Does it feel like you’re living a nightmare with your business? Do you wake up and think that entrepreneurship was a mistake? Maybe it was exciting in the beginning and you were learning lots. Meeting new and like-minded people. Talking about your business. Not working for ‘the man’. But pretty soon, it had become exhausting. Doing everything yourself, because, you know, that’s what entrepreneurs do. Working all hours of the day and night. Through the weekend too. Not seeing your friends or family. Because, you know, that’s what entrepreneurs do.
Worse of all, with all the work and the time you put in, you’re still not seeing results. After months or work, maybe even a year or two, you don’t see yourself or your business moving forward. You don’t have enough clients. You don’t have enough cash flow. What’s wrong here?
The most successful entrepreneurs and business owners know that you don’t have to do everything yourself. In fact, you shouldn’t do everything yourself. There is a much better, smarter way to get things done. It still involves a lot of hard work, there is no magic wand being waved, but you will be working smarter, and making more happen.
So what’s the formula?
Simply put, successful entrepreneurs remove themselves from their business, and have systems and processes in place to do the bulk of the work for them. They are working hard, but it is more concentrated on their strengths, and they are working fewer hours.
Today, you can automate almost any part of your business. There is a system available to automate your sales pipeline, right along with your payroll and accounting. Invoicing can be automated too. HR can be outsourced for someone else to handle. There really is an automated solution for everything now.
If you have decided to go ahead and start automating, it can be overwhelming. Where do you begin? Do you automate everything all at once?
Our advice is to automate the easiest processes first. Pick rote tasks where there is no human value-add. Automation lets you avoid human error while saving time in execution. Start small and focus on one business function. Once you have that automated and running smooth, pick another. For example, you can start by automating the method client attraction. Then sales. Then auto-responders. The list goes on.
And you can have fun too. You can start getting excited about trialing new and different automation tools for your business. A lot of the tools are free and a lot of them are free to try for a short period.
As you start automating parts of your business bit by bit, you’ll get rid of the busy work that every entrepreneur has to do, that takes up hours every day. You’ll have more time to spend with family, more time to do some learning, more time to get better at the things you’re actually good at. You will fall in love with your business again. It might even remind you of why you left a job to start your own operation.
With a million and one things to do, it’s within every small business owner’s interest to automate operations and save time where possible. Business automation is especially valuable to entrepreneurs, because your greatest constraint is often on your time. When you don’t have to do every little thing, or look over the nitty gritty of the business, it’s amazing how much time and mental space you will free up to really focus on what you do best.
Automated processes will transform your business into a more productive, efficient, and above all, profitable enterprise because you are working on your business not in it.
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