When working alone as a solopreneur, one of the key components you will have to figure out is how to automate as much as possible. Otherwise it turns into a real grind, and you are spending way too long doing manual things.
Automation can take many forms and you’ll build them specific to your business needs. Here are some that I’ve personally done, to give you some ideas.
1) An email “drip” campaign that will send follow-up emails to your contacts, on a predetermined schedule. ie: A customer you’ve done work with, will be put into a drip that sends them a monthly bit of useful information (ie: useful link, news item).
2) Automatic postcard mailings, as alternative to email, but sent on a predetermined schedule for each contact.
3) Automated webinars, such as my StealthSeminar service, that you can schedule in a recurring way. Instead of you having to do the same presentation over and over again.
4) Customer management software that tracks each customer of yours for you. Depending if they are a lead / customer / past customer / dead prospect, you’ll want to follow up with them in different ways. Software can make this automatic.
With my hypnosis business, I managed to get everything to run in an automated way meaning outside of actually performing gigs, all the customer relations was dealt with in under an hour each day. That included all mail followups, online or otherwise. If I didn’t have a gig that day, I could work on new ideas of how to expand the business – or just take it easy, knowing the biz had its daily upkeep.
I’m a big fan of creating automatic systems that give me a lot of spare time. I can easily create a “4-hour work-week” that accomplishes more than most people get done in 40+ hours. The rest of the time is mine to use as I wish.
Hey Chris: Other than Aweber, a weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual todo list, and a follow up system (I use a physical file, google calendar and followupthen), what other tools do you use?
There are the “big guns” of Automation which would be Infusionsoft and Ontraport. But lately I’ve been experimenting with Active Campaign, which is cheaper.
All 3 of them allow you to create automation flow charts. So you can get very creative with the logic and processes. I haven’t used Aweber in a long time, so I’m not sure if they’ve expanded their product to include that sort of functionality.
The automation process building is what is extremely valuable, imo. It will take some learning/experimenting to wrap your hands around it.
Agree 100%. Aweber has a “plug in” of sorts that really kicks it up. One of Perry Marshall’s employee’s projects. It’s not quite at the level of the above.
I have a personal aversion to Infusionsoft. I know too many shops who have either given it up in frustration, or even worse, trained one person to be excellent in it, and that person walks!
I like Aweber. And I like my Aweber affiliate checks.
I guess all I’m saying is… a simple system done well is better than a lousy system done poorly, or not at all.
For the type of people that would read this blog, I’d certainly never recommend a solution that is outsourced to the point where you don’t know how it works and cant maintain it on your own.
Which reminds me of another point; Some years ago I was speaking with a colleague, and he was really impressed with some of the elaborate automation I was doing, so much so that it basically paralyzed him from doing any, because he didn’t know how to recreate what I was doing.
I urged him to not try and recreate me, but instead just set up a few steps. A few things is better than zero, which is what he had.