Automation with Authenticity: Irit Levi's Guide to Streamlined B2B Growth on LinkedIn

TRANSCRIPT

Michelle J Raymond: Welcome everybody to the LinkedIn for B2B Growth Show. I'm your host, Michelle J Raymond, and I'm excited cause this week's episode is all about staying in your zone of genius because I think that is the ultimate way to grow on LinkedIn. So I scoured 875 million members on LinkedIn and I was like, who can I think of?

And there's only one name that came to mind, Irit Levi, it's up to you. Welcome to the show.

Irit Levi: Hi Michelle. Thank you so much for having me on today. I am a big fan of your show. Just saying.

Michelle J Raymond: Oh look, fan girl both ways, and we haven't been connected for that long, but it feels like we're friends already. But something tells me that this show, we're gonna see how different we are and where I can grow myself.

So I'm just putting it out there to the listeners. This is one of those ones where I'm gonna put my neck out and just say, yep, I've gotta probably take a dose of your medicine. But before we get into that, for people who haven't met you before, who are you, what do you do and who do you help?

Irit Levi: So my name is Irit Levi and I am a workflow and automation strategist. Took a while to come up with that sort of understanding of what I do, even for myself. What I do is I help coaches, consultants, creatives with their, their streamline their workflow, and simplify it. So we look at their process, we talk about. What they do, how they do it, how they can give their customers the best experience possible.

And then we find the right tools, and shall I say automations? I know people don't like the word, but how to do it in the best way possible and still keep it personalised.

Michelle J Raymond: Very important part to it because you are right that there are gonna be some people that are triggered by the word automation, and we're gonna get into that so that we can kind of say, when's it right? When's it, maybe not right?

But I love that you pointed that it's not just about what we do on LinkedIn because at some stage we're taking these potential clients off LinkedIn and that impacts our brand just as much as what we do on the platform. So we're gonna specifically talk about some of the ways that people should be considering automation, but at a really high level, what is automation at a, you know, really high level looking down and what are the benefits that businesses can have?

Irit Levi: So automation are things that, like the first half of the word, are done automatically. The way that it works is something triggers, there's a trigger. The trigger can be manual or it could be something that happens. I'll, I'll give you an example from LinkedIn. If you have a premium account, when somebody sends you a DM, you can have an out of office or an autoresponder respond and say, hi, I have about a thousand DMs coming in every day and I don't have time, so I'll get back to you when I can. Don't worry, I'll see it.

So that's an automated response on LinkedIn. It's an automation that you set up that's approved. There are not many that are, but it's an approved automation and it can help you sort of manage that inbound machine that you're building if you're doing LinkedIn right, which, if you're working with you, then you know you are.

 It gives your customers a better experience because when they reach out to you, they're not sending a DM and then waiting and they don't know when you're gonna see it. When they get that automated response, they're feeling oh, okay. So she's busy, which is a good thing. And then, and she'll get back to me and knowing you, you get back within three seconds so it's just there anyway.

Michelle J Raymond: That inbox and I are not friends and I recently used exactly what you were saying, so my out of office message literally says my inbox gets out of control on LinkedIn, not off LinkedIn, just on LinkedIn. And I'll take 24 to 48 hours to come back to you.

In the meantime, instead of putting you on hold. Here's the podcast. Go and have a listen. So to the listeners that are here today, you'll get that same message. I appreciate you all coming in, but that is one of the automations that I do enjoy on LinkedIn because I can't keep up as a small business owner that doesn't have teams of a hundred to do every function. I need help. So I love that you've mentioned that one cause that's always a cool tip.

Irit Levi: Yeah. Um, the thing about that message and what you did that I really like is it's a great place for a call to action to your clients. Our thinking constantly has to be what is our customer's experience, how do we make it better for them?

And this is on LinkedIn and off LinkedIn for sure, but this is the first initial outreach, potentially. It's if you're building an inbound machine on LinkedIn with content creation, this is the first time they're reaching out to you. I've been sick for a few days. I was yesterday off LinkedIn for 24 hours.

If people reach out to me and I'm not auto responding, I could lose them potentially. You constantly have to think how am I serving them best? And then like you said, what is the best call to action? So in your case it's, go listen to my podcast. It could be you wanna schedule a discovery call, cause usually when people reach out to me, they're already ready. You know, they're pretty much, they know what they want. So, again, doing LinkedIn, it has to suit your strategy, but take advantage of that automation, that automated response to sort of drive your clients to the next touchpoint that you want with them.

Michelle J Raymond: Because realistically, when it comes to LinkedIn and we're talking about business growth, we've got our personal brands that we're building our business brands, and I love that you've added to this. So it becomes a triangle where it's the customer experience. And I think that's where that trifecta is really powerful and something that I don't think enough people connect all of those points. So automation is something that I can see frees up time, which is always a good thing but what things shouldn't be automated?

Let's go there first so then we can jump into the juicy stuff about what should be. But there's gonna be people listening in and go automated. No, I don't want the bots coming for me Irit, like, help me out. What is, what shouldn't be automated?

Irit Levi: Well, I'll start with LinkedIn. Responses to not the auto-responder that we just talked about, but responses to people. True responses should not be automated. you could have an automation using a third party tool that every time a message comes in, send them this automated message. That's only about me, me, me, me, me.

No, no that doesn't work. Um, on LinkedIn, I would be very careful automating anything. I know there are some third party apps that say that they mimic the true behaviours of a user. Do not automate on LinkedIn what is not approved by LinkedIn. You will risk going to LinkedIn jail.

Michelle J Raymond: And it happens frequently. You know, the dream is on these websites and I've seen them and I get approached by them all the time, it's the promise land. Just press these buttons automated all. We'll connect to thousands of people. We'll automate these responses and I'm sitting there cringing going, would you put your whole reputation at stake? Cause that's what it feels like for me. So what else shouldn't they automate?

Irit Levi: Pushing information from LinkedIn to a CRM. Yes, it is the initial contact point and you wanna capture those contacts. I understand that. I do too. But automating that, once again, risks using a tool that LinkedIn has not approved.

Every time I get like approached by one of these tools, I'm like do you have approval from LinkedIn? And a lot of times I have a meeting next week with someone who has a tool like this that they've just improved. And I'm really impressed with what it does and how it does it. But if it's not approved by LinkedIn, I'm not going to be installing it on my profile.

Maybe I'll set up a dummy profile to play with it to see how it works. There's a reason why the big CRMs don't integrate with LinkedIn and pull information from there because you can't, because LinkedIn doesn't want that. If you want to automate that to a certain degree, download your contact information, do it once a week.

 Through an automation, push it to your CRM. Yes. Just push the, the CSV file that you get, but don't automate it directly through LinkedIn. Again, like you said, I built my business on LinkedIn. I'm not gonna risk going to jail for that. You know, going like to be blocked out from LinkedIn for that.

Michelle J Raymond: Oh my God. I can only imagine. I've spent eight years building up my reputation on LinkedIn. Um, if I was to try and replace the 12,000 followers slash connections, yes, I've downloaded my archive so I have it there. But if LinkedIn restricts how many people you can connect with every week, even if that number goes up slightly, I another eight years to kind of rebuild it.

Because back in the early days, you could connect with as many people as you wanted. It was amazing. Uh those days are long gone because of, I think these tools that automate everything, the, the spammers, the engagement pods, all this kind of stuff is why we don't have as much freedom on the platform. And so I'm kind of happy that LinkedIn protects us from that perspective because I don't think you can automate relationships. And I think you and I are on the same page on this one?

Irit Levi: Yeah, so far. So far, yes.

Michelle J Raymond: So far. Well, we're gonna go into the next part, but I'm gonna be guilty as charged, right? So we're gonna start talking about automations that relate more specifically to content management, content creation, and marketing in general.

Now, I'll start at the confessional and I'm gonna let you know what happens. Now, first off, I am not a technophobe. I actually love technology. I love the idea of AI in general. Um, I love the idea of automation in general. I love the idea of things supporting me to do what I need to get done in a day. So we're absolutely on the same page of those.

when it comes to tech, I am that person, which probably makes you cringe where I want to go and research for myself and work out what works best. So there's number one problem I have. Number two, the tools that I used to get when I worked for big corporates and I worked for, you know, companies that had 15,000 employees.

All the tools came with those businesses, and I had processes that were almost given to me that I had to follow. Since I set up my own business as a solopreneur, now I've got, you know, two of us in the business. I realised that my systems, because I had plenty of time in the beginning, I had time to do everything manually, shall we say. And so I haven't evolved in my own business.

Now, where do I start, Irit? Because there's so much tech out there that I wanna buy and I have bought, and then I cancel the subscriptions and then I go back and buy something else and I cancel another subscription. Talk me through where have I gotta begin with all of this process?

Irit Levi: Okay, so the first thing is I have no problem with you going and playing with tech on your own. I actually love that it's a good thing. The problem is, consolidating all of your research into one tool, committing to it and working through it. So that's where most people get the problem. I am pro trying out different, you know, trying out different pieces of software, but at some point you have to make a decision and that's where some like talking to someone like me and there, there are quite a few of us out there that, you know, getting an informed answer of which is best for your needs.

So it doesn't start with the software tool, it actually starts with the needs. So before I answer what tool you should use for content management, let's describe a sample workflow for content management, because that's what's gonna define our tool. We want a database that will hold all of our LinkedIn posts because you should not be writing your LinkedIn post in a Word document.

You should not be writing them on LinkedIn directly. Yes. I see you raising your hand. Hi Michelle.

Michelle J Raymond: I am the one. I do not have a copy of any of my posts ever in eight years. Not even lying. I can see your eyes about to pop out of your head. I am not even lying. I have never repurposed pretty much any one of my posts in eight years. Not kidding. Go for it.

Irit Levi: Okay. So just since I was gonna like, get wild on the fact that you're not repurposing, which is, you know, here's right. Here's the thing. I recently had my VA map out all of the emails that I wrote from 2021 and 2022. I have all of my LinkedIn posts from the third month of my posting, from October, I think from October, 2020.

That's when I started. I started in, in May. October, I moved from Word documents to, at the time it was Asana, and every post became a row like a task and so I have all of my content there, including any images that I uploaded that I uploaded there. If you're taking it one step further, you could actually automate bringing in the analytics.

I don't do that, but, the way that I would do it today, and this is how I'm running my business in 2023, is I have an Airtable database and it has every one of my personal LinkedIn posts, my Company Page posts. I've already done three this week. I'm working on the Company Page. I listen, I listen, I'm learning.

I have all of my emails mapped out. I have my blog posts mapped out and I have, I have a separate database for video production, but it's synced into this one as well. So first of all, it's just having a database of all of your information and that's just good sense. That has nothing to do with automation, that just has to do with content management.

Um, it also enables you to repurpose it because every piece of content, now that it's in a database, I say what pillar it's referring to in in terms of what the pillars that I talk about are, so is it referring to pillar 1, 2, 3, or 4? What kind of post it is? Is it a text post? Is it a carousel? Is it an image it, whatever, or is it a clip?

And then that will enable me to repurpose it later if it really goes well. If it's a, a text post, okay, let's make it into a carousel. If it's a carousel, let's make it into a text post. So that also enables me to repurpose easily because I have it. For me, part of that is also that I can put assignees. So this is where the automations start to, take a part. If I have a text post that does really well, I'll assign it to my VA and I'll say, can you create a carousel out of this? And then she'll go and create the carousel cause I suck at graphics and we have to work where we're good at. So I'm not gonna be doing that. If you see bad graphics on my page, I've done them.

If you see good graphics, Hayley's done them. Hayley's amazing. She loves Canva. Like she's totally in her zone of genius. Doing a lot of things, but that's one of them. Uh, and she's not a graphic designer or anything. It's not that you need to be a graphic designer, you just need to love it and have a sense for it.

So that's where automations start. My video production, for example, is completely automated. I have an idea, I'll put it into the database. And video production is now changing because for YouTube what I've learned, I've been down this rabbit hole for a while, is ideation is key. Before you even hit record, have a good idea. Have a good title. Have a good thumbnail. So what we'll do is Hayley and I will go through ideation on the platform, on the database within the task. Like we'll go back and forth and then I'll give her an idea for a thumbnail. I use ChatGPT by the way, to start getting some ideas for a thumbnail and then we'll create the thumbnail.

Once the thumbnail is created, then I'll hit record. And again, this is all like, she'll upload it to there and it'll automatically be assigned to me. I'll review it, I'll approve it, and then it goes to recording. Once I record, I upload the clip to a location. It automatically updates the URL in the database and it assigns it to my editor and it sends him an email saying, here's the clip, here's the location. We have to update that it has the thumbnail as well, but he'll get the idea of where it's going, and then he uploads it to a different location and it, it updates the U R L and it gives me a notification saying It's ready for your review, and then I'll approve it. And then that'll automate telling Hailey, okay, you can upload it now.

So there's an automation in the content management process in the backend. I'm doing the actual work of recording, Hailey's doing the actual work of creating the thumbnail, and Savannah is actually doing the editing. But we're not worried about do we have to update the project management tool, yes or no?

That's the minute you upload to a specific location using a specific naming convention. There are rules in order to make the automation work. Everything just streamlines and flow.

Michelle J Raymond: Look, I can see that there is a point where I'm probably at now, and it's probably why I wanted to talk you so early this year because I know that the processes for what I've got in place were fine for where I've been and they worked and I, I got to where I am.

But my business so far compared to the previous financial year has grown 50%. My target is by the time we've finished is a hundred percent, which as a salesperson by heart, that is very possible for me because I've spent a lot of time outside of my zone of genius while I've been creating my business, writing my training programs, doing all of these kind of things, building relationships, building my brand.

So now I'm at the Good Year where I'm like, yes, I get to do all the stuff that I really love. Uh, so I can see the benefits of being able to repurpose. You know, my amazing post. I'm a great writer and they resonate really well with people. And right now I couldn't give that to anybody else to turn into any other formats easily.

I could go and dig for it, I could make them dig for it, but ultimately it would not be efficient. Now, I've worked in manufacturing for about 20 years in different roles. I have been absolutely trained in continuous improvement in systems. I am designed to work that way, so it makes zero sense that I don't do it in my business again, not a technophobe. Love systems.

And you can see as a business owner though, for some reason, everything I've learned, I just thought oh, I don't need to do that in my own business. I just need to do it when I work for other people. So you can see where this kind of thing is going.

From a content and marketing, is there any other kind of key tools or key automations that you think, you know, cause I said to you this week, I don't know what I don't know and so in my mind I get stuck that I can't come and talk to you because I don't know what to ask for because I don't know what I don't know. So what other things should I be considering in the automation of content slash marketing management?

Irit Levi: Okay, so before I answer that, just one more tip for you. If you download your posts from LinkedIn and they have that data, they have to give it to you. You have all the data, upload it into the database, and there you're already ready for repurposing. So you can do it. You don't have to go search for it, and you don't have to manually map it. There's a manual step, but a, after that, it's all you.

The next thing that you could do is let's take your podcast for example. This amazing show. You reach out to me, you say, hi, are you willing to be a guest on my podcast? And I say, sure. And you send me a link. I don't remember if you used Calendly or whatever tool you're using. And then I book it, and then you send me a Streamyard link and we're done.

Now imagine if you automated that. Imagine if when I said yes, I'm willing to go, you send me an email or a link in a DM, and instead of taking me to Calendly, it takes me to a form and it fills out my bio information. I know Calendly has the form, but you can go a lot deeper. I can upload a picture there. I can do a lot more things.

And then once it's booked, you can automate creating in Streamyard, creating an event, and then getting that link and sending that link to you and to me, maybe even updating the event depending on where your calendar is, and then creating the notes. Like it pushes that to a database, right?

Again, I, I would recommend an Airtable database for this, but it pushes all of that. So you have the list of your guests, the, the recording date, the potential go live date. You can automate the whole process of the editing of this episode and everything that you have, keywords and all of that into one big database.

Take all the admin off of your shoulders. Give it to a tool and if you wanna take it one step further, create graphics that go along with it. So assign a task to a graphic designer to create any graphics you need for this.

Michelle J Raymond: All of that just sounds amazing to me. And I'm probably sitting here just going ah der Michelle, that's the only words I can think of ah der. Like, you should be doing all of this. I just, I feel like sometimes there's just so many things to do that it's, at a point where I, I'm not trying to make an excuse, but sometimes as setting this business up from scratch, you're trying to do everything.

And again, I'm outside of my zone of genius. When I'm training other people how to get the most out of LinkedIn to grow their business, that's where I thrive. That's where I shine. You know, business development, that side of things, social selling, creating content, love it. It's the other side of it that I had to have a dose of, I guess, humble pie when I set up my own business. I thought I'd been, I'd be amazing at it because I'd been running somebody else's business. I have 30 direct reports responsible for everything. Wake up the next day, quit, have my own business, and then all of a sudden it felt different, because it was created from scratch.

And so it's been really interesting as a journey for myself to see how much I've had to grow with all of this stuff and how much I've learned now I've ticked the box on the branding journey I had to go, you know, where I started with that was the simple colours, not even logos or anything like that I wasn't interested. But it's interesting now for me to say, where I'm at in 2023, those systems don't work anymore.

Now the next one we're gonna go to that we'll, um, talk about as well where automation comes into play is something that I've been trained in as a sales rep as long as I can remember. That is automation for customer relationships or managing those relationships more so is probably how I should describe it. But what things should I be considering high level in this space that I do? Do you want me to confess? I don't even have a CRM anymore. I set one up when I first started and then got bored.

I'm gonna pick you up off the floor again. Um, and again, it's not because I haven't been trained and understand the value. I absolutely do. But anyway, over to you. You can slap me with the, you know, the wet fish or whatever, proverbially.

Irit Levi: So one, like the second half of your, your statement has to do with the first half of your statement.

When you were working for corporate, you had these tools that they were paying for and they were already set up when you joined. So it was a no-brainer that this is how you run the business. When you start your own business. You can't afford most of these tools, not at enterprise level, not at what they're giving you when you work for corporate.

So you're like, ah, I'll just manage with a Google spreadsheet, or I'll just manage with, you know, I'll just put everything in a Word document. And I admit, when I started I was tracking my contacts in a Google spreadsheet. Very fast I realised this is not the way to go. This is not the what I want.

You don't have to pay for a full CRM. I don't track emails. I don't care. Uh, my, my inbox is organised and every email that comes in from a lead goes to a specific folder. Every email that comes in from a client goes to a specific folder. So sure, you have to set up rules in your email. Very simple automations. They don't cost anything but you don't need a CRM that will track everything. And so again, I use Airtable for this. I use Asana for my CRM that I'm transferring everything over to Airtable slowly. They're very different. Asana is better for project management, but this is my favourite thing to help creators with because when someone reaches out to you, you need to track that.

And then when you have a meeting with them, you take notes and you need to send them a proposal and then you need to send them a contract or an invoice and how are you keeping track of, of where everything is, where each lead is in your sales pipeline. So I set up processes for companies to do exactly this for small companies and now I'm actually working I'm gonna share this. I'm working on a group program to have people do it together with a group. So it gives you the accountability and it gives you the push that you have to do it. It's planned for March. Let's see if I can get it up there.

But here's the thing, by automating your sales pipeline, by streamlining it, you're giving your customers a better experience and giving your customers a better experience is where it's all about because I don't care if you're working five extra hours to create the proposal or to get your, find the file where you took the notes from our last meeting. I don't care as your client, I do care if I reach out to you and it takes you three days to send me a proposal. I do care if it takes you three days to send me a contract or an invoice, or once I've paid the invoice, a receipt. So you know, I care about these things.

So streamlining and automating that is what's going to take your business to the next level, and it's gonna get you off to the right start with your leads before you convert them. It's gonna make it easier for you to convert them because once again, when they book a call, imagine if they have a forum where they filled out all these qualification questions and you know before the call, are they a right fit or not? , if you're using the right tool, you can actually use that booking to see and if they're not a right fit, you can automate, oh, they're not qualified, and send them an email saying, sorry, I don't think we're gonna be a match here's a recommendation. Just save the time on having the discovery call even.

Michelle J Raymond: Uh, uh, look, I can see all the benefits and I think that's where I am coming to now. And to your point, when you think about that customer experience, if I go back to the early days of my business, and I share this authentically because I think there's something for other people to learn. Being on probably a similar journey to mine is that it used to take me probably two weeks to get back to people.

Not because I didn't want to, but I think there's something that you and I spoke about beforehand, that I didn't have processes in place. I couldn't even define what my products were. There are a whole bunch of things that there's no way I could have automated because I was still creating like, what am I actually selling? What is included in this? How much is it?

All these kind of questions I didn't have answers for, going back, two years because I was just making them as I went and, I'm absolutely not there anymore. And so now I've got processes and I've got things, but I'm the roadblock. Essentially, I end up being the funnel that people get stuck at and I can give some to you know, Lil, she helps me send stuff out and keeps me on track, but ultimately it relies on me probably reminding , letting people know.

And how much information have I lost along the way? I don't even want to think about that. I'll probably cry. My sales rep brain knows how important it is. This is not a, sell me on the idea. I'm absolutely on board for it. But for people that are listening in to us today, because there's so many things that we can automate, um, some things or some concerns that I have is, I know you're amazing at what you do. I know the values of automation, but is it something that anyone can manage on their own? Is it gonna cost me thousands of dollars in subscriptions every month? What is a budget that's realistic for, you've heard a bit of my story here today, but I don't even know, is it something that I'm up for thousands of dollars or is it something that, for the basics, I can get myself started pretty easily.

Irit Levi: So here's the thing, the automation tools are not expensive. Let's just start with that. But before I talk about the cost of setting up automations, I wanna say go back to something that you said. You mentioned you don't wanna think about how many people you left behind, like that you didn't reach out to.

How much money did you leave on the table? How much is it costing you not to automate? That's the big question because setting up a sales pipeline like I just talked to you about using very basic tools like Airtable and an invoicing tool that, I mean you could do this also not using an invoicing tool. You could do it with a Google doc as well, and a proposal using a Google Doc as well. Like very basics. It will cost you free in terms of subscriptions to tools. No, it will cost you $20 a month cause you need a Zapier subscription. Other than that, that's all you need.

And Zapier is such a powerful tool. It has a free plan, but you can't use the free plan for this because you want multi-steps zaps. And so you need at least a starter plan. And the starter plan will give you 20 zaps, so you're covered and 750 tasks. So you're more or less covered with $20 a month. US dollars, not Australian dollars, just to say.

 But what will cost you is not that. What will cost you is the setup and it'll cost you one of two things. It will cost you in your time, frustration, and energy, or it will cost you in hiring someone like me. That's where the money, that's where the big money is going to cost you. It's a one-time investment. So time, frustration, and energy, if you're just starting out as a business owner and you have more time than money, do it on your own, by all means, absolutely. Research it. Almost everything is available for free online to learn how to do.

On my website, I give it away for free. Literally how to set up everything. You don't have to pay for anything. It's ungated, so you don't even have to give me your email. Do I think people should do it on their own if they want it done properly? Probably not. Because there are a lot of nuances and every workflow is a little bit different. So I can talk about the general, but I'm not giving away, not not cause I don't want to just because it, it's too much to say exactly how to do for your setup. And so people come to me for that, or the group program, hopefully that will, alleviate the pain of the cost a little bit.

It is an expense. I'm going to be completely honest with you. Having that initial setup of the automation, whether you work with me or a slew of others that I can recommend like some in the southern hemisphere even, like not necessarily up where we are, but there are some amazing people doing this and they will help you and they will get you up and running within days rather than months. And hiring an expert to do this is once again going to help you focus on your zone of genius and do what's good for your business.

Will you be involved in this? Absolutely. It's your job. You have to define it, but if you'd focus on doing this. Michelle, if you were to do this, then 2023 would be the first three months of 2023 would be about setting up those automations. That's what it's gonna take you to do and figure it out.

Michelle J Raymond: Yeah, absolutely. And the thing that you are saying here is exactly the same thing that I talked to my clients about when we're talking about LinkedIn training. Anyone can do a post, you can research Google all the answers. There's lots of free content on LinkedIn about how to do stuff on LinkedIn. LinkedIn help, but the difference is the nuances, as you say, are the bits that actually make it from getting average results to someone like me who's aiming to double my business this year and next year.

And so from that perspective, relying on my own knowledge all the time and getting distracted by focusing on things that aren't my zone of genius is absolutely where I will not make those targets. And it's the same when I offer training to people. You will figure it out the same way that I did over time. But if you need results faster, then the only way you can fast track that is to leverage off someone else's expertise. It is really that simple.

And I need to, you know, I'm actually talking to myself here. I've got the mirror up, to take my own medicine here, but I always like to end the show with an actionable tip from my guest because I'm sure that people, if they're anything like me being listening in here and nodding away, going oh yeah, I probably should do this or I probably should do that. What's the one tip when it comes to automation that you think for someone that's gonna be starting out, they need to know or that they can get sorted before they reach out to you?

I'll make sure that I've got all of your details and website in the show notes so that people can see your videos. I've watched some of them, so I know that they're great. What's your tip that we can leave the listeners with this week?

Irit Levi: In a word it would be simplify. That's like, my, my motto. Oh yeah, my mug.

Michelle J Raymond: It's on mug. It's on the mug.

Irit Levi: It's on the mug. Um, but if you wanna start, choose one process. It could be either content creation or your sales pipeline. Those are the first two that you can look at. Choose one of them and write out every single step that you do. No step is too small when, when you look at a step, ask yourself, can I break that down even further?

Go back to maths in third grade. When you learn how to get to prime numbers. Find those prime tasks. When you come to someone who does workflows, if you have that, you save yourself a lot of time. They'll probably be able to break it down even more, cause that's what we do. But that's the first step that you need in order to know where you can start automating.

I don't like the word automating here. I say that's when you can know when to delegate to tools and what to delegate to people, but you need that workflow written down first.

Michelle J Raymond: Totally makes sense. And ironically, I actually have all of that written down. It was one of the first things that I did when I was training Lil, is I was like, we have to have this written because I was acutely aware that I could never give what's in my brain to other people if I didn't put something like that in place.

So absolutely on board for that one. At least I've got one tick today. I've certainly been inspired.

For anyone that is interested in continuing this conversation, please reach out to Irit Levi. I will put her LinkedIn profile details in the show notes. Go to her profile. In the top right hand corner underneath the banner is a bell, click on that people to get notified of all of her posts, they are always valuable.

They make me laugh as well. There's a dash of humour in there. And for me it's just something that you planted that seed. I'm glad that we actually got to have this conversation because you know where this is going for me and I've just been nodding the whole time that we've been talking and you can laugh at me afterwards, that's fine but I just wanna say thank you so much for sharing all of your knowledge. I know we only scratched the surface, but what you've done today has certainly given me food for thought and I'm sure the listeners as well. So I appreciate your time and coming on the show.

Irit Levi: Thank you so much for having me.

Michelle J Raymond: And until next week, thank you listeners and we will catch up with you. Cheers.