It’s no secret that dropshipping is becoming more difficult.
Apart from trying to test high quality products everyday, we’re faced with constant ad platform changes…
Increased competition…
People ripping off your products and ads…
And not to mention… Facebook BM Ban.
And as we know, as a dropshipper, you’ve to always be on the move looking for your next winning product before your current one dies out…
You’ve to constantly test out new, different strategies and tactics others haven’t tried before to stay ahead of the competition.
And with so many things going on in our heads, and so many problems to solve…
Only to have the same amount of problems the next day again.
Stuck in a vicious cycle.
This is what we like to call the Brain Congestion Cycle (BCC) – where you feel that you have so many problems going on at once and you’re feeling too drained to fix all of them.
You feel as though you have the world on your shoulders.
And if you’ve experienced BCC before (which you most likely already have), you know how this can affect your performance not only in sales revenue, but also how you lead your team.
The good news is, after working with 6-8figure dropshippers and brands in my operations agency, it’s easy to significantly reduce your chances of getting BCC, or break out of it…
And it comes down to ONE thing.
➡ They Automate Their Day-To-Day Operations ⬅
A common misconception that most people have is that you need to have a huge team with over 10 team members to fully automate your business.
That is not true at all.
You can automate your business with an extremely lean team as long as you have the right systems and processes in place.
With the right systems and processes in place, daily operations could be automated away.
One of our clients cut down his time in the business by a whooping 90%, even as his business was scaling up.
He used the extra time and mental headspace on finding new ways to outwit and outperform his competition.
By automating the daily running of the business, and only focusing on revenue-generating tasks, top dropshippers are able to:
This is how top dropshippers stay at the top of the game and earn good money consistently without burning out.
But how do they automate their business to be able to run more product launches than most people consistently WHILE finding and testing out the latest tactics to further scale up revenue?
Having worked with multiple top dropshippers in automating their business, these are the first 2 things we do to begin automating their business that can produce results almost immediately.
#1: Figuring Out Where and What Time Is Spent On
The first thing we do is to conduct a PACE ratio analysis.
It’s a time analysis to see how much time you’re spending on certain tasks. This way you’ll be able to see what are the most “time-sucking” activities.
For our clients, we provide a tool called the PACE Ratio calculator.
The PACE Ratio is a calculator to see how you’re spending your time in the business.
I mentioned above that top dropshippers are only focused on revenue-generating tasks. The PACE ratio calculator helps you track and analyze whether you’re truly spending your time on revenue-generating tasks…
Or tasks that could be systemized and delegated away to other team members.
These are what we call maintenance tasks.
Maintenance tasks are tasks like setting up ad campaigns, doing product research, producing new video creatives…
They are time-consuming tasks that can be automated away with the right systems in place.
Maintenance tasks don’t produce a high ROI for your time. That’s why business owners steer clear of it.
It’s not worth their time when they could be testing a new strategy or building a new store.
As the business owner, you should only be spending 10% of your time on maintenance tasks, and 90% of your time on revenue generating tasks.
Whenever we talk to dropshippers, it’s very common for most of them to have the numbers flipped. They spend only 10% of their time on revenue generating tasks and 90% on maintenance tasks.
So one of the first things we always do is to make sure they do the PACE ratio analysis and see for themselves how much time they are spending on doing the RIGHT tasks.
This will also allow us to list out all their maintenance tasks which can be systemized and gradually automated.
#2: Operational Right-Hand man
The next thing we do is to help the dropshipper find someone to safely take over and run the daily operations of the business.
Most dropshippers are their own worst enemy when it comes to automating their business.
They suffer from what we call the Superhero Syndrome.
Superhero Syndrome is a condition in which someone thinks that they must be involved in every single task.
It is either they think that others are not as good as them…
Or they don’t trust other people to get the job done for them.
The business simply cannot move without them being involved in the process.
This is one of the most dangerous mistakes a dropshipper can make as he ends up becoming the bottleneck in his business.
When you suffer from the superhero syndrome, you end up being involved in both maintenance and revenue-generating tasks.
One of the best ways we help our clients get around this?
Hire a project manager or operations manager that can manage all the maintenance tasks and the team for you…
Essentially this project manager will make sure your team is hitting the KPI and helping you to problem-solve challenges and bottlenecks…
Without you needing to be involved in the process.
So you get to focus more time and energy on revenue-generating tasks and outperforming the competition.
At our agency, we help our clients fulfill this role by providing our clients with an Atomatic Business Manager (ABM).
An ABM is like an operations manager or COO in the company…
Someone who will manage their team, and make sure that everyone is performing well and hitting their KPIs.
An even more important responsibility is that ABMs will ensure that all systems within the business are continuously optimized and updated.
This will allow all team members to get better, more efficient, and more effective, and the business owners will free up a huge chunk of their time.
If you don’t have an operations manager or COO, then you should consider investing in one as it can free up 90% of your maintenance tasks while you focus on scaling your winners.
BONUS: Want step-by-step tips on how to automate your dropshipping business?
I wrote an in-depth post on 3 ways you can automate your dropshipping business. You can check the post here.
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Hope you found this post valuable.
Atomatic Agency specializes in streamlining, optimizing and automating systems and processes for eCommerce businesses (including dropshippers) to scale to their highest potential, as well as build and train our client’s team into a team of A+ players.
By doing so, our clients are able to achieve consistent revenue, and turn their business into a consistent cash cow with less effort, and in a short timer period.
Ready To Automate And Scale Your Business?
If you’re a 6 figure/month dropshipper that is serious about automating your business and scaling consistently, click on the button below to schedule a call with us.