One of the most important resources in a business is founder time; the time used by founders to set the vision of their company and ultimately make the decisions that matter. Too often business owners find themselves doing administrative or boring work instead of building their business to succeed. This big scary word Automation is the big scary word that makes all of this possible. Automation is all about creating systems to reduce the amount of time you put into doing boring stuff, or more simply put cloning yourself. Automation isn’t exclusively about using computers to do the work, even though this is generally the best way to save time. Businesses value generating systems, why not optimize yours?
Any formulaic task can be automated to some extent. An easy first place to look is wherever you use a bunch of paper to store records. For example, if you are tracking employee time by hand you could consider an internet alternative like Airtable to make a simple payroll system. This could give you the flexibility and control to build a sophisticated system with minimal time. By doing so you can have ownership over your system and speed up the processing of records. This advanced online spread sheet can be set up to keep track of work contract documents, hours, specialties and more.
Once you’ve taken the first few steps you’re in a position to start creating the pipelines that will save you hours of time and more importantly can help you develop your business.
The most powerful aspects of automation is getting the right information to the right stakeholders. Imagine you’re doing audit work that requires specific data. You can use an automated system to collect the data you need and generate a report that allows you to move the needle and make better decisions.
To continue developing your business you can create even more sophisticated systems that accelerate your growth. For example creating a marketing engine, a lead generation tool, and content distribution systems.
A marketing engine that optimizes itself helps get new customers in the door and is simpler than you might assume. This could allow you to use customer acquisition as a lever to build your business. Additionally you can get existing customers back into the door by automating your interactions with them through Text Message Marketing.
Augment your marketing efforts with a social media monster that builds your presence online. You’ll can create many posts at once and schedule their posting times ahead of time with Social Media Management tools like Buffer or your own solution using a tool like Zapier with Airtable.
A lead generation system can turn your interactions to sales even faster than you would have expected by moving your customers through your funnels at an accelerated pace. It’s well known that when customers wait they are less likely to buy, a good sales system can reduce that time and get them to buy faster.
Automation is the way of the future. Your business is leaving an dollars on the table if you refuse to adapt to the ever changing ecosystem that is business. While some of these projects are very ambitious, you can super charge your productivity with them and they are cheaper than you would think. While automation looks like a big scary word, it’s really just the next step in your business. I’ve suggested a few projects that can help grow your business. If you are interested in any of these please feel free to email me at julian.moses@hey.com