automate Archives - Page 23 of 30

February 22, 2021February 22, 2021

8 Things You Should Outsource in Your Business

As you learn more about business automation, it’s important to realize there is another way to automate your business, and that is by hiring someone else to do the work for you. Hiring experts to deliver work for you on your behalf is called outsourcing.

You can outsource to contractors, or you can hire employees. It’s up to you and depends on the type of business you want. Outsourcing to contractors allows you to hire experts for parts of projects without keeping them on payroll long term and is focused just on deliverables. In contrast, hiring employees puts you in charge of their time and gives you the ability to direct them more closely.

Legal Work – Most small business owners will not hire a legal person to work on their team as an employee. Instead, they hire a law firm on retainer and use them only when necessary. If you do have a lot of contracts and other needs for a legal team, this is your best answer to those annoying legal issues. It’s also nice to have someone on call that you can ask simple questions of and check over contracts.

Finance – Most small business owners can save a boatload of time, stress, and money if they find someone to help them with taxes, bookkeeping, payroll, and other issues with money and accounting. You can hire a bookkeeper, a CPA, an EA, or even an admin person to do the data entry to help remove some of these responsibilities, but this is where you really do need an expert, at least at first.

Technology Needs – Most small business owners hire people and use automation technology when it comes to their websites. Building websites, using automation software, and all that technology really does need someone who understands it all in a professional sense.

Marketing – Whether it’s social media marketing or some other type of marketing, hiring an expert will pay off. Experts know how to use the software available and know all the tricks of the trade to ensure the process works. When you outsource marketing, you free up time to do something you’re more knowledgeable and skilled at doing.

Graphic Design – Giving a designer ideas for your graphics is so much easier than trying to design them yourself. Even if you think you can deliver good ideas using software like Canva.com, it’s not going to be as excellent as an expert can make it, and letting someone else do the design will save an enormous amount of time.

Customer Care – No business owner should be handling their own customer care because it’s just too hard. You’re too close to your product or your service, and it’s too easy to get upset about issues. But an expert can help set up your customer care in a way that takes it off your plate for a lot less than you may realize.

Administrative Tasks – Track the admin tasks you do every day, and you can likely save a few hours a day if you hire a virtual assistant to do the administrative stuff all business owners have to do. Whether it’s managing events, performing personal errands, or other tasks as directed by you, this is a substantial time saving and can really turn your business on like nothing else.

Writing – Your business needs a lot of content for customer education, product information, and so forth. Whether it’s blog content, article content, sales page content, or internal content, a professional writer can help you with it.

Whether sales, marketing, finance, accounting, customer service, or helping manage a team, you need to outsource in your business. You may not have enough resources to outsource it all right away, but you should consider creating earning benchmarks that signal the time to outsource the task. When you outsource more, you free up your time to focus on what you do best.

February 22, 2021

3 Reasons to Automate and Outsource

As a business owner, it’s important to understand what your expertise is. If you’re spending time in areas that you lack skills or information, you may be making mistakes that you don’t even realize you’re making while sacrificing what you are good at doing.

When you understand the core business, you will know what you sell, who you’re selling it to, where your buyers are, and how to find them. You’ll also know how you’re going to distribute the product or serve the customer. Additionally, you know how you stand out from the competition, and you use that to your advantage by differentiating yourself in the marketplace.

Remove Bottlenecks

When you start to automate and outsource tasks in your business as you develop each process, you’ll start to notice that bottlenecks are a thing of the past. Because the truth is, in most small businesses, especially those run by people starting them from home with no business experience, the bottleneck is the business owner.

Sometimes lack of skill causes the roadblock. Sometimes they just lack desire or energy because everything becomes so overwhelming. But whatever the reason, if you are engaged in organizing and planning as business owners should do and focused on automating and outsourcing, ensuring that others are responsible for doing, you’re going to get more done.

Reduce Errors and Mistakes

When you work with software, fewer mistakes will happen once you set it up correctly. Even outsourcing to an expert will ensure that mistakes and errors are less likely to happen. The main reason is that you’re going to use software that is tried and tested, and you’re going to hire people who are experts.

The truth is, hiring experts or using automation software can reduce your errors and mistakes so much that the cost will produce an amazing return on investment. You’d probably spend a lot more time worrying over the issue than your customer service expert or the automation software will. But you’ll get superior results in the end.

Setting Boundaries: It’s Not Selfish to Go After What You Want

Spend Time on Higher Value Projects

This is the biggest reason of all to automate and outsource. Focus on your primary business, which is the core of your businesses’ existence. As a business owner, while you may need to do things in your business as a job, once you reach specific benchmarks, you should hand those tasks off to machines or to experts so that you can spend time on projects that produce a much higher value for yourself such as business planning and idea generation which is the key to business growth.

You live in an amazing time to be a business owner. You can find plenty of technology to implement in your automation plan and plenty of people to hire in your outsourcing plan. Figure out what you want to do, set your goals for doing it, and then follow through.

February 22, 2021February 22, 2021

How to Do More with Less

Many folks in western society have been taught by word and deed that being busy makes them a good person. The truth is, being busy does not mean that you are productive. You can be busy doing the wrong things. Getting more done with less implies that the impact you make is more significant than your effort.

Some ways to get more done with less:

Understand your key objectives – For any task, what is the point of doing it? Does this task actually impact any of your critical business objectives or the objective of the one task?
Automate – If you can document the steps you do for a task, you can likely automate a lot of it. From using macros within your documentation to implementing new automation tech, there is likely a way to do it.
Outsource – If you cannot automate it, you can likely get someone else to do it for you. As a business owner, you should actually make it your goal to outsource or automate almost every task in your business, with few exceptions.
Batch tasks – Once you’ve figured out what tasks you really do need to do, batch things together that make sense. The fewer steps you can take, the better. For example, if you need to do bookkeeping, save all your booking entries to do one day a week instead of doing it daily.
Avoid multitasking – When you are doing a task, do that task. Don’t do anything else that will take away your focus. No human really can multitask anyway.
Create realistic schedules – When you write your tasks into your calendar, it should make sense. If a task takes four hours, you need to ensure you really have four hours and not one. For example, include set up time, drive time, and all the time needed to finish the task as scheduled completely.
Do the hard things first – If there is one thing on your list you really don’t want to do, but you cannot eliminate it, automate it, or outsource it, get that out of the way first thing.
Track your time – When you first start doing things, it helps to track your time so that you stay mindful of how you’re spending it and so that you know how long any given thing really takes you.
Focus on money-making tasks – Note which tasks you do that generate invoicing or money in your pocket. These need to be done first thing.
Cut distractions – Set up your workspace to eliminate distractions and interruptions. Turn off notifications, your phone, the TV, or anything that can take your mind off what you are doing.
Use the right tools – Don’t skimp on investing in the tools of your trade. If a tool exists to use that helps streamline your business and eliminate busywork, you need it.
Know your top five – Everyone has off days, but if you create a list of the top five money-making must-dos for a basic day, then even when you have issues, you can focus on those top five tasks.

Remember that being organized in your business is part of what a business owner does. Business owners reduce risk in their business by organizing, planning, and generating new ideas that create new opportunities.

February 21, 2021February 21, 2021

What Do You Do All Day?

As a business owner, you have a lot on your plate. But, in order to figure out how to automate your business, you first need to know in detail what you do all day long so that you know which tasks can be automated, should be automated, and even whether it’s something you should be doing at all.

In every business, you will have daily tasks, weekly tasks, monthly tasks, and even yearly tasks or quarterly tasks. The best thing to do is to get out a calendar and enter the items you know you have to do.

For example, you have to pay quarterly taxes, and you have to balance your books at the end of the month. You must buy a business license each October or January depending on your location and the rules and laws in your area. Whatever it is that you know for sure has to be done, enter it into your calendar, blocking off the approximate time it will take you to do it.

But there are also the daily things you do that generate your income. When it comes to generating income, it’s essential to specify which actions you are doing that generate income and which actions you’re doing that support generating income. Go through the steps you take in your day and write down what you’re doing, step by step.

What’s Your Job as The Owner of Your Business?

Coaches Example

Ø Business: Coaches retired teachers starting a second career as independent course and project designers.

Ø Morning: Checks the mail, email, and Trello to find out if there are any fires to put out this morning before paying any bills due for the day. Calls her group coaching clients for the weekly hour Zoom group coaching session. Writes 7 product educational and nurturing emails for a new one-on-one coaching product to market to her group coaching clients.

Ø Afternoon: Records part of an online course in development. Transcribes the group call and sets up her part as a standalone presentation video.

Ø Evening: Answers coaching client questions for those who signed up to receive daily emails and schedules them to be delivered in the morning.

As you can see, this is just one day out of an entire year and is not representative of all the money-making tasks this coach does, nor is it a complete picture of what happens in the business overall. But it does give you a great idea about where to start automating and even outsourcing. Once you see what you’re doing visually written out, it’s a lot easier to figure out places that you can improve your process. Take the time to write out every process you do each day that you do them. Once you’ve documented the different activities you do each day, you can identify what needs to be perfected and then automated or outsourced or both.

February 18, 2021February 18, 2021

What’s Your Job as The Owner of Your Business?

As a small business owner, you probably think that you have a lot of jobs to do. Some people like to describe the job of a business owner as one that wears many hats. As the saying goes, sometimes you have on your salesperson hat, sometimes you have on your finance hat.

It depends on what is happening what your job is at any moment. However, your main job description as a business owner is to plan and organize the daily operations of your business.

On any given day, you may be responsible for:

Developing your business plans
Arranging financing
Hiring staff or contractors
Reviewing sales
Developing marketing strategies
Overseeing daily activities
Identifying opportunities

All of these jobs represent your main function as a business owner, which is managing your risk. In each of these jobs, you really don’t physically do anything other than analyzing what someone else did for you, whether it’s automation or human.

Therefore, when you realized that you don’t need to physically do the tasks that you design, your job as a business owner becomes a lot simpler and can be boiled down to risk management.

When you realize that your job as a business owner is really one of risk management, it becomes a lot clearer what your main function is as a business owner. Realistically, you may have to wear a lot of hats at first, doing the tasks defined for each, — but it’s your choice to do the projects yourself or not as a business owner.

In fact, one can argue that it’s best for a business owner not to physically do the tasks that don’t require them since you only have so many hours in the day. It’s always, or should always, be less expensive to outsource or automate where you can. But you do have to start someplace, and most small business owners start out doing all the tasks themselves.

In any case, it can help to understand that finding and setting up automation in your business is one of the roles you play as a business owner. By doing so, you’re going to reduce risks associated with your business because you’re going to ensure those tasks get done in a timely fashion by someone (or something) who knows what they’re doing.

The more you can automate, the fewer things you have to outsource, and the bigger and better you can build your business because you’re going to free up your time to do more of what an owner does instead of the tasks involved in each area. After all, one of the reasons you started your own business is so that you can have more work-life balance, right?

One can argue whether the idea of balance even exists, but it’s clear that if you’re doing the job of 10 people, it’s hard to find that time freedom, much less anything resembling balance. In fact, you’re very likely to get burned out if you’re a small business owner who thinks that you have to physically do everything in your business. Instead, realize that part of risk management is to find ways to free up your time so that you can devote yourself to discovering new opportunities for your business.

February 18, 2021

What’s Your Customer’s Buying Journey

One of the first things you need to learn about your business is your customer’s buying journey based on the sales funnel. Big businesses like to call this their customer relationship management pipeline. They tend to use a few basic pipeline structures that follow their customer’s buying journey from awareness to delight.

The truth is that no matter what type of business you have, the basic sales funnel is the same and defines the buyer’s journey.

Awareness
Interest
Consideration
Decision
Delight

Map your customer’s potential journey so that you can visualize where you need to place touchpoints. For example:

Awareness – Sync your favorite apps such as Google Sheets, Aweber.com, and other apps using software like Automate.io or Zapier.com to deliver the right content at the right time based on the customer’s behavior.

Interest – Automatically deliver email subscribers content that teaches them about the products and services you offer via your email software as well as your website using auto sequences and conversational chatbots.

Consideration – This is when the buyer really wants what you have to offer, and it’s your sale to lose or gain. You can automate content delivery that asks for the sale, such as delivering a free webinar to them. Using the right software, such as offered by HubSpot Automation and others, you can even let the software generate new one time offers based on their behavior.

Decision – Depending upon the type of business structure you have, whether it’s a course or a physical product or not, you’ll want to help them make the choice to buy by setting up automated discovery call appointments. You can synchronize your website with scheduling software like Acuityscheduling.com to let your customers schedule their own call.

Delight – Finally, you can create a whole new funnel to use during the post-purchase stage in order to elicit customer delight. When you delight your customers, they’re going to make more purchases and recommend others to you. One way to do this is to automate the onboarding of new customers so that they receive enough information to want to stick with you.

People add different steps along the way to each of their funnels based on the path the buyer likes to travel on their buying journey. Each step is a chance to streamline and automate part of the process. To make your customer’s buying journey successful, you’ll hopefully lead them through the entire process past the point they decide to buy your product to include customer delight, loyalty, and advocacy when it’s appropriate.

February 15, 2021February 15, 2021

What’s Your Business Type?

Do you have a store where people purchase products, or do you offer a service like coaching?

Maybe you offer courses and classes, or you provide customer support or something else entirely? Whatever you offer, how you have structured your business is vital to determine before you start your automation plans.

If you have an online store that people come to in order to purchase products from you, the way you automate and run your business will be very different from the way someone who offers courses or one-on-one personal services does.

So, consider what your business type is.

Online Store

If you sell any type of product, whether it’s physical or digital, with a shopping cart, you have an online store. You may be selling books, content, and even courses if you’re selling them as a product without your extra coaching and input. Essentially if you sell anything online in a shopping cart, you have an online store and can use a lot of automation tips for online stores.

Virtual Services

If you sell any type of service, administrative, one-on-one coaching, and so forth that you perform at a distance, using your website as your storefront, you are a service-based business. As a service-based business, you’ll organize your business and market yourself differently from an online store where you don’t speak to the customers directly yourself and sell products directly.

Virtual Support and Consulting

You may also offer only virtual support and consulting without offering direct service. For example, you may coach your clients to create a sales page, set up a freebie, set up a discovery call, but you don’t do it yourself, you simply advise them on what to do, and the client with their team does it. This is an entirely different business structure than a business that does the services directly or delivers the product directly.

Virtual Training

If you offer classes and “how-to” information to your customers via courses, classes, and content, you have a business that provides classes either self-paced or teacher-led this is a training business. A training business sometimes needs more personal input and engagement than a storefront that just sells the complete self-paced course.

There are numerous opportunities for automation in each of these business structures. But first, you need to write it down. What does the composition of your business look like? What do you do for customers and clients, and how do you do it? Is it hands-off or hands-on, or a combination of both? The more you can document how your business works, the easier it will be to find ways to automate and outsource.

February 10, 2021February 15, 2021

The Fundamental Parts of Your Small Business

The first thing to think about when you seek to make your days more manageable and more effective is the parts of your small business. What parts of your business are essential to your success? For each business, you’ll need to look at your own situation to determine it, but this can get you started.

Human Resources – If you hire or contract out to others, you’ll need to concern yourself with setting up, organizing, and managing all your HR. Having some knowledge of this even if you think you’re going to do everything yourself is essential because you should not do it all yourself, and there are laws to consider.

Accounting and Finance – Every business must figure out how they plan to keep track of income and expenses and set up benchmarks for planning purposes. There is a lot you can automate in this area too.

Marketing and Advertising – No business can exist if they don’t get the word out about their solutions.

Production – If you have a product, whether physical or digital, the product has to be produced somehow. Much of production can be automated depending on the type of products you have.

Information Technology – Most small businesses today do have to deal with technology in some way, which means you need to have a general understanding of the technology available in your industry to help you manage and do your business.

Operations – The inner workings of your business are ripe for automation. It doesn’t matter if you sell products, manufacture products, or perform services, someone has to be in control of this work, and that’s typically the small business owner because they don’t typically hire managers, but you can.

Customer Service – Even if you only serve five customers a year, you need to focus on customer care in order to keep your customers happy. A lot of this process can be automated too.

Purchasing – This is a department that will often fall to the owner of a small business but exists as a separate department in a large business. In this department, you’ll want to figure out what the business needs, how much, when, and negotiate better prices, and so forth.

Legal Department – This is one of the first areas to go for a small self-owned business, but it is still important to acknowledge this area. You always want to make sure what you do is legal and follows the laws.

Business Development and Growth – This includes sales, marketing, project management, product management, and more. If you focus on business development, you’ll focus on how you can use what you have to expand your audience and make more money.

While in general, all businesses share the same fundamental parts, some businesses, especially home solopreneurs, may place importance on different parts depending on their goals. But these potential fundamental parts of your small business bare considering so that you can create a solid automation plan.

February 4, 2021February 4, 2021

8 TIPS TO BRAVE THE WEATHER WHEN WALKING

The thing that often puts roadblocks in people’s way when it comes to establishing a firm walking routine is the weather. These tips will help you navigate and plan for that happening – because it will happen. That way, nothing gets in your way. Remember, if you have a plan you can implement it.

It’s Raining

When it’s raining and wet outside, it’s tempting to say you’re not going to walk out there. Certainly, you don’t have to – you can walk in a mall, at a gym, and in other indoor areas if you want to. However, walking in the rain isn’t generally unsafe.

It’s essential, like any other time, that you dress for the weather. If it’s raining, wear rain gear for walkers so that you can still use your hands to protect yourself from a fall. You might be surprised that walking in a gentle rain when it’s above 60 degrees F outside can be fun.

It’s Snowing

One issue with snow is the cold and the potential for ice. Check the weather to ensure it’s not too cold, and there are no warnings about dangerous cold. Even if it’s at freezing doesn’t mean you cannot walk if you have the right clothing and shoes on.

Take shorter, smaller steps to avoid slipping, and wear the right gear to protect you – including the correct type of shoes and outerwear to protect against wind and wetness in order to keep your body safe.

There’s Ice Out There

One of the times you might want to consider skipping walking outside is if there is ice or there is a significant wind chill factor. If you do find yourself walking on ice, it’s important to take smaller steps that are more like marching than walking normally. This will help you avoid slipping.

It’s Hot as Heck

When it’s hot outside, you can still walk. However, it is important to understand that there are times that it’s best to stay out of the heat. The main thing about heat is to ensure you wear the right clothing as protection, are drinking enough water to stay hydrated, and that you protect your skin and head from the heat.

It’s So Humid

Walking when it’s humid will make it feel much hotter and less comfortable, but you can still do it. You may need to walk slower, drink more water, and take more breaks. Wear thin cotton clothing so that it helps wick away the moisture from your body so that you can avoid chafing and blisters on your feet. Consider taking a change or two of socks for a longer walk.

There Is No Humidity

While it’s always more comfortable outside even in hot weather when there is low or little humidity (as in the desert), drinking enough water is even more important. You should wear clothing to cover your entire body and your head to keep cool, plus plan on taking at least a gallon of water with you for each hour you plan to walk. You need way more than the eight glasses a day in this type of climate; in fact, you may need up to 30 cups of water.

It’s Cold Outside

If it’s cold but not snowing or raining, walking is a good thing to do. If it’s not too cold to be outside safely (look at your local weather information), you can walk like you usually do even if it’s down as low as freezing if it’s not too windy or bad weather. Dress appropriately and you’ll be fine.

It’s Just Not Safe Outside

If you have determined it’s just not safe for you to walk outside, or you simply don’t want to due to the bad weather, you don’t have to. You can go to a gym with an indoor track, the local indoor mall, and other indoor areas to walk, including a treadmill in your home when needed.

Walking in inclement weather is not hard to do. You simply need to dress accordingly and take enough water with you to keep yourself hydrated and healthy. If it’s too uncomfortable, you can do just as much walking inside if you prefer.

February 4, 2021

6 TIPS TO CONSIDER WHEN POWER WALKING

Speed walking, power walking, race walking… These are terms that describe walking very fast without running or going into a jog. The main reason for speed walking over running and jogging is the damage that running can do to your body. Speed walking is a low-impact way of exercising that enables you to get more out of your walking workout.

Here are tips to follow if you are a beginner to make sure you get the most out of this type of walking.

* Stay Hydrated – Start your walk hydrated and then drink small amounts throughout your course. Don’t over hydrate yourself by drinking too much, but keep a keen eye on the amount of fluid you are ingesting to ensure your body stays optimally hydrated.

* Your Posture Is Everything – When you are speed walking, it’s imperative to keep your posture correct. If anything hurts, you may be doing it wrong. It can help to have someone checking in with you. Your spine should be straight, you should not be leaning forward or backward, and you should look straight ahead (not down). Keep your chin up so that you can reduce pain on your neck and back.

* Keep Your Form – The way to walk when you are speed walking is different from your standard walking form. You need to relax your shoulders, keep your spine neutral, and keep your core tight. Ensure that you take natural strides that cause you to roll from your heel to your toe, giving you lift from your toes. When you want to go faster, don’t make your strides longer – just quicker.

* Wear the Right Shoes – You still need walking shoes that fit you well. It can help to go to a real shoe place to get fitted correctly with the right type of walking shoe. You also need to replace them every 300 to 400 miles of walking to ensure proper protection.

* Start Small and Add Daily – Don’t try to start speed walking 10,000 steps in one day. Instead, work your way up to it. You can add some speed walking into your daily walk for a minute or two at a time, working your way up until you are doing the entire course speed walking.

* Find a Coach – You need to mind your form so much that you probably should at least find a coach or someone who is an experienced power walker to demonstrate and then check how you do it so that you don’t injure yourself. It is quite a challenge to learn the new form and way of walking.

Because running is so hard on the body, with runners causing an impact on their limbs many times over their own body weight, speed walking and power walking can give you the same health benefits without the wear and tear and problems that running can cause.