The Playbook · DIY OR HIRE
Automate it yourself or hire someone?
Automate it yourself when the job is one trigger and one message. Hire someone when it touches money, customers or a system you cannot see inside. That is the line, and it holds in every trade I have built for. The tools are cheap either way; A single workflow automation is $3,500, for the second kind of job, not the first.
What can you automate alone?
More than most owners think. Zapier, Make and the free tier of IFTTT connect the tools you already pay for. A new form entry creates a row in a sheet. A calendar booking sends a confirmation. A paid invoice triggers a thank-you. If you can describe the job as when this happens, do that, you can build it on a Sunday afternoon.
Pick the tool by reading the Zapier versus Make matchup and the stack index, then build the missed-call text-back first. It is the automation with the fastest payback and the fewest ways to go wrong.
What should you hand to a builder?
Anything with an if in the middle. If the customer has paid, if the job is over a certain size, if the reply says a word that means trouble. Logic is where DIY automations quietly break, because the exception you did not think of arrives on a Friday night.
Anything that reads or writes your own systems: inventory, bookings, accounting. And anything that talks to a customer without you reading it first. A bad text from a bot goes out under your name.
Where is the line, exactly?
Three tests. Does it move money? Does it speak to a customer? Does it touch a system you could not rebuild from memory? One yes means get a second pair of eyes before it goes live. Two yeses means hire it out.
The moment a small job becomes a call
It is usually the third automation. The first two work. The third needs to know what the first two did, and now you have a system, not a shortcut. That is the point where an hour of a builder's time saves a weekend of yours.
What does hiring cost, and what does it buy?
Three cost lines: the tools, the build, and the babysitting. The automation cost play walks through each. In my plans the build has a fixed price and date, and the babysitting lives inside a month-to-month care plan on the plans page, Care there is $149, $349, or $749 a month. A single workflow automation is $3,500.
What it buys is the exception path, the log someone reads, and a person to call. The seven automation mistakes are all things a builder has already made once, on somebody else's business.
What do you keep either way?
Everything, if you set it up right. Accounts in your name, tool logins in your password manager, the messages saved somewhere outside the tool. Whether you built it or I did, you should be able to change builders without losing a single automation. That rule is the same one behind this whole site: the person you call is the person who built it, and nothing is held hostage.
What else do owners ask?
Is Zapier enough for a small business?
For one-trigger, one-action jobs, yes, and for a while. It gets expensive and fragile when the third automation has to know about the first two. That is the moment to consolidate, not add another zap.
What if my automation breaks on a weekend?
If you built it, the customer waits until you notice. If it lives inside a care plan, the person who built it is the one who gets the alert. Neither is free; you are choosing which one to pay.
Do I need a developer or an automation person?
For the first three jobs, an automation person or yourself. For anything that talks to your own database or booking engine, someone who writes code. I do both, which is why the same phone number covers the whole list.
Your move. Call or text (847) 387-0244, or price your build in six taps and I call you with the exact number.
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