Stop Leaking Revenue: The 3 Automations Every Business Needs Now
If you're still manually handling lead capture, follow-up, or client onboarding—you're leaking revenue. Period.
In this episode of Freedom to Exit, Lani breaks down the three critical automations every business should implement ASAP to reclaim time, tighten up delivery, and boost profit. Whether you’re scaling your team or just trying to take a real vacation without fires, this is your blueprint for building a business that runs without you.
She shares:
- The real cost of NOT automating (hint: it’s more than just your time)
- How to build trust with automation (and avoid the cold-bot feel)
- What every modern CRM should be doing for you behind the scenes
- The myth of “I can’t afford help” and how automation bridges the gap
- How to start with just one automation and stack smarter from there
If you’ve been saying “I’ll fix this later,” this episode is your wake-up call. Later is leaking profit now.
What You’ll Learn
- Why founders delay automation and how to stop
- The top 3 automations that impact revenue immediately
- How to delegate to AI so your team can stay focused on high-value work
- Tools and strategies that work even if you're not "techy"
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📩 Email: info@stealthfreedomtoexit.com
🌐 Website: stealthfreedomtoexit.com
Transcript
>> Lani Dickinson: Welcome back to the Freedom to Exit podcast. I'm Lani
Speaker:Dickinson, your host and we are listening to episode
Speaker:six in our Smart scale series. Scaling a
Speaker:team that doesn't need you there may sound like a dream, but
Speaker:in reality, throughout my corporate time, throughout my
Speaker:small business ownership, in all the turnarounds I've
Speaker:done, this is the key to not only your
Speaker:sanity, but more profit can certainly down the road a, more
Speaker:sellable business. Every founder thinks they
Speaker:want a team, but this is what I've learned.
Speaker:Scaling isn't about adding people, it's
Speaker:about building a team that doesn't need you there. And
Speaker:sometimes I like to say people, people,
Speaker:so it can be a problem. But at the end, if
Speaker:your team only works when you're in the building and
Speaker:when you're answering questions and you're making all the
Speaker:decisions and doing check ins and having
Speaker:daily calls and weekly one on ones and all of
Speaker:this, your culture is becoming about the meetings and you
Speaker:making all the decisions, not about scalable
Speaker:business model. You've just multiplied your exhaustion. But
Speaker:no matter how hard I try, I can't get people to
Speaker:stop having meetings. And I wanna help you fix that. When you
Speaker:look at Warren Buffett and his ideas around
Speaker:team independence, he owns 60
Speaker:plus companies through Berkshire Hathaway,
Speaker:but guess what? He's not in daily meetings.
Speaker:He doesn't micromanage. In fact, he famously
Speaker:invests in companies with leaders who run the business
Speaker:without him. Buffett doesn't buy founders, he
Speaker:buys systems and teams that make
Speaker:money without handholding in basically
Speaker:simple businesses that are easy to understand. I think he says something
Speaker:like, I don't buy businesses that I don't
Speaker:understand. You can build that too and we can help you.
Speaker:The real goal is team autonomy. You need a team that
Speaker:can do the work, make decisions. So how do
Speaker:you think you got to start getting that into your people and keep
Speaker:things moving while you're doing anything else?
Speaker:Taking Fridays off, that's my favorite. Showing up
Speaker:less, not being their first thing in the morning,
Speaker:eventually selling. Of course, having vacations along the way.
Speaker:That means hiring people who can carry the vision so
Speaker:they're bought into what it is that you're trying
Speaker:to do in the world, not just looking at a
Speaker:job. And before you hire, you've got toa understand
Speaker:what that vision is, the difference you make in the world,
Speaker:how you sell that to people. And then you've gotta
Speaker:have SOPs for the most critical tasks.
Speaker:KPIs for every role, that's key. Performance
Speaker:indicators, some People don't recognize that. But
Speaker:what is the data you're monitoring to know
Speaker:that this is working well? Because you need to
Speaker:be off site monitoring, not in the building
Speaker:micromanaging. You need to find outcomes, not just job
Speaker:descriptions. But what does success look like for a
Speaker:high, middle and low performer? Low performers we're going to manage
Speaker:out, but what does success look like so that the high
Speaker:and middle performers can say this is what I'm
Speaker:supposed to create at the end of this. Things like loom
Speaker:and slack and click up and go high level that
Speaker:create asynchronous tools that
Speaker:allow you to be anywhere and your team and your clients to
Speaker:still be getting the results that they need. You do have to let go
Speaker:of phrases like it's faster if I do it, it's faster
Speaker:this time if you do it. But it's not down the road.
Speaker:It's stealing your time if you do it. They just don't get it.
Speaker:Well then you need to communicate better or get
Speaker:better people, which means probably revamping your
Speaker:hiring process and maybe paying a little bit more for people
Speaker:who can do it right. I just can't trust anyone to do it right.
Speaker:Well then that's probably an ego issue and you
Speaker:need some self development. At the end of the day. There are
Speaker:great people all over this globe willing
Speaker:to make your business successful while
Speaker:you do other things. But we've got to get you there
Speaker:first. So roles that support your exit are
Speaker:roles you need to be thinking about. Now if you're going to
Speaker:walk out of the building to get to dinner, to take a
Speaker:vacation, to go to travel ball, all those things. Then
Speaker:you need an employee that is
Speaker:AI driven, AI employee assistant to handle lead
Speaker:capture, follow up FAQs and answer
Speaker:the questions a thousand times without rolling their
Speaker:eyes. And then books the people who are inbound.
Speaker:You need sales support. The qualification can happen
Speaker:through the AI and depending upon your price point, sales can be
Speaker:closed with AI. But what is the sales
Speaker:mechanism that is not you to hand off and
Speaker:close deals. You need a delivery manager that
Speaker:owns client outcomes and communications. If
Speaker:somebody comes to look at your business to buy it, they
Speaker:wanna know what percentage of the clients know you by name.
Speaker:If that is a big number, you don't have a business that's sellable.
Speaker:You're gonna get a significant discount. Now this Scale
Speaker:Smart series is more about giving you the time and freedom
Speaker:back now, not so much about the sale later. But
Speaker:the things you do now are the exact same things that
Speaker:give you the exit value. That's worth exiting for in
Speaker:the future. You need a number two. That's somebody who's gonna
Speaker:integrate your vision and make it all happen.
Speaker:They lead the execution and the team that does
Speaker:all of that for you. So the visionary, that's usually
Speaker:the founder needs the integrator to make it
Speaker:all come to life. If the visionary is trying to be
Speaker:the integrator, probably everybody's going crazy. And
Speaker:integrators usually aren't all that visionary. So we don't get into
Speaker:the problem of them trying to be the visionary. You need some
Speaker:real marketing ability. That's somebody
Speaker:who's going to schedule content, repurpose
Speaker:your clips, manage your Google my
Speaker:business and repurposing that for social
Speaker:proof. I'm not going to say you need a marketing agency
Speaker:or a marketing assistant, but you need some mechanism
Speaker:for that. It could be internal or external, but with
Speaker:what exists today, you can do that pretty much with AI
Speaker:and automation and just somebody who
Speaker:executes on the vision, who knows something about
Speaker:marketing. Now that brings us to social media and Google
Speaker:my business. That's all trust now plus
Speaker:value later. That's the equation there.
Speaker:Most businesses dismiss social
Speaker:media and say, you know I'm not an influencer if
Speaker:fix X, Y and Z. But here's the truth. Your Google
Speaker:my business profile is the first impression
Speaker:in 80% of local searches when
Speaker:people say salon near me.
Speaker:If you're not managing your profile, you're not going
Speaker:to come up. A consistent social presence
Speaker:that's consistent across the platforms
Speaker:boost trust now and leads to added
Speaker:value later. Buyers look at reviews and do you
Speaker:respond? They look at recency of content and they
Speaker:don't trust anything that has old reviews and
Speaker:nothing recent owner dependency in the brand voice.
Speaker:If everything is dependent and ties back to the owner,
Speaker:it's harder for you to get a good price or exit your business
Speaker:later. We help our clients with all of that. Automating the posting
Speaker:with go high level and scheduling tools, automating
Speaker:response flows to DMs and review requests,
Speaker:all of those things. Training AI and VA teams to handle
Speaker:all of the FAQs, teaching how to repurpose
Speaker:and all of those things. At the end of the day you need those
Speaker:things to be happening. You shouldn't be doing them. But you
Speaker:cannot discount what social presence
Speaker:will do for your ability to close leads faster at a
Speaker:higher price. Here are some signs that your team can't scale
Speaker:without you. They ask before every decision. You
Speaker:still approve either content or everything
Speaker:that gets purchased or done. You are the go
Speaker:between for clients and delivery. And you avoid vacations
Speaker:because things fall apart. These are all signs you've built a
Speaker:bottleneck, not a business. I had a client, Rosie, I talk
Speaker:about her a lot. A couple months into building her online
Speaker:bakery, she said, now when do we
Speaker:take a vacation? Is it like two years from now? I was
Speaker:like, because you said that you need to go on vacation now. She
Speaker:didn't go very far. She went to Palm Springs. She lives in Southern
Speaker:California. She went to Palm Springs for the weekend. She was
Speaker:forced to go. And I said, send me a selfie. I don't believe
Speaker:that you're actually going to go. And she sent me a selfie from
Speaker:a cabana in Palm Springs and she said, oh my God, it feels so
Speaker:good to be making money from a cabana while my team's doing all the
Speaker:work. If you can't leave, your life's gonna fall
Speaker:apart and you're not gonna have a sellable business later. So
Speaker:what can you change now so that later you can
Speaker:scale? Well sops for the 10 most important things
Speaker:in your business so that anybody could take over.
Speaker:Identify three areas that AI
Speaker:could take over right now. And I have a webinar that has three ways
Speaker:you can stop leaking profit from your business so you could sign up for
Speaker:that it's live every week. You could assign outcome based
Speaker:KPIs to every role so people know what they're driving
Speaker:for. Making sure that those key performance indicators
Speaker:are tying to retention of clients,
Speaker:retention of staff, dropping profit to the bottom line,
Speaker:making sure that they are meaningful metrics not just
Speaker:a stab in the dark. You can use content templates and chat
Speaker:GPT to create marketing and posting for you. But do
Speaker:not ignore the importance of your social presence.
Speaker:Set up claim your Google my
Speaker:business and get those reviews happening
Speaker:and the responses to the reviews and I'll talk all
Speaker:about why that's so important in the webinar. So sign up for
Speaker:that. So a couple things you can do to start getting on
Speaker:a better path now no matter where you are in business, you can sign up
Speaker:for the webinar. The link for that will be in the show Notes. I have a
Speaker:hiring tool that can help you start identifying the right
Speaker:people who can grow with you or how to hire the people that you
Speaker:need to bring in to go to the next level and stay after you
Speaker:exit. Whether that's exit to go home for dinner or
Speaker:whether that's exit to sell the business. You can book a
Speaker:brand invisibility audit. We will help you figure out
Speaker:what does your presence look like, what does your brand look
Speaker:like and where should you make some changes now and always? You can
Speaker:take the changes assessment and find out where you're the
Speaker:bottleneck and what a buyer would see if they were going to look at
Speaker:your business right now to buy it. The best teams don't need a
Speaker:babysitter and it is possible to have that. I think in
Speaker:the industry they say I want all a players. You have to
Speaker:define what that is. Those people exist. They need a
Speaker:playbook, not a micromanager. So let me
Speaker:help you build that together. As always, I'm so grateful that you're here
Speaker:today and I'm looking forward to seeing you in the next episode.
Speaker:Please share this with somebody who know, needs to hear it or
Speaker:subscribe to the episode so you don't miss any juicy
Speaker:information. Thanks so much.
