Automation will not save your business

Okay, so I was just scrolling through a platform called GitHub, which is, if you're not familiar, a place where developers show their code, makes it easier to collaborate, modify the code, make updates to it, et cetera. It's kind of like Google Docs, but for coding. And I was scrolling through GitHub and looking at all of these open source repositories, essentially these code bases that are made publicly available that anyone can contribute to. That might fix a specific problem for you. Sometimes there are even like entire applications. So there's also different types of work that's open source. I won't get into that right now. I was looking at these open source repositories and just reflecting on a book that I was reading earlier today. And it kind of made me realize the importance of system upgrades in business. And I'll explain what I mean now. If you've spent probably at least a year in an online business, building an online business of any kind, which most of the people that watch my YouTube channel make up to a few million a year in revenue. If you're already a billionaire, you probably understand this concept much better than I. But for you, if you're watching, you've probably, you know, in business come across this idea of systemization, creating systems around things. So that they run more effectively or so that you have more leverage, so that work is more automated for you. For example, a system that I love and I've used for years is I have a housekeeper that comes, cooks, cleans, packs suitcases, unpacks suitcases, does laundry, you know, makes sure that there's no unhealthy food in the house. And that is a system in and of itself. And it is mostly automated, at least for myself. Now, in, in online business, there's a lot of things that we do that require different software. Maybe it's Slack, maybe it's YouTube, maybe it's Google Docs. And what people really like to do, and usually when someone starts making around 7 figures a year, I see them get really into this. But lots of beginners do this as well. They start getting really into the, into this concept of automation. Now, you know, they'll take a process that exists, like maybe the process for them is that let's just use like lead generation, for example. So it's like scraping a bunch of data off of people's websites, getting their emails, and then automatically finding out information about them and then automatically writing them an email and then automatically sending that email out. And, uh, what I see often is people get really into this whole idea of automation. They go, oh my God, all of the work that I'm doing could be completely automated and I wouldn't have to do anything ever again. And I'm just going to retire and I'm going to make millions of dollars. Now don't get me wrong. There's people like that that exist. I met a gentleman today that makes over $5 million a year on his, from his agency and has done that for years and years and spends 5 hours a month working. Like it is genuinely possible. It's very simple, um, but it's, it's typically not how things play out. Now I'll explain that a little more. Um, so with, uh, most systems, and, and, and I guess like the mindset of this approach to systems is I can just take this one process that somebody is doing manually right now and I can just automate the entire thing so that a person is no longer needed. What actually happens though, whilst the idea is amazing, what actually happens is most of the time, um, something is automated, uh, before it's fully optimized. And this is one of Elon's rules. In fact, when Elon is building any process, his last step of building that process is automating it. And one of the reasons why is because he's found that he's automated loads and loads of things that didn't need to exist in the first place. When we're looking at car manufacturing, he automated the, the creation of machines that would be used to, to make the cars, only to discover that the specific machine that he needed or that he had automated the creation of was actually not needed at all. And he could have just optimized this process better, deleted the step entirely, and then not optimized the process for 4 weeks, 4 months, however long it was, only to discover it was not necessary. So that's one of the first rules of automation is people automate something too quickly and they see a— they have an idea for a new system or a new process. and their first step is to try to automate it versus doing the system itself. Now, I think the second part of this that is seriously wrong is people like, almost when you automate a system, most people do this with the assumption or the intention of, you know, not having any manual work anymore. And that's usually incorrect because typically what I've seen is people try to automate a process that either is not optimized or is very complicated. And instead of being able to do that process manually themselves first and then automate the process, they have tried to automate something and it breaks and it has issues. And if you're a customer buying something, let's just say, I'll use the example, I won't call them out, but I hired an agency this week. And when I started the onboarding process, we sat on a meeting and their automations were supposed to start a bunch of onboarding. It was supposed to create a bunch of documents and set up Slack channels and send messages to people and give us all this access to their resources. But their automation broke and they couldn't physically like get it to work manually. So they couldn't get any— nobody knew how to fix the problem aside from the guy that had created the automation. And then he spent 20 minutes trying to fix it. And by that time we had gotten to the end of the onboarding call. And that's a perfect example of where automation can be like deadly or dangerous. Is trying to automate something that isn't optimized or trying to automate an entire process instead of automating little parts of it is something I'd strongly recommend you avoid. And in general, I would try to get this idea of automation out of your head. All this fantasy that like system, you're just going to make a system and it's just going to work and there's going to be no tender loving care that you need to do it. It's almost like assuming that you're just going to plant a bunch of seeds or you're going to buy a flower and install it and it's just magically going to be healthy every single day. It still needs to be nurtured. It still needs to be looked after. It still requires work and efforts. So that's the first part. And then the second part is this, you know, automating really complex systems or long systems versus doing it in little stages manually. If you're automating anything, which is generally a good idea to do because it does give you more leverage. But if you're automating anything, do it in small parts and do only the like prioritize based on what is most critical inside of a function itself. So prioritize the, the most critical function, automate that first and maybe automate one step in a 10-step process and do that because you can guarantee that that step works and is fully automated and then you can move on to the next step. and then we can make sure that your entire automation works without completely breaking. Now, there's another thing to consider here, and that is that, um, all systems need to be improved. So the main want of this video is for the people that think that, oh, I can just automate something, I never have to touch it, and I move on to the next thing. Never, ever, ever works like that. It just doesn't happen. It's not a thing. And it's not a thing because technology evolves and improves over time. So you cannot go and create the iPhone without having a chip system that is automated or without being able to manufacture chips at volume. But if you can't— but if you— but once the iPhone is created, you'll need to upgrade the chips and you'll need to upgrade that automation in that system itself. So I think if you look at history over time, the way that we've gotten to where we're at today is by automating systems or improving technology, like actual technology. That's essentially what automation is, type of technology. It's by creating technology, and that technology then becomes the building block for new technology that is layered on top of it. But as new technology is being developed, everything is being recreated constantly. Some things are being deleted entirely, some things are being rebuilt from the ground up, and that is the nature of systems. And that happens because as humans, we are wired to improve the things around us. And naturally over time, they keep getting better and better and better. So even a system that is automated, it won't be automated for long. Like at best, you're automating things for 6 to 12 months in the world of online business. Maybe you're lucky if you can get something to be automated for multiple years. But in reality, it's not that viable to take the approach of I'm just going to automate this fully. And you shouldn't be approaching it from a perspective of I'm never going to touch it ever again because I'm some automation genius. So that's something that's like super important to understand if you're actually building a business itself and thinking about building a business itself. Make sure that you can modify the process manually. Make sure that you do it in steps and do it in parts. Make sure that you have optimized the process first before you're attempting to automate it. Make sure that you don't think that you're automating things to never touch it. And the biggest reason for all of this is because the because of the amount of time that I see people spending trying to automate something. And it's really funny because I know lots of smart people now and I've met like crazy people, billionaires, $100 millionaires, deca-millionaires, millionaires, people just starting out, like the entire spectrum. I've worked with like this broad range of everybody and I see so many people get stuck at, in this level of business where their business is doing multi-seven figures maybe, and it's not pushing any harder and they're getting stuck. And by the way, when I say multi-seven figures, I'm saying that because that's my audience, but like lots of you are below that and this applies to you too. But I see, again, I see lots of them trying to automate something and spending all of their time focusing on automation and getting so excited about the concept of something being slightly more optimized. Oh, AI is reading my calls now and is telling me, you know, what happened in the meeting. Like, I can just automate that a little bit more and then I can get it to send me an end-of-day update about all of my meetings. It's like they focus on BS automations that don't provide much value to your business instead of actually focusing on what matters, which is improving your product by improving your customer experience in the way that it actually functions and scaling your business. So getting more distribution, getting a product and shit out in front of more people, however you choose to do that. So that's my rod. But again, lots of the time people take something that takes literally 5 minutes to do and they spend 4 days working on automating. And the half-life of that expires really, really quickly. If we take 5 minutes, we apply it across a month, that's 150 minutes. That's 2.5 hours. 2.5 hours times 12, we're looking at like 25, 30 hours for 30 hours a month, maybe, oh, sorry, 30 hours a year, and they spent more time developing that system than it will actually save them in the long run. So they wasted 4 days only to build something that only is actually automated for 3 months before they make a new change to the process and everything breaks again. They have to rebuild it. So that is the dangerous cycle of automation. Thanks for listening to the rant. Hopefully that was actually helpful because people do it way, way, way too much and you have to catch yourself. Automation is sexy, of course. Oh my God, passive income, millions of dollars, no work, 5 minutes. Yeah, but like, that's not what happens. So be cognizant of that.