We invested 💲 0️⃣

If you’re starting a business and money’s tight, don’t go wasting everything on tools that you won’t fully use.

Here’s what you can do 👇

As a marketer obsessed with automation and systems, I needed to start planning and have a strategy in place.

My business partner is an action guy and he started finding us clients…

I immediately got so busy with meetings and attending to the client’s needs that I couldn’t define our marketing strategy.

What I kept doing was creating processes and automation with the little time I had.

Every time I created a new system, the next job got easier and easier.

We didn’t have a budget when we started.

We didn’t invest any of our money. We got paid first and executed second.

So I bootstrapped most of the processes and systems.

Here are the platforms I used to automate our business with only 💲16:

🛠 Aweber (free version) - An email platform was my top priority. The business couldn't afford a paid plan, so I chose Aweber's free version.

🛠 Calendly (free but upgraded quickly to $16) - We started using the free version of Calendly but this was the first tool I decided to upgrade to paid in order to automate.

🛠 Google Sheets (free) - To make an automated list of clients through Zapier (see below).

🛠 Zapier (free version) - To connect all the pieces. (check how below).

🛠 Trello (free version) - For business and task planning.

🛠 Slack (free version) - For communications with external collaborators

I created 3 automations with Zapier:

1. Calendly bookings to Google Sheets

2. Google Sheets to Aweber

3. Calendly meetings to Trello

4. Calendly meetings to Slack with a reminder bot

We’ve since upgraded our systems. And I ended up replacing Aweber with a paid version of GetResponse.