Business Automation and Templates - How to Streamline Your Workflow

Welcome to Building Better Developers, the Develop-a-Nor podcast, where we work on getting better step by step, professionally and personally. Let's get started. Well, hello and welcome back. We are Building Better Developers. We're Develop-a-Nor. We are back for another episode. This time we're going to talk about templates and automation and some things like that in your business and just ways for you to get your stuff done faster. However, we're going to wait, give you a little bit of like, you know, so you can refresh your caffeine or you can listen really closely to us because I'm going to introduce myself. My name is Rob Broadhead. I am one of the founders of Develop-a-Nor, also founder of RB Consulting, where we, through integration, simplification, automation, innovation, we use all of these tools and then we use the most important tool, which is a conversation with you. We understand, work with you to understand your business and actually not just, you know, in a general sense, but like, what is your secret sauce? What is it that is your brand? What is it that you bring that it brings the most value? And then we help find ways to leverage technology to get your job done better while still being yourself. Not like one of these like chat bots that you automatically know as just a really bad AI and it's just somebody automating something. It's like, no, this is where you're like, we're going to make sure that we get the best of it. You're best put forward with your customers and leverage that major investment that most companies have these days in technology. Now, good things and bad things. So good, and it's again, I'm like, I'm really in this like two sides of the same coin season of life it feels like because, and I'm talking about a little bit, but we're downsizing, we're moving somewhere else. And so we've had people come in and now they've staged a house. And now the good part of that is that we have all this like little furniture and stuff like they have so the house looks better than it ever has. It's like, it's really good. I mean, it's like, it's nice, it's comfy, it's all this kind of stuff. It's not like necessarily the highest quality furniture or anything, but it looks really nice. The downside is the bad thing is that one of the things we did was my office. And so now when I go to work, I don't feel like I'm at work anymore. I've got like all the stuff that I've had for like is all my little like comfort things and all that kind of stuff that like endears my workspace to me is sort of like, you know, I'm kind of like a cold and just surgical at this point. So I guess, and I guess that's the other good thing is that just more reason for me to become a road warrior for a while and go check out like the local cafes and stuff like that. Now, so he's because he's got his caffeine and he's ready to go. I want to go pass this over to Michael so he can reduce himself. Hey, everyone. My name is Michael Mlosh. I'm one of the co-founders of DevelopNR, Building Better Developers. I'm also the founder of Envision QA, where we help businesses really analyze their business and understand if the software is working for them or they're working for their software. One example is if you find yourself doing more manual tasks than the software can help you with, we can help you walk through those process, build systems or apply systems in place to help you streamline your business, improve your performance and hopefully improve the bottom line. Good and bad this week, a little bit of a good and bad. It started getting warm, started getting nice, started feeling better. Then we got cold again and all that fun stuff with the rain. The other bad of that is because of all the rain in that rainy season, our driveway started to get washed out. The other good with that was the guy who came by when we first bought the house that surfaced our driveway happened to come around three days after we were just having the discussion of, hey, we probably need to do the driveway again this year and got it done for, it wasn't too cheap, but it's cheaper than replacing the driveway. This one, as I said, we're going to talk about basically automations and templates and things like that. We can go and we will talk about using software and applications and stuff like that, but this is really more about routine and things like that and making sure that you've got things in a situation that if you use them a lot, then you don't have to spend a lot of time on them. You can just like, boom, you're done and you keep on going. That's why I talk, probably a lot of this is more about templates and processes and procedures and things like that than actually writing code or anything like that. The first thing is think about the stuff that you do daily or maybe even weekly on a regular basis. For example, for my company, one of the things I do probably almost daily, definitely do every week, is we will write proposals for a wide range of stuff. And then another thing we do is we send statuses out. We send statuses to customers. And we do, like everybody, you do invoicing periodically. That's something that you may do daily, weekly, monthly, whatever it is. That's usually something you're counting kind of stuff you're probably going to do on a regular basis. And then I guess the other one is just sort of in a general sense is our marketing effort. So it's where we want to get our name in there. So there's all of these are very, it's very useful to have a template to them. So stepping back, like proposals. With a proposal, yes, every proposal is unique to some extent because it's going to be like a specific, almost always it's going to be a specific customer, so specific needs, specific requests, essentially responding to a specific RFP. However, there's a lot of boilerplate kind of stuff that we're going to use in any one of those that are things like, or there are things that really don't change from project to project. So it's stuff like, who are we? What do we do? How do we approach it? What is our, maybe like some of our values or maybe even as I've mentioned earlier, it's like maybe there's some like your secret sauce, like what do we bring to the table that's a differentiator from somebody else? Those are all excellent things to have as part of every single proposal that you put together. So we have a template that is basically like here it is and then I can go through and I can put in the specifics and a lot of that is even templated to some extent because it's things like, I know I'm always going to have a, like here's roughly, you know, restating what the project is and here's what the primary goals are. Then here's some of the, you know, breaking that down and like maybe some of the key milestones or something like that. Those things occur everywhere. So it helps to have a template not only just because you're just going to like reuse the same thing. It's not just copy and paste, but it is like to give yourself an outline. So when you sit down to do that process, it's easier for you to just sit down and just like bam, bam, bam. You go through the steps because you've always done it. You don't have to worry about it's early in the morning or late at night and I forgot this step or something like that. You just walk through it or, you know, and you can also tweak these things. So your templates can make you better because what you can do is you can look at how well that template, that approach works, that process works. And then you can say, ah, I wonder if I can improve it. You make some changes, you take a look at it and see if maybe that improves it. So that's like for proposals. For status, it's the same thing. And actually status, and I would say almost any email that you send out, there's things like, you know, you have a footer on an email, go ahead and use that signature to the email and like use it to spread around your company. Some, you know, a lot of places will be, it'll be maybe their mission statement or their vision. It used to be like contact information and then usually stuff like, you know, some little tagline or maybe a link. A lot of people like I do will put a link to their calendar or one of their scheduling things. So it's like, hey, if you want to schedule a call, here's an easier way to do it. I recommend that even if you're not just for yourself. These days, if you've got some sort of service or something like that, it's so much easier than somebody saying, hey, I'd like to talk to you. Let's schedule it back and forth a thousand times. And you finally land on something. Just say, hey, here's a link, pick a time that works for you and just make sure you got your stuff, you know, you know, put together yet another automation piece that you can do. The other one I want to talk about is general marketing and branding kind of stuff. Is we have, if you're, especially if you're in any kind of business that, you know, if you've got a side hustle, your regular business kind of stuff where you're interacting with customers or more importantly, potential customers, prospects of some sort, then it's going to help to have some things that are sort of your intro to your company flyers and things like that. And it's going to vary on what you are, but it's probably going to be things about like who you are, again, who you are, what's your value, what do you bring to the table, maybe, you know, current sales and deals and stuff like that. Maybe there's references. A lot of people will have like references from other customers that say, hey, you know, Michael's a great guy. I love working with him or something like that. These are all really like just, I think we overlook them sometimes is these are automations and templates and processes that allow us to have a consistent look and feel and approach of our company without having to do a whole lot. It's basically like do it, refine it, and then just like, here you go. I know one more thing before I pass it on to Michael, and I'm going to steal it from him because he mentioned this is because I mentioned that I sometimes suck at this, is organizing such things. Is when you go to do, when you've got all these templates and, you know, all of these things that you've built out, you need to have an organized way to look at it. Now, it can be helpful. You could be like me and there's like, I have all of these odd little mental journeys so I can follow through my stuff. But if I have to go look for one specific thing and I'm not on that journey, it can take me a while to get there. Thus, that's why I have somebody that now is like, that's part of her biggest job is organizing all of our crap is basically taking these documents and doing it in a way that a normal person that at any point can be able to navigate through versus it being, which worked for me. I will argue that it did work for me because it was like I was on this journey so I knew at every step where I was going to be. So I knew where I needed to have my stuff, my materials for it. So you may want to do it that way. There's nothing wrong with that because sometimes your, how you do it is the best way for you. So it's like, if that's how, if you have a process and you're here and this is what it looks like, then organize it that way. But it doesn't hurt to maybe, especially these days with all the digital links and stuff you can do is have it both ways. You can have it your way, just like McDonald's or whatever Burger King or whoever it was, that tagline, you can have it your way. But also you could actually build a structure that makes sense, just like we talked about way back with development. If you just have one folder and you just draw all your source of various types in there, it's easy to find it in a sense because it's in the one folder. But if you want to find a specific thing, it's really a pain because you have to look at maybe thousands of other folders. It's the same kind of thing. And I think for us as developers, maybe that makes more sense is realize that your business is sort of its own set of code and directories and folders. And if you build that out properly and look at any big business, you'll see those kinds of structures to steal those is go ahead and use that. And that will help you as well with your processes, your procedures and being able to execute them better. That was a lot. And so I'm sure Michael is going to have quite a lot here. He's been waiting, he's been taking notes, he's been like, now it's his turn. Unless I cut him off. Thanks Rob. So you've already kind of touched on, you know, using automation and templates for invoicing strategies, proposals, marketing, you touched on email. Let me take it a little bit further into the branding world of things, because, you know, I'm currently our social media guy for developer. I cut the videos, I post them on social media, things like that. And I'm actually going to kind of walk through how I use a form of automation and templates to streamline that process, which used to take hours into a smaller time set of a couple hours. You know, sometimes it's took a day, and now it takes maybe about two hours because we still have to write our content for our blogs. So initially, the first thing we do, if you're doing any type of social media or branding for your company, you're going to want to post on social media. There's lots of different things you can do like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, X, whatever. But essentially, what you're going to want to do is you kind of want to get into a routine of doing that. So you have to automate or create a schedule for posting out your social media, because you don't want to just do it once and forget about. I'm bad about that with Envision QA, because I'm too busy working in the business than on the business. But when it comes to doing things the right way or the way you should to stay up on the rankings within Google or with your customers to keep them engaged, you want to try to get into a routine of, you know, use your calendar, set up a calendar reminder that, hey, I need to post on Monday, Wednesday, Fridays. Initially, if you're not new to social media, do things where you stagger your postings. You know, do it like in the mornings one day, lunchtime one day, afternoon one day. Kind of get in a routine to see where the feedback comes in. This is kind of interesting because if you are in the world of WordPress or other types of website management tools, you can actually download little apps and things, reminders, where you can schedule these things out to help you automate the process. Years ago, we used something. It's not Calendary. That's the scheduling tool that we use today for calls. But we used one for it was Buffer. So we used it to essentially go into a calendar. We would post the days we want our content to go out. We would put links to our blogs and we would set it and forget it. It would post out for us. We would spend one day doing it instead of trying to remember, oh, I got to go every day and do that. There are still tools out there and sites that do that. But because the social media sites constantly keep changing things, they break a lot. So you still have a little bit of a manual process. Even with the podcasts that we push out, sometimes we run into issues where the tools we use to push our podcasts out to all the different sites where podcasts go. Sometimes that fails and we need to catch that and then we have to make sure that we still get our podcasts out in a timely manner. Now, for those of you, because this is a developer podcast, if you are a developer, we like to write code. So one of the other things you can touch on is instead of going out and looking for these things to help you automate, you can write your own tools to automate your own templates and social media posts and things of that nature. So, well, like Rob said, you can use the existing tools like Word and that they have templates where you can format the way you want it and then you reuse them. You could also create your own turnkey solution with software where you could basically design what it is that you want that is custom for your company and then you essentially push a button and it spits out what you want. The other thing with that is it's something that you could possibly even sell or license. So as you're building your business and you're working within your business and looking at these automation template things, sometimes you run into things that are beneficial to others. And if you can get it to work for yourself, throw it out there. You might make some more money on this. I think was it Gary Vanderchuck or Tim Ferriss? One of them did something where, or maybe someone they interviewed, created a couple WordPress plugins that were very useful to them to help them with their business. And they just put them out there and they sold like, you know, they sold like a ball fighter. So these are, I know I'm kind of getting off the topic of automation template, but it comes from that. So if you are doing something that helps yourself, your business, and be more productive, these are also opportunities that you can use to essentially brand or even outsource some of your tools to others and make additional income within your business. Yeah, and I think that's a, that does take us a little off topic, but I think that is a good thing to consider is that there may be not only a benefit to you in doing your, with your processes, your procedures, your templates, and things like that, but it may be benefit to other people. And there are businesses that have been built off of the business that they did, taking their tools and moving that out to use for somebody else. So there's always that secondary, you know, effect, or maybe it's further down it, but also additional effect that you can have from doing your processes and your procedures as you do it. I will want to note that when you're doing automated stuff, particularly if you can, if you're going to code it, one of the things that if you can put some sort of wiggle room into your consistency, it does help a little bit these days because there's things like, you know, if you want to post, it's one thing if you want to do your post like at noon every day, like bam, bam, bam, at noon. And that's what we do with the, like the podcast and the, all of our releases, they go out at certain time, certain day, because you know, we're going to be available then. But if you're doing general marketing stuff, like, Hey, here's an article. Hey, here's a reference to something we did last week. It helps to have, to like move that around a little bit, partially because then the social stuff will not like kick you out and say, this is just a bot. And even other people will say, Hey, maybe this is like, no, it feels more human because it's not like, bam, every day at the same time. I don't know how much that adds, but for some reason, all of us, even though we know that we can schedule stuff somewhat randomly, we still feel a little better knowing that, oh, it was a little early, it was a little late. So maybe there's a real, it gives us the illusion that maybe there's a human behind this whole thing. And it's not just some bot conspiracy that's trying to get us to buy whatever the heck it is we're trying to, you know, that's being sold. But you, you know, you want that consistency because you want people to be able to say like, Hey, if I go in Monday, I'm going to see new content from this, or I'm going to see an update, or I'm going to get a newsletter, or whatever it is. But it also helps to, you know, not get, sometimes it's better to be like good, but not perfect. That's all I'm saying on those. Challenge of the week with this one is pick a process, really anything. And it could be as simple as like sending mail. Actually, I had this discussion earlier today, it was maybe what I do this week is actually reading mail. Years ago, I built tons and tons of filters, but I've gone through, I've got a different mail client and stuff like that. So a lot of that stuff is gone by the wayside. I still have some, but not many. So for example, here, what I'm going to do is, I'm going to look at one of the things we do all the time is email. We see email, we have to process email. So I think what I'm going to start doing is go back to what I did before, like maybe each day, I'll take a look at the emails that come in. And for those that I can do some sort of automated process, whether it's just throw it in the trash or more importantly, I think what I want to do is start taking stuff that is customers and you want to make sure it goes to the right customer folder. And I think even to make sure that if I get one from a customer, that I will forward it into like one of my, you know, like my bug tracking tool that I use and things like that, my to-do list. So it'll be like, instead of just my inbox with email, which with my email, which is, it used to be very good, but you know, we get, it grows. And then the next thing we know, it's like, okay, our inbox is too big. Now I do, you know, I religiously basically, I clean my inbox on a regular basis. So it actually stays pretty small. But it does have some times it'll distract me because I don't check out email all the time. And if somebody says, hey, you need to check your mail, it'll take me a minute because that's like, I'll pop up with all these things and I'll run through and process my mail real quick while I'm there. Which is okay for me, because time wise, that's like a good batch. It's like, okay, I got to be here. I can just like crank this stuff out because it's not, you know, it may be 10 or 20 messages, but you can like usually go through those pretty quick and be like, don't need it, don't need it, don't need it, don't need it. Okay, leave it, leave it, leave it. And then I'm, you know, I'm onto the thing I need to, but it can also distract me from whatever it is that I'm doing. Particularly if the person's right there, I'm more likely to get there and be like, oh, I'm going to look at that email. If they're not there, I may be like 30 minutes later, I'm like lost in some rabbit hole on some email that I like wished I hadn't looked at right then. So that's your challenge is pick a process and how can you improve it? How can you automate it? Or how can you take stuff you do on a regular basis? For example, like say a status, maybe there's a status report. If you haven't already look at it and say, all right, well, what do I always include? Here's, you know, I probably always have like an intro and an outro or a summary or something like that that I can, maybe I can take those and just be like, here's my bulletproof points of here's the stuff I did, here's what I'm going to do. Here's the summary, something like that. So that you at least have that outline and see how that works for you. Start to, I think if you do pick just something, ideally pick something every day, five minutes, what is it? Just like look at your day. What do I spend a lot of time on? Or at the end of the day, what did I spend a lot of time on? And then is there a way that I can create a word document or a notepad thing or a calendar reminder or whatever that will help me do that better in the future? Let's see how that goes for you. One thing I would actually challenge you to do, not an official challenge, just a side one, is to put on there sending regular emails to us because why not? Because if you're going to automate it, let's go ahead and do it. Let us know info at developernor.com what any comments you have, any suggestions, recommendations, things like that. We are always looking for feedback. We're always looking for ways that we can become better, build a better podcast from these better developers, all of you people that are out there that are especially the regular listeners, things like that. I mean, everybody's welcome, but if you spent some time, you probably have an opinion and we would love for you to share it with us so we can utilize that to be better. Because if you don't, then what is it? Silence is death or silence is acceptance or whatever. There's all these mean, the horrible memes about silence, but it's basically, but silence doesn't mean, it means that we're not going to be able to get better. We're asking you to be active participants and we will be active listeners and make sure that we help you out and validate that and provide you with better content. And if you're the only one that ever sends us an email, then great. You will be able to have your own personal customized podcast, basically based on your feedback. You can also reach out to us, leave us comments wherever you get podcasts. You can check us out on the Develop a Nerd channel on YouTube. Go to developernor.com and leave us, we've got contact form, you can leave comments on any of our blog articles or anything like that. Anywhere, basically anywhere you see our name, there's probably a way to give us feedback and we would love for you to do so. We'd love to hear from you. And right now we would love for you to go out there and have yourself a great day, great week, and we will talk to you next time. Thank you for listening to Building Better Developers, the Develop a Nerd podcast. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon, anywhere that you can find podcasts. We are there. And remember, just a little bit of effort every day ends up adding into great momentum and great success.