Episode 195: How automation can help you stick to your boundaries
Placing boundaries can be really hard for a lot of people. In today's episode, Fiona talks about automation for boundary setting. She shares platforms and apps that can help you. Tune in!
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
Marketing For Your Small Business
Platforms and apps to help automate
Conclusion
Get in touch with My Daily Business Coach
Resources and Recommendations mentioned in this episode:
Yricka
Hello and welcome to episode 195 of the My Daily Business Coach podcast. My name is Fiona Killackey and I am so happy that you are sharing the next 10 minutes or so with me, because today you are listening to a quick tip episode, and that's really where I share a tip tool or tactic that you can implement immediately in your business. And even if it's something that may be right now you don't need, it's something that if you do need it down the track, you can action it really quickly. That's the whole point of these quick tip episodes. Before I get stuck into that, I wanted to remind you that if you are interested in joining the next round of the nine-week course and coaching program, that is where you go through Marketing for Your Small Business online, which is always available. You can buy that anytime, but in addition to that, you have nine weeks of coaching with me and other small business owners.
So it allows you to go through the course at your own pace, and then turn up each week to a one-hour live coaching session. Now that kicks off at 9:30 AM, Melbourne time, the 26th of April for nine consecutive weeks, it's a Tuesday. And don't think that you have to be in Australia to be part of this. We have people from all over the world. We've had people from the US, the UK Europe. We've had people all over the world, definitely by the course. And then in the actual coaching, yes, we've had people from the US, Europe, New Zealand, and of course all over Australia and different parts of Asia, Hong Kong. I think we had somebody from Singapore. So it really is, is up to you where you put your energy in time.
So if you wanna just do the online course and you're like, I could do that. You can find that anytime at marketingforyoursmallbusiness.com and if you'd like to be part of the nine-week coaching session, get onto that really quickly, because we are about to close. If you've got any questions at all, feel free to email them through hello@mydailybusinesscoach.com. Now, before we get stuck into today's episode, of course, I want to acknowledge the institutional owners and custodians of this beautiful land on which I record this podcast, The Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation, and I pay my respects to the elders, past, present, and emerging, and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded. All right, let's get on with today's show.
So today I wanted to talk about something that I work with quite a few clients on. Now, a bigger picture of this is systems and processes. But the thing that I want to talk about today is automation. Now, this is something that can really help you in terms of efficiency, in terms of a cohesive and consistent brand message in terms of really being efficient with your staff and making sure that you are really utilizing those people to their best skill and not getting people kind of caught up with like tedious sort of mundane work that could be automated. But in particular today, I wanted to talk about automation for boundary setting.
So how do those two things go hand in hand now, every single business owner that I've ever worked with, and it's been thousands over the last six and a half years whether they've been a student through the Marketing for Your Small Business, or a bunch of other courses that we have available, or whether they've come to a workshop, whether they have come to a speaking gig or whether they've worked one on one or through group coaching, I can honestly say that boundaries and setting those boundaries and sticking to setting those boundaries is something that is really hard for a lot of people, whether it's service-based product base, a mix of the two, a lot of people find it very, very difficult to not just set the boundary, but to stick to it.
And it's kind of like goal setting. You can set a whole lot of goals, but if you don't actually work towards them, then they're just things that you put on a nice stationery area at the start of the year. And it's the same with boundary setting. You've got to keep it like a muscle, you have to keep at it and it can be really hard to do that. And so this is where certain tools or platforms or automation funnels can really help. So today I thought I'd cover three tools that we use in our business to help with this. So they're in no particular order, they all really help. So the first one and probably the biggest thing that has changed my life in terms of boundary setting is Calendly. So Calendly is a scheduling tool.
Now, before you are like, I have a product-based business. We don't need scheduling tools. You may well for stockers to come in and meet you. You might well for the showroom. If you have a showroom of places, you might well for your own staff, maybe you do, and you should be catching out with people for one-to-ones. And so maybe you just want them to schedule into your time rather than going back and forth and ending up, taking out the time that may have been spent on something else or that you'd rather have spent on X, Y, Z. And you're cutting into that with other people's sort of agendas and times. So Calendly, obviously as a business coach, I'm working with people all the time, one on one, and in group coaching. Now, when I first started my business, at the very end of 2015, and I started seeing clients, I would just work to whatever they needed.
So I only had one child at that time and I was trying desperately to have another child. And I would just work if they needed me Friday morning. Awesome. If they needed me Thursday night and they were overseas cool. I was just working whenever their schedules permitted and I wasn't really sitting there and going well, what works for me. And I also was doing all different things. So I was doing corporate consulting. I was doing workshops like strategy workshops with different agencies. I was doing coaching. I was writing. I was doing a whole bunch of different things. And I think a lot of people work, they start that way until they have got enough money in the bank and also enough kind of in a sense of what is actually needed and what do they wanna do.
And then they can kind of niche down a little bit more. But when I decide, I am gonna go much more into business coaching. And I like to work from home and all of that sort of stuff. I sat down and really thought, what are the days that I'd like to coach instead of going from writing in the morning and then driving into town to do something and then maybe coming back and doing, I had a lot of people, I don't know how that happened, but I had a lot of people in the US and Europe when I first started coaching. And it was great, but it meant that I was doing coaching at like eight o'clock at night, sometimes at six o'clock in the morning because of the time difference. And I still have clients in different parts of the world, but I definitely have kind of got a lot stricter in a sort of saying these are the hours.
If they don't work for you, we can happily recommend other people. And with all, so many different parts of the US, it totally works with Australian time and different parts of Europe as well. So anyway, I used Calendly because it allowed me to go in and think, what days do I wanna coach? What times do I wanna coach and how much of a gap do I need between those sessions? And so what it is, it's a tool. You look at your diary or you have your assistant look at your diary and then input the time that you're available. And then when you send somebody a link in case you wanna catch up for coffee or coaching or whatever it is, you can just send them one link and then they can find all the times that suit you and that are free in your account calendar.
And they can just find something that suits them. So it takes away that back and forth. And, could you do this time? I could do that time, but I could do it half an hour earlier. I've gotta do it this time. I've gotta get the kids, all these different things. It just allows you to go, here's my link, please find a time that suits you. And so all that you really need to update there is, I mean, it depends how you work, but we basically look at it kind of every month and sort of map out the next three months and just make sure that I've taken out things. I mean, every year we look at it at the start and we take out all the school holidays, we take out public holidays in Victoria where I am all sorts of things, but it's really allowed me to set a boundary with people and be like, that's my availability.
If you can't find something that works, then we may need to reassess whether I'm the right coach for you. And now that might sound really harsh, but it's allowed us to use a tool that automates everything. So as soon as they book it automatically integrates with Zoom, it creates a meeting there. It also integrates with Google Calendar. It sends them a calendar invitation and it goes into our system internally as well. And so it automates that way and there's less like back and forth and a whole lot of admin. But the other thing that it does is it allows me to say, I don't work after these hours, or I don't work on these particular days. And it allows me to keep to that and not slowly start having people booking in on days that I don't want to see clients. That sounds awful, but I have to have one day of the week where I don't see clients and then make sure that I have my other two days that I have off a week that I spend with my youngest son and doing a whole lot of life admin and all the other things that get in there.
So that's the first tool Calendly, and it has been game-changing for setting boundaries, setting my time in blocks, and making sure that other people are helping me adhere to that as well. So if you're interested in checking that out, you can do so at calendly.com and it's Calendly. And of course, we'll link to that in the show notes. The second tool that has really helped is just Google Forms, which is part of the Google Drive Suite. Google Forms is something that we use for all sorts of things from surveys, customer feedback, client information, and a whole lot of things. And one of the ways that we've automated, one of our processes is in the group coaching application process. So when I first started group coaching, so I think we were into our fourth year. Now, when we first started, it was all manual and it was taking a lot of time and we also didn't take a deposit.
So I remember that first year, I think we had like, I wanna say close to 60 applications or people on the waitlist store. It was a big number. And then we had to go through this whole, back and forth and interviews and it was a huge amount of time being wasted, to be honest. And in the second year and subsequent years, what we've done is just create a Google Form with the application. And so you fill in the form and you also have to pay a hundred dollars Australian AED. And what happens is that a hundred dollars gets fully refunded to you. If you don't go through the program. And if you are accepted into the program, we take that a hundred dollars off your first month's invoices. So either way, you get the money back that alone, just putting a deposit in has been game-changing.
It just means that the people that are applying are actually serious about applying and that they're happy to put a hundred dollars down to kind of get their spot. The other thing is that we've made the questionnaire a lot more detailed, which allows us to qualify people really quickly. And again, is setting that boundary around time and also making sure that we are working with who we actually want to work with. Now, I often say this to clients who are in say interior design or landscape architecture, that when you have a contact form, instead of just having a name, or email address message, you should try and put in as much qualifying material as possible. So you might have a dropdown as to the deadline. When would you like to start? And if you can't start, if you have a huge amount of work back booked up, then you should be putting in from three months or from six months or whatever the earliest time is.
But allowing yourself to say that from the get-go if you wanna have me come in as an interior designer, I'm not available tomorrow. Like you need to know that it's at least a three-month waitlist. And I know that when people hear that, sometimes they're like, I'm gonna lose clients. You are also gonna lose them. If you tell them that you can do it tomorrow and then you are actually delaying and delaying. So I think it's just better to be upfront in general and Google Forms or any type of form can really help you qualify people. It is an automated process. So I know with the Group Coaching Program, you apply online, you put in your deposit, you get the survey, and you fill that in. Then if we go through that and we think that you're a good fit, you'll be invited into an interview, which again is a Calendly link that people can have.
So there's quite a lot of that is either automated or it's a minimal effort from Yricka use my lovely om, who sets all of that up. And so it just really helps the whole process. So that is Google Forms. And again, you could do this through Typeform through all sorts of forms, but it has been such an incredible one for just allowing us to stick to what we said we were gonna do, and also not create a huge amount of time and tedious task for us as well. And the last one, which I have mentioned previously in this podcast and also on my Sunday email, and if you're not on my Sunday email and you wanna get business insights and tips every single week in your inbox, you can find that over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/subscribe. But I have talked about this a bit and that is setting up blocks basically on my phone for so social media.
So I have a 15-minute limit on Facebook every day, and I have a 30-minute limit on Instagram. Now I have done that because I understand that definitely in the past I just spend a lot of time scrolling, I don't always do it anymore, looking, going down like a vacuum of inspiration quite often, but still stuff that I need to put aside. So I think I'll actually get my work done or look after the kids or do whatever I'm doing. And so I have set those boundaries on my phone. And if you're interested in hearing a more in-depth episode, just on that, you can check out episode 99, or if you want the show notes for that episode, you can go to mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/99. But one of the limits that have really helped is just to set up app limits on my phone and my iPad.
So I just have that setup, you can go to, I think it's settings general screen time and then app limits. And then you can choose which apps you wanna set a limit for. And what you can do is actually allow it to block you. So I know that if I go over 15 minutes on Facebook, whether that's Messenger or Facebook itself, it will actually just shut the app down. I can't actually access it again until the next day. So that has been really good. And it's also just been great for me to understand, like sometimes I'll see it shut down kind of early in the day and I'm like, I've already used up my limit other times. Like, I won't see it at all, or I'll see it at like 10 o'clock at night and which will also be a reminder to put your phone away.
So yeah, there are so many platforms and apps out there to really help you set and stick to your boundaries. And the three that I covered were Calendly, Google Forms, and just the app limits that are on your phone. And we'll link to all of those in the show notes, which you'll be able to find over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/195 as this is episode 195. If you enjoyed this episode, I would love it so much. If you might take five seconds and leave a review, it just really helps us get found by other business owners around the world. Thanks so much for listening. I'll see you next time. Bye.
Thanks for listening to the My Daily Business Coach podcast. If you wanna get in touch, you can do that at mydailybusinesscoach.com or hit me up on Instagram @mydailybusiness coach.
