I'm gonna give you a simple set of steps to follow, to figure out how to automate your business. 

So one of the big topics these days for obvious reasons is what parts of our business can we automate to save time and give our customers a better experience when we're not able to per them or our staff can't, uh, take care of them. So we have so many tools today with all the software and everybody is, you know, communicating online with their phones and everything. So there's a lot of areas in our business that we can automate, but it's a little daunting to figure out how to do it. Here's the process that we use to analyze what can be and what can't be automated in any sort of business situation. The first step you got to take in doing all of this is mapping out the actual process flow. And, you know, as a business owner, you certainly have an intuitive feel for how things go. 

Like what happens when you get a new customer? Well, like we do this, we do this and that. And there's, you know, always, um, you know, kind of, uh, smoothing over of that in order to get this process, though, you really have to pick it apart in a very granular way, what those specific steps are. So using the example that we just mentioned, what happens when you get a new customer? So the new customer has, you know, one inner action, one step, they take maybe a form to fill out then an another thing they need to do. Then they make an appointment. Then they make a payment. Then they get a thank you, right? All those little things. And then you go back and review, are there even extras around each one of those steps? Like if they fill out a form, do they get a copy of the form? 

Do who else gets a copy of the form? Is there your staff members to get a copy of the form? Do staff members call them back to confirm the entry on that form? Right. So even one step of filling out a form might have three, four additional pieces to it that you got to put on this map. Now, once you have, and this could be any process flow in your business, frankly, it might be the example we're using like a new customer might be getting a customer is in the case of some sort of campaign or, uh, outreach or lead generation tool. Or it might be an internal process with your staff or something in the office, like an office flow or workflow amongst your staff. One of the workflows we have here is involves publishing these videos and there's a specific set steps and a specific number of folks that are involved with not only editing shooting, but also publishing uploading, and then syndicating and promoting and sending out all these things. 

Right? So there's all these things that are part of just even making these videos. That's a workflow, but it's all internal, right? So there's no customers involved in that. So it could be anything that you're looking at, but the first step is to pick it apart into all of its little granular pieces. Then you can start looking at which one of these pieces could be automated by automated messaging, some sort of cool software platform, or maybe even looking at trimming down some of these steps that maybe aren't entirely necessary. Also looking at duplicate labor and work that could be happening in any of these process flows. So that's the next piece of the puzzle. Then once you have a list of steps that you think can be automated, the next and final thing to do is start looking at platforms and tools that are going to fit into that. 

And the great part about that step is you should have incredible clarity about what your needs are when looking at available tools, because you've done the first two steps. So you're not kind of vaguely looking at things with the hopes that it's going to work out. You have a defined situation, and you're looking to plug tools into that to alleviate labor costs, enhanced communications and effectiveness and productivity and all the other cool positives that come out of that. So those are the three steps that we follow. I use a cool mapping software for that. So I can mop out all the process flows, you know, digitally and share that with my team. That's another cool tool that we you use. And there are those out there for you as well. So go ahead and use those couple of steps on areas of your business that you think could be automated. 

And I promise you that you will figure out and get closer to making it a reality. And that means you'll be able to save some time to do other the things, save some money for some other things, and probably do a better job overall in your business. We'll see, on the next one, I hope this helped you to make a step towards automating some tasks that you can do better with in your business.