How do you find automation opportunities in a non-technical industry like manufacturing?

#261 · how to find automation opportunities in any business

How do you find automation opportunities in a non-technical industry like manufacturing?

Manufacturing is already about automation (think assembly line). To find automation opportunities I start at the top of the funnel: reach, acquisition, conversion, expansion. For reach I look at AI‑driven creative generators, speed‑to‑lead systems (branded numbers, power dialing, follow‑up automation). For acquisition I automate quote production—saving time and improving quality by removing manual document review. For conversion I use high‑quality proposals, automated contractor dispatch, reminder systems. For expansion I follow up with promo offers and ideate solutions. The biggest gains come from automating front‑end sales and marketing rather than back‑end processes.

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I'm really interested in how automations work. If my goal is to eventually transition into automation as my full-time focus, what types of automations should I start building and selling?

Automations don't let you do anything you couldn't already do manually — they just improve the speed and efficiency of the process. Speed matters for revenue (faster speed-to-lead, more orders fulfilled per unit time, more personalization squeezed in); efficiency mainly saves money. Given that, build and sell 'revenue-proximate' automations — ones close to the revenue line: sales automations, marketing automations, lead-gen automations. Focus on things that help clients make money, not just things that help them save money.

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What niches are currently most in demand for automation in the US, such as HVAC, dentists, and law firms?

We have a bunch of people in Maker School experimenting with a wide landscape of niches, which is a benefit of being in the community. You can see which niches are working and which aren’t. HVAC, dentists, and law firms aren’t making a ton of money with automation because there aren’t enough of them to apply high‑volume, iterative strategies. I don’t recommend focusing on local services; instead go entirely digital and target industries with large headcounts that can benefit from automation without hurting profitability. The biggest boom right now is recruitment, which saw a surge of interest and will likely rise again. I also suggest experimenting with recruitment, older‑school agencies that haven’t caught up, MSPs, IT consultants, and similar businesses that can source leads automatically via tools like LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

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Most automation discussions focus on agents, email marketing, and content creation. Do you think there's a big opportunity in optimizing internal processes instead — like a CRM automation streamlining a Google Drive/Workspace setup for a contractor or PM? How does that space compare to those other trends?

There's a ton of opportunity here — you could build a fully successful business just optimizing internal processes; that was most of what Left Click did in its first year working with my old business partner. I later shifted primarily to growth systems because they make more money, but that doesn't mean internal-process optimization isn't also lucrative — think of it as top-line versus bottom-line. If a company makes some amount of revenue at the top, they only keep a subset of that as profit. Growth work adds to the top line; internal-process optimization mostly improves margin on what's already coming in (though it's not purely margin — faster internal processes also improve throughput, meaning you can push more customers through the same system, which does affect the top line too).

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If you were starting an AI automation agency from scratch in March 2025, which niches or industries would you focus on, and which automation flows would be best to prioritize and monetize?

I’d start with the three top‑performing niches I’ve identified: high‑touch SaaS businesses, recruitment firms, and coaches or consultants. These have proven to generate the highest ROI. For each niche I’d sell a suite of automation systems – an automated candidate‑placement hiring pipeline, a personalized cold‑email outreach system, an automated reporting/dashboard, an AI‑coach chatbot, and a coaching‑management CRM. I’ve documented all of these in a public doc, and you can even Google “best AI automation agency niche 2025” to see the same results.

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