Automation 101: How to Automate Your Business
Eight short lessons that take you from “we should automate something” to a clear plan for your first workflow. No technical background needed, no sign-up, and a quick knowledge check at the end of every lesson.
Lessons
- 1What automation is (and what it is not)What business automation actually means, the three building blocks every automated workflow shares, and the myths that stop small businesses from starting.
- 2Spotting tasks worth automatingHow to find the repetitive work hiding in your week, and how to score each task so you automate the ones that pay back fastest.
- 3Mapping a process before you automate itHow to write down a process step by step, simplify it, and turn it into a clear blueprint for an automation, with a simple template you can copy.
- 4Triggers, actions, and conditions: how workflows thinkThe building blocks of every automated workflow explained with examples: event and scheduled triggers, actions, filters, branches, delays, and loops.
- 5Connecting your tools: integrations, APIs, and webhooksHow business apps share data with each other: native integrations, automation platforms, APIs, webhooks, and polling, explained without code.
- 6Choosing an automation platformHow to choose between no-code tools like Zapier and Make, open-source n8n, Microsoft Power Automate, built-in app automations, and a custom or done-for-you build.
- 7Testing, monitoring, and handling errorsHow to test an automation before it reaches customers, what to monitor after launch, and how to design error handling so problems get caught early.
- 8Measuring results and scaling what worksHow to measure an automation's time savings and revenue impact, calculate payback and ROI, and build a roadmap for what to automate next.
About this course
Is this automation course really free?
Yes. Every lesson is free to read, with no sign-up. Your progress is saved in your browser so you can pick up where you left off.
Do I need technical skills?
No. The course explains every concept in plain language. Where a lesson touches on technical ideas such as APIs or webhooks, it focuses on what they do for you rather than how to code them.
How long does the course take?
About an hour in total. Each lesson takes around eight minutes and ends with a three-question knowledge check.
What should I do after finishing?
Take the free AI at Work 101 course to add AI to your workflows, score your own task list with the priority scorer, or book a free consultation to plan your first build.
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