Automation can be a great thing. In a way, it’s the reason you’re reading this right now instead of me having to come over to your house to tell you in person. There are databases, algorithms, feeds, and various other things that help get this post out there.
That said, I’ve been clear over the years that automation isn’t always the answer and it can lead to truly awful results. Authenticity always wins.
That’s not to say there isn’t a case for some automation in your life, but the more you can intentionally do things that can’t scale, the better you’ll look.
On an episode of “The Long and The Short of It” podcast (episode 811), Pete and Jen said it perfectly:
“Things that don’t scale make people feel seen”
Anyone can click the “happy birthday to x” button on Facebook, but a quick hand-written card is 1,000 times more appreciated. Things you do that aren’t scalable are often the most valuable.
Invoices
One interesting topic related to this is invoicing clients. Pete has relatively few clients, so he always sends a personal message with each manually-sent invoice. Jen, on the other hand, has a ton of small invoices to send and simply has no choice but to automate most of them. Both of their takes on this are valid.
We’ve discussed this at GreenMellen as well. We lean more toward Jen, as we often have a ton of small invoices and we automate much of it, but there’s another layer. Even with automation, there is still a good bit of manual work to be done (re-sending when needed, helping with credit cards that don’t go through, etc).
For a little while we considered hiring someone to help deal with those and take those efforts off our plates, but have opted to keep doing it ourselves. If a client is having trouble with an invoice, that’s absolutely a situation where some non-scalable human interaction is appropriate. Beyond that, it gives us another touch point with those clients, which is always a great thing.
Balance
Like much of life, balance is the key. We certainly automate quite a few things, but we try to find key areas where automation is possible but the non-scalable action is the better way to go.
