Detailed Notes
In the Building Better Businesses season of the Building Better Developers podcast, hosts Rob Broadhead and Michael Meloche delve into the power of business automation and templates in streamlining operations. This episode highlights the importance of optimizing daily workflows to save time, increase efficiency, and maintain consistency.
*Read More*: https://develpreneur.com/business-automation-and-templates-how-to-streamline-your-workflow/
*Practical Challenge: Improve One Business Process with Automation and Templates*
To help listeners implement these insights, Rob and Michael propose a challenge: pick one daily or weekly process and identify ways to improve it using business automation and templates. Whether it's filtering emails, setting up a proposal template, or automating social media posts, small optimizations can lead to significant time savings in the long run.
*Stay Connected: Join the Develpreneur Community*
We invite you to join our community and share your coding journey with us. Whether you’re a seasoned developer or just starting, there’s always room to learn and grow together. Contact us at [email protected] with your questions, feedback, or suggestions for future episodes. Together, let’s continue exploring the exciting world of software development.
*Additional Resources*
* Automation and Batching Tasks for Improved Productivity (https://develpreneur.com/automation-and-batching-tasks-for-improved-productivity/) * Three Impressive Achievements We Can All Do (https://develpreneur.com/three-impressive-achievements-we-can-all-do/) * Rinse And Repeat – A template pattern (https://develpreneur.com/rinse-and-repeat-a-template-pattern/) * Leverage Technology And Automation For A High Performing Business (https://develpreneur.com/leverage-technology-and-automation-for-a-high-performing-business/)
*Follow-us on:*
* https://develpreneur.com/ * https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZOuFN_LhczvGyT2KSItH_g/featured * https://facebook.com/Develpreneur * https://twitter.com/develpreneur * http://linkedin.com/develpreneur
Transcript Text
[Music] I may have people coming in continuing to Stage so howdy you everybody we are recording if you didn't know if we didn't know I guess is really should be but uh let's see I'm GNA do a little here I want to De oh I don't pop up there I want to take this thing and I want to make sure there's nothing there good kill him so we got uh last two were hiring talent and scaling with contractors employees ease uh we did elevator pitch overcoming barriers uh business finance management and the kickoff so we're on seven and8 this week what did we we had something I could find it did you write it in your notes or on your board I probably did well good thing about like all right I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna whine a little bit um it's like so we have a we're staging the house and the real estate agent came in it's like okay well here's all the stuff you got to move and stuff like that and she said you know look at my office of course she was like I don't know what we're going to do here but I know you got to work which to me is like okay then you can't touch anything so clean everything off all this stuff and one of the things she said do you you know do you need the Whiteboard I'm like yeah I use a whiteboard all the time and so she's like okay well Natalie heard I was going to take the Whiteboard down and then she just assumed I didn't do it so at the last minute I come in after they'd staged it and I was like that lady took my whiteboard down we we had a discussion and agreed so she was it and I oh no I did and I was like so I was not prepared for it and so whatever I had you know I'd already I think I'd already erased everything off of there so I I don't have my board anymore so got my whining out of the way um and I don't know where I have notes I don't think I wrote that down so I thought I put it in slack let me see if I let me go look real quick did iwhere looking for that uh so I went to a lunch meeting this week and uh there was a lady from Jackson State talking about Ai and business and it made me think so we already talked about Skilling the contractor's employee and hiring Talent one topic that I thought maybe we could discuss is not so much um like hiring but maybe task handoff or using AI or virtual assistance to streamline your process so you can focus on the things that you need to focus on and not basically do the busy work yeah it feels like it's not a I don't know [Music] um it's probably not a we can do AI everybody likes AI so I guess we'll do an AI we can do an AI discussion and soort like some ways you can leverage AI I mean that was what n and I were talking yesterday we were because we're looking at we're doing branding and Stu because I gave her another title basically I'm like okay I want you doing like media marketing and stuff I want because that was part of what we talked about from the start is for her to do some of the branding and marketing and things and so she said well I actually had a chat with I had a discussion with chat GPT about uh Google basically about SEO she's about like you know rankings and Google and stuff like that and I'm like okay well that's pretty cool I was like so what did it come up with and it did come up with a couple things that you know have I didn't know because Google changes their stuff period I odically but um I was like you know there's like it's not bad to have some of those where you're like okay I'm going to throw some ideas out there and see what it comes back with because sometimes it'll G it's like everything else it's another voice so um it's not a bad way to go about stuff it's like yeah I I don't use it as much as I probably should but particularly like uh meeting summaries and some of those kinds of things it's actually pretty darn useful and then you get into the whole um the like doing tasks that are repetitive I mean there's some things now there's a lot of stuff you can throw at AI that can uh can definitely speed your work up especially the repetitive stuff so yeah I think we'll do Ai and then oh what's another what's another what's a good one I wondering if there's something else we can do that's sort of like a followup because we've already done we've talked about like handing off tasks right we've already done like TR remember you already you just list them all out and I've already forgot them all yeah I accidentally oh that's email not my where did it go uh there it is I think we've done something about like using we did uh scaling with contractors and employees okay so I think that's uh that was growing your business so that we didn't really get into this part of it that's why I brought it up because uh one of the things that they were leveraging in this class was talking about like why don't you use it for some of your HR tasks like building a a company handbook or like a code in conduct or things like that like where you would spend money or hire someone to do this and you don't really do it again for a while why not leverage AI to get you 90% there uh and then hire somebody if you need to but you know use it for the beginning and it looks like I am really cutting out is my audio okay your audio is okay but you're like you're jumping around you're Max Head rooming a little bit there so hang on let me turn off this light that might help is that better this okay yeah you're not like it's not jumping as much that's odd that it would be a light oh that reminds me one more light on it that's the light yeah that's a light I have all these lights I might as well make use of them okay so and let's get through the Ai Ai and just general let's talk about because we haven't really let's go back to like in then General automation like some of the things Automation and templates let's say because actually I think AI will sort of feed into that or actually let's reverse those too let's go Automation and templates first and then we'll follow then the next one will be Ai and sort of using AI to build that and that's like you said like your employee handbook and crap like that which was funny you mentioned that because that's something we're building right now is just like huh I wonder what this is look like and most the employee it's like well okay grandfather didn't grandfather didn't grandfather didn't exist when you guys came here is that for for the other one or for the your current one oh that's for this is for RB Consulting so we don't have an employee guide we just like I always give them like a few documents and stuff like that it's like all right we're going to build a handbook and stuff like we had a handbook but it was virtual and it was like it was me chasing stuff down like a you know rabid squirrel trying to figure out where all those documents went even though I had a folder that they should all be in stuff would grow and move and so that's a good thing we'll talk about Automation and templates because that will help I think immensely and then we'll go into Ai and so we'll do a little three and two and go what well I was just going to say real quick before we do it um that also could lead into another topic of filing and managing your paperwork um yeah we may that may even be something we do here that may one to talk about here sort of like a file system or something like managing all that crap because I think that is part of the automation because it's not necessarily just uh like computer program automation but just yourself having a very automatic like this is what I do this is how I do it this is where it goes that kind of stuff okay we'll go back to this we'll do our little three and a two well hello and welcome back we are building better developers we are develop andur we are back for another episode this time we're going to talk about uh templates and automation and some things like that in your business uh 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 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 andur 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 your 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 your brand what is it that you bring that brings the most value and then we helped 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 is 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 your best foot forward with your customers and leverage that major investment that most companies have these days in technology now good things and bad things uh see 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've talked about a little bit but we're downsizing we're moving somewhere else and so we've we've had people come in and now they've staged the 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 it's like it's 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 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 have had for like is all my little like Comfort things and all that kind of stuff that like ERS my workspace to me is sort of like you know 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 M I'm one of the co-founders of developer building better developers I'm also the founder of Envision QA where we help businesses really analyze their software and understand if the software is working for them or their 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 uh little bit of a good and bad uh it started getting warm started getting nice started feeling better and then we got cold again and all that fun stuff with the rain and the other bad of that is because of all the r we're in that rainy season uh our driveway started to get washed out so uh the other good with that was the guy who came by when we first bought the house that uh 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 uh it wasn't too cheap but it's cheaper than replacing the driveway so good and bad so this one as I said we're going to talk about basically like automations and templates and things like that and I don't want to get we can go and we will talk about like 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 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 and that's why I talk like probably a lot of this is more about like templates and processes and procedures and things like that than actually like writing code or anything like that the first thing is think about the stuff that you do daily or maybe even weekly like on a regular basis for example for my company one of the things I've 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 know 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 so those are a couple PL 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 out 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 the proposal proposal yes every proposal is unique to some extent because it's going to be like a specific you almost always it's going to be a specific customer so specific needs specific request 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 and there or they're 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 to like maybe some of the key Milestones or something like that those things occur everywhere so it helps to have a of 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 and you can also tweak these 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 your company some you know a lot of places will be it'll be maybe their mission statement or their Vision uh it usually 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 calendly 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 sign of 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 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 you know put together yet another automation piece that you can do the other one I want to talk about is uh 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 customer 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 them something like that these are all really like just I 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 and know one more thing before I pass on to Michael I'm going to steal it from him because he mentioned this is because I mention that I I sometimes suck at this um is or 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 basing 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 I will you know 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 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 whatever Burger King whoever it was that tagline you can have it your way but also you could actually like build a structure that makes sense just like we talked about way back with development if you're if you just have like one folder and you just throw 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 ah 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 uh let me take it a little bit further into The Branding world of things because you know I'm currently are social media guy for developer Nur 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 site of a couple hours you know sometimes this took a day 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 um 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 cuz 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 you know up on the rankings within Google or with your uh 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 um initially if you're not new to social media do things where you stagger your were postings you know do it like at in the mornings one day um lunchtime One Day Afternoon one day kind of getting a routine to see what where the feedback comes in this is kind of interesting because if you are in the world of Wordpress or uh other types of website management tools you can actually download Little apps and things and reminders where you can schedule these things out to help you automate the process years ago we used uh something uh was it's not calendary that's the scheduling tool that we use today for calls but uh we used one for uh it was buffer so we used it to uh 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 um 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 uh even with the podcasts that we push out sometimes we run into issues where the tools we use to push our podcast 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 podcast out in a timely manner um now for those of you because this is a developer or podcast uh 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 um 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 kind of format the way you want it and then you reuse them you could also create your own TurnKey solution with soft Weare where you can 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 and 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 uh what it Gary Vander chuk or Tim Ferris one of them did something where uh or maybe someone they interviewed created a couple uh 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 wildfire 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 your self your business and be more productive the 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 that does take us a little off Tropic 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 uh secondary you know effect or maybe it's further down but also additional effect that you can have from doing your processes and your procedures as you do it I I would want to uh note that when you're doing automated stuff um 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 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 artic 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 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 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 newslet 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 uh with this one is pick a process really anything and it could be a simple is like sending mail actually I had this discussion ear day which 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 u mail client and stuff like that so a lot of that stuff has gone by the wayside I still have some but not many so for an example here what I'm going to do is as 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 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 uh more importantly I think what I want to do is start taking stuff that is customers and you know 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 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 uh but it does have sometimes that'll distract me because I don't check 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 you know run through and process my mail real quick while I'm there uh which is okay for me because TimeWise that's like a good batch it's like okay 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 on to 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 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 a 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 it's a side one is to put on there sending regular emails to us us because why not because if you're going to automate it let's go ahead and do it let us know info@ developer.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 you know what is it silence is death or silence is acceptance or whatever it is there's all these mean the horrible memes about silence but it's basically but silence doesn't mean 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 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 Podcast you can check us out on the develop and ner Channel out on YouTube go to developer.com and you leave us we have a contact form you leave comments on any of our blog articles or anything like that uh 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 a great week and we will talk to you next time bonus material so one of the things we touched on um or at least I touched on a little bit was the social media like buffer and things like that there's a lot of tools out there for social media marketing and scheduling uh which are very helpful Rob touched on calendary uh so if you need to schedule meetings with your customers instead of having that email back and forth of when there's availability calendar is really good because you could just integrate it with your website they can go to your page and it syncs with your calendar so if you have time blocked off that time won't be available for them to schedule on your calendar uh be careful with it though if you have the wrong tier you might not be able to create enough buckets for that I found that out briefly uh but it is a very good way to help organize your calendar with your customers uh and then I guess lastly the other thing I would touch on cuz you briefly touched on it is if you're going to go through and you're going to start building templates out be careful where you put them don't just build it put it in a folder and forget about it uh because then you're going to have to go through the process again so if you're going to spend the time to do it do it right and make sure you put it in a location that you can always find it uh and also make sure you back it up because you don't want to have it on a hard drive on the computer that dies or you accidentally sell and and you lose it um redundancy is probably the best thing you could do if you're going to start automating things make sure you have backups wow there's actually couple the backups is actually really is one that you threw that in there that totally threw me off because I was just this last week I've got like another little uh add one of these little like mini external drives and I was basic I was literally backing up Dropbox into this you know little portable drive because I'm thinking like hey if I'm going to be out somewhere that I don't have connectivity and this is sort of goes back to what I talked about earlier with my you know good thing bad thing is that like I want to be more I'm working on being much more able to be remote all the time and one of the things that I have to do then is that means I want to be able to be in a situation with my laptop I can actually be literally disconnected for hours maybe and get work done and one of the things I need to do is there's a lot of stuff I have in Dropbox this is not a tell them to like send money because we're they're not an affiliator anyway so we're not making money by mentioning this but we'd love for them to send us money if you join up and do that but I use that and so you know I was pushing stuff off to that and this is Again part of sort of that automation was one of the things that I've run into when I try to go completely disconnected as a developer is there it's too easy to use cdns and stuff like that is use these things so when you build your software you don't actually have that stuff local it just goes and hits it somewhere and it's awesome when you're connected all the time which basically if you're like me you are almost all the time and then you go to build something you're like crap I can't build it right now because it's trying to get this stupid CSS library that yeah I mean it's not that stupid because I need it it's critical to my application but I'm really don't need it right now I would love to be able to just ignore it but you know I it's like now I got to go like turn everything off and say don't you know don't do it right now or pull it all local which is what we should probably do anyways so I I think just I want to double down on that a little bit is the the organ if you're going to go build a template make sure that you also use that template on a regular basis that you like get yourself into that habit and put it somewhere where it's like okay I'm going to go grab this and I'm going to use it and even if you're like me like like the proposals I have proposals I'll sit down and like a grammarly I'll crank through it that way I've got like I'm I've got it you know correcting all my spelling and grammar and all that kind of crap but also then I've got a whole history of these things which is really useful because one now I've got you know dozens or hundreds of templates I can go back to one and go like oh yeah this is basically it's pretty close and I can take this and I can more quickly get the task done that I need to uh but also it's like I know where to go so I have that like you know whether you have it as a link on your desktop or maybe it's a tab that's always open on your browser or whatever it depends on what you you choose your own poison but it is nice to have stuff in that way or if you're somebody just like you put crap on on your desktop and your desktop is full of all these like links and all that kind of you do you but whatever works for you so that you do make use of these things don't put your time into it and then throw it away and never look at it again because then you just you were busy but not productive you did a great job you pulled up you created all this useful stuff but if you don't use it it's actually not useful so you didn't create useful stuff you created useless stuff congratulations and I say that I say you but I'm pointing the fingers at me because I have done that on more than if occasions where I put a lot of time into something and go crap not really going to use that so that also go actually okay bonus bonus if you're building software if you're building a solution for somebody and you're thinking hey this is a great thing think about stuff like that where you thought it was a great thing you built it for yourself and then you never touched it again so before you get all like ah these customers need to use this maybe the idea that you had was not a very good one I speak from experience I also speak from somebody who is ready to wrap this one up we got to we got to move on thank you for your time uh feedback as always is welcome we will be back almost immediately in our case basically immediately for the next episode uh for you guys you may have to wait a little while have yourself a great day and we will be here talking to you ready for our next conversation live not AI have a good one by bye [Music]
Transcript Segments
[Music]
I may have people coming in continuing
to Stage so howdy you everybody we are
recording if you didn't
know if we didn't know I guess is really
should be but uh let's see I'm GNA do a
little here I want to De oh I don't pop
up there I want to take this thing and I
want to make sure there's nothing there
good kill
him so we got uh last two were hiring
talent and scaling with contractors
employees ease uh we did elevator pitch
overcoming barriers uh business finance
management and the kickoff so we're on
seven and8 this week what did we we had
something I could find it did you write
it in your notes or on your board I
probably did
well good thing about like all right I'm
gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna whine a little
bit um it's like so we have a we're
staging the house and the real estate
agent came in it's like okay well here's
all the stuff you got to move and stuff
like that and she said you know look at
my office of course she was like I don't
know what we're going to do here but I
know you got to work which to me is like
okay then you can't touch
anything so clean everything off all
this stuff and one of the things she
said do you you know do you need the
Whiteboard I'm like yeah I use a
whiteboard all the time and so she's
like okay well Natalie heard I was going
to take the Whiteboard down and then she
just assumed I didn't do it so at the
last minute I come in after they'd
staged it and I was like that lady took
my whiteboard down we we had a
discussion and agreed so she was it and
I oh no I did and I was like so I was
not prepared for it and so whatever I
had you know I'd already I think I'd
already erased everything off of there
so I I don't have my board anymore so
got my whining out of the way um and I
don't know where I have notes I don't
think I wrote that down so I thought I
put it in slack let me see if I let me
go look real quick did iwhere looking
for that uh so I went to a lunch meeting
this week and uh there was a lady from
Jackson State talking about Ai and
business and it made me think so we
already talked about Skilling the
contractor's employee and hiring Talent
one topic that I thought maybe we could
discuss is not so much um like hiring
but maybe task handoff or using AI or
virtual assistance to streamline your
process so you can focus on the things
that you need to focus on and
not basically do the busy
work yeah it feels like it's not a I
don't know
[Music]
um it's probably not a we can do AI
everybody likes AI so I guess we'll do
an AI we can do an AI discussion and
soort like some ways you can leverage AI
I mean that was what n and I were
talking yesterday we were because we're
looking at we're doing
branding and Stu because I gave her
another title basically I'm like okay I
want you doing like media marketing and
stuff I want because that was part of
what we talked about from the start is
for her to do some of the branding and
marketing and things and so she said
well I actually had a chat with I had a
discussion with chat GPT about uh Google
basically about
SEO she's about like you know rankings
and Google and stuff like that and I'm
like okay well that's pretty cool I was
like so what did it come up with and it
did come up with a couple things that
you know have I didn't know because
Google changes their stuff period I
odically but um I was like you know
there's like it's not bad to have some
of those where you're like okay I'm
going to throw some ideas out there and
see what it comes back with because
sometimes it'll G it's like everything
else it's another voice so um it's not a
bad way to go about stuff it's like yeah
I I don't use it as much as I probably
should but particularly like uh meeting
summaries and some of those kinds of
things it's actually pretty darn useful
and then you get into the whole um
the like doing tasks that are repetitive
I mean there's some things now there's a
lot of stuff you can throw at AI that
can uh can definitely speed your work up
especially the repetitive stuff so yeah
I think we'll do Ai and
then oh what's another what's another
what's a good one I wondering if there's
something else we can do that's sort of
like a followup because we've already
done we've talked about like handing off
tasks right we've already done like TR
remember you already you just list them
all out and I've already forgot them all
yeah I accidentally oh that's email not
my where did it go uh there it is I
think we've done something about like
using we did uh scaling with contractors
and employees okay so I think that's uh
that was growing your business so that
we didn't really get into this part of
it that's why I brought it up because uh
one of the things that they were
leveraging in this class was talking
about like why don't you use it for some
of your HR tasks like building a a
company handbook or like a code in
conduct or things like that like where
you would spend money or hire someone to
do this and you don't really do it again
for a while why not leverage AI to get
you 90% there uh and then hire somebody
if you need to but you know use it for
the beginning and it looks like I am
really cutting out is my audio okay your
audio is okay but you're like you're
jumping around you're Max Head rooming a
little bit there so hang on let me turn
off this light that might help
is that
better
this okay yeah you're not like it's not
jumping as much that's odd that it would
be a light oh that reminds me one more
light on
it that's the light yeah that's a
light I have all these lights I might as
well make use of them
okay
so and
let's get through the Ai Ai and just
general let's talk about because we
haven't really let's go back to like in
then General automation like some of the
things Automation and templates let's
say because actually I think AI will
sort of feed into that or
actually let's reverse those too let's
go Automation and templates first and
then we'll follow then the next one will
be Ai and sort of using AI to build that
and that's like you said like your
employee handbook and crap like that
which was funny you mentioned that
because that's something we're building
right now is just like huh I wonder what
this is look like and most the employee
it's like well okay grandfather didn't
grandfather didn't
grandfather didn't exist when you guys
came
here is that for for the other one or
for the your current one oh that's for
this is for RB Consulting
so we don't have an employee guide we
just like I always give them like a few
documents and stuff like that it's like
all right we're going to build a
handbook and stuff like we had a
handbook but it was virtual and it was
like it was me chasing stuff down like a
you know rabid squirrel trying to figure
out where all those documents went even
though I had a folder that they should
all be in stuff would grow and move
and so that's a good thing we'll talk
about Automation and templates because
that will help I think immensely and
then we'll go into Ai and so we'll do a
little three and two and go what well I
was just going to say real quick before
we do it um that also could lead into
another topic of filing and managing
your
paperwork um yeah we may that may even
be something we do here that may one to
talk about here sort of like a file
system or something like managing all
that crap because I think that is part
of the automation because it's not
necessarily just uh like computer
program automation but just yourself
having a very automatic like this is
what I do this is how I do it this is
where it goes that kind of stuff okay
we'll go back to this we'll do our
little three and a two well hello and
welcome back we are building better
developers we are develop andur we are
back for another episode this time we're
going to talk about uh templates and
automation and some things like that in
your business uh 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 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 andur 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 your 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
your brand what is it that you bring
that brings the most value and then we
helped 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 is 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 your best foot forward with your
customers and leverage that major
investment that most companies have
these days in
technology now good things and bad
things uh see 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've talked about a
little bit but we're downsizing we're
moving somewhere else and so we've we've
had people come in and now they've
staged the 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 it's like it's 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 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 have
had for like is all my little like
Comfort things and all that kind of
stuff that like ERS my workspace to me
is sort of like you know 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 M I'm one of the co-founders of
developer building better developers I'm
also the founder of Envision QA where we
help
businesses really analyze their software
and understand if the software is
working for them or their 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 uh little bit of a good and
bad uh it started getting warm started
getting nice started feeling better and
then we got cold again and all that fun
stuff with the rain and the other bad of
that is because of all the r we're in
that rainy season uh our driveway
started to get washed out so uh the
other good with that was the guy who
came by when we first bought the house
that uh 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 uh it
wasn't too cheap but it's cheaper than
replacing the driveway so good and
bad so this one as I said we're going to
talk about basically like automations
and templates and things like that and I
don't want to get we can go and we will
talk about like 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 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 and that's why I talk like
probably a lot of this is more about
like templates and processes and
procedures and things like that than
actually like writing code or anything
like that the first thing is think about
the stuff that you do daily or maybe
even weekly like on a regular basis for
example for my company one of the things
I've 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
know 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 so those are a couple PL
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 out 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 the proposal
proposal yes every proposal is unique to
some extent because it's going to be
like a specific you almost always it's
going to be a specific customer so
specific needs specific request
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
and there or they're 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
to like maybe some of the key Milestones
or something like that those things
occur everywhere so it helps to have a
of 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 and you
can also tweak these 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 your company some you know a lot of
places will be it'll be maybe their
mission statement or their Vision uh it
usually 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 calendly 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 sign of
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 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 you know put together yet
another automation piece that you can do
the other one I want to talk about is uh
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 customer
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 them something like that these are
all really like just I 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 and know one more
thing before I pass on to Michael I'm
going to steal it from him because he
mentioned this is because I mention that
I I sometimes suck at this um is or
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 basing 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 I will you
know 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 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 whatever Burger
King whoever it was that tagline you can
have it your way but also you could
actually like build a structure that
makes sense just like we talked about
way back with development if you're if
you just have like one folder and you
just throw 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 ah 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 uh let me take it a
little bit further into The Branding
world of things because you know I'm
currently are social media guy for
developer Nur 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 site of a couple hours you know
sometimes this took a day 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 um
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 cuz 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 you
know up on the rankings within Google or
with your uh 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
um initially if you're not new to social
media do things where you stagger your
were postings you know do it like at in
the mornings one day um lunchtime One
Day Afternoon one day kind of getting a
routine to see what where the feedback
comes in this is kind of interesting
because if you are in the world of
Wordpress or uh other types of website
management tools you can actually
download Little apps and things and
reminders where you can schedule these
things out to help you automate the
process years ago we used uh something
uh was it's not calendary that's the
scheduling tool that we use today for
calls but uh we used one for uh it was
buffer so we used it to uh 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 um 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 uh even
with the podcasts that we push out
sometimes we run into issues where the
tools we use to push our podcast 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 podcast out in a
timely
manner um now for those of you because
this is a developer or podcast uh 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 um 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 kind of format
the way you want it and then you reuse
them you could also create your own
TurnKey solution with soft Weare where
you can 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 and 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 uh what it Gary Vander
chuk or Tim Ferris one of them did
something where uh or maybe someone they
interviewed created a couple uh
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
wildfire 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 your
self your business and be more
productive
the 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
that does take us a little off Tropic
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 uh secondary you know effect
or maybe it's further down but also
additional effect that you can have from
doing your processes and your procedures
as you do it I I would want to uh note
that when you're doing automated
stuff um 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 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 artic 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 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 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 newslet 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 uh with this
one is pick a process really anything
and it could be a simple is like sending
mail actually I had this discussion ear
day which 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 u mail
client and stuff like that so a lot of
that stuff has gone by the wayside I
still have some but not many so for an
example here what I'm going to do is as
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 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 uh more
importantly I think what I want to do is
start taking stuff that is customers and
you know 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 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 uh but it does have
sometimes that'll distract me because I
don't check 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 you know run through and
process my mail real quick while I'm
there uh which is okay for me because
TimeWise that's like a good batch it's
like okay 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 on to
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 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 a 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 it's a side
one is to put on there sending regular
emails to us us because why not because
if you're going to automate it let's go
ahead and do it let us know info@
developer.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 you know what is it
silence is death or silence is
acceptance or whatever it is there's all
these mean the horrible memes about
silence but it's basically but silence
doesn't mean means that we're not going
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will be active listeners and make sure
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to go out there and have yourself a
great day a great week and we will talk
to you next
time bonus material
so one of the things we touched on um or
at least I touched on a little bit was
the social media like buffer and things
like that there's a lot of tools out
there for social media marketing and
scheduling uh which are very helpful Rob
touched on calendary uh so if you need
to schedule meetings with your customers
instead of having that email back and
forth of when there's availability
calendar is really good because you
could just integrate it with your
website they can go to your page and it
syncs with your calendar so if you have
time blocked off that time won't be
available for them to schedule on your
calendar uh be careful with it though if
you have the wrong tier you might not be
able to create enough buckets for that I
found that out briefly uh but it is a
very good way to help organize your
calendar with your customers uh and then
I guess lastly the other thing I would
touch on cuz you briefly touched on it
is if you're going to go through and
you're going to start building templates
out be careful where you put them don't
just build it put it in a folder and
forget about it uh because then you're
going to have to go through the process
again so if you're going to spend the
time to do it do it right and make sure
you put it in a location that you can
always find it uh and also make sure you
back it up because you don't want to
have it on a hard drive on the computer
that dies or you accidentally sell and
and you lose it um redundancy is
probably the best thing you could do if
you're going to start automating things
make sure you have
backups wow there's actually couple the
backups is actually really is one that
you threw that in there that totally
threw me off because I was just this
last week I've got like another little
uh add one of these little like mini
external drives and I was basic I was
literally backing up Dropbox into this
you know little portable drive because
I'm thinking like hey if I'm going to be
out somewhere that I don't have
connectivity and this is sort of goes
back to what I talked about earlier with
my you know good thing bad thing is that
like I want to be more I'm working on
being much more able to be remote all
the time and one of the things that I
have to do then is that means I want to
be able to be in a situation with my
laptop I can actually be literally
disconnected for hours maybe and get
work done and one of the things I need
to do is there's a lot of stuff I have
in Dropbox this is not a tell them to
like send money because we're they're
not an affiliator anyway so we're not
making money by mentioning this but we'd
love for them to send us money if you
join up and do that but I use that and
so you know I was pushing stuff off to
that and this is Again part of sort of
that automation was one of the things
that I've run into when I try to go
completely disconnected as a developer
is there it's too easy to use cdns and
stuff like that is use these things so
when you build your software you don't
actually have that stuff local it just
goes and hits it somewhere and it's
awesome when you're connected all the
time which basically if you're like me
you are almost all the time and then you
go to build something you're like crap I
can't build it right now because it's
trying to get this stupid CSS library
that yeah I mean it's not that stupid
because I need it it's critical to my
application but I'm really don't need it
right now I would love to be able to
just ignore it but you know I it's like
now I got to go like turn everything off
and say don't you know don't do it right
now or pull it all local which is what
we should probably do
anyways so I I think just I want to
double down on that a little bit is
the the organ if you're going to go
build a template make sure that you also
use that template on a regular basis
that you like get yourself into that
habit and put it somewhere where it's
like okay I'm going to go grab this and
I'm going to use it and even if you're
like me like like the proposals I have
proposals I'll sit down and like a
grammarly I'll crank through it that way
I've got like I'm I've got it you know
correcting all my spelling and grammar
and all that kind of crap but also then
I've got a whole history of these things
which is really useful because one now
I've got you know dozens or hundreds of
templates I can go back to one and go
like oh yeah this is basically it's
pretty close and I can take this and I
can more quickly get the task done that
I need to uh but also it's like I know
where to go so I have that like you know
whether you have it as a link on your
desktop or maybe it's a tab that's
always open on your browser or whatever
it depends on what you you choose your
own poison but it is nice to have stuff
in that way or if you're somebody just
like you put crap on on your desktop and
your desktop is full of all these like
links and all that kind of you do you
but whatever works for you so that you
do make use of these things don't put
your time into it and then throw it away
and never look at it again because then
you just you were busy but not
productive you did a great job you
pulled up you created all this useful
stuff but if you don't use it it's
actually not useful so you didn't create
useful stuff you created useless stuff
congratulations and I say that I say you
but I'm pointing the fingers at me
because I have done that on more than if
occasions where I put a lot of time into
something and go crap not really going
to use that so that also go actually
okay bonus bonus if you're building
software if you're building a solution
for somebody and you're thinking hey
this is a great thing think about stuff
like that where you thought it was a
great thing you built it for yourself
and then you never touched it again so
before you get all like ah these
customers need to use this maybe the
idea that you had was not a very good
one I speak from experience
I also speak from somebody who is ready
to wrap this one up we got to we got to
move on thank you for your time uh
feedback as always is welcome we will be
back almost immediately in our case
basically immediately for the next
episode uh for you guys you may have to
wait a little while have yourself a
great day and we will be here talking to
you ready for our next conversation live
not AI have a good one by bye
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