Lose the role. Keep the work it did.
Practical AI automation for small businesses: emails, follow-ups, quotes, meeting prep and the daily admin, drafted and waiting for you each morning. Set up by someone who runs his own business on it, on the tools you already have, and nothing goes out without you.
Overnight it drafted three replies, chased two quotes, prepared one briefing, filed four site notes.
- Years running one firm
- 24
- Jobs run on my desk nightly
- 50+
- Calls transcribed and mined
- 1005
- Drafts sent unread
- 0
The proof is my own desk.
I run Lechley Associates, a one-person executive search firm in UK construction, and have done for twenty four years. Over 2026 I rebuilt the back office of that business around AI: a morning brief built from my own calendar and inbox, a one-page briefing before every call, meetings that file themselves into the CRM, follow-ups that get chased, and outreach drafted in my own voice from the history of the relationship.
None of it sends anything on its own. Every email, every note, every message is a draft until I say yes. That one rule is why it works, and it is the rule I would set up for you.
A few companies have asked how to do the same. This site is the answer: what is realistic, how to work out what you actually want, and how I would help if you want help.
What you can reasonably expect.
These are the six jobs that earn their keep in almost every small business. Each one is a piece of work that used to need a person at a desk, and now needs a person for five minutes of sign-off.
A daily brief
What today needs: the meetings, who is in them, what you owe people, what they owe you, and the three things that will matter most. Read it with your first coffee.
Inbox sorted, replies drafted
Your mail triaged into what needs you, what can wait and what is noise. The routine replies drafted in your voice, waiting for approval, not sent.
Follow-ups that actually happen
Quotes, proposals and enquiries chased when they go quiet. The chaser is drafted, dated and queued for you to sign off. Nothing falls through a gap because someone was busy.
Quotes and proposals drafted
First drafts built from your own templates, your price list and the enquiry itself. You check the numbers and the judgement calls. The typing is done.
A one-page briefing
Who they are, what was said last time, what was promised in both directions and what you want from this conversation. No more going in cold.
Meetings that file themselves
A structured note in your CRM, the actions captured, the follow-up tasks created. Nothing typed up by hand the next day.
It will not make your decisions, and it will not run unattended from day one. It will not fix a process that nobody can describe, and it will not work without one place where your customer records live. If those are the problems, we fix them first, and that is sometimes the whole job.
What a morning looks like.
This is the daily brief, the one page your team reads with the first coffee. Everything on it has already been drafted, filed or prepared overnight. The only work left is the decision. Try it.
- Reply draftedStock enquiry from a repeat customer
Asked whether 40 units can ship this week. Draft confirms Thursday, quotes the carriage.
Approve and send - Chaser draftedQuote 2381, sent nine days ago, no reply
Short nudge in your voice, offers a ten-minute call. Goes at 09:00 if approved.
Approve and send - Prep ready11:00 with the site manager at the depot job
Last call was about the revised programme. You promised dates by today. One page, two minutes to read.
Open the briefing - Filed overnightYesterday's site visit notes
Voice note turned into a structured record on the customer file, two actions created.
Mark as read
Monday, 8am.
- Forty unread emails, no idea which three matter
- A quote from last week you meant to chase and have not
- Two meetings today, going in cold to both
- Friday’s site visit still in your head, not on the file
- Admin starts at 8 and the real work starts at 11
- Three things flagged as needing you, the rest sorted
- The chaser is drafted, dated, waiting for a tick
- A one-page briefing for each meeting, already read
- Friday’s visit filed on Friday, actions created
- Five minutes of sign-off, then the real work
- Microsoft 365
- Outlook
- Google Workspace
- Gmail
- Google Calendar
- Apple Mail, Reminders and Calendar
- Proton Mail
- Todoist
- Asana
- Trello
- ClickUp
- Basecamp
- Notion
- Evernote
- Obsidian
- Airtable
- Google Drive
- Dropbox
- iCloud
- Box
- WeTransfer
- Zoom
- Calendly
- Loom
- your spreadsheet
- Xero
- QuickBooks
- Sage
- Odoo
- Stripe
- PayPal
- Tide
- Monzo
- Revolut
- Wise
- HubSpot
- Zoho
- Intercom
- Zendesk
- Brevo
- Mailchimp
- Typeform
- SurveyMonkey
- Trustpilot
- WhatsApp Business
- Telegram
- Signal
- Aircall
- Shopify
- WooCommerce
- WordPress
- Squarespace
- Wix
- Zapier
- Make
- Toggl
- Clockify
- Google Maps
- what3words
- Autodesk
First, work out what you actually want.
“Automate all of it” is where these projects fail. The ones that work start with three tasks chosen well. There is a five-step process you can run yourself in a week, with a worksheet that does the scoring. Run it before we speak, or before you speak to anyone.
How it works with me.
I am not a software company and I will not sell you one. I come in, do for your business what I did for mine, and leave you running it. The shape is the same every time.
- Discovery. A two-hour session working through your task list from the process. We agree the three automations, the sign-off gates, and what counts as done. Paid, and credited against the build if you go ahead.
- Build. Four weeks, on your existing tools. Most companies are on Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, an accounts package and some form of CRM. We do not move you to new systems; we connect what you have.
- The daily brief. Delivered from week one, because the thing people see every morning is the thing they adopt.
- Yours, not mine. Everything is built inside your own accounts, with you as the administrator from day one. If we part, nothing stops working and nothing has to be moved.
- Handover. You and your team run it. I write down how, in plain English, and we check it survives a week without me.
- Afterwards. A monthly check that everything is still running, because automations go quiet without anyone noticing. Optional, but I would take it.
Half on booking, half at handover. One company at a time: I still run my own business, so this stays small on purpose.
Who this is for, and who it is not.
- You own or run a company of roughly two to thirty people
- Someone is leaving, or you are drowning, and hiring is not the answer you want
- Your customer records live somewhere, even if it is a spreadsheet
- You are willing to read drafts every morning for a month
- You want the AI to make the decisions
- You want it running unattended from day one
- Nobody can describe how the work is done today
- You are looking for a software product with a login and a price per seat
Common questions.
Do we need new software?
Almost never. The work is connecting what you already use: your email, calendar, accounts package and wherever your customers are recorded. If you genuinely have nowhere customer records live, we fix that first, and I will tell you so before you pay for anything else.
Will it send emails without us?
Not unless you decide it should, and not in the first month. Everything starts as a draft for approval. Some companies later let the low-risk ones run alone, like a stock enquiry reply. Many never do, and that is fine.
Is our data safe?
The automations run inside your own accounts, under a data processing agreement. The AI provider (I use Claude, from Anthropic) processes text under commercial terms that do not train on your data. Nothing is copied into a system I own.
Which tasks should we start with?
Run the five-step process. The answer is almost always the three that are frequent, rule-shaped and cheap to get wrong. Follow-up chasing and inbox triage win most often. Quotes win when the pricing rule is written down.
Who owns the automations?
You do. They are built inside your accounts with you as administrator from the first day, and I hold nothing you cannot see. If we part company, everything keeps running and nothing needs migrating.
What if it breaks after you leave?
Things do break: a password changes, a supplier changes an email format. The monthly check exists for that. Without it, you have the plain-English notes from handover and you can call me.
How is this different from hiring an AI consultancy?
I am not selling you a strategy or a platform. I run a business on this every day and I know which parts quietly stop working. You get the three things that will actually change your week, and a straight answer about the rest.
Built by someone who still runs the desk.
Run the five steps, bring the list, and we spend fifteen minutes working out whether it is worth doing at all. If I do not think I can help, I will say so on that call.
Email me with the subject line AUTOMATE and one line on where the business is now.
scott@lechley.com