185 - Why you should automate all-the-things with James Rose

Interview with James Rose

A saved is a penny earned, or so they say. But perhaps we could throw the net a little wider? What about... a minute saved is a penny / dollar earned? That sounds good.

There's one person who I think of when I think about saving time, and that person is James Rose. That's because I know that he's spent a whole heap of time automating just about anything that he can get his hands on. If it is possible to save some time, I suspect that James has done it.

Now, perhaps you're thinking, well if James has spent ages saving time, then that's just an oxymoron. Well, he's cleverer than that! He only spends time trying to save time, when he thinks that the benefits in the longer term will justify the time-cost in the short time. Very wise.

So he speaks about why you might want to get skilled in this area. What the real benefits are and what the pitfalls are. Clearly not everything shoudl be automated; if you try to do that, you might end up with systems and processes which are a little robotic, shall we say. We don't want to become inauthentic. This is more about saving time on tasks that literally are just a time suck, ones in which there is literally zero benefit to you or your business from pouring that time down a drain.

Now, I could learn a lot from James in this regard. For reasons that I cannot explain, I never invest the time and imagine that it's better to do things by hand... just this one-last-time! I'm sure you've been there, you could invest twenty minutes to automate a process that you hate, a process that you do each week, knowing that, a year from now this automation will have saved you ten hours. But I don't! I just do it and then forget about it!

Well, it's that you, James is here to put you straight. Automate the things you can and leave the things that don't feel right.

The next thing to worry about is exactly how do you automate boring, repetitive tasks. James has a Zapier Mastery course which will help you along the way. He explains how the platform works and how you can get up and running in the shortest possible time.

His bullet list of course benefits runs as follows:

• Take the pressure off
• Scale your business
• Stay focused
• Reduce human error
• Feel like a wizard - I like this one best, because honestly some of this does seem like wizardry!

We also dip into another app that you might know James from, and that is Content Snare. The team have been busy updating it and giving the UI a new lick of paint and so we talk about that and how Content Snare can be used to make the process of getting content from your clients way easier.

So, go check out the podcast and leave a comment below or in the WP Builds Facebook Group.

Mentioned in this episode

Automation & Zapier Training

Zapier Mastery - 50% off (as on 22.06.20)

Content Snare

Agency Highway