Marketing isn’t a random act of posting when the mood strikes. In this episode, Kim Beer and Betsy Bird break down what it actually means to build a real marketing ecosystem. One that supports your business over time instead of draining it.

They explore why social media is only a small piece of the puzzle, how to create repeatable marketing rhythms that your nervous system can tolerate, and how systems and automation can carry the heavy lifting so you don’t have to. This is a grounded, real-world conversation for business owners who want marketing that works with their life, not against it.

Parts of a Marketing Plan (for reference):

1. Executive Summary
2. Market & Audience Analysis
3. Competitive Analysis
4. Value Proposition & MessagingGoals & Objectives
5. Marketing Channels & Tactics
6. Budget & Resources
7. Timeline & Campaign Calendar
8. Metrics & Measurement
9. Review & Optimization Plan

Metricool social scheduling tool affiliate link: https://f.mtr.cool/LUHXXL

Links referenced in this episode:

1. thebusinessanimal.com
2. ridetheskyequine.com
3. bemorebusiness.com

Companies mentioned in this episode:

1. Mona Planner
2. Mac
3. ChatGPT
4. Metricool
5. E. Myth Revisited
6. Ride the Sky Equine
7. Be More Business

Hey there, business animals.

I'm Kim Theier, and my notes live in a myriad and vast array of places.

And I'm Betsy Bird.

And to be quite honest with you, I like to keep my notes all in one place.

Betsy.

I have notes.

I have notes over here on my little pinup board.

I have notes written on, like hundreds of index cards.

I absolutely love index cards.

I like to write on the index card and then I stick them in a little index card drawer down here.

I have sticky notes.

I have phone notes.

I have truck notes.

I have armchair notes.

I have bed notes.

I have a little notebook next to my bed.

I have refrigerator notes.

I have door notes.

My gosh.

I have computer notes.

I don't have a notes, to be honest with you.

I'm like, I have a clipboard with notes on it, but it does have sticky notes on my legal pad too.

So I do have both of those, but they're in the same place.

And then I have my notes on my phone and that's about it.

It's so.

And I have my official, official Mona Planner notes.

I almost forgot about the place the.

Notes are supposed to go.

The one place that you actually should be putting those notes.

And then that doesn't even cover the tens of thousands of word documents that I have, where I keep track of my trains of thought, which I had to go find one this morning from a project.

And thank God Mac lets you look for content because inevitably I'll remember something weird that I put in it and then I can search for that as a content and then find that actual note.

Oh, good lord.

I can see where that would be beneficial for you.

I mean, because it's in so many different places just being able to search for a keyword.

I mean, that on ChatGPT search chats is very handy.

It is.

And I do so many things and keep so many different streams of thought going that this morning my chat got confused and I had to remind it what it was working on.

Like, wait a minute.

No, you have to change it.

It has to be to this Solara lost the plot.

I'm like, wait a minute, you've got to go back and pick the plot up.

So, yes, last night, that gives you an inner working into the mind of a neuro spicy adhd, multi business owner, farm rancher, photographer, women.

There you go.

Yeah, it's a scary place to be.

I call it home.

Oh, goodness.

Oh, goodness.

Okay, so we are on the other side of the holidays.

It is now a new year and we're all Excited about everything.

Did you have a good holiday?

I did.

I had a kind of a quiet holiday.

It was just us and the kids here.

Usually we have in laws and, and extended family but this year it was just the five of us.

So pretty quiet.

Well, except for, you know, the puppy which he didn't know what to do with himself.

And he proceeded to give me a black eye on Christmas day in his excitement.

Well, you know, it's your first Christmas and all.

He was very enthusiastic about the Christmas paper.

He just didn't know what to do with it.

I love that, I love that.

It was very quiet and very productive here.

I, I got a, a lot of stuff done and it's always a favorite time of year for me.

So I, I love the, the quiet piece and also the fact that I can spend all of my time in that 30, 000 foot view, high thought sort of space and I love being in that and can.

I don't know.

It's been fun.

I've had my fingers in a lot of things and I'm super excited for the next few months and being able to launch some of them out into the world.

That's where all the notes came from.

Just the list you gave me offline where we were talking about different things of what you have managed to accomplish in the last two to three weeks was pretty impressive, I gotta say.

Even coming from, you know, a type a person like me, I was like, wow, I feel kind of like I've been slacking.

No, no, I just, yeah, I've just been focused.

It's not you've been slacking, it's just I've been focused.

Well, today we are here to talk about building a real marketing ecosystem.

Something that isn't just you throwing messages out into the wind and hoping that they find a place to land and take root.

So both Betsy and I have a extensive background in marketing and helping small businesses market out to the world.

And I think sometimes even if you have a degree in marketing, it's the real world in the trenches version of how it has to go is sometimes not what you learned in school.

It's a lot easier to look at it on a whiteboard when somebody's teaching you about it than it is to put it into practice in a real live business situation.

So today we want to help you with that.

And so our big three One is to make an actual marketing plan.

So we're going to talk about that.

The second one is to create repeatable rhythms that have intention to them and that is Part of an ecosystem.

Right?

That's how an ecosystem works.

It works on rhythms and seasons and cycles.

And your marketing program should as well.

And then finally creating systems that can carry the load for you.

Think of it in animal terms of having a really well put together feeding system in your barn or a wheelbarrow that you can put all of the proverbial shit in that you need to take somewhere and do something with.

So all of those things are part of what we're going to talk about today.

So, Betsy, what do you think about making an actual marketing plan?

What are your thoughts?

Well, you know, when we first started discussing this topic, my initial thought went to a lot of the businesses that I work with, which tend to be a lot of solopreneurs, you know, really small, just starting out type businesses.

And in a lot of cases, for a lot of them, their idea of marketing their business was basically they created or bought a logo, they slapped it on a Facebook page or an Instagram page and they're like, I am open for business and I am marketing.

And they would just randomly post whenever the mood struck them, whatever they wanted to, which was really not, you know, a plan.

You know, and I have found that, you know, most people don't really actually have marketing plans.

They have marketing activities that they do when the mood strikes.

You know, they have random posts, they might throw together a promo at the last second.

They vaguely remember to send out an email every six months or so, but there's no rhyme or reason to what they're doing.

So that's something that a lot of people struggle with because when you became a business owner, you didn't realize you had to also be a marketer and.

Know that salesperson and everything else.

Salesperson and an accountant and everything else that comes with it.

I do think too that a lot of people put all of their marketing into the social media basket.

Yeah.

So, you know, in order to be a business and you're marketing your business, you're putting something on social media, thus your marketing is done.

And completely forget that social media really just supports your marketing system.

It's a portion, maybe not always of your plan, but it shouldn't be your whole marketing plan.

There's plenty of people who are not on social media or do not like social media for many reasons, you know, or.

Or that don't even see your posts when you put them up there, even if they liked your page eons ago.

So I like to think of it as social media supports your marketing.

It's a portion of it it is not the other way around.

It is not your whole marketing.

And just as a little thing to keep in mind, it's never a good idea to build your entire business marketing plan on a playground that's owned by someone else.

Because quite honestly, Mark Zuckerberg could decide tomorrow he's had enough of Facebook and shut the whole thing down.

And if you built your whole marketing platform there and that's where your customers are, you don't have any other way to reach them, you're going to have a really hard time having to rebuild your business.

Absolutely.

And I think you and I have had the discussion in the past around the fact that Facebook in particular is, is becoming more and more AI driven.

So there's more and more AI content and then there's also more AI on the platform.

So it's, it's edging towards the future if things don't change, to becoming a place where only the AIs go.

The AIs who don't have a face are going to be on Facebook.

And then we'll get some kind of a digest report at the end of the day on what the AIs talked about while they were building their relationships with, with each other.

It is, it's crazy how many people do believe that social media is marketing.

And I developed a program a few years ago called the 4x4 Small Business Marketing System.

It is a whole system, but it runs on 16 points.

Like, there's 16 and social media is one of those 16 points.

And so that should tell you, if you're only doing your marketing in social Media, you're doing 1/16 of, of the impact that my little brain could come up with.

I think we do need to look at that, and part of that is coming up with a plan.

I am a big advocate for functional business plans.

So business plans, I do think make a huge difference for business owners, especially small business owners who sometimes didn't have to make it.

That person who's the solopreneur who didn't need to go get a loan and have to prove their, prove their business plan through a bank who would scrutinize it or, or investors who would scrutinize it.

I don't think that excuses you from the necessity of creating one because that's part about how to design your business.

And part of that business plan is a marketing plan.

And so one of the things that I grabbed out for this episode today is some components of an actual marketing plan, like actually putting one together.

And I will list these out in the show notes when I do the show notes so that you don't have to try to grab a piece of paper and write it down.

Lord knows I don't need to spread my note taking craziness to anyone else, right?

Don't worry about that.

Just look at the show notes.

It'll all be right there in the phone and you can screenshot it.

But the components of a typical marketing plan for a business and my friend, if you're making money, you are an official business.

And if you plan to make money, you're an official business.

So I'm including all of y' all in this.

So the first thing you need is an executive summary that explains who does what, who runs the business.

And I know for a lot of you, that's me, myself and I, right?

You are, you are the business.

But you need to employ your parts of self and keep them in line.

Then you also need to know your market and your audience.

Because at the beginning of entrepreneurship, you create a business because of your wants and needs.

But at the end of the day, that business's success relies on your audience and your customers.

And so understanding who they are is really important.

And part of building a marketing plan is doing that.

Because guess what?

The next two things that we're going to talk about are going to hinge on you understanding your customers, also understanding your competitors, how it's done in the world that you live in, your competitive analysis, what are other people doing, what are their offers, how are you positioned in that?

And then back to the customers.

A value proposition and messaging.

I teach a class around business model canvases, which are really visual business plans.

It's a lot easier for people who are in the more artistic, creative side of businesses rather than that linear, boring business plan.

It lets you kind of play around with shapes and sizes and stick things on.

It's more of an art project than it is a business plan.

But part of that is coming up with something called a value proposition.

Friends, you can Google value proposition Canvas and it will pop out a myriad of things about the value proposition Canvas.

Highly recommend that you do that for all your target markets.

Then knowing how much you need and how much you want.

So goals and objectives is the next category.

Understanding your channels and tactics.

Those are those 16 points, one of which is social media.

Understanding your budget and your resources to fill that budget is part of a marketing plan.

People ask, how much do I budget?

So I always tell folks it's anywhere from 7 to 20% of your gross desired revenue and write that number down.

And it'll scare the hell out of you.

And then understand that's where you're aiming for.

So that's back in the day before there was the Internet and the illusion of social media marketing.

We had to actually spend that in newspaper ads in and television spots and any variety like signage in front of our buildings.

I mean that was cold hard dollars that were spent.

You get off a little easier in the modern world, but you don't get off at all.

You know, you've got to have a budget.

Then understanding the timeline and your calendar, like when things need to happen that cycle, that ecosystem needs to come into place, then understanding the metrics and measurement, one of the big ones of which is, is there enough audience to support you and the competitors in your business?

And then optimizing it, those are the components in an actual marketing plan.

And if that just made your eyes glaze over, I'm sorry, but I feel like, I feel like Betsy and I have a little bit traded spaces today because I'm being the cold hard reality and you're being the fun one.

But I guess every once in a while we're one of us has to become the realistic parent.

Well, let me, let me ask you a question that maybe might calm some people's fears.

When they look at this list and they think, I don't know this, I don't understand it.

I don't, you know, like looking at that, it you're thinking, oh my gosh, this is going to be a hundred page document for my business that I run by myself.

You know, when am I going to have time to do this?

So what would your recommendation be to someone who is like a solopreneur just starting out, you know, like how A, how do they figure out all of this and B, what are they going to do as far as, you know, like what, what would be your recommendation?

And I know that you and I have some real easy recommendations on this, but what would you suggest as a starting point for somebody who's newer.

Yeah.

Smaller.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

My first suggestion to you is go buy the book the E. Myth Revisited and read it.

Because you need to make the mindset leap from being the person who works in your business to the person who works on your business.

That's the very first thing that has to happen.

That's at the foundation of it all.

So if you haven't read the E. Myth Revisited, go read it.

It's available on Amazon, downloadable, all of it.

So grab it, read it.

Understand that you have to work on your business and you have to mindfully set aside time to do that.

Take a weekend.

I don't know, find babysitters, find a person to put, you know, take care of the spouse, find someone to take care of your animals.

Go somewhere for a weekend, take your computer, make sure they have good Internet, and then spend some time with perplexity.

And then your favorite LLM chatbot situation like ChatGPT or Quad, whatever you get along with the best.

Because honestly, this, none of this is rocket science and none of it is brand new, and almost all of it is accessible through public means through either an AI or through a librarian or through something like that.

And I do recommend get to know your local special unicorn resource librarian.

They're great.

If you go to any library, you can ask them, who is your resource librarian for business and, and they can point you to somebody.

But take a weekend and actually spend some time on those points.

And heck, if you don't get them all, you don't get them all.

But I can guarantee you at the end of the weekend, you will be further along than you are today and you will know a lot more about your customers.

And AI has it.

Of all of the things that AI can do, which it can do a myriad of things, this is one of the things that people never freaking do, that hopefully AI can do, but you still have to take the time.

AI is not.

It's not Gandalf.

You can't just say, dear White wizard, fix my marketing plan.

Wouldn't that be amazing if you could?

Oh, yes, it would.

But even, Even if I, Even if I go in as your entrepreneurial wise woman and I create a custom GPT for you, you still have to answer all of the questions.

AI has not made the leap yet to becoming a chip that's inserted into your brain and can read all of the things that you want to create.

And what's more is you don't know what you don't know yet.

And part of this process is discovering what you really need to know.

So that would be my answer to that question.

What is your answer to that question?

Well, I kind of fell in line on the same wavelength as you where it's.

You have to block out time where that's all you're doing, that's all you're thinking about.

I probably wouldn't have sent them to the library, although that's a great idea.

I am a big proponent of research, which normally I do online.

So, you know, a lot of Research on it.

And you know, mentorship helps with this kind of mentorship does help mentorship.

Finding someone who understands it or yeah, taking a class that can help you with it would be another way to do it.

But yes, AI can help you with a lot of it.

But as you say, it doesn't know what you know or what your future vision is necessarily and where you want to go and stuff like that.

And that kind of information needs to be included in this sort of thing.

It does.

And sometimes you don't know friend.

And you know what?

That's okay.

And to be honest, what's true today may not be true six months from now or a year from now, or five years from now.

And that's another thing.

You don't write one marketing plan.

Ecosystems do not complete one cycle and then stay in a stasis forever.

Ecosystems evolve.

And if we're talking about creating a realistic marketing ecosystem, we need to understand that that evolution is part of the story and that that cycle is going to repeat and it's a spiral.

It's going to go up or it's going to go down on the cycle.

And so you've got to hang in there with it through all of the ups and downs as well.

So I always consider the marketing plan to be very much a living document.

It is, and it should be constantly changing.

And that you as a business owner, at least once a year, if not twice a year or something, need to be reevaluating it.

What worked, what didn't work, what you need to change, how you, how your business has shifted and you need to make adjustments in your marketing.

All that stuff plays into it.

So our second of the big three for today is to create repeatable rhythms.

And I love the word rhythm because that's really again, what an ecosystem is about.

What are your thoughts around this?

So I am a huge fan of batching stuff.

Yes, me too.

I absolutely love it.

And I'll tell you that for me personally, the way my business operates is I tend to have a very busy photography season like twice a year where I have about six to eight months that are just really, really busy.

And then I have two, two to three month sections that are a lot slower, which I do a lot of back end stuff and you know, other things during that time period.

But for me, what I do is I tend to batch all my marketing stuff that I have to do, all my blog posts I need to write, you know, anything like that.

I do it during those slow periods and then I get it written and Scheduled and everything done and then I don't think about it for six months, you know, so that works.

That looks fabulous for me.

Of course, that doesn't necessarily work for everyone.

You know, they, they don't necessarily have a busy and, and not so busy season or something like that.

So batching, it's not necessarily that you have to do six months at a time or something because like, that is extreme.

But it allows for you to have fewer decisions.

It doesn't require as much brain power all the time.

You know, it takes a lot of brain power when you switch from task to task.

It does, you know, like if you're going to write a blog post and then you're going to go and, you know, do a social media thing and then you're going to go over here and you're going to record something and then you're going to go and do something else.

Every time your brain is switching between those tasks, there's kind of a lag time while your brain gets caught up to what you're doing.

So by batching things together, like for example, saying I am going to write 12 blog posts in the next day and that's all I'm doing is I'm writing, your brain stays in that mode long enough that you're going to be faster at it and you'll produce more consistent work.

That to me is, is a very handy thing to do, especially if you're the type of person who like, works at home a lot and let's say you're in your pajamas or something like that when you're working at home and you're like, eh, I don't want to do that.

Well, if you're going to have to do video or something or you're going to be on camera, you know, okay, we'll do that all in one day, right?

Because then you only have to put on the makeup one day.

You only have to get, you know, the nice clothes on one day.

You can be in your pajamas looking like a swamp troll the rest of the week if you want.

Like, it allows for a lot of benefits if you work like me.

So it really doesn't mean that you're doing everything at one time.

It just means that you're deciding when the marketing is happening and what you're creating at the same time.

So do you want to do all of your videos at the same time?

Do you want to do all your writing for your blog posts at the same time?

Do you want to go out and, you know, take B roll video animals in a pasture or something that you can use at a later time.

You're just basically kind of blocking out time for a specific purpose.

So a few examples for like business animals, you know, people who work in animal based businesses.

I, I mentioned me with my, where I have slow and busy seasons.

But you know, somebody else might have like one day a week where they don't, like they don't work out in the barn or they don't have clients that day or whatever.

And that might be a day every week that they use to do certain marketing activities.

Like this is when I do social media for the next week, or this is when I do my blog posts for the next month or whatever.

Another thing might be like where they capture like all the video while they're out at the barn that day or while they're out walking.

I mean, here's a really good example of it.

My puppy went to a dog trainer for a couple weeks.

It was one of those stay, you know, and train for a couple weeks.

And they video the dogs while they're walking them and while they're training them all day long.

So all the different dogs are working with, these are the different videos that they shoot.

And then they post those videos throughout the month with like explainers of what they're doing and how they're training and everything.

So you might see my puppy, which she only had with her for two weeks, you'll see him for six months, spread throughout, you know, on different platforms and social media and websites and stuff like that.

And with them talking about, you know, what they're doing and how they're doing it and everything like that.

So they're batching all their video creation and then spreading it out when they need it, which to me is a really nice way to do things.

What do you think?

I'm a big proponent for batching, but I also want to talk about in this area about repeatable rhythms being things you do on repeat in your business.

Because just like your nervous system really likes batching because you can get in the zone and stay in there, your nervous system also likes repetitive activities at basically the same time that are the same pattern.

They feel comfortable and they're easy for you to slip into on a daily basis.

And there's some things you can't batch because you have to be there to react or respond in the moment.

So if you're thinking about like everybody here probably deals with animals on a regular basis.

If you think about how animals establish their routines, I can tell you that my horses, they don't know how to read a clock.

But I know that they know exactly what time it is by when they get fed.

And so do dogs.

So does everybody else, right?

You, my friend, are no different.

You work on those systems and those you can do the same thing repetitively.

So what I created years ago for my own business and for my clients is something called my marketing habit, which is a repeatable rhythm that you do every single day.

And then once a week there's another part of the rhythm.

And then the batching part, which you just went over, is also included.

That's the third part of the rhythm.

So there's three, three basic little dances that you do.

One daily, one weekly, and then one batching on the big one.

So you covered the big one.

What I want to talk about is the two other ones.

Marketing and sales are kissing cousins.

They really go together.

Well, they.

And my marketing habit really kind of marries the two together.

And it's a 30 minutes in the morning and you show up.

You start with going to your customers and you respond and you reward your customers.

Then you move to your prospects.

And for your prospects, you invite them into your business.

So prospects are qualified.

We know they belong in our company.

They we just don't know quite where yet or if they're ready to pull the trigger.

Leads are people who, we aren't sure they're interested.

Maybe they've come to our website, but we don't know if they're qualified yet.

And they don't know if they're qualified yet.

But for them, we're going to reach out and we're going to educate them and then finally work on your network.

And my recommendation to keep your nervous system happy is to set a timer for 30 minutes.

And I'm going to tell you in the beginning, you're not going to get it all done.

You're going to.

You may only get through part of your customer part, but eventually you will get caught up.

Because here's what I know about most small business owners.

Most small business owners don't ever do this kind of work in their business.

Once they start doing it on a regular basis, eventually there's a tipping point and you get caught up.

And then you can get through that in 30 minutes.

And you utilize that batching time to create the systems that support you so you can get it done really quickly.

Which 30 minutes is not nearly as bad as like stacking all of your sales calls in one day out of the month.

And you get really flustered.

I don't know as Those sales calls are a good thing to batch maybe a few of them, but not all of them for like the last six months on a Tuesday afternoon or something.

And then once a week you go in and you look at your analytics and we're.

Our next episode is going to talk a little bit about understanding how your marketing is working and why it may not be so.

So I'm going to table that conversation for that and the Be More Business podcast.

So if that sounded intriguing to you and you want to know more, head over there and take a look.

There's even a downloadable PDF that has the whole workout and a little daily thing you can print in the whole nine yards.

But that's creating a rhythm in your business where you're coming in and you're doing it and you're doing it on the day to day.

I'm going to give you a real life system where I think this really applies in a, in a metaphoric way.

So our dishes, we don't do our dishes when all of the dishes in this kitchen are dirty.

Not that we haven't done that, but we don't do our dishes like that.

I do our dishes every morning while I'm making my tea.

I take the time load the dishwasher with anything that was up from the night before and it nick helps, but it's generally one or the other of us is loading the dishwasher first thing in the morning.

It, it means nothing ever accumulates.

And so it's a rhythm that we both understand and can work through.

And our kitchen sink stays open and available for new dishes all of the time.

Does that make sense?

That does.

It does.

When you have systems, they can carry the load.

So what do you think about that?

What do you think about systems being our wheelbarrow of the world?

Well, you know, I love a good system.

Yes, I never turn away a system.

Although I will say I like simple systems more than complicated systems.

Um, I think if you can't explain it to someone easily what it's doing, then it tends to get convoluted and stuff.

So I kind of like a simple, straight, easy to follow system.

I'm going to go back to automation and rely on automation to some extent.

But automating those things that are consistent and repeatable, such as follow ups, reminders, things that you send out to the client for, you know, monthly billing and all that stuff, having that be automated and easy and done can just make things so much easier.

And take so much stress load off you.

I mean, just imagine if like you didn't have anything to do with the bills going out and yet money kept rolling in consistently at the end of the month it just rolled in for you, but you really didn't have to worry about it.

That would be really nice, right?

Yes, absolutely.

So automation allows for a lot more of the fewer drop balls, more predictable results and stuff.

Whereas when you're doing things very piecemeal and you know, haphazardly when you think of it and whatnot, you really don't have that consistency and the predictability which, you know, some of us are creatures of habit and we really like that.

I'm also going to throw out there.

Outsourcing is an easy way to help you with things that either bore you or you're not good at them or you struggle with because you know, your time is worth money.

And if here's a, you know, an example, let's say I don't understand accounting, but Kim is amazing at it.

If I send it over to Kim, she could do something for me in 15 minutes that it would take me four hours to do.

I could have spent that four hours rounding up a new client, selling stuff to existing clients, whatever, and the stress load on my brain would be so much less because I wasn't constantly frustrated at not being able to do it and do it well, you know.

Yeah, don't ever send me your account.

That would be a huge mistake.

Yes, a number.

Big mistake.

You guys, we talked about website stuff that I can.

Do not send me your accounting.

You sound like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman.

Big mistake.

Huge, huge, huge mistake.

That would be a huge mistake.

I just always default as an example with accounting because I hate it so.

Much and I'm good.

I, I, I outsource that as well.

I, I love to make budgets where I think about and dream about how much money I can make from something and setting sales goals.

But that's about where my, my life ends with it.

And I like to spend money.

I do like to spend it, but yeah, anyway, so I love automations.

Part of my life is helping people create automations with software that helps their business.

And I do think software is a great employee to have and it, it's fantastic.

And so I thought I would add to this conversation by telling you five things that I automate in my business that help me stay on track.

So one thing that I started automating here in this last year.

I produce a lot of podcasts.

I have fully embraced in Case anyone's confused.

Yeah, in case anyone's confused about the myriad of podcasts that I'm on these days, I love the platform.

And one of the cool things about podcasting is it comes with an RSS feed that is specific to the show.

So RSS stands for really simple Syndication, which means that basically it sends out the episode out into the world.

So all I have to do is put the recording up in the software and it sends it to wherever you happen to be listening at it.

You're listening to it at your maybe you're listening to it on Apple, you're listening to it on Spotify, you're listening on YouTube.

All of those places.

It's kind of auto sent out YouTube.

I have to do some more.

But the rest of it it auto sends out.

But there's an RSS feed that goes with it from our distribution software.

And what I did was I used a tool called Metricool which helps you schedule social media.

And I created what is called an auto list that pulls the post from Metricool and posts it on my LinkedIn appropriate LinkedIn company page for each podcast.

So you can listen on LinkedIn as well.

But it auto populates that I do not have to even think about it.

It takes care of it.

It publishes at the same time every week.

Consistency is what all of social media loves.

And it's amazing.

This second fancy I. I am, I'm so fancy.

And then I also have another place that I use Autolist is on my photography Facebook page.

I go ahead and load all my seasonal photos in there and it publishes one a day.

It's amazing.

So easy.

The exploratory call scheduling.

So one of the biggest time sucks in my business in the past has been scheduling exploratory calls with people.

Oh, I'm interested in working with you.

What's our next step?

I mean, you can get caught in the vortex of what day are you available and what time and be in there endlessly and use guide step.

All of that by setting up a automated system where the software handles looking at your calendar, telling people when you're available, letting them book an appointment.

And I know some people get really scared about that.

Trust me on this, it's a hell of a lot easier than the opposite of it to where you have to keep going round and round with them.

Those exploratory calls are like having that scheduling done has freed up so much time in like in my life where I mean, it just, I don't even talk to a client or interact with them.

Everything is automated to that point.

So, like, by the time I get to that call, I know they wanted to actually talk to me.

But it has freed up a ridiculous amount of time spent with, as you're saying, the time suck of text messages and emails.

Are you available here?

I'm available at this time.

You know, like, it's brilliant.

I love it.

Yes, yes.

It meets them where they are and then it gives.

It takes care of it all so that they come to me when I'm available.

It's just absolutely perfect.

Another one I do is follow up from networking.

So all I have to do is add a tag in my CRM and it sends out an invitation for that person to join me for a zoom or a live meetup if it's necessary.

And this is a place where in the past I have left a tremendous amount of what I consider money on the table because people are interested, and when they're interested, they're interested, and then they lose interest really, really quickly.

And part of being good at networking is going out and talking to people.

But then if you don't follow up, all of that time for nothing.

Right?

So having the automated follow up and also it gets you out of your own way because what you do is you start overthinking.

Well, did I say that right or did I do this or did I do that?

Well, if you have an automated system for taking care of it and all you have to do is add the tag, that means you get out of it.

It's.

You don't have to overthink it.

So if you're one of those overthinkers of the world, it helps to have that particular system automated.

Another one I have is a lead magnet, which I think a lot of us do, which is to draw people in.

It helps qualify them to make sure that they're a good fit for my business and also is a small victory for them.

I was just on your website.

I noticed you have quite a few little downloadable things that people can grab onto.

I do.

And then the final one is a much more complicated one.

I have a program where I teach people how to build their own website.

And I start them out with a template, and then there's a whole process that they go through.

And believe me, it can go from just a couple of weeks working on it to actually have some people who are into a year or more in this program.

So it's.

It's really depends on the person.

And I mean, it's.

It's kind of all over the place.

And it's super hard to keep track of the people that are in there.

There's.

I think there's almost 100 people in that program at this point.

And it's very intense and it.

It requires you to.

To do a lot of things.

But I don't want to have to keep track of 100 people.

So I wrote an automation that tracks people all of the way through up into the publishing process.

It notifies me if they get behind.

It notifies them when they're getting off of the schedule that they and I set with each other.

It gives them cheerleading advice.

And what's funny is I know that the people on the other end of it know that it's an automation.

Right.

I don't think anybody's pulling the wool over their eyes that I'm sitting down and composing these messages at 3am or whenever they go out.

So I know that they know it's a message, but they reply to me like it's me speaking to them because it's authentically me who wrote that message, because they all are basically in the same place at those different times.

There's that meetable place where I can cheerlead or prod or suggest or offer a meeting or offer help.

And it makes me look like some kind of customer service guru while I'm in there playing Elder Scrolls online and not even thinking about people building their websites.

So that has given me back so much of my life.

It is amazing and it really helps the people that are in the program, or at least I hope it does.

I've gotten good feedback on it, but it took me a while to set it up, but I think it was well worth the effort of doing well.

The automation always has a heavier lead, you know, hours put into it than posting a single post that you randomly wrote, obviously, but it saves you so much on the back end.

It's a huge amount.

And it's funny when you said that about how people respond even though you know that they know it's automated.

My dogs are a very large part of my business.

They do a lot of my automated messages, like text messages and emails and stuff like that.

So you get, you know, emails from my dogs and they're very snarky and I get like, I will get responses to the emails from my clients dogs.

Like, they will write back in the voice of their dogs.

I've had people who show up at sessions disappointed that my dog is not at the session.

I have had people who have brought treats for them because they.

They want to make sure that they get something because they enjoyed their emails so much.

So my point with this story is, is that one being authentically you or authentically apparently my dog, but authentically something that tells them something about your business.

And understanding that goes a long way in those automations to making it not feel like it's an automation, even though that, you know, deep down they know it is.

Yeah.

But you know, they still feel that it's a touch point, that you're reaching out, you're talking to them, you care about them as a client.

Well, just the fact that you took the time to set all of that up and once you know your business pretty well, you'll find that there's a lot of repetition.

Again, go read the E. Myth Revisited.

It's going to help you with that understanding it.

To a lot of people who don't have systems in their business, everything feels brand new every single day.

And not always an easy world to live in.

I mean, I like a little novelty, but I don't want my entire world to be novelty day in and day out.

I want things that my nervous system and my mind and my safety can depend on.

And I think that our clients feel the same way.

And once you get the repetition down, it's very easy to create that.

It's just you also.

And again, I'm going to say, just like we said with the marketing plan, you know that automation, it's living as well, it needs care and feeding, it just doesn't need it as often.

And it's definitely not as hard to take care of in the care and feeding of it than it was in the creation of it.

You guys are all animal owners.

You all have patience, likely built in.

Probably not for a computer and probably not for human beings, but I know you have the capacity to do it.

So I don't know, give your computer a name and, and spend some time with it.

Speaking of which, you remember when you mentioned that you had named Solara and I said I'd never named it, but I thought I should be something like Bartholomew or something.

I went back after that, after we recorded that, and I actually asked it what it thought its name should be based off of what it knew, like what I, you know, the information.

I was really disappointed, I gotta say, because it kept coming back with Ellis.

Ellis, well, Ellison, Bartholomew aren't that far apart.

It was really like Ellis is what it feels it should be named.

And I, I'm having a hard with it because the only thing that keeps going through my mind with Ellis is Ellis gray, gray anatomy.

And I'm like, I don't think he.

Wants me like that.

Well, apparently, it has a different association to the word Ellis than you do.

I love it.

Oh, goodness.

Okay, that was a detour there.

But it was funny.

That was funny.

Well, thank you all for hanging out with us today.

We appreciate you.

You can find us@thebusinessanimal.com and the social and.

And the socials and all of the social media at the Business Animal, and you can find Betsy at Ride the Sky Equine and myself at Be More Business.

So take some time, get to know us on a.

On a deeper level.

Take a look at our websites, and we'll see you in the next episode.