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So how do you

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get started? How do you overcome

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the blank canvas problem?

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You’ve heard me talk about the four components of automation. Those are triggers,

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actions, conditions, and timing.

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But

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you don’t necessarily know what a trigger is, a good trigger or what an

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action is.

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You aren’t sure what apps Zapier supports.

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So

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you’re left wondering,

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what can I do?

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There’s too much to understand. And so the first thing

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that you need to do

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is

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understand your work.

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This is why my documentation exercise is so important,

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because if you don’t know what to do or

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if you don’t know what you do,

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then you just

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stare at a blank canvas.

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It’s like if you’ve been tasked to write a paper

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and you’re not given a topic or any other parameters, just like, what am I gonna

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write? A, there’s so many things I can write about, or maybe a better example is

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this.

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Tell me a funny story.

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Tell me a story from college.

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Tell me something funny that happened to you when you were younger.

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Most people will freeze when they get that question ’cause

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they don’t have something holstered.

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They don’t have something ready to be like, oh, here’s a hilarious story.

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So they freeze and they can’t think of anything.

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This has happened to me countless times. My, my oldest daughter has been asking my

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wife and me, Hey, tell

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me a funny story about mom from when you guys were dating. Or, Hey,

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tell

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me a funny story about Dad from when you first met him.

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There’s so many funny stories. I was an idiot when I was younger. I still kind of

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am. So it’s just, it’s not that we don’t have anything, just like, it’s not that

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you don’t have anything to automate, it’s that there are so many options you don’t

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know what to do. So

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my recommendation first is

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document.

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Pick a process or a task or a workflow that you do. It could be writing your newsletter,

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recording a podcast episode, making a YouTube video, following up with people who

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fill out your intake form,

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building your next product or service,

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write everything you have to do down,

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and then you have

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a list of potential tasks,

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a list of potential things that you can maybe hand off to Zapier,

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right? The obvious example is booking guests, right? Which you actually don’t need

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to hand off to Zapier, right? You can just use cal.com or Calendly for that.

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But an another example might be, well, okay, for my newsletter or for my podcasts,

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I need to

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capture ideas.

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And sometimes I like to bookmark stories or links for episodes. What if when you

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bookmarked a story, it got sent to your planning document or created a planning document

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for you?

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That’s a trigger and an action that can, that is something you can do in Zapier,

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but it goes beyond that. After you make the list of things that you need to do,

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write down the apps you use to accomplish those tasks,

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because that is the crucial part.

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Knowing what apps you use is the key to understanding how you can use Zapier.

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And we’ll get into exactly how you can use Zapier

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right after this.

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Okay, where back,

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how, what’s the key

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to using Zapier?

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You have a list of tasks.

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You have a list of apps

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before you open the Zapier editor or start typing into Zapier’s copilot,

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the thing you wanna do, I want you to do this.

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Go to zapier.com/apps,

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zapier.com/aps.

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This is the Zapier Explore Apps page,

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and this

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gives you everything you need to understand what Zapier can do for you.

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In the beginning of the show. In the cold open, I talked about a restaurant, except

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you need to build a menu with no other parameters.

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This is like saying we want to be a Mexican food restaurant, or we want to serve

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sushi.

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Now you’re working within some box.

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The Zapier Explore apps page

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allows you to search

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for the apps you use.

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So you can type in

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Feedly if you use Feedly for RSS

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or Instapaper. If you use Instapaper for bookmarking,

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you can search for Calendly or cal.com.

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You can search for kit, any of the apps that you use, search and see if they’re available

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in Zapier.

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But

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it goes one step. It goes many steps. Really further than that,

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once you pick an app,

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it will give you a few,

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it will give you apps that you can pair with

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apps that are commonly paired with the one you just selected.

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It’ll give you

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automation ideas.

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So it’ll say, you know, if you pick, uh, Gmail for example,

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it’ll say, Hey, save new Gmail emails

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matching a search to Google Sheets.

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Or

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when you label or star an email, send a Slack message about it.

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So it’ll start to give you ideas based on the apps that you use.

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And then further down on the page,

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it has a list of supported triggers and actions.

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So you can actually see the triggers that kick off the automation.

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You can see the actions that will be a result of the automation.

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So now you can see what’s possible.

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You can see what you can do,

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but I love when you choose an app to pair

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it with.

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It will allow you to select a trigger and an action. It’ll, it’ll suggest specific

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automations for those app pairings, and you can reverse them, right? So if, if we’re

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saying,

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let’s say Google Sheets and Trello,

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if we have Google Sheets as the trigger and Trello as the action, we can reverse

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them and we can see what’s possible with

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Trello as the trigger and Google Sheets as the action.

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So those three components, or those three

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things you need

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to do

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to prevent blank Canvas syndrome

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and get started with Zapier,

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make a list of the stuff that you do,

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the tasks that you perform on your computer.

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Then make a list of the apps you use to accomplish those tasks.

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Then head over to zapier.com/apps

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and search for one of those apps to see what Zapier can do with that app.

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Look at the triggers and look at the actions.

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And

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as I said in the beginning of the show,

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if you’re still thinking, well, I still don’t know

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you, you you wanna see, right? You wanna see examples of real world automations,

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you don’t wanna talk in academics,

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head on over to streamlined fm slash quiz

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because over at streamlined fm slash quiz,

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I will ask you a few questions

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and when you submit, I will email you four automations based on what you’re struggling

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with. And even if you’re not using the apps, I’m suggesting you are seeing the type

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of work that’s being automated.

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So seeing that paired with the Zapier apps page could be a really great way for you

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to figure out what you can automate.

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But that’s it for this episode of the Streamline Solopreneur. It’s a short one,

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but a really focused one.

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I do have a video where I walk through

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the Zapier Explore apps page, so I’ll link that in the show notes as well. You can

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find all of the show notes over at streamlined FM or in whatever player you’re listening

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to this episode on.

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If you have any feedback, you can head over to streamlinedfeedback.com.

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Thanks so much for listening,

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and until next time, I hope you find some space in your week.