10 things I've outsourced and automated as a coach

Business tips

14 Apr

warmly lit home office with black office chair at white desk and the words do more on the computer screen

Hello, I’m Emma and I’m a passionate coach for freelancers - and a huge fan of anything that makes life easier. You could say I’m a professional lazy arse. Or, to use a term Denise Duffield Thomas has coined, a Chillpreneur. If I can find a way to automate or outsource something to make life easier, I will (and ideally something that’s budget-friendly too).

I thought it might be useful to share some of the tools and outsourcing methods I use to keep organised, so I can focus on providing the best coaching service I can.

1. Business Management

Let’s kick off with one of my absolute favourite tools as a coach - Dubsado. I’ve been using Dubsado for almost a year now, and it’s revolutionised my business. Here are some of the things it allows me to do:

Schedule calls with clients
Create workflows so new clients can book a time, pay, sign their contract and get their coaching questionnaire, all without me having to touch a thing
Invoice
Send follow up emails
Track hours
Create portals for clients
Create To-Do lists to share with clients

It saves me so much time and it’s so much more professional than going back and forth with emails (because gosh, I hate my inbox).

2. Regular posts into Facebook Groups

I run several Facebook groups, both for my own business and for clients. I used to use Buffer for this, which meant I had to rebuffer the regular threads in each week or month. Last year I moved to SmarterQueue, which has made it so much easier to create a loop of content that goes out regularly during that slot. It means I can create similar posts with various different images or gifs to keep it fresh.

3. Podcast editing

My podcast is short and sweet, and for years I’ve edited it myself. This led to a lot of faffing! Last year I started outsourcing the editing to someone else, and it has streamlined my whole process! Not only does she edit it and add the intros and outros, but she also uploads it to my podcast host, Libsyn. So all I have to do is record, forward, then tweak the wording for the description. As an added bonus, Libsyn then uploads it to all the podcast platforms and shares it to all my social media channels.

4. Repurposing content

Once my podcast is out there, a tool called Repurpose.io waves its magic wand and uploads it to YouTube for me with a snazzy graphic. That’s only one thing Repurpose.io does. It can also turn your videos into social media videos (the viral ones that have the text bars at the top and bottom and captions), and turn your videos into podcasts too.

5. Newsletter Ninja

My newsletter is brought to you by the creator of this very blog, Emma Read! I write the content into a Google Doc each week, then Emma takes the content, checks it through and then adds it and schedules it into ConvertKit for me. She’s bloody marvellous. The thing about outsourcing for me is that it gives me accountability. I have to get the work over to the freelancer I’m working with in order for them to do their job. So if consistency is something you struggle with, I highly recommend outsourcing.

6. Canva for design

I have zero creativity, but Canva allows me to create all sorts of things that look half decent (I mean, definitely not as good as a graphic designer could do, but for a DIY job, not bad).

7. Easy email sorting

I mentioned earlier that I hate emails. One app I’m enjoying at the moment is Unibox. It sorts and bundles your emails by sender, so if you find yourself dealing with a heaving inbox, you can quickly weed out the ones you can safely archive or delete. You know the ones I mean, the 1000 emails from various companies on their CV19 thoughts at the start of March, and all those Pinterest emails.

8. Teachable for my online courses

I have lots of online courses and an online group coaching membership for freelancers, and I’ve used Teachable for years to provide these. I love that Teachable deals with all the money side, including following up when people miss payments, and allows me to focus on creating content. There are lots of self-hosted options, but I like that if I have any problems (which is rare) I can go to Teachable, or their Teachable FB group, for the answer.

9. Otter for recording and transcribing notes

Otter is one of the newest additions to my online toolkit, but it’s one of my favourites. You can brain dump into the app, and it transcribes as you speak, for free, adding in keywords to search later. Very useful for when you’re on the go, and when you want to write using your own tone of voice.

10. Bonjoro for video messages and Voxer for audio messages

These days, in an effort to reduce the emails I have to deal with, I’m using more video and audio messages. There are two I really like. Bonjoro for creating quick video messages to welcome people to my membership or ahead of a coaching call. This actually syncs with Teachable, so whenever I have a new sign up, it adds a new ‘task’ for me in the app. And Voxer for audio messages. In fact, I now use the latter for offering a more relaxed form of back-and-forth coaching.