7 Ways to Save Time in your Business

Christy [00:00:07]:

Welcome to Somewhat Us eful the show where we explore the world of digital entrepreneurship and web design. I'm Christy Price and I'm a Squarespace web designer.

Will [00:00:16]:

And I'm Will Myers. And I'm a squarespace web developer.

Christy [00:00:19]:

We'll discuss topics shaping the world around us and tackle your questions from the mailbag. We're figuring this out too, and hope you find this at least somewhat useful. So, Will, how many hours a week would you say you work?

Will [00:00:34]:

Oh, man, I probably work 50 hours a week. What about you?

Christy [00:00:39]:

I think I'm more in the 30 hours a week camp. And it's interesting because about maybe over a year ago, I had a postit note on my computer for months that said, work less and earn the same or more money because I felt like I was working too much. And I thought a lot about what was enough, what income was enough for me, and how I could achieve that while still doing the kinds of work that I liked and also getting some time back to do fun stuff like play with my dogs or go for hikes or read my books. So I still haven't figured out the four hour work week. I think that would be fascinating. But I do work a lot less than I used to, and I feel like life is more balanced. I enjoy my projects more when I'm working in them, and I still actively seek out ways to save time. And I think some of the things we're going to be talking about today are ways that have given me back hours every week.

Will [00:01:44]:

Yeah, and I would love to know what those are because I'm trying to figure that out. I'm moving from my wife calls it a very puritanical view of work, where I think work needs to be hard and I need to work hard and just work long hours and long days, and I need to get back to it being fun and enjoyable. And I've gotten to that place where I'm spending too much time just doing things and just sitting in my job. I'm not getting stuff done and enjoying it, and I'd love to save some more time.

Christy [00:02:17]:

This episode is sponsored by Growth Trackers. Have you ever heard? Test your marketing, but you have no idea how to do that. Social. Google Cold Call summits lives. Freebies marketing can become an exhausting grind. What if you knew how to choose the best path for your business? Introducing Growth Trackers, a membership for creative business owners who want to stay booked with less energy. Take charge of your leads when you learn how to find your getbooked formula, become a Growth Tracker@supereasydigital.com growthtrackers and use code somewhat useful for 5% off your membership. I mean, I'm always looking for ways to save time, and I think one of my favorites is that I use email templates, so I use Google Workspace and inside the email app, there is a way to turn on templates. So if you Google how to set up templates in Gmail, you'll find this, it's pretty easy. You toggle it on, and then whenever you're writing a new email, you can save it as a template. So anytime I find myself writing an email more than two or three times, I save it as a template. And I think you can have up to 50 templates.

Will [00:03:35]:

What are the ones you have in there right now of the templates you have? What are they?

Christy [00:03:40]:

Yeah, I probably have close to 50. Honestly, a lot of them are for lead emails that I get through my Squarespace form that are not a good fit. I can tell off the bat by the information they've provided. So I have one that's like a no go. This is too complex. I don't want to do an Ebay on Squarespace, which someone asked me to do once.

Will [00:04:06]:

An ebay on squarespace.

Christy [00:04:08]:

Yeah, I think that was the first time I wrote this email. And I'm like, no. So it basically says, I'm a solopreneur, I'm a one woman show. I work on projects with a quick two week turnaround, and unfortunately, your scope is more than I can do in that two weeks. There are some other people you might want to check out. So that's one, I have a no go. If it requires a lot of custom code, I have a no go because I don't do ecommerce.

Will [00:04:34]:

Sounds like a lot of no go. It sounds like all these templates are ways for you to say no to people, which is helpful.

Christy [00:04:43]:

Yeah, because I struggle with that because I want to be helpful and kind. And so those would take me so long to write instead of just saying no, I'm not a good fit. You might see this person. I felt like I needed to provide some context to it and then I would overthink it. So I'm a chronic overthinker when it comes to emails. 100% having these templates.

Will [00:05:03]:

Me too.

Christy [00:05:04]:

Even for like if somebody is inquiring about a couple of my different services, I have an email template that's like, here's this service, here's the price for my custom web design. You can check out more details on this page. Here's a designer for a day. Here's the price. You can check out more details here. Here's a link to schedule a discovery. Call with me if one of those seems like it might be a good fit, and we'll chat. So I yes, it saves me so much time because I'm not reinventing the wheel all day long. And I'm a slow writer when it comes to emails. I'm slow, I overthink. So having this, I just plug in their name, and if there's something personal that they shared, I add an extra sentence about that and the email is on its way.

Will [00:05:44]:

I love that. I think overthinking that's a huge time suck in my business, too. I'm, as a Southerner, like, you. I just overthink and want to be super polite and try and figure out exactly the right way so they're not mad at me and just put way too much energy into this one email. I think that's a brilliant reason to create these email templates is just so you don't spend all your time thinking about the same thing over and over again.

Christy [00:06:09]:

Yeah, that's good.

Will [00:06:10]:

That's really good.

Christy [00:06:11]:

It saved me hours every week.

Will [00:06:13]:

Honestly, I need to start doing I think that it's that framing that I need. I've always known I should probably be creating email templates, but like, why the why behind it? And I think you just answered it is overthinking, preventing yourself from overthinking. Okay, so mine, I have one and it comes from I waste a lot of time being distracted by other people's to Dos and that comes in the form of Instagram messages, emails that come through, text messages and stuff. And it's important, I need to have those. But when they come through as like a notification, I feel like it should jump to the top of my to do list. And so I've just turned off all notifications during the day, I get no email, I still get the emails, but it just doesn't get notified on my phone, not on my desktop. And then that allows me to put time where I need it and reprioritize those and do them when I want and I'm not getting distracted by all that.

Christy [00:07:14]:

I think that is brilliant. And as you're describing that, I'm thinking, is there a way that I could set up? Like I'm going to check my emails three times a day and that's it, and just have designated times to check them. Do you do that?

Will [00:07:28]:

Yes. And three is too many for me. It's really like two. It's really like two. I do it. My morning is the best time for me to be thinking and focused and working on stuff. That's also the time I'm working with Abby to do support ticket stuff and some other things. So that time is reserved for my brain thinking will push the business forward type stuff. Then about at noon, I'll open up emails and answer emails. And that also helps me not make anything urgent, like any of these emails that come in. Nothing is urgent, nothing requires me to drop everything I'm doing and answer it right then.

Christy [00:08:06]:

I love that you say that because I actually tell people there are no emergencies in web design, no one's dying, everything's fine. If there's something major going on with your site, it's probably nothing I can help you with anyway. It's probably a server issue, right?

Will [00:08:24]:

Especially in the web design world. All these things are going to be okay. And I'm trying to think of a better way to say this to make it more palatable so we can tell a client, but it's good to train your client a little bit. That you're not going to answer emails, like at the drop of a hat and all that. You will hate your business if you move from being, oh, I'm working at a job now, I'm going to be a freelancer. And now if you make all these clients your bosses, if you have like ten bosses, that makes it horrible.

Christy [00:08:59]:

And that actually brings me to another way that I save time that I think I may pair with your just occasional email checking. And that is that I schedule emails. Sometimes I check my emails, like in the evening or on the weekend, but I don't want to have to deal with replies until the next business day. So I schedule them to send out the next business day during business hours. And it's like a procrastinator's dream. Yeah. Austin Cleon, who is an Austin based writer and illustrator, he wrote a little blurb about this, and he said the problem with sending messages is that they'll get answered with new messages. If I pick a time to write all my messages but delay sending them, that buys me even more time to be blissfully UNM messaged.

Will [00:10:03]:

Oh, I love that.

Christy [00:10:04]:

I love that too. And what I found is that I sometimes get what I call the free help emails, somebody that I worked with a year ago, and they have a quick question. Well, I work with enough people that those I have a quick question emails really add up. And if I just put a pause on and wait and I email them back a day or two later because it's not an emergency, right?

Will [00:10:28]:

No.

Christy [00:10:29]:

I'll email them back and I'll say, do you still need a hand with this? And nine times out of ten, they've actually googled it and figured it out and they didn't need me. So I think that this doesn't save me hours like the email template does, but it's a stress reliever and it does save some time.

Will [00:10:48]:

Yeah, you mentioned this when you were on vacation a couple of weeks ago, but there were some emails that you answered, but you scheduled them to be sent. You answered it during the vacation, but it didn't send until the day you got back, which right. I think that's really smart. And it's way less and I've had this exact same experience. It's way less like answering an email than it is like beginning another chain. It's like another little coin to put in your to do box. It's just yet another thing to do and manage. It is the responses. That's smart. I really like that.

Christy [00:11:22]:

Blissfully unmessaged.

Will [00:11:24]:

Blissfully unmessaged. I know you've answered it. You've checked it off your to do item. You just don't have to get the response. I love that. So another one similar to that is Screen Time Managing minor, like all around managing my devices. The Screen Time app on iPhones, you can tell it which apps to allow you to work on during the day, you can set, like, okay, don't allow me to get on Twitter between nine and five or something during each day or limit myself to only 30 minutes a day of the Instagram app. And that has been incredibly helpful for those times where in the middle of the day, you're just like, working, and then all of a sudden you look up and Instagram's pulled up on your phone and you're swiping through and you're like, I don't even remember picking up my phone.

Christy [00:12:14]:

And it's like, how am I 45 minutes and it's already been 45 minutes. Cute puppies, but so many cute puppies.

Will [00:12:21]:

Like, just unbelievable. And the recipes, like, the cheesy recipes are just like, oh, just amazing. But it just sucks away all your time. And so having that screen time app, it really helps that initial, because still I pull up my phone and open Instagram, but it'll be like, Screen time. And that's all I need to just pull me out of it and be like, no, okay, you should be working right now. And I will say 50% of the time, I'll still say ignore and ignore the screen all the time. I ignore it, but it gives me that half second to pull me away from just my habit of pulling out my phone, opening Instagram, and scrolling. It just breaks that habit chain.

Christy [00:13:02]:

I love that it just provides an interruption so that you don't get stuck. I think that's the problem with Reels and TikTok is you just get stuck because they're so quick and it's new information all the time and you don't have a natural break, right? And so I love how you're using screen time to provide that interruption, that natural break to allow you to go, do I want to keep doing this or do I need to stop?

Will [00:13:27]:

Worth it, right?

Christy [00:13:30]:

So another way that I use tech to help me save time is I use Acuity scheduling, which is similar to Calendly, which is another scheduling tool that a lot of people use. So whenever I have a potential lead, I send them a link to schedule a time to talk where they can choose an available time on my calendar. And that takes out all of that back and forth email about, how about Tuesday at three? No, I have a dentist appointment. How about 430? Oh, no, I can't. Then I'm picking up my dog from daycare. How about it's just so easy and so much more professional and it doesn't feel like we're becoming friends who know each other's schedules intimately. It's more like pick a time on my work calendar for us to talk for 15 minutes. So I think that that is definitely a time saver in terms of just getting the scheduling off your plate and letting people handle that on their end.

Will [00:14:28]:

So I've wanted to do something like that for a while, but I think something that's held me back is how much work. I feel like it would be to manage that calendar to say, okay, only these dates and times are available, but maybe something else gets in there. What about if I take some vacations and then someone books? How much work is it on your end to manage the open slots available on there?

Christy [00:14:52]:

Yeah, so I have typical office hours that I have set up. So Monday, Tuesday, Thursday are the days that I do calls and it's from 09:00 A.m. To 03:00 P.m.. And so all of that is there on the calendar. But the beauty of it is it integrates with my Ical, which is my calendar that I use for my life. And so if I set something up as a personal event or travel or whatever calendars I want to block off, it actually pulls that into my availability and knows that I'm not available. So whenever I create a dentist appointment on my calendar, then Acuity looks at that and they're like, oh, nobody can book them. She has a dentist appointment. So it takes care of all that for me. So integrating your personal calendar, it's basically off my plate.

Will [00:15:42]:

So as long as you're managing your own personal calendar, that fixes it for you. Well, that's pretty awesome actually. You got to love automation. And speaking of automation, Zapier is mine. I use Zapier for all sorts of things. Zapier is an automation tool that allows you to connect to different systems like squarespace and emails. I use it for like a quiz tool. So once someone takes a little quiz, it adds them to MailChimp and they'll get like an extra email that goes on. So it just connects a bunch of the systems that you might be using in your business. And it's less of a time saver because I don't think a lot of people, unless something integrates automatically, they don't add it into their business. It's not like, okay, well I'm just going to manually send people emails that sign up to my newsletter. Now they wouldn't do that, but it's more of just, it allows your business to grow and do more things and I just feel like it kind of fits in here.

Christy [00:16:44]:

We agree on this one. I use Zapier too, and a couple of use cases that I use it for. You mentioned my vacations and I try to take a good number of vacations a year to keep as you Shane. And one of the things that drives me crazy is that while I can set up an out of office for my work email, I can't do an out of office when someone submits a form on my website so they're interested in learning more. So I have a Zap set up so that when someone submits a form and I'm out of office, I have an automatic out of office reply to that form submission. So it's like, hey, I'm hiking in the Rockies this week. I'll be back on monday and we'll reply to you then.

Will [00:17:28]:

That's a brilliant one. That's a really good one.

Christy [00:17:30]:

That's one of my favorite use cases because otherwise these people are reaching out and I'm just not getting back to them and that's not good. But I also use it in a similar way that you do. So if someone purchases one of my Squarespace templates, they get on a specific email list in Mailer Lite, and I have a Zap set up to do that. So they purchase the template in Teachable and then it adds them to a mailing list in Mailer Light so I can send them emails about their support window and what to look for and all of that good stuff.

Will [00:18:07]:

Yeah, I use it for support as well. What do we use? We use Fresh Desk, and so they submit the form on Squarespace using a Squarespace form, and then all that data gets pushed over to Fresh Desk, and we do the answering there. So it's fantastic. Really powerful. It is a bit expensive. I will say that it can get pricey depending on the amount of Zaps that you do. Okay, so here's the other big question. Zapier. Or zapier.

Christy [00:18:36]:

I thought it was Zapier because you're Zapping things together, but you said Zapier.

Will [00:18:41]:

That might be Zapier.

Christy [00:18:43]:

Like a rapier.

Will [00:18:45]:

Yeah, right, exactly. That's, I think, where it came from. You got the I over there, so I've always thought Zapier, but Zapier, they do call them Zaps in there. Yeah, I don't know. This is a question that might be too big for this message.

Christy [00:19:03]:

Will or me on instagram. I'm Christy Price.

Will [00:19:06]:

I'd love to know. I'm will. Dash Myers.

Christy [00:19:08]:

Myers. Let us know. Is it Zapier or Zapier? Don't know. One other thing that I use it for, whatever it's called that I love is I actually use it to connect Stripe and Square. So anytime I make a sale or make a sale from one of my products, or if someone pays me for a project, I automatically have it go into my accounting software so I don't have to enter anything in. It just magically appears there. And I'm like, yes, that was a course and template sale. Or yes.

Will [00:19:42]:

Really nice.

Christy [00:19:42]:

That was a service sale.

Will [00:19:45]:

Oh, that's actually really smart. I didn't know you could connect the two of those like that. That's pretty helpful.

Christy [00:19:50]:

It's awesome. That's like an hour a week of mind numbing data entry. That's off my plate.

Will [00:19:57]:

Yeah, that's super helpful. Smart, smart, smart.

Christy [00:20:01]:

Thank you.

Will [00:20:03]:

You're welcome. And speaking of relationship management tools yes.

Christy [00:20:10]:

So another way that I save time is, well, let me back up. Before I invested in one of these CRM tools, the client relationship management tools, and I had a custom proposal that I was sending out. I would email a proposal, then I'd create PDFs of contracts, upload them to hello, sign, set signature fields, email to the client manually invoice each client, and it was a lot. And I moved to a CRM tool that I don't use anymore to take care of all those steps. For me, that one was too complex for me. I actually had to hire somebody to help me set it up. And then when things would break, it just did not work the way my brain worked. So a couple of years ago, I moved to HoneyBook. It works the way my brain works. It's very pretty. And it saves me a couple of hours each week sending out proposals because everything's already there. I just put in new project dates and hit send.

Will [00:21:08]:

That is kind of brilliant. I do not use I don't have like a CRM that I use at all.

Christy [00:21:14]:

But you don't need one.

Will [00:21:15]:

But I don't really use one. Right. I mean, my CRM is kind of my support ticketing system. Right.

Christy [00:21:22]:

Will.

Will [00:21:23]:

Fresh desk. We use fresh desk.

Christy [00:21:27]:

That saves a ton of time, quite.

Will [00:21:29]:

A bit of time. Not having to have all my support tickets that come over email. Yeah, that was a nightmare. That is how I started. My support was just like, personally on my emails, and I very quickly realized, okay, this is not a good way to keep up with tickets and stuff.

Christy [00:21:45]:

Right.

Will [00:21:46]:

And actually, I think we initially moved to there's another big one, zendesk. Zendesk is the other big one.

Christy [00:21:53]:

I've heard of Zendesk.

Will [00:21:55]:

That's very powerful. It has a lot of stuff on it, but I think it was just too expensive. So we moved over to Fresh Desk, and it's great.

Christy [00:22:04]:

And it allows you to collaborate with Abby on the support ticket.

Will [00:22:08]:

You can add more members that can answer support tickets. Abby will jump in and answer tickets and then she can tag me on them and then I'll jump in and answer it. So, Fresh, if you have any type of if you're getting support tickets multiple a day, I would definitely recommend Fresh Desk as a good tool piece of software for that.

Christy [00:22:26]:

Another thing that sounds like it ton of time.

Will [00:22:29]:

Quite a bit. Quite a bit. Bonus there's seven plus one. Plus one. You people didn't realize you were getting this today, did you? All right, so that is our list of time saving items within our business that we do. I hope those were somewhat useful. Let's jump into a mailbag question here. So this is a question that came was sent to you, actually, Christy, and it was roughly just about WordPress and Squarespace, and specifically in the realm of SEO, like, what is a better platform for SEO? Is it WordPress or is it squarespace? Do you have any initial thoughts there?

Christy [00:23:13]:

I do, but I used to work in WordPress. I was a WordPress designer for a decade or more before I moved my business to Squarespace. Wait, when did you start in WordPress?

Will [00:23:26]:

In WordPress? Yeah.

Christy [00:23:27]:

Oh my goodness. It was mid 2000.

Will [00:23:32]:

Oh, wow. Yeah. So you were in WordPress, like in the heyday of it, I was when it was blowing up and growing, it.

Christy [00:23:40]:

Was the thing to do. Yeah. And I still hated it and all my clients hated it, which is why I eventually made the move to Squarespace. Yeah. The question was from a blogger who she said, I have my blog on Squarespace, and everyone who blogs tells me that I have to move my website to WordPress in order to rank. And I don't think that's the case.

Will [00:24:07]:

No.

Christy [00:24:09]:

Because I think as long as you know your keywords and what you're writing for and who your audience is and you know where to put your keywords and how to use them, which you can learn with just a little bit of education about Squarespace, squarespace does a great job of doing things automatically for you. Then I think that you have every chance of ranking just as high with a Squarespace website as with a WordPress website.

Will [00:24:35]:

110% and from a technical perspective, they're just about identical. If not, they are identical. The SEO game is one with good quality content. It's not won by having some special tool or something like that. So as long as you're writing good content, you're going to be fine in the SEO game. And Squarespace in the last few years has done kind of amazing things with SEO. They've really, really ramped up their SEO game. And so you get all the technical benefits that came with Squarespace or that came with WordPress, but now you just get the ease of use of Squarespace. So I would not hesitate at all to move over to Squarespace if that's where you're wanting to add a blog.

Christy [00:25:18]:

I totally agree. I think there are maybe just a couple of caveats. One is that if you're a food blogger, there are definitely plugins that are going to make your life easier on WordPress that don't exist for Squarespace right now in terms of making printable recipes and that sort of thing.

Will [00:25:37]:

Yeah.

Christy [00:25:38]:

Although, I don't know, food bloggers drive me crazy because you have to read an entire life story before you get.

Will [00:25:44]:

To the recipe 100%. Yeah.

Christy [00:25:48]:

The other thing that I want to mention is that if you are, for example, a lifestyle blogger and you're talking about a lot of different things like travel and clothing and candles and recipes, that's going to be hard to rank for. You're going to have to rank for things like your name. So you're going to have to become known through some other marketing efforts because that's such a wide swath of information that you're covering. And unless you hone in on something that you could rank for, it would be a real challenge. And that's WordPress or squarespace.

Will [00:26:23]:

Yeah. 110% any general stuff like that, the platform isn't going to be what makes or breaks your ability to rank. Those are really difficult topics to rank for. Lifestyle stuff, travel, blogging, those are difficult. You need to niche up a little bit is what I'd recommend. And then once you have established yourself, maybe you can go a little broader. But starting with niche, that's the way to win in the SEO game, for sure. All right, well, that answers our mailbag question. I hope you all have enjoyed the podcast. Found it somewhat useful.

Christy [00:26:59]:

Somewhat useful.

Will [00:27:01]:

Somewhat useful.

Christy [00:27:02]:

Yeah.

Will [00:27:02]:

We'll see you next time for another episode. We'll see you next time.

Christy [00:27:05]:

Bye.

Will [00:27:05]:

Bye.

Christy [00:27:06]:

Bye.

Will [00:27:10]:

This episode is sponsored by Growth Trackers. Have you ever heard test your marketing, but you have no idea how to do that? Social, google, cold calls, Summits, lives, freebies... marketing can be an exhausting grind. What if you knew how to choose the best path for your business? Introducing Growth Trackers, a membership for creative business owners who want to stay booked with less energy. Take charge of your leads. When you learn how to find your get booked formula, become a Growth Tracker at supereasydigital.com/growthtrackers and use code somewhatuseful for 5% off your membership.