Kristen 0:02
Hey y’all welcome to this episode of the savvy teacher seller. I’m your host, Kristen Doyle. And today I get to introduce you to my friend, Laura comark. She and I are talking all about how we have been working hard this year to prioritize time that we are working on, not just in our businesses.
Kristen 0:22
Laura is a website and tech strategist for women who love their work, but not the tech. She helps her clients simplify the back end of their businesses, use the right tech and create evergreen systems so they can scale with confidence and ease. She’s also the host of the Be Bold Make Waves Podcast, where she shares inspiring stories from women in business about scaling, growing and the struggles that we all face along the way.
Kristen 0:48
Laura and I met a couple of years ago in a mastermind group and we have been friends ever since. This year, at the very beginning of the year, she shared with me that she was going to try to implement something she called CEO weeks, once a month, to force herself to do some of those really important tasks that needed to get done in her business, but that she was always putting off and never really actually got around to. Turns out, surprise, surprise, I was having the same problem. I’m sure some of you have that problem as well. And I decided to start doing these co weeks along with her.
Kristen 1:27
We committed to scheduling these out on our calendar and holding each other accountable for our CEO time. And today, we sat down to have a conversation and share this process with you and to talk about how you can implement some of these same systems in your TPT business. We are talking social media, email marketing, data analysis, and of course, the tools that we use to make it all faster and easier.
Kristen 1:54
Now, if you are thinking that you can’t do CEO weeks, because your TPT business is a side hustle and you’re in the classroom full time during the week. Don’t worry, we have ideas for you, too. Let’s dive in.
Kristen 2:09
Hey TPT sellers, ready to see growth in your business. You’re in the right place. Welcome to the savvy teacher seller. I’m Kristen Doyle. And I’m here to give you no fluff tools and strategies that will really make an impact on your sales. Let’s get started y’all.
Kristen 2:29
Hi, Laura. Thank you for being here today.
Laura 2:32
Thank you so much for having me, Kristen.
Kristen 2:34
I am so so excited to talk with you some about something you and I’ve talked a lot about over the last, what 10 months. We started this in January, I think. And it is end of October now. So we’ve been at it for almost 11 months. And so you and I’ve talked a lot about our CEO weeks, but I am so excited to kind of share what that looks like with my audience and talk a little bit about what we’ve been doing during CEO weeks. So maybe let’s start with, I’m gonna let you start with what is the CEO week?
Laura 3:13
Yeah, absolutely. So this kind of goes back to last year, I was feeling so burnt out. I’m full time in my business. I’m not side hustling anymore. So I was so overbooked with calls, doing coffee chats, all these things. And I was not feeling a lot of space, to work on my business, to create content for my business, to build some different things I want to have on the back end, different products, different things that would help my business grow. And I wasn’t making time for that. And so at the start of the year, I said, You know what, I am just going to block off my calendar, the first Monday through Friday of the month. And it’s going to be set to reoccurring. So it will just always be like that. So no one can schedule anything with me.
Laura 4:03
And the reasoning behind that was to just have the space to do that. I knew if I put it near the end of the month, I would find other things that needed to be done and stick it in that time. And like take from that time. So I put it at the beginning of the month. Again, like if the first of the month falls on like a Tuesday it won’t be till that second week. So it kind of moves around. But it’s literally just set to reoccurring. And it has created so much space and openness in my schedule, and I’ve loved it. And so this year, I’ve been able to create more content for my business. I’ve been able to have that week where I just focus on the things that’s on that like never ending to do list for my business and get some things knocked out.
Laura 4:46
So the idea of the CEO week is it’s just a week that I’m able to fully focus on just my projects for my business and work on that. So and I recognize a lot of your audience is their side hustling they’re still in the classroom and so they might not have a full week they can take off. And that’s okay. It could be taking Monday night, maybe after the kids are in bed, I used to do that a lot when my kids were younger, and I didn’t have a full week to do things like this. And just really having that time structured and having your list and knowing like, these are the things I’m going to accomplish for my business during my CEO time. So it could be maybe on a Friday or on a weekend even. Just once a month, where you have that dedicated time to focus on growing your business.
Kristen 5:32
Yeah, and I think it’s so important that we do spend time on the things that grow our business, the things that get, like you said, pushed off the list. Because we all can feel like there are these pressing things that we need to get done right now. I know every time I open my email, there is something new that suddenly jumps to the top of my must do right now lis, because it’s sitting there in my inbox.
Kristen 5:55
And it’s just so important to put those things aside for a little bit of time to work on the things that are working on our business versus just working in our business can. It’s so easy to get swept up in the working in your business, answering questions from customers and fixing something that had a mistake in it. And doing all of these other little things that obviously are important, but they can get in the way of working on the big things that can make a huge difference and where our business is going long term.
Laura 6:28
Absolutely. I feel like there’s so many things, especially on the back end of our business, we do a lot of manual pieces to our business, especially when we’re first starting out. And when we’re growing. There’s a lot that’s done manually. And there are things we can do and put in place systems and processes. And it takes time to set those up. But once they’re set up, it frees up your time.
Kristen 6:49
Yeah absolutely. One of my big goals this year when we started our SEO weeks was to spend some of that time on things like setting up a welcome sequence and my email because I didn’t have one yet. I knew I needed one and I had needed one for years. But it’s one of those things that just doesn’t get done. If you don’t set aside time to work on it. So lots of those kinds of things that we can do during our CEO weeks. Let’s talk about some some of those CEO tasks. What things are we doing during our CEO week?
Laura 7:23
Well, I know for me, I’m doing a lot of content, not just creation, but scheduling. So I’m taking Instagram posts and getting those scheduled out so that they’re ready to go. I’m putting in place an evergreen sequence, nurture sequence in my email, that’s very jargony. Let me break that down a little bit.
Laura 7:44
So what an evergreen nurture sequence is an email is its content that is not date specific. I’m not saying, you know, hey, it’s Monday, and it’s my CEO week, I’m not starting an email saying that I’m using I’m making sure all the language could be read at any point during any time of the year. And I have a sequence that gets put in place so that once people get on my list, get that first welcome sequence, like what you just talked about putting in place, then they go into my nurture sequence. So in that nurture sequence, they get specific emails where they will be provided different value, training, different resources. And then also the opportunity for me to make offers to them, also opportunities for me to ask them like questions for feedback, stuff like that.
Laura 8:28
So I can continue to engage and just nurture they can get to know me better. And just really keeping up that communication. Because I think we all know that that email list is so important to our business. And so part of what I’ve been working on during my CEO time is just really continuing to build out that sequence, so that as people hear me on a podcast, or I speak at a summit, or any event, and then they get new people come into my world get on my email list. They then get nurtured. And it’s not something of me every week being like, Oh, what am I going to write to my email list? It’s also reusing the content, which is great because I’m big fan of repurposing past content.
Kristen 9:08
Absolutely. We have good content out there, and we definitely need to repurpose it. Let’s talk a little bit about this idea of an evergreen nurture sequence, though in terms of TPT because when you first told me about how you were setting yours up, I immediately loved the idea. And I don’t know if you remember but I think the first thing I said was I can’t do that for chalk and apples. Because my chalk and apples list is teachers and teaching is so very seasonal, in terms of what we are talking about to our audience at different times of year which of our products we’re promoting.
Kristen 9:42
All of those things have to be tied to the seasons, especially in the lower grades in the elementary grades because we are even you know if it is Thanksgiving, we are teaching basic concepts for teaching math, but it’s got turkeys on it. It’s because we’re trying to keep these kids excited and engaged. And so it really does matter that things are seasonal and timely in our business. But that doesn’t mean we can’t automate. And it doesn’t mean that we can’t find ways to take some shortcuts and create an almost evergreen sequence, at least it’s evergreen from one year to the next. Let’s talk a little bit about some ways that we can do that.
Laura 10:25
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, oh, there’s so many things. So in terms of like, the email piece, you can still create it and have it be seasonal based on like, here’s your January sequence, here’s your February sequence. You could set that up for the whole year. And then depending on when someone gets into your world joins our lists, there can be conditional formatting, which is something that your email list provider, as long as you have, like, one that’s capable of these sort of things, not all email list providers are created equal, you do need to have a good one in place to be able to do this. One that’s powerful enough, like ConvertKit, or Active Campaign and able to do this conditional formatting.
Laura 11:05
But say to it, hey, depending on what month it is, like, if we’re here in the world, after the welcome sequence dropped this new subscriber into this sequence. And so it puts them in the right month in the right place at the right time. So it still can be so you could potentially take all those emails that you’ve been sending out, whether and we’ve all done it, there’s no shame in like, I have a list, but I haven’t been emailing them consistently.
Laura 11:32
We have all been there and that’s okay. It’s okay to just start and just start nurturing them. And there’s lots of resources out there for help with what to write and all those things. But if you don’t nurture those people, especially if they’ve previously bought from you, they’re more likely to buy from you again, buy your products, but tell them about your products. We can’t just sit there and think I mean, they’re just on your TPT store, like looking through everything you have, like, let them know, right?
Kristen 12:00
They really need to be prompted that, hey, the season is coming up, and I have these resources that will help you teach whatever during this month.
Laura 12:08
Yeah I mean, how many times are we sitting there mean? You know, that time when you’re just like driving, all these ideas come to you, and you’re like, Oh, I really need to come up with something fun for the kids in the next season, that we’re going into Thanksgiving time, you know, November, it’d be great to have some new fun resource. And then if that resource just happens to pop into your inbox, that’s so much easier than having to go search for it.
Kristen 12:35
Yeah, absolutely. So one thing I’ve been working on, like you said, is writing out those emails, and they’re sitting in a Google doc initially, so that it’s all kind of ready to plug in and then putting them in kind of on a weekly basis. So I’ve got four weeks of emails for January. And for more for February, and we continue rolling through the year, that way, gives you a really good way to promote those resources that you have that are timely, but still have it all set up in a very automated way.
Kristen 13:08
And thanks to the power of things like Chat GPT, we can even take those and do a little rewrite of what I already wrote. So it’s still my ideas. I know a lot of us, you know, we don’t want to rely on AI to the point that it’s not even our ideas anymore. Everything starts to sound the same, all of those kinds of things. But that can help us just tweak the thing we’ve already written and make it a little fresh and new for the next year.
Laura 13:34
Yeah, and I mean, taking that to do list item off your plate, that gives you back so much time, time to either do other things for your business time to go spend with your family time to do other things. And know that your business is still running on the back end.
Kristen 13:50
Yeah, absolutely. And it helps so so much to just have some of that happening all on its own. And there’s also this magic that happens when you didn’t even write an email, but people are buying from the email you wrote last year, or whenever.
Laura 14:08
Yeah, I mean, I have a client that I recently just set up. We just put in place, I think five months of nurture emails, and then each month there’s a flash sale to one of her products she’s not a teacher. But she’s an online service provider and has digital products and I think she has four digital products. And we have a flash sale for every month and people are just starting to go through it because we got it all set up and activated. And I’m loving getting these messages from her.
Laura 14:34
She’s like, Oh my gosh, I made a sale today. I didn’t have to live launch. It just happened while I was out doing other things. And I told her I said just keep sending me these messages because I love hearing that. I love hearing my clients are like getting these results because that’s exactly what we want to be happening. We want to build these businesses but we also don’t want to spend all our time just living and breathing our businesses. I’m all our free time, we want to be able to step away and have some of it running on the back end.
Kristen 15:05
Yeah, I think a flash sale is a great idea for like some of our bigger bundles that are timely, some that are good to sell during certain seasons. I know, most of us have some big bundles in our store, because bundling up little bitty resources is a good way to increase your income. But putting some flash sales on those is a great idea too.
Kristen 15:26
Now, for my TPT listeners, that does require you to have a store on your own website or on a shopping platform of some sort outside of TPT. Because we can’t really control flash sales on TPT without doing something manual. So it’s not really an option to automate on TPT. But it’s definitely something you can do if you have your own store, or you have something like Shopify, or maybe you’re using Thrive cart checkout or something like that.
Kristen 15:51
So another thing I always love to do during my CEO week, and I know this is maybe not something you do during yours, but I always take a little bit of time to analyze my stores data. Because we have so many products in our stores. And my audience has heard me say a million times that we have more potential to sell more of our products by making our existing ones better than we do by just creating a bunch of new stuff. So I always like to take a little bit of time during CEO week to pull my data.
Kristen 16:25
I’m sure everyone has heard me talk about your data playbook. It’s the membership that I’m part of that helps analyze that data for me, so that I can pull it in, just look at numbers. And know that Product A I need to go in and tweak the pricing on because it’s converting better or worse or whatever than it normally does. And I need to play with pricing. And maybe I need a new cover image for product B, or I need to work on the SEO keywords for products see helps me find all of those things. So that is definitely a big piece of what I do on my CEO week. I don’t know, do you analyze any data on your SEO?
Laura 17:00
You know, I think it’s great that you brought that up because looking at the data is so important in our businesses, because that’s really going to tell you what’s performing. I mean, otherwise, we’re just kind of throwing things at the wall and not actually looking at what the data tells us. So, important to do, I try to remember to go in, I need to set a better reminder task, because it definitely is one of those things like I’m guilty of it that it goes on the back burner. It’s not really the sexiest thing to do in our business is like to analyze all these numbers like it can be a little overwhelming.
Kristen 17:38
It definitely can be overwhelming, but the payoff is so good. And especially when you’re tracking your progress, I’ve shared a story not too long ago about a product that I changed a price on in May. And when I track my progress, I have made an extra $3,000 from May until October on that product, compared to what I was making on the product before the pricing change.
Kristen 18:02
That’s fantastic.
Kristen 18:04
That’s insane. It’s wonderful. And it really just goes to show how important it is to be looking at your data and analyzing how your products are doing and then coming back and reflecting on the changes you’ve made to and making sure that they are working well. Because not every change I’ve made has that kind of a success story. I have some where I’ve made a change. And I come back a month or two later. I’m like, alright, well, that didn’t work. So I have to change it back. But the data is what tells us that and we have to make sure we’re taking a little time to look at it.
Laura 18:36
Yeah, I find I have because I don’t have a store on my website. But I do have blog posts and going and looking and seeing how my blog posts are performing has been really eye opening because I have a couple of articles that get a lot of SEO traffic. And I’m like, Yes, I did really good on that. But I’m a little surprised at how often I’m seeing that it pops up in the reporting and tells me how much it’s popping up on Google. And I’m like, Okay, good to know, maybe I need to create more content like this. Because it’s popular.
Kristen 19:06
Yeah. And it’s so helpful to to go in like a Google search console and see which keywords are actually bringing people to your content. Because sometimes the keyword that’s bringing people to my blog post or my podcast episode, or whatever it is, might not be the one I thought I needed to be optimizing for. And I need to change because the keyword that’s actually getting people to my site is a different one. And maybe I can rank higher if I focus more on that keyword instead of whatever the other one was that I picked.
Laura 19:36
Right? Yeah, it’s, again, the importance of looking at the data and really analyzing it and looking at it over a period of time. Like it doesn’t happen overnight. You need to go back and reflect on it just like you stated like that’s so important for us to be doing in our businesses.
Kristen 19:51
Yeah, and from a practical standpoint, I usually look at my TPT data every month. And then I look at my blog post from my website data, blog posts, podcasts, product listings in my store, all of the website data I look at about once a quarter. Because I do find changes tend to changes we make on TPT take effect really quickly, even SEO changes up, you might not know this, but I can change titles on my products on TPT. And they will move up in rank within a few hours, which is not remotely the same story as Google, where it takes 2, 3, 4 months to really see changes show up. So for my website, I tend to look about once a quarter, and then for TPT, I look every month.
Laura 20:36
Yeah, I probably need to be doing my website stuff a little more frequently than I do. But that’s okay. Because it’s, you know, I think it’s important to also give yourself grace and know like, there’s a lot of things we should be doing in our business. And again, that’s where bringing it back to the CEO Week can be really, again, if you don’t have a week, that’s okay, seek just a block of time that is dedicated to doing that work on your business. So that you’re able to know where you’re at, know your numbers, know what needs to be changing, and have the time to make those changes.
Kristen 21:12
For sure. We talked a little bit about content. And I know one of the things that you spend a lot of time on is scheduling out content, I definitely have to pop in once a month, once every two months at least, and do some content planning. I try on my CEO week to do that content creation as well. And I know you tried to do some of your content creation your CEO week, too. Let’s talk a little bit about that. Because I know not everyone listening has time to write.
Kristen 21:41
If you’re doing weekly blog posts or podcasts, not all of us have time to write or record five pieces of content in your CEO time, because like you said, we might just be doing a few hours, it might be the morning on Saturday, or something like that. So even if we don’t have time to create all of the content, I think taking some CEO time for content planning is really important to because when you get ready to sit down and plan out your and write that content if you’ve already got a plan in place that cuts out so much time and just mental work of trying to figure out okay, I have a blog post I need to write this week or I have a podcast episode two record. What am I going to do?
Laura 22:27
Yeah, I think either having an like, continuous document, I have a physical little book that I write all my things down in, so that I have it in front of me and I keep my running list of like, here’s all the things. Here’s my content ideas, here’s the things I want to be creating, like so I know when I sit down in that block of time, I know what I should be working on. And that does, like you said, it helps save on the bandwidth of that mental energy of like, Oh, what do I need to do now and just kind of sitting there and instead you kind of like, open up your computer and like, Oh, let me go check these can do all these other things.
Laura 23:03
Because you’re not really feeling motivated and excited, because you don’t maybe necessarily know what you should be working on. So yeah, definitely sitting down and having that plan and mapping out, like what you want to be talking about what products you want to be promoting when to be promoting them. And just mapping that out. So that you know, like, Okay, let me go create a blog post centered around this product that I want to be promoting this time a year.
Kristen 23:25
Yeah, because if we pull up our calendar, or whatever you’re using to manage your tasks, and it says write a blog post. It’s so easy to just get distracted and go down a rabbit hole of other things. But if my calendar says write a blog post on center activities for December, well, then now I know what I’m doing. I can just start doing that one thing, instead of going down a whole rabbit hole. And I love that you mentioned thinking through what products you need to be promoting this month because that’s a big piece of it, too. I like to look at what sold when I’m analyzing my data. I like to look at what sold in the upcoming month last year. And that’s how I plan out my content. What were my best sellers for December last year. That’s what I need to be promoting in December this year.
Laura 24:14
I love that so much. Because you can sit there and be like, Oh, I know what I want to talk about. But again, the importance of analyzing that data and saying what is performing well, what are the keywords? That’s because you might have picked a keyword. But if that’s not what’s being used and how you’re being found, you need to change that up. So again, yes, the importance of going back and looking at analyzing that information and then using that information as you move forward and plan out your content. So important.
Kristen 24:44
Yeah, I know you do you do paper but I love my little plan in Google Sheets is the simplest thing ever. My blog posts and podcast episodes go out on Tuesdays, blog posts for chalking apples blog and podcast for Kristen Doyle. So I have my little Google sheet that has all of the Tuesday dates. And if you didn’t know this, or maybe someone else listening didn’t know this, if you type in Tuesday dates, whatever date interval you want, and then drag them down, it will keep doing like every seven days from then until whenever you stop, which is so helpful. So my favorite little trick in Google Sheets right now.
Kristen 25:29
But I do that, and at the beginning of the year, I do a full year’s worth of Tuesdays, and I start brainstorming, what am I going to post about? And what am I going to record podcasts about? I don’t map out a whole year in January, I can’t work that way. I am amazed by people who can do it, you know, two or three months at a time usually is when I map that stuff out. And then I have another tab on that same Google sheet that’s just a brain dump of ideas. So if someone emails me or asks a good question on comments on an Instagram post or something, I’ll just drop those into my brain dump of ideas. Because you know, sometimes you need an idea from someone else. You’re just not feeling creative right now.
Laura 26:12
Oh, I love that. I’m always curious how people gather their like, brain dumping into different documents and things I have a brain dump, Google Doc, I have like, an email brain dump, a blog post brain dump, like I have all these different brain dump documents. But I know it’s titled brainstorm and I can do a search for it. Because a lot of times I’m out like walking the dog. And I have an idea. And so I just want to write it down real quick before the idea just floats away out of my head and disappears into the world.
Kristen 26:47
Yeah, I tend to pull up the Notes app on my phone for that. And then I at some point, we’ll move it into its place where it actually belongs.
Laura 26:56
I do the Notes app, too. And then I’m finding I sometimes have my ideas in too many places.
Kristen 27:01
I try to open the same note every time. It’s just my one little brain dump note. So that way, I don’t end up with a million notes in my notes app and not able to find anything.
Laura 27:11
That’s a good little tip right there. Because yeah, I have way too many notes that a lot of them go back very long time. They go back far. And I’m like, do I still need this. And so it’s been on one of my to do not a CEO week to do it’s a very low priority to do going back through and going and analyzing what’s in there and get rid of things.
Kristen 27:34
Let’s talk a little bit about some pitfalls. Some things we might run into trying to implement CEO weeks. I know, you and I both had some struggles as we were getting started, especially early this year. And I feel like, correct me if I’m wrong. I think for both of us, it’s gotten to be kind of just the routine now. And it feels good. And it feels easy at this point. But let’s talk about some of the things that we did run into early on. Do you have anything that comes to mind?
Laura 28:02
I do. I had, I know I had some of those weeks where like, in July, we were actually gone. It was fell over Fourth of July week. And so that was a week, kids were home from school. And we were actually out of town. And so I’m like well, I mean, I wasn’t planning on doing client work this week anyway. But I wasn’t able to work on my business because we were gone. So there was a number of weeks that kind of fell when I had other things happening in life, which is okay, like that’s, it’s okay to do it. I know, I had other times where there was a project I needed to finish up for a client. And I just wasn’t finding other time in my schedule. So I did book it during that week, I had times where I just needed to get, you know, a client needed a VIP day. And so I was able to squeeze her into that week, as well for a day there. But what else were pitfalls.
Kristen 28:55
So really, it comes down to being flexible when it when things do pop up. Because the idea of a set week, every single month, and it’s always the same and I am very strictly blocking this time out to work on this. That sounds great. But that’s not real life. It’s just not. You know, kids get sick and they’re home from school. And usually what next month I am going to be on vacation the entire CEO week that we would normally have.
Kristen 29:22
And so this time because I am not doing VIP days. The last couple of months of this year, I’m taking a little break from those to work on some more things in my business. I was able to just move my CEO week I’m actually doing the week that overlaps the end of the month instead of the first full week. So I’m just kind of bumping my CEO week up a little bit so that I still get that time I’m still getting to do those things. Even though I’m on vacation during my CEO week. And like you said the nice thing is that means I don’t have anything scheduled that week because it was already blocked out.
Laura 29:56
Yeah, I think just giving yourself grace, being flexible. It’s a week that’s there to have openness and space in your calendar. Because when we pack so much into our calendar, we can get overwhelmed, we can get burnt out. And I know for me, I just get so exhausted being on calls, you know, I have a podcast as well. And so I’m on a lot of zoom calls, because mine are almost all guest interviews, and I love them. But it does get draining being on podcast interviews, discovery calls, client calls, like it’s not having, you know, coaching calls, not having a week of calls. It just makes it feel so much lighter.
Laura 30:37
It feels like there’s a lot of space because I love being on the calls. But at the same time, there’s that this kind of energy shift where you’re like in the middle of doing something, and then you have to stop, get on the call, and then get off and get refocused again. And it just kind of changes the momentum that you had going.
Kristen 30:53
Yeah, it definitely does that we were just talking before we hopped on this call about how we’re, I think you said nine minutes until I’m supposed to be on this call. And now I feel like I can’t do anything else. Because I’m about to be on a call. And I’m the exact same way when I have things scheduled. When I know I have to be in certain places, it just interrupts the flow for the rest of the day. And it’s good to set aside some time where we’re not going to have as much of that going on. So that we can really work on the things we need to do on our businesses.
Laura 31:23
Yeah, and allow yourself to have that creative space to create the content, to schedule the content to just like, let the creative juices flow. Because again, those interruptions can really just like when you’re in a good groove, it’s hard to like stop pull away, and then get back to it.
Kristen 31:36
Yeah, speaking of creativity, one thing I have found is I need to be flexible and give myself grace with where the CEO week falls within my life and my cycles, we just had Tiffany, who you know very well talking about working in flow with our cycles and how, you know, for men, they tend to work in this 24 hour cycle. And so every day is a fresh start. And they’re able to just do whatever is on the calendar. But sometimes my CEO week falls in one of those weeks where I just don’t have the energy to be creative. And maybe I’m okay with looking at the data and making the plans. But I can’t create things this week.
Kristen 32:24
So it really helps me, I haven’t shifted the actual CEO weeks because I like doing things at the beginning of the month. But it helps me just look at my CEO week, this month, can I create content this time? Or do I need to just plan the stuff and create the content next week or the week after? That’s one place that I have definitely struggled some months, I know you have got some Voxer messages for me saying I have XYZ on my to do list and I can’t do it.
Kristen 32:53
And I don’t know why I can’t do it right now. And I’ve just had to give myself that grace to say, you know, what, if I can’t do it right now, and I’m just not there, then I’m going to pencil this into my calendar for next week. And I’ll do it then. And I’ll go ahead and make the plans. I’ll do the parts that I can do right now.
Laura 33:09
Yeah, it’s so important to for us to give ourselves flexibility in our plans. And in what we’re doing, like you said, give grace because even though we plan for this time to like, get it all done, like it still can all get done at once our cycles, our energy like it does, it fluctuates. I’m so glad you had Tiffany come in. She’s amazing and so knowledgeable. It’s been so interesting, as I’ve learned from Tiffany different, like ways for tracking my cycle and my energy levels and my creativity. It’s been absolutely eye opening on how and it makes sense. I mean, I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.
Kristen 33:45
Right. I mean, we all know how it affects our moods. I don’t know why we didn’t think maybe this has some effect on our work too.
Laura 33:53
Exactly.
Kristen 33:54
Well, you are the tech and automations clean. So can you share with us some of maybe the tech tools, the apps, you’d like to use things that you use to help kind of automate things and keep your business rolling.
Laura 34:11
Oh my gosh, yes, I love all my different tech tools. I because I do one on one client work. I know a lot of your audience doesn’t, but acuity is one of the tools I use and love and it integrates, which means it just connects to other apps and things so seamlessly like it automatically creates the Zoom link for calls. Which is great and sends it. I love being able to connect. Like I have the podcast and when someone is going to be a guest on my podcast, I have a release form for them to sign that says I can use their voice, their image, what they say for anything. And I have that set that as soon as they schedule it automatically sends out to them to sign and then my signature automatically gets added after they do I don’t have to do anything with that. It’s just all automated.
Kristen 34:58
And I know a lot of my list They may not have client meetings. But I do have quite a few listeners who have podcasts. So definitely using something like you use acuity, I use Calendly. But they’re very similar, something like that to schedule out these podcast interviews, like the one that we’re doing today and have things go out automatically, so that you’re not forgetting to contact the person you’re interviewing, or, you know, not getting that release form signed, and all of those things.
Laura 35:28
yeah. And then I use Social Bee for my Content Scheduling. And so that connects to my Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, all the places and so I schedule out my social posts in there. And then I have them on evergreen, so they will repost after a certain amount of time, like they get put back in the queue after they post. And so again, that’s been a huge focus on me for my business in the last year is to put things on evergreen so that I can still be showing up consistently still be emailing my list and showing up posting on social the pieces that are evergreen.
Laura 36:04
Like we’ve mentioned multiple times, I have my podcast as well, that’s not evergreen that in the sense of I need to post that every week. So I still go in and post you know, schedule that out for posting, but on when because mine goes out on Wednesday. But all the other days, it’s my evergreen content, unless I have other stuff going on. If I’m speaking at an event, if I’m you know, when this podcast goes live, I’ll go and schedule that in. So it’s not saying that when you go evergreen that you can’t ever do anything in real time, it just makes it so it’s one less thing to be worrying about every week, every month to just consistent like, oh, that task list item that’s just never done.
Kristen 36:42
Yeah, I think that’s something people forget, too, is that just because you’re putting things on evergreen doesn’t mean you’re totally hands off forever on it. You can make tweaks, you can leave whitespace in your content calendar to plug in those new podcast episodes, and maybe conferences or summits or events that you’re speaking at, or anything like that, that you want to promote, you can leave space for that.
Kristen 37:07
I’m using SmarterQueue, which is some again, similar to Social Bee. There’s lots of this platforms out there. But my chalk and apples social media is on SmarterQueue and it’s cycling out regularly now. And I just leave a little white space for the things I want to promote live in the moment. And the other thing that I’ve learned to do is kind of hack my scheduling system. Where if maybe there’s a TPT sale going on on a Tuesday, and on Tuesday, I normally schedule or share out blog posts, I can just plug a new post in on Smarter Queue and tell it to go out on that specific Tuesday. And if I tag it as a blog post, it’ll go out, even though it’s not, it’s my little hacky way to get around things. And go ahead and pre schedule things for even for sales and that kind of stuff.
Laura 37:58
Yeah, because it’s one less thing that you have to be consistently thinking about doing. And then again, the idea is to create more ease and flow in your business. And that’s the goal. So I’m also loving Thrive Cart I recently bought Thrive Cart and switched over. I know your Thrive Cart user as well. And I’ve been switching everything over to Thrive Cart and Thrive Learn and I’m just loving it.
Kristen 38:25
Yes, I am loving Thrive cart. In fact, I have a podcast episode on my content calendar to talk about course platforms. Obviously Thrive cart is not ideal for something like a store where people would be purchasing lots of items together. It doesn’t work that way. But it is amazing if you have a course or a membership or something like that, that you’re selling. And I know a lot of TPT sellers are doing those things now too.
Laura 38:51
Yeah, so great. But yeah, anytime that you can, you want to use tech, that’s going to talk to your other tech pieces. So it’s important when researching of like, what’s the best tech for you to figure out what other pieces you use in your business that it’s going to communicate with? Because if it doesn’t talk to the other pieces you use, it just is going to create a headache.
Kristen 39:16
Yeah, that’s been one thing that I have learned over the years from trying out different platforms for different purposes. One of the things I do now is before I even sign up for a new platform, I’m thinking okay, do they integrate with my email provider? Do they integrate with my website? Whatever I need it to integrate with for that particular purpose. Can I integrate this or am I going to have to do something on my own? Or am I going to have to use something like Zapier, do they even integrate with Zapier? It’s definitely something worth looking into. And I will say it has been the deciding factor on me choosing one platform over the other because I just need things to work together on their own automatically so that I don’t have to do things manually.
Kristen 39:59
Yep, exactly, such good advice right there.
Kristen 40:02
Well, thank you so much for coming on today. This has been such a fun conversation. I always love chatting with you. And I always get ideas for things that I should be automating. Because like I said, you were just the queen of automating all the things.
Laura 40:15
Yeah. Thanks so much for having me. You know, I always love chatting with you.
Kristen 40:18
Where can my listeners find you?
Laura 40:21
They can either come check out my website, www.LauraKamark.com. Even though it’s pronounced with an oh sound by now will be in the show notes. I’m on Instagram @LauraKamark. That’s where I’m most active and come say hi, let me know you heard me on Kristen’s podcast.
Kristen 40:39
Thank you so much, Laura.
Laura 40:40
Thanks so much for having me. This was so fun.
Kristen 40:42
That wraps up our chat today with Laura Kamark. All about setting aside time to work strategically on the things that can really move the needle towards growing our businesses. Huge thanks to Laura for joining us. If you would like to connect with her, you’ll definitely want to follow Laura on social and grab her freebie on website power integrations. It is full of ways to simplify your business, get more sales, and most importantly save you time. Head over to the link in the show notes to grab that freebie. And for more of Laura’s awesomeness, you can head over to her podcast Be Bold, Make Waves. You’ll even find an episode with yours truly. Talk to you soon friend.
Kristen 41:28
I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. If you did, please share it with another teacher seller who would also find it helpful. For more resources on Growing Your TPT business. Head to Kristendoyle.co/TPT. Talk to you soon.
