Joe Casabona:
If your business feels busy and expensive, your tools and time are probably misaligned. But if you don't know how they're impacting your business, you can't fix it. Which is why you need the time and tools Self audit. Cut unnecessary software and reclaim time for high value work. Get your time and tools self audit for free at Streamlined FM Impact. Start eliminating waste today and actually free up your time again. That's Streamlined FM Impact for your free time and tools Self audit template. If you run your business anything like I do, you are already out of office.
Joe Casabona:
My last day of work was my kids last full day of school and now I am taking off until they go back to school. And and part of the reason I can do that is because I have these great systems and processes in place I build in that time. But if I'm being totally honest with you, it's not a time where I don't do any work. It's really hard to keep good ideas and thoughts out. Something I like to do when I have some downtime, when the kids have gone to bed or they're visiting friends or family is do an assessment to figure out how I can further improve my processes and my workflows and my systems going into the next year. So today I'm going to tell you how to do your own self assessment with three things you should review before going into the new year. If you want a self guided document for this, you can head over to Streamlined FM Impact, join my mailing list and I will send you a documented version of this self assessment. But for now let's get into the intro and then we'll walk through the assessment.
Joe Casabona:
Look, you're trying to grow your small business while still having a life and not losing your sanity. On Streamline solopreneur We help small business owners grow without burning out through simple, powerful online automations and systems. I know you're busy, so let's get started. I absolutely love the end of the year here in the United States. Thanksgiving is great, Christmas is great. Everything in between is just the best. And as I alluded to in the intro, I optimized for a small or slow relaxed December. In the business.
Joe Casabona:
There's a lot of personal life stuff with school pageants and family obligations. Just lots of off days. One of the reasons I do take those two weeks off is because my wife is a nurse and so she will have to work certain holidays and she doesn't have that sort of flexibility that I have. And when the kids aren't in school, someone needs to take care of them right? And so that gladly falls to me during those two weeks. I'm happy to take those two weeks off and just have cozy Christmas and post Christmas holiday vibes. But that does mean that personal life is a lot crazier and so I do optimize for a slower December. I also like to take this time of year to do three things. I like to plan for the next year, do my year end posts which is like my favorites.
Joe Casabona:
You'll hear that on the 31st. You will get my yearly theme episode for the first episode of 2026 and just kind of other wrap up posts and things I'm thinking about. But I also like to review my systems, tools and workflows to see what I can do better. I like to view systems and workflows like a car in many states somewhere between 19 and 37 when I asked AI some sort of car inspection is required. You hope that your car doesn't need major work, especially in a state like mine where annual inspections are required. That can lead to some very big, unexpected or at least unwanted bills, as it has for me in years past. But it is important to fix something when you discover the problem. That's why those inspections in certain states I'm gonna guess especially in the Northeast where the roads are just brutal in the winter.
Joe Casabona:
That's why those inspections are required. So today I want to walk through my approach. And again, like I said earlier, if you want like a documented version of this so you can run the self assessment yourself, you can go to Streamlined FM Impact. That is Streamlined FM Impact. I also do these business systems assessments for hire, so you'll hear about that when you join the mailing list though in full transparency. So here is my approach. I review three things tools, workflows, and systems. So I'm gonna walk through how I do these and then how you can apply them.
Joe Casabona:
First, let me take a quick I'm so excited to tell you. This episode is brought to you by Stellar Sites. Stellar Sites and Liquid Web have been great supporters of this show from the beginning, and now they've made it even easier for busy business owners to create our perfect websites. Most SaaS services leave you boxed in with artificial limits and locked in to using them. But completely DIY platforms can be overwhelming and time consuming. It's not what business owners like us should be worrying about. Well, consider Stellar Sites the perfect Goldilocks Solution. It uses WordPress, a completely open and customizable CMS on their pre configured guided platform that gives you a head start Not a blank slate.
Joe Casabona:
The solution that I recommend from Stellar Sites the most is the learning package. Most online course platforms are bloated and overpriced and inflexible, but the learning package on Stellar Sites gives you everything you need to sell and manage online courses and memberships without going broke first. Plus, it's based on WordPress, so you can start simple and when you're ready, build the perfect experience without having to migrate or move. Stellar Sites delivers on one of the earliest promises of WordPress to build powerful sites without needing to know code. If you're ready to build your perfect site without breaking the bank or fighting the platform, Stellar Sites is for you. Head over to Streamlined FM Stellar to learn more Break for our sponsor. Okay, so let's get into the tools review. First, I take a look at all the tools I use, those are paid and free, and review how I use them.
Joe Casabona:
I also look for major features they released that I may have missed and any overlap between those tools. So I'll ask myself questions like what am I using? How do I use this tool? Do other tools I use also do this? How much am I paying for this tool? Am I paying monthly or annually? Do I like using the tool? Do I need to use the tool? Those are all things that you want to think about, right? And you know, I have an episode, a case study episode coming out with a former client, Laura Brazon. We did this for her and she said, she says in the episode Spoiler Alert, that the amount of money she paid me for coaching is less than the amount of money I saved her doing this tools assessment. So she got an incredible return on her investment. Now as an example, I use Obsidian to write most of my articles these days, but I also use the writing app Ulysses for writing and I use barenotes for note taking. And there's definitely overlap between these tools. They are all text based, markdown supporting apps that have a folder structure and a tagging structure and, and they're just different in small ways, right? Like Obsidian is really like a personal knowledge management system. There's a million plugins for it, it's open source, it's all plain text, flat files.
Joe Casabona:
Ulysses is a beautiful Mac and iOS app that's really focused on writing and also makes it very easy to publish to certain platforms like medium and WordPress and ghost. Bare Notes is very much your traditional mobile based note taking app. It supports markdown and tagging and searching and things like that. So there are, there are overlap between these tools. So then I look at how I'm using them? Where and when do I use them? Do I need to use them all? Is there a world where I can consolidate Obsidian, Ulysses and Bear? We'll get to that in a minute. Crucially, after I ask myself that, am I paying for tools I don't need to pay for? Would it be better for me to switch to monthly or to annually? Right. So if I'm looking at these tools I pay for Obsidian Sync, I don't necessarily need to do that, but I find it works more reliably than icloud. Ulysses comes with SetApp and bare notes is the only app that I pay and I'm paying monthly.
Joe Casabona:
So would it make sense for me to switch to annual? I think in the case of Bare Notes it would be because it's like less than 50 bucks for the year and so I'm not going to feel like this incredible lock in. Right. I just switched. If I'm looking at Convertkit or Kit formally convertkit, I just switched from annual to monthly because that gives me more flexibility. Am I going to switch? Probably not. But they just raised their price and in the month of November. This helps me spread my expenses out a little bit more because I've taken advantage of a lot of Cyber Week deals and the price increase just like put me over what I. What I want to spend on tools in a single month.
Joe Casabona:
Will I switch back to annual for Kit? Eventually, maybe. But maybe not. Maybe I. Maybe I will find something I like better. Especially if they do some of the things that they've kind of hinted at. Like there are some things that, that they might be working on that I just don't think they should be working on. That I think is a huge distraction. So monthly definitely gives you the flexibility and I would say the cost savings in my experience has never really been there.
Joe Casabona:
Right. For example, I pay annually for Dropbox. I switched away from Dropbox in August to go to Google Drive. Guess when my annual renewal for Dropbox was. It was July. So those are all things that you want to look at in your tools review when you do your workflows review right now you have an understanding of the tools that you use. Look at the workflows for those tools. How are they helping you do your work better? So let's look at the example of Obsidian, Ulysses and Bear.
Joe Casabona:
Again, I have three distinct use cases for them. Obsidian is my personal knowledge management system or my pkm. Pretty much everything I write or think about makes it into Obsidian at some point. But I've also enjoyed writing my articles in it this is a function I never thought I would do outside Ulysses, but I found a theme that's wonderful. And now all of my articles are in the same place. And I actually set it up so that Obsidian, or I'm using an external folder in Ulysses to pull from the Drafts folder in Obsidian, so they're sharing that folder so I can open. I can open that folder in either app and all of my writing will be there. The reason I keep using Ulysses at this point is for one crucial workflow, publishing the articles to my website.
Joe Casabona:
Ulysses has a great integration with WordPress, making publishing a lot easier. All of my sites at this point are WordPress and so publishing to WordPress is a lot easier with Ulysses. Bare Notes is my current note taking app. I optimize for speed on my phone and. And barenotes is much faster than obsidian, especially on the iPhone. Barenotes has great shortcuts, integration and an Apple Watch complication, none of which exist on Obsidian. This is important. I deeply value Quick Capture.
Joe Casabona:
It's the main reason Obsidian isn't also my Notes app. And I have a few shortcuts to send things to Obsidian. But when I need Quick Capture, Bare Notes is the best. So is there a world where I can easily publish from obsidian to WordPress? Is there a world where I can make Quick Capture better on Obsidian? Is the effort worth it? I would say Bare Notes is going to be my, my note taking app for the long haul. And if it's not Bare Notes, it's going to be Apple Notes. And the reason it's not Apple Notes is because I, I tried using Apple Notes for like a year. I still use it to share notes with my wife, but I want Markdown so bad. So bad.
Joe Casabona:
So Bare Notes it is. And then, you know, if there is a plugin for me to publish to WordPress from Obsidian, I should definitely look at it because opening up multiple, like opening up an app just to publish to another place, I might as well just copy and paste it from obsidian into WordPress. So those are. That's maybe one place where I can tighten things up. It's not going to be a cost savings unless I determine that, like Ulysses was the straw that broke the Camel's back for SetApp and I don't need to pay for SetApp anymore. I don't think that will be the case though. I use several apps from SetApp Daily. So anyway, that's only one part of looking at the workflows, right? Part of looking at my workflows is also looking at what Zapier make Hazel Shortcuts, Keyboard Maestro, whatever automations I have set up in those tools, looking at those and seeing how they work as well as what I'm still doing manually, right.
Joe Casabona:
I want to look at are there conflicts between my automations? Sometimes I'll set up automations within tools and not realize the Zapier was already doing them. Sometimes I'll do something with a third party tool like Zapier, but over the course of the year that tool got native support. A really good example of this is when Notion added the ability to send emails through Gmail. I was doing that with Zapier, so that eliminated an entire zap. It kept everything within Notion, which is great. And then looking over the things I do manually, can I automate or delegate things now? Right. Something I've been trying to do is follow the monthly updates from Zapier to see what they've improved. They do a really good job of communicating all of the triggers and actions that they've improved and added.
Joe Casabona:
So is there something that I can automate that I've been doing manually? And crucially, am I using my team efficiently? Is there something I am doing that my VA can be doing? Is there something I'm doing that my editor should be doing? Is there something I shouldn't be doing at all? I hired a thumbnail designer this year. You can see the exact date when I brought him on and the amount of time he saves me is incredible. So that's another thing I look at. Hey, what's preventing me from doing more YouTube videos? Well, every time I do a YouTube video, I need to do a thumbnail and I hate that the thumbnail takes me longer than the actual video. Not anymore. Now I record the video, I upload it to Google Drive, Notion automatically updates and then my VA gets an email and my thumbnail designer gets an email. So those are the things I do for workflow and then for system. After I look at my tools and workflows, then I look over, I look at the overall systems.
Joe Casabona:
Is everything running smoothly? Is there any overlap in what I'm doing? Are the jobs to be done clear? What does the entire system look like from start to finish? Is there a bottleneck, let's say, between my thumbnail designer and my va? Am I the bottleneck? How quickly ahead of time do I need to get videos to my thumbnail designer so that he can have them done before my VA schedules the video? That's all on the systems level because now I have the tools and the workflows and now I need to look at the overall system. I do this every year because it's easy to react when you're in the thick of it trying to get work done. Maybe I build an automation real quick because, okay, well, this is something I need to do. Or maybe I delegate something unclearly to my VA because it's something I need to do. Maybe I build a new notion database because it helps. Now I have three notion databases that all do the same thing that happened to me earlier this year. I had different notion databases for my podcast and my YouTube videos and my newsletters and my and my short form videos. And now I have one dashboard for all of it.
Joe Casabona:
So it's. It is easy to react to what you're doing in the thick of it, but purposefully making time at the end of the year to review what you do allows you to make it better and allows you to run smoothly. I can tell you quarter four of 2025 has been my best quarter ever in my adult business owning life. And it's because of the systems I've been putting in place which allow me to focus on delivering better work for clients and communicating better work for clients. Clients have said, I saw your YouTube video and I wanted to hire you. I heard you on a podcast and I wanted to hire you. If I didn't have good systems in place, if I was just always playing catch up, I wouldn't be doing as many YouTube videos, I wouldn't be going on as many podcasts, I'd be too busy in the minutiae of designing a crappy thumbnail. So doing this review on a regular basis, maybe it's not annually for you, but definitely do it on a regular basis, will pay dividends in your business.
Joe Casabona:
I usually take 16 to 32 hours to do this. That is two to four working days, assuming an eight hour day. A lot has changed for me this year, so it might be closer to 32, but I know it's important work for all the things I just told you. I want to hit the ground running in the new year, especially because I take so much time off. Right when you take a long vacation and you sit back at your desk that first day, it's like, what was I doing? How do I work? So there's a little rust you gotta shake off. Having well documented systems in place is a must. So how do you apply this? Well, again, go to Streamlined FM Impact and get your template. But the gist is this.
Joe Casabona:
Write down all the tools you use, how you use them, and if you pay for them monthly or annually. Write down how those tools fit into your work, how they talk to each other, and if there's any automated parts of them. And finally, take a look at the system. How are the tools connected, what do they each do, and what you're delegating versus what you're doing yourself? It takes me 16 to 32 hours every year. Your mileage may vary. Check out my free template. And again, I do have a handful of slots available in the beginning of the year because as you're hearing this, I'm already out of office. I'm not going to see, I'm not going to hear from you until the new year.
Joe Casabona:
My system Business assessment if you just like, you know what, Joe? Just I want to hire you. Go ahead and click on the link in the show and there'll be a link in the show notes, but streamline.fm/impact if you want to try it yourself first. That's it for this episode of the Streamline solopreneur. Thank you so much for listening. If you want to submit feedback, you can go to streamlinedfeedback.com that was one of the things I improved. I even Vibe coded a audio message recorder so you can submit an audio message if you'd like. That's over@celelinedfeedback.com all the links will be in the description as well as over at Streamlined fm. And until next time, I hope you find some space in your week.