A field guide to what small businesses run on and the tools that automate the manual work between them. Built to get you fluent enough to walk into a business, spot the opportunity, and scope the job.
Every small business runs on a stack of software — a booking tool, a payment system, an accounting tool, a spot where customer info lives. Each one is a system of record: it holds one kind of truth well and knows nothing about the others.
The gaps between those systems are where the manual work hides. Someone re-types the booking into the invoicing tool. Someone remembers (or forgets) to text the lead back. Someone copies numbers into a spreadsheet every night. That glue-by-human is what you sell removing.
There are three layers. You mostly sell the first, working on top of the second, increasingly powered by the third:
Tap any card to expand — price ballpark, who uses it, and the automation angle (the manual work you'd be killing).
You don't need to know the business — you need to spot these six signals. Every one is a job you can quote. This is the lens for the paid audit.