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Podcast Show Notes
I know the immediate value that automation can create in a business. And in this article, I want to help you understand how you can start to automate parts of your business and finally make the switch from burned out to beaming with absolute freedom. The freedom that comes when you don’t have to open a laptop on vacation or even check one message when at your kid’s sporting event. Inside I share the five reasons I believe you should automate your business and become an entrepreneur.
Here’s how I was doing it all wrong
When I think back on my journey to becoming an entrepreneur, it started with a decade of me turning a hobby into a small time-sucking business and sacrificing a ton of time for not much more than experience.
I was doing ALL the work from ordering supplies, making the items, running the online store, fulfilling orders, and all customer communication. I touched every part of the business and got burnt out quickly.
Unfortunately, I didn’t learn my lesson and repeated that a second time, first with a semi-precious stone jewelry business and second with a children’s clothing company.
My entry into direct sales
When I entered direct sales in 2012 is when things started to change for me. I wanted to grow my business my I didn’t want to do all that unnecessary work I saw everyone else doing. So, I immediately tested new ways to automate client leads without sending 200 cold direct messages. I built onboarding sites and systems to train our new independent consultants. But it was always welcomed with pushback from the company. Enough so they threatened to terminate me.
They said, “You aren’t allowed to blog about our products, build a team website for advertising, pass out handouts. It was always you can’t do this or that.“
Again, I was getting burnt out by the way they wanted us to run our businesses. They promised freedom, but there was none to be found.
The more they said NO, the more I started to discover the world of personal brand marketing. I was learning the difference between attraction marketing and push marketing, and my entire world shifted.
When everything started to click for me
I was paying for online courses and pieces of training from people outside of the direct sales industry. And that’s when everything started to click for me. I wasn’t crazy for trying to create these systems. It’s precisely what these marketing pros were doing inside their businesses.
I vowed to do things differently
Taking all I learned about personal branding and authentic marketing, I started an email subscription in 2017, which led to creating a branding course in 2019. All while creating automated system after system for my own business. I knew what it was like to always be INSIDE my business and always vowed to do things differently.
Eventually, in 2020 I sold my direct sales business to start helping other women incorporate automated marketing systems into their own business. And that is how CORE Brand Marketing Group was born in October of 2020.
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Create absolute freedom
I know the immediate value that automation can create in a business. And in this episode, I want to help you understand how you can start to automate parts of your business and finally make the switch from burned out to beaming with absolute freedom. The freedom comes when you don’t have to open a laptop on vacation or even check one single message when at your kid’s sporting event.
So let’s jump into the five reasons I believe you should automate your business as a dedicated business owner.
And did you notice how I didn’t use the word Entrepreneur? It’s because you aren’t one, YET. You are doing all the work in your business which means you simply have the entrepreneurial spirit.
According to Mike Michalowicz from the book The Pumpkin Plan – “Entrepreneurs don’t do most of the work. Entrepreneurs identify the problems, discover the opportunities and then build processes to allow other people or other things to do the work and to do it right, consistently.”
5 Reasons You Should Automate Your Business
So let’s turn your title from overworked business owner to Entrepreneur, and here are five reasons why that’s a great idea!
1 – Save You Time
It’s no secret time = money. If you find yourself doing the same time-sucking tasks over and over again, you are going to quickly lose your morale and waste a ton of time in the meantime. This can be seen many times when posting to social media or replying to direct messages about all the benefits of your excellent product or communicating in an email to drip a product campaign to a high-quality lead. All of these manual recurring tasks should be replaced by automation systems.
Ep 84: 3 Impactful Tasks You Need To Automate
2 – Reduce Costs and Increase Profits
YES! Hiring someone else to do things for you saves you money! Whether you outsource your business automation or create your system and hire internal staff to perform it for you. You can turn to automation to reduce your costs. Since you will be making a higher revenue due to your new automated system filled with computers doing the work for you, your costs go down, and your profit goes up. Don’t worry – it took me decades to understand this one too. I thought, “well, if I just do everything myself, then there is no cost”… boy, was I wrong. My cost was my time. And my time = money. With people doing the work for me, my revenue increased dramatically! I could do more in less time, which decreased my costs and significantly increased my profit and free time.
3 – Enhance Your Workflow
First, let me preface by saying if you don’t have a workflow, you need one! By designing a set workflow and task list for every project in your business, from onboarding clients to completing projects to following up – you need a workflow. Then you need to automate it so you can execute it more efficiently – thus saving you more time. When you can connect all your automated processes from lead generation, forms, project invoices, and emails, you will create a smooth workflow by eliminating unnecessary steps.
4 – Deliver a Better Quality Experience
Your customer can go other places to get a similar product to yours – but when you can automate your business to ensure that every action and experience is the same… this results in a reliable and high-quality product and experience. This consistency allows every customer who comes in contact with your business to receive the same level of service. And since you automate this experience, you can focus more time on improving your product, systems, or services.
5 – Improve Insight and Awareness
If you are continually stuck inside your business, you have no time to analyze its performance. Integrating analytics from your blog, website, and marketing is one of the most effective strategies to get to know your customers and their buying patterns. But unless you set up automations, this data just sits there, and you are unaware of how to serve your clients better. But when you have your business automated with lead generation, sales conversions, product development, and client communication, you can see how you can gain more time to make better decisions for your business.
Ep 39: How To Stand Out When You’re All Selling The Same Thing
Ep 81: 4 Reasons You Don’t Need To Be Empowered To Start A Business
Hesitant with Technology & Investment
I know that technology can be complex, and you may be hesitant to integrate it into your work process when what you are doing manually is working. But all I can tell you from experience is that when I started to delegate more and more tasks, I began to enjoy my business that much more.
And yes, building systems is another form of investment. It takes time and money. But let me break this down for you – at some point, you can’t work any more hours. It becomes physically impossible. But if you can invest the time and money to build systems from your workflows and constantly improve upon them so someone can take over the reins for you and execute it consistently, you just created the most significant long-term investment strategy.
When that happens is when you become a real entrepreneur.
Ep 87: 12 Essential Business Tools You Need This Year
My 20+ years of Experience in building an automated business
I have over 20 years of experience in building a confident, brand-focused, and automated online business. Today I offer three ways to work with me.
Online Course – I have perfected online business-building over the past 20+ years and teach you everything I’ve learned inside my signature Automated Business Bootcamp. If you are a DIYer this is the option for you! This course will launch soon – so to get your name on the waitlist, visit kristinkorn.com/waitlist. When you do, you will be the first to grab this offer at a discounted price.
The Social Note Membership – Inside this female-only online resource library and community, you’ll find accountability, a support system, a business building framework, and women who’ve had experience where you are today. For more information, visit jointhesocialnote.com.
Built For You Automated Business – We build for you a confident, brand-focused, and automated online business by applying a simplistic sales process fueled by your brand’s CORE Foundation and backed by our strategic quality. To fill out an application for a complimentary discovery call visit corebrandmarketing.com.
In Conclusion
In the end, I believe that true entrepreneurs aren’t working poolside or getting on daily conference calls to run every part of their business. I believe a real entrepreneur is so confident in their method and systems that they encourage others to showcase their talents inside your business.
Stop trying to run the entire show yourself. I’ve done it – it’s tiring and gets you nowhere fast. If you genuinely want to grow a serious business, it requires that you don’t do any of the work.
Wouldn’t you love to stop working for your business and instead have your business work for you?
You can achieve this with an automated business and building repeatable systems. I know you are proud of the work you do – I was too. But I guarantee you’ll be MORE PROUD of the work your company does.
Since I share awe-inspiring resources and must-have products for business builders like you who want to streamline their business – my content may contain affiliate links for products I use and love. If you take action (i.e. subscribe, make a purchase) after clicking one of these links, I’ll earn a small commission. While it has no effect on your pricing, it’s my responsibility to let you know that an income (however small or large it may be) is made from recommending products I love, use, and share with other awesome people like yourself. With your support, I’m able to commit time to this blog and to each of you on your journey!
