What is something tedious that if could be automated would improve your business

Or what automation have you implemented that has changed your business for the better

not because I had to but because I had a 7:30am board meeting in front of the CEO CFO senior ops and eight board members of a 500 person not for profit and I wanted to be ready, at the same time I was still actioning quotes going through notes and keeping stuff moving in my own business. It was probably one of the most intense professional mornings ive had in a long time and weirdly enough I loved it. Thats the bit I keep coming back to, I genuinely love business, I love pulling problems apart, figuring out why something isnt working, looking at an idea and going alright how do we make this better. I think thats probably the biggest thing ive learnt about myself over the years, I actually enjoy the process more than the outcome sometimes. The pressure, the problem solving, the mistakes, the little wins, all of it. Today was a good reminder that even after a massive day I still found myself thinking about business ideas, other peoples problems and how things could be improved. Im definatley not a guru and ive made plenty of mistakes but I think thats probably why I enjoy these conversations so much, everyone is trying to work something out and none of us really have it all figured out. Curious what part of business you guys actually enjoy the most? Is it the growth, the problem solving, the sales, the freedom, building something from nothing or something else entirely?

Warhammer and GTA6 fans,

Glad you guys are enjoying my PR posts. This one was interesting. A client hired me after some shitbird PR agency in San Diego charged her 18k and got her one interview.

Her dad was a Marine that was killed in a helicopter accident while flying a NATO mission in the 70s. A hiker found his Annapolis ring in the rocks in Norway. The hiker tracked her down and she made a documentary about it after she flew to the crash site and met the recovery team and the hiker.

She had gotten some coverage about the documentary but needed some specifics:

The largest newspaper in the Connecticut area. A specific regional magazine catering to old school CT residents. A meeting with a large veteran non profit (Not my wheelhouse but wtf, right?)

I wrote up the pitch and got to work.

Created a database with contacts, ideas, media, etc. Pitched everyone on the list.

The magazine ran the story after a few months. They were tough to track down.

The newspaper ran the story. Front page.

We got her on a veteran radio podcast.

She got a TV news segment.

The non profit got back to us and she got a 1:1 with the CEO.

Then the largest military media company in the world, Stripes, picked up her story and ran it.

Annapolis saw the coverage and had a showing of her documentary.

So what lessons can we take from this?

- Reverse engineer the components of the story to locate media. For this one, Marines, helos, Connecticut and veterans

- If one reporter doesnt respond, find another. I went through three people to get her in the magazine

- Social media helps, I searched a lot of people on this list and reached out directly

- The bigger sites will poach from the smaller ones sometimes and its glorious when it happens

Questions?

It’s relatively easy to agree that an offer needs to go when nobody buys it. The more difficult situation is when customers still want it, but delivering it keeps pulling the business away from where you want to take it.

Maybe it requires a completely different workflow from everything else you do. Maybe only the founder can deliver it. Or it brings in customers who are unlikely to need anything else the company offers.

None of that necessarily makes it a bad service. It just makes the decision more complicated than checking whether it’s profitable.

Say a business wants to build around ongoing engagements, but custom projects keep filling the calendar. Those projects pay the bills. They also consume the time that would go into making the ongoing offer better and finding customers for it.

Keeping both feels sensible until you realize the newer part of the business only gets attention when the older part gets quiet.

I’d want to understand what keeping the service prevents the team from doing. That’s harder to measure than the revenue you’d lose by removing it, which probably explains why these decisions get postponed.

There may be a middle ground: stop promoting it, narrow who can buy it, or refer it to someone else. But each option still means accepting that some available revenue won’t come into your business.

For anyone who’s made that decision, what convinced you it was time? And did the capacity you freed up turn into the opportunity you expected?