April 27, 2025 • 14 mins
Automation gets a bad rap—and frankly, it’s not fair. In this episode, Charlotte breaks down why the tool itself isn’t the problem… it’s how people use it. If you’ve ever felt torn between “doing it all manually” or sounding like a bot, this is your wake-up call to stop choosing between authentic and efficient—because you can (and should) have both.
In this episode, we cover:
•The difference between lazy automation vs respectful automation
•How to use automation without sounding like a robot
•Why manual lead gen keeps you small and inconsistent
•What smart systems can do for your energy, confidence, and growth
•The role of automation in lead generation that feels human
Respectful systems aren’t the enemy. They’re your edge.
✨ Feeling like this might be your moment? It is.
Check out kaffeen.co/llo and get your system in place before the 10th of May 2025.
P.S. Whenever you’re ready, here are four ways I can help you attract more high-value clients—without the hustle:
📚 Start with my free book
Join 3,000+ service providers and agency owners who’ve downloaded Client Magnet: 97 Proven Strategies and Tactics to Attract New Business and Scale Your Creative Agency Revenue.
(It’s written for agencies, but packed with advice any service provider can use.)
👉 Grab it free: https://kaffeen.co/book
🚀 Build your lead system with LinkedIn Lead Liftoff
A done-for-you lead generation system that brings in high-quality leads from LinkedIn—no content, cold calls, or awkward DMs required.
We’ll build it, set it up, and show you how to run it in under 30 minutes a day.
👉 Learn more: https://kaffeen.co/llo
🎧 Tune into the podcast
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👉 Follow here: https://open.spotify.com/show/7upjztW0B3hQi2YlHTVdNn
💬 Work with me 1:1
I work with a handful of clients each quarter to increase visibility, build authority, and land consistent £30k+ opportunities—with a system that runs on autopilot.
👉 Book a consult: ...
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Hi, welcome to the KaffeenEspresso Podcast.
Today I wanna clear something upthat automation isn't the enemy
bad automation is.
In today's episode, I'm tacklingone of the biggest
misconceptions I hear when Ispeak to people about the
generation that anythingautomated, it's called spammy or
lazy.
You've probably had a few ughmoments when somebody's used
(00:24):
automation really badly onLinkedIn or on Instagram or cold
email.
I have too, but that doesn'tmean we should throw the whole
thing out.
So in this episode, we'redigging into how automation when
well used is actually the mostrespectful, efficient, and
scalable tool you've got in yourmarketing toolkit, especially if
you're short on time or energy.
(00:46):
Okay.
Real talk.
Most people think thatautomation means blasting 300
cold messages a day that say,Hey Charlotte, I came across
your profile.
I thought we should connect.
I can almost guarantee that atany given moment, your
invitations section on LinkedInhas about 30 of thousand.
That's not what I teach.
That's not what I do.
It's not what automation issupposed to be.
(01:08):
The problem isn't a tool, it'sthe tactic.
The tool is neutral.
It's what you do with it thatmatters.
So now I wanna talk about whatgood automation looks like and
actually what it feels like youhandpick the people that you
want to speak to that are mostlikely to want to work with your
business and who you would liketo work with as well.
(01:29):
You do that at scale.
I'm talking a lot of people.
I don't just mean picking 20people out.
You then write messages thatsound like you.
And that are highlycustomizable, but at scale, then
you offer something genuinelyuseful in that message.
So like a free training or alead magnet, something that
actually provides a solution toa problem that they have.
(01:51):
And then when they respond, youactually show up and talk to
them like a human.
That's it.
No pushiness, no pretending tobe somebody.
You're not just a system thathelps you to start real
conversations at scale withoutlosing your soul.
So we're not talking here aboutautomating the entire
conversation, we're justacknowledging that when you're
doing cold outreach, you have toknock on a lot of doors for
(02:12):
anybody to answer.
That is just the reality of howit works.
We are providing you adisproportionate advantage by
using.
Those pointers that I just gaveyou about how you should be
doing that, what you should beincluding.
But we need to be able to do itat scale for it to actually be
feasible for it to pay off.
If you sent out a hundred, whichis the cap that LinkedIn allows
(02:32):
you to a hundred of thoseconnection requests with that
customized message per weekmanually, it would take you.
It would take you hours andhours.
I would say probably even atleast a day for somebody who's
starting from the beginning oryou're paying somebody to do
that, right?
You're paying for their time todo that.
So that's why I want you toconsider automation as a way of
(02:54):
starting those realconversations with the right
people at scale in a way thatworks for both parties and
without losing your soul.
So my account is no exception.
At any given moment, I havehundreds of those invites to
connect that are, I saw we haveX in common or I see, I'm
(03:14):
looking to expand my network onLinkedIn, or can we jump on a
call?
I think we can help you with XIhave hundreds of those in my
inbox.
In fact, when I, present a livetraining to people.
There is a chart on there whereI've taken screenshots, of
course I've anonymized them, buttaken screenshots of many of
those kind of messages in my owninbox and what they look like.
And the thing is, whenautomation is done lazily and
(03:39):
quickly, which let's face it, ishow most people try out
marketing.
They try the quick and dirtyway, and they.
Then write it off because it'snot working.
It's just not been employedintelligently.
And I think that's true of mostmarketing tactics, but
especially of automation.
Because if you do somethingwithout lots of intelligence,
without lots of thought, you dothe quick and dirty version, and
(04:01):
then you plug in automation anddo that at scale and at speed,
you are seeing not just anegative result, but a
negatively result.
Amplified, and that's what putsa lot of people off.
They may have had thatexperience themselves.
They may have heard a storyabout it.
What I'm encouraging you tothink of is if you are putting
the right inputs intoautomation, if you are setting
it up correctly, if you're usingthe right language, you are
(04:23):
using the right merge.
Tag opportunities.
If the content of that messageis gonna hit right and actually
be well received, and peoplecome back to you and say Thank
you, rather than delete get outof my inbox, then that is the
opportunity that automationcould present to you.
(04:43):
If you start thinking about whatit could be like if it's done
correctly, what it could be likeif you are working with somebody
who has a lot of experience withthat, who's done a lot of tried
and tried a lot of ways of doingthis and has found a, kind of
golden formula of how to makethis work most likely to work
(05:04):
for you.
So the truth about time andbandwidth.
Look, most of the people I workwith are smart, busy service
providers, and they do not havetime to be posting our every day
on social media and not justlike one social media, right?
How many social media platformsdo you have in the footer of
your website right now?
I have such an aversion tosocial media, which may sound
(05:26):
funny as somebody who's talkingto you about LinkedIn.
If you've been around on thispodcast a while, you'd likely
know that already and the kindof history of that.
It's not just one platform youneed to be posting on every day.
It's multiple.
If you are doing it right inInver to commerce as modern
Marketing Society like SisterBelieve, then you know.
They do not have time to becommenting on 27 LinkedIn posts
(05:48):
before breakfast.
They do not have the time to bewriting a new blog post every
week, most likely, and they donot have time to be keeping
track of every lead in aspreadsheet from 2017.
That's frankly petrifying.
They're juggling client work.
They are juggling delivery,they're juggling team stuff,
finance stuff.
They're juggling life outside oftheir business.
(06:09):
And I work with a lot of femalebusiness owners, which means
life often involves managing orat least partially managing a
household.
And being a primary or jointparent of maybe one, maybe more
children.
They don't need any more to do.
They need something to do theheavy lifting for them, and that
is what automation is for.
(06:30):
You get to define the rules, youget to stay in control.
You get to set the tone.
It doesn't mean you have to jointhe squad of people who use
automation to say, Hey, I'mexpanding my network.
I thought it'd be good toconnect, and you do not have to
log into LinkedIn every damn dayjust to feel visible.
That is not what this is about.
Why you're allowed to useautomation even if you hate
(06:52):
selling.
So if you're still thinking yes,but it feels a bit impersonal.
I wanna flip that for you.
What is actually moreimpersonal?
Posting generic content into thevoid and hoping somebody buys or
reaching out directly to peopleyou know who are likely to want
to work with you, offeringsomething of real value and
(07:13):
starting a relationship.
When you use automation you'renot faking anything.
You're just removing the adminso you can focus on actual
connection.
I've had clients tell me theyfelt more in control and more
human using automation becausethey weren't stuck in overwhelm,
that they could be fully presentwhen it mattered, when that
person replied and when theyneeded to continue the
(07:34):
conversation.
Let's be honest.
Doing it manually is slower andscarier.
I used to believe that I had todo everything manually to keep
it authentic.
I'm talking a decade ago now,and then I realized that belief
was keeping me small.
It was keeping me small for myprevious employers.
And it was keeping me small formy current business as well.
When I first doing that atKaffeen, and it was keeping both
(07:56):
of us, my employers and myselfin my own business,
inconsistent.
It was making lead generationharder than it needed to be.
So whatever you call leadgeneration, marketing, new
business, finding clients,sales, and when I finally
embraced automation with theright filters, the right
messages, the right offer, Istarted having better
conversations with betterquality client leads.
(08:18):
And more of them.
And my energy was completelyfreed up to think, to create, to
show up fully and to deliverbetter work.
And that's the real power of it.
And on that note, I just wannasay, I was one of those people
who thought automation was allthe bad stuff, and then I moved
from an agency into a techstartup.
And if you know anything abouttech startups, you'll know
(08:38):
there's famous mantras, lots ofthem, one of them the most used
is move fast and break things.
And what was really liberatingabout being in that tech startup
was that they were really opento trying as many things out as
possible, seeing what worked,scaling, what did scrapping,
what didn't.
Now, that was the diametricopposite from my previous role
where I had been a marketingdirector in a creative agency
(09:01):
where the focus was really on.
Getting things just rightbecause as a business ourselves,
our output had to be perfect forour clients.
That was really important.
It was really important when theartwork went to the printers
that it was absolutely just sothey didn't waste a print run.
Financially, time-wise, lots ofreasons.
It was important.
So it was understandable thatwithin creative agencies in
(09:23):
particular, or any businesswhere the output has to be.
Completely precise that theytake the same attitude towards
their own marketing.
And no disrespect to that, Icompletely understand it, but
there's a middle ground whereonce you find the perfect
output, you can then automateit.
Or you find a good enough outputa combination of factors that
(09:46):
has the most likelihood to bereceived.
Then you automate it, then youscale it.
And to me, the combination ofthose two experiences of working
in creative agencies and thenmoving to be a marketing
director at Tech Startup wasreally empowering.
Because I got the best of bothworlds.
So I want you to think about itlike that.
I don't want you to think aboutthe automated messages you've
received in the past.
I want you to think about thecombination of those two
(10:08):
experiences that I had and thepower that came out of the
process, the system that wasdeveloped based on those
experiences.
So if you are still doing allyour lead generation manually or
worse, still avoiding italtogether, this is your nudge.
We've built a service calledLinkedIn Lead Liftoffs,
specifically for people likeyou, people who care about
(10:29):
connection, who don't wanna feelgross about doing lead
generation, but who do want morecontrol, more consistency, and a
little bit more ease in theirbusiness.
It is a done for you setup thatgets your lead generation
running on LinkedIn in thebackground using smart
automation that still feels likeyou.
And we do all of this in justthree hours right now.
(10:50):
Right now the price is just 900pounds until the 10th of May
before it jumps up to 1400pounds.
You can get all the informationand book your spot at
Kaffeen.co/ll o.
That's KA double f, double EN.
Do co slash ll let automationwork for you and not against
(11:10):
you.
So that's it for today.
I really want you to consider asstopping demonizing automation
and start using it wiselybecause respectful, scalable,
connection driven systems,that's what's gonna help your
business to grow without burningout.
I'll catch you next week.
Bye.
Hi, welcome to the KaffeenEspresso Podcast.
Today I wanna clear something upthat automation isn't the enemy
bad automation is.
In today's episode, I'm tacklingone of the biggest
misconceptions I hear when Ispeak to people about the
generation that anythingautomated, it's called spammy or
lazy.
You've probably had a few ughmoments when somebody's used
(00:24):
automation really badly onLinkedIn or on Instagram or cold
email.
I have too, but that doesn'tmean we should throw the whole
thing out.
So in this episode, we'redigging into how automation when
well used is actually the mostrespectful, efficient, and
scalable tool you've got in yourmarketing toolkit, especially if
you're short on time or energy.
(00:46):
Okay.
Real talk.
Most people think thatautomation means blasting 300
cold messages a day that say,Hey Charlotte, I came across
your profile.
I thought we should connect.
I can almost guarantee that atany given moment, your
invitations section on LinkedInhas about 30 of thousand.
That's not what I teach.
That's not what I do.
It's not what automation issupposed to be.
(01:08):
The problem isn't a tool, it'sthe tactic.
The tool is neutral.
It's what you do with it thatmatters.
So now I wanna talk about whatgood automation looks like and
actually what it feels like youhandpick the people that you
want to speak to that are mostlikely to want to work with your
business and who you would liketo work with as well.
(01:29):
You do that at scale.
I'm talking a lot of people.
I don't just mean picking 20people out.
You then write messages thatsound like you.
And that are highlycustomizable, but at scale, then
you offer something genuinelyuseful in that message.
So like a free training or alead magnet, something that
actually provides a solution toa problem that they have.
(01:51):
And then when they respond, youactually show up and talk to
them like a human.
That's it.
No pushiness, no pretending tobe somebody.
You're not just a system thathelps you to start real
conversations at scale withoutlosing your soul.
So we're not talking here aboutautomating the entire
conversation, we're justacknowledging that when you're
doing cold outreach, you have toknock on a lot of doors for
(02:12):
anybody to answer.
That is just the reality of howit works.
We are providing you adisproportionate advantage by
using.
Those pointers that I just gaveyou about how you should be
doing that, what you should beincluding.
But we need to be able to do itat scale for it to actually be
feasible for it to pay off.
If you sent out a hundred, whichis the cap that LinkedIn allows
(02:32):
you to a hundred of thoseconnection requests with that
customized message per weekmanually, it would take you.
It would take you hours andhours.
I would say probably even atleast a day for somebody who's
starting from the beginning oryou're paying somebody to do
that, right?
You're paying for their time todo that.
So that's why I want you toconsider automation as a way of
(02:54):
starting those realconversations with the right
people at scale in a way thatworks for both parties and
without losing your soul.
So my account is no exception.
At any given moment, I havehundreds of those invites to
connect that are, I saw we haveX in common or I see, I'm
(03:14):
looking to expand my network onLinkedIn, or can we jump on a
call?
I think we can help you with XIhave hundreds of those in my
inbox.
In fact, when I, present a livetraining to people.
There is a chart on there whereI've taken screenshots, of
course I've anonymized them, buttaken screenshots of many of
those kind of messages in my owninbox and what they look like.
And the thing is, whenautomation is done lazily and
(03:39):
quickly, which let's face it, ishow most people try out
marketing.
They try the quick and dirtyway, and they.
Then write it off because it'snot working.
It's just not been employedintelligently.
And I think that's true of mostmarketing tactics, but
especially of automation.
Because if you do somethingwithout lots of intelligence,
without lots of thought, you dothe quick and dirty version, and
(04:01):
then you plug in automation anddo that at scale and at speed,
you are seeing not just anegative result, but a
negatively result.
Amplified, and that's what putsa lot of people off.
They may have had thatexperience themselves.
They may have heard a storyabout it.
What I'm encouraging you tothink of is if you are putting
the right inputs intoautomation, if you are setting
it up correctly, if you're usingthe right language, you are
(04:23):
using the right merge.
Tag opportunities.
If the content of that messageis gonna hit right and actually
be well received, and peoplecome back to you and say Thank
you, rather than delete get outof my inbox, then that is the
opportunity that automationcould present to you.
(04:43):
If you start thinking about whatit could be like if it's done
correctly, what it could be likeif you are working with somebody
who has a lot of experience withthat, who's done a lot of tried
and tried a lot of ways of doingthis and has found a, kind of
golden formula of how to makethis work most likely to work
(05:04):
for you.
So the truth about time andbandwidth.
Look, most of the people I workwith are smart, busy service
providers, and they do not havetime to be posting our every day
on social media and not justlike one social media, right?
How many social media platformsdo you have in the footer of
your website right now?
I have such an aversion tosocial media, which may sound
(05:26):
funny as somebody who's talkingto you about LinkedIn.
If you've been around on thispodcast a while, you'd likely
know that already and the kindof history of that.
It's not just one platform youneed to be posting on every day.
It's multiple.
If you are doing it right inInver to commerce as modern
Marketing Society like SisterBelieve, then you know.
They do not have time to becommenting on 27 LinkedIn posts
(05:48):
before breakfast.
They do not have the time to bewriting a new blog post every
week, most likely, and they donot have time to be keeping
track of every lead in aspreadsheet from 2017.
That's frankly petrifying.
They're juggling client work.
They are juggling delivery,they're juggling team stuff,
finance stuff.
They're juggling life outside oftheir business.
(06:09):
And I work with a lot of femalebusiness owners, which means
life often involves managing orat least partially managing a
household.
And being a primary or jointparent of maybe one, maybe more
children.
They don't need any more to do.
They need something to do theheavy lifting for them, and that
is what automation is for.
(06:30):
You get to define the rules, youget to stay in control.
You get to set the tone.
It doesn't mean you have to jointhe squad of people who use
automation to say, Hey, I'mexpanding my network.
I thought it'd be good toconnect, and you do not have to
log into LinkedIn every damn dayjust to feel visible.
That is not what this is about.
Why you're allowed to useautomation even if you hate
(06:52):
selling.
So if you're still thinking yes,but it feels a bit impersonal.
I wanna flip that for you.
What is actually moreimpersonal?
Posting generic content into thevoid and hoping somebody buys or
reaching out directly to peopleyou know who are likely to want
to work with you, offeringsomething of real value and
(07:13):
starting a relationship.
When you use automation you'renot faking anything.
You're just removing the adminso you can focus on actual
connection.
I've had clients tell me theyfelt more in control and more
human using automation becausethey weren't stuck in overwhelm,
that they could be fully presentwhen it mattered, when that
person replied and when theyneeded to continue the
(07:34):
conversation.
Let's be honest.
Doing it manually is slower andscarier.
I used to believe that I had todo everything manually to keep
it authentic.
I'm talking a decade ago now,and then I realized that belief
was keeping me small.
It was keeping me small for myprevious employers.
And it was keeping me small formy current business as well.
When I first doing that atKaffeen, and it was keeping both
(07:56):
of us, my employers and myselfin my own business,
inconsistent.
It was making lead generationharder than it needed to be.
So whatever you call leadgeneration, marketing, new
business, finding clients,sales, and when I finally
embraced automation with theright filters, the right
messages, the right offer, Istarted having better
conversations with betterquality client leads.
(08:18):
And more of them.
And my energy was completelyfreed up to think, to create, to
show up fully and to deliverbetter work.
And that's the real power of it.
And on that note, I just wannasay, I was one of those people
who thought automation was allthe bad stuff, and then I moved
from an agency into a techstartup.
And if you know anything abouttech startups, you'll know
(08:38):
there's famous mantras, lots ofthem, one of them the most used
is move fast and break things.
And what was really liberatingabout being in that tech startup
was that they were really opento trying as many things out as
possible, seeing what worked,scaling, what did scrapping,
what didn't.
Now, that was the diametricopposite from my previous role
where I had been a marketingdirector in a creative agency
(09:01):
where the focus was really on.
Getting things just rightbecause as a business ourselves,
our output had to be perfect forour clients.
That was really important.
It was really important when theartwork went to the printers
that it was absolutely just sothey didn't waste a print run.
Financially, time-wise, lots ofreasons.
It was important.
So it was understandable thatwithin creative agencies in
(09:23):
particular, or any businesswhere the output has to be.
Completely precise that theytake the same attitude towards
their own marketing.
And no disrespect to that, Icompletely understand it, but
there's a middle ground whereonce you find the perfect
output, you can then automateit.
Or you find a good enough outputa combination of factors that
(09:46):
has the most likelihood to bereceived.
Then you automate it, then youscale it.
And to me, the combination ofthose two experiences of working
in creative agencies and thenmoving to be a marketing
director at Tech Startup wasreally empowering.
Because I got the best of bothworlds.
So I want you to think about itlike that.
I don't want you to think aboutthe automated messages you've
received in the past.
I want you to think about thecombination of those two
(10:08):
experiences that I had and thepower that came out of the
process, the system that wasdeveloped based on those
experiences.
So if you are still doing allyour lead generation manually or
worse, still avoiding italtogether, this is your nudge.
We've built a service calledLinkedIn Lead Liftoffs,
specifically for people likeyou, people who care about
(10:29):
connection, who don't wanna feelgross about doing lead
generation, but who do want morecontrol, more consistency, and a
little bit more ease in theirbusiness.
It is a done for you setup thatgets your lead generation
running on LinkedIn in thebackground using smart
automation that still feels likeyou.
And we do all of this in justthree hours right now.
(10:50):
Right now the price is just 900pounds until the 10th of May
before it jumps up to 1400pounds.
You can get all the informationand book your spot at
Kaffeen.co/ll o.
That's KA double f, double EN.
Do co slash ll let automationwork for you and not against
(11:10):
you.
So that's it for today.
I really want you to consider asstopping demonizing automation
and start using it wiselybecause respectful, scalable,
connection driven systems,that's what's gonna help your
business to grow without burningout.
I'll catch you next week.
Bye.
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