What you do: Sit with or observe each person in the office for at least 30 minutes. Watch what they do on their screen. Every time you see them do the same action twice — write it down.

A list of at least 5–10 repetitive tasks ranked by: how often they happen × how long they take. The top 3 on that list are your first automation targets.

What you do: Pick one data point — for example, the buyer's name on a real estate transaction. Then trace it: where does it come in? Who enters it first? Does someone else re-enter it somewhere else? How many times is it typed manually?

A simple diagram — even on paper — showing the journey of that data. Circle every spot it was touched manually. Each circle is a potential automation point. Show this to the owner. It will surprise them.

What you do: Have a 10-minute conversation with 2–3 staff members privately. Not to report to the boss — just to understand where their day gets stuck. People know exactly where the problems are. They just don't get asked.

The real pain points — not the ones the owner guesses at, but the ones the people doing the work live with every day. These become your most compelling selling points.

What you do: For each repetitive task you identified, calculate its real cost. This is the most important thing you bring to the owner meeting.

A one-page summary: "These 5 tasks cost you approximately $X per year in labor. Automating them would reduce that cost by 70%, saving $Y annually." That's your proposal foundation.

What you do: Identify every place in the workflow where someone reads a document — a deed, an email, a lien record, a letter — and pulls specific pieces of information out of it manually.

A list of documents that humans currently "read and extract from." Each one is a candidate for AI document processing — one of the highest-value AI capabilities available today.

What you do: Collect samples of every document type the company writes regularly — letters, reports, commitments, exception write-ups, notices, emails. Ask for 3 examples of each. Look for patterns: are they mostly the same with small variations?

A stack of real document samples with notes on how long each takes to write. AI can draft these in seconds. That time savings is your most convincing demonstration.

What you do: For every task on your list, run it through this four-question test. The answers tell you whether it's automation, AI, both, or neither.

A categorized list: Full Automation / AI-Assisted / Human Only. This is what you present to the owner. It shows you understand the difference — and that builds trust immediately.

What you do: Pick the single best writing task you identified — the one they do most often. Get a real example of the output (a letter, a report). Then go to Claude.ai or ChatGPT and write a prompt that produces the same document. Practice until it looks right.

A live demonstration you can show in the meeting. Nothing closes a consulting deal faster than showing the technology working on their actual work.