Drowning in busy work

It was month six of running my coaching business and I felt like I was drowning in “busy work.”

Emails. Scheduling. Manual onboarding. Follow-ups I forgot to send.

One day I opened my calendar and realized something terrifying:

80% of my week was spent doing things I never got paid for.

I wasn’t growing—I was babysitting my own process.

Using Nothing:

I had no map. No structure. No automation. Just vibes, caffeine, and the hope I wouldn’t drop the ball (again).

The worst part?

I wasn’t even doing a bad job— I was just doing everything manually and burning out from it.

Using Pen + Paper:

I sketched out every single client interaction, from discovery to offboarding. When I saw it on one page, it was obvious:

Duplicate tools

Repetitive tasks

Gaps that made leads ghost

No system for re-engagement

No wonder I couldn’t scale. I was reinventing the wheel for every new client.

Using Airtable:

Next, I built a simple tracker: Lead source → call booked → proposal sent → invoice → kickoff → follow-up

One glance and I could finally see what was happening in my business.

From there, automation became easy. But it all started with mapping.

3 Ideas From Me:

You’re Not “Too Busy” — You’re Just Doing Things Twice Most overwhelm comes from reinventing the same process over and over. Automate it once, and move on.

Mapping Reveals the Real Problem You think your issue is lead gen. But the truth might be follow-up. Or onboarding. Or retention. A journey map exposes the real leaks.

Time Is Your Most Expensive Resource Every task you do manually has a cost. Mapping your client journey helps you spend time like money.

2 Quotes from Tech Visionaries:

Jeff Bezos on Systems Thinking: “If you double the number of experiments you do per year, you’re going to double your inventiveness.”

Andrew Wilkinson (Tiny Capital) on Scaling: “I’m not interested in being the CEO of every company. I want systems that let me build and step back.”

1 AI Tool to Try Today:

Airtable - Think of it as spreadsheets on steroids. Use it to:

Track every step of your client journey

Assign owners to each part of the process

Trigger automations with tools like Make or Zapier

It becomes your business control panel. No more wondering where a lead went. It’s all there.

Thanks for reading ❤ If you haven’t mapped your client journey yet, what’s stopping you?