“What would your day look like if you did less?”
That’s the question a friend asked Joe Casabona back in 2018. And while that person meant “You should say no to more things,” Joe heard something entirely different: “How can I keep doing the same stuff, but make robots do some of it for me?”
(Ha, how relatable is that?)
Since then, he’s automated loads of tasks and spends his days helping others save time via automations as well.
We recently had Joe on the Growth In Reverse podcast to talk through how he decided what to automate, and had him share his favorite automations. I wanted to share that with you here because this stuff is powerful.
Joe also set up this quiz to help you get custom ideas for what to automate.
The Wake-Up Call
Joe has a Master’s Degree in Software Engineering, so he’s been writing code and tinkering with tech stuff for years.
But he had a turning point during the pandemic that really shifted his view on things. Between that and the question his friend had asked, Joe made a list of everything he did in his business and life.
He then drew lines through anything that he personally didn’t have to do, and he started automating everything he could.
For the things he couldn’t automate, he hired a virtual assistant, who is still with him today.
Through the last few years of automating lots of tasks and projects in his business and life, he’s come to discover a few frameworks to help others do the same.
Alright, let’s get into how you can figure out what to automate, and some tools to get started with.
How to Figure Out What to Automate
You’ve probably thought about automating more, but didn’t exactly know what to start with. But if you really think about it, you’re probably already automating certain parts of your life, they’re just so ingrained that we forget about them.
If you do automatic bill pay, you’re automating. If you have direct deposit, you’re automating. It doesn’t have to be complicated.
But we can also be more intentional and add in automations to help with other areas of life.
Joe has a 3-step process for figuring this out.
Step 1: Write Everything Down
Pick a specific area of your business (like your newsletter) and write down EVERYTHING you do from start to finish.
Don’t just say, “I think of what to write, write it, and send it.” Joe says you need to get much more specific:
- How do you come up with ideas?
- Where do you capture those ideas?
- Do you use images?
- Where do you publish the article?
- How do you send it?
- Who do you send it to?
Joe recommends keeping a notebook next to you and writing down each step as you do it. This helps you remember everything AND creates documentation for delegating later.
I also feel like you could record a Loom video of you talking through each step, and then dump the caption into ChatGPT and have it give you steps on how to automate it.
Step 2: Ask Yourself, “Do I Personally Need to Do This?”
Unless it requires your brain or your voice, you don’t personally need to do it. It can be hard to let go of certain things, but it makes room for more important (and exciting) work.
Joe still does sponsorship outreach and guest booking because the relationship side is important to him.
But everything else? That’s all fair game for automation or delegation. At least, so far.
Fun fact: Joe is the only person who’s told me he actually enjoys reading/writing contracts for brand deals 🙂
Step 3: Use the 3-Questions Test
Once you’ve identified tasks you don’t need to do personally, ask yourself these three questions:
- Am I sending information between multiple apps?
- Can it be done with simple decision-making?
- Is the input and output the same every time?
If you answered “Yes” to those 3, congrats, it’s likely a good candidate to delegate.
Example: Getting Feedback
Let’s walk through a simple example of this in action.
Joe has a feedback form for his podcast at streamlinedfeedback.com. It’s a
Let’s apply the 3 questions:
1. Am I sending data between two apps?
Yes. Someone fills out the form in
2. Can it be done with simple decision-making?
Yes. The only decision is to check if they opted into the newsletter.
3. Is the input and output the same every time?
Yes. The input is always name and email, and the output is always adding them to the email list.
That’s it. Simple automation that saves Joe from manually checking his feedback form and copying emails into Kit. And then sending them the free lead magnet.
Okay, so now that we understand what can be automated, let’s talk through the how to automate it piece.
The 4 Components of Every Automation
Here are what Joe sees as the 4 components to all automations.
1. Trigger
This is the event that kicks off the automation.
It could be:
- Someone signs up for your mailing list
- Someone responds to an email
- It’s 6:00 PM in December
2. Actions
Once there is a trigger, what do we need to happen?
You need at least one action, but you can have multiple:
- Send them a PDF
- Add them to a welcome sequence
- Tag them in your system
- Turn on your Christmas lights (Joe does this)
3. Conditions (Optional)
This is helpful to sketch out when there are multiple decisions to be made or conditions where different things happen, vs just one outcome.
- If they joined Form A, send Lead Magnet A
- If they joined Form B, send Lead Magnet B
- If they’ve already joined before, skip the welcome sequence
- If they opted into the newsletter, add them to Kit
4. Timing
How often does this need to run?
Some automations should fire immediately (like sending a promised lead magnet). Others can run on a schedule. For instance, Joe used to have an automation that checked for Help A Reporter Out emails 3 times a day at specific times.
Joe’s “Can’t-Live-Without” Automations
When I asked Joe what automations he absolutely couldn’t live without, he gave me a few super interesting ones.
1. The Podcast Guest Flow
When someone books on Joe’s podcast through Calendly, a bunch of stuff happens automatically:
- They get added to his podcast planner in
Notion - A Google Doc gets created with research notes (shared with his VA and editor)
- The doc gets sent to the guest
- Reminder emails go out (“Hey, we’re talking soon. PLEASE wear headphones.” If you have a podcast, you’ll understand.)
On the post-production side (i.e. after it’s been recorded), it gets even more complex.
- Files get downloaded from Riverside
- The file gets renamed and moved into specific folders.
- When that folder has 3 files (the interview plus Joe’s intro and outro), it automatically moves to the “needs editing” folder.
- Notion updates a status to show the episode is out for editing
- His editor gets an email with the Google Doc and file links
- When editing is done and the file is uploaded to the “production” folder,
Notion updates again - Joe’s VA gets notified to schedule it.
Joe’s exact words: “After I record that intro, I do not see the episode again until it hits my podcast player.“
That sounds like a very nice and calm workflow that I’m extremely jealous of 🙂
2. The Shutdown Routine
At the end of his workday, Joe talks into Whisper Memos (a voice notes app that works with Zapier). He just brain-dumps everything on his mind: tasks, ideas, whatever.
The automation transcribes everything, sends it to ChatGPT with a prompt that says “turn this into a list of tasks,” and adds everything to Todoist, which is his task manager.
Joe used to be hardcore anti-talking-to-your-phone (“people who talk to their phones are sociopaths”), but now he does it constantly. Because it works.
Who’s the sociopath now, Joe? 😉
3 Newsletter-Specific Automations You Can Use
Joe built a couple of automations specifically for this episode. Here are my favorites:
1. Auto-Reply to Email Requests
We all want replies to our welcome emails. And oftentimes we say something like: “Reply with the word TEMPLATE and I’ll send you the free template.”
Joe was replying back to those manually until he realized he could automate it.
He setup an automation that watches his inbox for:
- Emails with “RE:” in the subject line (replies)
- Emails containing his specific subject line
- Emails containing the word “template”
- Emails NOT from his own address (to avoid a weird loop that counts his replies, or rather, the robots replies)
When all those conditions are met, it automatically replies to the email thread with the template.
The key part? Joe tells people it’s automated, including a line like this in his emails:
Hey, thanks for being on the list. As you might imagine, this very email is automated.
Joe says this for 2 reasons:
“It’s on brand for me, but also saying ‘Hey Joe Casabona’ is weird and doesn’t feel personal. So I’m just recognizing that I’m not physically writing this email. But if you respond, you’ll get me.”
2. Tracking Email Subject Lines
This one’s clever. Joe uses Zapier Tables (basically their version of Airtable) to track every subject line he sends from Kit.
Why? Because when someone replies with something nice, he wants to capture it as a testimonial in Senja. But he only wants to capture replies to actual newsletter emails—not random conversations.
So the automation:
- Logs every Kit email subject line in a Zapier Table
- Watches for replies in his inbox
- Checks if the reply subject matches a logged Kit email
- If yes, he forwards it to Senja as an unapproved testimonial
Now, instead of trying to remember to copy and paste testimonials, Joe just reviews them in Senja once a week.
3. The Voice Memo Content System
This is one of my favorites because it’s just so relatable for most content creators. We all have a million ideas swirling around our brains at any given time. So Joe decided to automate the capture process to remove friction.
For this, he uses Whisper Memos with custom trigger phrases:
- When he says “article idea” → Sends to a specific Zap that creates an article outline
- When he says “open threads” → Sends to a Zap that formats it for his open threads series
- When he says literally anything else → Goes to ChatGPT to process based on context
That last one is pretty cool! So if he just starts talking, ChatGPT will help figure out where to save this idea.
He also has a Zap that takes short-form videos, moves them to Google Drive, transcribes them, and sends the transcript to ChatGPT with a long prompt: “This is a video I want to post on LinkedIn. Make this a LinkedIn post. Here are all the parameters. Don’t add anything—only use the exact words I used. Come up with a good hook.”
That all goes back to
Obviously, he reworks it as needed, but he says it gets pretty dang close most of the time.
No more losing any of those brilliant ideas you had on a walk. 🙂
Where to Start
If you’re feeling overwhelmed with all of this, Joe has created a quiz that will recommend specific automations based on what you do and what tools you use.
Go to casabona.org/growth to take the quiz.
He also recommends checking out zapier.com/apps and searching for the apps you already use. You can see all available triggers and actions for each app. It’s basically a huge cheat sheet for what’s possible.
Tools You Can Use
Automations can help make time for more important work, and give you margin and space to think and ideate – two things creator businesses require.
Here are some tools you can use that help with automations:
There are plenty of others, but between those 4, you can do a lot of things.
And again, if you’re stuck on where to get started, make sure to check out Joe’s quiz at casabona.org/growth and/or check him out on YouTube (search Joe Casabona) where he’s posting shorts, long-form videos, and live streams about automations.
For Growth In Reverse Pro members, Joe is doing a session in the community next week to play that Automations Roulette game we were talking about 🙂 Bring your workflows/tools you use, and we’re going to challenge Joe to come up with ways to automate them.
If you’re not a member yet, you can learn more and apply to join us here.
