The Side-Hustle Dad

Ep31
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Series Recap
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​[00:00:00]

Bryan Steele: Welcome back. Today is part two of our initial series on basic automations you can implement into your side hustle to save you time and headaches. So last week, we talked about the one form to collect everything, all the inquiries into one place, get some basic ~con-contact~ information from anyone who's looking at your services so that you can then follow up.

Not having everything scattered, not be messing with your DMs. Everything into one form goes into one place. Simple, straightforward, one document to check to make sure everything is moving forward.

Why Fast Replies Matter
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Bryan Steele: Today, we're taking it to the next step, the scheduling, [00:01:00] getting in front of that person. As we talked about last week, having that initial response, that quick feedback.

Lots of times, if you're not answering the phone or, or responding quickly, somebody is just going to move on to option number two. So sometimes being the first to reply is so valuable and you're busy. You don't always have the time to respond. Maybe you're at your day job. Maybe it's your kid's weekend activities, or you're at the lake or something.

You don't always have that opportunity, so we wanna make sure we capture everybody that we can in this process. So now that we've got the form established, today we're scheduling our first interaction with the client. We want to automate this. We want to make it straightforward, seamless, so that it looks simple to everybody.

So one of the things that happens is an email will go out saying, "Hey, ~What does, ~what does next week look like for you? Are you free this time? When can we get together? Like, you email, then they [00:02:00] respond and say, "No, that... What about this day?" You go back and forth. There's like three, four, five emails before you land on a time to interact.

That is so difficult, so much work. You do not want to mess with that. And honestly, digital tools make it so easy to ensure we don't run into those situations.

Automate the Auto Reply
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Bryan Steele: So we're gonna automate the scheduling process. So somebody has found your form, they filled it out, you have their contact information. The first step is to auto reply once they've submitted.

Now, this is an automation you can build in free tools like Zapier on its free tier, or Make.com has a free tier you can try out. This is a one-step automation, only does one thing. So once somebody contacts you and you receive that inquiry through the form, and it's [00:03:00] added to your list in some way, shape, or form, now you want to use that as what's called a trigger.

So in Zapier, there's a trigger happens. The trigger is form submission. Form is submitted, you connect it to wherever you are collecting that form, whether it's Google or some other free platform. We talked about those last week. You can check those resources. But you connect that in the automation so that every time a form is submitted, the next step is an email goes out.

That's all it is, two steps, trigger, action. Now what you're going to do is connect to your email account and you're going to auto reply, and you're going to say, "Thank you so much for reaching out. I'm looking forward to talking with you and learning more about your project and how we can serve you."

Nothing more is needed than that. Then you're going to say, [00:04:00] "Here is a link which you can use to schedule a meeting with me at your convenience. Link." So the automation is simply an email that points them to a link. We're gonna get to that link in a second. We want it to be straightforward, simple, and auto-sends as soon as we receive that inquiry.

What we talked about is being fast in the response. When somebody reaches out and is interested in working with you, we want to capture that immediately. So you want to have the trigger, form submission, action, email.

Zapier vs Make Basics
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Bryan Steele: There are a lot more complicated automations you can get into with Zapier and Make or multi-steps.

The advantage of Zapier, in my opinion, it's very straightforward and easy to use. Very simple. They've got templates in there, and with their free tier, you can do a single step automation. For your side hustle, that's all you need. You just need trigger and [00:05:00] email. Make actually allows you to do more complicated things, more steps.

It's just limited on how many times those automations can run. So unless you're running through like thousands upon thousands of leads, which you're not, you would also fit within Make's free tier. So maybe you wanna get into some fancier automations, but at its core level, all you need is trigger and action, form submission and email.

Just wanna make that as clear as possible.

Scheduler Link Setup
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Bryan Steele: Use those tools to set up that ~automa-automation.~ Now, the link you are including in that email is going to go to a scheduler app. This is an online calendar that somebody can book meetings from you. There's several tools out there that you can use for free. If you're in Gmail, the Google Calendar can be used for this.

Another tool that works well is Calendly. [00:06:00] It has a free tier that you can get into, and people can schedule a meeting. Now, the free tiers in these are you're limited to a single meeting type, right? It's one form to book a meeting. You can't have like, oh, here's a thirty-minute meeting and here's a two-hour meeting for a longer event.

You can only have one meeting type.

Discovery Call Structure
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Bryan Steele: Now, what I want you to do is this is an introductory meeting. This is your first meeting with somebody. Make it thirty minutes. Does not need to be any longer than that because your goal on this discovery call is to go back to the BANT framework we talked about earlier: budget, authority, need, timing.

Get those four questions answered so you know how likely ~this ca-- ~how likely this lead becomes a customer. But either of these tools will work perfectly. You need only one meeting type. You're not having a ton of meetings. This is a side hustle. You should be able to make it work with one [00:07:00] meeting type.

Availability and Calendar Sync
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Bryan Steele: The other piece is you set your availability in there. You can block out times where people cannot book a meeting with you. So you say, "Dinner time, I'm not taking any meetings during dinner time," or, "Getting ready for bed with the kids, I'm not scheduling any meetings in that slot." Maybe I'm only taking lunch meetings when I'm at my day job.

Those are the things that you get to carve out. The other piece that is really nice about these scheduling apps is you have the-- it looks at your calendar. So you can connect your calendar, and if you already have a meeting, be it somebody else booked a meeting with you through this app, or it's something you just put on your calendar, like you're going on a lunch date.

Well, now nobody can book that time if you've set up your availability and you've linked it to your existing calendar. And now what you have is this landing page where you [00:08:00] can provide that link. You put it in that automated email that we've set up, and as soon as somebody says they're interested in working with you, they now have the ability to, on their own, go schedule a meeting with you, and you've had to do nothing.

You haven't had to have any interaction with them yet at all. And you can go into that meeting. It's on your calendar. It's blocked out. You jump on that meeting, and you've got the information that they filled out in the form. You've got somewhere to start.

Why Scheduling Automation Wins
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Bryan Steele: It's so powerful, and it saves you a bunch of time.

No longer chasing leads, sending emails back and forth, trying to figure out a time to get together. It's quick, it's easy to use, it's very common, so lots of people are using this format in scheduling meetings, and it's straightforward I think this is the single most important thing you can automate in your business.

You should not be having to manually schedule your first [00:09:00] meeting with somebody. Send this link, let them schedule it, and then you're off and running. Now, that's not all you can do with this.

Level Up With Screening
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Bryan Steele: There are ways to level up this automation a little bit further. So you can add additional screening questions to the calendar scheduling.

~So you've asked some questions in the form. Don't repeat those~

You've asked some questions in the form, so don't repeat those. But this is an opportunity to say, "Hey, let's-- let me get a little more detail. Tell me a little bit about the problem you're trying to solve. Tell me about what you've tried before." You can let people fill it out. Maybe you have some multiple-choice questions, whatever it might be.

You can try to get a little bit more information. Now, we don't want to make this too restrictive, right? We want to get you onto the call. So if you don't have a lot of leads coming in, be careful about putting too much information in these forms because we wanna make it easy for somebody to get in front of you.

Now, if you're getting too many of these conversations and they're not resulting in [00:10:00] clients, then absolutely, filter away. But just something to be aware of.

Deposits and Paid Consults
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Bryan Steele: The other piece is you can take a deposit. Like maybe the meeting itself has value. You're gonna do something for them. So now you can say, "Hey, this is what I charge for a one-hour or thirty-minute consultation around this.

And if you end up booking a project with me, we apply that as a deposit to, to the project that we're working on together, but this just compensates me for my time in, in advising you." And especially if you-- they leave with some valuable information or knowledge that they didn't have coming in, this is something you can definitely implement.

Automated Follow Ups
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Bryan Steele: After that, you know, you can also, if you wanna level this up a little further, you can automate follow-ups. So there's a couple places you can do this. First is if they submit the form, you get the form in, and you send them a link to schedule. If they don't schedule after a day or two, you send a follow-up email automatically.

It says, "Hey, noticed you didn't schedule a [00:11:00] meeting. This is really important so I can learn about your project, learn how I can help you, see if we'd be a good fit to work together." That's a, a fantastic follow-up you can do. So you can have a full sequence in following up with people who fill out the form on your website or wherever they might fill out the form, but then never actually book a call.

So you can make that an automation. Another more advanced automation is if they no-show. So if somebody doesn't come to the call, there's an automated email that goes out and says, "Hey, we missed you. If you'd like to reschedule, here's the link." Or just tell me what's going on. Tell me, tell me why you weren't able to make it.

So there's some other pieces in here you can try to make sure people do not fall through the cracks, ~um,~ if they're filling things out. Now, certainly initially you can do these things manually, but as you get busier and busier, more things are going on, these are great things to implement additional automations into your business.

Great.

Wrap Up and Next Week
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Bryan Steele: So hope this was helpful. I [00:12:00] know if you put in these automations from last week and today, you're gonna really feel the benefit immediately in your business. Next week we're gonna be wrapping up our starting automations, and I hope to see you then.

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