Automation & Outsourcing: Eliminating The Repetitive Drudgery

Automation & Outsourcing: Eliminating The Repetitive Drudgery

According to a recent study by INC, The majority of small business owners say they work at least 50 hours per week.

That is despite small business owners typically starting their venture to get more flexibility, autonomy, impact, direction… and TIME vs employed life!

But often your find yourself feeling unable to avoid long hours and endless to do lists… It can feel like your business is a time, money & energy sucking monster! 

A lot of this ‘excess’ time can be spent doing the same thing over and over….. think about all those emails, answering question, scheduling, writing up notes, proposals, documents, trouble shooting…

What repetitive stuff do you find yourself doing?

Start by jotting down say 5-10 things that you do regularly in your business.

If your mind has gone blank think through the customer journey from say – advertising, enquiry, FAQs, creating quotation, setting up contracts and invoicing through to actually delivering the project/work and receiving feedback.

Then consider all the tasks typically involved in these steps.

And mull over what about that tends to be repetitive and time consuming that could perhaps be fixed in an automated or pre prepared step… or are moved or outsourced all together!

And here are my top 3 ways to automate and outsource away the repetitive drudgery

1. Define how prospects get access to you

This is super important if you don’t want to spend all your time dealing with enquiries and selling

Do you take discovery calls/give trials? How do they book in? What days do you do these/how long are they?

Are you the best person to lead this? Now and in the future? Is there any pre-qualifying information people could complete upfront? Could you perhaps solve FAQs on your website or share the next steps in a blog?

2. Streamline All Customer Documents

Thinking about booking forms, diarisation, quotes/proposals, invoicing, signing t&cs, feedback etc. Do you have standard templates? Are they up to date?

Can you use software to help? E.G. Calendly, Docusign, Google Forms, Accounting software or AI tools…

3. Outsource or Delegate to the Most Appropriate Persons

As your diary gets more full there is a point when hiring makes sense…. as your time is better spend on the ‘higher value’ client delivery, that you are also most skilled in.

You don’t have to commit to hiring employees! Consider a part time self employed VA/freelancer/social media manager etc. who is specialist in what you are bad at, have no time for or simply dislike doing!

What could even 5 hours a week support do for you? Run the numbers and see what it means in terms of finance and sanity.