that's why I wanted to break it down like this for you, because often we think, okay, this is only taking me a very short amount of time. But when you compound those little tiny tasks over, you know, the span of like we just talked about when you compound those tasks together, if you're doing five tasks a day, that I'll take 15 minutes, if you could automate those tasks, that would give you so much of your time back.

[00:08:33] So I wanted to share that just before we dive into the five ways so that you understand how powerful this can be and how worth it it is to set up these automations within your business. So you're doing the work front to get the time back in the future. Okay. So now let's go ahead and dive into the five different ways.

[00:08:52] So number one is scheduling. So in our business, we use Google calendar and Calendarly to organize and [00:09:00] automate our scheduling. So with Google calendar, we have regular calls inside of action takers club, our signature course and program. And we have recurring calls that we have every week for our co-working.

[00:09:11] We also have recurring calls every month for coaching and we have a recurring call for our networking. So this is a way that people can actually just subscribe to our calendar. And all we have to do is we just set it up once and we just have that recurring calendar that, that is recurring every single month.

[00:09:30] Now, sometimes we have to change the date of a call, but that's just an easy tweak where we just move that event to another day. Okay. Now let's talk about Calendly. I've talked about Calendly in this podcast before, and it is so, so game changing, especially if you do regular calls in your business. Or even if you only do a few calls a month, I still highly recommend it.

[00:09:53] I think it is an amazing resource. It's so easy to use and it really streamlines and is able to automate [00:10:00] your scheduling. The reason why I love it so much is because I can just set up my schedule once and I put my availability out there and then people can book in my calendar and they will automatically get a zoom link populated.

[00:10:16] I can even have questionnaire on there that they can answer, if I want to. I can have different types of meetings, so I can have a 30 minute meeting, 15 minute meeting, an hour meeting, whatever, and I just send the specific link to that person and they can automatically book on my calendar. This has been so helpful to streamline client calls, interview calls for our mastermind clients, podcast episode interviews, all of those things that we use our calls for it's been so incredibly helpful within just managing my own schedule and my own calendar.

[00:10:55] Now, the great thing about Calendarly as well is you can actually integrate it to your other [00:11:00] calendars so you can integrate it with your Google calendar or your iCloud calendar, whatever you use and it can automate automatically populate in your calendar as well. The other cool thing is that if someone needs to reschedule, they can just reschedule right inside of Calendarly. So they don't have to, you don't have to go back and forth with them to figure out a time.

[00:11:19] So this saves so much time you guys, this is honestly, probably saved me hours and hours and hours per week because of how streamlined it is. So if you have in your business, if you have consulting calls, discovery calls, client calls. If you have a podcast, anything like that, I highly recommend using Calendarly.

[00:11:40] And there's obviously a free version. There's also a paid version. You can use either. I love the paid version because it sends out automatic reminders as well, which is super helpful for me to have that reminder come into my email. And it also helps with no-show rates because it also reminds the other person that you have a call as well. [00:12:00] So those are the two ways that we automate our scheduling is through goo Google calendar, as well as Calendarly.

[00:12:07] All right. Let's talk about email. Email marketing is a huge way that you can set up automations within your business. And obviously there's endless things that you can do with email. We would be here all day if I went through all of them, but I'm gonna give you a couple examples so you can kind of open up your mind to the idea of what you could do within your email to create these automations.

[00:12:28] So one, you can set up an automated welcome sequence when someone first joins your email list. I highly recommend this cuz this is a really great touch point for your potential clients. It's a way for them to get to know you. It's a way for you to send out valuable resources or, you know, if you have a lead magnet, something valuable that you're offering in exchange for their email, you can send that in the welcome sequence. Um, you can also just introduce yourself, tell people more about your background story, whatever that is, [00:13:00] that's just a really great way to warm up those people that are new to you. There may, maybe found you online and they don't know you very well. This is just a way to connect with them and get to know them on a more personal or for them to get to know you on a more personal level as well, and to potentially have them convert into a client.

[00:13:20] This is also, I see this a lot within the product based industry is that people will give a specific discount code or a gift card towards their products. You can even do this in service based industry, too. If you have like an online shop, you can give them a specific discount code to use when they first join your email list.

[00:13:40] And so that's a really great way to grow your list as well. And then there's another way that you can automate your email, which is you can create an abandoned cart follow up email. So if someone comes on your website, they're about to purchase your product or your service, and then they don't end up purchasing it, you can set up an automated sequence that [00:14:00] actually, uh, encourages them to go back to their cart and complete that purchase.

[00:14:06] another idea, another example of this is setting up automated emails when someone purchases a product or service from you. So this is a really great way to build a relationship with your new client. So what information do they need when they first purchase that product or that service from you? This is really important because you want them to know that they've made a really great decision by investing in you or investing in your product, and so, giving them an email sharing, you know, what they can expect, whether it be shipping times, if it's a product based business, or if it's a service based business, what they can expect moving forward, any information that they need.

[00:14:46] So that is really important as well is setting up an automated equal, email sequence. So if you are just sending out individual emails, when someone purchases your product or service, this is a way you can save yourself so much time, especially when you [00:15:00] scale.

[00:15:00] All right. The third way to automate your business is task management. So setting up a workflow and recurring tasks for yourself or your team. I know I've talked about this before. For, but our team uses Asana and we love it so much. And you can actually create workflows depending on what you're working on in your business. So I have a personal workflow for the podcast.

[00:15:21] Also, we have workflows for our events for action teachers club for the mastermind, et cetera. And it is really great because I have basically a automatic to do list every single day that pops up in my inbox. And so I can set those tasks that are recurring. So those tasks that I do either every day or every week or every month, I can set them up so that instead of having to think of them myself, I can have it automatically pop up on my dashboard so that I remember, oh yeah, that's exactly what I have to do.

[00:15:54] And you can even order them depending on which you wanna prioritize. It is just so, [00:16:00] so helpful to have there. We actually have a in depth training on creating a profitable workflow inside of action takers club. And it's one of the bonuses that we offer for the program. It's just so incredibly valuable because it is basically a way to automate your to-do list. So if you find yourself, you know, spending, whether it be like 10 or 15 minutes a day, going over your to-do list, figuring out what you need to prioritize. This is a way that you can actually automate that and make it super, super simple and set up those repeating tasks either on a daily basis, weekly basis, monthly basis, you can even do yearly basis. It is so amazing. It's a great way to straight stay on track when it comes to reaching your business goals.

[00:16:42] All right. Number four is creating templates. This is such a powerful way that you can automate because it saves you so much time. Instead of creating things from scratch, whether it be a blog post, or podcast episodes, or maybe your social media posts or your [00:17:00] graphics, maybe even emails. You would probably have specific emails that you get in your inbox that are very similar, right? Maybe asking the same questions. So how can you create a template email that you can copy and paste? And I'll obviously tweak to the specific situation and send out. So that's just one example.

[00:17:19] We have templates for basically everything in our business, we have template emails. We have template graphics for social media. We, I have templates for my podcast episodes. There's so many ways where you can save yourself so much time. So I want you to ask yourself when you are doing a task, is there a way I can make a template for this so that it can save me time in the future? All right.

[00:17:41] Now, the fifth and final way to automate your business is through bills and payments. This is something often overlooked and people don't talk about, but do you have bills that you pay on a recurring basis or do you have clients that pay you on a recurring basis? If you [00:18:00] do, having automatic payments, both for you and your clients is so, so valuable, it's gonna save you so much time and also so much stress and headache in the future.

[00:18:11] So an example of this is when I started working with an accountant for my bookkeeping and accounting needs, basically I pay them a, a bimonthly rate. So twice a month, they would send me an invoice and I would pay them manually. So I ask them, in order to save time, if I could pay them via credit card and if it would be able to set up an automatic payment that would just automatically bill me and pay me at the same time every single, every two weeks.

[00:18:38] This was so valuable and it saved me so much time instead of having to manually go in and pay them twice a month. So how could you do this for all of your payments? Almost all of my payments that I make in my business are automatically paid, so I never have to worry also about being late on my payments.

[00:18:57] We also have this set up for clients. So whether [00:19:00] it be mastermind members or action takers club, students who are on the payment plan or my ongoing clients, payments are made automatically so that I don't need to spend time chasing payments that are overdue. So that is another great way that you can automate your business.

[00:19:16] That is it. Those are the five ways that you can automate your business to ultimately save you time and help you make more money. Because if you can get rid of all those tedious tasks that you're doing on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, you can get back to the things that are actually going to bring in money and profit into your business as well. And you can be focused on growth. You can be focused on those things that are within your genius zone that you're lit up to do that get you excited to wake up every single day. And I promise you that taking the time to set up these automations now are gonna pay off so much in the future.

[00:19:52] So, if you find yourself in the summer months, having a little bit more time, having a little bit more flexibility. I highly [00:20:00] recommend, put in some of these automations now, so that when you get into your busy months, you can thank yourself. and if you need any support with this at all, I would love to be able to support you with that.

[00:20:12] So whether you jump on into action takers club, so you can show up to one, one of our monthly group coaching calls, I can definitely support you there. Or if you wanna work one on one, you can go to businessbabescollective.com. You can either click on the action takers club button, or click on one-on-one coaching.

[00:20:29] And I would love to connect with you. I would love to support you in automating your business and setting up those systems that are going to pay off for years to come. So the last thing I wanna mention, if you have not gotten access to our free masterclass yet go to businessbabescollective.com/masterclass.

[00:20:48] In that class, I actually break down the profitable entrepreneur method, which is a method that I created to help you be able to scale your business without working around the [00:21:00] clock and become more profitable in less time. It's all of the lessons that I've learned over the past 10 years of being an entrepreneur and things that I wish I would've done differently.

[00:21:10] So definitely go over there, get access to that free class. And, until then, I cannot wait to see you in the next episode of this podcast on Thursday. And I hope you have an amazing rest of your day.

[00:21:25] If you love this episode, make sure you screenshot, post and tag us on Instagram at @businessbabesco. Want to know when the next episode goes live? Subscribe on your podcast app, and while you're there, leave us a review. Until next time, keep dreaming big, setting goals and taking action.

Danielle Wiebe