Business Automations That Kept Everything Running While I Was Gone | 130

(Note: This is a formatted and slightly edited, AI-generated transcript to make it easier for you to read through. Please excuse any spelling, grammar errors and filler words – it’s just how I speak LOL)

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A few weeks ago, I stepped away from my business for almost a month, and here’s the cool part. My business didn’t just survive, it kept working. My email list kept growing, my podcast kept getting new listeners, sales kept coming in, all because of automations I had already built long before I knew I’d need them.

Today, I’m pulling back the curtain on exactly what those automations were, so you can assess whether you have them too

Are you tired of competing priorities, a messy task list, and constantly feeling behind? Hey, I’m Lucy Reyes, and I help overwhelmed solopreneurs embrace faith-led productivity through simple systems for life, home, and business. So if you’re ready to clarify your priorities, honor your energy, and feel accomplished every single day, welcome to the Cheers to Better Systems podcast.

Hey, hey, welcome back. This episode is for you if you are a solopreneur who’s ever wondered what would actually happen to your business if you just stepped away unexpectedly. In the last episode, I got very, very vulnerable and real, and shared about a hard season I went through and what productivity actually looked like for me in the middle of it.

So if you haven’t listened to that one yet, go back and give it a listen first, because it’s going to give you the full context for what I’m going to share with you today. Because during those few weeks, I really truly stepped away entirely from my business unexpectedly. So today, I’m going to pull back the curtain on what kept things running while I wasn’t touching a single thing.

So by the end of this episode, you’re going to know exactly what worked, and more importantly, you’re going to leave with a new way to think about what in your business could run without you, too. Okay? All right. So let’s go ahead and throw out a few caveats. This is a behind-the-scenes look essentially of the systems or the automations that my business actually ran without me.

It’s not a how-to list. It’s not a list for you to copy. But of course, you can definitely use these as inspiration. This, these are just the list that actually kept things running for me. I had already built these a long, long before I took this break. They’re not something that I rushed to set up in the moment when things started to go south in my life.

Um, these have been existing, and they ran in real time for those three weeks that I was out, without me having to touch anything, without me having to make any manual updates or check up on them to see if they were working, because I honestly did not have the mental capacity to do any of that. So I went through and really sat with and really analyzed and assessed, like, man, what actually worked?

What kept going while I stepped away? And that is what this episode is, okay? So yes, go ahead and use this list to see if it’s something that your business, that is, that your business is ready for, that you could set up in your business. But if you’re not there yet, that’s totally fine. And know that these are also automations that I have built out over time.

Like, this is not something I created all in one day. That is why it’s so important to create and set up your automations and systems as you’re working on your other tasks in your business. So with that out of the way, let me go ahead and mention the automations that ran without me that I’m so, so grateful that past Ver- Version Lucy set them up at some point.

Even though they’re not perfect, they got the job done, especially when I just went from working one day to not working the next. So the first one that I… is probably the most important one in my business, were my evergreen email sequences. So I have several opt-in funnels. I have several freebies, where that essentially means that you sign up for one of my free gifts, my opt-ins, and then you are put into my email list, and then there’s automations that trigger out email sequences to you over the course of a few days, and then you get added into my regular email newsletter along with my Time Savers Sunday evergreen newsletter.

So I have my opt-in funnels, and then I have my evergreen newsletter that is currently… It’s a new version. I’ve had several versions of this evergreen newsletter, but this current version has about three months built out currently. And every now and then, once I’m starting to run out of those emails, I’ll go in and batch another few months’ worth, and then I just keep that going.

So the goal with that one is that you, everyone on my email list, will always receive an email on Sunday, and it’s evergreen. It’s valuable. These are some of the most favorite emails according to my audience because it sends them a tip. There’s sometimes a freebie included in there. So these are… This is the most important automation that kept things running for me because my audience in some cases didn’t even know I was gone because they were receiving constant emails from me through one of these funnels.

So that’s the first one Another one is I have Zapier, so I had some zaps feeding into Airtable for data. This is more, not less important, but it’s more like I set it up once, I forget about it. Every now and then, I’ll go into Airtable and look at my stats, and everything’s already there. So the Zapier zaps kept working for me.

I also have Hello Audio, so it was auto-adding people to the private podcast feed as people were purchasing relevant courses. So that automation is already running whenever someone buys a course that has a Hello Audio or that has a private podcast with it. Hello Audio knows to automatically go ahead and send them their private podcast link.

So that’s another one. Um, I was also participating in some bundles during this time away. So the products that I had contributed to these bundles, those sales pages and checkouts were already live and working. So people were joining my email list through these bundle contributions without me having to do anything.

They were going through the bundles, um, information page, going to my sales page, to my checkout, putting in the free code, and then getting everything automatically sent to them. And then from there, of course, of course, they get put into my evergreen email sequences. So that was really neat because, again, we always want to be growing our email list, and so it’s nice to have all of these things set up on the back end inside of our email provider to make sure that we are nurturing the audience that we are getting into our email list.

And then lastly, I also have automation set up for my Skool community. So I have communication that goes out when new members join. So there’s two types of automation that gets sent to every single new member when they join my free community. So if you don’t know about my free Skool community, definitely come and join.

The link is in the show notes. Um, that is where we talk all about, like, these episodes. I throw in more tips and insights in there. There’s more realtimeness. There’s conversations going on. I’m adding a weekly devotional. So anyways, that is my Skool community. So when you join, there’s a couple of questions that you’re asked, so one of those questions is for your email address.

There’s also a multiple choice question. So whenever someone joins, you will receive an auto- an automated DM with your next step inside the community. So as soon as you join, a few minutes later, you’re going to get an automated DM from me that lets you know that it’s automated. I go ahead and let you know that it’s automated, but I’m saying, “Hey, welcome.

So excited that you’re here. Here’s the link to the Start Here course inside the community, and, you know, can’t wait to see your, comment inside of our intro post.” And then the second thing that happens, which is connected to Zap and then my email marketing provider, is based on the multiple choice question, which- I should have looked it up before recording this episode, but I believe the question is something like, “What are you struggling with the most?”

Or, “What do you want to, get the most support with?” And the answer choices are something like Trello, productivity, faith-led productivity, or simple systems. And depending on what you respond, what you select, there is a very specific freebie funnel that gets sent to your email address. And so that goes to all of the new members.

So those are all of the automations that ran without me during this specific time. There… This is not the full list of all the automations that I have set up in my business, but for these sp- specific three weeks, these are the ones that were running. So it was my evergreen email sequences, my Zapier zaps, my Hello Audio private podcast connections, my checkouts and sales pages, and then my school community automations for communication.

So the neat thing that I’ve already mentioned is my email list kept growing. Customer support stayed nearly silent, which is amazing because, you know, I wasn’t really checking anyways. Um, and I usually don’t have a lot of support tickets. Um, I typically have, like, 10 a year maybe. Um, and those are the ones that are, like, truly support, like something stopped working or something, they didn’t get access or something.

But customer support, because of the automations, everything streamlined, I get very few of those. So that stayed very minimal. And of course, all of this was happening while I wasn’t checking anything, so it was nice to randomly have a little text message… Oh, that’s another one. Well, I guess that goes with the zap.

But I would get a text message whenever I would get a sale. Um, that’s another zap that I have set up. So that was also still working. So it was nice while I was away to still be receiving these, like, “Hooray, you got a sale,” type of text messages. So with all of that being said, automations are not just about being fancy or bougie or techy.

Like, they are crucial to building something so that if you do have this moment where you have to step away, they continue working without you. Not to mention how much time is saved, like, not to mention all of the other benefits of having automations. But in this scenario, these automations that I had set up months ago, in some cases years ago, really helped me w- in this moment of crisis where I literally just had to step away and not do anything.

So if you’re in a place when you… where you want to set up these automations, but you’re finding it very hard to do, I will say that having task management systems is what makes it so much easier to set them up in the first place. Because you can see what automations you have, what you don’t. For some of these, they were projects.

All of my evergreen funnels or my freebie funnels, they are projects. They’re not just as simple as, like, go create this freebie funnel. Like, no, I have to create the, the freebie, which involves different steps. I have to write the emails for the freebie funnel, which involves multiple steps, you know, multiple platforms.

Like, there are so many steps involved with, with each of these automations. So if you want to be able to keep track of everything and how to do them and be able to duplicate them, right? Because the freebie funnels, I can just duplicate what I’ve already done in the past and redo it again for a new funnel, and I can do that easily.

So that is what task management systems help you do. So if you don’t have that foundation yet, that is where I actually recommend that you start, not the automations themselves. Yes, go ahead and make a list of the automations that you think would be helpful for your business, but once you have that list, go ahead and start getting your systems in place that will help you manage the flow of getting those automations set up.

And if you don’t know where to start, that’s where my free workshop comes in, okay? It’s called Three Steps to Say Goodbye to Task Overload. The link is in the show notes, and it is going to guide you the first steps to helping you get these systems set up Now, before I let you go, I want you to sit with this for a second, okay?

I want you to think about what in your business needs you every single day. Like, what would actually happen if you stepped away for even a week? And then ask yourself, does it have to be that way? Like, what would happen, and does it have to be that way? Do you like what would happen? Would your business be able to run without you?

If not, and if you’re starting to realize that you don’t have this in place, that is okay. Start with the free workshop. That is your starting point for building any kind of task management foundation, and it’s what makes all of this possible down the road. And as a little teaser, if you want to be around while I build out a premium tier inside of my free community which will showcase some of these backend automations I’ve talked about, then come hang out with us.

Come join my free community so you can be inside once it’s ready. That link is cheerstoproductivity.com/community-invite, but you’ll find the links to everything else in the show notes. All right, friend, I will talk to you in the next episode where we’re going to do another episode in this little series, where the next episode I’m gonna talk about the systems that specifically made it easy for me to come back after my time away.

So today we focused on the automations. Next week we’re gonna talk about the systems that I used as soon as I came back. All right? Be sure to follow the podcast if you’re not yet, so that way you know once it drops. All right, I’ll talk to you in the next one.

If this episode inspired you, challenged you, or gave you a fresh perspective, I want to encourage you to take one small action today. And if you want to go deeper and connect with other solopreneurs on a similar journey, come hang out with us inside of our free community. It’s where we keep the conversation going. And be sure to follow the podcast so you don’t miss what’s next. Talk soon, and cheers to more peace, faithful steps, and steady progress, one system at a time.