The same name, typed three times
Out of the email, into the customer list, into the calendar, onto the invoice. Four places, four chances to spell it differently, and no way to tell afterwards which one is right.
The work that repeats
The steps between your tools, done without you.
You already pay for a phone, a calendar, somewhere to keep customers and something that does the invoices. What you do not have is anything joining them, so the joining is you — forty times a week, five minutes at a time, on the days you can least afford it.
We watch a real week before we automate anything, because a rule written from a guess breaks on the first exception. “Book a call” opens an email — send us a time that suits and we will confirm it.
ALG / AUTOMATION MAP
WHAT WE AGREE BEFORE WIRING
AUTOMATION · ONE RUN
One run, start to finish
What starts it, what it checks, what it does, where it lands, and the exception where it stops and asks you.
01Drawn from a week you actually worked, not from a diagram we like.YOU SIGN OFF THE RULE
01A trigger you chooseA form filled in, a call finished, a job marked done, a date arriving.
02A rule you approvedWritten in plain words first. If we cannot explain it, we will not ship it.
03A handoff that landsSomewhere a person will actually see it, not a folder nobody opens.
Where the day goes
01
02
03
Nobody is paying you to re-type your own week.
None of the three below is difficult. That is exactly the problem: difficult work gets protected, and this gets done at nine at night instead.
The follow-up nobody sent
The quote that went out and was never chased. The customer who said “ring me in the spring”. Nothing broke and nothing is late — it simply never happened, and there is no list anywhere of what never happened.
The document that gets made by hand
The same quote, the same job sheet, the same monthly summary, rebuilt from scratch each time because the numbers live in three places and only you know how to combine them.
The delivery path
01
02
03
04
Watch → Write → Wire → Keep.
One verb a step, four steps, and the first one is watching. Most automation goes wrong at the start, not the end: somebody automates the process people describe rather than the one they actually run. So we look at the real one first.
Watch a real week
What you touch, in what order, and where it goes wrong. Including the exceptions, because the exception is where every automation eventually breaks and it is cheaper to find it now.
Write the rule down
In plain words, before any tool is opened: what starts it, what it checks, what it does, and what it must never do on its own. You read it and you change it. Nothing is built off a conversation nobody wrote down.
Wire it, and watch it run
Built in one piece you can see, run alongside the manual way until it agrees with you, then switched over. If the two disagree, the manual way wins and we fix the rule.
Keep it running
Automations break when the tools around them change, and they break quietly. So it is watched, fixed, and changed as the business changes. Monthly, no contract.
The usual three
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02
03
Three shapes most jobs take.
Almost everything we would automate for a small business is one of these three, or two of them joined. All three are written as work we would deliver, because we have none of it delivered for a customer we can name.
Intake
Whatever arrives — a form, a call, an email, a message — lands in one place, in one shape, with the same fields filled in every time. One list to work from instead of four half-lists and a memory.
Follow-up
The quote chased on the day you said, the reminder sent the evening before, the customer asked back when the season comes round. Sent from rules you set, with an opt-out on every message and consent respected as the law requires.
Paperwork
The quote, the job sheet, the weekly summary, built from the record rather than rebuilt from memory. Filed where it belongs and sent to whoever needs it, in the format you already use.
What we will not do
A rule we cannot explain is a rule we will not ship.
Automation earns its keep by being boring and predictable. The moment it is doing something nobody can describe, it has stopped saving you time and started costing you trust.
Some of this already runs — on our own platform, every day.
The joins under our voice agent and our chatbot are the same class of work: a call finishes, a lead is written, a text goes out, an appointment appears in a calendar, and nobody touches any of it.That is the only automation we can point at today, and it is ours rather than a customer’s. Everything else on this page is written as work we would deliver, on purpose.- Every rule is written in plain words and approved by you first.
- It runs beside the manual way until the two agree.
- You can see what ran and what it did, afterwards.
- It is watched after it ships — the tools around it change without warning.
- You can switch any of it off without waiting on us.
- Nothing moves money on its own.
- Nothing messages a customer where you have no consent to send.
- Nothing deletes. A rule that would remove a record flags it for a person.
- If a job is a judgement call, we leave it to a person and say so.
How we define progress
Not one of those is a figure, and none of them is an amount of time saved. We have no automation delivered for a customer we are able to name — so an hours-a-week number here would have come from somebody else’s business or from nowhere. What you get instead is a log you can open yourself.
What gets counted, and what you end up holding.
Everything above turns into a log with rows in it. There is no hours-saved figure on this page, on purpose — the only run count worth showing you is the one your own rule produces.
What gets counted
- Runs. Every time the rule fired, on a row of its own, with the date and what set it off.
- What each run did. The record it wrote, the message it sent, the document it made — the actual thing, not the word “success”.
- Where it stopped and asked you. The exceptions: a judgement call left to a person rather than guessed at.
- What did not finish. The runs that broke because a tool underneath them changed — which is how a quiet failure becomes a visible one.
- Where it disagreed with you. While it runs beside the manual way, every place the two did not match. The manual way wins and the rule gets fixed.
What you end up holding
- The rule, in plain words. What starts it, what it checks, what it does and what it must never do on its own — written and approved by you before anything was wired.
- The automation itself, and the off switch. You can switch any of it off without waiting on us.
- The log. What ran, what it did and what it did not finish, afterwards rather than only while somebody is watching.
- Somebody watching it. The tools around an automation change without warning, so it is monitored, fixed and changed as the business changes. Monthly, no contract.
The other six
Automation is one of seven.
This page is one service. If the re-typing is not the thing costing you the most, one of the other six is — and each of them has a page like this one.
01
Automation is 03, and you are standing on it. Start with whichever of the other six is costing you the most.
AI voice agents
Answers your phone line day, night and weekend, asks what you would have asked, books the job and texts you the lead.
See voice agents → 02AI agents
The same idea in writing rather than out loud: answering on your website from your own services and hours, into the same lead list.
See AI agents → 04Marketing
Getting found where people actually look, running the ads, and following up every enquiry the same way twice.
See marketing → 05Websites
A site built for you and hosted, wired to your calendar, with somewhere for a visitor to ask a question at eleven at night.
See websites → 06Custom software
The quoting tool, the scheduler, the portal you cannot buy off a shelf. Scoped and written down in full before any code.
See custom software → 07Systems
The joins. One place a lead lands, one calendar behind every door, one record of what happened, whichever way the customer came in.
See systems →