How do you approach automating a freight forwarding business given the niche is good? Should I get in touch with a friend? Any tips for automating status updates or document generation?
Brokerage is inefficient because it’s just glue between vendors and seekers. Automate big chunks—like matching trucks to loads—by pumping inquiries and mover lists into a system that sends automatic notifications when someone clicks ‘yes’ in an email. This speeds things up but lowers perceived broker value, which is offset by speed and ease. Brokerage marketplaces that do this automatically are emerging. Even if you don’t build a full marketplace, still automate document generation: use AI with templates to fill in specifics instead of copy‑pasting and rewriting each time. Talk to the prospect about their exact workflows and customer journey to know what to automate.
I've launched a campaign for real-estate brokers. One system is a BTOC outreach where you offer to buy people's homes—you need a pre-existing list of owners. The second is a custom AI follow-up system that nurtures old leads on both the buy and sell sides. You get the agent's CRM (most are basic) and, ideally, connect via webhook or API to poll contacts weekly, monthly, or yearly. Instead of sending generic templated messages like 'Hello Peter, thank you for purchasing a home with us last year...', you can customize follow-ups—for example, an SMS that says, 'Hey Peter, hope you're settling in well in your new neighborhood. Just checking in to make sure everything's okay with your new home.' This personalized approach feels higher-value, builds more goodwill, and can be implemented today as a sellable service.
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.
We already work with any industry on anything they need—AI systems, business software, automations. The simplest way to start productizing is not to invent a new service, but to look at what you’ve already delivered that clients liked and double down on that. Make a list of every project you’ve done over the past year, pull the email threads, project files, and note the industries and types of work. Patterns will emerge: you’ll see which systems you built most often and, more importantly, which ones generated the most revenue. Use that data to decide which services to package. Then, reach out to the clients you built those high‑value systems for, remind them of the results, and ask for referrals and repeat business. Reactivating past clients is a low‑effort way to generate upsells—typically a 3‑4% uptake rate, and I’ve seen 15‑20% when I first started. Identify the most profitable, least time‑intensive product you’ve created—often an automated follow‑up agent or similar—and turn it into a repeatable checklist or product. Streamline the delivery: ask if you really need three discovery calls or if a single call or a form will suffice, reducing time investment and allowing you to raise prices, which is pure leverage. In short, catalog your past work, find the high‑margin, low‑effort services, market them to similar clients, reactivate old customers, and refine the process into a sellable product.
Lead‑generation and client‑onboarding systems make up roughly 70% of my revenue, so I focus on those bottlenecks first. The flow is: generate leads, close the sale, onboard the client, fulfill the work, then retain the client with follow‑up. AI agents are getting better, but the real money comes from solving concrete bottlenecks, not fancy chatbots. My process is simple: look at an average business’s pipeline, identify the biggest bottleneck, and ask how you can do that step faster or better. I often reference the Theory of Constraints (see "The Goal" by Eli Goldratt) to frame this. Most bottlenecks are at the top of the funnel—lead generation—so start there. For each bottleneck, map what’s currently being done and brainstorm ways to automate or accelerate it. Specific tools help, but the core is understanding the pipeline and continuously removing constraints.