To automate step by step is the difference between a system that holds up and a project that never moves forward. A business owner in France reached out to us with a service company doing six figures in revenue, plus a full-time job on the side. Every evening he opens a spreadsheet: two hours of invoicing, every single night, after his workday is done.

When we talked, he wanted everything: quotes, invoices, a database for his subcontractors, an AI assistant that answers by text. All of it is doable. Still, we said no, not to the project, to doing it all at once. When you automate step by step, you accept that nothing is finished this month, so everything holds together a year from now.

Automating step by step, in practice

Phase 1 is the irritant costing the most today, not the most exciting project. The math was quick: two hours of invoicing per evening, five evenings a week, so ten hours lost every week.

So phase 1 became quotes and invoices in one click, nothing else. The subcontractor database waits in phase 2. The text-message assistant waits in phase 3. They’re on the plan, they’re just waiting their turn.

In other words, when you automate step by step, you always start with the same question: what costs the most this week, not in six months?

What we deliberately kept simple

Two real examples from this project.

First, document recipients. We could have built a full configuration module: who gets the quotes, who gets the invoices, with rules you can edit at will. Instead, we wrote the names directly into the system, two people for quotes, two for invoices. If that ever changes, we’ll change two lines: shipped in days instead of weeks.

Multi-phase plan to automate step by step in a small business

Second, the dashboard. The temptation was to show annual revenue per contract, trend lines, comparisons. We kept exactly one thing: who paid, who didn’t, against 15 and 30 day terms. That’s what protects his cash flow. The rest is just decoration.

Why delivering everything at once doesn’t work

Three reasons, all of them lived through with real clients.

  • First, a big project is never finished all at once. There’s always one last module blocking the rest from going live, and while you wait, you’re still doing everything by hand.
  • Second, you don’t actually know yet what you need. Phase 1 teaches you how you really work, and the following phases build on that.
  • Third, every phase has to prove its worth. If one-click quotes don’t give you your evenings back, there’s no point building the next piece. If it works, the next piece funds itself.

That’s exactly why we refuse to deliver everything at the same time, even when the budget would allow it.

Automating step by step in your business: where to start

Grab a sheet of paper. Write down the task stealing the most hours from you each week, not the most annoying one, the one that costs the most. Then put a number on it, hours per week times your hourly rate. That’s your phase 1.

Everything else can wait its turn, and that’s perfectly fine. Automating step by step forces you to prioritize, something most owners never do as long as the system is still holding together, however barely.

To get a sense of the budgets involved, we broke down the cost of an automation in a dedicated article. The logic behind the minimum viable product comes from the same principle you use when you automate step by step: ship a minimal version, learn, then add.

Automating step by step: what to remember

Automating step by step isn’t automating less. It’s automating in the right order, the one that protects your evenings starting with phase 1.

If you want us to look at your phase 1 together, reach out.

Frequently asked questions

Where do you start to automate step by step in your business?

With the task that costs the most right now, not the most exciting one. Put a number on it, hours per week times your hourly rate, and that becomes your phase 1.

How long should a phase run before moving to the next one?

Long enough to prove its value. If phase 1 doesn’t hand you back real hours, fix it before you fund phase 2 with the money it saved.

Why not deliver everything in one shot?

Because a big project is never finished all at once, and one last module often blocks the rest from going live. Automating step by step avoids that trap.

Edouard Vilver, co-founder of Meriaky

About the author

Edouard Vilver · Co-founder of Meriaky

Software engineer with 15 years of experience, including more than 7 years at the National Bank of Canada, where he rolled out electronic signatures and migrated systems to the cloud. Today, he helps small businesses automate their client follow-up and repetitive tasks with AI.

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