When people hear “AI automation” they picture robots replacing jobs or massive IT projects. That’s not what I do. For most small businesses, the most valuable automations are boring: the stuff you hate doing but keep doing anyway because “it only takes a minute”. Those minutes add up. Here are five things you can realistically automate this week. 1. Collecting website enquiries in one place Right now: Someone fills in your contact form. You get an email. Sometimes you act on it, sometimes it gets buried. Better: Every form submission automatically goes into a Google Sheet or Airtable. You can see all enquiries at a glance, not just in your inbox. This is a simple automation: form → sheet/database. Easy to set up, and once it’s there you’ve got a live list of leads. 2. Sending a proper follow‑up when someone enquires Most small businesses reply to enquiries once, then forget about them. You can set up: An automatic “thanks for getting in touch” email as soon as the form is submitted. A gentle follow‑up 2–3 days later if there’s no reply. A “still interested?” nudge a week after that. These can be simple, plain‑text emails that feel like you wrote them. You only write them once, then they go out automatically. 3. Confirmations and reminders for bookings If you do calls, consultations or appointments, you’ve probably written the same “Just confirming our call at…” message hundreds of times. Instead: When someone books a slot in your calendar, an automation sends: a confirmation email with the time and link/address a reminder the day before a reminder an hour before Result: fewer no‑shows, less admin, and fewer “what time is it again?” messages. 4. Sending the same document or link over and over Things like: Your pricing guide Your onboarding form A link to your FAQ or knowledge base If you always send the same thing at the same point in your process, automate it. Example: New enquiry → add tag “New Lead” → automation sends a short intro email with your pricing guide attached. You stay in control of the actual conversation, but the repetitive bits are handled for you. 5. Daily or weekly summary of what’s going on A lot of owners don’t know what happened this week until they sit down with a coffee on Sunday and trawl their inbox. You can set up a simple “operations summary” that lands once a day or once a week, including: Number of new enquiries Booked calls/appointments Any overdue invoices Anything else you care about It pulls from your tools (forms, calendar, finance) and gives you one clear view. No dashboards, no spreadsheets. You don’t need to build this alone None of these automations are huge projects, but they do need wiring up properly. If there are 2–3 boring tasks in your day you’d happily never do again, that’s a good starting list. Send them to me and I’ll tell you what’s easy to automate and what isn’t – honestly.