Make More, Do Less: Automation and Sales Strategies for the Holidays

Speaker A: Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the online course Elevator Podcast. My name is Joshua Lyon. I am your host, and I am thankful that you are joining me today, y'. All. We are getting into the holidays, and as much as I love them, and I'm sure you do, too, they are when I feel the most stretched between wrapping up projects I'm trying to finish and getting family gatherings together. It's just really, really hard making sure that your business doesn't fall apart. And one thing I've noticed is that I often get to the point where I just say, you know what? I'll deal with it later when it comes to my business, because, you know, my family's here or whatever. In fact, I'm about to have family in town. I hope that you guys have some family that you're going to be spending Thanksgiving with or any of the holidays you celebrate with. Um, I'm going to have family in town the end of this week through next week, and then the week after that. So even recording this podcast, you know, I'm going to. It's probably not going to happen as often as I'd like it to, and that's okay. I'm not talking about, you know, are you posting on social media, are you recording your podcast, are you doing your YouTube videos? Although if you're to the point where you can batch and work ahead, that's great. But what I'm talking about is more of the things that have to get done, those things that absolutely make a difference in your business, like doing paperwork or dealing with clients or setting up, you know, your next year's, uh, revenue stream. So it's just that this time of year brings out a lot of stress, and that's okay. That's part of running a business. It's how we deal with it. It's the systems that we set up to help us improve our business so that we don't have to be there all the time. So, looking at the big picture, I want to talk a little bit about strategy and creating systems that work for you. So let's look at the big picture. You started this business so that you could probably have more freedom and so that you could spend more time with your family and so that you could be less stressed and so that you could make more money, right? But if you are having to touch every piece of this business every day, you're likely not doing that. Now, maybe you've gotten to the point where you can hire some people to help you, and that's great. You should be Shifting from delegating to doing. I'm sorry, from doing to delegating. Um, even as tough as that is, but sometimes you need to automate things. Sometimes you need to look at the things that you do day to day and say, is this something I have to put my hands on? Do I have to copy and paste these, you know, sales records into this spreadsheet? Or do I have to email these people back and set up my one on one calls, coaching calls with them or something? You know, how, uh, are you, how are you assessing your daily business tasks and asking yourself, is this something I have to do? Is there software out there that could help me do it? Is there some type of integration that could take this task off of me or even off of an employee? Maybe you have somebody who is helping you, but they're doing everything and they need some support. They need some of it taken off their plate so they can spend time with their family. Um, we need to be thinking about these processes that we take for granted, that we do them every day and don't think, am I doing this the best it can be done? So, quick exercise, I want you to write down three things that you do every week that are not client facing. And these are things I want you to really think about automating, really research. How can I automate this? How can I make this something that I don't physically have to do? Um, and like I said, it could be something where maybe you're using a platform like Kajabi and you're having to go in and copy all your sales into a spreadsheet or QuickBooks or something. There's probably a zap for that, which we'll talk about in a minute. There's probably some type of integration that will feed that information in. Um, you know, maybe you're, maybe you're not using an automatic calendar like Calendly or something like that to schedule your, your one on ones or your coaching sessions. Like there are tools out there. There's so many tools that can do this. And so I want you to take some time this week and just look at the things that you do that are not right there in front of a client. That's what client facing is, you know, and really think about how can I automate this or delegate it if you, if you have someone you can delegate it to. And so thinking about that, let's talk about some tools that do this for us. Um, some tools that help make life a little bit easier. And I've used quite a few of these Tools, some of them are better than others out there. I, um, tried to include the ones that I use the most. Now, Zapier, I think everybody knows what Zapier is, but I thought, I'm trying to keep my mind in this place of not everybody knows what I know. So I need to share even the things that maybe I don't think people want to know. But Zapier is basically like your own API. And an API is just a connection between softwares. And so you can set up Zapier to do very specific things between different softwares, like thinkific and, or Kajabi or something like that, and your accounting software or, um, you know, a lot of people use it with, uh, their email automation software, connecting it to whatever platform or E commerce store that they're using. And so you can track stripe payments in a Google sheet if you need to. You know, you can do all kinds of things. You can, when somebody signs up for your, um, lead magnet, you can automatically add them to your email list on your other platform if you're using a different platform. So you have a lot of options there. And this can, especially if you're going more of like the put it together yourself route, um, where maybe you're using something like Squarespace or WordPress and, and then different tools outside of that in order to piece together your course platform, which is fine. But something like Zapier can really, really help with that. The next one is Calendly. And I use this all the time. I love this app. And instead of one of the things that I hate the most. Okay, let me just start here. One of the things that drives me nuts is trying to set up, uh, meetings with people, especially in other time zones, because chances are I'm going to get it wrong. I am likely going to get that time zone wrong. Um, I have to do the math and everything. And I don't know, for some reason time zones really like F with me. Uh, but with something like Calendly, you can put your availability into your calendar and connect it to your Google Calendar or whatever you use on a daily basis. And when things update, updates so that people can book time with you without it being like a, uh, big, you know, it, it automatically translates your time zone to their time zone and vice versa. So it's not like this back and forth, like, oh, well, 2pm Your time is 5pm My time. Can you do 4P? You know, like they can just pick a time and then it emails you and it lets you know, like, hey, you have a new meeting So I love that you can connect calendly to probably like your email provider using Zapier, and you can. That way they're automatic. When they sign up for the. The coaching call or whatever, they're automatically added to your email list or something, I'm sure. Um, so it's just a really nice, convenient tool that I like a lot. And then the third one is one that I am just currently playing around with right now, and it's called Motion AI Calendar. And you might have seen ads for it. They're pretty heavy in the advertising. But, um, what's neat is that I can put my projects and my tasks into the Motion AI and it will schedule it for me around my actual calendar. Now, my biggest hurdle is not making the plan. It's working the plan that I've made. Uh, because the renegade in me will often come out and be like, no, I don't want to follow this plan. I want to go do something else. And so I have to. I have to talk him down a little bit. But so Motion takes the to do list and the projects on your plate, and it automatically puts them on your calendar. And then let's say somebody, uh, schedules a meeting with you over something, it will adjust and make a change so that based on the priority so that you still have that task on your calendar. But maybe it's not in the same spot. Maybe it bumps something to the next day or whatever. So I'm really trying to use this, I'm really trying to get a hang of this, um, because I think it could be a game changer because making my own calendar is not fun. Um, and I just get caught up in everything. So I think this is something that I'm really gonna like moving forward. And I'll probably do an update or whatever later because I know most of us, most of us solopreneurs, like, we don't do well with structure, or we do well with structure when somebody else is giving us the structure and we need that other person. If that other person is an AI, maybe that'll work for me. I don't know. Um, you know, but it's nice to have that person. Like, I've had people on my team before who, even though I was their boss, I gave them the ability to be like, hey, I need you to boss me around when it comes to getting stuff done. You know, they were like my executive assistant. So I was like, I need you to be on top of me. So that's. That's kind of what I'm hoping this Motion AI calendar will be a little bit. All right, let's talk. Let's talk business and revenue for the end of the year and 2025, because it's coming, um, it's coming fast. And I want to go back to, um, my previous work and courses and things like that. And what always seemed to happen around this time of year is November 1st hits. And everybody's like, oh, crap, we don't have anything planned for Black Friday. Uh, we don't have any Christmas specials planned. We don't have any Black Friday sales planned. We don't have anything. You know, what can we do? And I am not kidding when I say I have literally watched people throw together a course just to sell for Black Friday, spend a week filming and editing and then building out a promotion. Everything. And I mean, just for Black Friday. And it was like, holy crap, this is a lot of work. And we made, you know, $10,000 off of it, which, don't get me wrong, $10,000 is not nothing. You know, if I make $10,000 in a week, that's awesome. But this was a, you know, this was a team of, like, six to eight people, uh, running a company, making a couple million dollars on online courses. So we didn't. $10,000 wasn't that big of a deal to us. Um, it was almost like, wow, we could have spent more time focusing on our January budget and our January promotion. So that is something that I learned is instead of waking up and being like, holy crap, I need. I need Black Friday sales. I need Christmas sales. Focus on 2025, focus on January, focus on the new year. The great thing about what we do is pretty much every product we or every niche we have, we're transformative in that niche. A course, community, whatever it is, what we do is transformative. Um, it's not an accessory. It's not generally a nice to have. Ah, usually, at least most of the people I talk to and work with, we are saying we want to take you from point A to D or G or Z. We want to take you all the way into this new world or life or level of, um, performance. And so the new year is a great marketing tactic. Starting your year off right, taking your life and doing something with it, whatever kind of verbiage you generally use. Um, and so I guess I'm saying don't sleep on the new year. Don't get so worried about Black Friday and Christmas and this stuff. When you have January coming up, which would make up far. Make up for all of those Black Friday and Christmas sales. If you focus on promoting yourself going into 2025 and have something that is a timed launch, um, you know, starting at the new year. So let's talk about three, three options for that. Like, it's nice to say it, but what does that actually look like? So coaching packages, you know, leading up to January is a great time to sell coaching packages in addition to your digital product. People know they want to make the change, but they know they need the accountability. And you can, you can promote that. Coaching is accountability. Coaching is having a guide. Coaching is having someone there with you. Now when you're selling this, depending on how many, you know, I don't know how many coaching sessions you want to do or whatever, but I want to encourage, uh, you probably not to discount the coaching aspect of May. Depending on your business model, it could make sense, um, especially maybe if it's a group coaching or a community or something like that. But whichever product you package together and is full price, that's the one that's gonna seem more premium. And so when you're packaging these, you know, it might be like, hey, yeah, you can get the course for $3,000, or you can get the course and six weeks of coaching for 3,500, you know, um, something like that. And so you're building them in together. But I would encourage you not to say, hey, buy the $3,000 course and get half off of coaching, because coaching is a premium product generally. So you might say, hey, buy this thousand dollar coaching package and get the course half off or something. Um, so coaching packages are a great option for this business model. And then for those of you who have masterminds, start a new group, Start a new group for the new year. Um, this is always really attractive, especially for those people in the business space, um, who really want to promote that community problem solving and issue resolution with a group of people. So, you know, make a new, Create a new mastermind group plan out. You know what you will do, uh, in each of these meetups for the next three months and start promoting that. Sign up for that January 1st. And the last thing you can do is you can relaunch your program. This is what we did almost every January. Uh, you can basically do a huge push plan some type of live online event, do an upgrade to your course, do some kind of update around something that has changed in your program, keep it fresh and keep it new. Um, and you can literally relaunch that and get new sales, get new students, start a new cohort for the new year. Uh, it's, you know, for some of you, it's copy and paste. For some of you, it may take a little bit more. You're like, hey, I've already launched. It was this big deal and everything. See if you can. See if you can do something new. See if you can, um, refresh that and maybe condense it and then do a January launch and start promoting that in December and letting people know, hey, this is coming up in January. All right, now, I'm assuming I'm saying all of that because I think it's more important to focus on January than it is current, you know, focusing on the Black Friday and the Christmas sales. But, uh, some of you already have your January plans, and so now you're looking for. Maybe you're looking for something for Black Friday, or maybe I reminded you about Black Friday and you're like, oh, crap, I already have January plans. I need something for Black Friday. Look, Black Friday is easy. Bundle up a couple of your products, bundle up a couple small courses or something like that and offer them at a discount. You know, don't do your premium course. That just becomes a problem. You really don't want to discount that too much, in my opinion. I like to keep the main thing. The main thing and keep that a premium cost. But if you've got some smaller courses or, or you can use video from some of your coaching sessions, um, that maybe people normally would have paid to be in. You know, you can package those up as a. As a product, um, and then you could do giftable courses or memberships. Like promote a way for people to give your course as a gift or your membership as a gift if they know somebody who would like to be in it. Um, that's a great way to get some Christmas sales and things like that, because there are people who. It's like, I don't want to ship something, you know, um, or I don't want to have to wrap something. It's like, I just want to be able to send it. So that can be a really good option for people who are looking for something digital for their family members. So, um, okay. You know, it's easy to sacrifice time with family because. And friends because we're trying to keep things running. But hopefully I have shared a few ways for you to automate and take some of the load off yourself, um, and really enjoy this time of year without letting the revenue stop from float. Right? So take a deep breath. Take this week prior to Thanksgiving. And I guess we have two weeks prior to Thanksgiving, but you know, take this time and set up systems for yourself. Set up systems that will keep things running, keep things on track without you having to constantly be checking them. And then step away from your laptop. Go spend some time with the people who you care about. I hope you all get to do that. I hope you all have wonderful, wonderful, um, Thanksgivings and holiday seasons. And I will see you or talk to you in the next episode.