I got a DM from Nathan the other day and here's what he asked:
"I'm having trouble doing everything.
I have a full time job and my own company on the side.
What would you suggest the best business practices are,
including automation as much as possible?" Running your own business can be the
most exciting and most overwhelming thing ever,
especially if you're growing it on the side of your day job, and I get it;
it feels like the more that you get done or the more time you give it,
your list of to do's just continues to grow.
That's why it's important to implement the 80/20 rule,
which states that 80% of your results typically comes from 20% of your efforts.
This rule is really important so that you don't burn yourself out.
That's the last thing you want when you are also working your day job.
If you've ever struggled with the day to day operations of your business or
you're feeling on the verge of burning out, in today's video,
I'm going to share with you how to automate your online business so that you can
actually feel like you have a life and a business that supports it too.
And stay tuned until the end where I'm going to share my number one business
efficiency and automation tip that I wish I knew back in the day,
but once I share it with you,
I believe it's going to be crucial to your success.
What I'm about to share in today's video has worked for me, Elise Darma,
because about two years ago I implemented all these automation tips,
and today I wake up to Stripe and Paypal notifications on my phone.
This is possible because everything runs 24/7 without me,
even while I sleep.
I'm Elise Darma and I've helped thousands of entrepreneurs like yourself use
Instagram to grow their online business.
And today I am revealing my secrets to automate your online business.
A quick heads up,
today's video is going to scratch the surface on online business.
So if you're liking these free trainings,
be sure to hit the Subscribe button and the bell so that you never miss one of
my training videos in the future.
Let's dive in to my three tips to automating your small business.
Tip number one is you need Funnels in your business. Now,
don't run away just yet because funnels are fun and to be honest,
the word 'funnel' is just a fancy term for what I like to call the customer
journey.
So your very first step to automating your business is to understand what
happens for your customer to, you know,
maybe start as a lurker on your Instagram profile to then becoming a sale.
You need to map out that process. Here's an example:
maybe they come across one of your posts on Instagram.
They check out your profile.
They then decide to make a small commitment by following your profile.
Then they watch your Instagram stories a few days later.
They swipe up and sign up for your freebie and then they make it to your email
in your email sequence.
You invite them to your $99 service and voilà,
they become a customer.
The key to mapping out your funnel or customer journey is to understand,
how does someone go from discovering you to liking you,
to ultimately becoming a customer and trusting you with their investment?
This is where you really need to understand the transformation that your
customer takes while on your journey.
You can even try filling in this sentence to illustrate this journey:
"I help [target market] achieve [desire] without [old method],
through [your new method]." You got that down? Seriously,
pause this video and fill in those blanks. Once you have that sentence complete,
go ahead and pop it in a comment below this video.
I would love to learn more about your customer's journey.
One tip here is to keep your offerings and therefore your journey very simple.
This comes back to the 80/20 rule.
What 20% of your clients bring in 80% of your revenue?
What 20% of your efforts bring in 80% of your revenue?
Really take the time to analyze what activities you're doing bring in the most
revenue and streamline your customer journey to focus on those.
Tip number two for business automation is to get your tools in order,
so I'm going to bring you behind the scenes and show you what team Elise uses to
run all the automation in our business.
We use an email service provider called Convertkit and that connects to our
landing page builder and the one I like to use is Clickfunnels.
I also like to use a call booking tool called Acuity.
This allows people to book time into my calendar,
whether it's free or paid on all of our sales pages and checkout pages we use a
chat tool called Drift,
and to keep all of this running smoothly between me and my team members,
we use a project management tool called Asana - and bonus - that one's free.
Did you know that I have a free tools training on some of the tools I just
listed? It's true. Had to elisedarma.co/tools,
you're going to get about six hours of free training.
I don't know how long it's going to be free for, but today it is free,
so had to that link and sign up.
The third tip to automating your small business is 'Team'.
Even if it feels like you just got started and you're doing the solopreneur
thing and you don't have the budget to hire someone,
I really recommend for you to look to hire someone even for 10 hours a week.
That VA or virtual assistant can take care of repeating tasks that you don't
need to do or any customer support-related tasks.
Where do you hire a VA? I've got a couple of recommendations for you.
First stop is Upwork.
You can check out Upwork and take a look at the profiles and see if anyone
really speaks to you.
Another program that I love is called Gen M which connects you the business
owner to a pool of people who are looking for digital internships.
So yes,
that might mean that you get an intern for free and then if you like working
with them you can then make them an offer to join your team.
If you're more interested in hiring someone overseas,
which could typically be a lower cost per hour,
I recommend to checkout onlinejobs.ph I've never used this service myself,
which connects you to a virtual assistant in the Philippines,
but I've definitely heard good things about it. Above all else,
if you're feeling like these online job boards are not for you,
your best bet is to ask your network,
ask your friends in your business industry,
ask your friends in the online business world,
ask for that referral to anyone who might be looking for a little side work and
what's my number one efficiency and automation tip is to document the processes
along the way. I use two free tools for this. One is called Loom,
which allows you to record your screen and all the movement on it and the other
is Asana which allows me to store these recordings.
What we're doing here is building up a resource bank in Asana where all of our,
how-tos and documentation live so that our team members today and in the future
can learn how our business operates.
If you're loving this topic of automation and you want to know how to use
Instagram as a customer journey to make sales while you sleep,
I invite you to check out my Instagram Funnel Bootcamp.
Head to the link right below this video to check it out.
If you enjoyed this video, stay tuned for next week.
I'm going to take you behind the scenes and share with you a day in the life of
an online business owner. Hit that Subscribe button so you don't miss it.
To ease and revenue. I'll see you in the next video.
Internships and apprentices. Apprenticeships.
What is that word? Apprenticeships. That's a hard word.
Oh God. Okay. And I used two froo -
free.