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I get it. You’re busy. Your to-do list is a mile long. You’re thinking, “If only I could automate some of this stuff, life would be so much easier.” But hold up! There’s a right and wrong time to automate your parts of your business. And sometimes, it’s just too soon. This topic has come up a few times in the last few weeks as I’ve had calls with customers of the Content Repurposing System. I’ve spent as much time as possible learning how and why other people are using it. It’s been insightful! In this email I’m going to share my thought process behind how I determine when it makes sense to automate. It’s critical to take all of these into account… Does it work when it’s not automated:This is the first critical step! If you don’t know whether it works before it’s automated, then do it manually a few times first. Before I started creating the Content Repurposing System we’d spent years on some of the processes I automated like podcast/summit notes and emails. We knew they worked. It’s how we grew our business so quickly. So it was an easy process to automate because I knew it intimately.
Slight tangent: there can be some benefit tapping into existing workflows of others if you’re strategy is largely the same as theirs. This is why I added the social media content section to the CRS by adopting what’s working for the largest content creators and automated it for myself.
What’s the Cost Vs Benefit Analysis:Let’s consider this scenario… Imagine an employee spends four hours every week on a repetitive task, with an hourly rate of $10. This translates to $40 per week or $2,080 annually. Now, let’s say we want to automate this because 4 hours is a lot, right?! But let’s say it’s going to cost $10,000 for someone to build that automation for us. That’s 5 years before we get a return. And that assumes that the process won’t change for 5 years. Which it probably will. In that case, automation is a bad idea. However let’s take the practical example of when I built the Content Repurposing System + some other workflows I’ve not shared yet… I built it myself because I had spare time = $0 cash cost (just time cost)
It’s saved me the expense of at least 2 team members — let’s call that $4,000 per month (offshore talent prices) or $48,000 per year in savings… THAT!!! makes sense… Finally… Integration Capabilities:Finally we need to check if what we want to do is even possible. Some of the best tools that we use in our manual workflows don’t have API access. So it’s not possible to automate. If that’s the case there are 3 options:
Bonus tipMarketing and sales is the lifeblood of your business, and where most of your time, energy and resources should be spent. Focus your time there first when it comes to automation. But ultimately please remember this… I get as excited as anyone else when I see what’s possible with automation. But don’t let automation get in the way of revenue growth. Especially in the early stages. Revenue is the only thing that’s going to keep your business alive. Stay focused!
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