July 29, 2025 • 34 mins
Are you feeling overwhelmed by your nonprofit's workload? In this episode, I sit down with Karen King, founder of Gold Star Pro, to explore how automation can revolutionize your organization's productivity and give you back precious time to focus on your mission.
Embracing Automation Without Losing the Human Touch
Karen shares valuable insights on:
- Why automation doesn't mean depersonalization
- How to create personalized experiences at scale
- Balancing efficiency with authenticity in your communications
Streamlining Your Nonprofit's Processes
Discover practical strategies for:
- Identifying tasks that can be automated
- Creating a roadmap for implementing automation
- Leveraging data to make informed decisions
Overcoming Common Automation Hurdles
We address key concerns, including:
- Maintaining consistency in your messaging
- Ensuring quality control in automated processes
- Freeing up time for strategic thinking and creativity
Getting Started with Automation
Learn how to:
- Map out your current processes
- Identify areas for improvement
- Choose the right tools for your organization's needs
Whether you're a small grassroots organization or an established nonprofit, this conversation offers fresh perspectives on how to work smarter, not harder. Don't miss this opportunity to explore strategies that could transform your approach to productivity and impact.
Want to skip ahead? Here are some key takeaways:
06:28 Mapping Your Processes Learn why creating a roadmap is crucial before implementing any automation tools.
12:47 Personalization in Automation Discover how to maintain a human touch while leveraging technology for efficiency.
19:36 Data-Driven Decision Making Explore how automation can provide valuable insights to guide your strategy.
26:15 Consistency and Trust-Building Understand how automation can help you maintain a consistent presence and build trust with your audience.
Don't let burnout hold your nonprofit back. Tune in to learn how automation can help you create more impact while reclaiming your time and energy.
Resources
Worldschooling Central: A community founded by Karen King, helping families educate their children through travel.: https://www.worldschoolingcentral.com/
The Escapepreneur: Another program by Karen King, teaching entrepreneurs how to design businesses that fund their ideal lifestyle.: https://www.theescapepreneur.com/
Karen King
Karen King is a visionary entrepreneur, world traveler, and founder of Gold Star Pro—a platform and coaching program designed to help solopreneurs and coaches build scalable, location-independent businesses. With over a decade of experience in technology coaching and marketing, Karen specializes in simplifying business automation so her clients can focus on creating freedom, not just revenue.
After leaving corporate burnout behind, Karen sold everything to travel the world with her family, embracing a “world schooling” lifestyle for nearly a decade. This journey inspired her to launch Worldschooling Central, a 13,000-member community helping families educate their children through travel. Now, she merges her expertise in business automation with her passion for freedom through The Escapreneur Movement—a program teaching entrepreneurs how to design businesses that fund their ideal lifestyles.
Learn more at usegoldstar.com
https://www.facebook.com/groups/worldschoolingcentral
https://www.instagram.com/gold.star.pro/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/karen-e-king/
Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-first-click
Learn more about The First Click: https://thefirstclick.net
Schedule a Digital Marketing Therapy Session: https://thefirstclick.net/officehours
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Sami Bedell-Mulhern (00:00):
We've talked a lot about AI and automations as it relates
to your marketing, uh, and contentcreation, but we haven't talked about
it in a while as it relates to yourproductivity for your team and how
you can get more done in everything,all areas of your organization.
And so that is what we aregoing to talk about today.
(00:21):
My guest today is Karen King.
She's a visionary, entrepreneur, worldtraveler, and founder of Gold Star Pro.
A platform and coaching program designedto help solopreneurs and coaches build
scalable location independent businesses.
With over a decade of experience intechnology coaching and marketing, Karen
specializes in simplifying businessautomation so her clients can focus on
creating freedom, not just revenues.
(00:43):
After leaving corporate burnout behind,Karen sold everything to travel the
world with her family embracing a worldschooling lifestyle for nearly a decade.
This journey inspired her tolaunch World Schooling Central, a
13,000 member community, helpingfamilies educate their children
through business or through travel.
Now she merges her experience inbusiness automation with her passion
(01:04):
for freedom through the EscapePreneur movement, a program teaching
entrepreneurs how to design businessesthat fund their ideal lifestyle.
Burnout in the nonprofit space is huge.
And you know, just working and grindingand doing things for hours and hours
and hours doesn't work anymore.
We need to have better systems, betterthings in place for not just us, but
our team and opportunities for usto live and balance what we're doing
(01:27):
in our personal and work life andfeel good about what we're doing.
And so that is exactly what Karenand I talked about today, and
it was such a fun conversation.
So I'm excited for you to check it out.
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(01:51):
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Let's get into the episode.
You're listening to the DigitalMarketing Therapy podcast.
I'm your host, Sammy Del Mulhern.
(02:55):
Each month we dive deep into a digitalmarketing or fundraising strategy that
you can implement in your organization.
Each week you'll hear from guestexperts, nonprofits, and myself on
best practices, tips, and resourcesto help you raise more money online
and reach your organizational goals.
Hey friends, please join me inwelcoming Karen King to the podcast.
(03:17):
Karen, thanks for being here.
Karen King (03:18):
Thank you so much for having me.
I'm so excited to be here.
Sami Bedell-Mulhern (03:22):
So I love organization, task management, um,
'cause it permeates through everythingthat we do all day, every day.
Uh, why is kind of streamliningour days being more efficient,
working smarter, not harder?
Why is that something thatyou love and love to coach on?
Karen King (03:40):
Well, it's, it's funny it's, I've been traveling the
world now for the last 10 years.
We sold everything in Australia 10 yearsago and started traveling the world.
And when I was trying to launch abusiness, I realized that I was spending
a lot of time stuck at my laptop doingthe mundane stuff that we all have to do.
Like it, it has to be done.
But when I discoveredautomation, I realized it didn't
(04:01):
have to be me that did it.
I'd much rather be out exploring theworld and hanging out with my family
or my friends or whatever the casemay be, than stuck at my laptop.
So that's really where it started from.
Just, you know, I guess I alwaystell people I'm, I must just
be inherently lazy or somethingbecause that all really smart.
Sami Bedell-Mulhern (04:19):
No, but I, okay, so I love that you said that because.
I think that for a lot of us, it'singrained that busy equals success or busy
equals, you know, movement and trajectory.
Like we're doing things in our business.
If we're not busy thenwe're not doing enough.
Um, so I'd just kind oflove your thoughts on that.
Like what was that like for youas you kind of started automating
(04:42):
things and freeing up time and space?
Like how did you allow yourself to.
Take advantage of that spaceversus like fill it with more busy?
Karen King (04:53):
Well, that, that's a really good question because I'm very
guilty of filling it with more busyand it's something that I struggle
with because I love what I do.
I, I very, very easily can find otherthings to fill that with, but what
it has allowed me to do is pick andchoose what I put in that space.
So, you know, last week, for example, wewere celebrating a big birthday with my
(05:14):
daughter, and I needed a couple of days tohelp, you know, set things up and prepare.
And because things were automated, Ididn't have to be the one there doing it.
The business just kept operating.
Of course, I check in to makesure that everything's okay.
But what it does is it gives you thatflexibility to choose what you do.
Um, but yeah, you know, as entrepreneurswe always have a lot of ideas and,
(05:38):
uh, you know, we're always comingup with new or wonderful things.
So yes, we have to be really carefulthat we don't build that space.
Um, when, when I, on the timeswhere I've really lent into that,
what I have discovered is that thebusiness runs really well without me.
Quite often, I actually make alot more money, so I don't know.
(05:58):
So yeah, as I said, wetravel the world full time.
Last winter, we spent, you know,every Monday, Wednesday, Friday
morning, I'm blocked out to go skiing.
And I made more money over those coupleof months when I wasn't doing the
busy work than, uh, than when I was.
So it was an interesting experiment.
Sami Bedell-Mulhern (06:14):
Oh my gosh,
Karen King (06:15):
I love that so much.
Sami Bedell-Mulhern (06:16):
Well, okay, so let's jump over one other hurdle really
quick before we jump into some specific.
Strategies and tactics.
Um, being, I'm hearing automationautomatically, I'm thinking
depersonalized, I'm thinking, you know,my people are gonna know that it's not me.
Or like all the, the thingsare gonna go off the rails.
(06:37):
Things are gonna break.
All of these things when we'rein the nonprofit space and.
You know, we're small teams andyou know, we wanna make sure that
everything is still authentic andconnected and you know, there's just
this fear of it's not gonna work.
And you already said you mademore money when you weren't
doing it, and that's great in theentrepreneur for-profit space.
(06:57):
But like, can you kind of share someof the reasons why we might wanna stop
thinking about it as a depersonalizationand as more of an opportunity for
us to actually be more personal withour connections and our audience.
Karen King (07:12):
Absolutely.
And it is one thing that I hearall the time, and you know, people
think it's gonna be cold or likeyou said, just not personalized.
The, the thing you have to rememberis this is about replacing the
need for you physically doing it.
That doesn't mean it needs tosound robotic, for example.
So when you are setting.
Up an email, you are writingthat email to one person.
(07:35):
So you're doing it as you wouldautomatically or, or ordinarily,
but then you are taking that emailand putting it into a system.
So for that wonderful customization, thatpersonalization that you would do yourself
for one person then goes out and becomesthat for everybody without you doing it.
(07:56):
So I always tell all of the peoplethat I work with, I always tell them,
build your system for that one person.
What would be the most amazing processthat you could create for that one person?
Create that, and then you startpushing other people into it.
And then you don't run the riskof, oh, you know, I forgot to
send such and such an email, or,you know, I forgot to do this.
(08:18):
Whatever the case may be,you're actually using that
personalization that you've created.
Doing it more consistently, again,without you having to be involved.
It's ab, it's actually quiteincredible how personalized automation
can be when you do it that way.
I regularly get people right back tomy audit emails, automated emails,
(08:40):
saying, oh, thank you so much.
It's so sweet of you to respond to mebecause I've written the automation in
the first place aimed at one person.
They respond to me, and thenthat starts a conversation.
That's when you can step in and continuethat conversation and, and be very
personalized, but it just takes you outof the, you know, the repetitive stuff
(09:00):
that you need to do every single day.
Sami Bedell-Mulhern (09:03):
Well, I think there's something really important that
you said there, uh, that I wanna makesure we highlight is that a lot of times
we'll go to a conference or we'll goto a networking event or we'll go do
something, um, and we forget to do thefollow up, or we don't have time to do
the follow up for a week or two later.
And then what's that we, that,that's a missed opportunity versus
(09:23):
having it being able to funnelpeople into an automation and know
that that's gonna happen right away.
Like, you know, it's happening.
Um, instead of saying, well, it'sUnpersonal or whatever, if you
don't follow up with them, youknow you're gonna get zero results.
Karen King (09:38):
Yeah, absolutely.
And that we are so guilty ofthat, even just, you know, as
human beings, we have life.
Get in the way of thethings that we need to do.
We have a lot of things that we haveto do in our day-to-day life, and
it is easy to forget this stuff.
So if you can set that to me, that'sthe perfect use of automation.
Creating something that is verypersonalized, very customized,
(10:01):
even things like, you know, whensomebody signs up for something,
don't send an email straight away.
For example, when I getoff a call with somebody.
I have an email that will go outautomatically, but I've put in
like a, a 10 minute wait step.
So it looks at like, if, if it arrived intheir inbox 10 seconds after I've hung up.
Clearly that's not me, that'swritten up and it's not, try
(10:22):
not me trying to impersonate.
Or pretend that it's not automated.
Um, but, you know, I, I wantit to feel personalized.
Yeah.
And so waiting 10 minutes, it lookslike I've gotten off the call and
put this email together for them.
So there's a lot you can do to reallycustomize and really personalize.
My business is all about people first,so looking after people and really
(10:45):
giving them the best opport or best,best experience that I can give them.
I just do that through automationbecause I know, like if,
if I had to rely on myself.
Or even, you know, when, when I saymy team, it's not about that my team
don't do an amazing job because they do.
But again, we're all humans.
Yeah.
There's always room for humanerror if we rely on humans.
(11:06):
Whereas if you can set it up reallywell once, put time and effort into
it in the beginning, get it right.
Um, and you can rely on that to beconsistently incredible every single time.
Sami Bedell-Mulhern (11:17):
Love that.
Okay, so let's get specific,because I feel like automations.
Is a buzzword just like ai, just,you know, there's all these things
out there and, and sometimes it'shard to like content creation, right?
Like, well, what does that look like?
How do I actually start to implementthat into my day-to-day life?
So if I am like, okay, I'm in, I lovethis, I love what you're saying already.
(11:40):
Where do I start with trying to figureout what types of tasks I can automate?
Mm-hmm.
And, and what I should dofirst, where I should start.
Karen King (11:48):
I love that question because most people don't.
Start at the beginning.
Most people jump in and go, oh, youknow, automation, I need software.
I actually, which is, which is kind ofironic 'cause I have a software company.
I actually tell people, forgetabout the software when you are
getting started, because if youjump straight into the software,
you're missing the most fundamentalparts of setting this up properly.
(12:12):
So the first thing I always tellpeople to do is look at the processes
you have in place right now.
What are you doing?
Map that out.
Get some, you know, some paper,some post-it notes, whatever it is.
Look at all of the thingsyou do in the business.
So it might be, you know, somebody comesin, they buy a product or you know, and
then this happens and then this happens.
(12:33):
But you'll have lots of differentfor processes that you go through.
And then look at those each individuallyand look at the individual steps.
Map that all out.
What is happening right now?
Then have a look at what's working welland what's maybe not working so well.
And then from there, again,forgetting about software and
(12:57):
and what's actually possible.
Dream a little bit about what themost amazing process could be.
Like.
Do you want an email to goout to them at this stage?
Do you want to, I don't know.
Like there's so many differentthings depending on your business.
What is the most incredibleexperience that you could give?
Your customer that's going throughthis process, then you have an
(13:20):
understanding of what you want.
So once you've got everything mapped out,and we work with a lot of coaches and
course creators, small business owners.
So if it's, you know, selling aa course, for example, somebody
has to buy it, they have to havea place to, to actually buy it.
They have to have a form or, you know,an order form that they can fill out
and put in their credit card details.
(13:40):
So then we can actually startlooking at what those processes are.
And what is the software that we need?
Um, and then we can start lookingat, at what do we actually need to
do to make that process come to life?
And what I quite often find people dois jump in and, you know, oh, my best
(14:00):
friend Jenny said she's got this platform.
So I've jumped in and, and I'm, I'm inthere, but I've got no idea what to do.
The thing is, if you don't know what youneed to do, you don't know how to do it.
Um, so having that roadmap, startingwith a roadmap is absolutely critical.
And I always say to people, it'slike, if I tried to drive from
New York to Los Angeles, you'dprobably never see me again.
(14:22):
Like, if I did that without aroadmap, without directions, uh,
you know, I'd probably fall inthe Grand Canyon or something.
Yeah.
I said, who knows where you'd end up?
Oh, exactly.
But what we do is we get onto,say Google Maps and we map it out.
We work out, well, you know what?
I wanna drive for this long and Ineed to stop for lunch, and blah,
(14:42):
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
You know what those steps are,and then it's really easy.
I might not know exactly how to dothose steps, but I can always ask help.
Once I know what those steps are andwhat I see is most business owners
or most, most people using tech intheir organization are not techy.
(15:04):
And so they get in and they don't knowwhat to do and it becomes overwhelming.
And then they go, you know what,I'll just keep doing it myself.
'cause that's easy.
I at least know how to do.
Sami Bedell-Mulhern (15:12):
Yeah.
Karen King (15:13):
So I
Sami Bedell-Mulhern (15:13):
mean, I love a good reverse engineering starting from the
end and working towards the beginning.
Uh, but I also think that what'sbeautiful about the exercise that you're
mentioning is, I think a lot of timesin organizations, even if there's only
like one or two people that are kindof overlapping in their roles, both
people have two completely differentprocesses for how they're managing it.
(15:34):
And so there's also inconsistencygoing out in, you know, the way each
person is kind of handling things.
And so the beauty of this exercisealso is, are there things where we
just as a team are duplicating efforts?
Number one, can we automate it?
But number two, are we already likedoing double the work because we're
both doing things differently orwe didn't realize the other person
(15:56):
was doing the step in the process.
So it seems to me like this isjust a great exercise in efficiency
as an organization in general.
Karen King (16:04):
Definitely.
We see a lot of people comeacross to Gold Star Pro who.
Have done what I said before.
They've, they've sort of built this andthat, and, you know, they've ended up with
all these different softwares and we, Ilove when they come across because they
can do it all inside of our platform.
But the, the point I'm trying tomake is that it's a really good
opportunity to really streamline,look at what you've created and
(16:29):
is it the best version of that?
Are you?
You know, are you wasting time?
Is it clunky in parts?
Are you missing things thatyou've never really thought of?
So stepping back and looking atthe process is just such a valuable
experience, and I can't emphasizeenough that that is the first
step of using tech, even thoughthere's no tech involved in it.
(16:51):
The first step of simplifying anorganization, processes, all of that is
truly understanding what that looks like.
Yeah.
No, that's
Sami Bedell-Mulhern (17:00):
so good.
Okay, so we've kind ofidentified some of the gaps.
Um, we've taken a look at our processes.
I think one of the things that Ihas really stuck in my brain as an
entrepreneur at building my businessas I've kind of grown and scaled and
added people and all of that, is payingattention to the things that only I can
(17:21):
do versus the things that I can outsource.
And that's where like the automationpiece for me really sinks in, is like.
I can't, there's certain parts of,let's just take this podcast recording,
for example, or con like large,large, long form content creation.
Nobody else can recordthis podcast but me, right?
Yeah.
That, but there's other parts ofthe process that can be automated
(17:42):
or systematized, and so kind of howmight we want to really think through.
What your role is, whatyour superpower is for your
organization, and be really honest.
Like do you have questions that youask clients to like really get real
with themselves about like, okay,what are you holding onto mm-hmm that
(18:03):
you need to let go of, that we canautomate from a fear place versus
like, this is your zone of genius.
You need to go forward with this.
To your point of now I can go skiingthree days a week for this period of
time and still make money and still builda business and still generate income.
Karen King (18:18):
I see a lot of small business owners doing is, you know, they've
launched their business because they'vegot this passion about something.
They wanna help people, they wanna havean impact, but then they get stuck in
all that busy work, all the stuff thathas to take place, but isn't their
zone of genius, as you mentioned.
And time and time again, I hear frompeople that just say, I'm just exhausted.
(18:39):
Like I got into business to doX, Y, Z, and I spend maybe 10%
of my time actually doing that.
And so I think that's where theroadmap really comes into place.
Highlight on those roadmaps, what arethe things that you have to do versus
what are the things that maybe a teammember can do, automation can do.
(19:01):
Um, an example might be, I do a callwith every new user of Goldstar Pro
because I am genuinely interestedin connecting with everybody.
And as I said, we're very,very people first, now.
I have to do that session, but Idon't have to do everything else, so I
don't have to send them the reminders.
Uh, you know, the confirmation whenthey book the call, I don't have to send
(19:23):
them, uh, the recording after the call.
So every part of that is automated.
There's a page where peoplecan sign up for a call.
They then automatically get reminders.
And those reminders areso incredibly valuable.
Our show rate is, you know,about 90, 98% because people
are getting those reminders.
Then I am physically on the call.
(19:44):
At the end of the call, I do one littlemovement in the system, and that sets,
sets up a task for my va who then does,you know, various different things to
send that recording to that person.
So that, I mean, that's just onevery, very simple, um, example, but it
really understand what you need to do.
Um, what you want to do.
(20:05):
Like, there are things that youmight just really love to do.
It might not necessarily be you thathas to do them, but if you love them,
and that's the point of, you know,what we're trying to do, then put
yourself into those, those key areas.
Yeah.
And then find those areas that youdon't need to be involved and, and
figure out can that be automated?
Because again, if we automate, weremove that need for human error.
(20:28):
Um, but in the example that I'musing, we are pulling, you know,
passwords and, and links and thingsfrom Zoom and, and all of those.
So I like to have somebody just, youknow, double checking and making sure
that that whole process is, is good.
So there will always be a need forthat human touch, but the things we
don't have to be involved in, that'swhen the automation comes into,
Sami Bedell-Mulhern (20:49):
yeah.
I wanna double down on this,you know, mention this.
What do you love to do?
What are the things thatyou are, are your space?
And the, I think the thing for me whenit comes to figuring out where to start
automation and where to start kind ofpassing things off to other people are
when I look at my to-do list and thesame task keeps getting carried over
(21:10):
from week to week to week to week.
And I'm not doing it, not becauseI'm incapable or because it's not
important, but just because it'slike the thing where I'm like.
I don't, I don't wanna do it.
I'm not gonna do it.
So I push it off day after day after day.
And so that to me seems like a greatspot to kind of start with, okay,
if I'm not doing this for weeks,because I don't want to deal with it.
(21:31):
Like for me, this is an automationin, well I guess it is in a certain
way, but like the first thing I hiredin my business was a bookkeeper.
'cause I knew financials were not gonnabe a thing that I wanted to deal with.
It was gonna be a task that justcarried over and all of a sudden
it's gonna be tax season and I'mgonna be like in real big trouble.
'cause I haven't done my books.
So, you know, is that kind of anotherway to start figuring out what types of
(21:54):
things we need to offload and automate?
Karen King (21:57):
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Looking at those, looking at those tasks.
And I love that actually.
'cause I'm, I'm now lookingat my list, what's on there
that I don't need to be doing.
Um, but yeah, absolutely.
I think that's, that's areally, really good point.
Um, as I said, looking at thosethings that you do need to do versus.
You don't need to do.
(22:18):
And using that roadmap, I think thatroadmap is, it's one of these things
that time and time again, I see peoplego, oh, I don't really need to do it.
But when we actually start digginginto it, there is so much benefit
out of doing it, and it can reallyset the stage for everything in your
business, like, you know, a yearor two, or even six months down the
(22:41):
track if you want it to be operatingsmoothly in the best possible way.
That's where the roadmapcomes into, into place.
I see so often people just startingto do these things because, oh,
you know, this, this has come up.
Uh, I need to grow my mailing list.
Oh, well, I need to build this.
Yeah.
And then something else comes up and, uh,oh, you know, and now I need to do this.
(23:02):
But there's no real plan.
It's just all very, you know, they'rereacting to what's happening to
life as opposed to, this is my plan.
Right now I need to be doing thesethings because, you know, that's
where I am in my organization,where we are in the business.
But in a few months time, I wantsomebody else on board or, you
know, whatever the case may be.
(23:23):
Starting with that roadmapis, is so critical, and you'll
be, you'll have that list.
So even though it's not a a to-do listthat you're doing every day, you'll be
able to see those steps and those tasksand very clearly be able to say, okay.
This belongs to me, this belongs to her.
This just can be automated.
Suddenly we've got this spacethat, you know, in initially it
(23:47):
might just be kind of ca chaotic.
Um, but once we've done thatroadmap, we can really, as you
said, reverse engineer the process.
Yeah.
And, and implement a system that's, inthe long term, gonna be much, much better.
Sami Bedell-Mulhern (24:00):
Okay.
So I just have to say that, um, it makesme so happy when guests come on and.
You lead me directly to my next question,and we haven't even like prepped this,
uh, by any means, but it's so greatbecause I feel like as nonprofits and
entrepreneurs in small business, wetend to think very emotionally about
the next step, where, like you mentionedearlier, we're emotionally invested.
(24:22):
We started this because it'ssomething we're passionate about.
And we tend to kind ofpull that data piece away.
So we kind of go with, okay, welllike you, you know, so and so said
you should try this tech tool andthis is a strategy that's working
right now and you need to do this.
And we tend to be very reactive becausewe're trying to grow something that
we care so much about emotionally.
So I would love for you to kind oftalk about too, like how automations
(24:45):
can help us with kind of pullingdata in and the analytical side of
our business that we might not be.
Uh, naturally, you know, tuned tolike analytics and data for me are
not something that I love, but Iknow are super important for me in
making decisions like how can we useautomations to help us with the growth
(25:05):
of our business because it knows whatwe are trying to do and can kind of
be that kind of north star that that.
Know, analytical brain for us, um, so thatwe can make the right decisions and not
spin our wheels on the task list, that'snot gonna get us to where we're going.
Karen King (25:22):
Absolutely.
And I think that, you know, I,I love numbers, but I spend a
lot of time building things asopposed to looking at the stats.
But a, a really good example, I'm workingwith someone at the moment who is, this
week we've launched, uh, an online summitand we are getting some feedback in, in
various different areas about, oh, youknow, I didn't get this email that landed
in spam, or whatever the case may be.
(25:44):
The, the beauty of automationis that it tracks everything.
You can see how many visitorsyou've had to a page, you can
see who's opened your emails.
You've seen, you can see who's clicked.
There is so much data that iscollected when it's done automatically.
So, as an example, this lady came tome and she said, oh, you know, I've,
I've got a couple of people who saidthey didn't get the email, and so,
(26:06):
you know, I don't think it's workingproperly, and blah, blah, blah.
I can go into the system and Ican see this person received the
email at three minutes past eight.
They opened it at five minutes past eight,they clicked on it at, you know, whatever.
Yep.
So we can actually see the stats in there.
Um, now that's not to say there'snot a way that we can improve.
(26:27):
So I then went into the actualemail stats and I could see.
Then her open rate was sitting about 45%.
Now industry average is 16 to 26%.
So we were well above average, butthere's always room for improvement.
So I tweaked some things and then thenext day we ended up with a 55% open rate.
Yeah.
'cause I simplified a few things.
(26:48):
Now I could have, without thosestats, I could have been saying,
oh my goodness, nothing's working.
Oh, I need to go in and andchange everything and rebuild it.
In this example, so many peoplesay, oh, I didn't get the email.
Well, you know what?
It might've gone in spam.
It might've gone in promotions.
(27:08):
You might've just clicked on it.
Not realizing that that's, youknow that, that it is somebody
that you've subscribed to.
Having that information allowed us tomove forward from a position of authority.
We knew that they'd receivedthe email because we got.
Uh, you know, a report backfrom their provider saying, yes,
we've put it in their inbox.
(27:28):
Um, so it actually gives you hard, youknow, real information, hard facts that
you can make decisions on moving forward.
And I've, I've changed a whole bunchof things today to, you know, again,
improve what we are doing, which, youknow, I could have wasted a lot of time
if I didn't, if I wasn't doing that.
(27:49):
Based on those numbers.
Yeah, so there's a lot of informationthat we can collect that we can see.
Um, and things like, um,optive pages, for example.
A really, really easy one to do is,um, do what we call split testing.
So you can have two versions of thepage, make one small change between
the two pages, and let it run for,you know, maybe a week, two weeks,
(28:12):
whatever, depending on your traffic.
See which one is doing betterand then choose that as a winner.
So without that sort of tracking, you'vejust got no idea what's really going on.
So there's a lot of informationyou can collect by using.
Sami Bedell-Mulhern (28:25):
Yeah, I think that's so important and such great examples.
And if you're thinking splittesting, AB testing, it sounds way
more complicated than it really is.
Most software allows youto do it pretty easily.
Yeah.
So don't let that stop you.
Talk to your people.
Um, but you could probablymake it work pretty easily.
Okay.
So as we kind of wrap this up, Iwould love for you maybe just to share
(28:46):
some additional kind of ways that youkind of geek out about automation or
some other examples of things thatyou've seen that you love, um, that
maybe people wouldn't naturally thinkabout when it comes to their tasks,
um, and their day-to-day work life.
Karen King (29:01):
Well, it's just all the simple things that.
Well, I guess something youmentioned earlier about the
things that you don't love to do.
I used to absolutely hate trying togrow my email list because, you know, we
all know that we should have a freebieor a lead magnet or something like
that, and I was still kind of runningall over the internet going, Hey,
who wants my freebie and blah, blah,blah, and, and I really, really didn't
(29:25):
enjoy doing it, so I stopped doing it.
And for many people it'sthe same with social media.
I don't love social media, so I don't havea massive, um, social media following,
but I'm just in the early stages ofbringing somebody on who can create the
content, and they're gonna batch thatfor, you know, the next month, two months,
three months, whatever the case may be.
So you can really use it in thatway to just make your life simpler.
(29:50):
Yeah, I think the big thing aboutautomation and tech is consistency.
You know, we need to build trust.
Our customers.
There's so much information, somuch noise out in the world today.
What people, when they find you,they're judging you, good or bad.
Yeah.
Based on what you're doing.
And if you don't follow up, if you'renot consistent, if you, you know,
(30:11):
post on social media three timesthis week and then go do it for six
months, then you know that's gonnamake them question whether you are the
right person for them to work with.
So being able to have thatconsistency in a way that's simple.
Is going to, you know, push a messageout there to people that you are,
someone you know of authority that can betrusted, that, you know, would be great
(30:35):
to work with, and so on and so forth.
So, um, again, I think we've kind ofcovered so many different things and,
and I guess benefits of automation.
Keeping it simple, making itconsistent, getting it to do the
things that you don't love to do.
And doing it in a way that'sreally, really personalized.
So there's, there's so manydifferent examples I could
(30:58):
give of how you can use it.
I mentioned calendars.
I mentioned the freebie that we justdid Then, um, even things for me, like,
you know, we had a Facebook group.
We were letting people into the Facebookgroup and grabbing their email address
and putting it into the software.
So I just created an automationthat I clicked one button.
Lets them into the Facebook groupsends, oh, sends it across to Gold
(31:18):
Star Pro and uh, and then that emailgoes out to them automatically.
So all of a sudden my email listis growing and all I'm doing is
chatting with people and lettingthem into my Facebook group.
So, um, figure out what you want todo and then get in touch with somebody
that knows how to use the tech.
And that's one thing that we didwhen we launched our platform.
(31:40):
I've mentioned thatwe're very people first.
I wanted to create a space thatI needed when, when I first
started in the tech space.
Mm-hmm.
You know, you can use the software,but if you're not an expert,
how do you use the software?
We don't know what we don't know.
So we created a space where we doregular coaching calls and have, you
know, 24 7 live chat and all of that.
So you don't have to be a tech expert,um, to be able to actually start taking
(32:04):
steps forward with the, the tech.
So support is massive.
Sami Bedell-Mulhern (32:08):
I love that and I love what you're kind of
weaving through this is that likeautomation doesn't necessarily mean
technology, it just means systems.
In some cases.
In some cases it is technology and Ithink we always preach, start with the
tools you already have, because likelythey have automation features that you
just probably never looked at before.
Mm-hmm.
(32:29):
Um, but I also love that yousaid when you start with.
Integrating tech.
Start with the problem that you'reactually trying to solve first.
'cause we say the same thing.
What are you trying to solve for?
Because otherwise you're gonnaget stressed out trying to
figure out what the tech tool is.
So I think a lot of great resourceshere, ways to think about how
we're streamlining our work.
Um, there's no one size fits all system.
(32:52):
You gotta kind of go through yourmotions and, and work on that as a team.
So, um, I appreciate you takingsome time to really share your
thoughts and insights with us, Karen.
Uh, but you know, if people wannaconnect with you, learn more
about Gold Star Pro, the work thatyou all do, how do they do that?
Karen King (33:08):
So our website is just use goldstar.com.
Um, so just, I mean, even Google GoldStar Pro, you'll be able to find it there.
Uh, and we've recently also launchedthe Escape Preneur, so that's another
one where, where people can find this.
But, you know, everythingthat we do is about.
Making it easier for you to enjoywhat you're doing and enjoy your life.
(33:29):
And that's where automation, to me is key.
It's, it's really about giving you thefreedom to live a life on your own terms.
And now, you know, we've got somany tools available, you know, to
us in this day and age, we don'thave to be doing it all ourselves.
So yeah.
Sami Bedell-Mulhern (33:47):
I love that.
Well, Karen, thank you somuch for being here today.
I really appreciate your insights.
Thank you so much for having me.
Okay, so what were you mostinspired by in this episode?
Leave us a commentwherever you are listening.
Um, we'd love a review.
Also while you're there, justso that you can help us get this
podcast out to more nonprofitleaders who are looking for support.
You can find the show notesand links, uh, that Karen
(34:10):
shared@thefirstclick.net slash three 12.
Uh, and I really, uh, thank youfor listening to these episodes
and for being here with me everyTuesday or whenever you're listening.
Uh, thank you so much, and wewill see you in the next one.
We've talked a lot about AI and automations as it relates
to your marketing, uh, and contentcreation, but we haven't talked about
it in a while as it relates to yourproductivity for your team and how
you can get more done in everything,all areas of your organization.
And so that is what we aregoing to talk about today.
(00:21):
My guest today is Karen King.
She's a visionary, entrepreneur, worldtraveler, and founder of Gold Star Pro.
A platform and coaching program designedto help solopreneurs and coaches build
scalable location independent businesses.
With over a decade of experience intechnology coaching and marketing, Karen
specializes in simplifying businessautomation so her clients can focus on
creating freedom, not just revenues.
(00:43):
After leaving corporate burnout behind,Karen sold everything to travel the
world with her family embracing a worldschooling lifestyle for nearly a decade.
This journey inspired her tolaunch World Schooling Central, a
13,000 member community, helpingfamilies educate their children
through business or through travel.
Now she merges her experience inbusiness automation with her passion
(01:04):
for freedom through the EscapePreneur movement, a program teaching
entrepreneurs how to design businessesthat fund their ideal lifestyle.
Burnout in the nonprofit space is huge.
And you know, just working and grindingand doing things for hours and hours
and hours doesn't work anymore.
We need to have better systems, betterthings in place for not just us, but
our team and opportunities for usto live and balance what we're doing
(01:27):
in our personal and work life andfeel good about what we're doing.
And so that is exactly what Karenand I talked about today, and
it was such a fun conversation.
So I'm excited for you to check it out.
Before we do this episode isbrought to you by Oh, my High.
Oh, my high is a website buildingplatform that is great for you.
If you want something that is clean,looks great, easy to use, um, and
(01:51):
doesn't overcomplicate anything.
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you throughout your entire process.
They have live q and as every weekwhere you can go in and actually have
somebody show you how to fix, update,or tweak what you have in your mind.
(02:11):
It is a great platformand I'm obsessed with it.
In fact, they have a nonprofittemplate that I helped them
create, so you can check itout@thefirstclick.net slash oh my high.
That's, hi, and check out a greatinterview I did with, oh, my high
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Oh, my High, and Who, oh,my high is perfect for, so.
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Help you check it out.
It's a great platform and can reallyremove the stress and pressure of a
super crazy build expensive, and with notraining for you to update on your own.
Again, that's at thefirst click.net/oh my hi.
Let's get into the episode.
You're listening to the DigitalMarketing Therapy podcast.
I'm your host, Sammy Del Mulhern.
(02:55):
Each month we dive deep into a digitalmarketing or fundraising strategy that
you can implement in your organization.
Each week you'll hear from guestexperts, nonprofits, and myself on
best practices, tips, and resourcesto help you raise more money online
and reach your organizational goals.
Hey friends, please join me inwelcoming Karen King to the podcast.
(03:17):
Karen, thanks for being here.
Karen King (03:18):
Thank you so much for having me.
I'm so excited to be here.
Sami Bedell-Mulhern (03:22):
So I love organization, task management, um,
'cause it permeates through everythingthat we do all day, every day.
Uh, why is kind of streamliningour days being more efficient,
working smarter, not harder?
Why is that something thatyou love and love to coach on?
Karen King (03:40):
Well, it's, it's funny it's, I've been traveling the
world now for the last 10 years.
We sold everything in Australia 10 yearsago and started traveling the world.
And when I was trying to launch abusiness, I realized that I was spending
a lot of time stuck at my laptop doingthe mundane stuff that we all have to do.
Like it, it has to be done.
But when I discoveredautomation, I realized it didn't
(04:01):
have to be me that did it.
I'd much rather be out exploring theworld and hanging out with my family
or my friends or whatever the casemay be, than stuck at my laptop.
So that's really where it started from.
Just, you know, I guess I alwaystell people I'm, I must just
be inherently lazy or somethingbecause that all really smart.
Sami Bedell-Mulhern (04:19):
No, but I, okay, so I love that you said that because.
I think that for a lot of us, it'singrained that busy equals success or busy
equals, you know, movement and trajectory.
Like we're doing things in our business.
If we're not busy thenwe're not doing enough.
Um, so I'd just kind oflove your thoughts on that.
Like what was that like for youas you kind of started automating
(04:42):
things and freeing up time and space?
Like how did you allow yourself to.
Take advantage of that spaceversus like fill it with more busy?
Karen King (04:53):
Well, that, that's a really good question because I'm very
guilty of filling it with more busyand it's something that I struggle
with because I love what I do.
I, I very, very easily can find otherthings to fill that with, but what
it has allowed me to do is pick andchoose what I put in that space.
So, you know, last week, for example, wewere celebrating a big birthday with my
(05:14):
daughter, and I needed a couple of days tohelp, you know, set things up and prepare.
And because things were automated, Ididn't have to be the one there doing it.
The business just kept operating.
Of course, I check in to makesure that everything's okay.
But what it does is it gives you thatflexibility to choose what you do.
Um, but yeah, you know, as entrepreneurswe always have a lot of ideas and,
(05:38):
uh, you know, we're always comingup with new or wonderful things.
So yes, we have to be really carefulthat we don't build that space.
Um, when, when I, on the timeswhere I've really lent into that,
what I have discovered is that thebusiness runs really well without me.
Quite often, I actually make alot more money, so I don't know.
(05:58):
So yeah, as I said, wetravel the world full time.
Last winter, we spent, you know,every Monday, Wednesday, Friday
morning, I'm blocked out to go skiing.
And I made more money over those coupleof months when I wasn't doing the
busy work than, uh, than when I was.
So it was an interesting experiment.
Sami Bedell-Mulhern (06:14):
Oh my gosh,
Karen King (06:15):
I love that so much.
Sami Bedell-Mulhern (06:16):
Well, okay, so let's jump over one other hurdle really
quick before we jump into some specific.
Strategies and tactics.
Um, being, I'm hearing automationautomatically, I'm thinking
depersonalized, I'm thinking, you know,my people are gonna know that it's not me.
Or like all the, the thingsare gonna go off the rails.
(06:37):
Things are gonna break.
All of these things when we'rein the nonprofit space and.
You know, we're small teams andyou know, we wanna make sure that
everything is still authentic andconnected and you know, there's just
this fear of it's not gonna work.
And you already said you mademore money when you weren't
doing it, and that's great in theentrepreneur for-profit space.
(06:57):
But like, can you kind of share someof the reasons why we might wanna stop
thinking about it as a depersonalizationand as more of an opportunity for
us to actually be more personal withour connections and our audience.
Karen King (07:12):
Absolutely.
And it is one thing that I hearall the time, and you know, people
think it's gonna be cold or likeyou said, just not personalized.
The, the thing you have to rememberis this is about replacing the
need for you physically doing it.
That doesn't mean it needs tosound robotic, for example.
So when you are setting.
Up an email, you are writingthat email to one person.
(07:35):
So you're doing it as you wouldautomatically or, or ordinarily,
but then you are taking that emailand putting it into a system.
So for that wonderful customization, thatpersonalization that you would do yourself
for one person then goes out and becomesthat for everybody without you doing it.
(07:56):
So I always tell all of the peoplethat I work with, I always tell them,
build your system for that one person.
What would be the most amazing processthat you could create for that one person?
Create that, and then you startpushing other people into it.
And then you don't run the riskof, oh, you know, I forgot to
send such and such an email, or,you know, I forgot to do this.
(08:18):
Whatever the case may be,you're actually using that
personalization that you've created.
Doing it more consistently, again,without you having to be involved.
It's ab, it's actually quiteincredible how personalized automation
can be when you do it that way.
I regularly get people right back tomy audit emails, automated emails,
(08:40):
saying, oh, thank you so much.
It's so sweet of you to respond to mebecause I've written the automation in
the first place aimed at one person.
They respond to me, and thenthat starts a conversation.
That's when you can step in and continuethat conversation and, and be very
personalized, but it just takes you outof the, you know, the repetitive stuff
(09:00):
that you need to do every single day.
Sami Bedell-Mulhern (09:03):
Well, I think there's something really important that
you said there, uh, that I wanna makesure we highlight is that a lot of times
we'll go to a conference or we'll goto a networking event or we'll go do
something, um, and we forget to do thefollow up, or we don't have time to do
the follow up for a week or two later.
And then what's that we, that,that's a missed opportunity versus
(09:23):
having it being able to funnelpeople into an automation and know
that that's gonna happen right away.
Like, you know, it's happening.
Um, instead of saying, well, it'sUnpersonal or whatever, if you
don't follow up with them, youknow you're gonna get zero results.
Karen King (09:38):
Yeah, absolutely.
And that we are so guilty ofthat, even just, you know, as
human beings, we have life.
Get in the way of thethings that we need to do.
We have a lot of things that we haveto do in our day-to-day life, and
it is easy to forget this stuff.
So if you can set that to me, that'sthe perfect use of automation.
Creating something that is verypersonalized, very customized,
(10:01):
even things like, you know, whensomebody signs up for something,
don't send an email straight away.
For example, when I getoff a call with somebody.
I have an email that will go outautomatically, but I've put in
like a, a 10 minute wait step.
So it looks at like, if, if it arrived intheir inbox 10 seconds after I've hung up.
Clearly that's not me, that'swritten up and it's not, try
(10:22):
not me trying to impersonate.
Or pretend that it's not automated.
Um, but, you know, I, I wantit to feel personalized.
Yeah.
And so waiting 10 minutes, it lookslike I've gotten off the call and
put this email together for them.
So there's a lot you can do to reallycustomize and really personalize.
My business is all about people first,so looking after people and really
(10:45):
giving them the best opport or best,best experience that I can give them.
I just do that through automationbecause I know, like if,
if I had to rely on myself.
Or even, you know, when, when I saymy team, it's not about that my team
don't do an amazing job because they do.
But again, we're all humans.
Yeah.
There's always room for humanerror if we rely on humans.
(11:06):
Whereas if you can set it up reallywell once, put time and effort into
it in the beginning, get it right.
Um, and you can rely on that to beconsistently incredible every single time.
Sami Bedell-Mulhern (11:17):
Love that.
Okay, so let's get specific,because I feel like automations.
Is a buzzword just like ai, just,you know, there's all these things
out there and, and sometimes it'shard to like content creation, right?
Like, well, what does that look like?
How do I actually start to implementthat into my day-to-day life?
So if I am like, okay, I'm in, I lovethis, I love what you're saying already.
(11:40):
Where do I start with trying to figureout what types of tasks I can automate?
Mm-hmm.
And, and what I should dofirst, where I should start.
Karen King (11:48):
I love that question because most people don't.
Start at the beginning.
Most people jump in and go, oh, youknow, automation, I need software.
I actually, which is, which is kind ofironic 'cause I have a software company.
I actually tell people, forgetabout the software when you are
getting started, because if youjump straight into the software,
you're missing the most fundamentalparts of setting this up properly.
(12:12):
So the first thing I always tellpeople to do is look at the processes
you have in place right now.
What are you doing?
Map that out.
Get some, you know, some paper,some post-it notes, whatever it is.
Look at all of the thingsyou do in the business.
So it might be, you know, somebody comesin, they buy a product or you know, and
then this happens and then this happens.
(12:33):
But you'll have lots of differentfor processes that you go through.
And then look at those each individuallyand look at the individual steps.
Map that all out.
What is happening right now?
Then have a look at what's working welland what's maybe not working so well.
And then from there, again,forgetting about software and
(12:57):
and what's actually possible.
Dream a little bit about what themost amazing process could be.
Like.
Do you want an email to goout to them at this stage?
Do you want to, I don't know.
Like there's so many differentthings depending on your business.
What is the most incredibleexperience that you could give?
Your customer that's going throughthis process, then you have an
(13:20):
understanding of what you want.
So once you've got everything mapped out,and we work with a lot of coaches and
course creators, small business owners.
So if it's, you know, selling aa course, for example, somebody
has to buy it, they have to havea place to, to actually buy it.
They have to have a form or, you know,an order form that they can fill out
and put in their credit card details.
(13:40):
So then we can actually startlooking at what those processes are.
And what is the software that we need?
Um, and then we can start lookingat, at what do we actually need to
do to make that process come to life?
And what I quite often find people dois jump in and, you know, oh, my best
(14:00):
friend Jenny said she's got this platform.
So I've jumped in and, and I'm, I'm inthere, but I've got no idea what to do.
The thing is, if you don't know what youneed to do, you don't know how to do it.
Um, so having that roadmap, startingwith a roadmap is absolutely critical.
And I always say to people, it'slike, if I tried to drive from
New York to Los Angeles, you'dprobably never see me again.
(14:22):
Like, if I did that without aroadmap, without directions, uh,
you know, I'd probably fall inthe Grand Canyon or something.
Yeah.
I said, who knows where you'd end up?
Oh, exactly.
But what we do is we get onto,say Google Maps and we map it out.
We work out, well, you know what?
I wanna drive for this long and Ineed to stop for lunch, and blah,
(14:42):
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
You know what those steps are,and then it's really easy.
I might not know exactly how to dothose steps, but I can always ask help.
Once I know what those steps are andwhat I see is most business owners
or most, most people using tech intheir organization are not techy.
(15:04):
And so they get in and they don't knowwhat to do and it becomes overwhelming.
And then they go, you know what,I'll just keep doing it myself.
'cause that's easy.
I at least know how to do.
Sami Bedell-Mulhern (15:12):
Yeah.
Karen King (15:13):
So I
Sami Bedell-Mulhern (15:13):
mean, I love a good reverse engineering starting from the
end and working towards the beginning.
Uh, but I also think that what'sbeautiful about the exercise that you're
mentioning is, I think a lot of timesin organizations, even if there's only
like one or two people that are kindof overlapping in their roles, both
people have two completely differentprocesses for how they're managing it.
(15:34):
And so there's also inconsistencygoing out in, you know, the way each
person is kind of handling things.
And so the beauty of this exercisealso is, are there things where we
just as a team are duplicating efforts?
Number one, can we automate it?
But number two, are we already likedoing double the work because we're
both doing things differently orwe didn't realize the other person
(15:56):
was doing the step in the process.
So it seems to me like this isjust a great exercise in efficiency
as an organization in general.
Karen King (16:04):
Definitely.
We see a lot of people comeacross to Gold Star Pro who.
Have done what I said before.
They've, they've sort of built this andthat, and, you know, they've ended up with
all these different softwares and we, Ilove when they come across because they
can do it all inside of our platform.
But the, the point I'm trying tomake is that it's a really good
opportunity to really streamline,look at what you've created and
(16:29):
is it the best version of that?
Are you?
You know, are you wasting time?
Is it clunky in parts?
Are you missing things thatyou've never really thought of?
So stepping back and looking atthe process is just such a valuable
experience, and I can't emphasizeenough that that is the first
step of using tech, even thoughthere's no tech involved in it.
(16:51):
The first step of simplifying anorganization, processes, all of that is
truly understanding what that looks like.
Yeah.
No, that's
Sami Bedell-Mulhern (17:00):
so good.
Okay, so we've kind ofidentified some of the gaps.
Um, we've taken a look at our processes.
I think one of the things that Ihas really stuck in my brain as an
entrepreneur at building my businessas I've kind of grown and scaled and
added people and all of that, is payingattention to the things that only I can
(17:21):
do versus the things that I can outsource.
And that's where like the automationpiece for me really sinks in, is like.
I can't, there's certain parts of,let's just take this podcast recording,
for example, or con like large,large, long form content creation.
Nobody else can recordthis podcast but me, right?
Yeah.
That, but there's other parts ofthe process that can be automated
(17:42):
or systematized, and so kind of howmight we want to really think through.
What your role is, whatyour superpower is for your
organization, and be really honest.
Like do you have questions that youask clients to like really get real
with themselves about like, okay,what are you holding onto mm-hmm that
(18:03):
you need to let go of, that we canautomate from a fear place versus
like, this is your zone of genius.
You need to go forward with this.
To your point of now I can go skiingthree days a week for this period of
time and still make money and still builda business and still generate income.
Karen King (18:18):
I see a lot of small business owners doing is, you know, they've
launched their business because they'vegot this passion about something.
They wanna help people, they wanna havean impact, but then they get stuck in
all that busy work, all the stuff thathas to take place, but isn't their
zone of genius, as you mentioned.
And time and time again, I hear frompeople that just say, I'm just exhausted.
(18:39):
Like I got into business to doX, Y, Z, and I spend maybe 10%
of my time actually doing that.
And so I think that's where theroadmap really comes into place.
Highlight on those roadmaps, what arethe things that you have to do versus
what are the things that maybe a teammember can do, automation can do.
(19:01):
Um, an example might be, I do a callwith every new user of Goldstar Pro
because I am genuinely interestedin connecting with everybody.
And as I said, we're very,very people first, now.
I have to do that session, but Idon't have to do everything else, so I
don't have to send them the reminders.
Uh, you know, the confirmation whenthey book the call, I don't have to send
(19:23):
them, uh, the recording after the call.
So every part of that is automated.
There's a page where peoplecan sign up for a call.
They then automatically get reminders.
And those reminders areso incredibly valuable.
Our show rate is, you know,about 90, 98% because people
are getting those reminders.
Then I am physically on the call.
(19:44):
At the end of the call, I do one littlemovement in the system, and that sets,
sets up a task for my va who then does,you know, various different things to
send that recording to that person.
So that, I mean, that's just onevery, very simple, um, example, but it
really understand what you need to do.
Um, what you want to do.
(20:05):
Like, there are things that youmight just really love to do.
It might not necessarily be you thathas to do them, but if you love them,
and that's the point of, you know,what we're trying to do, then put
yourself into those, those key areas.
Yeah.
And then find those areas that youdon't need to be involved and, and
figure out can that be automated?
Because again, if we automate, weremove that need for human error.
(20:28):
Um, but in the example that I'musing, we are pulling, you know,
passwords and, and links and thingsfrom Zoom and, and all of those.
So I like to have somebody just, youknow, double checking and making sure
that that whole process is, is good.
So there will always be a need forthat human touch, but the things we
don't have to be involved in, that'swhen the automation comes into,
Sami Bedell-Mulhern (20:49):
yeah.
I wanna double down on this,you know, mention this.
What do you love to do?
What are the things thatyou are, are your space?
And the, I think the thing for me whenit comes to figuring out where to start
automation and where to start kind ofpassing things off to other people are
when I look at my to-do list and thesame task keeps getting carried over
(21:10):
from week to week to week to week.
And I'm not doing it, not becauseI'm incapable or because it's not
important, but just because it'slike the thing where I'm like.
I don't, I don't wanna do it.
I'm not gonna do it.
So I push it off day after day after day.
And so that to me seems like a greatspot to kind of start with, okay,
if I'm not doing this for weeks,because I don't want to deal with it.
(21:31):
Like for me, this is an automationin, well I guess it is in a certain
way, but like the first thing I hiredin my business was a bookkeeper.
'cause I knew financials were not gonnabe a thing that I wanted to deal with.
It was gonna be a task that justcarried over and all of a sudden
it's gonna be tax season and I'mgonna be like in real big trouble.
'cause I haven't done my books.
So, you know, is that kind of anotherway to start figuring out what types of
(21:54):
things we need to offload and automate?
Karen King (21:57):
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Looking at those, looking at those tasks.
And I love that actually.
'cause I'm, I'm now lookingat my list, what's on there
that I don't need to be doing.
Um, but yeah, absolutely.
I think that's, that's areally, really good point.
Um, as I said, looking at thosethings that you do need to do versus.
You don't need to do.
(22:18):
And using that roadmap, I think thatroadmap is, it's one of these things
that time and time again, I see peoplego, oh, I don't really need to do it.
But when we actually start digginginto it, there is so much benefit
out of doing it, and it can reallyset the stage for everything in your
business, like, you know, a yearor two, or even six months down the
(22:41):
track if you want it to be operatingsmoothly in the best possible way.
That's where the roadmapcomes into, into place.
I see so often people just startingto do these things because, oh,
you know, this, this has come up.
Uh, I need to grow my mailing list.
Oh, well, I need to build this.
Yeah.
And then something else comes up and, uh,oh, you know, and now I need to do this.
(23:02):
But there's no real plan.
It's just all very, you know, they'rereacting to what's happening to
life as opposed to, this is my plan.
Right now I need to be doing thesethings because, you know, that's
where I am in my organization,where we are in the business.
But in a few months time, I wantsomebody else on board or, you
know, whatever the case may be.
(23:23):
Starting with that roadmapis, is so critical, and you'll
be, you'll have that list.
So even though it's not a a to-do listthat you're doing every day, you'll be
able to see those steps and those tasksand very clearly be able to say, okay.
This belongs to me, this belongs to her.
This just can be automated.
Suddenly we've got this spacethat, you know, in initially it
(23:47):
might just be kind of ca chaotic.
Um, but once we've done thatroadmap, we can really, as you
said, reverse engineer the process.
Yeah.
And, and implement a system that's, inthe long term, gonna be much, much better.
Sami Bedell-Mulhern (24:00):
Okay.
So I just have to say that, um, it makesme so happy when guests come on and.
You lead me directly to my next question,and we haven't even like prepped this,
uh, by any means, but it's so greatbecause I feel like as nonprofits and
entrepreneurs in small business, wetend to think very emotionally about
the next step, where, like you mentionedearlier, we're emotionally invested.
(24:22):
We started this because it'ssomething we're passionate about.
And we tend to kind ofpull that data piece away.
So we kind of go with, okay, welllike you, you know, so and so said
you should try this tech tool andthis is a strategy that's working
right now and you need to do this.
And we tend to be very reactive becausewe're trying to grow something that
we care so much about emotionally.
So I would love for you to kind oftalk about too, like how automations
(24:45):
can help us with kind of pullingdata in and the analytical side of
our business that we might not be.
Uh, naturally, you know, tuned tolike analytics and data for me are
not something that I love, but Iknow are super important for me in
making decisions like how can we useautomations to help us with the growth
(25:05):
of our business because it knows whatwe are trying to do and can kind of
be that kind of north star that that.
Know, analytical brain for us, um, so thatwe can make the right decisions and not
spin our wheels on the task list, that'snot gonna get us to where we're going.
Karen King (25:22):
Absolutely.
And I think that, you know, I,I love numbers, but I spend a
lot of time building things asopposed to looking at the stats.
But a, a really good example, I'm workingwith someone at the moment who is, this
week we've launched, uh, an online summitand we are getting some feedback in, in
various different areas about, oh, youknow, I didn't get this email that landed
in spam, or whatever the case may be.
(25:44):
The, the beauty of automationis that it tracks everything.
You can see how many visitorsyou've had to a page, you can
see who's opened your emails.
You've seen, you can see who's clicked.
There is so much data that iscollected when it's done automatically.
So, as an example, this lady came tome and she said, oh, you know, I've,
I've got a couple of people who saidthey didn't get the email, and so,
(26:06):
you know, I don't think it's workingproperly, and blah, blah, blah.
I can go into the system and Ican see this person received the
email at three minutes past eight.
They opened it at five minutes past eight,they clicked on it at, you know, whatever.
Yep.
So we can actually see the stats in there.
Um, now that's not to say there'snot a way that we can improve.
(26:27):
So I then went into the actualemail stats and I could see.
Then her open rate was sitting about 45%.
Now industry average is 16 to 26%.
So we were well above average, butthere's always room for improvement.
So I tweaked some things and then thenext day we ended up with a 55% open rate.
Yeah.
'cause I simplified a few things.
(26:48):
Now I could have, without thosestats, I could have been saying,
oh my goodness, nothing's working.
Oh, I need to go in and andchange everything and rebuild it.
In this example, so many peoplesay, oh, I didn't get the email.
Well, you know what?
It might've gone in spam.
It might've gone in promotions.
(27:08):
You might've just clicked on it.
Not realizing that that's, youknow that, that it is somebody
that you've subscribed to.
Having that information allowed us tomove forward from a position of authority.
We knew that they'd receivedthe email because we got.
Uh, you know, a report backfrom their provider saying, yes,
we've put it in their inbox.
(27:28):
Um, so it actually gives you hard, youknow, real information, hard facts that
you can make decisions on moving forward.
And I've, I've changed a whole bunchof things today to, you know, again,
improve what we are doing, which, youknow, I could have wasted a lot of time
if I didn't, if I wasn't doing that.
(27:49):
Based on those numbers.
Yeah, so there's a lot of informationthat we can collect that we can see.
Um, and things like, um,optive pages, for example.
A really, really easy one to do is,um, do what we call split testing.
So you can have two versions of thepage, make one small change between
the two pages, and let it run for,you know, maybe a week, two weeks,
(28:12):
whatever, depending on your traffic.
See which one is doing betterand then choose that as a winner.
So without that sort of tracking, you'vejust got no idea what's really going on.
So there's a lot of informationyou can collect by using.
Sami Bedell-Mulhern (28:25):
Yeah, I think that's so important and such great examples.
And if you're thinking splittesting, AB testing, it sounds way
more complicated than it really is.
Most software allows youto do it pretty easily.
Yeah.
So don't let that stop you.
Talk to your people.
Um, but you could probablymake it work pretty easily.
Okay.
So as we kind of wrap this up, Iwould love for you maybe just to share
(28:46):
some additional kind of ways that youkind of geek out about automation or
some other examples of things thatyou've seen that you love, um, that
maybe people wouldn't naturally thinkabout when it comes to their tasks,
um, and their day-to-day work life.
Karen King (29:01):
Well, it's just all the simple things that.
Well, I guess something youmentioned earlier about the
things that you don't love to do.
I used to absolutely hate trying togrow my email list because, you know, we
all know that we should have a freebieor a lead magnet or something like
that, and I was still kind of runningall over the internet going, Hey,
who wants my freebie and blah, blah,blah, and, and I really, really didn't
(29:25):
enjoy doing it, so I stopped doing it.
And for many people it'sthe same with social media.
I don't love social media, so I don't havea massive, um, social media following,
but I'm just in the early stages ofbringing somebody on who can create the
content, and they're gonna batch thatfor, you know, the next month, two months,
three months, whatever the case may be.
So you can really use it in thatway to just make your life simpler.
(29:50):
Yeah, I think the big thing aboutautomation and tech is consistency.
You know, we need to build trust.
Our customers.
There's so much information, somuch noise out in the world today.
What people, when they find you,they're judging you, good or bad.
Yeah.
Based on what you're doing.
And if you don't follow up, if you'renot consistent, if you, you know,
(30:11):
post on social media three timesthis week and then go do it for six
months, then you know that's gonnamake them question whether you are the
right person for them to work with.
So being able to have thatconsistency in a way that's simple.
Is going to, you know, push a messageout there to people that you are,
someone you know of authority that can betrusted, that, you know, would be great
(30:35):
to work with, and so on and so forth.
So, um, again, I think we've kind ofcovered so many different things and,
and I guess benefits of automation.
Keeping it simple, making itconsistent, getting it to do the
things that you don't love to do.
And doing it in a way that'sreally, really personalized.
So there's, there's so manydifferent examples I could
(30:58):
give of how you can use it.
I mentioned calendars.
I mentioned the freebie that we justdid Then, um, even things for me, like,
you know, we had a Facebook group.
We were letting people into the Facebookgroup and grabbing their email address
and putting it into the software.
So I just created an automationthat I clicked one button.
Lets them into the Facebook groupsends, oh, sends it across to Gold
(31:18):
Star Pro and uh, and then that emailgoes out to them automatically.
So all of a sudden my email listis growing and all I'm doing is
chatting with people and lettingthem into my Facebook group.
So, um, figure out what you want todo and then get in touch with somebody
that knows how to use the tech.
And that's one thing that we didwhen we launched our platform.
(31:40):
I've mentioned thatwe're very people first.
I wanted to create a space thatI needed when, when I first
started in the tech space.
Mm-hmm.
You know, you can use the software,but if you're not an expert,
how do you use the software?
We don't know what we don't know.
So we created a space where we doregular coaching calls and have, you
know, 24 7 live chat and all of that.
So you don't have to be a tech expert,um, to be able to actually start taking
(32:04):
steps forward with the, the tech.
So support is massive.
Sami Bedell-Mulhern (32:08):
I love that and I love what you're kind of
weaving through this is that likeautomation doesn't necessarily mean
technology, it just means systems.
In some cases.
In some cases it is technology and Ithink we always preach, start with the
tools you already have, because likelythey have automation features that you
just probably never looked at before.
Mm-hmm.
(32:29):
Um, but I also love that yousaid when you start with.
Integrating tech.
Start with the problem that you'reactually trying to solve first.
'cause we say the same thing.
What are you trying to solve for?
Because otherwise you're gonnaget stressed out trying to
figure out what the tech tool is.
So I think a lot of great resourceshere, ways to think about how
we're streamlining our work.
Um, there's no one size fits all system.
(32:52):
You gotta kind of go through yourmotions and, and work on that as a team.
So, um, I appreciate you takingsome time to really share your
thoughts and insights with us, Karen.
Uh, but you know, if people wannaconnect with you, learn more
about Gold Star Pro, the work thatyou all do, how do they do that?
Karen King (33:08):
So our website is just use goldstar.com.
Um, so just, I mean, even Google GoldStar Pro, you'll be able to find it there.
Uh, and we've recently also launchedthe Escape Preneur, so that's another
one where, where people can find this.
But, you know, everythingthat we do is about.
Making it easier for you to enjoywhat you're doing and enjoy your life.
(33:29):
And that's where automation, to me is key.
It's, it's really about giving you thefreedom to live a life on your own terms.
And now, you know, we've got somany tools available, you know, to
us in this day and age, we don'thave to be doing it all ourselves.
So yeah.
Sami Bedell-Mulhern (33:47):
I love that.
Well, Karen, thank you somuch for being here today.
I really appreciate your insights.
Thank you so much for having me.
Okay, so what were you mostinspired by in this episode?
Leave us a commentwherever you are listening.
Um, we'd love a review.
Also while you're there, justso that you can help us get this
podcast out to more nonprofitleaders who are looking for support.
You can find the show notesand links, uh, that Karen
(34:10):
shared@thefirstclick.net slash three 12.
Uh, and I really, uh, thank youfor listening to these episodes
and for being here with me everyTuesday or whenever you're listening.
Uh, thank you so much, and wewill see you in the next one.
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