When you start a business, you do it because you have something to say, something to share, or a service that may benefit others. So there are a lot of opportunities to be creative and to express yourself. 

But once you start getting some traction or you have been at it for a while, you begin to realize that many of the activities you do are business administration tasks, and not so many creative tasks. 

Some people enjoy this, but most creatives tend to feel drained by it. 

If you can afford it, a solution is to hire someone who cares to help you. 

Another solution is to automate as much as you can. 

We live in the age of Artificial Intelligence. If you wonder: “Is there a way I could automate this” the answer is very likely to be “yes.”

Here are some of the things that can easily be automated:

• order fulfillment for downloadable products
• thank you notes
• providing support and guides about how to use or access your products
• ask for feedback or testimonials
• subscribe customers to your newsletter service
• backups of your important data
• weekly or monthly reports
• health checks of your systems
• posting on social media

Zapier is one of the most powerful automation tools that I know. It allows you to connect apps and services that do not talk to one another and create all kinds of workflows that will run automatically. 

And if you are thinking of building an online service yourself, it may be worthwhile to integrate it with Zapier as this will increase the rate of adoption. Many other services will be able to connect with you without having to write custom code. 

There is a caveat to all of this: your customers and visitors are humans, and they crave a human connection. Automate the repetitive tasks, and for the others, let your creativity and human nature shine :).