Top Reasons Why You Should Automate Your Online Business
Listen to the podcast version of this blog post and subscribe on your favorite podcast app:
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Podcasts | Pod.link / Pick Another App
Perhaps you’ve heard about automation before, but may not fully understand why you should automate your business when you’re still a bit new.
The truth is that automation is good for any business, no matter what stage you’re in. The sooner you can implement some automation, the better and I’m going to share the top reasons why.
Disclaimer: Please note this post may contain affiliate links. This means I may receive a commission if clicked at no extra cost to you. Though the opinions remain my own
What does it mean to automate your business?
But first, what does it mean to automate your business? In the simplest terms, this means that there’s an input that automatically triggers an output with minimal or no steps from you.
The input and output could literally be anything in your business. Essentially, an automation is saying, “when this happens (input), do this (output).”
For example, inside my preferred project management tool, Trello, there’s an option for me to create automations for various things. One of the most common automations I create and mention to my students is for labels to be removed when certain labels are added.
Another example is whenever a student purchases a course from me, they’re automatically sent a post-purchase email from my email platform, ConvertKit, without me having to do a thing.
Sure, there’s upfront work that you have to do in order to get your automations up and going. However, once you’ve implemented certain automations, they should be able to work on their own and you’ll simply need to monitor them to ensure they’re working.
Related Post: How To Use Trello to Organize Your Business
Reasons Why You Should Automate Your Online Business
Now that you understand what it means to automate your business, let’s go through the top reasons why you should automate your business as an online business owner. (Spoiler alert: automation is not just for big corporations, it’s for small business owners like you too).
Saves you time
The first reason why you should automate your online business (and probably the most important reason why) is because it’ll save you a lot of time.
As online entrepreneurs, you likely have A LOT going on outside of business. You may have a job, a family, medical conditions etc., which means you don’t have a lot of free time in your hands to do certain tasks manually. That’s where having automations in place comes in.
Automating your business saves you time by making things happen without you having to be the one that makes them happen.
Related Post: “I don’t have enough time.”
Reduces task switching
The second reason why you should automate your business is because it’ll help you reduce the amount of task switching or context switching that you do throughout the day.
Now, this isn’t to be confused with multitasking as these two are not necessarily the same thing. What I’m referring to here is the act of switching from one task to another. Even the smallest task like searching in Canva for your designs and then going back to designing counts as two separate tasks.
When you do this, you’re losing focus on what you’re doing which opens up opportunities for distractions to creep in (like ahem, scrolling on social media).
Related Post: Unhealthy Habits That Are Hurting Your Productivity
Minimizes errors
How many times have you accidentally forgotten to publish a pin to Pinterest when you said you would or were late to paying your affiliates?
Even if you haven’t experienced either of these, chances are you’ve done some mistakes in your business that could have been avoided if they were automatically done for you.
Not only are you now having to go back and fix your mistake, but it’s costing you additional time to do so. There are certain tasks that could drastically reduce the amount of human errors made regardless if it was due to forgetfulness, accidental or something else.
Reduces operational costs
Whether you’re paying yourself a salary from your business or not, all the reasons we’ve covered so far on why you should automate your business, are also supporting the fact that it’ll reduce your overall operational costs.
What I mean by this is when you’re saving time, minimizing errors and avoiding task switching, it’s all saving your money. Why?
Because errors, mistakes, task switching etc. all costs you time, and as you know, time is money. Therefore, when you reduce these negative factors from your business, you also reduce your operational costs.
Related Post: 30 Entrepreneurial Lessons Learned Before Turning 30
Improves your productivity
Lastly, when you automate your online business, you increase your productivity. You’re doing less but getting more done by allowing the automation to pull some of the weight for you.
In the same way that you’re reducing your operational costs due to the other factors mentioned, they also help improve your productivity too.
And as an online entrepreneur with little time, one of the best things you can do for yourself and your business is to better this skill. Time management and productivity is a skill that can be learned and improved overtime, so definitely tune in to the Cheerful Productive Chats Podcast to learn how.
Automation is Good for Business
As you see, there are so many reasons why automation is good for business, even as solopreneurs. It’s never too early or too late to start getting automation systems and tools implemented for your online business.
Automation will help you minimize task switching, reduce errors, decrease operational costs while saving you time and boosting your productivity.