I've been working on workflow automation for this 1.5 years using platforms like Inent Make and others. As I begin to consider commercializing these solutions, I have a question. If I build a workflow, what's the best approach to selling it?
Oh, here we go again. Should I deliver the entire workflow to the client or retain control and run the automation on their behalf? Well, somebody spent 1.5 years getting really good at workflow automation but probably hasn't made any money with it. How much cooler would it be if you learned enough to talk the language in a couple of weeks, then just started talking to customers? You probably wouldn't have been in this situation. In 1.5 years you could have a big book of business with 20 clients. Time will pass anyway. A lot of lead generation mechanisms like cold email and Upwork just require time to pass while active. You might as well have planted a tree 20 years ago; the second best time is today. That's a good analogy. To answer your question about delivering the entire workflow: yeah, deliver it to the client. Then why would they need you? They don't need you for a one-off, but they'll want you if you make them choose needs and such. I get it; it's kind of a Machiavellian way to run the business—strategic and logical—but you don't build as much goodwill with clients and it becomes annoying working with them, especially with handoffs. So, what are you going to do? Hold the business hostage when they want to let you go? Or would you rather be in a situation where the client wants to keep you on because you constantly produce massive value? I like that situation; having a rising floor where clients want more value forces you to creatively find ways to deliver it. That's one reason I agree so quickly.
Yeah, for sure. But I think you went about this the wrong way. You started spending tons of time building this product. Now you're considering whether to sell this or something else. A lot of this is wasted time. You might have actually spent time selling a product that nobody cares about. Just to be blunt. The reality is, as beginners, we don't really know what we don't know. So the best way is to put as many possible things in front of as many people as possible. Put as many possible things in front of as many people as you can and let them guide you in the right direction. If you put five possible offers in front of 5,000 people and people disproportionately choose offer number three, then you can invest the time and energy necessary in building the product. This is the modern way of go to market: you go to market first, then build the product based on what people want. People respond positively to this. These are the questions I'm always getting about whether your automation does this or that. So that's what I'm going to build into the freaking thing. Does that make sense? So, it's putting the cart before the horse. Don't lose the forest for the trees. But that's my recommendation there.
Ah, great question. I like this because you're asking how you make the client's life easier—that's really the most important thing. You'll find that as clients grow bigger and better, they want less work on their end and prefer an all‑in‑one done‑for‑you service where they pay a set amount and get the result. I feel the same way: at this point I don’t want to be a partner who constantly discusses the best way of doing things; I’d rather hire someone who’s good at what they do and trust them to deliver a great job. This is taking ownership and minimizing friction—reducing client complexity. Clients don’t care about the inner workings of the black box that is your product; they only care about the input, output, and the interface. So what I think about this is that it’s great—exactly what you should be doing, and what you should have been doing all along. To be that someone, you just position yourself as the person capable of handling everything. You are the person who does cold email: I will handle your cold email systems from start to finish, completely autonomously. All I need from you is a brief three‑minute form you fill out right now, and I’ll do everything for you for 90 days straight. If I don’t deliver the X, Y, Z results I guarantee, you don’t pay a cent. Make it a complete and utter no‑brainer for them—get them to give you what you need up front in a couple of minutes, then you’re off to the races. Handle it completely autonomously, give them progress updates (but don’t disappear or demand anything). That’s how you do it.
All agencies share the same fundamental shape: lead generation at the top (via ads, cold emails, cold calls, etc.), which funnels into a sales event (typically a discovery or closing call). From there you onboard the client, fulfill the promised service, and manage the client—checking in on progress—before delivering the project, possibly with a revision cycle that leads to another transformation event where you resell them. I’ve documented this shape in the three automation agency sales flows and a roadmap to $25k/month automation that you can download for free. The real key to success isn’t becoming a top AI or automation specialist; it’s becoming a good business person who understands the container (the agency model) and what you put inside it. This mindset can be learned in a couple of weeks, and you don’t need to be expert at the specific service you’re offering.
Are we talking no clients in general, in any of my businesses, or specifically automation? You might be talking about automation. The way I did automation was I just started out on Upwork — applied to like 10 to 20 Upwork jobs per day along with my business partner at the time, and the vast majority of them said no to us. We used a custom Loom-video-based approach: I'd record a Loom of me talking through the problem and send out a ton of those. I got really good at explaining automation problems consistently, and we scaled that automation agency pretty quickly to $15-20K a month. We languished around $20-40K a month for a while because my partner wanted to operate it as a software consultancy taking on custom projects with a big hired team, but that didn't really work — the engineers we hired could drag-and-drop in tools like Make.com but didn't understand the business side, so the automations they built were brittle. That's when I learned how difficult hiring is for something as complicated as a software/automation project. My partner and I eventually split up amicably — he wanted to focus on the consultancy side and building resellable equity, I didn't. I kept the business, focused on high-leverage applications of systems I'd already built, scaled up Upwork applications and cold email (reinvesting most of my income into cold email), and simplified the offer down to mostly cold email systems and one-click CRM templates. Around $35-45K/month I couldn't keep scaling that way, so I started pitching a fractional-COO model: I took a few smaller clients paying $3-4K/month and gave them massive 20-30 page proposals saying, 'I want $10K/month plus 7% of your business, and here's how I'll justify it by delivering $100K/month in value.' That worked for a couple of clients, my revenue shot up, and combined with old clients coming back that same month I hit $72K in revenue (not all of it was recurring).