189: Make Less Work with Blake Bailey

Welcome to episode 189 of The Food Blogger Pro Podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork interviews Blake Bailey from Process Street about the importance of documenting your processes.

Last week on the podcast, Bjork chatted with Simon Duduica from Short Pixel about optimizing images on your website. To go back and listen to that episode, click here.

Make Less Work

Whether you know it or not, there are a lot of processes that go into creating blog content. Photographing a recipe, publishing a post, sharing that post on social media, reaching out to sponsors, adding ads to your site.

Blake from Process Street is here to talk about why you might to document these processes and how to get started documenting these processes.

He’ll help you save time and work smarter by automating some of your most common to-dos and prioritizing your tasks.

In this episode, Blake shares:

  • What an SOP is
  • How you can start creating processes
  • Why you might want to start building processes
  • How you can automate your processes
  • How you can make less work for yourself and your team
  • How to create a more valuable business with processes
  • How you can build your processes and prioritize your tasks
  • How to use Content Lock

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Transcript:

Alexa Peduzzi: In this episode, we’ll chat about the questions you’ll hear at the Growing Your Food blog in 2019 live Q and A, and then Bjork interviews, Blake Bailey from Process Street about the importance of processes and automation in business.

Alexa Peduzzi: Hey, hey friend, you are listening to the Food Blogger Pro podcast. Hope you’re having a great start to your week. Today’s episode is sponsored by our sister site WP Tasty, the go to place for WordPress plugins for food bloggers. If you want more information about WP Tasty plugins you can head on over to wptasty.com.

Alexa Peduzzi: And for today’s tasty tip, I’d like to take a second to remind you about a very exciting event that we’re having this time next week. It’s on Tuesday, February 19th at 1:00 PM ET, 12:00 PM CT. It’s a completely free and virtual live Q and A with Pinch of Yum, Bjork and Lindsay Ostrom. They’ll be answering your questions about what it takes to grow a food blog in 2019, as well as sharing their successes and failures that they’ve experienced in the eight years that they’ve run their food blog.

Alexa Peduzzi: If you need no more convincing, you can pause the episode right here and head on over to foodbloggerpro.com/register to register, but if you need a little push, here are some questions that we already have in the queue for the Q and A. Do brands really value and want to work with food bloggers? How many posts do you suggest I have when I launch my blog? How do I stop procrastinating and just get going? What is considered small traffic and when do you reach medium traffic? Is it better to wait for a certain amount of traffic before starting to try to monetize your food blog? What are the key steps a blogger should tackle when moving from hobby level to professional level? Is there a blueprint, or document that captures what to tackle first? You’ll have the chance to submit your most burning blogging questions once you register for the event. The questionnaire link will be in year a successful registration email. We hope to see you at this free virtual Q and A on February 19th. That registration URL, again is foodbloggerpro.com/register.

Alexa Peduzzi: And now the interview, maybe you know it and maybe you don’t, but there are a lot of processes that go into creating blog content. Photographing a recipe, publishing a post, sharing that post on social media, reaching out to sponsors, adding adds to your site. Blake from Process Street is here to talk about why you might want to document these processes and how you can get started when you document these processes. He’ll help you save time and work smarter by automating some of your most common to do’s and by prioritizing your tasks. So without any further ado, Bjork take it away.

Bjork Ostrom: Blake, welcome to the podcast.

Blake Bailey: Oh, thank you so much.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, excited to talk to you about all things processes and talking about Process Street specifically, but for those that aren’t familiar, let’s start off at the very basic level explaining what this tool is. What is Process Street all about?

Blake Bailey: Yeah, sure. So Process Street is a tool that allows you to document your company or even your personal processes and standardize them, and allows you to collaborate with other people by assigning them to things by essentially setting due dates and using a lot of other automated tools inside the platform itself to make your actual processes a lot easier to run through. And then it also integrates with a lot of other different services out there, which allows you to become more efficient by automating and even removing yourself from those same processes.

Bjork Ostrom: Got it. And that’s actually one thing that I’m really excited to get to, to talk about how you can integrate into other services is something that I don’t think that we do enough and we actually use Process Street and it actually goes back to when we were just in the early stages of building a team. We had hired somebody and Raquel came on and she said, “We should really create an SOP for this.” And it was a great example of what I feel like is a through line for essentially everything that I’ve done is like the people that we bring on as team members teaching me. And this was Raquel being like, “We should create an SOP for this.” I was like, “What’s an SOP?” She’s like, “Well, it’s a standard operating procedure, it’s essentially a process.” And that kicked off us looking for a tool, a solution that would do this really well, and we came to use Process Street and we still use it today for both Pinch of Yum and Food Blogger Pro.

Bjork Ostrom: So the next question, Process Street, a bit of an example of what that is, it creative processes, but if somebody hears SOP, if they hear process, they don’t really know what that is. How do you explain to them what a process is and why is that important for business owners or bloggers to be creating processes?

Blake Bailey: Yeah. Well actually the metaphor that I like to typically use, especially for a lot of our webinars, it’s a lot of other content that we create would actually be the idea of a recipe, right? So when you’re going to go, you’re going to bake a cake, right? You have this really, really awesome cake that you would like to make and maybe it’s your grandmother’s recipe or something like that, but if you didn’t have a recipe to follow, it would never come out the same. It would never come out nearly as good as what she made. Maybe it never does anyways, but it wouldn’t even come close.

Blake Bailey: So, realistically having a process in place, it’s sort of like a recipe for success to allow you to replicate and scale what it is that your business is doing and even if it’s you as an individual, as a solopreneur or as a massive team, and especially going from being a solopreneur to being a massive team. Being able to have a process that grows and scales with you, with your team and allows you to pass that down and continue replicating that success. That’s the whole point behind an SOP.

Bjork Ostrom: Got it. And it was actually funny because we were talking about it before we pressed record here and you said, “Yeah, like the process that you sent over for preparing for the podcast.” And I was like, “Oh yeah, that’s a great example of something that we’re doing an interview with Process Street and I send you a Process Street process for preparing for the podcast.” But with our onboarding process, for getting people ready for the podcast interview, we started to notice, hey, there’s these things that I’m essentially reviewing when we start the podcast. Why don’t we just create a little list and send that over? And so now we have this list built in Process Street that we share publicly. And it’s all the things you need to do to get ready for the podcast interview. Find a quiet room, remove any bracelets or watches that make noise, plug into the internet via wired, if you have that. Close out all other applications.

Bjork Ostrom: And it’s this checklist essentially. And I love what you said about that being a recipe because as much as possible with no shame use recipe and food analogies on this podcast. And so often, there are good examples of that and a recipe is a great example where it’s essentially a recipe for success for a business, or a certain operation or procedure that you are doing consistently. So let’s say somebody has never created a process and you mentioned solopreneur, it’s just them, they don’t have any team members and they’re interested in starting to think strategically about writing down the recipes, writing down the business processes that they use for certain things that happen with them. And let’s say this person is a blogger, what would be some low hanging fruit, some areas that you’d encourage people to look at first to say, “Hey, it’d be really smart for you to create a process around this thing.” How do people know where they should start with creating processes?

Blake Bailey: Yeah, absolutely. That’s a really good question. So, the very first thing that somebody should consider, especially in the entrepreneurial world, especially now in the whole lean startup world, is the whole idea that you want to go ahead and create your highest priority process. Essentially what are the things that are going to get you to, whether it be revenue, or users, or just eyes to your website, for example, or to your podcast. Essentially, whatever it is it’s going to get you to that is the thing that you want to focus on first. So, you want to look at the things that are core to your business, essentially the highest priority things, because of course there’s a million things that you need to do in a business, right? Any sort of legal stuff, any administrative stuff and those things of course are important, but they’re not going to get you any revenue, they are not going to get you to that next level that you need to get to.

Blake Bailey: That’s always the first thing that you want to focus on. And sometimes people will come to us with that same exact question. They may have already that first one in mind, which is great, which is you want to know what that most important thing is. But then the next one is actually usually be the most challenging ones that come up with, okay, now what? Now what do I do? I’ve got my most important thing in there, what comes after that? And for those that’s actually a bit more challenging, and that’s where you want to consider two things. There’s frequency and there’s isolation.

Blake Bailey: So frequency, what’s something that maybe is less critical, and this is of course after you’ve already put the really critical thing in there, what is something that’s a bit less critical, but you use it every single day, you use it all the time. If you’re able to systemize that, if you’re able to automate that, especially you’re going to get a huge benefit from that even though it’s not as high quality, it’s going to be a lot in quantity. And then finally, also there is the concept of isolation where if you have, maybe you have a few people on your team, but you’re the only person who knows how to do something. That is definitely something that you want to go ahead and get written down.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s great. And the other thing I was thinking about when you’re talking about that is one of the questions that we often get is when should I hire somebody? When should I bring somebody in to help out with what I’m doing? And oftentimes for people it’s, the two considerations are time and budget. Do I have the money for it? And do I have enough time to do this? Sometimes people will have less time and more budget and then it makes sense. But if you don’t have the budget and you are still thinking, I want to get to the point where I can bring somebody on and onboard them and have them be a part of my team. One of the things that you can do, even before hiring somebody is start to build out those processes that you are doing.

Bjork Ostrom: A great example is, okay, if you’re going to publish a new blog post, what are the steps that you go through every single time, probably in a really similar way to publish that on social media? You’re probably going grabbing an image, downloading that, bringing it into Facebook, bringing it into Instagram, writing a caption. What are the hashtags you use? You probably, more than you would even know, have these pretty similar processes that live in your head and it’s getting those out of your head and then actually putting those down somewhere where it’s recorded. So one of the examples that you gave was frequency. So this idea of taking the things that are really popular and happening often and then bringing those in and then isolation, which I think is so great. So, if you’re the only person that knows how to do it and there are multiple people on your team that could maybe help with that, you need to get that into a place where other people can see that and other people can use that.

Bjork Ostrom: One of the things that you had mentioned was this idea of automation, and I know that there’s a different way, a couple different ways in Process Street, that they’re talking about automation and how to use automation, and I think that’s something that we’re not fully taking advantage of, and I would love to have a conversation with you around that. So when you talk about automation, what is that and how can people start to integrate that in with the processes they’re using?

Blake Bailey: Yeah, absolutely. And realistically, automation can happen at any level. So you realistically can have it at the very, very small level, which for example, inside of Process Street, a really basic level of that would be the fact that you can actually automatically preset people to get assigned to particular task. So someone does the exact same task every single time as a part of that process, you can actually have it so that you essentially assign them once and then every single time they need to go and run that process, they’re automatically going to get assigned to that. And that’s a very, very, very basic version of automation because the fact that you don’t have to do it every single time means that’s going to save you just that little bit of effort and even more importantly, you’re never going to forget to do it, which is realistically the big cost if you ever did forget. So that’s one side, the very basic side.

Blake Bailey: Then of course you can take that through much larger extremes where realistically entire work functions, for example, for posting a blog post, like you just mentioned, everything that you just mentioned could be automated. So doing keyword research, posting to Facebook, posting to Instagram, posting to … Any of those sorts of things, you can actually, first off, you could use Process Street, but you can use lots of other tools as well to do all of that work for you through the use of other tools like Zapier and lots and lots of other integrative tools that are out there now, that realistically allow you to step back out of your process and let it work its way for you.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s awesome. For those that aren’t familiar, can you talk about what Zapier is at a high level, what it is and how people could potentially use it?

Blake Bailey: Sure, sure. So Zapier, first off is in a suite of tools that exists now luckily as realistically as coming out in the last three or four years, that include things like if this then that I have TTT, as well as a few others here and there. Zapier is realistically one of the biggest ones. And Zapier is one that Process Street integrates with, which is why I bring it up. Zapier is a tool that allows you to integrate different digital services together. Process Street is one Gmail, G-calendar, Office 365, Asana, Trello, any of those sorts of things. All of those different tools and realistically there’s thousands of them out there. All these different SAS tools, realistically they live on their own. But with tools like Zapier, you’re able to connect them together and pass data in between them and automate tasks, essentially between each different service that you’re using.

Bjork Ostrom: So a couple of examples that I can give because we use Zapier as well for all of our different businesses, and one of the ways that we use it is when somebody buys, so Pinch of Yum has an eBook. When somebody buys an eBook from Pinch of Yum in our email service, which is active campaign, add a tag that tags them as having bought that email or bought that eBook. And then what happens is after tagged, they get a little email sequence related to that eBook which is about food photography. So, that’s something that we don’t ever have to do. And even though the two services we use, which is E-junkie to process the payment and active campaign, they don’t talk to each other, but we use Zapier and it sits in between and anytime somebody buys an eBook, Zapier says, “Hey, we noticed that …” It’s literally called a Zap, which I think is so cool.

Bjork Ostrom: We set up a little Zap and it says, “Okay, we notice somebody bought it, now we’re going to talk to active campaign and say add them to the email list and then send them emails related to that book.” So, what you were saying is with Process Street, it’s possible to have Process Street and to use Zapier. And I’m really curious to know because it sounds like what’s happening is you can do something like check something off of a list. So let’s say you have a to do list or not a to do list, let’s say you have a process. And that process is the process you go through for posting something on social media after you publish it. Are you saying that there’s certain ways that you can set up Process Street so you can check off an item and once you check that off, there’s an automation that happens behind the scenes that something happens without you having to actually go over and do it if you’re using Zapier, is that right?

Blake Bailey: That’s absolutely right. Yeah, so in Process Street you could have a field where you’re … Essentially a field for the title of the post or potentially a field for the actual content of the social media posts, a place to upload the image. So essentially only the very specific things that you actually need in one place that you’re just thinking about that thing and say that from there you want to post it to maybe four different places. What you can do is that you would have a task in that same process inside of Process Street where you would check a task off and that task could be posted to Facebook where you know normally you’re going to have to go log into Facebook, grab all those things from your computer, go into there, craft that post and then go ahead and post it. Instead, just by checking that task off by way of automation, literally at the exact same moment you’re saying I did it, and the automation is actually doing it for you and automatically just goes ahead and post it straight to Facebook, as well as potentially four other places at the same time.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Oh, that’s really cool. And that’s something that, you know, we are probably using Process Street as like the very one on one version of what it is, which is creating processes and using it as our own little list to follow. But this is actually, like you said, removing work. It’s not just helping you to organize your work, but it’s removing work by putting it all in one place. So really interesting and I’m assuming that there’s a lot of people that are really creative with how they’re using processes. Maybe it’s bloggers, maybe it’s not. We can go broad. Let’s go broad and say just businesses in general because I think people can look at that and say, “Hey, I can pull out little pieces and apply to what I’m doing.” But are there examples that you can think of, of companies that are creative in how they’re using processes and therefore creating a more valuable business because of the processes that they have in place?

Blake Bailey: Oh yeah. Most definitely. Realistically, since processes are ubiquitous across every single industry, every single size of company. We have people who are using Process Street for pretty much everything and that gives us a lot of really creative use cases. So two that I can think of at the top of my mind here, one, we actually have a company out in California that uses Process Street for their auto body repair. So there are a huge auto body repair shop and realistically they have hundreds of steps that happen between the moment, between a customer walking in the door to the months after that when they’re essentially filing with the insurance company. And they’re using not only Process Street to systemize every aspect of that and make sure that cars are actually getting fixed properly.

Blake Bailey: But also that, the entire process is being tracked through an automated system that pushes everything up to a live board. They’re able to watch on the shop floor and know when cars are being held in particular stages for way too long, which ones are going to, essentially which ones need to move on. Anything like that, they’re doing that all through Process Street and through automations. And it’s really, really seamless. Another really cool example is also another group that has been using Process Street for a little while now. They actually manage what they call cycles for in vitro fertilization. So, for actually getting people to donate eggs to match up donors with potential parents and then the entire process from when a potential parent walks in the door to when a brand new baby is born. The entire process, all that goes into that all inside of Process Street.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s so interesting. And it’s funny because, you know, Process Street online business we talk to and speak about online businesses. So the people that we rub shoulders with are doing online businesses. That’s how I tend to think about it. But it’s like, well, no, of course it could be an auto body shop, it could be a clinic or a hospital, it could be all of these different places. And it actually reminds me of a book called the Checklist Manifesto. I don’t know if you’ve heard of this, but it’s like it should be the book for Process Street, and it’s a doctor who wrote a book about why it’s so important to have a checklist that you follow for everything that you do. And he talks about that in regards to surgery. He’s a surgeon, but how important it is to have those checklists, and when you’re going into surgery you want to make sure that everybody’s on the same page and they understand what the processes that you’re going through, especially when it’s surgery, but it’s true for businesses as well.

Bjork Ostrom: And, we’ve been using them more and more processes and starting to get, especially as we build our team, starting to think really strategically around how do we add in processes as an element to our business to make it valuable. And I would love to in real time, I think this would be interesting for our listeners talk with you and have you advise me on a potential process that we’re going to be building. So would you be up for doing that in real time to see if we can come up with something cool?

Blake Bailey: Yeah, absolutely.

Bjork Ostrom: Okay. So here’s the idea. I’ve been thinking a lot about how the content that we have on our website, there’s areas in ways that we can optimize that because it’s kind of, there’s low hanging fruit with it. So there’s all these different tools that we can use and updates that we can make to content in order to get more traffic from social media and from search engines. And so I want to build out a process for that. So, without you needing to know any of the tools, let’s say that you were at the very beginning stage of building a process. What would be the first thing that you would do in terms of taking the first step towards building that process?

Blake Bailey: Absolutely. So the very, very first thing that you want to do, anytime that you’re actually going to go about building out a process, is you want to outline the major steps. Realistically, the entire philosophy for building out a process works the same way for building out a business. You want to start with an MVP and of course MVP, minimum viable product for us here at Process Street, that’s a minimum viable process.

Bjork Ostrom: Nice.

Blake Bailey: So you essentially just want to start off with what we call tasks and headers, task being the actual things you’re going to get done. The headers being dividers, ways to break it off into little different sections if you want. You don’t have to, but start off with that. And then from there, that’s where you want to start focusing on other elements becoming, essentially as they are, you’re adding in things in levels of ease. So you want to start with things that have high value but require minimal levels of effort.

Bjork Ostrom: Yup. That’s great. So a couple of things and I think this would be interesting just for people to hear that I’ve thought about doing it. I’ve thought about it as the bringing our old content through the carwash and getting it sparkly and shiny again. And we’ve done this kind of as an experiment a few times in the past and have noticed when we do this with a specific piece of content that we actually see a bump in traffic, like search rankings go up. And so we want to build a process around this. This is one of my goals for 2019, and to actually follow up question that I’m going to ask you later is about how we can share those processes strategically, which is such a cool part of Process Street. But let’s just talk through this a bit because I’d be interested to see if we can tie any automations into this.

Bjork Ostrom: So just a few things off the top of my head, for what they would be. Number one would be we would find the low hanging fruit and by that I mean, the posts that we feel like have the most potential to be optimized and we use a tool called a Ahrefs for that. It’s an SEO tool. The next step is we would, we’re just in the early stages of looking at this tool club MarketMuse, which helps you understand your content. So the next step would be a running it through, running the post through MarketMuse to see if there’s any optimization opportunities. The next step we would probably have Lindsay who does a lot of the content writing for Pinch of Yum, update the content and then we would go through this long list of ways that we would republish that.

Bjork Ostrom: We’d put it onto Instagram stories, maybe we would include it in the email list, or the email update that goes out. We’d push it out to Facebook again, so then we’d have this long list of essentially the places that we would blast it out to social media, updating the blog post and things like that. So with that basic understanding, high level understanding of it, can you talk through some of the automations that we could potentially build into that even if it means once something is checked off, then assigning it to somebody else?

Blake Bailey: Yeah, absolutely. So from what I’m hearing here, it’s essentially a three major step process, which is that first one is, is determining what are the articles that you would like to fix up. And then from there is the actual fix up process, and then at the third point you’ve got posting it. So actually putting them back out there, helping your SEO.

Bjork Ostrom: You simplify it so much by my like rambling idea and you’re like, essentially it’s three things. Or like, yep, that’s basically it. Yep. Spot on it.

Blake Bailey: Well actually that realistically goes back to the very core of things, which is, I mean, even before what I said a moment ago, so I guess I lied. In terms of starting with your tasks and headers, the very first thing is breaking down what it is that you’re trying to achieve. From that, you really want to get to the very core of what am I trying to get done with this? And then work your way into the specifics. Okay, now what is it going to take to get it done? What’s the most important things to that process? And then go ahead and start putting those most important pieces in. Now, from that point though, essentially the next thing that you’d be including would be things like you’re not only the things you need to get done, but also potentially what information do you need to collect or would you like to push it into other places via automations.

Blake Bailey: We use a thing called form fields inside of Process Street to allow you to collect information. Also, get information from automations as well. So realistically the very first stage of that in terms of doing that investigative process would be in the beginning of your process, putting in potentially what terms you want to search or maybe some potential titles, or whatever it is that you might want to be actually searching with. You’d be putting that into potentially Process Street, you can use other things for that particular stage since you’re going to be pushing that into something like crafts or whatever else it might be. But you definitely want to have a place to systemize how it is that you’re going to go through an actually properly investigate and get the right information back and collected information in a place that you’re going to be able to easily peruse it and figure out essentially what you need to prioritize.

Blake Bailey: And then from that point, realistically you’re doing all of that first investigative, say maybe on your own. Maybe you give that to somebody else, which you could easily do with Process Street. But then, since you have Lindsay doing that next stage, which you’re going to want to do is have her automatically assigned to that. And what’s going to happen is that through some tools inside of Process Street, you’re going to be able to easily and automatically as soon as you’re done with those, with that first stage, hand it directly off to her. She’s going to get notified in her email, letting her know, “Hey, I got to come in here and do this.” You don’t even have to worry about it. You can go have some coffee, go grab a drink, whatever you’re going to go do a and let her go ahead and do her work. And then when she’s done, she can go ahead and pass that back onto you or to whomever else to actually do all the posting.

Blake Bailey: But that element, as we spoke of earlier, can absolutely be automated entirely. So, you’ve already decided what words you are going to use by the investigative process. She’s already tweaked up the articles for you, and now you’re going to go ahead and just say, “Okay, this is the final article title. This is the final image we’re going to use. These are the places we’re going to post it.” You check some boxes off, it’s posted, you’re done. You can go to Fiji.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, which is the last step in the process.

Blake Bailey: It is, it always is.

Bjork Ostrom: Always is, that’s the great thing I love about Process Street is that go to Fiji step at the very end. That’s awesome, and really exciting for me to think about ways that we can be strategically going from process 101, to process 201, which is removing the step of like me going into, we use slack as an internal communication tool. Me going into slack and saying, “Hey, I just finished this. Can somebody else take it over?” Or, “Hey, just a heads up. I put the podcast file in drop box to send over.” So removing some of those communication elements and creating a seamless process is exciting. And one of the things that I mentioned earlier that I think is, is really exciting, especially for publishers like us and publishers who are interested in building an email list is this thing that I didn’t know about until I was preparing for the podcast interview, which is an email lead generation/content upgrade thing that Process Street has as it relates to sharing your processes.

Bjork Ostrom: And I can see this being a really cool way for bloggers to help get emails by sharing the processes that they’ve created. So can you talk about what, I think the name for it is check leads, but can you talk about what that is and how bloggers can be not only creating a process but then if they like sharing that with their readers and then also using that as a lead generation/email signup tool.

Blake Bailey: Absolutely. Yes. So, influencers or bloggers or marketers or I mean anyone who has knowledge of, I mean really anything, but who has knowledge of any process can easily go into Process Street and write it down, have a place, really nice clean process right there that you can go right to. And the beautiful thing is that you can then embed that process, that checklist, directly into your website or into a blog post. And there’s that feature that you mentioned which is, actually the lead generation or content upgrade tool which allows you to essentially lock it off so you can see it when you get to your blog posts or to your page. But then if somebody wants to say, copy it into their organization, so it’s not only in your blog would you be explaining how you would do something, you’re actually giving them the actual process, the actual steps that they can bring into their own organization in Process Street and start using themselves without any work.

Blake Bailey: But in order for them to do that, you can put a little lock on it that essentially requires them to input their email address. So that’s a really great way to build your marketing lists, to get followers from one piece of content that you create and then continuously share and get SEO from.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s great. So I can see that even, I would assume a lot of people listening to this podcast, they hear us talking about this SEO refreshed checklist that we’ll be creating. And I’m sure a lot of people will be like, “Gosh, it’d be really awesome to have that checklist, so I don’t have to create it knowing that you guys have gone through the hassle of building that out and creating the perfect list and maybe even we’ll be updating that would be great for me, to be able to see what that is.” And for us we can share that. And, if we want, we could either just embed it and have it on the blog posts so people can see it. Or we could say, “Hey, you can get this, but the exchange here, you don’t have to buy it. But we would ask for your email address, so we can stay in communication after.”

Bjork Ostrom: And it’s a great little content upgrade, or a marketing strategy that you can use, which I think is a great additional layer, especially for people that listen to this podcast to be thinking about is as email is so, so, so important. We’re coming to the end of the interview, Blake, but I’d be interested to hear from you for somebody, if you’re going to speak to somebody who’s at the very beginning level, if they’re just starting out, if they’re getting a feel for things, what would your advice or encouragement be to them as it relates to this foundational element of being intentional to build processes and to build systems within their business? What are the things that they should think about doing it if they haven’t done any of it before, what would your encouragement to them be or advice be to somebody who’s just starting out?

Blake Bailey: Yeah. So, my main piece of advice/encouragement, I guess, that I give to people as they’re getting into this is, is the fact that realistically, if what you want to focus on is the systemization and the optimization of your processes in a way that allows you to, essentially systemized and optimize the mechanical stuff. Right? So, when someone, for example, of course, with your eBook, right? So when somebody gets your eBook, you don’t need somebody who is going to get a notification every time that that happens and then type up an email and send that to someone. There’s no point. So anything like that, anything that has over and over and over and they can really just be done by a computer, let a computer do it. Get a way, find a way to automate being it through Process Street, et cetera.

Blake Bailey: And also find a way to systemize it so that when maybe it’s not a computer doing it, but maybe you don’t need to do it. You can get someone else to do it. Whatever it might be definitely, get those things in there. And the whole point of doing that, the whole point realistically of automation in general is so that the human elements of a business, whether that be talking to customers one on one, just interfacing with people. Having that real human connection which is so critically important for a business. Being able to heighten that experience to have more time and effort, and care from the human to be able from the human as if it’s just something like a computer, to be able to have that input, have that influence and not have to sweat all the small manual meticulous computer stuff which have been already done for you.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s great. And it’s people talk about, how your view of the future and this idea of a machines and robots taking over and there is one potential path of like this dreaded future of everything is computers and robots. And then there’s this other one where it’s like, this incredible future where the automation of things, and tasks has allowed us to lean into things that are so uniquely human. And, I hear a bit of that in what you’re talking about with Process Street is allowing us to have those things that only we can do. Like having conversations and connecting and establishing relationships with people, which I think is a great goal for business and a goal for people that are looking to build their business, or builder their blog, to be able to do the thing that they are good at and automate things that they’re not interested in doing or that can be done in another way.

Bjork Ostrom: So a great note to wrap up on. Blake, I know that you had talked a couple times before we recorded and I mentioned this idea of doing webinars and teaching and education. If people are interested in connecting with you or seeing what’s going on with Process Street and in learning a bit more, continuing in their pursuit of automating and in learning how to upgrade their business, what’s the best way for them to do that?

Blake Bailey: Yeah, absolutely. So, first off, very easy thing to do is just go right to process.st. So that’s Process Street, so process, P-R-O-S- I’m sorry. process.st so Process Street. And if you go there, as soon as you go there, you’ll get a little chat bubble from somebody on my support team and you can always message us in there. Say you chat, say hello. You can ask for me directly, my name is Blake. You can also shoot me an email at [email protected]. So same web domain there, just Blake and then an add sign in front of that. But either way, feel free to reach out, say hello. Definitely sign up, check us out. And I’m always happy to talk to people.

Bjork Ostrom: Awesome. Thanks so much, Blake. We’ll be sure to include all that in the show notes as well so people can just click on over, but really appreciate you coming on the podcast and sharing all your insight.

Blake Bailey: Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me.

Alexa Peduzzi: And that is that my friend. Thank you so much for tuning into the Food Blogger Pro podcast this week. But before we wrap up, it’s time for our reviewer of the week. And this review comes from listener Sylvia. It says, “I’m embarrassed to say that I’ve been meaning to leave a review on this podcast for a couple of years now, but I couldn’t figure out how to do it. I can’t tell you how much this podcast has helped me grow my blog from a hobby to a full-fledged business. I honestly recommend it to everyone because it is full of golden nuggets that have been incredibly useful. Not only is the podcast inspirational showing us that anything is possible. It is also just really helpful and informative. It’s also been a great tool for connecting me with experts that have helped my blog tremendously. So I just want to thank you from the bottom of my heart with your help Bjork, I was able to transition from my extremely stressful catering business into full-time blogging. A dream come true. Thanks for all you do.”

Alexa Peduzzi: Thank you so much, Sylvia, for your review and congratulations on your success. And if you are listening right now, are a bit confused about how you can leave us a review and potentially become our next reviewer of the week, you can go to iTunes, search for the Food Blogger Pro podcast, click the show, and then if you scroll down a bit, it’ll say tap to rate. It’s there that you can give us a star rating and a written review. Be sure to leave your name and blog name as well. Thank you so much for friend, we’ll see you next Tuesday. Same time, same place, but until then, make it a great week.

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