Every solo founder has a version of this problem. There's a task you do repeatedly — same sequence, same tools, same result every time — and you do it manually because setting up an automation always felt like a project for later.
Later is this week.
The five automations below require no coding, no technical background, and no complex setup. Each one uses tools with free tiers and takes under an hour to configure. Once they're running, they run without you — which is the entire point.
Before you start: how automation actually works (in plain English)
You don't need to understand the technical details, but you do need to understand the basic concept or you'll get confused by the interfaces.
Automation works on a trigger-action model. Something happens (the trigger) → something else happens automatically as a result (the action). That's it.
Example: Someone fills in your contact form (trigger) → their details get added to your Google Sheet (action).
Example: A new meeting gets added to your calendar (trigger) → a Zoom link gets created and a reminder gets sent to the attendee (action).
The tool that connects your apps and makes these triggers and actions work together is called an automation platform. The two you need to know:
Zapier — the most beginner-friendly option. Over 7,000 app integrations. You can build your first working automation in under 30 minutes. Free tier gives you 100 tasks/month with two-step automations (one trigger, one action). Paid plan is $19.99/month billed annually for 750 tasks and multi-step workflows.
Make.com — more powerful for complex workflows, visual drag-and-drop interface. Free tier gives you 1,000 operations/month — 10x Zapier's free tier. Paid plans start at $9/month for 10,000 operations. Steeper learning curve than Zapier but significantly better value once you're building anything beyond the simplest workflows.
Which one to start with: Zapier if you want the fastest first experience and you're only building simple two-step automations. Make.com if you want more headroom on the free tier or you're planning to build anything with more than two steps.
One honest note on Zapier's free tier before you start: the 100 tasks/month goes faster than it sounds. A single five-step Zap uses five tasks every time it fires. If a Zap runs 20 times a day, that's 100 tasks gone in one day. For testing purposes the free tier is fine. For anything you depend on running reliably, you need either the paid plan or Make's free tier.
Now the five automations.
Automation 1: Meeting transcription and action items — without taking a single note
What you're currently doing manually: Taking notes during calls, then spending 15–30 minutes after every call writing up what was discussed, what was decided, and what needs to happen next. Or — more commonly — not doing this properly and losing important details.
What the automation does: Records your call automatically, transcribes it in real time, generates a summary, and extracts action items. You end the call and the document is already there.
The tool: Fireflies.ai — free tier gives you 800 transcription minutes/month with no per-call time cap. Connect it to your Google Calendar and it automatically joins every meeting you schedule. No manual setup per call.
Alternatively: Otter.ai — free tier gives 300 minutes/month but has a 30-minute per-conversation cap. Fine if your calls are short. If they regularly run longer, Fireflies is the better free option, or Otter Pro at $8.33/month removes the cap.
How to set it up (20 minutes):
Go to fireflies.ai and create a free account
Connect your Google Calendar or Outlook during onboarding
That's it — Fireflies joins your next scheduled call automatically as a participant called "Notetaker"
After the call, you get an email with the transcript, summary, and action items
Time saved: 15–30 minutes per call. If you have five calls a week, that's over an hour back every week — permanently.
The honest limit: Fireflies joining your call as a visible participant surprises some clients the first time. A quick "I use an AI notetaker so I can stay present in our conversation" heads this off entirely. Most clients appreciate it once they understand what it is.
Automation 2: Lead capture to your tracker — without the copy-paste
What you're currently doing manually: Someone fills in your contact form → you get an email notification → you manually copy their name, email, and message into a spreadsheet or CRM so you can track them. Every. Single. Time.
What the automation does: The moment someone submits your contact form, their details go directly into your tracking spreadsheet (or CRM) automatically. Nothing to copy. Nothing to paste. It's already there.
The tools: Zapier or Make.com + your contact form (Typeform, Google Forms, Tally, or whatever you use) + Google Sheets or Airtable.
How to set it up in Zapier (30 minutes):
Go to zapier.com, create a free account
Click "Create Zap"
Set your trigger: choose your form tool (Typeform, Google Forms, etc.) → select "New Entry" or "New Response" as the trigger event → connect your form account → test it by submitting a test entry
Set your action: choose Google Sheets → select "Create Spreadsheet Row" → connect your Google account → map the form fields to your spreadsheet columns (name goes in the Name column, email in the Email column, etc.)
Turn the Zap on
Every new form submission now appears in your spreadsheet within seconds, formatted exactly how you set it up.
Time saved: 3–5 minutes per lead. If you get 20 enquiries a month, that's a meaningless number. If you get 200, it's significant. But the real value isn't the time — it's the reliability. Manual copy-paste means leads fall through the cracks. Automation means none do.
The honest limit: This uses one Zapier task per form submission. If you're on the free tier and getting high form volume, you'll burn through your 100 tasks quickly. Move to Make.com's free tier (1,000 operations/month) or Zapier's paid plan if this becomes a problem.
Automation 3: Invoice reminders — without the awkward follow-up email
What you're currently doing manually: Sending a manual follow-up email when an invoice goes past due. Either you forget to do it (and the money sits unpaid longer), you do it inconsistently, or you spend mental energy each time deciding whether it's been long enough to chase.
What the automation does: Sends an automatic reminder when an invoice hits a certain number of days overdue — no manual monitoring, no awkward drafting, no forgetting.
The tool: Most invoicing tools have this built in and you just haven't turned it on. Check your invoicing software first before building anything in Zapier.
FreshBooks: Go to Settings → Invoice Settings → Late Payment Reminders. Turn on automatic reminders at 1 day, 7 days, and 14 days overdue. Takes 3 minutes.
Wave (free invoicing tool): Go to Invoicing → Settings → Reminders. Same process.
PayPal Invoicing: Go to Invoice Settings → Payment Reminders. Enable and customize.
QuickBooks: Under Invoice Settings → Payment Reminders → set your schedule.
If your invoicing tool doesn't have this natively, build it in Zapier: trigger on "Invoice overdue" from your invoicing tool → action sends an email from Gmail with your pre-written reminder text.
Time saved: 10–15 minutes per overdue invoice in awkward email drafting, plus the mental overhead of tracking who owes what. More importantly: faster payment. Automatic reminders go out on time every time, which consistently reduces average days-to-payment.
The honest limit: Automated reminders can occasionally feel impersonal for a long-standing client relationship. For clients you've worked with for years, a personal note is better than an automated one. Use automation for new or shorter-term client relationships and handle the exceptions manually.
Automation 4: New lead follow-up — without the delay
What you're currently doing manually: Someone fills in your contact form or sends an enquiry. You see it when you check your email — which might be an hour later, might be the next morning. You draft a reply. The lead has been waiting.
Response time is one of the biggest conversion factors in service businesses. Leads contacted within five minutes of enquiring are dramatically more likely to convert than those contacted after an hour. As a solo founder checking email at intervals, you're almost never hitting that window manually.
What the automation does: The moment a new enquiry comes in, an immediate acknowledgement goes out automatically — letting the lead know their message arrived, when to expect a real reply, and optionally giving them a way to book a call. You still handle the actual conversation. The automation handles the first-touch response time problem.
How to set it up in Zapier (45 minutes):
Trigger: new form submission (Typeform, Google Forms, Tally)
Action 1: send an email from Gmail (or your email provider) using a template you've pre-written
The template that works:
Subject: Got your message — here's what happens next
Hi [First Name],
Thanks for reaching out. I've received your message and will come back to you
within [your realistic timeframe — e.g. "by end of day" or "within 24 hours"].
In the meantime, if you'd like to book a time to talk directly, here's my
calendar: [Calendly link or equivalent]
Speak soon,
[Your name]
Action 2 (optional, requires Zapier paid or Make): add their details to your lead tracking sheet simultaneously
Time saved: The automation itself takes seconds to run. What it saves is the conversion loss from slow manual response — which is harder to quantify but consistently significant in service businesses.
The honest limit: Don't make the auto-reply sound like an automated reply. "Our team will be in touch" when you're a one-person business sounds immediately false and erodes trust. The template above reads like you wrote it because it should — keep it in your voice.
Automation 5: Social media scheduling — without the daily manual posting
What you're currently doing manually: Writing a post, opening LinkedIn or Instagram, pasting it in, adding an image, hitting publish. Repeating this for every platform, every time you post. Or — more commonly — not posting consistently because the friction of the process keeps breaking the habit.
What the automation does: You write your content in one place and schedule it across multiple platforms in advance. You batch your content creation once or twice a week rather than interrupting your day every time a post needs to go out.
The tool: Buffer (free tier covers 3 social accounts, 10 scheduled posts per account — enough to test whether this workflow fits you) or Later (free tier covers 1 account per platform, 30 posts/month).
This isn't technically a Zapier automation — it's a scheduling tool. But the outcome is the same: a manual daily task becomes a batched weekly one.
How to set it up (20 minutes):
Go to buffer.com, create a free account
Connect your social accounts (LinkedIn, Instagram, X, Facebook — whichever you use)
Set a posting schedule — the days and times you want posts to go out
Write your next week's posts in one sitting, schedule them in Buffer
They publish automatically at the times you set
The AI angle: Use ChatGPT or Claude to help batch-write your posts in one session. Describe the week's content themes, ask for five LinkedIn posts, review and edit them, paste them into Buffer. What used to be a daily 20-minute task becomes a 90-minute weekly session — and the 90 minutes produces better output because you're in a focused creation mode rather than context-switching from client work.
Time saved: 15–20 minutes per post removed from your daily routine. If you post five times a week across two platforms, that's potentially 2–3 hours a week back.
The honest limit: Scheduled posts don't respond to real-time events or trends. For timely commentary you still need to post manually. Scheduling works best for evergreen content — tips, frameworks, client results, questions.
The right order to build these
Don't try to build all five at once. Each one takes setup time and you want to actually test each before moving to the next.
Here's the sequence that makes most sense for a typical solo founder:
Week 1: Automation 1 (meeting notes) — highest immediate time return, zero ongoing maintenance once connected.
Week 2: Automation 2 (lead capture to tracker) — straightforward Zapier build, immediately useful if you have any form volume.
Week 3: Automation 3 (invoice reminders) — check if your invoicing tool already has this built in before building anything. Most do.
Week 4: Automation 4 (lead follow-up) — slightly more nuanced to get the template right; worth doing properly.
When you're consistently posting content: Automation 5 (social scheduling) — only worth setting up if content is already part of your routine, otherwise you're building infrastructure for a habit that doesn't exist yet.
Do this today: Pick Automation 1 — meeting transcription. Go to fireflies.ai, create a free account, connect your calendar. It takes 20 minutes and saves time starting with your very next call. Everything else can wait until that one is running.
Next in First Wins: How to Build a Simple AI Assistant for Your Business (In Under an Hour) →
Or step back to: How to Use ChatGPT for Your Business →
Or go back to the pillar: ← First Wins: Get AI Working in Your Business This Week
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