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Business & Life & the World.
Yesterday, I talked about outsourcing much of your errands around town and have Amazon to do it for you. 🙂 If you missed that, you can catch up here.
Today I want to talk about some of my favorite things in the world – Automation and Simplification.
Pretty much ANY time I can make my life easier and not have to think about something menial, I jump at the chance.
Let’s see how this might affect your business, your life and the world.
My life:
There are a million different ways to improve your life with automation.
For instance, I recently bought a second Roomba. Silly right? Not for me. I have 3 dogs. And, I also have 4 people in my house who have allergies. I was sweeping every day (or outsourcing it to my kids) and it was making me crazy. I don’t mind sweeping or housekeeping in general. What I do mind is tedium and things that waste my time – or it would be more fair to say that I dislike doing things that keep me from spending that same amount of time on something else that I love.
So I bought a iRobot Roomba 770 Vacuum Cleaning Robot for Pets and Allergies
Another way you can automate is to do what I suggested yesterday. Have items that you need regularly on autoship from Amazon or your other favorite stores. That way it just shows up and you’re set. I order our dog food (because it’s a special Limited Ingredient kind) from Chewy.com. Every 3 weeks, they email me and say “We’re about to process your order. Do nothing to get it.” I do a little cheer and wait for the dog food to show up at my home in a week or so. Yay!
What else? How about autodrafts and online bill paying? If you’re still sending in monthly checks to utilities and other vendors, then see if they can do either autodrafts or online payments. If that’s possible for you, I highly recommend it. I, of course, do realize that you have to have money in the bank in order to “set it and forget it” so I’m not suggesting that it possible for all things, but do it for anything that would otherwise drive you crazy. For instance, if you get a late fee EVERY month on some bill because of the short timeline, why threaten your awesome when you can pay it automatically and forget all about it? 🙂 Or if you regularly run out of stamps and have to go to the Post Office to get them. Why? Really, why do that to yourself when you don’t have to… especially in inclement weather or when you’re not feeling well. Just do it online.
ok. So that’s automation, what about simplification? If you’ve got bills you’re paying for things you’re not using, cancel them. Voila. Problem solved.
Your business.
I love love love automating in my business. The odd thing about automation in your business, though, is that you might not know what can be automated unless you ask.
Where to start? I look at tasks that I do repeatedly all the time and/or ones that annoy me and I ask myself “Is this something that might be automated, while offering the same quality solution, without any negative impact?” If I can’t find a solution myself, I go to one of my mastermind groups and I ask. You never know until you know, right?
For instance, one thing that was driving me bonkers was that I needed a good voice / dictation app on my phone that I could quickly talk into while I was out and about that would record the audio as an mp3 and save it somewhere that I could easily access it so I didn’t have to go find it later. I searched and searched the app store and got frustrated so I quickly went and asked in a coaching group. I got the answer in 2 minutes. The DropVox app works with Dropbox. Problem solved. 🙂
What about simplification? This is another area where working with a coach can be very helpful. I find that my coaching clients come to me with some pretty overly-complex problems that aren’t really problems. Simplify it and voila! Problem solved.
Examples:
- Problem – “I can’t release this product because X,Y,Z.”
- Solution – “What if we didn’t do X,Y,Z and we released it as it is at a lower price? You can release XYZ as an upsell later.”
Simple is sexy. Simple sells.
The world.
Instead of giving once a year during the holidays to charities (not judging at all, but statistics show that’s when most of giving happens), plan an autodraft donation every month all year long. Not only can you be giving all year without taking a big one-time hit, but you can probably donate a little bit more if you plan it this way.
How can you use simplification in this application? Don’t overthink this. By doing the things I mentioned above, like shopping online, getting things autoshipped, and paying your bills online, you’re reducing waste and therefore are making the world a better place. 🙂
Hugs and high fives you awesome thing you!
Nicole