How to Automate Your Business

Hey there, my name is Tiago and about 8 months ago I quit my job to focus 100% on being a solopreneur.

Since then I have started 4 different projects that I still maintain to the day.

You need to automate your business

Like @levelsio says we need to build robots to do our manual, repetitive tasks so that we can focus our time building new projects and taking time to ourselves.

What’s the point of building a lifestyle profitable business if you can not enjoy your earnings?

When building my projects I always try to automate everything I can and that served me well recently when I was forced to take a couple of days off due to Covid-19 (you can hear more about it in my latest podcast episode).

I want to go through all of my projects and tell you how I am automating each one:

Changeit - Climate Change App

Changeit is an app that is available on IOS and Android. The fact that it is an app has the great advantage of having the code running in the clients’ phones which allows me to save a lot of costs and time in maintaining a server. The only server that I have running is to manage the microlearning notifications that help the users achieve their sustainable goals.

I have worked in the algorithm to be able to automatically determine the best timing for each user and that way built a highly personalized product that does not require my undivided attention.

The app has been running for months completely autonomous since I have recently been focusing more on the other projects.

Podcast

I have to be honest, this project is really hard to automate since I need to record the content on a daily basis. However, there are a couple of little automations that are already facilitating my life:

• I use calendly to help me with scheduling my interviews
• I pre-record a couple of episodes which allow me to take a few weeks off without disturbing the podcast.

Virtual Co-Working Space

This is the project that is making the most money and also the one that has the most automation of them all. The product itself is a community, which means that its main value is created by its members. This means that the product will be creating value even if I am not working on it given that the members remain active.

Besides that there are still a lot of tasks that I have automated:

• The whole registration process is automated. After becoming a member the user receives a message with the access code and once she joins the slack channel I have a zappier automation that sends a welcome message to the new users

• I have a couple of other automated messages that help onboard the user in their first days.

• The website runs in netlify which means that the whole infrastructure is managed by and I don’t have to worry about downtimes.

I can mostly enjoy the space as a user because most of the operational tasks are automated :)

Indie Offices

This is my most recent product and it’s still very young but I have already started the automation process:

• The website also runs in netlify and it uses third party tools like jetsi and youtube playlists
• I have automated messages that help the onboarding process of the users

Conclusion

Especially as a solopreneur your most important asset is your time. You need it to make great decisions, build products, and for your personal life. That is why your efforts to automate your business should start from day one because it is really connected with the way it is built.