A magazine about the boring parts.
Every week, one workflow that quietly loses money in a small service business — what to automate, what to keep behind a person, and how to tell the difference. Twelve pages, free, no form.
One workflow an issue, taken apart.
Each issue is cut from a longer written piece on this site, set for reading rather than skimming: the diagnosis, the tempting wrong move, where AI genuinely helps, and the honest limits. Nothing in it is gated, and no issue claims a client result we do not have.
Approvals that stall the work — speed them up, do not remove them
The quote was finished at 11am and went out at 4pm. Where the line falls between work that needs a human gate and work that does not, and the four fixes that clear the stall without removing the approval.
When the owner cannot see what is happening
The status update that takes an hour is not a reporting problem. What that hour is really spent on, which four categories of number earn space on a dashboard, and why we build visibility before automation on almost every engagement.
Follow-up falls through the cracks: fixing intake before automating it
Enquiries arrive on five channels, each with an owner, and the set with none. Why a chatbot adds a sixth channel instead of fixing anything, and the four-step order in which we actually build intake — with AI entering last.
AI for owner-led service businesses: what to automate, what to keep human
The four workflows that leak money in almost every small service business, and why three of the four turn out to be missing handoffs rather than missing software. Includes the four tests a first project has to pass before it is worth quoting.
New issue every Wednesday. Issues are also posted on LinkedIn and X. If a week has nothing honest to say, it is skipped rather than filled — the back catalogue is the point, not the streak.
Recognise one of these in your own week?
Send the workflow that keeps leaking — what gets missed, repeated, delayed, or is hard for you to see. The audit is free and often concludes you should not build anything yet.