When I first started my small business (about 18 months ago) I figured growth just meant hiring people. More sales reps, more output, more deals. But that plan collapsed fast because the cost didn’t make sense and I was drowning in manual work anyway.

Out of frustration, I started experimenting with automation. I didn’t know much about it, but after about a week of research I began connecting a few tools that people seem to use. mainly Clay for research and enrichment, Notion to track deals, and Zapier to push updates around. Over time I stitched together a workflow that basically does what a whole SDR team used to do. Now it runs overnight. It pulls fresh company data, finds decision-makers, checks signals like hiring sprees or funding rounds, and builds me a short list of warm prospects by the time I wake up. I just handle the outreach and conversations myself.
The craziest part is how human it still feels. It’s not spamming anyone or blasting templates, it’s just using data and timing better than I ever could manually. What used to take me and a part-timer an entire week now happens automatically in a few hours.

What are other small business owners doing?