One of our readers, Lauren, recently shared this challenge:
“I work for a small business, who has grown so much in the past two years. My biggest challenge is figuring out how to scale processes without burning out myself and my team.”
Perfect timing for this one because October is Women’s Small Business Month, and this challenge couldn’t be more relatable. Growth is exciting…until it starts to feel like you’re sprinting on a treadmill that keeps speeding up.
That used to be me 🙋🏻♀️.
When The Assist started scaling, I hit that exact point. Every new milestone came with another pile of tasks that “only I could do.” Sales calls, client proposals, editing content, analyzing data, managing ops—you name it. I was proud, but exhausted. The turning point came when I realized that frustration itself was a clue. The tasks that annoyed me most were the ones screaming to be systemized or automated. So here’s what I suggest:
Step 1: Follow the Frustration
If something annoys you more than twice, it deserves an SOP.
I started documenting every repeatable task: how I did it, what good looked like, and what mistakes to avoid, so I could eventually hand it off. That small discipline built the foundation for scaling. Delegation only works when your process does.
Even if you don’t have a big team yet, start SOP’ing as if you do. Future you will thank you when hiring or outsourcing becomes necessary.
Step 2: Make AI Your First Hire
If you don’t have the budget to bring on another human, AI can help fill in the gap especially for the repetitive, rule-based, or research-heavy tasks that clog your calendar.
For me, AI became a second brain:
- It preps me for sales calls by helping me spot hidden objections.
- It drafts proposals and sponsorship packages so I’m never starting from scratch.
- It summarizes meetings and creates follow-up to-dos automatically.
And here’s where the money angle comes in: when you can prep better, respond faster, and show up sharper, you close more deals. That’s how AI helped me land bigger sponsorship contracts and justify higher retainers, without hiring a single extra person.
Step 3: Custom GPTs Changed the Game
Even after hiring content writers, I was still acting as Editor-in-Chief, spending hours polishing every draft.
So, I built a Custom GPT trained on our tone, brand voice, and editorial guidelines. It now handles the first round of editing, cutting my review time by about 90%.
What used to take me two hours, now takes 10 minutes. And the output is consistent.
That’s when it hit me: this isn’t about replacing people, but about creating leverage.
Step 4: Teach Your Team to Think the Same Way
Once I figured this out, I started teaching my team to build their own AI workflows.
Cameron (ops lead) uses AI to summarize and analyze reports.
Kristel (marketing) uses it to draft and edit ads.
Our content team uses it to brainstorm, research, and repurpose ideas faster.
When everyone uses AI as an assistant, not a threat, your output multiplies, and so does your earning potential. You don’t need to grind harder; you need to scale smarter.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that promotions don’t go to the busiest person…they go to the most efficient and effective one.
That’s what gets noticed. That’s what gets rewarded.
If you want to see the exact systems I used to scale The Assist and the 3 AI Power Plays that can help you land a $10K+ raise and save 10+ hours a week, join me for our free live masterclass next week:
👉 3 AI Power Plays to Land a $10K+ Raise & Save 10+ Hours/Week

Joanna (TA Co-Founder)
P.S. We’ve got a surprise gift for live attendees, so don’t miss out!