Streamlined Solopreneur: Tips to Help Solopreneurs Automate Their Business

Welcome to the Streamlined Solopreneur, a show for busy solopreneurs to help you improve your systems and processes so you can build a business while spending your time the way you want. I know you're busy, so let's get started.

When I was a full-time Web Developer, one of my biggest pet peeves was seeing my fellow freelance developers impose their own tools on their clients because they didn't like the tool the client used. Why is that a problem? Because if your client is comfortable in what they're doing, then you shouldn't make them use something because you don't like it. If it's not a good fit for you, then you shouldn't take on the job.

I have adopted this credo for myself. I hate CRMs. It's a big problem because I know that, especially as I'm doing more coaching work and taking on more clients and doing more outreach, I'm getting more inbound. I'm the, I'm, look. I'm the number one. Well, things can change, but we'll say I'm in the top three search results, organic search results in Google if you search podcast coach. So I'm getting a ton more inbound.

I know that I need to use CRM, and I never use them even if they're good. I have tried all of them. HubSpot and, well, not Sales Funnel, but, like, HubSpot and Zoho and whatever else is, like, the flavor of the week. They just don't fit into my system in a way that works for me.

So, I decided to leverage my skills in automation to build a simple CRM, and I'm going to tell you about that today. And then I'm also gonna talk to you about how you can take this approach with this stuff in your life. I will talk about my favorite things from the CRM, how it works, the tools I'm using, and of course, the automations. And if you wanna get access to those automations and 40 more, you can head over to [streamlined.fm/automation] to get my 40-plus automations database templates or automations templates database for free. There will be a link in the description for this episode as well.

So, first, let's dive into the solution for my CRM.

I decided to build my own simple CRM using three tools. Well, really four tools if you count my website.

The first is Notion. I, over the last year and a half, I have become a big Notion fan. I was Airtable army all the way, and then Airtable made some changes, and they don't really do a good job of, like, hosting rich text, or they didn't at least when I left. And Notion does a really good job of that. I understand that Notion can be confusing for people. If you treat it as what did my friend say to me? If you treat it as a database, you're going to have problems, but if you treat it as pages, then that's gonna be better. I think that's what he told me, and I was definitely looking at it as more of a database than just like a collection of pages.

Since then, though, I have really enjoyed Notion. My podcast planner is in Notion. My CRM is in Notion. I manage all my VA tasks in Notion, and it's just a wonderful all-in-one tool for project management and stuff like that. So, the first one is Notion.

The second is Todoist. I know that you can do tasks in Notion, and Notion even has like reminders, but Todoist is my task manager. So, if a task doesn't exist in Todoist, it might as well not exist. So I need Todoist.

The third tool is Make, make.com, formerly Integromat. You can do the same thing with Zapier, and honestly, I think Zapier is better for most people. I'm probably going to do a Make versus Zapier episode. If you wanna hear that, go to [streamlinedfeedback.com]. That's [streamlined (with a “d”) feedback.com, and let me know if you wanna hear that episode. But I use Make. That's where I moved most of my operations, too. I do use Zapier for some things, but Notion, Todoist, Make.

And then the fourth tool is my website because there is an intake form on my website using Gravity Forms. I have a WordPress site, and I'm using Gravity Forms because, in my opinion, Gravity Forms is the best in the business.

So, how does it work? And I will include a link to a LinkedIn post that has the breakdown. There's an image of all of these automations. So if you wanna kinda see what's going on, you can see that in the show notes or the description for this episode wherever you happen to be listening.

So, here's how it works. The first way someone gets into my CRM is they fill out the intake form on my website. So they'll, there's a bunch of questions based on their podcast journey, how much they're investing, have they launched or not launched, what's their biggest problem, do they have a product.

There are some screener questions there. Right? Because, it used to be the case that someone would fill out the form and then book a discovery call and then not show up. Or fill out the form to book a discovery call, and they were just looking for free advice because they're not willing to invest any money into their podcast at this point.

And then if that's a hobby, if the show is a hobby, that's fine. But this is what I do professionally. And so there are a number of screeners, like how much they're investing and is their podcast is tied to their business or a business in some way.

And based on those answers, they will go to one of two pages. The not right now page, the hey. Based on your answers, I don't think we'd be a good fit right now is a video of me explaining that, and then it has some free resources. But then there are a couple of products that they can buy if they really do want to invest. Right? I don't wanna completely take that off the table based on some assumptions from a form.

So,l the thank you maybe later page does have some of that. The thank you I think you'd be a great fit page is basically inviting them to immediately book a call with me on my cal.com discovery scheduler. So I guess there's five tools. Right? There's Notion, my website, Todoist, Make, and Cal.com. So they'll immediately be invited to book a call with me.

Now, they can also get added to my CRM by filling out that discovery call scheduler, even if they didn't fill out that form. So this is maybe somebody coming via email, or, you know, my mailing list or seeing me speak at an event or being referred to me from a friend or a colleague. And so I want them to be captured in the CRM too.

And so the way that works is they fill out the discovery scheduler. And if they aren't already in the CRM, and I do this by email, so it's a little fuzzy because if they use different emails for different things, then it's not gonna catch it. But if their email address is already in the CRM, it doesn't add them again.

The next thing I need to do is add that they've booked a call. Right? That's not really a status. Because it's on my calendar. I don't really think it needs to be a status, but it is good to see at a glance kinda how they came in. And so, if they aren't already in the CRM, they'll get added from that discovery call. So, again, that's just to make sure I don't have duplicates.

So they're in the CRM. They come in. There's a bunch of statuses. One is lead. One is prospect. Basically, a lead is somebody I haven't talked to yet, and a prospect is somebody who I think could actually become a client.

There's also a follow-up field in the CRM. So, whenever the follow-up field gets updated, that's a date, field or date data type in Notion. Whenever that gets updated, I create a task in Todoist as long as there's not already a follow-up task for that lead.

So, I basically say, is there a task called follow-up with client name? If there is, don't do anything. If there isn't, add them as a task in Todoist, and the due date is whatever the follow-up date I set it to is. So, now I see that I need to follow-up in Todoist.

This one part, for me, has worked like gangbusters. It's not something I thought about doing, and honestly, for most of 2024, I used Things 3 as my task manager. And the biggest problem with Things 3 is, it's not very web-services friendly. And so I couldn't get things I couldn't get tasks into things the same way I can with Todoist. So I'm really glad to be back on Todoist. It has improved my follow-up game, which I've been traditionally bad at because I don't feel like I bother people. But when I set it and it gets added as a task, you know, I just see it as a task. I don't think, I don't have to think about the last time I followed up. So, that's the follow-up field.

So, the statuses are like lead, prospect, proposal sent, won, lost, cold, and no show. No no-show is if they don't show up for our call. They are marked as a no-show. That's like it's they don't show up for our call and didn't tell me ahead of time. That's just like, or later, and they're like, hey. Sorry. I missed our call. Something crazy happened. That is, that's like a demerit to me. I think, you know, if you're not gonna, if you're gonna, if you're gonna take a slot on someone's calendar, you should have the courtesy to show up or let them know you're not gonna show up. And I make sure that I do that. And if I don't, then I email them immediately after and apologize. And usually there's some extenuating circumstance where I'm not going to make it, but I try to give as much time as possible. So anyway, I marked them as a no-show.

They are cold if I have, and this is a, this is manual right now. But they are cold if I followed up four times, and I haven't heard anything from them. Right? And usually it's like one week, two weeks, a month, month. So, like three months have gone by, and I've heard nothing from them. That means they're cold.

If I mark them as one, then they are automatically copied from the CRM to my client's database, and they are hidden from the active leads view. I only wanna see leads and prospects there. And then they get moved into my client's database so that I can I treat that a little bit differently.

So, I know there are a lot of improvements, but the quick overview. They fill out a Gravity form, and they get added to Notion, or they fill out the cal.com discovery scheduling link, and they get added to Notion if they aren't already there.

When I change the follow-up date, a task gets added in ToDoist. And if I have one client, I move them over to the client's database, and I hide them from the CRM view.

The last thing, or the last two things, maybe that I'll mention here, and I'm actually, I'm I'm looking at the CRM now, is, I made this post on LinkedIn, and I've made some changes since. The biggest change is that I added a new column for creating a proposal, and it's a button, and you can assign automations to buttons in Notion.

So, the create proposal button grabs the name and the email and then creates a new page in my proposals database. And I have a template for the proposal that's automatically generated. And so now I already like, it's, this was a little bit tedious because I'd have to go back and, like, copy the proposal that I think best fit the client I was working for now, I'd have to get their email address and their, name. And now everything's automatically associated.

There's also a proposals field, so I can click through to the proposal from the CRM and I can kinda see, like, the total value of all of the proposals. So it's really nice.

So that is one big change. really great automation because it saves me a lot of time. I don't have to copy and paste anymore.

The button feature in Notion is great. And since Notion has updated their automation to add dynamic data, that's also been great. That's been a game changer for me, and it's why I can do some of these things in Notion now.

The other thing I have in the CRM is a chart where I can see, like, it's a bar chart where I can see lost no-show prospect cold completed, which is like done with them completely. Lost, Won, and Lead. I'm sorry. Lost, Won, Lead, and then like, I have a lukewarm. I don't have anybody in lukewarm. That's just like, they're not really cold yet, but they'll, they're probably gonna be cold.

And I added this view because I want to understand my close rate better. Right? This is one of the most important things about having a CRM and doing client work is I need to understand how many people are saying yes and then looking over who said no and figuring out why.

And that's a lot of experimentation, but before, I was just like, I guess they didn't want what I was selling, but there's probably a breakdown in the process. And, yes, I'm leveraging AI for some of this. Right? Like, I take the transcript, and I have, like, the Alastair McDermott made, like, a sales call analyzer bot, and that's been really great. And so I can go back and look at some of that stuff and say, oh, there was a misalignment between what I offered and what they said they needed. Or we went back and forth too many time,s and it was just very clear that what they needed and what I was offering wasn't good or wasn't aligned. Right? So that's one of my projects for this year. Really, the first half of this year is to figure out my close rate and how I can improve it.

And then I also have a timeline view, and the start date for the timeline is the day they were added to the CRM, and the end date is the follow-up, the next follow-up so that I can see about how long it takes me to either close or lose prospects. This is another thing that I was just never tracking because I didn't have a CRM I actually used. And the flexibility of Notion and the fact that I already used Notion have been a big boon to that.

So, wrapping up here, again, you'll be able to see all of this. You'll be able to see the automation and stuff like that. I'm not sharing the exact CRM, obviously, because there's a lot of private information in there, but you'll get a good idea of of how it works with some links in the show notes, for the screenshots over on LinkedIn and the automations database if you want that over at [streamlined.fm/automation].

So how can you take this knowledge, this information, and apply it to your own life?

First of all, the biggest key is reducing friction. If you are using a tool because someone told you, you should use it and it's the best and it'll make you so much better, there's a lot of friction there if you don't know how to use it. Right? I never took the time to learn HubSpot. I never took the time to learn ClickUp. I never took the time to learn Zoho CRM. But I already know Notion, and I use it for a bunch of other things, and I can iterate. And the best part about using Notion is that I started really simple, and I've expanded upon it.

So, as you think about how you can improve your life and improve your processes through the right tools, pick tools you're already using.

Myke Hurley is a host on a bunch of podcasts I listen to, and he shared that his Read It Later app is notes. He will grab a link, use the share sheet, put it in Apple notes, and then when he reads it, he deletes it from Apple notes. And that's what works for him. He doesn't need Instapaper or Pocket or Reader or whatever. He probably wouldn't; he explains it on the show, like, so I'm just t's just a graveyard of stuff I'm never gonna read.

So, think about the tools you already use and what else you can use them for. If you're like, I should really use a CRM, but I don't use Notion. I basically like Notes is my note-taking app. Have a folder called CRM or a list in reminders called CRM, and just each client gets their own note. And if that's what works for you, that's what works for you. And as you determine your needs, then you can grow and change. But you wanna get into the habit of using some tool first.

So, there you go. That's it for this episode. Thanks so much for listening.

If you have any questions about the CRM or using Notion or, of course, automation, you can head over to [streamlinedfeedback.com]. That's streamlined (with a “D”) feedback.com.

And look, if you are just super stuck and you want someone to come alongside you and help you, check out my Unstuck sessions. It's asynchronous coaching. It's on your own time. I will answer your questions within 48 business hours. That's over at [casabona.org/unstuck].

Thanks so much for listening, and until next time, I'll see you out there.