#123 | What to Automate First in Your Business (Using AI Without the Chaos)

You don't need twelve tools, a tech consultant, and a complete system overhaul to start using AI in your business. You just need to know where to start.

Most founders who try to automate everything at once end up with faster, bigger chaos. Complex Zapier chains, custom dashboards, dozens of tools — and nothing actually works together. That's not an automation problem. That's a sequencing problem. Automating a messy process just gives you a messier process that moves faster.

In this episode, Kristen Poborsky cuts through the noise and shows you exactly what to automate first, why simpler workflows produce bigger results, and how to use AI to free up hours every week without adding complexity to your business.

The starting point isn't automating everything — it's finding where friction is highest. For most founders, that's team handoffs, client follow-ups, and project approvals. One well-placed AI workflow in any of those areas can free up hours per week, not just for the founder but for the whole team.

Kristen walks through the three areas her team focuses on when building AI-powered backend systems. First, content workflows — setting up AI to draft, tag, and route content through the pipeline, trained on your voice, your course materials, and your frameworks, so your team can run it without waiting on you. Second, client delivery — automating check-ins, progress updates, and support so clients feel taken care of without anyone chasing them manually. She shares a real example of an AI agent built inside a client's course that eliminated student bottlenecks and removed the need for hand-holding at every step. Third, ops and task tracking — using AI to assign work, write SOPs, and push tasks directly into tools like Asana and Slack without the founder touching any of it.

Kristen also shares what happened with a client running seven tools and three assistants who came to her in daily chaos. Instead of adding more, they removed half the tech, simplified the workflows, and automated only the top three friction points. Within 30 days, execution moved faster, the founder got her focus back, and the team stopped needing constant input to move forward.

These shifts alone can cut founder touchpoints by 60% or more — without hiring another person.

Get the free week-by-week Blueprint for building an AI-powered business team — so you can stop being the bottleneck, reclaim 20–30 hours a week, and scale without adding headcount: https://www.kristenpoborskytraining.com/biz-team-blueprint

Transcript

0:23

Ai, it can feel overwhelming, like if the 12 tools, a system consultant and a team of robots just to get started. But the smartest founders I work with, they don't automate everything. They start with the bottlenecks first. The cost them the most momentum. So today I'm gonna show you exactly what to automate first and how to do it without breaking your business. I'm Kristen Poborsky, and I help founders build their backend systems using lean automations and AI without hiring more people or building out custom tech stacks. So you see, it's not about adding complexity into your business, it's about creating leverage with the simplest workflows that will drive the biggest results inside your business. So if you're still approving every single piece of content, answering repeat client questions or manually tracking what your team is doing, you don't need more help. You need better systems. And most founders, they're drowning in repeatable work that could be easily automated if they knew where to start. I'm sure you've probably heard or seen people trying to automate everything all at once, using dozens of tools, complex Zapier chains, custom dashboards. Nobody checks that approach. I don't know about you, but it sounds overwhelming, and to be honest with you, it usually breaks because automating chaos, it's just gonna give you bigger and faster and more chaos. See the automation and using ai, it only works when you simplify first. So the smartest founders, they automate where the highest friction is, and it's usually with team handoffs, client follow-ups, project approvals. These are areas where one simple AI. Or a workflow shift can free up hours per week. Per week, not just for the founder, but for their team members as well. So when we. Sit down to wor build ai powered systems. This is how we start. So grab a pen and paper. You might wanna write this down. Number one, we start with content workflow, have ai draft tag and route content through the pipeline so your team isn't waiting on your brain. It's like you set up a team. Is an entire content team that your team can operate because it's trained to sound like you, not just your voice, but on your course materials, books, you name it. When you give it all that information, then your out of the loop client delivery, that's a second area. We automate check-ins, updates, progress. And so that your clients feel supported without manual chasing. We do this also inside of courses. We build AI agents that will help the students get results faster. Just recently, we built one of these for my, one of my clients where she had a big hu, a big course that people are paying a lot of money for, but there were bottlenecks all inside the course. We identified where the bottlenecks were. We automated helping the students get through each part of it using an AI agent result. No more bottlenecks. No more needing someone to coach them every step through the course so that they could implement ops and task tracking. Use AI to assign follow up and summarize projects inside your tools, not your Slack. So one thing that I do is I have an assistant, it writes all of my I just delegate all of my. One thing that I do is I have an assistant, a Claude assistant, and it's trained to write all of my standard operating procedures, assign tasks to my team. It even goes over into Slack, into Slack, into Asana, and assigns to my assistant Carissa. Whatever I have handed off, and it even asks me where to put it inside my Asana. It can even ask you, when do you wanna have it done due? Bam, done, ready out the door in minutes rather than hours, or maybe never if you're the bottleneck. So these SH shifts can alone reduce founder touchpoints by 60% or more, which means your team. They can start running without you in it. So one client recently they came to me, they were using seven tools, three assistants. It led to daily chaos. Instead of adding more, we removed half their tech simplified workflows and automated just the top three friction points. And here's what happened. In 30 days, their execution got faster. Faster. Their founder. She was able to get her focus back'cause she wasn't drowning in running her team and her team. They were finally feeling confident without having to have her constant input. So if you want to see where automation could. Create the biggest lift in your business. Drop this word systems and I will send you over our AI blueprint. It'll show you exactly how we build these systems to run leaner, smoother, and rely less on your input.