MWH 234 : 5 Easy Automations For Your Business (Even If You Aren’t A Techie) with Kiah Worling

Mums With Hustle is a community for women who are balancing their time between setting up their business, growing their business, while also being fully-present mamas. The juggle is what the hustle is!

But do you ever find yourself asking, “How do I integrate those things and actually make it work?”

Let me tell you that one of the big secret elements to making it work is embracing technology. You need to be open to embracing automation in your business!

One of my passions here at Mums With Hustle is helping more women to implement and embrace ease into their lives so that they can grow the business that their heart desires. This is without having to compromise the things they love the most such as family time, their hobbies, self-care, etc.

“Ease” was actually my word of the year, last year. I feel that in this episode. It’s going to allow you to embrace more ease while growing your business.

Today’s guest describes herself as a bonafide uber-geek and she is a great woman to have this conversation with. Don’t worry! This episode is not full of tech-jargon, so you’re not going to get lost and your eyes will not glaze over.

Our guest has a wonderful way of teaching tech, even if you think you are not techie.

So, let’s get into it!

About Kiah Worling

Kiah is a digital thought leader and productivity adviser. Her mission is to better the lives of others through the smart use of technology in their business.

Kiah knows that your time is so precious and it is better spent on more fulfilling things — things like wowing your customers, being there for your family and pursuing your hobbies. Which is why it is her belief that you don’t need to be weighed down by the clutter and you don’t need to be scared of the tech phobia in your business.

With a strong background in tech, in projects and in planning, Kiah unites AI (artificial intelligence) with humanness to advance her clients’ technical prowess and improve their everyday enjoyment of business entrepreneurship.

When she’s not on the tools, she’s more likely playing with her beautiful boys, sourcing the freshest ingredients for healthy meals, and savouring every precious drop of one of her most loved wines, or she’s planning her next adventure.

Kiah started her business to provide flexibility for her family as she balances mum life and business/work life. She wants to bring her knowledge to mums like her who are starting their business at home and might be struggling, scared or they simply don’t know what they’re doing with tech.

What Is Automation?

I used to fear words like automation and tech, and think, “I’m not techie, I can’t do that.” But I realised that automation doesn’t have to be complicated and it does free you up to give you back more time in your life.

According to Kiah, automation (when it comes to business) involves a bunch of tasks that you do on repeat whether it’s everyday, every month or every year. Instead of a human doing these tasks, you plug-in a robot or a tech tool to do the tasks for you.

With her clients, Kiah looks into the things that they really want to be spending the most energy and time with — the things that really light them up.

She asks them, “If there’s a dream day or a dream week for you, how would you be spending your time and what are the tasks you want to do because they are meaningful and making the most impact?”

Then all the other stuff that makes up the business, those can be automated.

Examples of Automations In Business

1. When someone visits your site, downloads a freebie or signs-up for a free masterclass, as soon as they type-in their email address, it lands in their inbox.
2. Chat bot in Facebook Messenger or other messaging apps that reply to queries whenever business owners cannot do so.
3. For B2B services, automation happens when someone books an appointment through your calendar using an online booking tool such as Calendly and Acuity.
4. Using an accounting software such as Xero to automatically reconcile finances.
5. For those with online courses and memberships, the module emails that get sent out after a certain period of time to coincide with the customers’ progress.

Launch season here at Mums With Hustle is a mammoth project. There are so many pieces of the puzzle that have to be executed on any given day. It’s impossible for me to be doing all of those things in real time.

A large part of what’s allowing me to show up is the fact that I have so many layers of automation in place. That’s what is giving me the space, time and energy to be able to show up live and be present.

Having More Impact By Doing Less

In the Social Method Society and with my Inner Circle Mastermind ladies, I often say that scaling is about making more money, having more impact but doing less themselves. (I talked about how to make more money by doing less on this previous podcast episode>>>)

People often ask, “How do I do that?” There are so many ways to scale up and automation is one of them. Deep down we know that technology is crucial for business and it can set us free.

3 Types of People Who Encounter Blocks When Using Tech

Kiah says that there are 3 main blocks she sees in people when it comes to tech.

1. The Appoholics – These are the people who are pretty tech-savvy but are confused with the systems. They are trying every app and tool that comes on the market.

Sometimes, they tend to get overwhelmed with too many shiny objects turned on. Those who try to combine everything together. People who spend so much time researching and trying things that they end up building an effective and complicated system for their business.

Sometimes, they end up spending a fortune because of buying so many tools and platforms. They end up trying everything but getting nowhere.

To address this, Kiah advises that it’s about reducing the overwhelm to make things less complicated. Find the right tools that will work and avoid ineffective objects that are only shiny.

Get a pen and paper and write down all the tools and apps that you use and write their purposes. Look at why you need them. You’ll find pretty quickly that you’re writing the same reasons for several different apps.

2. The Technophobes – These are people who keep thinking, “I am not techie, I will just keep doing what I’m doing.”

Kiah says that these people can absolutely unravel the mystery of tech. You can navigate through and understand tech. You might just need a little hand-holding to boost your technical confidence.

Ten years ago it was totally different because you couldn’t DIY and use tech in your business. But nowadays, there are many platforms that are very user-friendly, readily available and at a price point that is affordable.

The world has changed so much. If you’ve had negative experience with tech before, chances are, they’re based on a previous version of you at a completely different time.

Let go of the old identity and the old way of how things used to be. Let’s get current, cause it’s getting faster, easier, more accessible and more affordable to use tech.

3. The Ignorance-Is-Bliss Type – These are the people who understand that tech is important but they don’t want to learn it and prefer somebody else (such as an IT person or a developer) to do things for them.

If you’re in the early phase of your business or just starting, this can be really expensive.

Also, the block comes in from not understanding what is coming back to the business once a developer or an IT person did something on your platform, website or accounts.

Kiah says that business owners need to have a base understanding of what some tech jargon means in order to improve your business. It’s really good to start to use the opportunity with somebody you are paying to learn more, understand more, gain more and be educated in the process.

Once you know what category you fall in among these 3, you can start moving beyond being stuck. This is when things can get exciting for you and your business!

5 Easy Automations For Your Business

Knowing where to start is the hardest part. So hopefully, these examples, a checklist of sorts, can help point you to the right direction with where you can start automating your business.

1. Online Scheduling Tools

In trying to find a time for meeting or appointment, turn to online scheduling tools like Calendly or Acuity and open your calendar up so people can book straight in. This is great for coaches, consultants and trainers, as you can also get payments at the same time.

2. Email Marketing

When trying to market your business and build your email list, turn to downloadables and freebies that are really valuable and showcase how awesome your business is. This is where your audience can opt-in!

The main idea behind email automation is to know who’s landing on your site by getting their email addresses. You can then turn it into a nurture email sequence to grow your list and start building a relationship with your audience. This is where a lot of sales can come from!

If you are in the Social Method Society, this is part of Stage 3.

3. Electronics Signatures

There are different tools available that make signing and sending documents (such as contracts, orders, agreements, bank statements, etc.) pretty easy without you needing to be hands-on. It can also be an internal tool for your team for employment contracts.

Examples of these tools are HelloSign, DubSado or DocuSign.

4. Finance and Accounting Tools

To remind your customers of their due dates, pending payments and bills, you can easily set-up automatic invoices that go out in a specific period of time.

You can easily connect your bank accounts and other money transfer services (like Stripe, Square, PayPal) to your bookkeeping platform to automatically collect payments. It also reconciles other areas of your finances.

Energy-wise, chasing payments can put you off and it can even be awkward. Using automation, it removes the emotion and it frees yourself up from low-vibe energy.

Instead of coming from dread since you might have an awkward conversation with your customers, bring your brand voice and personality to your responses so that it will come from fun and inspired ways.

5. Personalised Notes

Sometimes people think that having automations is just about the number and it takes out the humanness. But it’s not the case as you can add a personal touch with voice messages, welcome note, thank you notes or even send them voice messages in Instagram’s DM.

A way to really wow your customers is if in your workflow, you automate a to-do when they land on your list. To do this, you can integrate your CRM with to-do tools (such as Asana, Monday.com, Trello, etc).

When they have visited your sites several times or refer your brand to someone else and your CRM picks this up, you can send yourself a reminder to send a personalised Thank You note. This will let them know that you are aware of their continued support to your business.

Don’t underestimate how you can add a personal touch and humanness to the automation.

It can be powerful and magical for your customers. Plus, it also helps nurture your relationships with them.

Wrap-Up

Thank you so much Kiah for literally holding the hands of my beautiful listeners and hopefully inspiring them to start using at least one of these 5 easy ways they can automate their business.

Listen up ladies, don’t be afraid of the new things that technology has to offer. Like Kiah said, we’ve come so far in the past 10 years. If you weren’t a techie back then, chances are you will be now because things are so much easier.

I don’t identify with being a techie myself, but I know that we are capable of doing some amazing things with the help of automations. Because they are easy, they are convenient and they are more affordable than ever. They help us ensure our business is moving forward.

I challenge you to befriend automation in your business. When you embrace simplifying these automations to alleviate you from repetitive tasks, it frees you up. It allows you to move on and focus on essential activities not only for your business, but also for your family and your personal well-being.

I would love to hear from you, so please feel free to send me and Kiah a DM, tag me in your IG Stories and let us know which one of these 5 automation you’re going to start with.

Until next week, stay happy in your hustle!

CONNECT WITH KIAH:

Facebook: @kiahworling
Instagram: @kiahworling
Website: kiahworling.com

CONNECT WITH ME

Web: www.mumswithhustle.com
Facebook: @mumswithhustle
Instagram: @mumswithhustle
Twitter: @MumsWithHustle
Biz Club: MWH Biz Club

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