Managing an $800K Consulting Practice with Just 2 Tools (And No Full-Time Team) with Ashley Rose

"I always say that Airtable is your first team member. It doesn't make sense to bring in a VA if you have absolutely no systems... Having that central place where it's all out of your brain and in one spot with those automations - it's the cheapest team member you can have." Ashley Rose

Managing an $800K Consulting Practice with Just 2 Tools (And No Full-Time Team) with Ashley Rose

Ever wonder how to scale your consulting practice without a huge team or complex tech stack? In this episode, Ashley Rose from Systems Over Stress reveals how she built and manages her business using primarily Airtable and strategic automation. A self-described "systems nerd," Ashley opens up about how her ADHD diagnosis led her to create systems that work with her brain instead of against it – and ultimately helped her build a thriving consulting practice.

But here's what makes this conversation particularly valuable: Ashley isn't just sharing theory. She breaks down exactly how she uses Airtable as her "first team member," managing everything from client experience to launch tracking with just two part-time VAs. She also gets refreshingly honest about the financial reality of scaling, including a recent $43,000 business loan and her journey to more intentional business spending.

Whether you're drowning in spreadsheets or trying to figure out how to scale without sacrificing client experience, this episode offers practical insights on building systems that actually work. Ashley shares specific examples of how she automates everything from sales tracking to content management, and why the right systems can help you make better business decisions.

Highlights:

• Your Systems Should Be Your First Hire - Before bringing on team members, invest in systems that can automate routine tasks and provide clear visibility into your business metrics. A good system is like having an extra team member for just $24/month.

• Data-Driven Decisions Change Everything - When Ashley ignored her data and followed industry trends, her template shop made $23,000 compared to her group program's $422,000. Having clear metrics helps you make decisions based on what actually works in your business, not just what everyone else is doing.

• Scale Without Sacrificing Experience - The right systems let you maintain high-touch client experiences even as you grow. From automated check-ins to progress tracking, you can use technology to enhance rather than replace personal connection.

• Simple Can Be Sophisticated - Ashley manages her entire business with primarily two tools: Airtable and strategic automation. You don't need a complex tech stack to build a successful consulting practice.

Timestamp summary: 

• [00:01:31] Episode introduction - Cindy hosting solo while Jess recovers from Mexico City trip

  [00:02:12] Introduction of guest Ashley Rose from Systems Over Stress

  [00:02:33] Discussion of mastermind group meetups and their value for business clarity

  [00:04:00] Ashley's background and journey with ADHD and systems development

  - Diagnosis in June 2020

  - How ADHD influenced her approach to business systems

  - Introduction to Airtable as a game-changing tool

  [00:06:00] Cindy's journey with Airtable

  - Initial skepticism in 2018-2019

  - Transition to using it for group program management

  - Current usage with 95 automations

  [00:08:04] Core business systems discussion

  - Importance of a central client hub

  - Managing client data and engagement

  - Automating follow-ups and tracking

  [00:11:03] Deep dive into program tracking

  - Using forms to track client success

  - Monitoring program promises and outcomes

  - Automated intervention for struggling clients

  [00:15:47] Sales hub functionality

  - Payment tracking and projections

  - Analyzing offer performance

  - Data-driven decision making

  [00:19:56] Launch hub features

  - Historical launch data tracking

  - Real-time metrics monitoring

  - Content planning and management

  [00:24:48] Content management systems

  - Email marketing integration

  - Content repurposing strategies

  - Database benefits for platform changes

  [00:31:36] Unique system applications

  - Podcast management workflow

  - Hiring process automation

  - Personal use cases (including wedding planning!)

  [00:35:11] Ashley's confession

  - $43,000 Stripe capital loan

  - Business challenges and debt

  - Journey to more intentional spending

  [00:38:46] Closing and contact information

  - Website: systemsoverstress.co

  - Instagram: @systemsoverstress

  - Available services and support options

Find Us Online:  https://www.confessionswithjessandcindy.com/

Connect with Ashley:

Website: https://systemsoverstress.co/ 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/systemsoverstress/# 

Connect with Cindy:

Cindy Wagman Coaching https://cindywagman.com/

The Good Partnership https://www.thegoodpartnership.com/

Connect with Jess: 

Out In the Boons: https://www.outintheboons.me

Transcript:

[00:01:31] Cindy: Hey everyone, it's Cindy and I am hosting today's podcast without Jess, because she is recovering from our trip to Mexico City last week. it's so funny, I thought we were all in the clear in terms of not. You know, just coming through without any stomach issues, but sorry, Jess, she's feeling it today.

[00:01:54] Cindy: as are a few of our other friends. it's just me, but we decided to go ahead because we're [00:02:00] talking about Systems and you all, if you've been listening to the podcast for a while, you know that Jess's eyes gloss over anyways when we talk about that, and we really didn't want to delay having this conversation.

[00:02:12] Cindy: So it is my pleasure to welcome Ashley Rose to the podcast from Systems over stress. Hey, Ashley. Hi! So good to see you. so fun that you guys travel together. That's,so fun. Yeah, so, our listeners should know, because we talk about this a lot, we have a group mastermind. There's six of us, and twice a year we get together in person.

[00:02:33] Cindy: So, we've gone to, Southern California, to New York and Long Island, to, Prince Edward County in Ontario, Canada. And we just, planned we're going to, Boulder, Colorado this summer, I think, and Jamaica next January. So 

[00:02:51] Ashley: yeah, I know 

[00:02:54] Cindy: it's so good and like the clarity and actually this is such a [00:03:00] good lead into the topic because the clarity we get from being together is.

[00:03:06] Cindy: so valuable and part of that, part of my confidence and clarity and decision making this year has been the fact that I've worked with you to get my systems in order and I can look at the data of my business so quickly. To know that like I can match up the vibes of my decisions with the data of the decisions and feel pretty confident in what things look like so and we literally like this is the kind of mastermind where we're like, show me if you show me your systems, I'll show you mine.

[00:03:43] Cindy: Yeah, everyone is pretty nerdy in terms of like in understanding the value of having a I don't want to say sophisticated, but streamlined backend of your business. So first, just introduce yourself. What do you do and how did you get into this? [00:04:00] 

[00:04:00] Ashley: Yeah, so I'm Ashley. I'm a systems expert that specializes in a software called Airtable.

[00:04:04] Ashley: So Airtable is like a database software. It's gonna replace Spreadsheets. I am a systems nerd that uses zero spreadsheets. I'm so anti spreadsheets. If anyone uses the word Google Sheets or Google Forms in my orbit, they get a talking to. But I really just,I am a neurodivergent entrepreneur, so I have ADHD and depression, and when I was first starting my business, I really needed to rely on systems.

[00:04:26] Ashley: I think, quote unquote, normal people can sit down and do a Money Monday and input numbers into a spreadsheet, or, remember to send sales call follow up emails, and, I just couldn't. My brain would be on to the next thing, I would forget, all of those, normal business tasks were just so daunting for me.

[00:04:42] Ashley: And I was diagnosed with ADHD in June, 2020, around when I started my business. And it just gave me this permission to be like, this is a part of you figure out how to work with it. And so I knew I needed to create systems that really worked like with my brain. And when I found Airtable, like [00:05:00] everything changed for me.

[00:05:00] Ashley: I was like everything that I wish I could do with spreadsheets are like, I was an operations manager. I was an organized person, but it was just such a heavy lift for me. Everything changed. Airtable has internal automation, so I could send a follow up email right after a sales call without having to go get into Gmail and get distracted.

[00:05:19] Ashley: Like, all of these things, and what was really big for me was just all the automations of data into one central spot. So all of my sales numbers go into Airtable, so instead of having to do the task of importing them in, I just have to look at the data and make data driven decisions instead of actually compiling stuff.

[00:05:36] Ashley: And that's really, like, I have been The Airtable girl since 2019, really, and every month, every day, I'm learning new things about it and how it can further support me and my clients who just need that data driven decisions, need to make data driven decisions, and, don't want to spend the time, in that manual admin slump.

[00:05:56] Ashley: Yeah,

[00:05:57] Cindy: full disclosure, but I first learned about [00:06:00] Airtable probably around like 2018, 2019, and I was like, oh, cool, not for me, and it really wasn't until I started growing my business into a one to many tool and I've tried a lot of systems and what I found was that I was, I felt like I was losing contact with all the people in my group program.

[00:06:25] Cindy: Like I, I felt like all the data lived in different places and I wasn't sure. Everything had to be my manually thinking and updating of okay, is this person engaged? Is, are they not engaged? Do I need to reach out? Is this payment due? all these kinds of things. And I, people know, I love, cashflow projections in my business.

[00:06:47] Cindy: And like literally every month looking at, okay, what Updating my formulas and all these kinds of things just because the nature of having a group program that was growing. It just felt it felt like it was [00:07:00] stunting my growth. And so when I discovered you, and actually I think someone introduced me to you a few years ago, I want to say it was Rebecca Gremla, but I could be wrong.

[00:07:12] Cindy: That's cool. but. I didn't know how powerful Airtable was until we started working together and I was like, wow,Now you've seen my air table bases. They I think one of them has about 95 Automations built into it. We've reached the cap and I deleted a few but obviously like I would say I mean you tell me in terms of the level of sophistication like I feel like I go above a little bit extra with my Group programs.

[00:07:45] Cindy: So what are some of the core things that we should be, like, build into our business systems, to be able to leverage or look at that data and really have a [00:08:00] handle on, or the foundation to grow, and scale? 

[00:08:04] Ashley: Yeah, great question. So the biggest thing that you need and what you were mentioning in the beginning as a pain point is a central source of truth where every moving piece of your clients live.

[00:08:13] Ashley: So you're talking group programs, but you need like an air table we call a client hub. You need a client hub whether you are an agency owner, you have one on one, you have retainer, you have group programs, masterminds, memberships. If you have clients, You need air table to house all of the moving pieces because there are so many moving pieces you have an Onboarding form that's probably in a Google form somewhere gathering dust you have their payments that are going through stripe or something like thrive cart and those are separate and all of these moving pieces if you have group calls, pre Q& A call submission forms, there's forms, there's, there's just so many moving pieces.

[00:08:47] Ashley: And when they're all in all these different platforms, it's really hard to just pop open a person and see how they're doing. And especially what I've found is, I'm sure my network is like this, I'm sure yours are too, our [00:09:00] clients aren't interested in growing and sacrificing their client experience.

[00:09:04] Ashley: They're like, well, if I have asix figure launch, but all of my clients are pissed that I'm getting bigger because they're getting forgotten about or they're not being taken care of, then that doesn't feel good to me, and I don't want to grow. And with our systems, you're really, your offers get better as they get bigger.

[00:09:19] Ashley: Because Airtable is the only system that can do this. It's a database system, and people try to make client profiles in ClickUp. ClickUp is a task management system, so you're just like, it's square peg round hole. You're using the wrong tool for the job, so you're always going to cap out with it.

[00:09:34] Ashley: With Airtable, the potential is limitless, because there's just so much you can do to customize it. Everybody needs a client profile, and what that looks like is in Airtable you have a little table. it looks very similar to a spreadsheet, and you'd have your client's first name, last name, email, their start date, and their end date, and that's great.

[00:09:52] Ashley: Even a lot of people don't even have that, and the status of if they're active or graduated, just having that visibility is really helpful. But then what [00:10:00] you get to do with Airtable, you get to link every other piece of their engagement. To that client profile. So when they fill out their onboarding form, it's linked to the client profile so you can pop that open and take any client notes and see like when is the last time or when did they submit their onboarding form and Cindy mentioned all the automations that she has.

[00:10:19] Ashley: You can set up automations like. If that client hasn't completed their onboarding form in seven days, since joining, send them an email reminding them to fill it out. So those little things, when you're like wondering, you, when you're small, you're able to keep all that stuff in your head. Oh, Ashley hasn't submitted her onboarding form yet.

[00:10:34] Ashley: let me shoot her a text or let me shoot her a quick email and then see if she can fill that out. You can't do that at scale, but you don't want to lose that intimacy. And so that's what Airtable and our systems really help you do. 

[00:10:46] Cindy: Yeah. one of the biggest things for me was being able to, like you mentioned the onboarding form and that is important and was important for me because I have a program promise and [00:11:00] I want to track, like before I was like, Oh yeah.

[00:11:03] Cindy: most of the, on average it takes three months for a member of our fractional fundraiser academy to get their first client. And I had I don't know, maybe 25 people and I could say that confidently because I literally would create a list and be like, okay, da da da da da has a client, so and so has a client, all of that.

[00:11:20] Cindy: Now we have an onboarding form and I know when someone joins the program, but also they have, we have a, first client tracker form. So whenever someone gets their first client, they fill out the form and we can actually see to the day when someone gets their first client and how long it took them, the value of that first client to them, how long their contracts are.

[00:11:43] Cindy: I feel so much more confident in talking about the program promise. Because I can actually see that it's working and if something happens and it stops working, I know right away. And I can be like, okay, troubleshoot. let's get in there. so [00:12:00] and so's missed their deadline or their goal for their first client or it's been like X number of days after that.

[00:12:07] Cindy: Like, how do I get in and support them in the program so that they can catch up? So that's been a huge, Huge benefit just in terms of, A, again, like standing behind the promise that we make, but also being able to, intervene if people are falling behind. I really love that. Anything you want to add to that?

[00:12:27] Cindy: Yeah, no. I 

[00:12:29] Ashley: just, I really believe that, whatever offer you have, even if you have custom one on one coaching there's not a master result that you're tracking, you've got to be tracking results if you are selling something. And Airtable is really the only software that I've, I know of that makes it super easy to do that.

[00:12:45] Ashley: And like you're saying, having those forms where They get to submit when they've, when they first hit their first client, or if you have a 10 client club, let's say, if you like, once they book their first 10 clients, with Airtable, you can set up systems that say, every [00:13:00] time you book a client, submit the form to us, and Airtable is keeping track, because it's all connected to their client profile, and so they can get an automated email that says, hey, Ashley, Ashley.

[00:13:09] Ashley: Thanks for submitting your client form. You've just submitted your seventh client. You have three more to go until you enter into our like 10 client club. That's the type of level and customization and cool stuff that you can do with Airtable. And that is. Leveling up the standard of offers of coaching programs of service providers, like that type of high touch, high level thing is really I have created monsters, beautiful little monsters, nerdy little monsters.

[00:13:36] Ashley: that's where we're going. And, I think it's just really cool to be able to always be thinking about how can I get my clients better results and how can my systems help my clients get better results as well. 

[00:13:45] Cindy: one of the things.

[00:13:47] Cindy: that our mastermind was just talking about last week was with our group programs, like, how do you create the experience where people continue to show up and take action? And I think this is a big part of that, giving them quick [00:14:00] wins and celebrating their successes and being able to monitor and say, yes, you're on the right path, or here's how I intervene at scale through automation is just, it creates.

[00:14:13] Cindy: A lean growth opportunity, a lot of people probably know this about my business, but it's me and actually get asked this quite a bit, what is your team? I'm like, I, it's me full time. And then I do have two, like I have a part time VA who does our podcast and marketing, and then I just onboarded another part time VA who we're still figuring, she helped me with a summit that I hosted recently, as you know about, and we're figuring out what to do.

[00:14:40] Cindy: what her role is going forward, but the scale and the ability to, Manage that without hiring a bunch and all of that is just such a gift, to me, so. 

[00:14:53] Ashley: Yeah, I always say that Airtable is your first team member. it doesn't make sense to bring in a VA if you have absolutely no [00:15:00] systems. You can bring in a VA only if their goal is to set up your Airtable systems because you don't want to do it.

[00:15:05] Ashley: But like, that, having that central place where it's all out of your brain and in one spot and those automations, like you don't want to be paying air table. I use air table for absolutely everything. I'm on the 24 a month plan. Like it's the cheapest team member you can have and to be able to set up those automations instead of a team member hunting people down for onboarding forums to just be able to set that stuff up, it really helps you be as lean as possible for as long as you can before you do want to hire more folks.

[00:15:32] Cindy: okay. We've talked basically about a client hub, right? Like a group program or client hub where we can track people who are working with us. What are the other, sources of information or hubs, whatever we want to call them that we need, in our business? 

[00:15:47] Ashley: Yeah. So if you launch, I love having a launch hub.

[00:15:50] Ashley: I'm currently in a launch. And what that is another like source of truth for all of my historical launch data. So I have launched this group program I'm launching right now since [00:16:00] January 2022. And I'm able to like, look back and reference how each launch performed year after year. So I can be like, oh, yeah, yesterday was my highest revenue lot like date, like launch date today.

[00:16:12] Ashley: And you get to see all of that stuff. What's really amazing about it, too, is if you do webinars, for example, you can bring like all of your webinar registrants in and you can see over time just like it just really, especially with the launch roller coaster, can really just give you that calm, neutral, data driven decisions of like.

[00:16:29] Ashley: Yep. You actually do make most of your sales on day six out of a seven day launch. Like you're good. Keep it moving. Wednesdays are always slow, like that type of stuff you can really have. And with our launches, there's obviously a lot of content. Even if you don't launch, maybe you're on evergreen, you are probably writing launch emails, doing podcasts, doing YouTube videos, having your content managed inside of air table is really incredible.

[00:16:53] Ashley: It's always been like the, it's just the easiest place. A lot of, Social media marketers are now actually using air table for it as well. So [00:17:00] having your content inside of air table, having your launch data inside of air table, and then having all of your sales. And like Cindy mentioned with the projected payments, air table can do automatic projected payments.

[00:17:11] Ashley: So if you have clients that are on payment plans. It can project into the future those five payment plans when that first one comes through so you can group by month and see what your MRR, your monthly recurring revenue is going to be and that is an absolute game changer for so many of my clients because they have those spreadsheets where they're, add someone in but then if somebody cancels then it's not really up to date and so it's like, kind of right.

[00:17:33] Ashley: You don't want to be kind of right when you're forecasting your revenue. You want to be, you want to be really clear on what you should be expecting and pulling in. And so content, clients, and sales and launches are my main things. 

[00:17:45] Cindy: Okay. I want to come back to the launch, but talk a little bit more about the sales because literally what I used to do in my spreadsheet, my budget spreadsheet is I would say, okay, I would look at all the, I'd say, okay, I have this many people on this payment plan.

[00:17:59] Cindy: And so I would [00:18:00] do Five times, let's say, six thirty, six eighty five plus, and then I have this formula, plus four times eight sixty five plus, every single payment plan and I would create these formulas in spreadsheets and then tweak them, and halfway through the month I'd look and say, okay.

[00:18:18] Cindy: Out of the five, three people have paid, so I changed the number two so I could track how many people, like what the outstanding cash for that month is, and now it's all set out for me in Airtable, and literally shows me what's been paid, what's still outstanding for that month, and what the projections are.

[00:18:40] Cindy: I like, I used to, I still find a lot of comfort in going back to the numbers, but it was so time consuming. Whereas now I can just be like, we cool. I just, I can see it. I love, love, love that for me. And I feel like every business needs something like that. [00:19:00] aside from the ability to look at projections, what are some other insights that we can get from a sales hub?

[00:19:08] Ashley: For me, one of the bigger things, too, is understanding what offers are really working in your business and what aren't. I've done a bunch of different things. I've done VIP days, I've done hourly consulting, I've done group programs, I've done templates, I've done live workshops. And because all of those sales come into one central hub, this is also really important, too, if you have different types of checkout platforms.

[00:19:29] Ashley: For example, we use Thrivecart. For our group programs, we use acuity for our paid consulting calls. There's not a way in our Stripe to really divide that up. Like you don't get that granular, like a visibility and something like Stripe where that centralizes it. So when we have Airtable, we can say, okay, I'm tagging anything that comes from acuity as a paid consulting call, anything that is a Thrivecart group program, tag it as a group program, then I'm able to see totals of you have made, I pulled it up.

[00:19:56] Ashley: Let me see. I have it up here. [00:20:00] sense. 2022, my group program has made me 422, 000, 422, 000. About that's 50 percent of my total revenue. That's really cool to see when I was like debating on, getting rid of my group. Yeah. I was like, all maybe I mean, I did. I got rid of my group program because I wasn't making a data driven decision.

[00:20:22] Ashley: I was so burnt out and I was like, so based on vibes. I was like, people don't want a group program. They're telling me they want templates. So I'm going to build a template shop. And people on threads were saying that to me, but my data was telling me something very different. I'm like, okay. Was like, listen to the people, but I need to listen to the people that pay me.

[00:20:39] Ashley: And so like, I really did last year, I didn't launch my group program almost at all. And I launched a template shop and I'm pulling it up now. My templates made me 23, 000. that's cute, but it's not, that's not group program money. And so now I'm going back to it. I was able to like, make a really grounded decision and say, okay, you tried something not based on your data.

[00:20:58] Ashley: And now you can go [00:21:00] back and make a more grounded decision. But just having those numbers is really helpful. 

[00:21:04] Cindy: Yeah, it opens up a whole lot of conversation about what's selling in 2025. but for now, I want to talk about the launch hub because I don't have the launch hub. I mean, I have the applications for my launch, but I don't see like historically year over year launch stuff.

[00:21:22] Cindy: So maybe this is my next thing. tell me more about like how, what that looks like. 

[00:21:29] Ashley: Yeah. So my launch hub, and this is something too, I always, we actually just rolled out this like seven, seven scalable client system scale, because there are so many systems that you can build, it can feel very overwhelming to be like, I don't have everything.

[00:21:43] Ashley: And you actually just need to focus on what is like the most urgent need in your business? So we have this like green, yellow, red, like rating. So launch hub is just like a nice extra to have that visibility when you're launching, but I'm happy to talk about it. So yeah, our launch hub. Again, central source of truth for all of our [00:22:00] launch data.

[00:22:00] Ashley: So the different phases of our launch, of course, is pre, it's like prep mode. So we are like bringing in what's going to be the webinar bonus? what's what's the angle? we keep a historical like track of all of that. So we can see what was the webinar last year? do I want to tweak that?

[00:22:15] Ashley: So it makes that repurposing easy. so we have that pre planning. We do our content there as well, so we plan out the launch content. We keep track of our webinar registrant goals and our actuals, so I'm always refreshing it. There's a mobile view with Airtable, so I literally pull up my phone. I can see oh, I'm, let's see, we are at 138.

[00:22:33] Ashley: 67 percent over our goal for our webinar registrants for this year, which is like really cool to see. and having that visibility every day. This is also relevant to the sales hub too, as you're able to make decisions day by day instead of waiting until the end of the month or the end of the launch and looking at your numbers afterwards and being like, you can't move the ship when it's already done.

[00:22:54] Ashley: So I'm like, okay, like we need I saw we had 190 people in the last day. I was like, let's see [00:23:00] if we can get to 200. And that just like lit a fire. So those numbers can give you that visibility and that excitement as well. So all of our webinar registrants come in live. And then all of our sales come in live too.

[00:23:10] Ashley: It's like a launch sales hub hybrid. And so we have our webinar goal and we have our sales total. And that is where we can see, we get even more granular there. I know with every client that comes through how long they've been on my email list, like the average amount of time, that they've been on the list, how they heard about me.

[00:23:28] Ashley: So I get really granular in the launch so I can see. 50 percent came from referrals, 25 percent came from threads. Like what are those things that I want to see so I can be better for the next one? If we're launching, we want to make sure we are like looking at our past data because we can rinse and repeat and we can get bigger and better.

[00:23:44] Ashley: And so using your data to help do that, you want to do that. The only real, the easiest way to do it is to have an automated launch hub. I used to be an operations manager for somebody else who did launches. We had a spreadsheet. They'd have to wait on me to like log into Stripe to update the numbers and [00:24:00] da and like I don't have to wait on my team to do this.

[00:24:02] Ashley: It's just all automatically getting updated. 

[00:24:04] Cindy: Okay, I'm in. I need that one next. Because I do, and I have tracked, I have a spreadsheet with my various launches, and I look at, list size, webinar registrants, all that kind of stuff. first day enrollments, mid launch enrollments, last day enrollments, pay in full versus 12 month versus 9 month payments, and all that kind of stuff.

[00:24:25] Cindy: I think I'm ready. I think I'm ready to upgrade that system. Um,which is so awesome. Tell me a little bit about, and this is one that I have and I don't use well. I use like half well as the content hub. So I use it, I'll tell you how I use it. And I actually have your template. So I know that I'm not using the full capacity.

[00:24:48] Cindy: maybe you can convince me why I need to use it. More of it. So how I use it is I use it as a brainstorming hub. So when I'm out and about and I have an idea for an email for [00:25:00] my email newsletters, I will jot down the notes in as a new air table entry of here's a great idea. So for example, I had this little mishap on my flight where they gave me, they printed the wrong boarding pass for me, but I didn't figure it out.

[00:25:14] Cindy: And so I was like on the plane and stuff. I'm like, that's my scene. There's someone sitting in there and then the airline is calling me like, you're checked in, but you're not, where are you? And I'm like, well, I'm on the plane. Oh my gosh. I was like, that's a good story for an email newsletter talking about anyways, the flight attendant looked at the ticket.

[00:25:32] Cindy: She's like that, your name's not like Fred Lim. Like this is the wrong ticket. 

[00:25:37] Ashley: Weird. 

[00:25:37] Cindy: I know. It's so strange. But I was like, Oh, just like someone else's eyes. Looking at something can completely fix the solution and that's happened to me a couple of times and so I was like, that's a story that's a story for my newsletter.

[00:25:53] Cindy: So I wrote that in my content hub under my tab that is like brainstorming ideas and [00:26:00] then I click them off when I use them. That's about all I do right now. I use Kit for my emails and I know that I don't like, They're reporting or it's not robust enough for me to be able to look back and say which are my best performing emails 

[00:26:16] Cindy: I feel like everything else. There's an automation to get data into air table and I've struggled with like, how do I automate getting my emails? In there, or other content pieces, and it feels more manual than I'm used to with Airtable, Yeah. I don't know, convince me.

[00:26:32] Ashley: it's, first, if it's, if, the way that you're writing, I'm assuming, are you like, opening up Kit and writing your email right there?

[00:26:37] Ashley: Yes, 

[00:26:38] Cindy: yeah. Okay, 

[00:26:38] Ashley: cool, yeah, so if you do that, keep doing that, I want it to be as easy as possible for you to get content out. Then one day, if you are watching HGTV or something, and you're like, okay, this is really a, I love to do this like after a launch is if you can go to your launches and you do, this is a manual thing, we get five, someone on Fiverr to do it when your VA is something like just copy and paste the [00:27:00] content, like the subject line, the body, and bring in those three metrics, open rates, unsubscribe, whatever, do it once it is a manual task.

[00:27:08] Ashley: There's some convoluted ways you can automate it, but I don't want to get into that now, but you have to, if you're like, convince me, it's like. The benefits are what is convincing to me because you're not just, you're not just doing it. So you have a centralized database, you're doing it. So for your next launch, you can search the words content hub, and you have every single email you've ever written about your content hub, and you can click repurpose for the next launch and figure out where you want to put it.

[00:27:35] Ashley: So it's really helpful if you're in the habit of. a little bit more than just popping them out, like popping them into kit. You can use the calendar function to schedule to move around the calendar dates. So you can be like, here's all my emails. So even if you write your emails in kit, which is totally fine.

[00:27:51] Ashley: If you grab the edit link and you drop it in. to Airtable, you can still, you can move around the send schedule date as well. So then you, can go back in, [00:28:00] schedule it, and send it. So it really just depends on your process. Everybody's so custom when they come to their content, workflows. I also love to, when you are ready to delegate some of your, social media and your content, I give my team member I write my emails in Airtable because I'm not trying to be an active campaign and mess everything up.

[00:28:19] Ashley: And we have a status that says, ready to, ready to schedule. She gets an email that says, hey, there's an email ready to schedule. Here's the date. Here's the preview line. Here's everything that you need to make that easy for you. And so it's sometimes it's easier,it's like a little more, it helps you streamline when you're growing.

[00:28:33] Ashley: But the biggest benefit for. For you at where you're at in your stage is like just thinking about this is going to be an incredible database for me to repurpose and make my life easier. So yeah, 15 minutes of popping these in for will help will save me hours in the long run. That's like the best convincing I can do.

[00:28:51] Ashley: But I'm also like, if it's not a major systems problem right now, don't worry about it. Like, yeah, all good. but that's been the biggest, like biggest, like amazing things for [00:29:00] me. 

[00:29:01] Cindy: That is such a good point. Like literally my last launch, I have over 150 pages of email copies. So my weekly newsletters, I usually write in kit, but my other I write in Google and then have someone schedule.

[00:29:15] Cindy: So sounds like we might be ready. 

[00:29:18] Ashley: Yeah. So instead of your team member hates a hundred page Google doc, that was like, that's been, that's one of my subject lines in one of my emails is like, it is so annoying to have to say. schedule all those out and to have a record for each of them is really helpful.

[00:29:30] Ashley: And even if in your beautiful brain, if it's easier to write in a Google doc than air table, that's fine. But you can even use like Google's like bookmark function to bookmark that page. 75 is the email that you need to put over in the content hub. and also just as so many of us, I think people have, I have absolutely switched my email list so many times.

[00:29:51] Ashley: If you move off of kit. All of that data is gone. all of your metrics are gone. All of your historical data is gone. Like all that content. So if you want to [00:30:00] repurpose, you can't. And so at least like capturing it and just knowing that if I ever move, this is going to make, it makes you way more nimble too.

[00:30:07] Cindy: Yeah. 

[00:30:08] Ashley: everybody is moving email platforms all the time. 

[00:30:11] Cindy: Seriously, I think I have about five times. maybe not five. But I've definitely done ActiveCampaign, Cartra, and now Kits. There were a couple more before that. I want to say there was one like Rainmaker or something. No, I don't know.

[00:30:25] Cindy: yeah, and the other big piece of that is, I'm increasingly leaning into,custom AI bots and for my writing, and, I know, again, what writing I like and I want to train, so if I'm training a custom bot, I usually say, here are examples of emails that I like, Okay. But what I really should be doing is here are examples of high performing emails that, you should be trained on or what is, what are the content, subject lines that are highest performing.

[00:30:55] Cindy: So to me, that's also like really [00:31:00] important to be able to look at the data. I can see what, what performs in kit, but I can't. Organize it in a meaningful way. 

[00:31:08] Ashley: And if you're doing that, you can export an air table view that has every emails, subject line, body copy, open, Click. Great. You export it as a CSV, import it to chat, dbt and be like, here's my content.

[00:31:20] Ashley: What's and you don't even have to, you don't even have to sayyou don't have to tell it what's the best performing. It's tell me what's best performing and tell me the themes from the ones that are best performing. Having that data is really cool. 

[00:31:32] Cindy: Yeah, I love that. Okay, that's a project.

[00:31:36] Cindy: Um, okay, like I'm curious what other sort of like niche or random things you've seen people do that maybe isn't for everyone, but you'd be like, for example, we manage our podcast in Airtables, so We have, guests submit an, application form, it sends them, automatically sends them a link to book their recording time, [00:32:00] it adds that when the recording is done, I think I actually like manually just note it as done and it sends my VA a link to, the record.

[00:32:10] Cindy: And she puts in like the show notes and changes the status so I get an email being like these show notes are available for you to review. And then eventually we, when I approve it and she finishes it, there's a next phase where it's like it automatically sends an email to our guest. Being like here are your assets, here's the social graphic, da da da da.

[00:32:31] Cindy: So that's how we, that's one that we use, but I'm curious what else. you've seen people use it, again, maybe a little bit more like once you're more established. 

[00:32:40] Ashley: Yeah, I, this is the thing I love about Airtable is that it really can grow with you and it, it can do so many things. hiring is a big one.

[00:32:47] Ashley: being able to put out a job application, accept those applicants, automatically let them know, hey, we received your application, reviewing them, saying, Accept, move to the next phase, invite them to a call, reject, say thanks [00:33:00] so much for their time, not going to move forward with you. That's a process you can set up.

[00:33:04] Ashley: You can do that. We use it for all of our task and project management and like SOP bank collection as well. My team submits their like time reports and weekly reports through Airtable so we can see how much like How their time is progressing. All of that stuff. we have clients who create, databases and directories based on clients who have completed their program promise.

[00:33:27] Ashley: So it's like another feature they can add. So Jamar digs has the low lift club, which he helps clients get, Launch YouTube channels, if they're low lift club approved, they get this, like they're in this beautiful database that he built using air table and an app called softer on his website. That's here are all of the channels that have launched through the membership.

[00:33:44] Ashley: And so it becomes a marketing asset as well. It's and it's just simple, like the client achieved the result. They've said some nice things about me. We put it in the channel, put it in the directory and all that works too. There's that, and then I have three, very niche ones, which are more on the personal [00:34:00] side, but I planned my entire three day summer camp wedding inside of Airtable.

[00:34:03] Ashley: I'm now divorced, but it's not because of Airtable. Airtable made the wedding very smooth. Did that. I keep Oh, all my recipes inside of Airtable and another client who's using Airtable for her business, made a gallery view of all of her daughter's hairstyles that she liked. And so she would take these pictures and then her daughter could look at the pictures of herself and say, which hairstyle do you want to use today?

[00:34:23] Ashley: And it would be like, she would give it to her husband to filter by Easy, medium, hard, like, how long it takes to do. And so, like, that stuff is really cool too, like, links to TikToks to, like, do the instructions. There's truly so many ways that you can use this thing to make your life easier. 

[00:34:42] Cindy: I love that.

[00:34:43] Cindy: That's so fun. Amazing. Okay. Ashley, where can our listeners Oh, I didn't ask for confession. I keep forgetting. one of the things we do with all of our guests is we ask for a confession. Something that we, maybe wouldn't be so open to [00:35:00] talking about publicly, but because we love transparency here, we want to share a little bit of the behind the scenes.

[00:35:07] Cindy: So, what's your confession for our audience? 

[00:35:11] Ashley: Man, my biggest confession. I'm so transparent that like I've said this confession before but like people think I'm killing it And it's yeah sure and I also last year had to take out a forty three thousand dollar striped capital loan It's like those types of things are really important to know and like I'm about to probably have my first six figure launch I had to take out 43, 000 in capital, this year to,to get me through a divorce, to get me through some, really hard times and just, bad business decisions and being in fear.

[00:35:40] Ashley: I was, like, so frozen a lot of the time last year. I didn't know what I was selling, who I was. I thought I should burn down my group program and build template shops and that didn't work. And, overall, it's, I think that's my biggest confession is, I sound, I am very smart. I am a genius, but like business is hard and money is hard and like My confession is like I've got 30, 000 in debt [00:36:00] still like and like that's all business debt like I've gone into debt to build this business and I'm excited for this year.

[00:36:08] Ashley: I think I'll be debt free and I think I'll be like clawing my way out of that. But yeah, man, money is messy and investing and those shiny things of like you need this coaching program to get you to the next level and maybe you did, but my 30, 000 is about how much I spent in, in a masterminds last year, you know?

[00:36:25] Ashley: Uh, and so I think that's overall my confession is like, business is messy and expensive. 

[00:36:33] Cindy: Oh, so true. And literally, having just come back from this mastermind where one of our themes was, like,first of all, kill the darlings. if there's something that, you put a lot of time and effort into and it's not working, let it go.

[00:36:47] Cindy: let it be, right? I think, well, we know there's like sunken cost fallacy and people are reluctant to move on from things, that they've put a lot of energy into, but also simplify. Just like,we don't have to [00:37:00] chase every trend in our business and, just because one thought leader is like, oh, you need a low ticket offer, you need a high ticket offer, you need a group program, you need to make money in your sleep.

[00:37:10] Cindy: You need a business that's making money. Like, first and foremost, let's get the core of the business working, and, and then you can play with the others, the extras and the bonuses, Yeah, 

[00:37:20] Ashley: I am romanticizing profit this year. I think, my, I have spent, my confession is, I did a lot of identity spending, in the last few,the last couple years of, spending 15, 000 on a three day Retreat that was like basically just vibes like I spent 15, 000 for vibes.

[00:37:36] Ashley: I put that on a credit card for vibes and it's no, we don't do that anymore. And I, there is a, there's a event I want to go to, in April that did make me a lot of money last year, but I was like, all right, if you hit 50, 000 in this launch, you can go to that event. But you're not going just to be like, you're not going unless it makes sense money wise.

[00:37:56] Cindy: Definitely. I love that. Is that DL's event? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'm going to [00:38:00] be there, yeah. Okay, yeah. I make 50k 

[00:38:02] Ashley: during 

[00:38:02] Cindy: this month. I'm rooting for you, I'm rooting for you. Yeah. I'm rooting for you. no, I think, I've often, over the course of my business, been like, I want to learn this.

[00:38:11] Cindy: I want to learn that. And this year, I really have scaled back. So I'm in DL's program and, that's it. I'm like, that is it. Anything else, I have a parking lot of ideas for the future, but I'm not learning right now, or I'm not learning multiple things this year. I'm like, really trying to focus and do the work.

[00:38:33] Cindy: So yeah, so helpful. I love that confession. all right, where can the listeners connect with you if they're like, this sounds crazy cool and I want to nerd out and build these systems? what's the best way to find you? 

[00:38:46] Ashley: Yeah, so our website is systemsofrestress. co and that's where you can see the link.

[00:38:51] Ashley: We have a YouTube channel, podcast, Instagram. You can always DM me, shoot me a voice memo letting me know you listen to this. I'm at systemsofrestress on Instagram. [00:39:00] And yeah, those are the places to find us. Awesome. And I should add 

[00:39:04] Cindy: You have a done with you program where you teach more robust than the templates but you also have the, I don't know if you'll still allow for the templates, but you have these sort of teach you how to do things, but you also have resources if people are like, can you just set this up for me?

[00:39:19] Cindy: which I think is really important because I personally like to know how things work, but not everyone, likes all the nitty gritty details. 

[00:39:26] Ashley: Yeah, we have a 12 month systems consulting container, which is like the structure of a group program, has all of our templates and all of support ticketing, and we, you can always book VIP days, hourly calls, so you can, we can set it up for you, but then you have the support ticketing system, so if you're like, this broke, I want to understand how it works, we really meet everybody where they're at, where, in their Airtable, in their systems journey.

[00:39:48] Cindy: I just want to say thank you. It's been game changing for me, which is why I wanted to have this conversation on the podcast. Cause I think it is so powerful for everyone else. So thanks for joining us. 

[00:39:57] Ashley: Thanks so much for having me. [00:40:00]