Streamlining Your Business Systems with Rachael Mueller

Andréa Jones [00:00:00]:
If you ever opened up your favorite project management tool, mine is Asana and Airtable. And then you start crying and then you close it immediately because you're completely overwhelmed. Well, this. This episode is for you, my friends. We're going to be talking about a love for systems and tools and how do we make our businesses feel more streamlined without feeling like we're adding more to our plates. I have the amazing Rachel Mueller on the show today to talk with us all about that. But first, a word from our spons. Riverside is the all in one podcast recording and editing tool that I use for this right here show.

Andréa Jones [00:00:38]:
I use it to edit not only the audio and the video, it is like Chef's kiss, magical, making the entire process so, so easy. Plus, I love their magic AI clips. Their little AI robot in the background pulls out the most impactful moments of the episodes without me having to comb through and do it myself. Resizes them for social media. So those vertical videos you see on Tikt and reels, those all come from Magic AI inside of Riverside. It's literally one click. It spits out 10 clips. I picked the best one and away I go.

Andréa Jones [00:01:13]:
Saves me so much time. If you want to get on the Riverside train, check it out today, the links in the show notes and make sure to use my code DREA D R E A at checkout to get 15% off your membership. Welcome to episode number 369 of the Mindful Marketing Podcast. Rachel, I'm so excited to have you here today.

Rachael Mueller [00:01:33]:
Here. Thank you for having me.

Andréa Jones [00:01:35]:
Yes. We were just talking before the show about how systems, tools and tech is a big question that we often get on the podcast, especially with our theme of approaching things mindfully, so doing less, not more. So let's start though, at the beginning of you and your story. Give us the elevator style journey of your path towards being a systems expert.

Rachael Mueller [00:02:02]:
Yeah, so it's I think, a very typical entrepreneurial journey in that I did something, I learned a lot and I thought this could be better. So my partner and I started our first business together in 2015 and it was a real estate investment company. We were buying and selling property and there were a lot of moving parts, as you can imagine. And we were managing everything manually by ourselves and got to this point where almost daily I was having like a two year old tantrum style tantrum on the couch, feeling so incredibly overwhelmed and I thought this, there has to be a better way. Like, this is not working. I've always found myself a very organized person. I collected notebooks And I, you know, do all these organizational things. But it wasn't until we actually jumped into finding the right tools and systems and we started implementing a CRM project management tool.

Rachael Mueller [00:02:53]:
Like all of these things that actually helped make things feel so much easier and more streamlined. And life got a whole lot easier because I didn't feel like I was scrambling every single day trying to figure out what am I doing, who needs what, checking my inbox for my to do list to respond to things, and being very reactionary, it definitely swapped that mindset for me and put me in much more control of what was going on. And that was amazing. And then come 2019, we started to shift a little bit, realized we kind of wanted to move away from that business pandemic hit. People were starting new businesses, people were working from home. There was a lot of things happening, and it felt like the perfect opportunity for me to slip in. And I didn't know what it looked like. As any business when you start kind of is where it's like, let me just figure this out as I go.

Rachael Mueller [00:03:37]:
But I knew that I wanted to show up and help people and let them have that same experience that I did of making their life feel so much easier.

Andréa Jones [00:03:45]:
Yes, 100%. I had the same thing happen to me with actually one of my clients. We used to put all of our client work in a spreadsheet, really Google sheet. And I had it new client come in and they were like, this is not working for us. We can't give feedback appropriately in this tool. Can we find a better way? And that's when I landed on airtable and it was like, oh my gosh, my life has completely changed now. I'm an airtable like lover. I can't go a day without using that thing.

Andréa Jones [00:04:14]:
And so it came from necessity. Right. We all have those moment where we're like, okay, this is not working. But I want to talk more about the step before the tool. You know, when we're sitting in that moment where we're like, gosh, this isn't working. How do we start thinking about the systems or the things behind the tools to. To actually build in an easeful path and not just adding more complexity into our lives, what are the questions we should think about before we get into the tools of it all?

Rachael Mueller [00:04:45]:
Yeah, for sure. So, I mean, like you said before, there is even the tools and understanding what the solution is, you got to figure out where your problem is. Right. And where. What is it you're actually trying to sol. Chances are that if you have we'll say thrown the proverbial spaghetti at the wall, which is trying this new tool and oh, this new thing is going to solve all my problems. But it doesn't work. And it's because you're not actually figuring out what the real problem is.

Rachael Mueller [00:05:06]:
And so my suggestion is always starting with auditing your time, figuring out what is actually the bottleneck. Is it that you are losing leads in your inbox, you're not getting back to people fast enough. That is suffering. Your marketing is suffering because of it. You're not getting enough referrals because the client experience isn't great or you're dropping balls or whatever that looks like. Cool. You probably need a project manager or excuse me, you probably need a client management tool that's going to help with streamlining that process. Sending out tasteful automations to keep people moving forward even when you aren't in front of the computer.

Rachael Mueller [00:05:39]:
If it's a busy season or whatever, that looks like making it that much easier for them and for you from a lead management, scheduling and onboarding, making it all so much easier. Cool. On the flip side, if it is, you feel pretty good about your client experience, but it also feels like when you actually jump into doing the work for people or even your day to day work, you have no idea what you're doing. Your schedule feels like a mess. You're kind of just guessing and trying to figure out what should I be doing today? What feels like the most important fire that I need to put out right now? Chances are you probably are keeping a lot in your head and need some kind of central tool database to hold it all. So you're not having 100 Google random docs for this and notes in your iPhone and post it here in that notebook by your bed and gathering everything and putting it in one central place that you can then have accountability for that due date, be able to move things forward. That is also a very helpful step. And I think the two very much go hand in hand.

Rachael Mueller [00:06:38]:
Like you kind of need both in your business. But I think it's also very important to recognize before you again, just start doing all the things. What is it that's actually needing the most attention? Right. Then get that set up, then move on to the next piece, then the next piece, then the next piece.

Andréa Jones [00:06:54]:
Yes. Oh my gosh. This reminds me of when I moved from handwriting my notes to typing them in a Google Doc. Like it does feel like a very simple decision, but I got to the point where I was sitting there staring at my chicken scratch. Going, what did I even write here? What does this even say?

Rachael Mueller [00:07:14]:
You can't even understand your own shorthand. Yeah, right.

Andréa Jones [00:07:18]:
And so I feel like sometimes we go with what we know because we think it's easier at the time, but when in reality there are things that can help improve that entire process. And even now I record all of my client calls because there's so much information in there that I can't gather at the time with notes. There are so many tools that I use in that process as well. You know, recording the call, taking the transcript, putting into AI and going, know, what's the summary? What's the lessons learned? What are my follow up questions? You know, there's, there's so many tools that can help improve my entire client process, but you kind of have to think a little bit about that. And I know that this thought process takes time. And so I feel like the biggest roadblock to a lot of business owners is like, okay, so I'm overwhelmed right now. How in the heck do I now have time to then sit down and think about a system?

Rachael Mueller [00:08:10]:
So cool, cool, cool, cool.

Andréa Jones [00:08:14]:
Yeah. How do we help that problem?

Rachael Mueller [00:08:17]:
Yeah, it's a really good question. I think that it's twofold. So one, what you were just describing to me, it also very much feels like a comfort zone thing. Right? We stick with what we know because it's comfortable and it's easy and learning something new takes time. And figuring that out. And when you are already feeling so overwhelmed trying to do something different, it's so difficult. Right, because it takes you three times as long and you don't know what you're doing and you're going to mess up and it's two steps back, one step forward kind of feeling. But that being said, said, I think that if you are able to take a moment to really assess what needs your attention and then break it down into bite sized pieces.

Rachael Mueller [00:08:58]:
So earlier I said, okay, you need a client management tool or you need a project management tool. Great. We're not talking about sitting down and setting up the entire thing on Monday. We're saying that, okay, you have decided that, you know what the biggest thing for me is that my leads are getting lost in my inbox. I'm not responding to people in time. It really sucks because I feel like I'm not getting as many bookings as I could. Tool, yes, you need a CRM. That tool is going to help you.

Rachael Mueller [00:09:27]:
Like Dubsado, Honeybook, Moxbe. There's so many awesome things out there, but maybe the very first thing, and the only thing that you do is you set up a new contact form that you embed on your website. That is the exact same contact form that you had on Squarespace, but now it's connected with your CRM. So when somebody fills it out, it drops them in there with all their information. You get notified and maybe we create a really easy one step automation that just sends them an email saying thanks, we got it, we'll get back to you in X amount of time. Okay, cool. Now your leads aren't getting lost anymore. Now that's going to start to feel a lot easier.

Rachael Mueller [00:10:04]:
What's the next step? The next piece of that step by step process for you getting them on the phone? Okay, well if we are emailing back and forth and at some point that conversation thread becomes so long and so convoluted because we can't find a time because of time zones and this and that. Cool. Now we need a scheduler. Let's set up your scheduler and let's just have one schedule type for that new lead discovery call and get that going. Then let's move on to the next piece. And before you know it, you've made it to the end of your process and everything is feeling so much easier. But if we look at it in that bite sized piece, it feels so much easier to jump into than feeling like you got to conquer all of it and you know, all or nothing essentially. If I don't start using my entire tool perfectly by the end of next week, I'm just going to keep doing things the way that I'm doing them because it's comfortable and it's safe and it's easy.

Andréa Jones [00:10:52]:
Yeah, I mean honestly, we live in the age of information overload. Right. We can literally go to YouTube and find the solutions to our problems, but at some point we have to start implementing them. And I feel like that that's your advice works so perfectly there, which is like just start somewhere, start small, don't try to do everything today because then you'll get really overwhelmed. Is there any like particular thing that you've seen, like a commonality with small business owners or solopreneurs entrepreneurs where you go just do this one thing and you'll have a difference, like a quick.

Rachael Mueller [00:11:25]:
Win, probably brain dumping. I find that 99% of the people that I work with, unless we're coming in and were auditing like their system that they've been using for a while and we're just judging it up, very good chance that you are keeping way Too much in your head. Like way too much. Like without even realizing it. Not even just like business stuff, but personal stuff where it's like, okay, when you wake up in the morning, I gotta go to the grocery store today and then I'm recording that podcast episode and oh, I gotta pick up that birthday present for Rachel and I got an rsvp. Like even all that personal stuff, if you're just, if it's swirling around in your head, there's a very good chance that that is weighing so heavily on you. And I have worked with very successful business owners that are doing really great things in their business and they're just keeping all their to do's in their head. Or they wake up and they grab their phone and they jot down those thoughts and then they forget to look at it and they jump into the fires of the day and it just starts to feel a little chaotic.

Rachael Mueller [00:12:23]:
And so I always recommend the first place to start is if you're keeping things in your head, getting them out, writing them down, using your project management tool, whatever that looks like, making a concrete list so that you then free your mind and you're no longer thinking like, don't forget that. Remember this, whatever that looks like. Waking up at 2am in a panic because you forgot to do that thing again, it just makes things feel so much easier. And then it also makes it so much easier to move on to all the other pieces that we talked about because you're no longer just juggling it in your brain, it's somewhere tangible that you can look and say like, okay, these are the things that I need to prioritize. Everything else that can wait.

Andréa Jones [00:13:00]:
Yeah. Oh, brain dumping. I love this. I feel like I forgot what that feels like because I'm so reliant on my calendar, my asana, literally, if it's not my Google calendar, I don't know what's happening. I don't know thousand percent. I completely forgot about it the second it went in there. And so I just have that, that system already in place. But when you don't, it is, it's a very heavy feeling.

Andréa Jones [00:13:23]:
Is there a frequency we should brain dump like daily or how do you recomm to do this?

Rachael Mueller [00:13:28]:
Yeah, so I mean, whatever works for you for sure. Like the goal is not to find like whatever my process is. If it doesn't work for you, you're not going to do it. And consistency is the key with trying to implement any of these new habits. Right. But for me, the easiest thing is I keep post its in Literally every room and space of the house. I'm looking for them right now because I went around this morning and I gathered all of my post its and I do this almost daily where if my brain is feeling extra heavy and I've shut my computer down for the day, I will write all my thoughts down. And then in the I walk around and I gather them and then I put them in ClickUp and I put them in their proper place and I give them a due date or I do them right away, whatever that looked like.

Rachael Mueller [00:14:07]:
And that helps so much so that even if I wake up in the middle of the night I chicken scratch something on the post it and then I can fall back asleep and I'm not having to sit there going okay, don't forget that, go back to sleep. Don't forget that, go back to sleep. And it's just a very, very toxic cycle for your brain. And so I think that the goal should be that getting to the point of what you described where you don't have to think about it, where you put it in, you put it where it belongs, you do the thing, you schedule the appointment, whatever it looks like and then you move on to the next thing. And so if there's something that's preventing you from doing that because you are ping ponging in your brain from thing to thing, then you need to sit down and write some stuff down.

Andréa Jones [00:14:42]:
Yeah, a hundred percent. I feel like it's, it's especially now in the world we live, it's so digital. Like we have so many tools available to us, it just makes sense to use them. I've started using them a lot too in my personal life. Like I've got a three year old and a one year old now. Nobody told me about the birthday situation. There's so many birthdays, there are so many birthdays and you gotta get gifts for all the little friends for the birthdays and it's a lot and I like religiously put them in my Google calendar now because otherwise I don't know they're gonna happen. And so it's been so, so helpful.

Andréa Jones [00:15:17]:
But you mentioned ClickUp and I'm curious about this because I feel like people who like their tool love it. I'm an airtable girly, I like asana. There's notion people out there to love it. ClickUp person, tell me what you like.

Rachael Mueller [00:15:30]:
About ClickUp for sure. So I'll back up also before I jump into getting the nerdiness of ClickUp because I could talk about ClickUp literally all day like If Click up go down, my whole life goes down with it. Like everything, everything about me is in ClickUp. But I will say that for me it was about finding the right tool. And I, for our first business, I was using a completely different platform that like barely exists now. And then I swapped for this for hey, Rachel. When I first got started I was using Trello and then I did try using Asana and then I was working in a client's Asana and then I we used airtable for personal stuff for years, for travel planning and creating spreadsheets kind of that way. And like, I've tried all the things but I never found one that felt like it was like my catch all for everything until I found ClickUp.

Rachael Mueller [00:16:11]:
And that's really what it feels like for me, is that I can do everything that I was doing in three different platforms all in one. But also it just makes sense for me. Like, you know, sometimes when you log into something and you're like, I don't know, I just need to find this thing. I don't know where to click. Like, the menu feels complicated and I don't know what I'm doing and it feels overwhelming. It's not the tool for you. Like, there's no amount of training that's going to help you figure it out. Like you might learn and be able to follow step by step.

Rachael Mueller [00:16:37]:
Like, okay, I go here and here and here. But if it doesn't feel good, if you don't feel excited about logging into it, if it doesn't fit your vibe that day, you're not going to use it. And then what's the point, right? So like I can sit here and spew about like all the things that I love, but you got to find the right platform for you. And I think that the biggest thing for me of, I feel like nowadays especially it's kind of like a ClickUp versus Asana versus notion conversation. And I think it's really about that, about finding what feels good for you. For me, Asana felt almost too simple. Like I wanted to be able to do a little bit more as far as like the views and the automations and that kind of thing. And I also really didn't love the hierarchy in Asana and how it worked with like the project situation and that kind of setup versus Notion where you literally open up a blank screen and you have to figure out what you're designing.

Rachael Mueller [00:17:26]:
No, that I, I am a recovering perfectionist. I would spend a thousand hours trying to create something before I even started using it. And that's why there are so many people out there that are in Notion Template, because it's very difficult to start from a blank screen. And so for me, ClickUp was just this beautiful marriage of all the things into one place that just made it. It just connected. It just connected with my brain.

Andréa Jones [00:17:49]:
Yes, 100%, you are speaking my language. Because I feel like. So I say the same thing about, like, social media scheduling tools. So many of them out there, and people are always like, which one you recommend? And I can tell you which one I recommend. However, if you log in and you go, my brain does not understand this language, then you're. You're not going to get, like, you're not going to get it. So, yeah, I like that. And I feel like that's why I liked airtable over Notion, because I did open an ocean thing one time and I actually have.

Andréa Jones [00:18:16]:
I purchased templates for Notion.

Rachael Mueller [00:18:18]:
Yeah, there you go.

Andréa Jones [00:18:19]:
I'm going to learn this. It's too flexible. It feels like designing a WordPress website from scratch. Like, I know you could technically get a better, highly more customized website, but, like, give me a squarespace, give me a wix any day, because then you can just drag and drop. I don't need all the fancy stuff. So, yeah, I totally understand that with ClickUp. Okay, so talk to me more about ClickUp. Specifically.

Andréa Jones [00:18:44]:
What's your favorite way to use it as a system or tool in your marketing?

Rachael Mueller [00:18:49]:
Ooh, in my marketing. Okay, so I love using ClickUp for my content planning. I have a content plan space and folder where I'm able to gather all of my ideas and thoughts. So I have lists for all of my platforms, my email list, my blog, my Instagram, et cetera. But then I have a central calendar view where I can see it all laid out like a content planner, like a social media planner, and be able to plan everything from there. My favorite feature of ClickUp, though, is the little bit of customization that you can do with, like, your status colors and making them your brand colors and making them pretty and making it a fun place to want to go, adding your emojis and your icons and all the things and like, really getting down to, like, the very specifics. So it's very clear of, like, okay, on this day I'm posting this Instagram thing and it's a reel and I need. Still need a caption for it.

Rachael Mueller [00:19:38]:
But then on the next day I'm posting this and it's a carousel and those need hashtags or this is still a work in progress. Or whatever it looks like. And so you can get very specific with the organization of it. And that makes it feel so much easier to go from just having like all of these content ideas in your phone to then actually having something tangible that you're getting across the finish line and saying like, okay, looking at it at the calendar, I'm scheduling this for this day. Working backwards. Let's start working on it.

Andréa Jones [00:20:06]:
Yeah. So how frequently are you putting ideas in there? Is it like a monthly weekly thing.

Rachael Mueller [00:20:12]:
Or it's probably by like several times a week that like I'll think of something or if like I'm on socials, I get an idea for something and I jot it down, but then actually like putting it somewhere on the calendar where it's like, okay, that wasn't just an idea. This is actually something that I want to do probably weekly to like every couple weeks. I'm like really mapping out what that actually looks like.

Andréa Jones [00:20:34]:
Okay, and are you attaching like images and videos and stuff in there too or is it just text?

Rachael Mueller [00:20:39]:
Sometimes, yeah. So if I have someone that's helping me, like, so I have an assistant that helps with marketing stuff like scheduling emails and working on blog posts and that kind of thing. And so sometimes we need visuals for that, so we'll add those in. Or if it's something like a video kind of thing that's getting edited, maybe that gets uploaded there to work through the approval process. But generally speaking, like I try and get as much in there as I can and then when it's like tangible ready to go, that's when I drop it into my actual like social media planner grid. I use planoly still for me that works. And so dropping it in so I can see like visually, like how does this all line up with everything and make it very easy to go from there to my phone? I know there are extensions and add ons and tools where you can like schedule stuff directly to your socials from ClickUp, but I, I don't like auto posting stuff. I definitely still like the handholding of it and getting it across the finish line.

Rachael Mueller [00:21:35]:
So that process worked for me.

Andréa Jones [00:21:36]:
Yeah, I mean, especially now, like I find that I kind of have to do a temperature check before I post stuff online because the world is like so wild right now. You don't want to post it, like have something automatically go out and you're like, oh no, things are on fire.

Rachael Mueller [00:21:50]:
So yep, that was a horrible time to share that. Yes, totally.

Andréa Jones [00:21:54]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, cool. I love this content planning in ClickUp. It's, it's exactly how I do an airtable as well. So for those of you listening, if you tried Airtable and you're like, my brain didn't like this, try ClickUp. It may be the alternative that you need to get things planned. And the other thing that I like about using tools like this instead of planning in your scheduling tool, is that you're able to actually sort and reuse that content a whole lot easier. You know, you can source content from previous months, years even, and repurpose it in other ways.

Andréa Jones [00:22:32]:
So I'm curious about your process to this. How are you using content repurposing inside of ClickUp?

Rachael Mueller [00:22:40]:
Yeah, so I, I've gone through many iterations of it over the years trying to find a process that works. And I would say generally speaking it's really easy and ClickUp to like duplicate a task. So like, let's say that like you have this like blog post that you shared on this day. You can easily then add that into your Instagram list and say, okay, we're going to take this little snippet and make carousel of it kind of thing. Or you can also get really deep with the automations inside ClickUp and like, let's say that something in one place like your blog post. Now you can get an automation alert task that says, great, this blog posted. It's time to make your Pinterest pins and share that to Pinterest and create this from that and share it on socials and then schedule it in the email newsletter. So you send out your blog, like there's a lot that you can do there, but without going like too deep and nerdy into it, which I know you and I very much could, I think that it's just all about like finding, finding the flow that like feels really easy to maintain.

Rachael Mueller [00:23:38]:
Like that's the thing for me. I think that like when I tried to make it overly complicated, I stopped using it because it was so rigid that like there was no flexibility in it to like figure out. Like, well, if I set this up and I am cross posting the content to every single platform but this post, I don't want to, but my automation is telling me I need to. And it's created four tasks for me. Like that starts to get too messy and complicated and I think that's when things can start to feel like overwhelming past the point of helpful.

Andréa Jones [00:24:06]:
Okay, you put into words something that I've been struggling with with Airtable for a while too. No, because I have a friend who's like an Airtable. Like. Like, she does everything with Airtable. And she was showing me her automations for, like, podcast guest booking and how, like, she just, you know, toggles it from, like, you know, pending to booked. And it's like emailing the person out some stuff. It's like attaching all these things. And I'm like, but what if.

Andréa Jones [00:24:30]:
What if you want to toggle it but those things aren't ready yet and then your automations are all broken? Like, yeah, that's what I think when I. When I see, like, it's too automated for me in my process. I love that for her, and I like that she could do that. But for me, I need a little manual, like some checklists in there so that things are like automatically going wild.

Rachael Mueller [00:24:49]:
Yeah, there's nothing wrong with templates over automating everything. In fact, I'm very much like you were. Like, I'm not a fan of automating everything. I find that an overly automated experience can actually do the opposite for you sometimes. Like, exactly like what you're describing. But a good template. Yes. That makes it so easy for you to be able to get things across the finish line so you're not just staring at a blank screen every single time.

Andréa Jones [00:25:12]:
Yeah. I feel like this leads into one of the questions I had, which is about the difference between systems and tools, because it feels like sometimes people get so reliant on the tool itself without really thinking about the entire pro, like, the client experience. Like you talked about, like, the client doesn't care if you manually had to edit that email or if it went out automatically. Right. Like, they don't care. They just want the email. And so I feel like sometimes we get too, I don't know, we get too far in the tech. But can you talk a little bit about that from your experience? Like, this difference between systems and tools and how do we decide what is automated and what isn't?

Rachael Mueller [00:25:48]:
Totally. So the way that I like to think about it is basically a system is something that takes a manual process and it turns it into something that is repeatable, automatable, delegatable, etc. So whether that means that you are taking your process and you're putting it into a tool, like a CRM or asana or ClickUp to do the thing. Cool. Or is it just that you're mapping out what that process looks like for how things work and you now have your steps? One, two, three. Maybe they're all manual steps, but it's a very clear way that you do it every single time. And you're creating a system out of that where it's now, you know, when you do this thing, this happens, and when you do this step, this happens. And then you can start to pepper in some things like templates.

Rachael Mueller [00:26:31]:
If you're doing the same thing every single time, if it's repeatable sitting down, let's use your podcast as an example. If you are sitting down every time that you need to record with somebody and you're saying, okay, so we need to, for this recording, get their headshot and their bio, and I need to look up questions and I need to do this research, and then you're going to forget something. Right. But if you have that template, that checklist that you can refer to every single time, but then manually do the pieces to fill in the dots, that's going to feel like a much cleaner, easier process than having to do it, you know, the other way every single time.

Andréa Jones [00:27:02]:
Yeah, a hundred. I love all of this. I really do, because I, I feel like I got this question a lot when I was doing a lot of mentoring for social media managers and freelancers. And I used dubsado for years, and then I switched to moxie. And yes, both of those tools have a ton of automations. I wasn't using all of them. I was using more of their templates and the automations because there are a few. Like, if someone fills out a form, then, yeah, I want to send them, thank you and be like, I'll follow up.

Andréa Jones [00:27:31]:
But when someone hits accept on a proposal, I like to do a. A customized email. Like, I don't want them to get something automated. They just gave me thousands of dollars. So, yeah, I got a template for it to help me, but I'm going to be very specific and layer in things that we talked about, things that they're excited about into that email so that it is a personalized experience. It's not just another templated response. Right. So I do feel like some of these automations, especially for a lot of us who have smaller businesses, which is a lot of people listening, right? We're not like, you know, top 100 companies over here.

Andréa Jones [00:28:06]:
We are, you know, usually, you know, under 10 million, let's say, in business a year. And so when I think about companies that are that size, it's like, even if we have one person on our team or we have 20, it's like sometimes a lot of the work we're doing is still highly personalized. Like, that is actually our superpower over the mega companies. And so, yeah, we use the tools to help us. But we don't want to like strip away the humanity of it.

Rachael Mueller [00:28:32]:
All. Right, Absolutely. And I think a lot of times when people hear automations, they're worried that it's going to sound like cold or robotic. And like, especially now we think of like, like I think the, the conversation around the M Dash and Chat GPT is the perfect example where it's like, everyone assumes that if you use an EM dash Chat GPT wrote it right where I think that there is definitely a way that you can insert your personality into these things, making the templates or the automated else feel down more like you. And also, there's nothing wrong with like being on the nose about it. If you're sending out a payment reminder, let's say not you, your tool, sending out a payment reminder, there's nothing wrong with saying, hey, this is a friendly automated reminder. Any questions, hit reply. Or if somebody fills out your form and you want to make sure that they're, let's say they fill it out on a Friday, but you're not logging back into your inbox on Monday.

Rachael Mueller [00:29:22]:
So you want to make sure they know I got it. We're good. It's off your plate. I'm on it. You can send a quick hey, we got it. Thank you. I'll get back to you soon with next steps and all that good stuff. Just wanted to let you know it's not lost in my inbox, that kind of thing.

Rachael Mueller [00:29:36]:
That can all be very helpful to carry that experience across the finish line and not lose the humanity and the touch and the secret sauce of you and how you work with your people.

Andréa Jones [00:29:47]:
Yeah, 110%. I love this. Okay, so, so I know that there are people listening who are going, okay, now I'm ClickUp curious and I know you have a resource for them. So tell us a little bit about your ClickUp Repeat.

Rachael Mueller [00:30:00]:
Yeah, I created this tool a while back because I found that just like any tool, when you log in and you don't know where to start, it can feel very overwhelming. And so I made just a little free list that you can use to start brain dumping all of your things in your head, whether that is your client project or your personal, whatever that looks like, just getting it out and starting to put it somewhere that's very tangible and then you can expand on that from there. But it makes it very easy for you to be able to get started using the tool.

Andréa Jones [00:30:27]:
I love this so much. I'll get this free resource in the show notes online. Drea.com 3, 6, 9. Rachel, thank you so much. Where else can people connect with you online?

Rachael Mueller [00:30:38]:
Thank you. This was so much fun. I feel like you and I could chat for literally hours about all of these things. I think that we've been on our best behavior keeping it under 30. So I am on Instagram. Feel free to go find me. I'm sure you're linked to this, but I'm at. Hey, Dot.

Rachael Mueller [00:30:52]:
Rachel. Rachel's R A B H A E L. Thank you, mom and dad. And you can find me there if you have. If you listen to this and you got to this point, you're like, cool. Maybe I want ClickUp. Maybe I want Asana. Maybe I need devoto.

Rachael Mueller [00:31:03]:
Maybe I need Moxie. I don't know. Send me a message. I'm more than happy to help point you in the right direction. I think there's a lot of noise, especially if you're an online business owner in the online social base. And it's hard to find someone that you can go to and ask questions without it feeling like it's just going to be a pitch and they're going to ask you to jump on a sales call. Call. I'm not going to do that.

Rachael Mueller [00:31:22]:
Let's chat. Let me help point you in the right direction. Feel free to send me a message.

Andréa Jones [00:31:26]:
Okay? Y' all take advantage of this once in a lifetime opportunity and just to talk to someone too, because I do feel like a YouTube video can only get you so far. So very generous of you, Rachel. Thank you so much for being on the show today.

Rachael Mueller [00:31:40]:
Thank you. Appreciate it. This was so much fun.

Andréa Jones [00:31:42]:
Hey, and thank you, dear listener, for tuning in to another episode of the Mindful Marketing PO Podcast. If you like this conversation, you're going to love the conversations inside of the Mindful Marketing Lab. We talk about marketing, we talk about what's your system, we talk about our different tools. And y' all already know mine is airtable. So if you're air table friendly, I have all the air table templates for you, but you gotta join in the Lab to get them. Head on over to onlinendra.com lab to join us today. I have another episode for you next Tuesday. I'll see you then.

Andréa Jones [00:32:16]:
Bye for now.