Putting Robots To Work
One of the things we do at Do Your Thing as a trusted partner to our clients is look for ways to save their precious time for the tasks that have the greatest impact in their business, for their business. This is a key reason why we are obsessed with eliminating drudgery wherever we can.
Less time typing = more time strategizing.
Less time creating invoices = more time planning your next great offer.
Wherever we possibly can, we look to leverage the great tools at our disposal. That means taking advantage of apps and software to offload repetitive tasks. It means taking advantage of robots — alright, alright, really it’s Artificial Intelligence, but robots just sounds so much better.
So for one client recently, it was finding ways to streamline her invoicing process, something that costs her about 8 hours — one full day — a month. That’s 8 hours this CEO could be spending on business development, on coming up with great new solutions for her clients, on scheming brilliant new ways to build customer retention. Or on catching up on her sleep, spending time with her loved ones, reading a book, just generally enjoying the fruits of her labor.
Instead, that 8 hours is spent in front of her laptop, sorting through receipts, manually calculating mark-up, and going back and forth with her calendar to make sure she hasn’t missed anything. No fun. Which also means there could be a very human tendency to put off this process.
Part of that 8 hours, too? Hesitating to add in all of the costs because she’s worried her Client will balk when she sees the total. Part of that 8 hours is worrying because the whole thing makes her nervous.
This is where Do Your Thing comes in. We’re working with this Client now to take full advantage of the recurring invoicing & auto-charging functions within Quickbooks Online so that her invoices go out, as we say, “auto-magically” on the 1st of every month, to cut time out of the process of creating invoices AND to reduce the time-lag between service delivery and payment. In case this seems selfish, you are actually doing your clients a favor when you take these measures, by removing one thing from their To Do list, no need to write a check, find the email, click the right button.
Another benefit to this kind of robot-maximization? It also helps remove some of the emotional weight that invoicing carries. It gets you out of the middle, so you’re not hemming and hand-wringing and slowing down that process of those well-earned Benjamins landing in your account.
For those who cry out, “but all my work is so custom! This will never work!,” we got you. EVEN IF there’s a fair amount of customization in your work and in the way you invoice, there are STILL ways we can reduce the time required both for you and for your Client. Like, for example, setting up auto-charging for recurring base payments (leaving you only to invoice for additional products/services) or setting up ALL of the invoices for a big project with progress payments built into it at the start of the engagement. You can still add little custom flourishes and change orders as you go, but at least we have the basic bones of the invoicing all ready to go.
Why? So you can spend as much time as possible in your zone of genius. Let’s put robots to work for you in your biz, so you can be alllll the creative powerhouse you truly are.
If we can help, let me know.
XO,
Ariane
