Meet Sarah. She's an ops manager at a small agency that works with freelance writers. Smart, funny, the glue of her team.
But she was drowning in a workflow that made no sense.
Here was her process every time a client requested a new piece:
Email 50 freelancers asking who was available
Wait for replies, update a massive Excel sheet called "WRITER_TRACKING_FINAL_v12"
Collect samples and quotes via 47 different email threads
Compile a PDF of 15 options, then chase the client for feedback
Rinse and repeat when they picked someone
It ate 40 hours a month. And three quarters of that time was copy-paste between her inbox and that cursed spreadsheet.
Sarah loves strategy calls and building client relationships. The spreadsheet was stealing that from her.
Here's what we built instead:
Airtable base to replace the Excel chaos
Zapier tracked freelancer responses and populated records automatically
Email parser grabbed samples and rates, filed them in the right spot
Client gets a clean dashboard link instead of a PDF attachment
That 40-hour grind shrank to 6 hours a month.
But the detail I love the most is that Sarah built the email parser herself using Zapier's templates.
Once she saw how the pieces connected, she started finding automation opportunities everywhere. Last week she automated their invoice follow-ups.
Those 34 saved hours didn't mean less work. They meant Sarah could spend Tuesday mornings on strategy calls instead of Excel hell.
Takeaway
The best operators don't disappear when you automate. They become more themselves.
Still occasionally debugging Zaps,
Jamie
P.S. This is exactly the kind of process we break down and rebuild inside the AI Operator Bootcamp.