It’s easy to look at a repetitive task and immediately think, “I should automate this.” But just because something can be automated doesn’t necessarily mean it’s worth automating. Here’s a simple 3-step framework I’d use: 1. Find the repetition 🔁 Look for tasks you’re doing the same way over and over again. Following up with leads, creating reports, moving information between tools, posting content, updating records, etc. If you only do something once a month, automating it probably won’t change much. If you’re doing it every day, keep looking. 2. Calculate what it’s actually costing you ⏱️ Don’t just look at how annoying the task is. Take the time it requires each week and multiply it across a month. 20 minutes a day doesn’t sound like much. That’s still roughly 7 hours every month spent on one repetitive process. Now ask yourself what those 7 hours would be worth if they went toward sales, clients, content, or actually growing the business. 3. Ask how much of the process actually needs YOU 🧠 This is the big one. Separate the parts that require your judgment, creativity, relationships, or decision-making from the parts that are just execution. You might realize you shouldn’t automate the entire process. You might only need to remove the repetitive 80% and keep yourself involved for the 20% where you actually add value.

Most people don’t actually want automation experts trying to build them countless “advanced” workflows. They hire them because today’s automation tools are still too complicated for the average business owner to use without learning workflows, integrations, triggers, APIs, and a bunch of other technical nonsense. As AI gets better, that entire process should start disappearing. Instead of hiring someone to build an automation, businesses will increasingly be able to choose the outcome they want and deploy a system that already knows how to deliver it. The future of automation isn’t making everyone an automation expert, it’s making automation expertise unnecessary. P.S. Automation experts will always be necessary as long as automation exists, their skill set will just change from building to advising and managing.

WHAT IF THE USER NEVER HAD TO BUILD THE AUTOMATION? For the last few years, using automation has still meant learning complicated tools, building workflows, fixing integrations, or paying someone else to do it. I think that’s about to change. Instead of becoming technicians ourselves, we’ll increasingly be able to use finished AI agents that deliver the outcome we want without needing to understand everything happening behind the scenes. I broke down what I think this shift means for business owners AND people making money with AI in this video

I built the first version of my automated agent marketplace ClickFlow Automation earlier this year and in doing so, it led me to having a massive perspective change over this one thing. 🟢 You don’t need to actually build your own automations anymore as an ai agency or freelancer. 🟢 I understand how that might sound. Crazy. But hear me out. Serving ai automation clients that are willing to pay you just got a whole lot easier for you. Why? Normally, automation agencies only get paid when they keep building custom systems from scratch. With ready to use automated agents, they can run the work for their clients using automated agents that are already built, so they still deliver the service themselves without wasting weeks rebuilding the infrastructure behind it.

Before automating a task, look at what happens immediately before and after it. A lot of businesses automate one step in the middle of a process and wonder why it barely saves them any time. The problem is the bottleneck just moves. You automate lead research, but you’re still manually qualifying every lead, writing the outreach, updating the CRM, and remembering who needs a follow-up. Now you have one really fast step surrounded by four slow ones. Instead, map the entire process from start to finish and find the point where work consistently gets delayed, forgotten, or requires you to step in. The goal isn’t to automate the most tasks possible, it’s to remove the bottlenecks that are actually slowing down the business.