Hey there!
Welcome back to another edition of The Automated Growth Blueprint.
I'm Travis Steffen, and last week’s newsletter was about using AI to generate a social media content calendar. I’m extending that one more, so stay tuned for part 2.
In the meantime, I’m on a quest to build a fully automated, one-person, 7-figure business. I’ve made some good progress on two of the three fronts, and at the moment, it’s still just me, and I’m just shy of $50k MRR.
It’s nowhere close to fully automated, though. My strategy is to utilize a few human contractors where necessary early on, scale up to 7 figures, and then look to automate as much as possible.
One thing I’ve found helpful whenever possible is a periodic review of what meetings are useful and which ones can be accomplished asynchronously using technology.
Without fail, I’ve found at least one every quarter that has popped up that’s pretty inefficient.
But Travis, what about team cohesion? You can’t get that from asynchronous communication.
I agree - and I’m not saying you do away with ALL meetings. Just the mechanical ones you can live without. That way, the meetings you keep on your schedule can be filled with rigorous, intellectual debate and complex problem-solving.
Deep work is your biggest asset at this stage.
So - here’s what I’d recommend…
I’ve used a few Slack automation tools over the years, but the one I like most right now is GeekBot.
It’s as easy as it gets - and they even have a free plan so you can jump in and splash around to get a feel for it.
First and foremost, jump in and create your account.
No screenshots necessary here - it’s super quick and easy.
From there, you should see a dashboard that looks like this:
If you’re like me and you love a good ol’ fashioned Daily Standup, start there.
However, I opted to kick off with a Retrospective because I don’t have any day-to-day employees at the moment, just a few project-based contractors here and there.
I like the weekly retrospective because I like to see a recap of how I spent each week.
You can roll with their template, but I rewrote mine with a few simple questions, plus a stop/start/continue.
Responses all go into a specific channel in Slack. I’d recommend setting up just for you, and making it private (assuming you have other team members) so people don’t sanitize their responses too much.
I’ve scheduled mine to ping me every Friday at 4:30 pm PST.
Even if I DON’T add any full-time employees (which is my goal), I find that doing a weekly retrospective is really helpful in encouraging continuous improvement.
It also ensures I can evaluate my efforts each week versus the intention I had coming out of the prior week.
Oddly enough, I also do a daily standup - again, just with me.
However, I edited it to note the #1 most important thing today and whether I accomplished my #1 most important thing from the day prior.
When I do run up against a blocker, that’s usually my signal to tag in a project-based contractor to get me unblocked.
This one was quick and easy - but it’s been helpful for me over the past several weeks.
I hope it’s useful for you too.
→ Today's action steps: Create a free account with GeekBot. Create a private Slack channel to house past responses. Integrate GeekBot with Slack. Kick off a weekly retrospective, and try out an asynchronous standup for a few weeks to see how it goes.
That’s all for today.
Stay hungry.
- Travis Steffen
---
Connect with me on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter where I share bite-sized nuggets about starting, growing, and selling companies every single day.
DM me directly via social media with a specific question, and I can explore it for a future newsletter.