Automate the Boring Stuff: Time-Saving Hacks for Creatives

Ever wished there were two of you so you could finally keep up with your creative business? 

In this episode, Kaylie shares how gentle automation can help you do just that — without losing the personal touch.

As a mum with chronic illness and a busy toddler, Kaylie opens up about how automation has become her secret helper for protecting her energy, sanity, and creativity. She walks you through simple ways to start automating your emails, social media, and admin tasks so you can spend more time doing what you actually love — creating.

You’ll learn:
 ✨ What to include in your first email welcome series
 ✨ Easy tools to schedule social posts, videos, and replies
 ✨ How to use AI (like ChatGPT) authentically
 ✨ The platforms that make automation actually easy for creatives

Plus, Kaylie shares a personal look at her own automation journey — from tech headaches to time-saving breakthroughs — and invites you to grab her free cheat sheet: “Automate the Boring Stuff: 10 Time-Saving Hacks for Creatives.”

🎧 Tune in, take a deep breath, and get ready to reclaim your time (and your joy) one small system at a time.

Transcript

Kaylie Edwards: [00:00:00] 

Hey, lovely creatives. It's Kaylie here. Welcome back to the Creative Juggle Joy podcast. Today we're diving into something that honestly changed the way I run my business automation. Now, don't panic, I promise we're not going full tech nerd mode. This is a gentle intro. Perfect. If you've ever thought, I don't have time for the admin stuff.

I feel like I'm always behind if only there were two of me. Well, automation is kind of like getting that second you. It's not about losing the personal touch. It's about making space for your creativity and energy by letting the boring, repetitive tasks run in the background and the stuff you genuinely can't do all the time.

So why automation is your secret helper? As a mum with fibromyalgia [00:01:00] and joint hypermobility syndrome, I know firsthand how limited time and energy can be. Some days I'm fine. Other days I can't push through like I used to and it feels like I'm falling apart. I'm in so much pain and so ill, and then. Add a toddler into the mix.

Who wants snacks every 10 minutes and the TV channel changing constantly? Well, you get the picture. If I didn't have some parts of my business automated, I'd either burn out fast or I just simply couldn't have a business. Automation doesn't mean you are lazy. It just means you're smart

it means you are protecting your health. Your time, freedom and your creativity for the work that actually matters to you.

Email automation. The first thing I always [00:02:00] recommend is automating your emails. A welcome series is a must. Here's what that can look like. Email one, you can deliver your freebie or your discount. And say hi. Share who you are in a brief statement of what your creative business is about. Email two would tell your story why you started creating what you stand for.

You'd build that connection with that new person. Email three, you'd give them something valuable. A tip tutorial showcase of your products.

Email four would be softly Introduce one of your best sellers or seasonal offers. Email five to seven. Would transition into sharing more about your products with a mix of education, inspiration, [00:03:00] gentle selling, or even cross-promoting relevant products that they may have already bought. And don't forget, an abandoned cart email offering a small incentive, like 10% off if they complete their purchase within 24 hours can recover.

So many lost sales platforms. I recommend to do email marketing on if you haven't already. It may a light I, back using them again. They're easy and affordable. I've actually, gone up to their more advanced plan because of some of the new features they've created, convert Kit, but now known as kit.

They're great for creatives who want to grow. They do have their challenges, but so do all email have platforms a client of mine, Delores, who, who does this co-hosting of the podcast, she uses Kate. We moved from flow desks because it was just not sustainable with the rate her business was [00:04:00] growing.

But flow desks is great for beginner creatives who don't mind paying, the flat rate fee each month. They do have gorgeous templates. If visuals are your thing, like most creatives are, then flow desks is a good one to go for, I think they're starting to catch on with some of the features.

Now, let's talk about something we all struggle with, especially myself. I have a toddler and he's only just started getting full-time education at school because I've. Eventually got the application for funding to do wraparound care around his nursery hours. Let me just say, social media can eat your whole week if you let it.

Here are a few ways to make it easier. I am no expert at this because I'm not consistent with social media as people can see from my own if they go on [00:05:00] it. But the podcast, that's what I'm consistent with. That's what I'm sticking to. These are the things I've seen many people doing and I'm trying to start incorporating into my own business.

So batch recording videos, use tools like caption.ai or InShot to film three to five reels in one go. Add captions automatically so they're accessible and ready to post. Then schedule your posts out. Canvas built in scheduler is great. Then you have the Facebook business manager that also helps you schedule out posts.

And then there's later, plannery, even Notion Social. If you are already a Notion user, you can schedule out posts from within Notion itself using social notion. Sorry, notion social, so there's so many different social media scheduling platforms [00:06:00] out there that you can use and tools.

Then repurposing content is a big one. Like I preach so much about repurposing content because it saves your energy so much. Repurposing content. One blog post into a carousel, into a reel, into an email like I do. The podcast then goes into a blog post into reels, carousels emails.

So don't reinvent the wheel every time. You can take snippets of longer form content, like a podcast, like a YouTube video, like a blog post, and then share that out through the week. Or even over multiple times and then repurpose it again. Let's say three months time, you come back and repost a snippet to drive traffic to whichever long form content you used.

You can also use tools like ManyChat to automate replies and send links to [00:07:00] relevant freebies or products, blog posts or YouTube videos that you do. That's what I, I've started doing on my own things is you give ManyChat a keyword and use that keyword in your caption. For somebody to, let's say I use the keyword handmade, and then if someone comments that underneath that post, then ManyChat will then send them the link to my signature course.

It's a great way of automating it. I can't be on social media every day, all day. Me replying to people that want to know more about my course or want, the latest freebie I've done and sending them the links every time. It's just not sustainable for me. And people want instant replies now.

For handmade sellers you can batch product photos [00:08:00] on, one sunny day. Edit them all at once, then schedule them to drip out over the week. For artists, you could record time lapses of your painting sessions and cut it into three reels. One filming session equals a week of content, unless you, obviously you post a reel every day.

Then. You might wanna do a couple of them.

Now let's talk about admin. I know it's not a sexy part, but definitely the sanity saving part, invoices and payments. If you sell through Etsy or Shopify, you can set up auto reminders for invoices. If you invoice clients directly, try, things like Wave or QuickBooks or even PayPal's, automatic reminders, task reminders.

You can use Notion or Trello or Clickup [00:09:00] ASAs. There's so many. So if you use any of these or you wanna try them out, you can use them to nudge you and set reminders. Send you reminders for like move the needle tasks, so making sure that you are selling every day or doing some kind of task that will get you sales, whether that's sending out an email with your latest product

so you are not keeping it all in your head. Then you have Facebook automations. Set up auto replies in Messenger for FAQs, like, where can I buy your prints? Or what's the shipping times? Do you ship to the us? Do you ship to the uk? Many customers want instant replies these days, so if you can give them their answers quickly using [00:10:00] the automations in Facebook, you are helping yourself massively, or even if.

They send you something and you are literally just sending them the link to your FAQ page on your website, that's fine. It's just a way of responding to people quickly. And if you are an ET seller and you people might have queries around your products

Etsy also does auto replies. You can set them up. So it kind of helps you with your customer service. You are responding quickly or at least giving them some kind of answer so they don't think you're just not gonna answer them.

And then using AI gently and authentically. This one's been a bit of a game changer for me since. AI came out. I use chat, GPT, Gemini, and sometimes claw AI to brainstorm content [00:11:00] ideas, do research, draft outlines for emails or posts research faster. But always fact check AI can make mistakes, especially when it comes to facts and it likes to hallucinate

The golden rule is never use AI generated content as is. I always edit it. I always rewrite it, add in my own voice or my own words. 'cause for some reason, even when it knows me, it still says a word that I would never have used. So you have to correct it. That's what keeps it authentic because it can't know you.

Exactly. You need to still be able to put your own. Personality into it. For example, you could ask for five Instagram carousel ideas for Autumn Art Collections or YouTube videos for your next tutorial. [00:12:00] Then pick two and add your own stories and design them in canvas.

And if you want to dip into paid ads, even on a small budget, automation helps here too. You can set up Facebook or Instagram ads that run automatically to promote a seasonal mini offer, like a holiday card pack while you keep focusing on creating. And you can set a small budget daily or weekly. And just let it do its thing and test and tweak.

And if you are not ready for ads, you can still automate a flash sale, let's say you schedule your emails like a teaser, the launch and the last chance emails. You can schedule them out in your email system. You can schedule your posts around the same dates. You can prep your graphics ahead of time.

[00:13:00] Once, and then you can then reuse them across platforms like create graphic templates that you can just keep reusing

Lessons from my own business. I'll be honest, one of the biggest lessons I've learned is to pick platforms that support automation. I'm still in the middle of leaving. The platform I started with, which was FEA, create, because every time I tried to launch something, I felt like I was climbing a mounting of tech.

The affiliate marketing wasn't automated. Customer support was lacking for those answers, and it just drained my energy. I hunting around for places and then I'd forget to connect something it wasn't as intuitive as it was made out to be. And don't get me wrong, I love Carrie Green and her businesses and I really wanted that platform to work for me and since actually trying to move from the platform, and I've obviously got my new [00:14:00] WordPress website created and I'm still moving stuff over at the time of this recording, FVA creator, bringing in more features now, so it is a little bit like, hmm, should I have just waited?

But at the end of the day, if a platform isn't working for you, and there is a simpler way with more automation, you have to consider, seriously consider it. And I'm not gonna regret moving because at least with a WordPress website, I have much more control. More scalability, and I can decide on what I can add and what I don't want.

Now with my new setup, I've got automation that saves me hours every month. And it's very much more simple once you know what you're doing in the backend, and it's [00:15:00] way easier to connect things. But I am still discovering new workflows I can put in place. I still have my email sequences that automatically go out and I've recently had an influx of sales from a new product I've created it's just so satisfying when you are on a weekend, you are not supposed to be working, but I'm checking my emails 'cause as I do sometimes on the weekend, I will check my emails and I'm seeing.

A new purchase come through and another new purchase come through, and they're receiving the emails to welcome them into my world if they've not been here before, knowing that is set up in the backend is a relief because I couldn't manually send them out.

Even simple automations like batching my podcast edits in D Script instead of Riverside. Will save me hours each month. I still have to get [00:16:00] used to using the tech, which is something I need to do. There's still stuff I need to learn, but it's just making the time to schedule that in to actually learn more features for the.

Platforms I'm using, the tools I'm using to be able to utilize them more effectively, and it's worth it once you actually know how to do something so lovely. Here's your gentle challenge this week. Pick one boring task in your business and automate it or find a way, and to make it even easier, I've created something special.

Download my free cheat sheet. Automate the boring stuff, 10 time saving hacks for creatives inside. You'll also find a special podcast only discount code you can use to grab [00:17:00] any of my readymade templates or resources like email sequences, holiday sales bundles, time saving checklists, so you can put these hacks into action straight away.

that's it for today. Go automate one boring task this week, and then celebrate the time you've just given yourself back until next time, keep creating, keep juggling, and most importantly, keep finding joy in the process.