“We’re too busy for automation right now”

“This is awesome but we’re much too busy for it, try us in six months.”

I get told this ~50 times a week. I’m talking to a prospect about an automation idea, they’ve identified how much time it’ll save, and we can get it implemented within a week after they press go. Some of them have even gotten the project scoped and have a quote in their inbox ready to sign off.

Then, they have a super busy week of admin and putting out fires. They don’t have the headspace to think about automation because their business is coming at them too fast to think about anything else. They’re reacting to everything. They don’t even do any sales work, it’s too busy for that. That’s totally understandable - we all have busy beaver weeks of working in the business instead of on the business.

Unfortunately, the week after is the same: five long days of treading water that even overflows into the weekend. They’re making decent money and staff are stretched but happy. It’s good to be busy. Generally, being busy means being successful.

Two weeks turns into three months. There have been a couple of gaps in the onslaught but not enough time to put brainpower into automation. A super promising project is now almost dead in the water. The illogical of this never ceases to amaze me; it’s like running as fast as you can to get to a stack of cheeseburgers (or something), but you’re on a treadmill fixed to the ground. You’re expending many kilojoules (or something) of energy, and staying alive, but three months later you’re in the same place.

Another trend I’ve noticed: people hugely overestimate the personal time investment for automation. They expect to close up shop for a week while a project gets put in. In reality, business continues to be aggressively normal, and the only time investment that we require from you is a matter of minutes to get access set up - we can row the waka from there.

If you’ve had an automation idea in the back of your head for ages, and you’re the villain in this blog article, reach out today. Right off the bat, we’ll give you a timeline and explain any impact on your business operations.

-Fred