What I actually do during a half-day workflow audit.

"Workflow audit" sounds like consultant-speak. I get it.

Half a day watching how you work, then a written plan, for $750. Said out loud, it can sound like the kind of thing where a guy in a vest shows up, nods a lot, and leaves you a forty-slide deck full of words like "synergy."

That's not what this is. So here's the whole thing, start to finish, with nothing left out. It's half a day, on site or over video.

First, I shut up and watch you work

The audit starts with you showing me a normal week. Not the polished version — the real one. The Monday where three emails turned into a quote, which turned into a phone call, which turned into a sticky note you lost.

I'm looking for one thing: where your time leaks.

Every small business has a few tasks that eat hours and produce almost nothing. Re-typing the same quote for the tenth time. Copying customer details from an email into a spreadsheet into your invoicing app. Writing the same "thanks for reaching out, here's how we work" message from scratch every single day.

You stop noticing these because they're just "the job." I notice them because I'm new to your job. That's most of the value right there — a fresh set of eyes on the stuff you've gone numb to.

I time things. Actual minutes.

This is the part that surprises people. I don't estimate. I ask you to do the task while I watch, and I write down how long it really takes.

The gap between "that only takes a couple minutes" and the stopwatch is often big. Here's a typical version: picture an HVAC office that's sure its post-job follow-up takes five minutes a customer. Put a stopwatch on it and it could be closer to twenty. Across a week of calls, one task like that can eat most of a working day.

You can't fix what you won't measure. So I measure.

Then I sort the leaks into three buckets

Once I can see where the time goes, every task lands in one of three piles:

• Kill it. Some tasks shouldn't exist. You're maintaining a spreadsheet nobody reads, or sending a report no client ever opens. The best fix is to stop.
• Template it. A surprising amount of "custom" work is the same thing every time with two details swapped. That doesn't need AI. It needs a good template and ten minutes to set up.
• Automate it. What's left — the repetitive, judgment-light work — is where AI actually earns its keep. A custom GPT that drafts your quotes in your voice. A tool like Otter transcribing your site visits so you stop typing notes by hand. A simple step that pulls a new inquiry straight into your invoicing instead of you copying it by hand.

Notice that two of the three buckets have nothing to do with AI. That's on purpose. Most of the time you don't have a technology problem. You have a "nobody ever stopped to question this" problem.

What you walk away with

At the end, you get a short written plan. Not forty slides. A plan you'll actually read.

It names the three to five automations worth doing first, with the hours each one should save every week, what it costs to set up, what it costs to run, and the order to build them in. It's written so a capable person on your team could implement it without me.

The audit is a plan only. I don't build anything during it. If you want me to do the build-out afterward, I quote it in writing as a fixed price, typically $1,500 to $3,500. But you're not obligated to hire me for anything. The plan is yours, and taking it and running with it yourself is a completely fine outcome.

One more thing: if the plan doesn't show at least 3 hours a week your business can win back, I refund the $750.

Who this is for

If you're a one-or-few-person operation and your week feels like you're always behind despite working constantly, that feeling usually isn't a discipline problem. It's a process problem. There's friction baked into how the work moves, and you've been absorbing it with extra hours.

Half a day and a fresh pair of eyes is a cheap way to find out where it's hiding. If you'd like to look for the leaks yourself first, start with the free AI Time-Leak Checklist.

---

Feel like you spend half your week on admin that shouldn't take this long? I run half-day AI workflow audits for small businesses for $750. Book a free call, tell me about your week, and I'll tell you if it's a fit.