Automated Business - Myth vs Reality...

How much can you automate your business? Is it REALLY possible to automate everything and not work? 
Today we're going to talk about what this really looks like. 
I know how to set up a lot of systems and automations, I've worked on a TON of different platforms, and well, you could say I might know a thing or two about automating your business... 

This episode is all about the myths vs reality of automating your business and how "little" you're going to have to work to run an ACTUAL business. 

I'd love to hear your takeaways after you listen! 

Connect with me here: 

IG: https://www.instagram.com/iamtaraleson/

Website: https://www.taraleson.com

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:08

Welcome to the Behind the Scenes of Online Business Without the BS podcast. If you're a motivated entrepreneur with a dream of building your own sustainable online business, you are in the right place in the right place. I'm Tara, the systems expert, and I help online business owners put systems into your business so you can live in your life, not in your business, and still make daily sales. I also love to keep it real with what it takes to build an online business. Get ready as we go behind the scenes on this wild ride of entrepreneurship and building successful, real businesses. Welcome back to the podcast. All right, today we're going to talk about automated business. This is one we've been seeing like so much online, especially with the whole like, I think, with like the faceless marketing stuff and digital marketing and just all of those things, and especially, I would say the past year especially, this is like really picked up the automated business thing and obviously I do systems and automations. That's like a big part of what I do in business and I find it so interesting when people are talking about you know so many parts of automating their business and how easy it is and how little you have to work when your business is automated and all of these things and how a lot of it is bullshit. What a surprise, but you know. So the biggest thing that I think is you know. So interesting about this is there's a lot of people that are putting out there this whole idea of you know you, idea of you know you, if you automate your business, you will only have to work two hours a day or 10 hours a week and it is so easy at like, first off, first off. Okay, the math doesn't pass. It's just like mind-blowing to me in the first place and it's not easy. And if you, actually it's funny because I've went back to threads and I don't. I'm not like an active participant on threads, I'm an active watcher on threads. Sometimes I'll like comment on other people's things, but I don't know, I don't usually post anything there myself, because then I will also forget that it's there for a couple of weeks and like I'm off and on for a couple weeks and like I'm off and on. Anyways, for whatever reason, my threads algorithm is full of digital marketing people and even though the claim is that this is so easy and you don't have to work and blah, blah, blah on threads, it's totally different. It's a wildly different story, and it's funny to me because the reels that are being posted on Instagram are telling a completely different story than what all of the threads are saying. The threads are saying that this shit is hard and it is taking forever to make one sale and like I'm having months and months and months of no sales. Why am I not making sales? What am I doing wrong? Blah, blah, blah. But then the reels are like all you need is an automated business and it's everything's so easy and you'll just make like six million dollars in five seconds, which that will never happen, but it's just.

Speaker 1: 4:33

It's so interesting the total dichotomy there between the two platforms platforms and the number of people that are saying that they aren't actually living this dream of digital marketing, even though we are hearing this on like well, on TikTok too, I see this a lot and it's like no, that's not what's happening, because it can't. That's just not how it like, it's legitimately not how it works, and I think everyone knows that with well. Clearly not everyone knows that, but if you are building a business or you are just going into business, like you can't just decide one day that you're going to have a business, the next day, start it and all of a sudden, like sales are just rolling in and your bank accounts just like filling up nowhere. Like that's not how this works. It takes time. It takes work. You also have to make the content, and this was like a big thing.

Speaker 1: 5:50

That a lot of people were saying is like oh my God, why is it taking me more than two hours a day? Because I'm having to do all this content and then I'm having to post things and I'm having to do like this, that and the next thing. Yeah, you have a. Like you have a business, though and I think that this is where some of this gets lost in translation. I don't know, but it's like you, you're wanting to own and run a business. This isn't something that you know. You can just do for a couple hours and think that it's good. Like you're going to bankroll here in tons of money. It's not going to happen. Like it really takes time and effort. It's not going to happen. Like it really takes time and effort. And I see, even with different things, that these people are setting up like they don't have the automations to even be working the little amount of hours that they claim, the little amount of hours that they claim. It just wouldn't work that way because the things that are set up aren't set up right and some of these things apparently show you how to set up automations. I don't know, but from I've actually watched it was. This was extremely interesting to me.

Speaker 1: 7:25

I watched a reaction video to one of these courses and the platform recommendations is another huge thing. Recommending Kajabi to open your business on is a terrible fucking idea. Like it's things like this because they have no idea. Like you're not an expert in this area, you don't know about these platforms, you don't know about what would actually be suitable for this kind of business and that if you are a beginner business owner, a beginner entrepreneur, just jumping onto Kajabi is not easy. Like that's not going to be easy, and then trying to set up an entire website and courses and products and email marketing and like all of these things, that alone is going to take you a shit ton of time. So I don't know where this like two hours a day is coming from, even for those types of things. So that's like I don't know kind of that one. That's that side of it, the digital marketing thing Because even with those, I really don't see how this happens, because, like it doesn't, and it doesn't as easily as these people are claiming, really doesn't. Then there are also people claiming the same thing for coaching businesses, whether it's business coaching, whether it's fitness coaching, whether it's fitness coaching, life coaching, like whatever same thing 10 hours per week? Totally not.

Speaker 1: 9:35

Do you have clients? What in the fuck? I swear. Like sometimes I'm just like maybe no, I shouldn't keep these thoughts to myself, but honestly, like if you have clients, you're definitely going to be working more than 10 hours a week. I'm sorry, but you're, you're going to be. Because even like, how many clients do you want in? Like how many clients do you want? And I mean, I've seen a. I've seen a huge range Like this is. I've seen a wild range. I've seen anywhere from like five and people wanted more up to like, well, if you have over 20 and they're pretend they're all getting a call every week, well, that's right there. Over 10 hours a week just on client calls. Like none of this shit makes any sense. So when you hear these things and you're like, why is this not happening for me? This is why because it's happening for no one. Like this shit is happening for nobody. This is not happening. I like I don't even know how else to say it Even with systems and automations, because you can set these things up and that can definitely make things a lot easier, so that you have, you know, systems that people can go into.

Speaker 1: 11:16

You can have the landing pages where people can go and sign up for things and receive your emails automatically, and go to your sales pages and check out and like. All of that can be handled and a lot of things can be automated, but they're still taking care of your clients. They're still like the number one thing in business, which is building relationships. That's like number one. You have to do that if you want your business to last and it's building relationships with both your clients and new leads. Like these things take time and if you truly want to have a business that is sustainable and is around for like any length of time, you're going to have to put the time into these things. Otherwise, I do, I do truly feel like at some point, this stuff is going to phase out, because I it. I know that it's not just me. I know it's not just me, but people don't want to talk to a bot. People want real support and they want to know that they're actually getting you know the support that they paid for. That takes time from whoever's giving that, so you have to be willing to put that time into your business.

Speaker 1: 12:54

Then there's taking care of, like, all of the other things in your business creating the content, like just doing the things that can't be automated, okay. And there's, like other stuff that people don't often talk about the financial things, like in actually keeping track of you know your income, your expenses, like all of these things. This is all time in your business and people I think like to talk about this and like make it sound so much better than it is, because they're like well, if I make it sound better, you're going to want to work with me because it sounds so good and you know I'm going to make it sound like it's all easy. But it's not, like it's it's a fantasy world because everyone has to deal with this stuff. Like everyone has to do this stuff. It's just it's a part of owning and running a business period. Like it just it just freaking is. And, like I said, systems and the automations 100% are going to help more, especially if you have them set up properly, especially if you have them set up properly. And this is like the other thing that I see is many times well. Like I gave the Kajabi example, you know, either people don't know what platforms or there's pieces of shit but they're not talking to each other, so the systems aren't set up properly.

Speaker 1: 14:47

There are so many things, but this whole like working two hours a day or working 10 hours a week is something that I just it's not a thing, even with a team, and I've talked about this too before no-transcript. A lot of things that come with this that I don't think a lot of people realize, because nobody talks about those things. They're just like this is what you need to do and then you'll just cut down your hours and it'll be all fine and la-di-da. No, there's always trade-offs, there's always different things, and I'm not saying that like having a team is bad, it's not. But I also don't have a team, just FYI. But I'm just saying that's not like inherently bad, but these are things that you have to think about. It's not just like that's what's going to solve the problem.

Speaker 1: 16:17

There are other things that you then have to think about, because it's not just delegating and then your hours are gone. You still have to make sure that those people are doing their job. So this whole automated business thing is an interesting one because I do think and I like I say you can have like margaritas on the beach and still make sales. You can do that because you can have sales pages that people can go to the checkout and check out and be onboarded into your business. While you are doing that, while you are sitting on the beach sipping your margarita, doing whatever Like that can happen as long as you set things up properly. Can you do that like forever and ever on end? No, can you do that like forever and ever on end? No, because you're going to have to handle shit in your business, like there are just things that you're going to have to come back and do, but there are things that you can put in place so that you're also not always in hustle mode, so that you're also not always in hustle mode.

Speaker 1: 17:46

And I think it's getting more realistic with these ideas and having more people talk about the fact that almost no one's actually working two hours a day At least. I don't believe that they are. I like wholeheartedly, actually don't believe that they are. I like wholeheartedly, actually don't believe that they are. So, anyway, I think that we just need to be all around talking about what is actually happening, because then people aren't feeling like why am I the only one Because this is something that I've seen asked many times that was one that was asked a lot of times on those threads is like why am I the only one?

Speaker 1: 18:24

That is, it was actually specifically having to work more than two hours a day and I was like, oh well, because you want to have a business and that's kind of what has to happen. Like that's the reality of it. But the thing is, this person was led to believe that that was what was going to happen Because they got in through these digital marketing reels that promised this life of you are only going to have to work two hours a day if that and you know, everyone's going to buy these courses, no matter what size your audience is, and the money is going to roll in. Well, that's not the way that things work. Unfortunately, I hate being like I don't think it's like being the downer on this, it's just being realistic about it, because I hate seeing people continue to get like taken advantage of, really by these things. I just like I hate seeing it. It hurts me, so I have to talk about it. It hurts me so, so I have to talk about it anyways. So that's the thing on automated business.

Speaker 1: 19:59

Now, if you are looking for getting real automations and systems in your business, you can check out my website. It is in the show notes, it is in the description box on YouTube, is in the show notes. It is in the description box on YouTube. That is something that I do, so you can check that out there and let me know your thoughts on automating your business and you know the working, the two hours a day or 10 hours a week or whatever else you've heard.

Speaker 1: 20:28

Let me know the craziest one that you've heard. I'd love to hear it. And if you are watching on YouTube, make sure you like and subscribe. I will see you in the next one. Thank you so much for listening, friend. I appreciate you being here and sharing in our experiences as we go behind the scenes in online business. I would love for you to hit that five stars, share with a friend that might enjoy it too, and leave a review telling me your favorite part of the show for this episode. Until next time, go, be successful, do the hard things and stay away from the BS.