Notes on fixing the systems and processes that make work harder than it needs to be.
Most advice about AI for small businesses stops at "write your emails faster". That's fine, but it misses the jobs that eat most of your week: the chasing, the copying between tools, the status updates nobody enjoys writing. Here are 16 jobs inside a service firm that AI or plain automation can take off your plate, sorted by where they show up in a client's life with you.
Read more » 16 things AI and automation can fix in a service firm (that you might not know about)
Your client said yes. Now there's a stretch of days, sometimes weeks, where the work is sold but can't start. Most firms run that stretch on memory and email. Here's what should happen in it, in order, and who should own it.
Read more » What should happen between a client signing and the work starting?
The person who sold the work knows things nobody else does: what the client is nervous about, the "we can probably also do that" from the second call, the name of the person who actually signs off. The handoff is where most of that goes missing. It doesn't have to.
Read more » How to hand a new client from sales to delivery without losing anything
Most client onboarding questionnaires are too long, ask things the client already told you, and arrive as an attachment nobody fills in. A good one is short, specific to your work, and takes the client ten minutes. Here's what goes in it.
Read more » The client onboarding questionnaire: what to ask before kickoff (and what not to)
Search for how long client onboarding should take and you'll find answers anywhere from a few days to three months. Both can be right, because they're measuring different things. Here's how to work out what's right for your firm, and how to tell how long yours really takes.
Somewhere along the way you ended up with a CRM, two project tools, a forms app, a shared drive, an invoicing tool, three spreadsheets that "really should be in the system", and a chat app that's become the actual system. You're not alone, and the fix is usually smaller than replacing everything.
Read more » Too many tools: how to tell which ones your team actually needs
The new tool launched, everyone was relieved, and six months later it is quietly broken. A login expired, a connection stopped syncing, and nobody noticed until a client did.
Read more » What "support" should actually cover after a system goes live
A new client signs on. Someone enters their details in the CRM, then again in the invoicing tool, then again in the project tracker. Nobody planned it that way. It just happened, one tool at a time.
Read more » Why your team types the same information in three places
It was supposed to fix everything. A freelancer started building it, the budget ran out or the person who knew it left, and now it sits half-finished while the team works around it.
Read more » The app that stalled halfway: finish it, fix it, or start over?
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