Your Business as a Formula 1 Car: Why Custom Automation Matters
Lots of people have talked about automation and how you can turn your business into something that practically runs itself without spending any time on admin. As far as I know though, most of them are duct-taping solutions together that don't fit a £10 million business if you're running one anywhere between £1 million and £10 million. I'm Thi and I do automation for established, boring businesses, these are a couple of things you need to know about AI automation as a business owner.
Your business needs to function like a Formula One car
Firstly, it needs custom bespoke parts instead of after-market or consumer market solutions. You can't order parts from a Formula One team off Amazon and buy a £50 or even a £200 set of steering wheels just like you would for your Fiat Punto or any other consumer car, it has to be custom-built and tested. The same way, you can't actually go and buy a WordPress plugin or WordPress theme and think that's going to work for your business. These plugins are made for thousands of people out there, of course they don't fit you, modifying them is going to raise a lot of legal issues, copyright issues, things like that.
You're the driver, focus on driving
Secondly, when you're moving at that speed you're the driver and focusing on driving is going to take the most mental toll on you. That's the fun part, that's why Lewis Hamilton became a Formula One driver: he's the one who sets the lap times, he's great because of his driving skill and his team supports him. If you switched roles it wouldn't work, would it? You need to focus on your driving, the pit crew handles tyre changes and the equivalent of admin tasks gets delegated to AI and automation. At any specific point in time ask yourself: are you exhausted, overthinking or stressed because of the driving itself, or are you just doing admin work like changing tyres? It might sound expensive at first, it's always worth building something custom and suited to your business bespoke as they say, rather than buying something off the consumer market and trying to plug that in.
Why F1, not an airliner?
Your £5M-£20M business is an F1 car, not an airliner. Here's why that matters:
F1 car characteristics:
- Small high-performance team (20-50 people)
- Fast decisions, driver in control
- Custom-built for your specific race
- Every second counts
- Can pivot quickly
Airliner characteristics:
- Hundreds of employees
- Standardized processes, slow to turn
- Bureaucratic, committee decisions
- Takes miles to change direction
- Efficient at scale but inflexible
Both are high-performance vehicles, but F1 can turn on a dime while an airliner needs miles of runway and can't pivot quickly. Your business deserves the agility of an F1 car, not the bureaucracy of a corporate airliner.
If you need help building custom automation for your business, don't hesitate to reach out.
