New year, new hire? Maybe not...

I've had a few chats with Business Coaching clients recently about the very specific pain point that exists at the moment when an Entrepreneur has outlined their exciting growth plans and then quickly realised there's a) too much to do and b) no money to pay anyone else to split the workload.

It's in this spot that a lot of businesses fail; this particular crunch point is a real make or break moment because it's the decisions made whilst solving this early problem that can define your business's scalability for years to come.

If you're feeling this pinch at the moment, I got you.

When I was first building Pay As You Go COO, I knew that affordability would be a key concern for some of my earlier-stage clients and so, rather than hiring a team to work with me, I set out to build systems for my own business that would allow me to automate a lot of my internal admin so I could reduce my own operating costs in order to offer the entry-point content and Business Coaching that's a foundation of our model. What can I say, I'm just nice like that.

And because I'm so nice, I'm going to lift the lid on a lot of what I did so you can replicate it in your own business and find ways to expand your capacity without increasing your budget. Let's dig into how you can 'hire' a system of your own (and don't forget to come back in a fortnight for the second article in this two-part series which is going to cover how to measure the success of your digital system once you've hired it).

There's problem with traditional ways to scale systems

Back in the day, we'd 'scale' a business by hiring more people. Sure, there were economies to be found in the mid-line spends, but, generally, if you wanted more done, you needed to hire more people and that meant more costs too.

When I was figuring out what Pay As You Go COO's audience needed, I headed to one of my favourite places in the world - the Office For National Statistics. Yeah, I know, I really need to get out more.

I wanted to understand the data - historically, has hiring more people meant a sensible path to generating more revenue - specifically, more revenue per person? Having done my time in sluggish, bloated companies, the results were not surprising.

I found that 'micro' businesses in the UK (0-9 employees) delivered an average of £160k in turnover/year or an average of £99.5k in turnover per employee per year. In comparison, a small business (10-49 people) delivered on average 19x that turnover/year at £2.98m per business per year but, despite that massive 19x growth rate in overall turnover, turnover per employee only went up by 53% to £152k per employee per year in a small versus a micro business.

At the level of medium business (50-249), average turnover increased by another 6x from that of a small business to £17.8m (with turnover per employee increasing by only 1.2x to £184k per employee per year).

TL:DR? Revenue per employee does not grow at a similar rate to total revenue as your business scales its team. In 2026, the route to answering this profitability gap is obvious - automate a bunch of shit so you can scale revenue per employee at a similar level to total revenue.

To automate your way to a scalable system, you need to set your direction first

Yeah, yeah, I know. A strategist talking about the importance of Strategy isn't worth the paper your click is written on but hear me out because you have to take a step back when you're making decisions like these and I'm certain you've heard the buzz around automations but not so certain you've heard the softer sound of the right automations.

When you're so overwhelmed by the day-to-day chaos of your business, are you truly taking enough time to think about where and how you want to grow or are you just thinking "grow, damn it, I need a nap"?

In short, it's likely you're already thinking about building automations but are you building the ones that prioritise the most important problems you need to solve? Or are you being distracted into building automations that just help you clear the noisiest things from your to-do list?

Just as I'd encourage you to think about what a new hire is responsible for before your hire them, before you even think about building your operating system, automated or not, take some time to really nail down your Strategy and your quantitative goals. Head here for more info on how to do that if you need.

It's important to prioritise which systems you're scaling first

Once you've identified your Objectives and Key Results, you can detail out the actual work required to get there. It’s here, in the day-to-day grind, that founders typically get buried, confusing (really) frenetic activity for productive work.

To avoid this trap, start by dissecting your work into its smallest, most definable components to lay the foundation for truly scalable systems -i.e. identify your individual Tasks.

The first step in hiring your "digital system" is then identifying which of these Tasks is worthy of automation. Look for:

• Repetitive tasks: Anything you do over and over thats's exactly the same each time, regardless of the customer. These could be things like sending standard onboarding emails, drafting welcome letters, or frequently updating a spreadsheet. I've automated a lot of our customer emails, calendar invitations, and reminders.

  
  

• Rule-based tasks: Any process that follows a strict, predictable logic: if 'x' happens, then 'y' must occur. Things in this bucket could be automatically scheduling a follow-up email a certain number of days after a customer signs up, or moving a client's status from 'Lead' to 'Active' when payment is received. I've automated our CRM (we use Hubspot) to trigger reminders in our project management system (we use Asana) when prospect follow-ups are due.

  
  

• Time-consuming but low-value tasks: Work that consumes your limited hours without directly moving the revenue needle or requiring creative thought - things like manually formatting data reports, organising calendar invitations for a fixed schedule, or moving information from one tool to another. I have all our various SaaS tools integrated through Zapier so that everything is updated to the latest available data.

These are the sorts of Tasks that seem like quick things to do but they compound into a lot of blocked hours that could be better spent elsewhere.

Your scalable system is all about the tools you choose

Once you know what work can be automated, you can go shopping for your first "hire" - a.k.a your stack of automated tools.

I think about hiring an automated system stack in the same way that I think about hiring a team. First, I set the goals that need to be achieved, then I look at the work that needs to be done to achieve those goals, then I look at who's going to do that work and whether or not I can (and should) be doing it myself or if it's better placed with someone else.

Generally these would fall into the following buckets:

Project & task management

This is the most crucial layer; it is the central hub for organising the chaos. Tools like Asana (my personal favourite), Trello, or Monday.com act as your operating system, tracking your progress against your goals, holding info about your priorities, your deadlines, your definitions of success.

A good project management system keeps you focussed and accountable without you having to constantly think up new operating plans or make endless new lists of things to do. Done properly, an automated PMS will mean you can just show up each day and look at this list and have it tell you what needs to happen to move the business forward.

It's worth noting that a PMS is only as good as the information it's fed with so don't forget to take the time to set your goals, figure out what needs to be done to achieve those goals, and what the most important pieces of work are to get every Project set up with the right relative level of priority.

Communication Automation

Automating routine communication saves massive amounts of time and ensures consistency, a key component of a successful, early brand experience. Customers want to feel safe with the companies that they give their money to and predictability and consistency are the drivers of that sense of safety.

Use email scheduling, templates, and basic Customer Relationship Management (CRM) flows (e.g., we use Mailchimp for email marketing and HubSpot to remind us who to email) to manage customer outreach and necessary follow-ups. These tools allow you to systemise the client journey from first contact to conversion.

Financial & Legal Systems

Do not let simple financial and legal tasks drain your energy and definitely don't let financial and legal Tasks become such a millstone around your neck that you ignore them and land yourself in chaos...

Automate recurring processes like invoicing, simple bookkeeping (e.g., QuickBooks, Xero, Free Agent), and essential contract signing workflows (e.g., DocuSign or Signable - I use the latter because I like the credit model). These can go a long way towards keeping you on the right side of regulatory compliance and smoothing out your cash flow without demanding a bunch of daily manual intervention.

Integration/No-Code Tools

This might be my favourite bucket because the most powerful automation comes from enabling your separate tools to talk to one another. I'm a COO, I like cross-functional integrations from my tools as much as I do from my humans.

Tools like Zapier (which I use) or Make (which I keep meaning to check out but have yet to get around to) are the essential glue for building some of the more complex, automated workflows without needing to write any code.

These allow you to connect your entire stack (e.g., our system triggers a Google Calendar Invitation when a call is booked in Wix). This integration capability is what elevates a simple collection of tools into a robust, scalable system - basically, a tool like Zapier is the digital version of your COO bringing everyone together at the Monday morning meeting to ensure interdepartmental alignment. No wonder I like it so much.

In the next article, we're going to look at measuring the success of a system like this - much as you'd want to ensure your team is hitting their metrics and earning their value, you need to be on top of the same for your tools. In the meantime, if you fancy a chat about how you can build your own scalable, automated systems, give me a shout in the link below.

Pay As You Go COO Discovery Call

45min

Book Now