You Know What to Automate. Now What?

Before we dive into all things automations, let me share a story. My husband and I met in college while rock climbing. (In fact we liked each other so much that we got pretty good at climbing our freshman year while we tried to make sure we’d keep running into each other.) The thing with rock climbing is that after a while you can look at most climbs and have a pretty good idea of how to get to the top, down to each hand and foot movement. Actually getting to the top, however, is another story entirely. Sometimes the route is as straightforward as it seems, but requires too much strength or flexibility for someone at your level. Other times you get halfway up the wall and realize your original plan won’t work because the holds are way worse than you thought. Either way, you tend to reach a point where you know what you need to do but not necessarily how to do it. And you end up just staring at the wall like this:

Occasionally I’ll see a client in a similar spot: an organized, type A CEO with good processes who knows what their business needs automated to free up time and energy, has an idea of what system or systems are in need of automations, but isn’t sure what to do next. They know they want to get to the top of the wall, they know, theoretically, how to get there, but find themselves stuck when it comes to actually doing it.

If you feel like this describes you, here’s a simple plan forward you can build off of:

• Step 1: Map out how you will automate those tasks. What steps do you need the automation to do, and how can that be achieved?
• Step 2: Ask yourself if it can be done in a single platform or if it needs to be done across multiple platforms.
• Step 3: If it needs to be built across multiple platforms, use Zapier or Make to integrate the platforms (assuming the platforms you’re using can integrate via those programs).
• Step 4: Set up the automations.
• Step 5: Test the automations; NEVER skip this step.

You may notice that the real trick here is Step 4, setting up the automations.

There are a number of people who are using automation softwares for the first time and don’t know how to build out and customize their processes using them. Sometimes these programs will have tutorial videos available for free (and sometimes they’re behind yet another pay barrier.) But let’s be honest, most small business owners don’t have the time or energy to teach themselves those skills from scratch, even if they are capable of learning on their own. Especially if you’ve reached a point in your life and business where you need to lessen the amount of work you’re pouring into tasks like this, so you can focus more on the big picture, needle-moving things in your business.

The great news is we can help! Upwell can handle the systems development for you and teach you all the ins and outs of your chosen platforms, so that you don’t have to waste time struggling to research, learn, and build it all on your own. We’ll give you the skills to edit and maintain your automations internally, so you aren’t repeatedly having to hire us or a tech contractor to make updates for you.

For more information about our systems development services, click here.