I'm so pumped for this episode today, because this is a conversation that I see a lot in the industry that a lot of people get really overwhelmed about and just don't know where to start and just have a lot of questions about. And so today I just really felt pulled to talking about workflow automation and the tools and strategies that you can put into place for yourself that are really going to help you to get things moving a little bit faster, moving without you and your team, constantly having to do it. And that is through the lovely tools of automation. So I'm gonna. To talk a lot about Zapier and today's episodes, if you're not sure what Zapier at it is, essentially it's a third party app that can connect between softwares to help you automate certain things within your business. We're also going to be talking through a process mapping and why it's so important to be documenting your processes and also mapping them out. So that way you can further automate and further C and I identify when steps are redundant or when you need to fix things and I'm going to be sharing some cool tips and tricks along the way about workflows and automation. So I hope you enjoy today's. Day's episode. So I'm super pumped to talk about this topic today because we're really going to be diving into workflow automation and some key tools and strategies that I might have, you know, in my tool belt that I'm willing to kind of share with you guys and really talk through today in today's episode. So I just wanted to like start off with the preface of like, what is automation? Because I think a lot of people. Look at automation, different ways inside the industry. And so I just wanted to like, kind of lay it out in the eyes of what I see automation being and how it can help you and your firm. And so automation essentially is any tool or technique system process like it. A lot of it's going to be in tech and software. That can allow for something to trigger off or something to happen when something else happens. And so, for example, if you know, a client signs, a contract. Then do this, like then send out the email, welcoming them, or then add them to a slack channel, whatever that looks like for you. And so automation, I feel like is going to be the bane of a lot of people's existence, listening to this episode. for those of you, who've tried to automate things or don't even know where to start. Don't worry. This episode is totally for you. It is very overwhelming. It's you didn't get into your business thinking that you're always gonna have to learn all this tech and learn how to automate things and make things easier. Sure. Can your business still run without automation? Absolutely. I mean, how many people have been running their firm for many, many, many years before automation was even a thing. Who are now learning how to automate or still continue to not even have to automate and still operate in a different way of doing things no matter what, whatever way that you're running your business is the right way for you. And so just remember that and don't think that just because everybody else is doing things, or even if I say automation is key, I think it makes you more efficient go with what feels good for you and what gives you least form of resistance for showing up every single day in your business and showing up and serving your clients. So for me, automation works in so many different ways at my firm. And even here at this company, workflow queen too, we have a lot of triggers and things set up that like when something happens, something else happens. And we can either do that through a third-party apps, like such as Zapier. Or we do it directly within the app. So like for example, within the piece of software. So, notion for example, they recently came out with their own versions of automations, which like you can add them to databases, which is their way of saying like really Excel versions of spreadsheets. Inside of notion. There's a lot of different pieces of tech and software that will have built in automations and workflows. Another great example is Dubsado. So if you've ever used Dubsado, then you know, that there's a lot of different workflows that they set up in automations. and they live within the piece of tech and the piece of software. So nowadays it's pretty normal for a lot of the different pieces of tech that you're using in your firm to have some sort of built in automation. If it's not built into the system that you're using the most likely or not, you can connect it to something called Zapier. So if you're unfamiliar with Zapier, is the Z a P I E R. Zapier has been such a game changer for me, to be honest, I think I was introduced to Zapier. Oh, my God, probably in like 2019 was when I was introduced to Zapier. And man, like when I first heard about Zapier and try to use it for myself, I was really overwhelmed and like, and I really used it for them in the most basic ways possible. And I think that's because. I didn't know how to use it properly. And there's not a lot of trainings online. The cool part is if you ever used apiary ever interested in using Zapier, they do have what they call it. Zapier university and Zapier university is actually hosted directly from Zapier itself. From their system. And so essentially the university will help you understand, like, what is this app? How does it work? And I would say that it's really good for like basic knowledge for Zapier, but there's not really anything out there specific to the accounting space. That's really going to show you like specific automations directly related to the industry. And I'm going to explain why, because if you really look and do a lot of research on Zapier and try to find a program or try to find resources on it, It's really hard to find those resources. And I think the reason why. Is because. Everybody's tech setup. Everybody's softwares everybody's systems, even if we're in the same industry are wildly different from each other. And so, for example, My onboarding might include things like Dubsado might include Google drive. It could probably also include things like slack and adding channels and all these different pieces of the tech. Well, for you listening, maybe you use something like anchor and then maybe instead of Google drive, you're also using share file because of this. I think there's a, not a lot of teaching specific to the industry on Zapier. On really understanding the core functionality of it and also how to utilize it in the different tech and softwares. and that's mostly the reason why is because everybody uses different tech. And so it becomes really hard and cumbersome to actually teach. Ask me how I know. Zapier in this space because. Everybody literally uses so many different things. I could create templates all day, every day, inside a Zapier and hand them off to my students. that's what we do inside a breakthrough. So in my group coaching program, breakthrough, we have segments like inside of our, we have like a bonus module and inside of there, we have like a Zapier bonus module. Anytime I've ever shared a zap from my own firm. I go in there and I fill myself on video. How I set it up, why I'm setting it up the way I am, why it would function the way it needs to function, what are the triggers that are happening? And essentially I go through this video showing them how to set everything up. And the reason I show up with a video for my students is because it makes it easier for them to be able to be like, okay, I could swap out my piece of tech for the one that Alyssa's using on her screen. And so what I do is like, as I'm building my own zaps for my own firm, I share them only exclusively with my breakthrough students. and so if you're inside of breakthrough, just make sure you go to the bonus module and the Zapier. Area and inside of there you'll find any of the zaps that I've shared with you guys. which include the step-by-step video of how I'm actually setting it up, what it's used for. And so even then, like with me, showing me like walking this through on screen, they're still going to be hiccups. People are still going to run into problems because every piece of tech that's connected To Zapier. That helps you to automate things. Only has so many options of what you can do with it. So for example, Dubsado has been, you know, connected to Zapier for quite some time. Now there's a lot of different options. If you go to zapier.com and you look up the Dubsado integrations, it might be like when a contract is signed, you could then do this. Or when, you know, I don't know, invoices sent out, then do this. There's a lot more opportunities of what you can automate with a software that. Zapier has been working with for quite some time versus anchor. Let's just use anchor as an example, because anchor has started to be a big, proposal system that a lot of people in the industry have started to. Kind of have an eye on. And like I mentioned in prior podcast episodes, I have no intentions of switching from Dubsado my proposal system over to something like anchor, because I just refuse to like go with the shiny object syndrome. I already know that Dubsado is solving all of our problems when it comes to proposals. So there's no point in me getting distracted, looking at another system. But the reason I'm bring up anchors because I'm inside of Zapier, it's going to be a little bit more limited. With newer softwares that are just like barely up and coming because they might barely be opening up. The opportunity for Zapier to connect with them. And so every software that you use with the automation tools is going to be like maybe not available. So for example, Google drive has a lot of options of what you can work with, versus if you try to use share file is going to be way different. I actually don't even know if Zapier has options to work with share file. But then there's also limitations of Zapier, right? So Zapier can't work with things like last pass. Which it would be so nice if they could, because in our onboarding it'd be really cool. If Zapier can go and create that when someone signed up proposal and Dubsado, it could create a folder inside of last pass for that client. That would be really cool, but it's not possible. And that's because of security reasons. So that's why WhatsApp. You're like, you're not gonna be able to like transfer money from like chase bank account to a different bank account because. Zapier is a third party application that needs access and permission from both softwares to be able to work together. And so not every piece of tech and not every software and not every thing is automated. And even when you think it's, the, had the ability to automate it, you might run into even more errors with filters and the ways that you are setting things up. So I wanted to really like, just dive into some Zapier. I think a lot of people get confused and overwhelmed. And then I wanted to talk through. Some of the tips and things that you can be creating with Zapier. And like I said, really, a Zapier university is just one of those big options that I recommend to just check out, to really understand. You know, what is Zapier, how it works, but it's not really going to teach you the technicalities of what you're trying to automate. My recommendation. This goes to like, even my students in break here, because we do touch on some of the Zapier stuff is you really have to start from square one to really. Understand what needs to be automated later. So, what I mean by that is if you are, don't even understand your own process and you don't even have a process in place, and you're just kind of Willy nilly ING it. And, and like winging it every single day that you're like running your firm. Then you're not going to be able to automate as successfully as someone who understands our full process. He knows what they need and knows the outcome. And the reason I say that is because. I think, I find a lot of people in this industry try so hard to automate things, whether it's automated directly within their softwares or using third-party apps like Zapier. I think a lot of people get so overwhelmed because they just tried to automate things like one little tiny thing, which is great. And I think it's amazing if you have one zap, I'm so proud of you, but what I'm trying to say here is that. A lot of people are trying to do all these automations and they want this thing. But yet they're not willing to put in the work to document their full process from start to finish. You need your firm to be able to rely without all of those different automations before you try to automate. And I think that this is where the big mistake is. Everyone wants the end result, but nobody's willing to walk through the journey. And so my recommendation is to do what I like to call process mapping if you're not sure of what this term means I'll just kind of do my best to break it down in a high level. So process mapping essentially is when, like you take a step back and you're looking at. what steps do you have in place for each core process of the business? So a couple of core processes that come to mind as I'm talking here is your onboarding process, your cleanup process. Your monthly bookkeeping process. Like that's a whole different process than like your cleanup, right? it could be your payroll process. It could be your offboarding process for your clients. It could be onboarding for your team members or even hiring. So there's different core processes that everybody has within their firm. And so my recommendation is to take a step back. And pause. And pick one process per quarter. This will seriously change the game for you. One process per quarter to focus on. And I know you're probably like if you're like me and you're super ambitious and you're just like, I can get so many processes done in like, more than one in three months I get it. But I promise you there's a lot to it because what you're going to do is pause. You're going to start to document, what do you do to execute that whole entire process? Pick one process, come over to Instagram at workflow queen and tell me what process did you pick? For example, let's just use onboarding as a process. The only reason I'm using onboarding as a process is because recently. My firm really focused the past quarter on onboarding stuff. And so what that meant was we first picked onboarding as the process, and then we took a step back and said, what is it that we actually do as of right now in order to onboard a client? in all its capacity. So first we brain dumped is one of the best terms I like to use. We brain dumped everything that we did for our onboarding process. Then what we did was we went back and actually looked at how did we actually do it? What that was based off memory or based off tasks that we have in Asana or just documented information. We tried to take ourselves through the journey that the client went through when we onboarded them. And so as we did that, it just gave us the opportunity to kind of document everything that we needed to. Then, what we did is that we took a software it's called Miro that's M I R O I fricking love Miro. I will put a link below the video. It is an affiliate link. If you ever want to sign up for them. I'm obsessed. I've been using them for quite some time now. And so essentially Miro, we're able to essentially map out in a visual format. That exact process that we now have written out is now in this beautiful process map. And the reason why we have it in this beautiful process map is because from that process map, we're able to color code it, add little mini, virtual sticky notes. Like we collaborate with the team on it. And so we get, we gathered together as the team. And if you don't have a team, don't worry, could do this to solo. And we actually changed the color. Like we put boxes per step in the process. We will change the steps in the process that we visually mapped out on this, like on through Miro. And we go in and we actually color anything that we think we think. Key word here think can be automated as yellow. And the reason we do that is because Zapier is like orange, it's yellow. So that's the only reason I've done that. There's no other correlation to it. so I go in, we change that box cause we're like, maybe there's a way. That when someone signs the contract and Dubsado, we no longer have to create the Google drive folder for the client. What if instead of us having to manually create the slack channel for our teams to communicate about that specific client? We no longer have to do that. Is there a way to automate it? So we go in and we actually like color each of those steps, yellow. And then that tells us that like, there's a possibility that we think if we can automate it through something like Zapier, or maybe even not through Zapier, it doesn't need to be through the third-party app. It could literally be a trigger within your own software tech that you're already using that can help you create those automations as well. And so we color them yellow. And then once we're done, we're kind of take a step back and say, okay, now let's do the research to see if there's a way that we could make this faster. Also when we're process mapping, we're also finding a lot of redundant steps or repetitive things or unnecessary things, and this is pretty normal. It goes back to like, have you ever like done something in your life where you're just like, and someone asks you about it and they question you and you're kind of like, I just do it because I just do it. Like, I'm not really that you don't even know how to answer the question. Cause you've always just done it. It's the same in your business that throughout the years you'll find that you'll just accumulate reasons why you do things and then you just do them and you don't even know why you do them anymore. And so like process mapping it out, allows you to see high level. Like, what the hell is this? Like, why do we do this? Like, this is unnecessary step. We don't need to be adding this. Like, it doesn't do anything for anybody or this step here. Like, it's just repetitive of like the step over here. And so it helps us to really clean up that process. So it helps us like overall holistically. So if you haven't taken the time to like document a process and then like map it out, then seriously, it's such a game changer. If you're a listener and you're in breakthrough, we talk you through all of process. Mapping, we even show you all the examples inside of Miro. how to actually process, map things out. And I even give you sample process maps down to like the hiring process map. So if you're interested in breakthrough and you really need support in this arena, then breakthrough is perfect for you. If you are a scaling firm, you are not a newbie. Unfortunately we only take people at the scaling phase in their firm. And then also you need to have some sort of a PM system in place. That's a project management system. It does not need to be perfect and it does not need to be. My trainings or my systems. You just need to not be using pen and paper because we need people past that. And just like a desire to really change your firm and remove yourself from the day-to-day work. Or maybe you're just drowning if you're not sure if breakthrough is right for you and you want to just have that conversation with me. I will tell you straight up, if it's not the right fit for you right now, I will I'll even give you action items of what you need to do to get ready for breakthrough. And so my recommendation is just, check out our page, which I'll link below for you to go check out. And if you need to just hop on a consult call, which will drop a link below as well, but typically you could go to work folk weed.com backslash consult dash call. Or you can Instagram me@workflowqueen or send us an email at support@workflowqueen.com and we'll get you that link to get on a call because I'm more than happy to support you. If this is a problem area for you, like the process mapping, I swear to you will change the way like your mind will be open about so many different things inside of like the business. So once you've processed map this thing out, you've color coded it to say, maybe this is possible to automate. You've cleaned up your processes. And based off of just maybe collaboration with your team or if it's just, you. You just looking back to see how you've done it before. This is where the world work will start to happen. So this is where you're going to be. Maybe documenting SOP is for the different steps in your process. So that way you can finally outsource the work and finally let go of the information to another team member. This is where you're also going to start researching. Can you actually automate things? And so, for example, this is where you're either looking through Zapier to say, you know, if this happens in So if a contract is signed, end Dubsado. Is it possible that Dampier can create a slack channel for us inside of slack named the client's name? Which I could tell you is possible? Our onboarding zap is actually 75 steps. It is very, very thorough and it automates.**** ton and yes, that's a word guys. It's a measurement. I promise. Literally it automates so many things for us. In the onboarding. It's so impressive. We had moments where every time we were onboarding new clients, There were some hiccups that we experienced, which is normal. So I want to warn you, like, just because your zap or just because your automation doesn't work doesn't mean that it's never going to work forever. It's just, maybe it needs to be tweaked or maybe needs to be fixed. And this is why I say you want to take three months. AKA one quarter to be able to focus on a process. That way you can test it. You could tweak it. You could fix it until it works like a charm. And so essentially inside of, Zapier, we're just like researching stuff. If it's not Zapier, we're doing the direct automation within the system. So for example, in Dubsado, we could set up workflows and automations directly through their. Which is really cool. So my recommendation is you start to do that research, and then this is where you're going to feel really overwhelmed with Zapier, because you are going to go down a rabbit hole and things aren't going to work. It's not going to connect. It's going to say it's failed. And this is really normal. And this is where I really recommend looking at Zapier university because the university will like, at least give you some high levels of like, how to use their system. Like I said, it's not going to be specific to this industry. It's not going to be specific to the tech that you're using, but it can give you a really good foundation. And then what I would do is now you're going to start to actually do the automations. And like I said, you're gonna start testing things. You're going to make sure that whatever you set up and whatever you're doing is actually working. And so for us, we have someone assigned to the team that is in charge of making sure all of our automations are going through. And so if you ever want to like, not risk that, like it's not going to do everything that you set it up to do for the automation. Like, for example, in our onboarding, we have like an onboarding project in Asana. Yes, we have a lot of things automated, but there's still some things that we can not automate in any capacity. It's just not possible. And so as of right now, and so we have a task inside of her onboarding that when someone signs a contract end Dubsado, it creates a task that says to double-check that the automation went through. And that allows for us to like, remember to go in to make sure that the automations worked because sometimes it'll. This hasn't happened to us in a very long time. Since now, the automation is working really well, but before. At one time, like didn't trigger off the content snare requests. It didn't trigger off a certain folder in Google drive. And so we were able to go through it and double-checked it actually go through. That's how we found problems and mistakes. And I think that's another thing that people get overwhelmed with Zapier for. Is that they're like, oh my God, all this automation, how can I trust these tools? We'll like just have someone watching over it. It's really as simple as that. And I think a lot of people's minds get blown when I tell them, like, all you gotta do is assign someone to pay attention to this apps. And that's really as simple it, as it, as it is. If it is just you and you don't have a team in place. Then, obviously that person watching over it's going to be you, but you could create yourself a task, like maybe once a week to just go check on your zaps and your automations within your softwares. Just to double check that they're working and it's really like, that's. Straight forward. But to be honest, like when it comes to these things, like I said, I would try not to automate, unless you really understand your process. Another big reason why too is like for just in case. Something goes wrong with all these pieces of software and tech. I think. documenting your process and documenting your like process mapping, everything. Really helps you to be able to pivot really easily. I always joke that like, if Asana were to crash today, I could easily move to click up. And that's where I would go. I would not go to keeper. I would not go to Xanax. I use Cenex, but I'm not going to use it for project management as a project management system. It's not what it's built for. And so for me, I would go to a true project management system. I would move to click up and I would be okay. Like, yeah, the functionality would change. Yeah. We have to use a new piece of software and piece of tech. But we have the core processes documented to the point where like, we don't need the specific software. Is it helping us in the current time? Absolutely. But if you don't understand your process and you'll never know what you need, or what tech or software that you're going to need to replace a certain step, if that ever comes into the picture. And so the whole goal of this episode here is really just to give you some ideas of where Zapier can fit in. How can you can use process mapping and documenting your process to really help you to level things up and to automate. And like I said, if you're interested in learning how to process, map, how to document your processes and Zapier and automation tools and how to be more efficient in your firm, then breakthrough is going to be an amazing program for you to check out. You can go to breakthrough dot a breakthrough with systems.com backslash join. And what you could do is you can also click the link. That's going to be added below. We are going to be doing something super special coming up. This is currently February as I'm recording this. But near the end of February, beginning of March, we are going to be doing a special sale and that's March of 2024. And so we will be releasing details, make sure that you're on our subscriber list. I will drop a link below. For you to get on the subscriber list, to keep a lookout for something that we have going on with breakthrough. So if something that you've been interested in quite some time, Then in beginning of March 2024, if you get on our subscriber list, you'll get an email about something super special we're doing for breakthrough. And I can't wait. To support you in any capacity. And if you have any questions you're overwhelmed or stuck on automation, or you just want to like, kind of jam on it. I love voice noting over on Instagram at workflow queen. I'd love to see what things you're automating. So come share them with me. Let me know, like, how are you automating things? What issues have you ran into and so on and so forth. And I hope you enjoy today's episode.