Template everything!

Let’s be honest: you’re probably spending way too much time reinventing the wheel every day-and so is your team.

In this episode of Automate Your Agency, Alane and Micah get straight to the point. They’re here to show you that templates aren’t just another bland productivity tip-they’re actually the secret sauce behind real business growth and smooth automation.

Think about it: How many different ways does your team answer the same client questions? Why does every project kickoff feel totally different depending on who’s in charge? And seriously, why are you still starting from scratch every single time?

Here’s what you’ll walk away with:

• How shared templates can turn a bunch of scattered processes into a streamlined system everyone can follow
• The one crucial step most businesses skip when making templates (spoiler: if nobody knows they exist, nobody’s going to use them)
• How to upgrade your manual templates into fully automated workflows that actually scale

Whether you’re leading a team of two or twenty, it’s time to stop settling for the chaos of everyone doing things their own way. This episode is your green light to standardize, template, and eventually automate the repetitive stuff-so you can finally focus on the work that really matters.

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Transcript

0:00:00 - (Alane): Welcome to Automate Your Agency. Every week we bring you expert insights, practical tips, and success stories that will help you streamline your business operations and boost your growth. Let's get started on your journey to more efficient and scalable operations.

0:00:18 - (Alane): Micah, I thought we could talk about one of my favorite use cases of automation, and it's utilizing templates.

0:00:27 - (Micah): I like templates. Yeah, let's talk about this.

0:00:29 - (Alane): Okay, so I used to think, you know, templates are in the perspective of, you know, using your project management system, ClickUp Asana Monday having project templates. But I want to simplify the start of this conversation with a template can be used in an email that teams have access to.

0:00:48 - (Micah): Yeah, I mean, honestly, I think we've started thinking about templates for almost every aspect of our business. So, yes, we've got email projects, but even, even with, you know, we use ClickUp. So even within ClickUp, we have project templates, we have task templates, we have filter templates, we have folder templates, we have space templates. I don't know, I'm probably missing some form of other template that we have in there, but we have a lot of templates.

0:01:16 - (Alane): We do, and it helps make things so consistent and streamlined. And one of the things that I remember, uh, when I was on Drew McClelland's podcast last year and he owns Build a Better Agency, one of the way, the way that he said something made me understand why I love templates so much. It's because when you're at a company and I'm going to use you and me as an example, I have the Alane way of doing it and Micah has Micah the way Micah way of doing it. And we have Bo, Bo's way of doing it. But when you streamline with a template, you have a company way of doing it and everybody falls in line with the company way of doing it. And so thinking like that, well, how do we want to communicate to clients Now? Not everything can be templatized with communication to clients, but we can put some frequently asked questions in place. You know, have an email template for when we get asked this question, when we need to follow up this way, whatever it might be, then we're not having to reinvent the wheel every time.

0:02:13 - (Micah): Yeah, it's a cool way to think about it because a lot of times, myself included, I want to jump to how do we just directly automate this? Even hearing you talk about this, I'm like, oh, we could automate this. But the reality is this is the beginning stages of understanding what our Own workflows are what could be templated so that we know what we could automate down the road.

0:02:37 - (Alane): And then you have a standard way of doing it. So if you want to automate an email draft. Well, if you have four different ways of sending an email, then we can't do an automation from it because the template is different depending on the person.

0:02:52 - (Micah): Well, I can guarantee that, you know, if you have a team of more than one person and they're all doing their own things, there's going to be X number of ways of doing things. Right. You know, following up with, with clients. If you have three account managers and it's not standardized, it's not templated, there's no framework, there's not a standard way of doing things, there's going to be three different ways of following up with a client.

0:03:19 - (Alane): Well, I'd argue more because how are you feeling that day?

0:03:24 - (Micah): Yes.

0:03:25 - (Alane): Are you feeling stressed? Are you in a bad mood? Are you in a great mood and you're feeling like you get a free thing and you get a free thing?

0:03:32 - (Micah): Yeah. Or are you tired and you forgot 50% of what you did the day before?

0:03:39 - (Alane): Yeah, exactly. So it's inconsistent even by the person when you don't have things templatized. Because what we remember day to day can be different.

0:03:49 - (Micah): Yeah, I agree. I think the email is a really good example. I mean, that's because you can even put in placeholders. And I think when we get into like project and task templates, we sometimes forget that we can put placeholders because it feels like, oh, this is such a thing fixed thing. When we're just looking at a simple template like text and an email message that could go out to answer a common question that really frames it well.

0:04:15 - (Micah): And I think we have to remember that even a complicated template, like a project that has a hundred tasks is still full of placeholders.

0:04:24 - (Alane): That's a great point. You know, I want to just say how valuable shared email templates are because it's one thing if you have templatized your emails, but another for your other team members to be able to access them and use them because otherwise you're still working in silos.

0:04:42 - (Micah): I would almost argue that that's a requirement for creating a template driven system is that they have to be accessible to everyone who needs access to it. Because like you just said, if one person is using a template and another person is using a template, even if it starts as the same template again, we've seen this time and time again, I'll guarantee six months down the road, 12 months down the road, those templates are going to be different because one of those people are going to go, well, I just make this little change here.

0:05:14 - (Micah): And the other person goes, well, I think we could edit it here. And then suddenly we have all these different templates, and they're not templates for the sake of templating anymore.

0:05:26 - (Alane): Right, right. So I'm always big on email templates because I feel like that's the first step in communication. I mean, if you've got clients, then you have a need for email templates shared across your organization.

0:05:38 - (Micah): Hell, if you don't have clients, you still have a need for templates for getting those clients.

0:05:43 - (Alane): Well, that's. That's true. I mean, for the sales process I have, it helps me be organized and to get back to people efficiently. If I have to recreate everything, then that's time that I'm not dedicating to the new person that we could be working with. And time is a crucial piece.

0:06:02 - (Micah): So here's what's crazy, Alane. We're talking about this, and here's what's going on in my head. I'm typically the systems guy, but I realized I like. I like it because I like building the systems. So I'm actually worse at creating templates than you are.

0:06:20 - (Alane): Oh, I know, absolutely. Because I'm. I want to build templates so that other people can do the work. You build templates because you like building things.

0:06:30 - (Micah): That's right. That's totally right.

0:06:32 - (Alane): So I'm like, what can I template size? That way my team can do execute or I can get things done faster. We're like. But that would take away from building cool things. And the other thing that I do, too, and I'll just pat myself on the back is, please do. I am. Because this is something that I feel that needs to be shared. Because you have a template accessible doesn't mean people know it's there. So if I'm creating a template that I know other team members would benefit from that would find value in having that.

0:07:06 - (Alane): I am a crazy person. No, I'm just really systemized. And my thinking is I take that template and I screenshot it and I put it in ClickUp and I say, hey, team members that I, you know, tag them, which ones would want to be that would want to know about that? This is a new email template that's available in front that you have access to use, and they can see it there. And I'm like, hey, also, would you mind sending me an Email. Using this new email template so you can get in the habit of where to find it and use it.

0:07:38 - (Alane): Because we have too many things going on in our day to remember those things. And so when they have to be a part of the process and you bring them in and you're saying, hey, use it, they're going to be more likely to remember it. Is it going to be flawless? No. Are they still going to forget? Sometimes, yes, but they've been a part of it, so there's more likely a chance they can use it. So that's my pat on the back for something that I do so my team members know that that template is available.

0:08:05 - (Micah): Can I add to that and I'll like virtually pat you?

0:08:08 - (Alane): No, actually not. No.

0:08:10 - (Micah): That's it. That's it. Episode over. Yeah, so. So I think, you know, I like where you're going. I definitely agree. I think there's also a concept of that this is a habit building scenario where you can't just, just like regular delegation, you can't just say, all right, team, here's our new template once. Because tomorrow they're going to forget that template exists. They're going to go back into the path of least resistance, which is exactly what they always do with reinventing the wheel, doing things manually, starting things from scratch, as we know. I'm super guilty of that myself, but it is a habit thing.

0:08:50 - (Micah): So reminding that the template exists, catching when the template isn't being used, and supporting your team and saying, all right, we need to use this template for this situation. That's why they're there, and creating the tools that make it easy for them to find the right templates in the right situation, whether that's the right platform that's using shared templates. For example, we've talked about front a lot on this podcast that's a shared email system that sits on top of your channels like Outlook and Gmail and there's a shared email template system. And it's fantastic.

0:09:29 - (Micah): The other thing that I would say is we're, we're also, you know, we have internally a template library for things like our production team and different things like that. But one thing that I just realized as we were talking through this, Alane, is I've even created a template to promote the templates. So, for example, every time we create a template that our production team can use, I want them to watch the instructional video, the tutorial video that either myself or somebody on the team creates about why to use this template, how to use it, etc.

0:10:06 - (Micah): But in order to make sure everybody knows about this. Like you were just saying, we go in and we create tasks for everybody to watch the video and acknowledge and ask questions and all that good stuff. Well, that setup takes a lot of time. So instead of repeating that over and over, we have a template that essentially when we create a new item in our template library, that automatically adds all the tasks and suddenly we're using a template to talk about templates, which is pretty meta, but works really well.

0:10:36 - (Alane): No, I. I love that. And the other thing that you were mentioning earlier is the evolution of how people can use templates and where they can start off as a template and then it evolves into, well, I'm going to use this, but then I'm going to change everything. At the crux of that is not a true template, then if there needs to be that many edits to how things are communicated, it's outdated or inaccurate would be how I perceive that there shouldn't be that. Yes, you want to customize it. You're not robotic. You know, we're using this as a baseline for communication.

0:11:10 - (Alane): But if there has to be that many edits to it, then it's inaccurate. It needs to be updated. And so how do you keep up with that? And this isn't just email. This is any template that you create has to be maintained. It has to be updated. I mean, I'm thinking about one that I'm working on with my team on the sales automation side, when we bring on a client and we want to make sure that we have a complete system.

0:11:34 - (Alane): Well, as I come up with new ideas and improvements or my team is doing it, we want to make sure we're bubbling that up to the template. And so that's when we make a change, we come up with an idea. You know what, we have a master template that we're going to go back to and update. So any of these templates need to be updated regularly. And how do you do that within an organization? Because you might have originally came up with the idea, your team might have grown, you might have delegated, you might not be in it every day. So I thought, Micah, we could talk about how we've done that internally with our team members.

0:12:08 - (Micah): Yeah, I mean, I'm doing it right now. I've got an update to a production template that I'm working on. And so we have kind of this version 1, but version 2 is going to replace that and there's going to be training and education that needs to go. How do we go from template one? What's better about template two, what changed. So we've got to go through the whole process. We've got to update the template. We've got to announce to the team who you know it relates to that there's going to be a change in this template. The next time you see it, it's going to be different.

0:12:38 - (Micah): We've got to make sure that they understand, you know, that they're aware, not understand, but that they're aware that this change happened and why. And you know, we need them to watch the update videos and different things like that.

0:12:53 - (Alane): Yeah. And, and we really like bottom up ideas. The ones that are out there doing the work and them coming up with an idea for improvement and getting it to the manager might not be one of us. It could be their manager is like, hey, I have this idea. Maybe they don't have the access to updated or maybe we do want to have a validation step. We don't just want anybody going in and changing everything.

0:13:17 - (Alane): So empower the team when they have those ideas or they see flaws to go and have the authority to make a change. How does that process need to happen? Does that need to go to a manager? If it's something in the knowledge base document that needs to be updated and maybe one of the sites changed where you click Lemlist just changed where you access a dropdown. Now it's in the bottom left. Well, if it's that simple, can somebody, anybody on the team, maybe, maybe they can just go and change it. But you need to have that in place or else nobody's going to make the change.

0:13:51 - (Micah): Yep, yep, A hundred percent. I, you know, we see this all the time with clients and with our past business. Once you hit a certain size of employee count or team member size, you're getting in and the people that are doing the work have really, really good ideas because they're in it every day, they're seeing the problems and if there's not an easy way for them to say, hey, what about this? Then management sits at the top and goes, well, obviously I know how things are working, things are working perfectly because nobody's telling me anything different.

0:14:28 - (Micah): And so when you're leading a team, it's easy to think everything's fine, we're just going to keep growing, we're going to keep going. But opening that door and hearing like you're saying, from the people doing the work, making sure that they feel comfortable providing those ideas, that goes beyond templating. But for templates, it's especially awesome and effective and important I think you know, Alane, where you were going a second ago too, which is if there's a bunch of changes to templates.

0:15:01 - (Micah): You know, this podcast is all about how do you streamline, how do you get efficiency, how do you automate. Like I said earlier, I always want to jump to automation. A lot of people want to jump to the automation. Let's just have AI run everything right. We wish. The reality is every single change, every single adjustment that's creating so much extra work. So you want to make sure that you have your stuff working right. Templates are a great place to start because you can start testing the system. You can say, all right, let's just get templates going. Because that's the precursor to standardized automation.

0:15:39 - (Micah): It's just doing it manually, but it's doing the same thing over and over with humans. If you can get that right, then you can go, okay, let's take this. These parts of the stuff that's timec consuming for us humans, and let's automate that, or let's give that to an AI agent to do the work. And then the humans get to be in the loop and approve. But the template is already defined.

0:16:03 - (Alane): Yeah. So, Micah, let's bridge how this as an example, let's bridge all this together. So first, let's start. We're going to build a new client onboarding template and ClickUp with basically, we're just going to start it off in this discussion as a main task with subtask with everything that needs to happen for a new client coming on board. And so that is a great way to start identifying what all you do to onboard clients. So we're going to have that as a template.

0:16:34 - (Alane): It's going to be in ClickUp, and every time we onboard a new client, we're going to use that template. All right, now that's the first step of manually automating, because now every time a client comes on board, we're going to use that template and we know what all needs to get done.

0:16:48 - (Micah): Now all we have to do is go down the list and check off. Did it, did it, did it, did it.

0:16:53 - (Alane): Cool. Yep. You can assign it to the right people that need to handle that part of it. You could have that as part of the template of if the same person handles it every time, it can be assigned out. So now that we've got our template, now how does that process go into an automated workflow?

0:17:10 - (Micah): Well, well. And so I would even say right before that, we need to run that process multiple times. So do it with 10 clients, do it with 20 clients, do it with 50 clients. Whatever makes sense in your context to say, okay, hit the edge cases. You know, we've made the changes, we've made a few iterations. We're feeling solid, like we're bringing clients on. We're not worried about the template. Clients are coming on. This is working.

0:17:39 - (Micah): Then we get in and say, okay, now let's automate it. So a simple automation would be instead of a human creating a new task, with the task template, you have the automation go in and create a task and apply the task template.

0:17:53 - (Alane): Yeah. So what would be the trigger assigned a proposal or one deal in your CRM. Now, instead of somebody manually going in and doing the new client onboarding template, that turns it into the new client, that automatically happens. Because we had a trigger with automation and we had a template for it to go from. So now we've got that part of it with, well, if we had a welcome email for new clients.

0:18:17 - (Alane): Hey, that email can already be drafted from a template.

0:18:20 - (Micah): Yep. Folders could be created in Drive or SharePoint.

0:18:24 - (Alane): You stole the words literally out of my mouth.

0:18:26 - (Micah): That's my job. I get all the credit over here.

0:18:31 - (Alane): So that's where templates are the first step in automation and can really start streamlining things. If not, if you didn't have a consistent way to onboard new clients, you cannot have a systemized automation that it works from. And then one of my other ones that we've mentioned on here in another episode is even our proposals are templatized. Like, if we can, if it's something that we do over and over again, that is, that needs to be a template at its core that can be customized.

0:19:03 - (Micah): Yep, yep. I mean, and that's, that's the crux of scaling and systemizing your business is identifying these areas that are repeated. Creating the template, testing the template, automating the template, and then automating it with today's technology, which is AI and agents.

0:19:25 - (Alane): Yeah. It just reminded me when I said that when I do my speaking engagements, I have like the six things that are prime for automation and one of the six. Or it could be templatized. Yeah. And then bringing in AI and AI agents, then you're having some of the thinking happen for you and not having to be a part of every single part of that process.

0:19:48 - (Micah): Yeah. So if we take our client onboarding example that we were just working through, the end result would be you still need a human in the loop. So likely, unless your welcome email was super templated, likely you're still going to want a human to review that before it goes to a client. If you have your project brief or your client brief automatically generated from a template, given criteria that's coming in from the sales calls, you're going to want a creative director. You're going to want somebody to review that brief, make sure that that's correct before it goes to the team.

0:20:26 - (Micah): But it's shifting the work that we're doing from every single step. Copy and paste creating from scratch. You know, if we, if we just think about where we ended, are ending this episode on this example. Alane to where we started. We started with the concept that everybody is doing something different in their own way at different times, with different messaging, with different, you know, personalities and whatever happened and how they're feeling in emotions.

0:20:53 - (Micah): Two, we're, we have this very structured system that is running that's producing the assets so that we can review and excel. Like the difference in accelerated work. Right. The, the crafting everything from scratch, hoping that it's good. The amount of training, the back and forth, the questions versus let's review this. Is this good? We're talking a 10th, a 50th of the time, which means we can onboard a lot more clients.

0:21:29 - (Micah): And if we don't have more clients onboard, we can do a lot more work for clients. We can focus a lot more strategy on clients, et cetera.

0:21:37 - (Alane): Exactly. It leaves us to be creative and strategic, not just checking boxes and moving data. So if you are trying to figure out where to start and building your templates or how do you even go about building a template, we would love to chat with you and help you start standardizing and start automating.

0:21:57 - (Alane): Thanks for listening to this episode of Automate Your Agency. We hope you're inspired to take your business to the next level. Don't forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and leave us a review. Your feedback helps us improve and reach more listeners. If you're looking for more resources, visit our website at biggestgoal.ai for free content and tools for automating your business. Join us next week as we dive into more ways to automate and scale your business.

0:22:22 - (Alane): Bye for now.