A few weeks ago, I posted on LinkedIn with an ask to tag people working smarter not harder. Selfishly, I wanted to see what other people’s workflows looked like and to my surprise, there were 44 comments of people chiming in!

As a solopreneur, there are 83028 billion things that I could be doing at one time. I could be creating a social media post, emailing my accountant, creating a new offer, onboarding a new client—the list goes on and on.

The more I can find efficient, time-saving hacks, the more time I’ll be able to spend on only the tasks I can do. And even if you’re not working for yourself, everyone wants to spend more time with the people they love.

Email has been around for ages and yet, I imagine the majority of people don’t keep it super organized. Maybe you’re an inbox zero person (I applaud you!) but if you’re not, I love Ros Croad’s tip.

She creates filters for specific emails and sorts them automatically into folders, so they don't grab your attention when you want to focus.

For example, she has a filter for "Receipts" and opens it once per month when she’s doing her bookkeeping. Her filters are carefully designed so that when her accountant sends her paperwork, the email automatically skips the inbox and into the “Receipts” folder. When her accountant emails her about anything else, that email will still go into her inbox.

Anna Burgess Yang is the queen of Zapier and automation. She has automations for everything, and she has very helpful step-by-step guides that I’ve personally used to set up a few “zaps” myself.

Repurposing social media content across platforms is a great strategy to work smarter, not harder. If you put in the hard work to create a piece of content, you save energy by repurposing it and posting on additional platforms.

Anna takes this a step further by automating the manual work that can go into it.

When she writes a new post for LinkedIn, it automatically runs through ChatGPT where she has instructions to tweak the post for Threads. The modified post is then sent back to her social media scheduling platform, Buffer. When she’s ready to schedule posts on Buffer, she already has a queue of posts waiting to be reviewed.

There are lots of places where you can get messages nowadays—email, iMessage, Whatsapp, Slack, Instagram, LinkedIn. To streamline things, I love how Taylor Harrington routes people to the right place to reach her.

Whenever someone DMs her, they get an instant reply that clearly communicates how and when she prefers to be reached.

This eliminates the feeling of urgency to respond to LinkedIn DMs. If someone tries to reach her on her personal email after getting this, but their message isn't time-sensitive, she’ll wait to respond once she’s back in her LinkedIn DMs.

While LinkedIn is a premium feature, she says you can also just put this in your LinkedIn bio!

I set up a CRM in Notion to keep track of everyone I talk to. After each call, I was manually adding them into my CRM, I would have to copy their email address into my CRM and fill out fields in Notion.

Now, I have a Zapier workflow set up so when someone books time with me via Calendly, they are automatically added to my CRM in Notion. Based on the type of call (coffee chat vs sales call), I also apply labels for “career” vs “collaboration”.

If they book a career strategy call, which shows they have intent to learn more or purchase, I have a zap that adds them to my newsletter in Beehiiv.

One question I’ve been sitting with that might be helpful for you too is: How can I simplify my life?

I’ve realized that sometimes I take the hard path without even knowing it, trying to do all of the things myself when it doesn’t have to be that way.

Seeing other people’s workflows is proof that easier ways do exist—you just have to keep an eye out for them.

P.S. If you liked this topic, send me a reply to let me know! There are a lot of people who commented on my original LinkedIn post that I didn’t feature but would love to.

I was supposed to fly to London tonight but my flight was cancelled due to the blizzard in NYC, so I will (hopefully) be leaving tomorrow night! I’m always amazed at the wonderful people who I get connected to on the internet, so if you’re in London these next two weeks, let me know 🙂 Last time I met up with two women who were both in corporate but wanting to do something else on the side.

Also, I randomly went to the viral froyo shop, Mimi’s this weekend. The toppings were actually very good, but the yogurt itself wasn’t anything special (in my opinion). In the end, I would not wait in a 30 minute line or spend $14 on the cup of yogurt, but it got me thinking…

So much of marketing is about building hype, FOMO, and even exclusivity. You have to have a quality product at the end of the day, but if you get the right people to vouch for it, your impact compounds.

After a quick Google search, I found the LinkedIn post from the founder. It looks like their first customers were influencers, but it also highlighted the need that this shop helps solve, which goes way beyond eating frozen yogurt—the need for 3rd spaces to hangout that don’t revolve around alcohol. A combo of solving a real problem, hype w/ the right people, and quality product = a viral winner.

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