Quick answer: I don't do calls, I don't reply right away, and I use one tool. The stuff that keeps the money coming in, like relaunches and new products, shows up on my plate without me having to remember it. From the outside it might look like I'm just doing less, but it's the reason my business still runs when I'm a full-time caregiver during the day.

Almost everything about how I run my business is built around my autistic brain, on purpose.

I'm Samantha. I'm a systems and operations specialist, and I'm also a mom to a neurodivergent kiddo. I help people like us build a business that still works on the days we can't, because of low capacity, mom stuff, life stuff, whatever you're going through. I help you run your business in the gaps.

So here's what I stopped doing, what I built instead, and what it's earned me in my business and in my actual life.

You can either keep reading or watch the video:

How to run a business without calls: what I stopped doing

The first thing I stopped doing was live calls. I used to have a lot of them: discovery calls, plus weekly, monthly and quarterly calls with each of my OBM clients when I was an OBM.

And for me, a call is never just a call. I need time to mentally prepare beforehand and time afterward to recover. So one call can really take a whole day of energy, and that's energy I can't spend on other things that need to get done. On top of that, I have caregiving to do for my daughter, so it just wrecks everything really.

I even hired my most recent VA without a single face-to-face call. We did the whole thing over voice messages, and it worked out really well for both of us. (I shared more about how I hire without second-guessing myself here.)

The second thing I stopped doing was being available all day. I used to reply to client messages within the hour, sometimes within minutes, because it felt like the right thing to do. Coming from a traditional job, that's what I was used to. You just have to always be available when you're working. And I'm at home, my computer's right there, my phone's right there, so I guess I should reply, right?

But then I learned: hey, I'm running my own business. So I set up reply windows, and nothing fell apart. I go deeper into that in why I stopped trying to be available all day.

The third thing I stopped was measuring my day by how many hours I worked. Now a productive day is one where something went out into the world, or something kept selling, or something moved forward without me hovering over it. Some of those days, I only work for a really short window, because I'm a caregiver and my main job right now is caring for my daughter. I love my business, but I love my daughter more.

If any of this sounds familiar, or like something you want in your business but you have no clue how it would even work, that's exactly why I'm starting something new called Simply Supported. It's for people running a business in the tiny gaps: moms, ADHDers, caregivers, anyone running on low spoons or low time. Every week you see how I actually run my business, you can send me the thing you're stuck on, and there are tools and templates ready for the days you can't build anything. I'm only opening it to a small group of founding members through my email list, so if that sounds like you, hop on the waitlist. No pressure ever.

What I built instead

None of it is fancy. It's all built so that the version of me on a hard day doesn't have to think.

Async support. Text, voice notes and Tella videos. People get what they need, and I get to answer once I've actually thought it through. When I can listen to someone's voice note and make notes first, they get my better-organized thoughts instead of me fumbling on a live call. I also just need time to think about my thoughts before I say them. Once, in the middle of a client's support day, my daughter's school called and I had to go pick her up, but the day just kept going. It was totally fine.

One tool that passes the low-day test. My favorite test for any tool is: can I open it on a low day and know exactly what to do next? For me, that's Asana. If a tool feels overwhelming, or you open it and can't tell what's next, that's a problem with the tool or how it's set up. (More on that in the 3 questions to ask before you pay for another app.)

A rhythm I don't have to think about. Every quarter, I plan out the new products and relaunches for the next quarter. Every month, I plan the important tasks for the month ahead. Every week, I schedule the next week's content on Thursday or Friday, depending on my kiddo's school schedule. And every two weeks, I batch my YouTube videos. Same rhythm over and over, so I'm not making a bunch of new decisions every week.

Things that show up on their own. This is my favorite part. When I set a relaunch date, the tasks are already templated out, and they automatically start showing up two weeks before the promo. I just choose which date it's going to be, and Asana assigns me the tasks relative to that date. So I don't have to remember to schedule any of it. It just pops up in My Tasks and I just do it. New products work the same way: I pick the launch date and all the dates get added for me.

So on a hard day, I'm not sitting there trying to figure out what needs to happen for a launch. Past me already figured it out. I just open it and do the next thing.

Not sure which part of your business to set up first? My free Systems Audit Tool shows you where things are slipping through the cracks, so you know where to start.

Things that run without me. My checkout, my funnel, how people buy and how they get what they paid for. I set that up once on a good day so it works on the bad ones. (I talk more about this in the 3 things that kept my business running when I couldn't.)

If you keep saying you want to set it up and not have to redo it, this is what that looks like. You don't need more willpower. You just need a setup built for your worst day instead of your best one.

What it's changed for my business, my clients, my family and me

For my business: client work is still my biggest income stream this year, but digital products are right behind it and creeping up close. Digital products are the part of my business that sells without me sitting at my desk, and that's only possible because I stopped spending my time on calls and instant replies and put it into creating products and content instead. Don't get me wrong, I'm still lovely to my clients. It just doesn't run my life.

For my clients: here's something interesting about my autistic brain. Prioritizing and working efficiently have just always come naturally to me. I look at a pile of stuff and know what matters and what order it goes in. But a lot of my clients have ADHD, and that's exactly the part they struggle with. They're so great at so many other things that I'm not great at, but deciding what comes first, setting it up and sticking with it is where they get stuck. So my brain is good at the part their brain finds hard, and that's why this works so well. I can do that part for them or with them, and build it in a way that still fits how they think.

For my family: I'm my daughter's caregiver during the day. These days I'm by her side most of the day, and the business just keeps running. My business looks smaller than it could be, but that's on purpose. My daughter needs me right now, and she comes first.

For me: I've been able to save a ton of time and mental energy. That time and energy doesn't go into some fancy self-care routine. It all goes to my daughter. But because my business doesn't need me at 100%, I can actually be there without feeling like everything's falling apart behind me.

One question to try this week

If you freeze every time you open your laptop, or the thing holding you back is time and energy, think about your worst day. Could you do this task without deciding anything? If not, that's the one to set up first. It doesn't have to be everything at once.

Questions people ask me

How do I set it up so I don't have to redo everything later?
Template the things that repeat. When I set a relaunch date, the tasks are already templated out and they start showing up two weeks before the promo. New products work the same way: I pick the launch date and all the dates get added for me.

How do I manage day-to-day tasks without overthinking it?
Let the dates do the remembering. My tasks just pop up in My Tasks and I do them. On a hard day, past me already figured it out, so I open it and do the next thing.