To automate, delegate, or eliminate. First we'll go through the theme song, and then I'm going to talk all about it.
Hey guys. Welcome back, Marcel Martens with Cloud Secrets Podcast. And today I want to talk to you about how I automate things, delegate things, or eliminate things that don't contribute to my personal goals, or things that I... Well, as Dean Graziosi names them, his needle movers. So the thing that don't move the needle for me in my life, that's the things that I automate, delegate or eliminate.
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And I hope you're doing fine. By the time you hear this, probably Tuesday or Thursday, for me it's Monday while I record this. I had a lovely weekend, had a lot of time with the kids, some parties, joined a soccer game, and well my son got his well diploma for swimming yesterday. So one step further down the road, one more to go, and then he's finished as well.
So, well it was a nice weekend spent some time with family. Well then, that perfectly aligns with the things that I want to talk to you about today because, things that don't contribute to your goals or the things you set to do by this week, this month, this year. And as Tony Robbins calls them, calls it you... But most people overestimate what they can do in a year and they also underestimate what they can do in a decade.
How I finish 3 goals every day
So by having a plan and stick to it, by sticking to it I mean, well on a weekly basis or make it a habit of using a method where you... But my wife told me, no not told me, teach me, I don't know maybe 10 years back, that when I write down three things I need to finish today and I do it on a daily basis, I get massively get things done. But now I'm taking it a step further and I'm doing it on a weekly basis for my weekly goals, on a monthly basis for my monthly goals and the same for my yearly goals.
So every week when I go over my journal, I'll see the things that I need to get done this week that really as Dean again names them... have moved the needle. So things that really changed in my life or make it better or, you know what I mean, right?
And same thing goes by daily goals, monthly goals and yearly goals. So for example, if you go hire experts and you go to these lance sites that I talked before in the early episode. And you got UPWork, you got Freelancer.com you got Fiverr, you got 99Designs.
Yeah all these kinds of lance sites where you can just post a job description or a task and people apply for it. You can even mention your budget, so only people that can make it within that budget will respond. It's absolute gold because, let me give you an example, we got... We sell backup online and our customers pay by the quota that we reserve for their backups.
So, for example, we reserved 100 gigabytes and we set a 90% threshold. So, when that threshold is breached, we get an email or a trigger that we need to increase the quota, so this particular customer can keep backuping his data. But all those steps is like five to 15 minutes manual labor.
The email that we get as trigger is sent to our ticket system. So a support ticket is created, the engineer needs to bind it or the customer service user needs to assign it to the customer. Then he needs to increase quota, he needs to change contract so, billing gets done. And then he needs to close down the ticket, communicate with the client that the quota has increased. And all of these steps is like five to 15 minutes. And maybe we got 20 to 40 times a week that we need to increase that quota.
And in this case, it isn't a needle mover for my own life, but when I can eliminate this and... Well, we can't eliminate it because it needs to get done. But when I can automate that task... At first, I delegated it because 10 years back I was doing it myself, then we hired some staff and I can delegate it to my staff. So that task is no longer on my desk and I can do a lot of things. And now my engineer is of too much value to, well basically do this kind of lame work. It's repeating work every single time, the same steps need to be taken. It's well flawed to human error. Well, if they missed a step because they received a phone call, billing is incorrectly or whatever. So all these risks that you'll... The risk we want to eliminate, but also to free up more time of the engineer so he can do more things that move the needle for the business.
What tasks can you automate, delegate or eliminate?
So at this point we're automating the entire sequence so there's no manual labor involved anymore. And I encourage you to take a look at your own task or your own goals or your own things that you do on a daily or weekly basis that you can automate, delegate, or eliminate.
Because lots of people just start browsing on social media and if it's Instagram or Facebook, I don't care. And then they realize, Oh my God, I've been swiping up for an hour or two hours. And that's lost time you never get it back.
Time is our most valuable thing because you can't make any more of it. So I encourage you to take a look at automating, delegating and eliminating. And for me browsing on social media, I've completely eliminated it. Well I try to stop responding to messages that I get, because I get overwhelmed by so much messages then I can't keep up.
And again, I did an earlier podcast about it I believe, to stand out of the crowd you need to be polarized. And so, I stand for things that you know. If you follow me by now, I don't like OneDrive, I don't like SharePoint, we are very fond of Office 365 but we combine it with the Google G suite, especially the Google Drive and other things... Well, to make a successful Always Safe in Business Suite that really moves the needle for our customers. So IT is a tool, it's not a purpose on its own so, that they can just start their laptop, their desktop, their whatever and just start working without any problems. So again, I encourage you to look at all your tasks and all your things to do or your goals, see where you can automate things.
It's really cheap or really affordable these days when you go to these lance sites and you can hire people from all around the world and well, get more things done that really matter to you. So you got more time for your family, for the things you love to do. And well, that's it for now. To me, I've been doing this for the last two years and it's proven me so much value every single time.
So I hope we can get anything out of it, out of this. And if so, please provide some feedback or comment down below because I'd love to hear what you well, really made happen. If you freed up X amount of hours in a week or got time to more to play with the kids or whatever, just let me know. I like to know, it encourages me to keep creating these kind of episodes and then I'll see you guys next time.
Thank you very much.
Bye-bye,
Marcel Martens.
Oh yeah, by the way, if you like this, please rate and subscribe on iTunes, SoundCloud, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you listen to keep up with new updates. And well share some feedback for the rest of you guys out there. So, thank you very much again.
Bye-bye,
Marcel Martens.
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To Automate, Delegate Or Eliminate