EP71 - Business Automation That Still Feels Human - How to Automate Your Business Without Becoming A Robot

Business automation has a reputation problem. It is supposed to give you time back, but most of it ends up feeling cold and robotic, nothing like the business you set out to build. In this episode Emma breaks down how to automate your business without becoming a robot: which tasks to hand off, which ones to protect, and how to build systems that serve your life instead of consuming it. In this episode: Why does so much business automation feel icky, and how do you do it differently? Which tasks should you actually automate, and which ones should you never hand off? 

How do you save 10+ hours a week without losing the personal touch your clients feel? 

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Freedom & Flow Challenge → https://flowos.tech/7-day-automation-challenge Hustle Culture Webinar → https://go.flowstatescollective.com/hustle-workshop-reg 

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Em x

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Automation that feels human. Systems that serve your life, not consume it. Welcome to the Flow Lane with me, Emma Mapon. This podcast is for the female entrepreneurs who want the both end big goals and a life that you can actually enjoy. We're talking sustainable scaling, working in flow, and creating a business that supports your energy, not trades it. Let's dive in. Now I want to start this episode with a little caveat that's saying, whilst I'm here to speak to you about automations and whilst helping people with automations and systems is a massive part of my business, it is also not my zone of genius. My husband and my business partner, Tyson, is the guy for systems, processes, AI, automations. So basically everything that I learn, I learn from him. But I want to talk to you about it today because it is so important and it is such a point of resistance for so many people, particularly the people in my world, particularly the mothers in business, particularly the women, because we just think, ah, that the tech stuff feels overwhelming. I cannot hear you how often I hear. Tech overwhelms me. I'm just gonna bury my head in the sand. I literally had this vision the other day of making a reel of me physically burying my head in the sand to represent how many people I speak to that know they need this stuff, know they need to lean in, know that they probably should lean in and would see some benefit in doing so, but don't. And I get that because that was me. I used to think that automating my business was cheating, that if I wasn't physically responding to every message, that I was somehow doing something wrong or that I wasn't giving people enough of me until I realized that actually I was just leaking a whole bunch of my energy that for whatever reason I thought I was necessary and it wasn't. So if a task doesn't actually need your brain, it shouldn't take your time. This is where automations are game-changing. So what changed for me, I was doing everything manually and thinking that that meant personal, as opposed to realizing that I could actually that that's not sustainable, and that I could actually still make the experience of, you know, client onboarding, all these things very, very personal, but an actual automated process. Now this happens all the time where I'll work with a client, they'll launch a new program, and then they will have people sign up and suddenly they're like, oh my gosh, there's all these people signing up. What do I do next? I have to send them an email, I forgot to send them an email, or you ran an event and you forgot to send a follow-up and you're like totally capitulating. If all those systems and processes are automated, then you don't have to think about that. You just show up, stay in your zone of genius, do your thing, and the system holds you. This is the benefit of having that system. So I really am big on like automations that don't actually make you less human, but that actually make you more human in the right parts of your business. So manual isn't the same as meaningful. Just because you're manually doing it doesn't mean that it's actually a meaningful part of your day. So something that I learned from my partner and that I'm going to share with you, and that we teach and work with all of our clients on is actually this CEO tracker. So the question is, do I automate this? Now there's a 4D filter that you can put this through. For any recurring task in your business, ask these four questions. Number one, does it repeat? Number two, does it require my brain? Number three, does it impact the client's experience? And number four, does it drain my energy? So if it repeats and it doesn't in your brain, automate it. If it needs your brain and it repeats, then have templates and systems and things that you can lean into and automate parts of it. And if it's actually like high stakes, the actual human side, so whether that's like coaching or deep sales conversations or your actual content creation or speaking to a customer complaint, whatever it is, keep that part human and have it supported with systems. So when you actually have automations in your business, it doesn't mean that you're just relying on the robots to do the work. You're actually just giving yourself space to not do these repetitive tasks so that your humanness becomes more amplified in the places that it actually matters. So automate, automate the predictable and personalize the meaningful. That is a really nice way to kind of think about it. So when you do this tracker and you start to look at these four categories, does it repeat? Does it require my brain? Does it impact the client experience? Does it drain my energy? Put it through these kinds of filters. So number one, the automation part of it. Tasks that are repetitive, tasks that are predictable or really admin heavy. So things like appointment confirmations and reminders, things like onboarding emails or what to expect, payment receipts, overdue nudges, client offboarding, testimonial requests, this whole process of when somebody comes into your world or experiences your business, your service, or your product in some way can be thoughtfully automated. You can map and design that customer journey from start to finish, have all of your little funny personal human touches to it, and have it sent out completely automatically. So you're not thinking, oh no, new customer came in, I have to remember to sell them an abandoned cart or send them a reminder to buy. You know, after a certain amount of days, they get this email and then that email. It gives you so much freedom. Then the second part of this is which parts do you then template and systematize? So these are the things that maybe need your voice that you don't need to totally remove yourself from, but that you can actually kind of rinse and repeat. So if you're in more of a service-based business where you're pitching proposals or sales follow-ups, they can be kind of pre-written or templated replies that you're just tweaking or customizing to that particular moment. DM replies for common questions. I mean, there's even a function inside of uh what's it called, Instagram, where you can actually manually just copy and paste these direct questions that you get from people. So you're not just constantly putting way more time in than what you need to. And then boundary scripts, like here's how to work with me, here's how it works, all that kind of stuff. Launch emails and structures, all of that stuff can be a template that you're just adjusting. You're not having to reinvent the wheel every time. It's like if you go to send an email and you don't have your standard email template, and then you spend all this time moving the text and tweaking this and making this look pretty, and then you wasted six hours to send one email, as opposed to having the template beautifully designed, and then you just go in, add your copy, and off you go. These are the kinds of things. And then when you should delegate. So that is something that like still needs a person, but not you. So, for example, like your inbox triage or a scheduling coordination or podcast admin and uploading or formatting, tagging, organizing your SOPs, that can be delegated nowadays to an AI agent, which is pretty wild to see how that is kind of playing out. And again, not my area of expertise, but when I watch what my partner is doing in that space and I see how much AI can actually take over those tasks and do them to such a high standard, it blows my mind. Or maybe you have a VA, maybe you have someone in your team. It is usually the first hire that most founders make is somebody that can take over those repetitive tasks. Going back and forth with someone trying to schedule an appointment, not a good use of your time, right? Somebody else could be doing that for you. And then writing SOPs. Oh my goodness, I cannot tell you how many people I speak to that do not have any SOPs in their business. And I get it because hi, that was me until I met my husband. He died when he saw the state of my business. I was running a multi-six-figure retreat business. I barely had waivers that people were weren't signing. I had no sales process, nothing about it was repeatable. It was like everything I was doing was so labor-intensive, so customized. There were every single email was written, every single welcome email was hand-done. There was no spreadsheets of budgets or anything. It was like, by all means, not a very good business. Great on paper, and people loved it, but in terms of actually having a system and a process, nobody could come into that business and help me because it was all in my head. And so we had to take, okay, what is the process when someone buys? Write that down. That's your system and process. I go through this with my clients all the time. Now, back in the day, gosh, I sound old, before we had AI, you used to have to physically write that SOP or have a VA do it for you. Now you can basically word vomit it into Chat GPT and say, hey, this is the process I do when somebody buys my program, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and it writes you an SOP. And that means that when somebody, when you hire someone in your business, when you scale to the next level, it's not all in your head. And this is what most founders get wrong is they don't think the future in mind. So they're so in the scramble of like, right now I'm doing everything and I am the CEO, the CMO, the CEO, I'm all the people, right? Yeah, you kind of have to be in the beginning, but you need to think about it as if I was gonna hire someone to do this, how could I systematize this? How could I have a system and a process documented? Sometimes that's a quick loom video. It's quickly recording. This is the process of editing the podcast. This is the process of uploading the podcast so that when you get to that point where your business can support to pay somebody else to come in and take over that role, you're not then spending six weeks training them. You're like, hey, here's our SOPs for how we run everything. Everybody is clear. And then on the days when maybe you're feeling like a bit of a hot mess or you're not in your best creative flow, you can revert back to what is the process for this? There's a reason why big businesses do this. And if founders thought this way from the beginning, oh my goodness, it would give you so much more head space when you start to scale. Always start with that idea of how does this scale? Where is this going? And then the last part of that is what is the deeply human part? So where your energy is the product. So actual delivery to clients, actually speaking on the stage, actually writing the book, relationship building, voice notes. Like I think that's a beautiful touch in a sales conversation to physically with your human voice reply to someone. Nuanced client support kind of moments or like final review of anything. So pricing changes, refunds, any conflict that needs to come through you. You don't have to automate that part. That's that becomes part of your job. But you've cleared so much else because you've really actually lent into these processes. So human doesn't mean manual, human means intentional. Can we actually leverage where automations because it they it is advancing so fast and there is so much you can do to completely systematize your business, to buy you back so much of your time and energy so that you can be more human. AI automations, they're not here to take away from any of that. They're here to give you back time so that you can leverage these tools, you can use them in your business to actually give you more time and space to grow the business, to scale the business, or to live your damn life. So when you go through this CEO tracker, I want you to look at these different areas and then go through and look at your tasks for 10 minutes once a week. Look down and go, okay, what did I actually do today? Could I automate? Could I put this into a template? Could I systematize this? Can this be delegated or does this need to stay human? It gives you so much clarity on where the bottleneck is in your business. So another way that you can frame this or or work on this is to actually list down your drag tasks. So what makes you sigh? For me, that has always been the back end. I've never loved that side of my business. I know that I need it. I know, particularly now as a mum in business, I rely so heavily on funnels to do the selling, on systems and processes to hold me, on our sales process and our client onboarding process, on all these automations that we have. That means that I'm working way less. I'm leveraging my time so much more. So whilst those tasks make me kind of sigh, I needed to lean into actually being able to get to a point of systematizing them, making them a template, or automating. So you can track for the five days in different columns tasks, time sprint, frequency. So if you're doing it daily, weekly, monthly, the energy cost, how much energy is it costing you to manually do that task? Does your brain actually required in that process? And is it impacting the client or the delivery of your product in any way? That will give you a pretty clear indication of whether it then repeats, needs your brain, improves the experience, or drains your energy. And then you'll be able to lean into automating parts of your business. So my favorite automations for business, as I've said before, are like onboarding sequences. That actually reduces the kind of client anxiety of what to expect, what do I do, and increases the trust. And it's not something you have to think about. It's there. You know the process that you take people through. You can hold your hand through that without having to think about it. They might get a thoughtful text message reminder, they might get emails, whatever it is. Calendar and reminders. Oh my goodness. No shows and the back and forth drives me nuts. As I mentioned in my motherhood episode, I'm so protective of my time. Now I get it. When I'm working with my clients, particularly my private clients, stuff happens, right? I'm in communication with them. I know if they're sick or they've had a sick kid or something's happened. Obviously, I'm a human being and I have compassion. But there is nothing more annoying than someone trying to schedule with you and going back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. Well, you could just actually send them a link and say, hey, pick a time. There's a there's your options, right? That is such a simple automated task. And then they get reminded, they also get reminded if they need to change the time or reschedule. I even work with service-based businesses that, you know, even being here in Greece, if I want to book an appointment, a lot of the places I'm booking an appointment in, I have to physically text the person, the hairdresser, the nail person, whatever it is. There's no, it's not even an online booking system. How much time do we then spend going back and forth trying to find an appointment where I could have just been sent a link, choose chosen a time, and gone for it? It sounds so simple, but it's it would astound you how many businesses don't have that basic setup. And then other things like client portals and hubs or FAQs or lead magnets and welcome emails, these kinds of things can all be automated. If you set up a simple funnel in your business, a lead magnet that goes through to a low-ticket or a high-ticket offer or whatever you're setting up your funnel to be, wow, then all you're doing is filling the funnel. Then all you're doing is bringing people in. You're not doing every single manual part of it. At this point in the game, if you haven't turned on automations on your social media, what are you even doing? Like seriously. Now you can have somebody follow you from nowhere, see a post that you like, instantly comment on that post, opt into your funnel, into your world in some way, and be taken through a sales process instantly, right? You're not having to remember to get back to them or remember to, oh, I've got to, you know, engage with my people. They've come straight into you. They've found you, they're in your world, they're in your funnel instantly. It is mind-blowing to me that people are sleeping on this. Do not sleep on automations on social media. It is such a powerful way to use your page as the top of your funnel and actually bring people effortlessly into your world. So I implemented all of these automations that I spoke about today. And I would say it's it saves me 10 to 15 hours a week, but it also protects my energy and my nervous system, which is my biggest asset as a business owner and as a mom and as someone that mentors people directly. My energy is so important. So the less time that I'm faffing around trying to send an email or answer the same question 600 times, the more that that's automated, the more that I'm able to then be in my zone of genius and give my clients the best of me and give my family the best of me. So I want you to think about where am I acting like the bottleneck in my business? What am I doing manually to actually just prove I care or to think I'm superior in some way? Because ego is seems to be a big part of people resisting this work. And then what would I change if I actually trusted the systems to hold the small stuff? This is where your micromanagement might come out. But if you actually trusted that, you know what, I've built a really great funnel or I've built a really great process, I can trust that people are being sent the information that they need to be sent and I can just slip into delivery. So automations should feel like hospitality, not harassment. Do not use automations to just ping people. There's a trend at the moment going around where everyone's like, wow, you can now use ManyChat to DM someone that follows you straight away and have them basically opt into your funnel straight away. And I'm like, wow, that to me feels kind of abrasive. I've just followed you and suddenly you're like, hey, here's an automated message that is not human at all. As opposed to me landing on your page, seeing a post that I like and choosing to knock on your door. That's kind of how I see it. It's like you, it's like I've I've I've knocked and you're just like being, you know, you're barging in, or there's actually a knock and an invitation as a worthy inquiry, and that person is then where they want to be, not where you're blasting at them. So I don't recommend that one. That's your vibe. If it's working for you, good for you, but it's not my style. So automate the predictable, personalize the meaningful, leverage automations to buy back your time so that you can spend time actually living your business, living your life and working in your business. So if you need help with this, I can help you to an extent, but my partner is the go-to guy for that. And I'm gonna put some details below of how you can get in touch for a session with him. Or we have so many incredible free offerings in this space. We have our seven-day freedom and flow challenge that literally takes you through how to set up basic automations in your business. It's seven days. So you're with us for an hour each day. We take you through step by step. We have a custom GPT that will answer all your questions. So you can have this stuff all set up. You'll feel so empowered by the end of that that you actually physically did the thing. And I'll also put the details below if you're ready to take this a step further. Because I know for a lot of people it's like, okay, I already have the basics there, but I know I'm fully under-leveraging AI. I'm really underleveraging automations. Tyson is the guy for that, not just a biased wifey. But I cannot tell you how much my business changed when I really, really lent into all of this stuff. So I'll put the details below and I'll be back again in your ears soon.