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James is back and he's smarter than ever! Freeing up time, saving money and focussing on areas that will grow your business - these are all things we as business owners would love but often daily firefighting gets in the way…enter automation!
A podcast helping companies grow with marketing strategies, automation and time-saving tips and creative solutions.
James: Hello and welcome to another
episode of behind the madness.
I'm your host, James Roberts,
founder, and owner of Method.
We are a growth agency who are hell bent
on unlocking company's potential through
creative and marketing techniques.
On today's episode, we are
talking all about automation and
optimization, something that I love.
Once again, I am joined by my two friends.
Jamie and Paul.
So let's jump in with today's topic.
Firstly hello both.
How are you?
Jamie: Very good.
Thanks James
how are you
James: Yeah.
Good, good.
It's nice to somebody asks
plus somebody cares Jamie.
It's nice somebody cares.
Jamie: You say that, but I'm going to
stop you there because we're going to
flip the script today and we're going
to put you on the spot a little bit.
We know that automation
optimization is your baby.
you love making sure a company
works more efficiently.
So today to ask you a
couple of questions, get your
responses and see how it goes.
That's right.
Isn't it.
Paul.
Paul: Yeah, James is an
automation and workflow nerd.
Jamie: said like a true friend.
James: Yeah.
Thanks mate.
Right go on then let's get cracking.
Jamie: So first and foremost,
what's it all about?
As in, we've just thrown automation
optimization all out there.
What you talking about?
James: So with automation, optimization,
anything along those lines, it
kind of is around streamlining.
If we're just focused on businesses and
obviously be done in everyday life, to
be honest, it can be done with anything
personally, as well as business.
But for this, I think people will
get more interest out of business
optimization and automatization.
So we're primarily talking about
streamlining companies, we are
trying to optimize their day,
into working more efficiently.
done in a number of different ways.
I could certainly talk for
hours and hours on the topic.
And you can break that
down into certain sectors.
So when we take the car industry.
There's two ways of making cars that
you can make beautiful handmade cars
like our friends over at Pembleton,
or you can go down the automation
route and mass produced cars.
Now to do that, you've got to get
systems in place where that automation
is taking care of and in that instance,
they are actual robotics that are
automating the car manufacturing process.
I think it's nice to start there
because everybody has seen the pictures.
Everybody is seeing video footage
of these cars being produced and
you can take it one step further.
If you look at the likes of BMW who
actually have almost robots that are
driving around the shop floor, doing
all of these automation tasks now what
that's doing is obviously speeding
up the creation of a car in this
instance and saving people's time.
We only have so much a day and to train up
staff, to be able to do that, to train up
engineers, to train up people is obviously
costly and can take a lot of time.
Jamie: That is key, that is a massive
key point is talking about this, given
me a great outlook of what it is, but
why, why should business owners marketing
teams, like, why should they care?
Like, what's the benefit.
James: So it's, obviously it
generally does come down to cost.
Everything has to come down with
cost of business and we are trying
to get the most for our buck.
We built a system a few years back,
and when we were introducing it to
companies, they were really worried
about it replacing them because it
was doing a part of their job, but
I never looked at it like that.
I look at it from the view that it's
giving that person time back, that can
be used to do more beneficial tasks for
the organization, or for the company.
If you're doing a repetitive task
all the time, you are paying for
somebody to do that repetitive
task rather than build on or grow.
And I think that's what it
comes down to is, is the growth.
So if you are automating something,
they then have time to grow themselves,
they have time to learn new things, but
also you have the Headspace maybe to
apply that into a different field, but
you are saving money on that person.
You have bought them back time
where you are going to get
more productivity from them.
They're going to actually be able to do
more things for that money when they are,
you know, could be very highly skilled
members of your team that are doing
the same thing day in and day out and
that is a waste of time and resources.
Jamie: I imagine massively on, on
that point, the employee team get much
more enjoyment from that jobs as well,
because they're not doing those boring
tasks that you kind of said, and they
are given more time and license to use
their expertise to innovate, or to think
up new ideas or grow themselves with
the time you've given back to them.
So I can see it being a massive, useful
tool on that side of the morale as well.
Paul have you got anything
fire over to the boss man?
Paul: I want to add on what James just
said really, it's it's about efficiency.
It's about giving people
time back to do their job.
If started the job five years ago,
you will have taken on more today then
you signed up for you're constantly
getting niggling little jobs thrown at
you to do that takes up so much time.
With automation, workflows, and things
like that like that it's giving you
that time back to concentrate on your
job and not, not wasting time on the
jobs you're doing before it's just
letting technology do it for you.
Jamie: Yeah.
Interesting.
Going going back to James.
I'm going to put a bit of a clock on this.
I'm going to look for one to two
minute answers for the next couple.
You spoke earlier about the importance of
having these systems and stuff in place.
How do you plan automations?
What do you do for that?
James: Quick answer, start
simple, you are never going to
have a complex system overnight.
It's never going to just wake up one
day and you're going to have your whole
system, your whole organization automated.
You have to think with the basics first,
you know, maybe take email something
that every organization uses and we
will all send an email with the similar
content in it, three or four times a
week, easily, where it could be related
to sales and that same email or that
chasing email of did you get my quote?
We will send it and we
will write it every time.
So why not set a template that you
can use and you change a few things
because we all want to be personal.
You have to be personal,
but the bulk of it is done.
That could be your first
step in terms of automation.
Jamie: Perfect and well, under
a minute, so nicely done.
Paul: I've got a question for you, James.
Some people might be put off by the high
cost of implementation of automation.
So is it worth it?
James: So, yeah, so as I said, you
know, templates could be free.
You could save them on, on Google docs.
When you get up to, obviously we
are HubSpot partners HubSpot have
around marketing automation and sales
automation even service looking after
ongoing clients are brilliant at what
they do and you can get some really
complex automation workflow set up.
When you get to that level yes, there
is a cost involved, but the flip side
of that, Essentially a HubSpot license,
I usually treat it like a member of
staff that is working, you know, every
day of the year, working every hour.
They're not forgetting things.
I don't have to pay them a pension.
So really a member of staff that is
helping the whole organization out.
So I think don't view it as an outgoing
cost that is you know, not, not going
to really win you anything back.
It certainly is.
It's going to win you back in terms
of optimization time, also, yeah,
treat it like a member staff who's
doing all of those jobs for you.
Jamie: So I think kind of answered them
part a little bit of my next question,
but if you were to give people a
toolkit for automations, optimizations,
what does, what does yours look like?
What would you recommend?
And like you kind of did there is
there a scale, obviously starting,
maybe on a free solution to
paying for a tool like HubSpot.
James: Yeah, so again, you know, there is
ways that you can utilize optimization,
so it could, it could just be a simple
System that you are looking at within
your business, that looks at how much
time you are using in certain tasks.
So every time you are writing emails,
for example, and it's a bit of a boring
process to go through, but if you
can segment that time and understand
how your staff are working, we all
think we know, but really we don't.
There's so much wasted time
that happens within a day.
That's understanding that first and
foremost, which essentially is free,
we can do that with stopwatches,
you can have a good idea of really
what your staff, your team, your
workforce are doing, then you can
decide, well, what should we automate?
And with a lot of these platforms, you
know, we use a number of different tools
and they all start off with a starter or
a free version to kind of get you going.
So within our tool kits, yes, we have
some in fact, all of our tools, I think
have a starter option, and then you
can grow that as your business grows.
Jamie: Okay.
So last one from me before
I let you off the hook.
Business doing okay, how do I start?
If you would just give me a easy
process that I could follow here.
And it's once two minutes, super simple.
How do I start freeing up this time?
This time that you said to me,
that I could have, how do I do it?.
James: So again, analyze
what you're doing, set out,
what you do during the day.
I think going back to time and tracking
your time and understanding how you
spend your day and how you split up your
day is a really interesting exercise.
Then once you've done that you
can set time within your day.
So without getting started with
any of these tools, it's a good
to have this understanding of
how you can optimize yourself.
Block in time to do set tasks.
we all have this monkey mind, especially
when it's within business and we will
have to jump between different tasks.
Different people are pulling us in
different ways of phone will go off and
email will come in and we're being pulled
in all of these different directions,
which is why it's sometimes very nice
to get home and put your feet up.
So block out time, you know, on a Thursday
morning for an hour, I'm going to do
prospecting, in the afternoon I'm going
to look at clearing my emails out, set
time within your day and stick to it.
You might have to deviate, but
then also set meetings around that.
So I know that between 12 and one
o'clock, I'm going to have my lunch
and I'm going to go for a walk,
let's say, that's blocked out.
That's in my calendar, people
can't book a meeting then, then
I'm going to do meetings at two
til three and set things like that.
All of a sudden you're optimizing
yourself from then you start to then get
a greater understanding of how to manage
your time and what repetitive tasks
you are doing and then you can start to
move on from there to what to include.
Jamie: Perfect.
Yeah, that makes sense, that makes
sense, Paul, is there you've got to fire
at him before I head back over to him?
Paul: I think he's covered
pretty much everything that
we needed to in this podcast.
Jamie: That's perfect.
So, James, thank you for
jumping into the hot seat and
giving your expertise on that.
I'm sure HubSpot will be very
happy with a couple of mentions.
We will try and get them on here as well
at some point, so if you're listening.
James, back over you to wrap up
and say bye to our lovely audience.
James: Yeah.
So as I mentioned, I love automation.
If you have any questions about how
to get started off, drop me an email.
It's probably the easiest
way, james@hellomethod.co.uk.
And I only answer emails on a Friday
afternoon between five and six.
No that's a lie.
Just drop me an email and I will
come back to you on the, on those.
Jamie: It's a lie.
James: It's a lie.
I'm always on my emails.
So anyway, thanks for listening.
This has been behind the madness
with me, James Jamie and Paul today.
We hope you enjoyed
learning about automation.
Make sure you subscribe.
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that we're putting out on there as well.
We'll also include some links and
some resources in the show notes as
ever, but that's it for this episode.
So see you next time.