Service
Automation
There's almost always one process eating hours a week that could run on its own. The reason it hasn't been fixed isn't that it's hard — it's that nobody's had time to sit down and build the replacement. That's the work.
What is this?
Replacing repetitive busywork — copying between tools, hand-built reports, paperwork loops — with something that runs on its own and tells you when it breaks.
Who is this for?
Owners stuck doing the same manual steps every week, or who inherited a process nobody fully understands.
What do you get?
A working pipeline, enough documentation that someone else can run it, and fewer hours lost to busywork.
Typical timeline: Most pipelines land in one to three weeks. Larger document or multi-system work can stretch to a month — but you'll know the timeline before we start, not during.
What you get
Deliverables and outcomes
Scoped clearly — you know what's included and what you keep running.
Manual work that ate hours per week now runs on its own
Tools that wouldn't talk to each other now sync in seconds
Documents generate and route themselves end to end
External data lands in your systems clean, fresh, and on schedule
Errors get logged and surfaced — no silent failures
You stop being the bottleneck between two pieces of software
When this fits
This lane is a good fit when…
If several of these match what you're trying to get done, you're in the right place.
Working together
From first note to handoff
Message or a short call — same process either way.
Map the manual work
What gets copied, who does it, where it breaks, and what “done” looks like — so we automate the right loop.Build the replacement
Connect the tools (or write a small custom job) so the work runs on its own, with alerts if something fails.Turn it on and hand off
Go live with monitoring and a short note so your team knows what runs, what to watch, and who owns exceptions.
Proof
Related projects
Real work from this lane — short write-ups, not slide decks.
Custodian Transition Automation
High-volume document recovery, generation, and e-signature routing for a firm-wide custodian move — finished on a timeline everyone said was impossible.
→ Large-scale paperwork migration finished on an “impossible” timeline
View details →
Will It Flow
A rental-analysis web app I built and run — live rates and rent data so investors can evaluate a deal in one place, plus market pages that bring in organic traffic.
→ Live product · paying users
View details →
Freelance CRM
A simple CRM I built for my own consulting work — clients, leads, opportunities, tasks, time, and invoices in one place, without fighting Salesforce-scale software.
→ Private beta · built for real consulting ops
View details →Field notes
Related write-ups
Practical notes from this lane.
Google Maps Lead Generation: Automate Business Discovery with n8n (Step-by-Step Guide)
This workflow searches Google Maps for businesses in your niche, resolves each listing to its website, scrapes the site with polite rate-limits, extracts valid emails + company info, de-duplicates, and appends the results to Google Sheets—perfect for outbound campaigns.
7 min read · 2025-08-31
Read field note →
The Ultimate Guide to Enterprise Document Automation: A Deep Dive into Advanced DocuSign Integration
Explore a sophisticated Python-based DocuSign automation system with over 2,400 lines of production-ready code that transforms manual document workflows into highly efficient, scalable operations for enterprise environments.
15 min read · 2025-08-22
Read field note →
Automating Earnings Call Intelligence with Python, GPT-4, and Twitter Integration
Learn how to build an end-to-end automation pipeline that scrapes earnings call transcripts, summarizes them using GPT-4, extracts sentiment and strategic insights, and posts results to Twitter for scalable financial content production.
10 min read · 2025-07-23
Read field note →Explore
The other lanes
Most real work touches more than one of these.
FAQ
Common questions — Automation
Do you always build something custom?
No. If a simple connector tool can do the job safely, we use that. Custom work is for when the steps are too messy, too high-volume, or too important to fail silently.
What if the automation breaks?
Silent failures are worse than manual work. Production jobs get logging and alerts so you know when something didn't run — before a customer does.
Can you take over something someone else started?
Often. I read what exists, document what it actually does, then harden or replace the risky parts without stopping the business.
Do you work with documents and e-signatures?
Yes — fill templates, send for signature (DocuSign or similar), and file the signed PDFs where they belong. Common work for me.
How is this different from hiring an agency?
The same person who scopes the work builds it and hands it off — so context doesn't get lost between strategy, design, and implementation. You get direct answers and far fewer coordination meetings.
What should I bring to a first call?
What you need done in plain language: the website, CRM, automation, or analytics work, what “done” looks like, and any tools already in play. That is enough to tell you fit and what a first milestone would look like.
What happens after launch?
White glove is available if you want me on updates. If you'd rather own light changes — or the work is an automation your team will run — you get clear notes so nothing depends on memory.
How long does this usually take?
Typical timelines on this lane: Most pipelines land in one to three weeks. Larger document or multi-system work can stretch to a month — but you'll know the timeline before we start, not during..
Optional reading
More detail if you want it
Skip this if you already know enough to reach out.
What the work can look like
Scheduled scripts
Python jobs that run on a cron or a server-side scheduler — pulling data from one system, transforming it, pushing it into another, generating reports nobody has to assemble by hand. I've had scripts running on Raspberry Pis for three years straight pulling vetted leads from a paid lead-gen service every few minutes — the kind of speed-to-lead advantage that's worth real money, but only if the integration is solid.
API integrations
Most business software has an API. Most businesses don't have anyone in-house who can wire two of them together. The work is identifying which calls you actually need, handling auth, dealing with rate limits and error states, and making the integration observable enough that you trust it without checking on it daily.
Document pipelines
Generating, populating, routing, and storing PDFs at scale — invoices, contracts, onboarding paperwork, proposals, regulatory filings. The biggest version I've built generated and routed more than ten thousand DocuSign envelopes for a custodian transition. The same approach scales down to a business producing thirty proposals a month by hand.
Scrapers and external data
When the data you need lives somewhere without an API, the path forward is a scraper. The work isn't writing the scraper — it's making it polite, durable, observable, and resilient to the source changing underneath it.
A bit more on this lane
This is the lane I work in most, and the one I'd argue most small and new businesses underinvest in. Whether you're inheriting a manual process someone set up years ago or building workflows from scratch, there's almost always at least one loop eating hours a week that a script could handle in seconds. The reason it hasn't been automated isn't that it's hard — it's that nobody's had time to sit down, map the loop, and build the replacement.
How I think about this work
Most automation gets sold on time saved. Time saved matters, but it's the second-order benefit. The first-order benefit is consistency. A script doesn't forget a step on a Friday afternoon, doesn't get sick, doesn't have a worse week than usual. When you replace a manual loop, what you're actually buying is reliability — and reliability compounds in ways an hours-saved spreadsheet doesn't capture.
The other thing I'll argue: don't automate the wrong process. The temptation is to point at the most painful task and say “automate that.” Sometimes that's right. Sometimes the task is painful because the underlying process is broken, and automating a broken process just makes the broken outcome faster. I'd rather spend the first conversation on what's actually wrong than start writing scripts.
Tools I often use here
Not my lane
- RPA platforms that record screen actions (UiPath, Automation Anywhere) — I work in code, not surface-level recorders.
- Enterprise iPaaS rollouts (MuleSoft, Boomi) — those are agency-shaped projects.
Want help with automation?
Send a short note about what you need done. You'll get a read on timeline, fit, and next steps — or book a call if you'd rather talk it through.
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