How to Auto-Pilot Your Business and Set and Forget It

TIME.

One of the most important assets in your business and in life, once this resource is depleted it can no longer be recovered.

Twenty-four hours is all the hours that we have in a day... and why is it that entrepreneurs like Warren Buffet, Robert Herjavec, and Richard Branson have the same amount of time as all of us, and are yet able to produce more profits, more authority, and a long-standing business that can operate on its own?

The amount of time we all have in a day is the same but how we choose to leverage this time is imperative. Creating a system to streamline operations to maximize profit through scalable processes is one of the fastest ways to 100X your business.

The true test of a business is the ability to step away from it and have the business run on its own. A business should operate like a well-oiled machine that acquires new clients while taking care of the needs of its existing clients.

Is there a way to leverage technology and/or manpower to increase profit-earning power, while maintaining profit margins?

As a founder, it is important to find ways to remove yourself from the day-to-day operations of your business and focus on profit-driven activities like creating new strategic partnerships that can help with bolstering profits for your business.

With that being said...how do you build a business that runs without you?

Here are some common business tasks that can be automated, outsourced, or re-purposed to save you time and increase your sales:

1. Posting to Social Media - Tools like HootSuite and Meet Edgar allows you to post one piece of content to multiple social media platforms like Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, and more, while also allowing you to recycle content in case your queue of posts are empty.

2. Managing Payment - Automated invoices through invoicing programs like Quickbooks to send out payment forms if you operate on a month-to-month basis with your client

3. Email Marketing - Using automated email software programs like Hubspot and ConvertKit, to batch emails, automate replies for commonly sent emails, and track and test your email marketing campaigns to deliver the best email campaigns to improve your sales.

4. Marketing Funnels - Marketing funnels can be used to enroll new potential clients into your products and services when they visit your website. A funnel walks them through a path of having them added to your email database in exchange for free resources like an ebook, white paper, or guides. If you have never created a marketing funnel before, Click Funnels is a great beginner-friendly way to start adding a funnel into your website.

5. Re-targeting Ads - Depending on the prices of your product/services, it may be a higher financial investment for your client. For higher-end products or services, a majority of people are not ready to buy right away from you, so to stay top of mind with your prospect and make sure you aren’t leaving money on the table, it may be good to re-target them with paid advertising. Installing code on your website like Facebook pixels, allows businesses to have extra opportunities with a potential client that may purchase their product/services in the near future.

6. Customer support - Are you losing opportunities because your potential client is not finding what they need right away? Having automated chatbots to re-direct commonly asked questions by website visitors and get them on-demand help before they decide to leave your website is a great way to preserve this relationship. Talk.to and Intercom are some common customer management software programs that are designed to expedite customer needs. If you have a Wordpress website, you can easily download the free Talk.to plugin onto your website.

7. Delegating Day-to-Day Administrative Tasks: Sales and profits are the lifeblood of any business. Time is one of your most precious resources, consider using virtual assistants or software: to manage your website, take care of basic customer needs, manage your databases, creating proposals, following up with others.

Conclusion

As a business owner, while it is good to know about a number of things...it is important to also remember that you don’t have to be an expert in everything, and outsourcing your greatest weaknesses can give you major advances in scaling your business faster and effectively.

Is there a way to use technology to automate, repurpose your content, delegate your day-to-day tasks so that you can build a business that runs without you and doesn’t require as much of your presence? Automation can play a huge role in helping businesses scale and grow with fewer time resources and exponential profits. In effect, creating a self-running business that gives back some of the power and peace of mind back to the business owners.

How are you spending your most precious resource, time?