5 Things to Automate For Your Business in 2021

Now that it has been almost one year of many companies drastically shifting to a work from home setting since Covid hit, some of my favorite automation tools such and Zapier and IFTTT have really upped the ante!  These tools were already awesome in their ability to create automated tasks with ease, but now that more companies are on board, there is soooo much more you can automate for your business and blog.  I wrote an earlier post on the top things you should automate for your blog, so here are 5 more things that you should automate for your business/blog now that it’s 2021.

1 | Accounting

Accounting for a small business owner can be daunting especially if you don’t have an accountant.  The great thing is that there are various types of accounting software out there that make bookkeeping easier on you.  Many of these tools have the ability to track income from PayPal, Stripe and other payment processors automatically.  They can also track the ins and outs of your bank account meaning less for you to have to keep up with throughout the year.

For those business expenses that do not hit your linked account or if you don’t feel comfortable linking your bank account, you can use automation to add certain transactions to a Google Sheet when a receipt comes to your email (this can be set up using Zapier).  For example, I subscribe to various monthly services for my business, so when the email receipt comes to my inbox, an automated task combs through the email and pulls the values that I want to add to my accounting spreadsheet (date, company name, amount paid, accounting category, etc.).  This is something I implemented last year and tax season was much more streamlined as a result.  And, since I created the spreadsheet to be compatible with my bookkeeping software, importing the data for the year is a breeze!

2 | Hashtag Groups

Using hashtags is still an effective way to increase viewership on social posts.  Because of this, many Instagram feed planning apps incorporate the option to save your commonly used hashtags in a group inside the app. You then copy and paste them into Instagram when it’s time to post.  With the ability to use 30 hashtags per post, it would be difficult to remember them all!  The only catch is that sometimes these apps only allow you to save a certain number of hashtag groups depending on the type of plan you have.  While this is a great app feature, I recently ditched the feature and created my own hashtag groups inside of my phone by using the text replacement iPhone shortcut feature.  I created an Instagram Reel showing how to do this step by step, so check it out here.  I love this hack because it’s so much faster and streamlines the posting process! 

3 | Sales & Invoicing

Gone should be the days of selling products/services by telling customers to DM you for an invoice or leave a comment to get an invoice.  Your sales process should be automated.  If you have a business, you should have a web presence.  Not only is a website professional, it is a place where you showcase your business and products and it makes it easier for customers to make purchases.  This can be in the simplest form of a basic landing page which contains buttons to purchase your products/services.  You can create something simple such as a Google Site (sites.google.com) and embed PayPal or Stripe payment buttons where customers can purchase your items directly.  Doing business in DMs and comments can become disorganized and is incredibly manual.  You could be spending your time creating more products, services and content. Google Sites is a standard part of a Google account and is free to use, however, it’s a good idea to have your own domain name/URL.

While you’re at it, you should also create a business email account with an email address that uses your custom domain name (this screams professional!).  Currently, Google Workspace comes standard with a business email account and starts at only $6 a month. And y’all, the $6 is sooooo worth it.  Check it out to see all the benefits of Google Workspace then get your site set up today!

4 | Inbox

Signing up for all those free and paid courses, newsletters, memberships and sites to receive free shipping on your first order all contribute to a clogged inbox.  Make it a point to get your inbox in check and set up filters and rules!  Filtering messages and creating rules for certain messages will help to organize your mailbox automatically!  Check out this blog post for the steps to clean up, organize and automate your inbox.

5 | Video Transcription

Since we all know that video content is King these days, remember that it’s important to include text on your videos (Reels, Stories, IGTV, etc.).  This is because one, you want your content to be accessible to everyone, even the hearing impaired.  Also, two, everyone doesn’t have their audio on when scrolling through IG.  You want to catch your viewers attention with words on your video, that way they will know what you’re talking about and they may unmute to hear the entire message.  Transcription is a great solution to these two problems, and you can easily add transcription to your Instagram videos automatically.  One app that has this feature built in is Threads.  You record your video content as you normally would inside the app, then after a short period of time the words you spoke are transcribed and added to your video.  The awesome part about automating this is that you don’t have to worry about typing it up, and you only need to make edits to the existing text if needed.  You can also activate the “auto-generated captions” feature in Instagram to have captions added to your IGTV videos before they are posted (Settings->Account->Captions-> Toggle “Auto-Generated Captions” to On).

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Automation is important now more than ever especially if you are a solopreneur. What are some thing that you wish you could automate for your business? Let me know in the comments!

7 Ways We Have Navigated Through Digital Learning While I Work a Day Job

The second semester of school has started, and we are still doing digital learning.  The first semester was full of new challenges, adjustments and sanity checks.  Now that we have the first semester under our belt (check out blog post part one of this series- how to prepare for virtual learning), I would like to share with you the things that we have done to make working from home and learning from home live together in the best version of harmony that we can get, haha!

1 / Pivoting

In August, I had a schedule laid out for our day, and after a few months I had to make some adjustments to it.  The first thing is...I sleep in a little longer than I used to now.  I get about 30 more minutes in the morning and have adjusted making my morning latte to late morning.  We now take a break around 10am, and that’s when I make my latte or tea.  It’s a block of time when Ava’s ready for a break and I am as well.  I don’t find myself in need of caffeine as soon as I wake up these days, so this change worked out nicely! I also enjoy the process of making my morning latte (I find it therapeutic), so the morning break is the perfect time for this centering activity as well. And yes, the latte that I made below is pink :)

Another change I made is to my work schedule. I get my work day started 30 minutes later so I can dedicate the first 30 minutes of the day to LM&C as well as my daughter's morning meeting (as a reminder, she’s in Kindergarten so I have to be present and active for her full day).  These small changes to the schedule have made a huge difference for the better!  If something isn’t working well for you, by all means, pivot!

2 / Sanity Check

It can be difficult to try to stay sane when you have such a hectic day. The best ways I have been able to keep my sanity are the following:

Wine.

Haha! No seriously, while a glass of wine is nice, I dedicate time to relax after my work day.  Sometimes that looks like watching TV, sometimes it looks like listening to music with a candle burning and sometimes it’s me starting on my blog/biz tasks earlier than planned.  All of it is for the sole purpose of keeping me sane.  The days are much more hectic now and there’s ALWAYS something going on (Ava’s small group meetings, my work meetings, my work tasks, Ava’s lesson plans that she needs my help with, etc.)...not to mention everything else going on in the world.  Making time for yourself is a key to keeping your sanity in check.

Also, on the days that my husband is home, he is able to assist with Ava’s school day which is a HUGE help! When she attends aftercare, he also takes her there and picks her up, so the team effort really helps with keeping my sanity in check.

3 / Social Outlet

Since Covid hit, Ava has continued to attend her childcare facility.  We felt very comfortable with this because of their protocol (temperature checks at the door for students and staff, no parents or outsiders allowed inside the building, scheduled deep cleaning, etc.).  Since Ava isn’t in her Kindergarten classroom during the day (the school system does not have as thorough of a protocol as childcare), we decided to have her attend aftercare three days a week so she can have interaction in person with other children.  Many of these children she has known since she began attending as an infant, so the familiarity is great.  She gets to play and learn more with her friends safely, and I get to finish my work day with 100% focus.  This has been a huge help during this school year.

4 / Car Time

On the days that Ava attends aftercare, on my drive home I usually listen to explicit music lol!  This is one of the only times I can listen to it since Ava’s not around.  Sometimes I stop to get a small snack then sit in my car listening to music while snacking!  Little moments like this are enjoyable and don’t happen often, so I take advantage when I can!  I sometimes even find myself in the garage after I return home still sitting in my car listening to music and scrolling through IG or TikTok for a quick laugh before I clock back in to work!

5 / Normalcy

One major reason we decided to stick with digital learning for the remainder of the school year is because we know that kids thrive in routine.  They need routine and predictability to aid in their learning process.  Going into the winter months, we were certain that there would be back and forth with in-person students going digital due to rising numbers, etc. (in fact, that is exactly what happened this week!).  We didn’t want to deal with the back and forth and break up the routine and normalcy that she has.  We have a great routine going, and 95% of the time, we stick to it.  Ava’s day (with my assistance) consists of a live morning meeting, two lessons, morning break/snack, three more lessons and live meetings, lunch, two final lessons, then aftercare (or chill time if it’s a day she doesn’t attend aftercare).  This schedule has worked well for us and it helps me to also know what my capabilities are with my job such as when to schedule meetings and trainings and when to work on different types of tasks (high concentration tasks happen when she has a long lesson or after she has completed her day).  I am thankful that my job knows and understands the situation and is willing to work with me to make everything flow as smoothly as possible at home and work.

6 / Learning Aides

Something that I adopted early on in the school year was hanging learning aides in her work area.  Things such as the ABC, number, money and shape charts have been a huge help in her learning.  She can easily reference these things to check her work and help her if she needs it.  Her work area also resembles a classroom with these things on the wall, so she knows it’s school time when she’s sitting at her desk.  I also have a large whiteboard that I write the weekly schedule on as well as her sight words for the week and her special class of the week.  She has the task every morning to change the magnet to the current day then tell me the full date which she enjoys!  She also has different tasks such as turning on the printer when we need to print worksheets, and I have been teaching her how to use and navigate her way through a computer.  It’s never too early!  She enjoys learning about finger placement on the keyboard, using the shift key for capital letters, using backspace to erase and opening/closing internet tabs when different screens are needed for her lessons.  I even gave her a lesson in marketing when she wanted to know why ads are on YouTube!  I explained everything about having to watch ads if you don’t pay for a service and went into all the detail!  She repeated it back to me so she gets it and never asked about it again lol!  Learning aides, especially as a young child, are not only in the classroom, but also life lessons in the things that you use and do everyday.

7 / Supplemental Lessons

Many say that Kindergarten is such an important year for a child’s learning and development.  I understand this the more I see what they are learning (Kindergarten has changed since I attended in 1987!).  If there is a concept or lesson that Ava may need to focus more time on, I like to supplement her regular lessons with extra things such as workbooks that I have purchased for her and real life lessons (learning in life).  This way, she can focus extra time on the concept outside of her classroom hours.  These things are also sometimes through a learning game on her tablet or a book that we have about the subject.  I think parent involvement is a key element to a child’s education. Though teachers are the main source of education during the school day, parent involvement outside of school hours is key! A child’s education shouldn’t fall totally on their teachers or stop in the classroom.

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These are the things that we have adjusted since school started in August.  If your child (or children!) is doing virtual learning, how is it going for you all and what are some things you have had to adjust to make the day flow as smoothly as possible?