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How many times have you felt overwhelmed trying to set up tools in your business, only to find yourself caught up in busy work? You’re not alone. The struggle of balancing daily operations with the need to implement long-term improvements, all while managing seemingly endless administrative tasks, is a challenge most entrepreneurs face – too often our days are filled with busy work after busy work.
This is especially true when it comes to diving into automation and project management amidst a busy schedule filled with client work.
Today, I want to share a transformative case study of my client, Kristyn Merkley, and her family from Lil’ Luna, who successfully turned their business around with a bit of help. Their story highlights how upgrading your business doesn’t have to be as time-consuming as you might think and can have an immense impact.
Meet Lil’ Luna: The OG Recipe Blog
Kristyn and her husband are the dynamic duo behind Lil’ Luna, a thriving recipe blog filled with thousands of delicious and easy recipes. Launched in 2010, Lil’ Luna has grown to become a major resource for culinary enthusiasts, offering everything from family recipes to Disney-inspired dishes. Their devotion to life, family, and food is evident in every post and photo shoot they share.
With such a vast array of content and ongoing book deals, managing their project workload became an increasingly complex task. Their story is a perfect example of the challenges faced by businesses dealing with substantial amounts of content and digital assets.
The Initial Struggle: Overcoming Spreadsheet Overload and Everyday Busy Work
Lil’ Luna’s primary challenge was their reliance on spreadsheets for project management. While spreadsheets are excellent for data collection and visualization, they fall short in making that data actionable. They lacked due dates, reminders, and the ability to automate tasks related to creating, updating, and editing blog posts.
Their manual processes were leading to burnout. The team was overwhelmed by the workload, leading them to consider hiring two or three additional staff members just to keep up. Enter Lorin, who reached out to me in search of a solution.
From Spreadsheets to ClickUp
Initially, we considered sticking with Google Spreadsheets and exploring automations via Airtable. However, we ultimately decided to implement ClickUp as the central platform for their project management. ClickUp allowed us to automate task management and streamline their processes in a way that wasn’t possible with spreadsheets.
The repetitive nature of their work—creating a recipe, producing a video, writing a blog post, conducting SEO research—lent itself perfectly to the automation capabilities of ClickUp. We implemented task templates and automations, ensuring that every piece of content followed a consistent process from start to finish.
By centralizing all their tasks in ClickUp, we turned passive data into actionable items. The team no longer had to wonder what needed to be done each day; they had a clear, organized plan laid out for them.
The Power of Streamlining Busy Work
The transformation was remarkable. In just two to three months, the team went from being on the brink of burnout to thriving with newfound efficiency. When I checked in with Lorin at the end of our engagement, he informed me that they no longer needed to hire additional staff. The existing team was happy, knew exactly what to do each day, and felt more in control of their workload.
One of the most significant outcomes was the reduction of administrative work by 40%. This freed up valuable time for the team to focus on revenue-generating tasks and creative endeavors, ultimately driving the business forward.
Investing in Automation
The case of Lil’ Luna exemplifies the immense benefits of investing time into automating your business processes. If your current operations are leading to inefficiency and burnout, consider the following steps:
Evaluate Your Current Tools: Identify the tools you are using and assess their limitations. Are they helping or hindering your productivity?
Consider Centralized Solutions: Platforms like ClickUp can centralize task management, making processes more streamlined and actionable.
Implement Task Automations: Develop consistent processes for repetitive tasks and automate them. This not only reduces the manual workload but also ensures consistency.
Seek Expertise: Sometimes, bringing in an expert can expedite the process. Whether it’s an hour consultation or a more extended engagement, expert advice can save you time and effort in the long run.
Conclusion
The story of Lil’ Luna is an inspiring example of how the right automation tools and project management strategies can significantly improve business operations and team morale. If you’ve been pushing off implementing these changes, consider taking the plunge. Even a small improvement in efficiency can lead to substantial benefits.
At Ask Yvi, we specialize in helping digital entrepreneurs and service providers turn their passion into profit through automation and streamlined processes. Remember, the best processes are people-centered. They should enhance your work and make your team’s life easier.
Are you ready to transform your business just like Lil’ Luna did? Visit askevi.com to find the resources and support you need to dominate your industry. Drop a comment below and let me know what challenges you are facing, and let’s work together to find a solution.
By embracing automation and effective project management, you can return to focusing on what you love, confident in the knowledge that your business operations are running smoothly and efficiently.
ready to take action and stop trying to figure it all out on your own?
You don’t have to do it all – or all by yourself.
I have helped many Digital Entrepreneurs scale their operations, teams, and offers!
Let’s get you to that next level.
Video Transcription:
Yvonne Heimann [00:00:00]:
How many times have you felt overwhelmed trying to set up tools in your business? You’re not alone in this. We all know how difficult it can be to be in your everyday taking care of clients, taking care of business, and knowing you should do this thing that you know is gonna help you get out of working in your business and allow you to work on your business. But you don’t have the time to dive into this because your day is full with taking care of clients. So if you’re struggling with automation or project management, don’t worry, you are not alone in this. So today I want to share with you a really fun and interesting case study of a client of mine to inspire you. Upgrading your business. Putting the work in doesn’t have to take as long as you might think and has a bigger impact than I even knew. So today we’ll dive into how Kristyn Merkley and her family from Lil’ Luna were managing their business lives and growing a blog when they went into some roadblocks when it comes to project management as well as digital asset management.
Yvonne Heimann [00:01:19]:
And with really just a little help for me, they turned things around in an amazing way. So stick around and see how they went from burned out team and ready to hire two or three more people to a happy team and hiring new people. But not for the reason you think. And if you’re new here and don’t know me yet, I’m Yvonne Heimann, aka Yvi, from AskYvi.com and I help digital entrepreneurs and service providers turn their passion into profit by automating their business so they can dominate your industry. Now, who is Lil’ Luna? Kristyn and her husband. Super couple. Not just super mom to six with a passion of food. Following them on Instagram and seeing their devotion to life, people, family and amazing food is inspiring.
Yvonne Heimann [00:02:16]:
They’re running Lil’ Luna which is a recipe blog. It is the OG of recipe blogs with thousands and thousands of recipes from the family’s rich culinary background as well as some Disney inspired recipes. They started the site in 2010 and since then have grown that little food blog into a major resource for delicious and easy recipes. First banana bread I ever made that was a Lil’ Luna. They ran into some project management issues. As you can imagine, this is a blog since 2010. They create video content, they have regular photo shoots for the recipes to showcase what everything looks like. There is book deals involved and all kinds of stuff.
Yvonne Heimann [00:03:09]:
So you can imagine there is a lot going on. And as we all know, Google constantly changes SEO. So that also means you need to go back to blogs, update the recipes update the content, update images, make Google happy, make readers happy. There is so much going on on such a big scale. Me with my tiny little website, nothing with that. So really looking into automating and optimizing that project management, that has to happen behind the scenes for things to not fall through the crack. A lot of that had happened in spreadsheets. Spreadsheets are perfect for data collection and visualization.
Yvonne Heimann [00:03:53]:
Being able to track your SEO from a year ago to now, do we need to update things and all the stuff? It’s great in a spreadsheet. The struggle that they ran into is it’s not actionable. There is no due dates, there is no reminder. Trying to automate the actual tasks of creating, updating and editing blog posts was huge. And when Lorin initially had reached out to me, they were looking at staying with Google spreadsheets and potentially doing some automations with that, looking into airtable. And we ended up going with ClickUp as the single source of truth because we were able to automate the actual task management and doing of things. Because it’s the same process. You create a recipe, we need the video, we need the blog post, we need the research for SEO and we need to put it together.
Yvonne Heimann [00:04:55]:
The process is the same, no matter if that is generating the blog post, generating the recipes, updating it, or checking for SEO. So now suddenly all of the data and all the things they had became actionable. The team didn’t have to come in in the morning and be like, what do I need to do? What’s, what’s due? Where, how, what? They moved into an active way of managing their projects rather than managing data and working with it. We optimized this, we automated this. You know, I love me some tasks, templates and some automations. The team, shortly after we worked, I think we literally just worked two or three months with each other. I asked on my last call, Lorin, tell me, you came here overwhelmed. Your team was burned out, they were tired, they were, you were ready to hire two or three new team members to support your team.
Yvonne Heimann [00:05:57]:
That’s how taxing the work was. And I did not know yet. That was literally just on the call. And he’s like, Yvi, we didn’t have to hire somebody new. The team is happy to come back in again because they know exactly what to do. And his words, we saved them 40% of admin work. So when you consider this thing that you’ve been pushing off that you know will help your business be more efficient, consider bringing somebody in, consider saying no to a client for a month. And pushing them out to work with them to be able to implement this.
Yvonne Heimann [00:06:38]:
Even if you just save half of the time that we were able to save this team, imagine how much freer your everyday is going to be. Imagine how much more you can put into your work after you saved 10%, 20%, 40% of your non revenue generating admin b’s work. That is what you can do, but you need to focus on it or bring somebody in to cut down on the time of implementation. And if you’re ready, you know where to find me. AskYvi.com because Kristyn’s and Lorin’s experience shows just how much a game changer the right support can be. Even if you just take somebody for an hour and ask them the questions to have an educated answer rather than trying and browsing YouTube to find what’s right for you. If you are struggling with setting up tools, managing your business, turning your passion into profit, and really automating your business to dominate your industry, I am here to help here at AskYvi.com we can help you automate your business to dominate your industry streamlining processes and help you focus on what you love. Not only that, yes, we are process driven, but we are focusing on people in our processes.
Yvonne Heimann [00:08:11]:
The best processes don’t do anything if your team doesn’t enjoy what they’re doing and go along with those processes. So drop a comment below and let me know what challenges are you facing and I’ll do my best to guide you with any free or paid resources I have. And you always can schedule a one on one call with me or join my Boss Your Business, which is the monthly membership or Automate To Dominate which is coming up my three month program to really help you automate your business to dominate your industry.
