The 3-Step Process for Your First Automation

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My oldest daughter loves asking me to tell her a funny story about my wife from when we were dating... and I almost always freeze. It's not because there aren't any funny stories. It's because there are too many to pick from.

This is exactly what happens when you open Zapier without a plan. You're faced with a "blank canvas" and endless possibilities, so you freeze and do nothing.

You've heard about "triggers" and "actions," but you're not sure what your triggers or actions should be. Zapier isn’t a sandbox for people starting out. The secret is to look at the work you're already doing.

I'll walk you through my simple, three-step process to get started. It starts with documenting your tasks, listing your apps, and then using one specific (and often overlooked) page on Zapier's website that will show you exactly what's possible for you.

Stop staring at the screen, wondering where to begin. Let's get your first automation built.

Want to see some real-world examples tailored to your biggest struggles? Take my free quiz at https://streamlined.fm/quiz and I'll email you four automation ideas you can use today.

Show Notes

• Take the Automation Quiz: streamlined.fm/quiz
• Explore the Zapier Apps Page: zapier.com/apps
• Watch the Zapier Apps Page Walkthrough Video
• Leave feedback: streamlinedfeedback.com

★ Support this podcast ★

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
So how do you
get started? How do you overcome
the blank canvas problem?
You've heard me talk about the four components of automation. Those are triggers,
actions, conditions, and timing.
But

(00:22):
you don't necessarily know what a trigger is, a good trigger or what an
action is.
You aren't sure what apps Zapier supports.
So
you're left wondering,
what can I do?
There's too much to understand. And so the first thing

(00:46):
that you need to do
is
understand your work.
This is why my documentation exercise is so important,
because if you don't know what to do or
if you don't know what you do,

(01:06):
then you just
stare at a blank canvas.
It's like if you've been tasked to write a paper
and you're not given a topic or any other parameters, just like, what am I gonna
write? A, there's so many things I can write about, or maybe a better example is
this.
Tell me a funny story.
Tell me a story from college.

(01:27):
Tell me something funny that happened to you when you were younger.
Most people will freeze when they get that question 'cause
they don't have something holstered.
They don't have something ready to be like, oh, here's a hilarious story.
So they freeze and they can't think of anything.
This has happened to me countless times. My, my oldest daughter has been asking my

(01:50):
wife and me, Hey, tell
me a funny story about mom from when you guys were dating. Or, Hey,
tell
me a funny story about Dad from when you first met him.
There's so many funny stories. I was an idiot when I was younger. I still kind of
am. So it's just, it's not that we don't have anything, just like, it's not that
you don't have anything to automate, it's that there are so many options you don't

(02:12):
know what to do. So
my recommendation first is
document.
Pick a process or a task or a workflow that you do. It could be writing your newsletter,
recording a podcast episode, making a YouTube video, following up with people who
fill out your intake form,

(02:33):
building your next product or service,
write everything you have to do down,
and then you have
a list of potential tasks,
a list of potential things that you can maybe hand off to Zapier,
right? The obvious example is booking guests, right? Which you actually don't need

(02:58):
to hand off to Zapier, right? You can just use cal.com or Calendly for that.
But an another example might be, well, okay, for my newsletter or for my podcasts,
I need to
capture ideas.
And sometimes I like to bookmark stories or links for episodes. What if when you
bookmarked a story, it got sent to your planning document or created a planning document

(03:24):
for you?
That's a trigger and an action that can, that is something you can do in Zapier,
but it goes beyond that. After you make the list of things that you need to do,
write down the apps you use to accomplish those tasks,
because that is the crucial part.

(03:44):
Knowing what apps you use is the key to understanding how you can use Zapier.
And we'll get into exactly how you can use Zapier
right after this.
Okay, where back,

(04:04):
how, what's the key
to using Zapier?
You have a list of tasks.
You have a list of apps
before you open the Zapier editor or start typing into Zapier's copilot,
the thing you wanna do, I want you to do this.

(04:25):
Go to zapier.com/apps,
zapier.com/aps.
This is the Zapier Explore Apps page,
and this
gives you everything you need to understand what Zapier can do for you.

(04:48):
In the beginning of the show. In the cold open, I talked about a restaurant, except
you need to build a menu with no other parameters.
This is like saying we want to be a Mexican food restaurant, or we want to serve
sushi.
Now you're working within some box.

(05:09):
The Zapier Explore apps page
allows you to search
for the apps you use.
So you can type in
Feedly if you use Feedly for RSS
or Instapaper. If you use Instapaper for bookmarking,

(05:29):
you can search for Calendly or cal.com.
You can search for kit, any of the apps that you use, search and see if they're available
in Zapier.
But
it goes one step. It goes many steps. Really further than that,
once you pick an app,
it will give you a few,

(05:51):
it will give you apps that you can pair with
apps that are commonly paired with the one you just selected.
It'll give you
automation ideas.
So it'll say, you know, if you pick, uh, Gmail for example,
it'll say, Hey, save new Gmail emails

(06:13):
matching a search to Google Sheets.
Or
when you label or star an email, send a Slack message about it.
So it'll start to give you ideas based on the apps that you use.
And then further down on the page,
it has a list of supported triggers and actions.

(06:37):
So you can actually see the triggers that kick off the automation.
You can see the actions that will be a result of the automation.
So now you can see what's possible.
You can see what you can do,
but I love when you choose an app to pair
it with.

(06:58):
It will allow you to select a trigger and an action. It'll, it'll suggest specific
automations for those app pairings, and you can reverse them, right? So if, if we're
saying,
let's say Google Sheets and Trello,
if we have Google Sheets as the trigger and Trello as the action, we can reverse

(07:18):
them and we can see what's possible with
Trello as the trigger and Google Sheets as the action.
So those three components, or those three
things you need
to do
to prevent blank Canvas syndrome
and get started with Zapier,

(07:39):
make a list of the stuff that you do,
the tasks that you perform on your computer.
Then make a list of the apps you use to accomplish those tasks.
Then head over to zapier.com/apps
and search for one of those apps to see what Zapier can do with that app.

(08:04):
Look at the triggers and look at the actions.
And
as I said in the beginning of the show,
if you're still thinking, well, I still don't know
you, you you wanna see, right? You wanna see examples of real world automations,
you don't wanna talk in academics,

(08:25):
head on over to streamlined fm slash quiz
because over at streamlined fm slash quiz,
I will ask you a few questions
and when you submit, I will email you four automations based on what you're struggling
with. And even if you're not using the apps, I'm suggesting you are seeing the type

(08:48):
of work that's being automated.
So seeing that paired with the Zapier apps page could be a really great way for you
to figure out what you can automate.
But that's it for this episode of the Streamline Solopreneur. It's a short one,
but a really focused one.

(09:08):
I do have a video where I walk through
the Zapier Explore apps page, so I'll link that in the show notes as well. You can
find all of the show notes over at streamlined FM or in whatever player you're listening
to this episode on.
If you have any feedback, you can head over to streamlinedfeedback.com.

(09:30):
Thanks so much for listening,
and until next time, I hope you find some space in your week.