WE TRAIN YOUR TEAM TO BUILD AUTOMATIONS YOU OWN
Most agencies build your automations and bill you forever. We do the opposite. Over 6 to 12 weeks we train two or three of your own people to build and own automations - and we build the hard ones with them. When we leave, the capability stays.
Enquire NowYOU DON'T HAVE AN AUTOMATION PROBLEM
You have a dependency problem. Here is what it looks like.
You rent your systems - forever
An agency builds your automations, then bills you every month for changes you could make yourself in ten minutes. Raise a ticket, wait three days, get an invoice. You never own what runs your business.
The know-how walks out the door
When the agency or the one clever staff member leaves, the knowledge leaves with them. You are left with a system nobody in your building understands or can fix.
Your DIY pilot quietly died
You tried ChatGPT. It was brilliant for a fortnight, then nobody owned it and it faded. By one widely cited MIT study, 95% of AI pilots never deliver a measurable return - usually because nobody owned them.
Everything depends on you
You are the bottleneck. Nothing moves until it crosses your desk. Your best people do $25-an-hour admin on a $100-an-hour salary, and you cannot take a week off without the business holding its breath.
THREE WAYS TO AUTOMATE. ONE THAT STAYS.
Done-for-you agency
- -Bills you a retainer that never ends
- -Every change is a ticket and an invoice
- -Knowledge lives with them, not you
- -Lock-in: it all breaks when they leave
Do-it-yourself
- -Promising demo, then pilot purgatory
- -Nobody owns it, so it fades
- -Highest failure rate of any approach
- -No one to ask when it breaks
buildAutomation
- +One investment that ends - no retainer
- +Your people make changes instantly
- +Capability stays and compounds in-house
- +Real automations live before we leave
WHAT YOU WALK AWAY WITH
You own it outright
No retainer, no ticket queue, no waiting. We hand you the keys and the people who can drive it - not a black box.
The capability stays
We train two or three of your own people to build automations for good. When we leave, your heroes keep shipping long after the program ends.
You finish with live automations
Not a slide deck of ideas. We build the genuinely hard automations with your team so they learn by shipping real work on your real systems.
Your best people get their week back
Free your team from copy-paste, data entry and chasing things that should run themselves - so they do the work you actually hired them for.
Faster payback than a retainer
A one-time investment that ends, versus a cost that never does. By common estimates, automation hands owners back around 5 hours a week and staff far more - the retainer you cancel often pays for the program.
Upskilled staff stay
Investing in your people is also a retention play. Teams with strong learning cultures hold on to staff markedly better - your heroes are less likely to leave.
HOW THE PROGRAM RUNS
Six to twelve weeks, shaped around your business and your heroes. Done with you, not to you.
Map & diagnose
We sit with your team and map your real workflows - quotes, enquiries, invoicing, onboarding, reporting. We find the highest-ROI automations hiding in your week and pick your 2-3 heroes.
Build along, together
Weekly working sessions where your heroes build real automations on your own tools, with us beside them. They ship as they learn - no theory, no slideware.
We build the hard parts
The genuinely tricky flows - customer-facing, integration-heavy, compliance-sensitive - we build with your team so the knowledge transfers, not just the result.
Independence & handover
Your heroes run solo. We leave a documented internal playbook and an optional low-touch get-unstuck channel. The capability is yours, compounding from day one.
WHAT YOUR TEAM WILL AUTOMATE
Real examples we build with you - mapped to your workflows, not generic templates.
Trades & home services
- /Missed-call text-back: every unanswered call gets an instant SMS before they ring the next tradie
- /Quote-to-invoice: an accepted quote auto-creates the job, the schedule entry and a draft invoice
- /Automated review requests the day after a completed job
Allied health & clinics
- /New-patient onboarding: intake, consent, file creation and first booking from one trigger
- /Appointment reminders and rebooking to cut no-shows
- /Recall and care-plan follow-ups that run on their own
Professional services
- /Lead-to-proposal: an enquiry creates the CRM record, drafts the proposal and books the call
- /Client onboarding: contract, welcome pack, kickoff scheduling and folders in one trigger
- /Recurring status reports and dashboards built from your data instead of by hand
WHAT THIS LOOKS LIKE FOR A SIX-PERSON PLUMBING BUSINESS
We would rather show you our maths than invent a case study. This is a made-up but typical business - two office staff, four on the tools - with the assumptions out in the open. Change any of them in the calculator below.
| Where the time goes | Before | After automation |
|---|---|---|
| Owner | 8 hrs/week on quoting, invoicing and chasing enquiries | Accepted quotes auto-create the job, schedule entry and draft invoice |
| Office manager | 12 hrs/week re-typing job details between phone, calendar and accounting | One enquiry trigger creates the record everywhere it needs to exist |
| Missed calls | Calls missed on the tools go to voicemail - many never call back | Every unanswered call gets an instant text-back before they ring the next tradie |
| Reviews | Asked ad hoc, usually forgotten by knock-off | Review request sent automatically the day after each completed job |
RUN YOUR OWN NUMBERS
Your numbers
People who touch quoting, invoicing, enquiries or data entry each week
Copy-paste, chasing, re-typing - not judgement work
Wages plus on-costs for the people above
We assume 60% - repetitive, rule-based work. Change it if you disagree
What a done-for-you agency would charge you, forever
What that is costing you
reclaimable every week across your team
per year, assuming 48 working weeks
of staff time per year, at your hourly cost
is what a $1,500/month agency retainer costs over three years - and you still would not own the automations. buildAutomation is a one-time fee that ends.
Every figure above is driven by the assumptions you enter - it is an estimate, not a quote. The 60% automatable default reflects the repetitive share of admin work we typically map in the audit; your real number comes out of week one of the program.
Not sure which process to start with?
The calculator above assumes you already know what you would automate. If you do not, run the workflow audit first. It scores your processes on hours, consistency and risk, and tells you which one is worth building against and which ones need fixing before anyone writes code. Free, and no email required.
Run the workflow auditAUTOMATIONS WE RUN IN OUR OWN BUSINESS
We do not have a wall of client logos yet, and we will not fake one. What we do have is a business that runs on the same automations we teach. These are live in 13Labs today - we are our own first client.
Event registration lifecycle
When someone registers for one of our events, an automation sends the welcome email, schedules date-gated reminders, and syncs the person into our CRM - registration to follow-up with no hands on keyboard.
Luma + Resend + AttioOutreach sequencing with a safety guard
Our own cold outreach runs on an automated sequence with a rule layer that checks reply history and minimum gaps between touches before anything sends - so no one is ever double-emailed.
Resend + Gmail + PythonDaily content generation
One of our products publishes a new validated app idea every day. The research, writing and publishing pipeline runs on a schedule - nobody presses the button.
Next.js + cron + AI modelsInbox triage and draft replies
Incoming enquiry emails are read automatically and reply drafts are prepared for review - a human still approves every send, but the first pass is done before we open the inbox.
Gmail API + AI modelsThis is the enterprise "citizen developer" playbook, sized for your business. Large organisations have trained thousands of non-technical staff to build their own automations and apps - shipping hundreds of production tools and saving entire teams weeks of work. You do not need a 4,000-person program. You need two or three of your own people, the right first automations, and the skill to keep going.
WHO THIS IS FOR
Owners who are the bottleneck and want the business to run without them in the loop for everything
Teams drowning in repetitive admin - data entry, quoting, invoicing, enquiry response, reporting
Businesses burned by an agency retainer or a DIY pilot that never stuck
Trades, allied health, NDIS, accounting, legal, real estate and professional services with 2-200 staff
Leaders who want capability to stay in-house, not walk out the door with a contractor
QUESTIONS
What is buildAutomation?
A 6-12 week program where we go into your business, train 2-3 of your own staff to build and own AI-powered automations, and build the genuinely hard ones alongside them. Instead of paying an agency forever, the capability stays in your business and keeps compounding after we leave.
My staff are too busy to learn this. How does that work?
That is exactly the symptom we fix. We start by automating the tasks eating your team's week, so the time to learn pays for itself early. The repetitive work that disappears is the time they spend learning to build the next automation.
My people aren't technical. Can they really do this?
Yes. This is point-and-click automation on tools like n8n, Make and Zapier, not traditional programming. We pick people who know your business - the tech is the easy part to teach. Large enterprises have trained thousands of non-technical 'citizen developers' the same way.
What if our trained hero leaves?
That is the strongest reason to do this, not to avoid it. We train two or three people, not one, and everything is documented and owned by the business - so capability never lives in a single head. With an agency, the knowledge was never yours to begin with.
We tried automation before and it didn't stick. Why is this different?
It didn't stick because nobody owned it - the most common reason pilots stall. We don't run a pilot and leave. We embed the skill and ship real automations with your team, on your systems, so ownership lives inside your business from the start.
Why not just hire someone or use an agency?
A new hire costs half to twice their salary and is still a single point of failure. An agency bills forever and the knowledge leaves when they do. Enablement is cheaper long-term than both and leaves the capability inside your business, compounding.
How much does it cost?
It is a one-time program fee, scoped to your business and the number of heroes you want trained - not an open-ended retainer. The fastest way to a real number is to send an enquiry below and tell us where the manual work hurts most. We will come back with a clear scope and price.
Are you based in Melbourne?
Yes. 13Labs is a Melbourne software studio. We work with businesses across Australia, in person where we can and remotely where that suits you better.
STOP RENTING. START OWNING.
Tell us where the manual work hurts most. Callum reviews every enquiry personally and will get back to you within one business day with a clear next step.