This Training Business Was Drowning in Admin. Here’s How We Fixed It.
Our client, a certified Mental Health First Aid instructor, was in exactly this spot. She was an expert in her field, but her days were spent manually copy-pasting client data, creating invoices one by one, and trying to keep track of it all in a mess of spreadsheets.
This wasn't just annoying. It was a cap on her business. Every hour she spent on admin was an hour she wasn't spending on growing the company.
THE COMPLICATIONS
Her operations were broken in three specific ways.
The "System" Was Digital Duct Tape: Her process for tracking clients was a mix of emails, monthly spreadsheets, and her accounting software. Nothing talked to anything else. This meant constant manual work and a huge risk of making an embarrassing mistake.
The Founder Was the Bottleneck: You can't scale a business when you are the one approving every booking and creating every invoice. She couldn't run a new marketing campaign because she literally didn't have the bandwidth to handle more clients.
The DIY Fix Made It Worse: She was smart. She tried to automate it herself and spent over 40 hours wrestling with software. But she hit a wall. She learned the hard way that you can't fix a foundational problem with surface-level tools.
THE RESOLUTION
We sat down and mapped out the entire process. The problem wasn't her software; it was the lack of a central brain connecting it all.
Our framework for this is simple. We build one central hub that manages everything. For her, that was a smart database in Airtable. Think of it as the new HQ for her entire business operations.
Here's where it gets interesting. We used a tool called n8n to act as the "digital plumbing." It’s a behind-the-scenes worker that never sleeps.
When a booking comes in via email or her website, the "plumbing" instantly grabs the data and organizes it in the Airtable HQ. No more copy-pasting.
If a client needs an invoice, the system automatically creates one in her Xero accounting software and sends it off.
Once a client pays, the system sees it, updates their status, and automatically sends out the pre-course materials.
THE QUANTIFIED IMPACT
Numbers speak louder than adjectives. Here's what changed:
40+ Founder Hours Reclaimed: This includes the time she’d already wasted on a DIY fix, plus the weekly hours she now saves on admin.
100% Admin Automation: Her client onboarding and invoicing process is now entirely hands-off.
$0 Cost of Errors: The risk of manual data entry errors (and the cost to her reputation) is now zero.
THE CLIENT'S PERSPECTIVE
Here's what the founder had to say, in her own words:
"I have, before coming to you, spoken to quite a few people... It's like going to a car garage and not knowing anything. Just so worried you're just going to get conned. It's been really good to work with you."
She went from feeling stuck and frustrated to being back in control. She’s not just the main operator anymore; she’s the founder with the time and energy to think about what's next.
WHAT YOU CAN LEARN FROM THIS
Your "System" Isn't a System. If your process relies on you remembering to copy-paste something, it's not a system. It's a habit, and it's holding you back.
Automate the Boring Stuff First. The biggest ROI isn't in flashy AI. It's in automating the repetitive tasks that drain your team's soul, like data entry and invoicing.
Stop DIY-ing Your Foundation. You're an expert in your field. Don't waste your genius-level hours trying to be an expert in ours.
WHAT NOW?
Tired of being your own head of admin? Take your Operations Readiness Scorecard to identify similar opportunities in your organization. We’ll tell you exactly what’s broken and how you can fix it.