What I Wish I’d Known Before Setting Up My First Workflow

Automation can be scary. We get it! 

There is nothing worse than spending an entire Saturday afternoon setting up what you think would be a seamless client onboarding sequence to then have it all triggered automatically the moment someone booked with you. 

Working out your process can leave you feeling drained and frustrated as automation is supposed to save time, not create more problems.

To help you on along your journey here are a few tips to know before diving into setting up your automations.

Start With One Workflow, Not Five

The first mistake many make is trying to automate everything at once. “I wanted to overhaul my entire business in a weekend.”

The result is usually chaos. Too many new systems, too many things that could go wrong, and no clear picture of what was actually working.

Start with just one workflow: the new inquiry response. It’s simple, it’s high-impact, and it teaches you everything you need to know about how automation actually works before you build anything more complex.

Once that runs smoothly for a few weeks, add the next one.

Test Every Workflow From the Client’s Perspective

This sounds obvious in retrospect, but many never do it. They build the workflow, hit ‘activate,’ and assumed it would work.

Many times there are a few kinks to work out.  Check to ensure links are not broken, the timing is spot on, and the emails don’t sound robotic because you wrote them in ‘system mode’ rather than imagining a real person receiving them.

Test every single workflow by going through it as if you were a new client. I fill out the form. I click the links. Read the emails. Check that every step does exactly what is intended.

It takes twenty extra minutes. It saves hours of cleanup and client awkwardness.

Write Your Automated Emails Like a Human

Automated doesn’t mean impersonal. The tone of your automated emails should sound exactly like you — warm, clear, and specific to your business.

Avoid the trap of writing formal, stiff copy just because it’s going into a system. Your clients don’t know (or care) that an email was automated. They only know whether it felt human.

Read every email out loud before you finalize it. If you wouldn’t say it that way in a real conversation, rewrite it.

Give Yourself Permission to Adjust

Your first workflow won’t be perfect. That’s fine. The goal isn’t perfection on day one — it’s a working foundation you can improve over time.

Revisit my core workflows every few months to make small adjustments: a clearer subject line here, a tweaked call-to-action there. Each iteration gets a little better. After two years, they’re really good.

If you wait until everything is perfect before automating, you’ll wait forever.

The Moment It Clicks

Give it a few weeks and let your workflow start really working for you. Then before you know it you will be offline doing something fun, and when you come back to your desk, you will find to-dos completed for you.

That feeling — relief, excitement, and a little disbelief — is what the March issue of The Journey is trying to help every small business owner find.

The March issue of The Journey walks through how to build your first real workflow step by step. It’s free to read, and it might save you the Saturday afternoon of mistakes I went through.

Read The Journey For More Small Business Education

March’s issue of The Journey is all about using automation to reclaim your time and create smoother, more scalable business systems. Instead of feeling overwhelmed by complicated tech, this issue shows small business owners how simple workflows, templates, and smart tools can quietly handle repetitive tasks — freeing you to focus on creativity, clients, and growth.

READ THE JOURNEY