The 20-minute audit: what to automate first

You don't need a consultant to find your first automation. You need twenty quiet minutes, last week's calendar and your inbox.

Step 1: list the repeats (8 minutes)

Look at last week. Write down every task you or your team did more than three times. Don't judge them yet. Typical ones: answering pricing questions, confirming bookings, chasing unpaid invoices, copying leads into a spreadsheet.

Step 2: score them (7 minutes)

For each task, give three quick scores:

• Minutes: how long it takes each time, multiplied by how often

• Annoyance: from one to five, how much the team dislikes it

• Risk: would a mistake be embarrassing or costly?

Step 3: pick one (5 minutes)

Choose the task with the most minutes, the highest annoyance and the lowest risk. That's where to start. Circle it.

An example

A physio clinic we worked with found that confirming appointments by phone took 6 hours a week, the team hated it, and mistakes were low-risk. It was live as automatic texts within ten days.

The best first automation is boring, frequent and safe.