Business Automation — Day Companion

Business Automation — Day Companion

Automate Your Email — Day Companion

Business Automation
Build AI-powered business workflows with Make.com — no coding required. Everything you type stays in your browser.
Morning — What You Set Up
10:00 – 10:30

Setup & Business AI Assistant

Configure your AI to know your business — so every answer after this one is already in context.

Your Business System Prompt

Paste this into Claude or ChatGPT's system instructions. Fill in the brackets.

You are my business operations assistant. Here is my business context: Business: [YOUR BUSINESS NAME] Industry: [WHAT YOU DO] Size: [SOLO / 2-5 / 6-20 / 20+] My role: [WHAT YOU ACTUALLY DO DAY TO DAY] Tools I use: [EMAIL PROVIDER, CALENDAR, CRM, PROJECT MGMT, ETC] Top 3 things I spend too much time on: 1. [THING] 2. [THING] 3. [THING] When I ask you to help automate something, always: - Ask what the failure mode is (what goes wrong if the automation screws up) - Suggest where a human should review before the automation acts - Default to Make.com for no-code workflows - Think in terms of time saved per week, not impressiveness

Checklist

  • AI assistant has your business context loaded
  • You can ask it a question about YOUR business and it answers in context
  • Test: "What are the top 3 things I should automate first?"
10:30 – 11:00

Expert Personas & Business Prompting

Stack personas to get perspectives you'd normally pay a consultant for.

Three Perspectives Prompt

I'm considering automating [YOUR PROCESS]. Analyze this from three perspectives: 1. AS MY CFO: What does this cost me in labor hours per month? What's the breakeven if automation costs $X/month? Be specific about the numbers. 2. AS MY OPERATIONS MANAGER: What are the steps in this process? Which steps are pure repetition vs which require judgment? Where does the process break when I'm sick or on vacation? 3. AS MY MOST DEMANDING CUSTOMER: If this process gets automated badly, what will I notice? What would make me lose trust? What must stay human? For each perspective, give me ONE specific recommendation.

Checklist

  • Ran the three-perspectives prompt on your #1 automation target
  • Got a real hourly cost number from the CFO persona
  • Identified which steps require judgment vs repetition
11:00 – 12:00

Make.com Fundamentals

Connect your first accounts and build your first scenario — the one that watches your email and does something with it.

Getting Started

  • Created Make.com account (free tier is fine)
  • Connected your email (Gmail or Outlook)
  • Created a new Scenario
  • Added the Email trigger module ("Watch Emails")
  • Added one action module (even just "send to Slack" or "add to Google Sheet")
  • Ran it once and saw it work

If You Get Stuck

I'm building a Make.com scenario and I'm stuck on [DESCRIBE THE PROBLEM]. My scenario so far: - Trigger: [WHAT STARTS IT] - Action 1: [WHAT IT DOES] - Where I'm stuck: [THE ERROR OR CONFUSION] Help me fix this specific issue. Don't redesign the whole thing — just get past this one block.
Lunch — Process Mapping
12:00 – 1:00

Pick Your Process

Open the ROI Bench and map the process you're going to automate this afternoon.

Open the Automation ROI Bench →

In the Bench

  • Listed at least 3 repetitive processes
  • Entered frequency and time per occurrence
  • Entered your hourly rate
  • Picked ONE process to automate this afternoon

Good Process Picks

Start with something you do weekly that annoys you — not your most critical process.

  • Email triage — sorting incoming email by urgency/category
  • Meeting follow-ups — extracting action items and sending them
  • Invoice generation — from time tracking or project completion
  • Weekly reports — pulling data from multiple sources into one summary
  • Social media scheduling — drafting and queuing posts from a content plan
  • Customer FAQ responses — drafting replies to common questions
Afternoon — What You Automate
1:00 – 2:00

Email Automation & Triage

The main build — human-in-the-loop email triage. Your AI reads, categorizes, and drafts — you approve.

Email Triage Prompt (for the AI module in Make.com)

Classify this email and draft a response. Email from: {{sender}} Subject: {{subject}} Body: {{body}} CLASSIFY as one of: - URGENT: needs response today, involves money or deadlines - ACTION: needs a response this week, not time-sensitive - FYI: no response needed, just information - SPAM: unsubscribe or ignore For URGENT and ACTION, draft a response. Keep it under 3 sentences. Match my usual tone — professional but not stiff. If you're not sure what I'd say, write "[NEEDS YOUR INPUT: specific question]" instead of guessing. Return JSON: { "category": "URGENT|ACTION|FYI|SPAM", "summary": "one sentence", "draft_response": "the draft or null", "confidence": "high|medium|low" }
Score feasibility in the ROI Bench →

Make.com Scenario Shape

  • Trigger: Gmail → Watch Emails (or Outlook)
  • Module 2: OpenAI (or HTTP → Claude API) with the triage prompt above
  • Router: Split by category
  • URGENT path: Send Slack/Teams message + draft reply in Gmail
  • ACTION path: Add to task list (Todoist/Notion) + draft reply
  • FYI path: Label and archive
  • SPAM path: Archive (don't auto-delete — you're not ready to trust it yet)

Checklist

  • Email trigger connected and receiving
  • AI module classifying emails into categories
  • At least one path (URGENT or ACTION) routing correctly
  • Draft responses appearing somewhere you can review them
  • Human gate: nothing sends without your approval
2:00 – 2:30

Agent Dispatch & Business Agents

Build a specialized AI agent for one part of your business — a researcher, a writer, or a data cruncher.

Agent Prompt Template

You are a [ROLE] agent for [MY BUSINESS]. Your job is to [SPECIFIC TASK] whenever you're called. Context you always have: - [KEY BUSINESS FACT 1] - [KEY BUSINESS FACT 2] - [CONSTRAINT OR RULE] When given input, you: 1. [STEP 1] 2. [STEP 2] 3. [STEP 3] 4. Return [OUTPUT FORMAT] If you're uncertain about anything, flag it with [NEEDS REVIEW] rather than guessing.

Checklist

  • Identified one repeatable task an agent could handle
  • Wrote the agent prompt with your business context baked in
  • Tested it with 3 real inputs
2:30 – 3:00

Advanced Automation Patterns

Chaining, error handling, and the patterns that keep automations alive past the first week.

Patterns to Know

  • Human-in-the-loop: AI drafts, human approves. Always start here.
  • Escalation: If AI confidence is low, route to human instead of acting.
  • Fallback: If Make.com module fails, send you a Slack message instead of silently dying.
  • Batch vs real-time: Not everything needs to be instant. A daily summary often beats per-email alerts.
  • The audit trail: Log every automated action to a Google Sheet. When something goes wrong — and it will — you need to see what happened.

Checklist

  • Added error handling to your scenario (at least one fallback path)
  • Added logging — every action writes to a sheet or database
  • Tested what happens when the AI module fails (it will)
3:00 – 4:00

Build Your Business System

Wire everything together and ship something that runs next week without you touching it.

Assign stacks and compute ROI →

Final System Review Prompt

Review my automation system and tell me: 1. SINGLE POINT OF FAILURE: What breaks everything if it goes down? 2. DRIFT RISK: Where will this slowly get worse without me noticing? 3. FIRST WEEK CHECK: What should I watch during the first week to catch problems early? 4. NEXT AUTOMATION: Given what I built today, what's the obvious next thing to automate? My system: [DESCRIBE WHAT YOU BUILT — TRIGGERS, ACTIONS, HUMAN GATES, AI MODULES]

Final Checklist

  • At least one automation is live and scheduled to run
  • Human gates are in place — nothing sends without your approval
  • Error handling exists — failures notify you, they don't disappear
  • Logging works — you can see what the automation did
  • ROI computed in the bench — you know the $/month this saves
  • Ran the system review prompt above

What You Leave With

  • An AI assistant configured for YOUR business
  • A Make.com account with at least one live scenario
  • Email triage running (or your chosen process automated)
  • A specialized AI agent prompt you can reuse
  • ROI numbers from the bench — what this saves you per month
  • A failure plan — what to watch during the first week