I’m not running my business anymore. Something else is. And it’s better at it than I was.
Look, I know how that sounds, but these 3 tools handle what used to eat up 40+ hours of my week.
They don’t forget to follow up. They don’t get tired at 9 PM. They don’t call in sick.
They just… work.
This isn’t about tools, tho.
It’s about removing ‘YOU” as the bottleneck from stuff that makes you money.
If your business only moves forward when YOU have to do things, you don’t have leverage at all… you really just have a snowflake system that’ll crumble and cost you a LOT of money at some point.
Let me show you what I use that sends me on vacation a lot.
Why This Setup Works
This setup is useful only if:
- You already sell something repeatedly
- leads or customers are coming in consistently
- follow-up, onboarding, or ops are stealing your time
If you’re still figuring out what to sell or how to get traffic, this is not where your focus should be so maybe check this out first.
Gotta have the fundamentals down first bc automation doesn’t fix anything if it has a broken foundation.
It just makes shit worse.
Like any monkey can make an automation technically work… but most of them quietly create more problems than they fix.
A big one I see is AI making bad decisions due to weak inputs, or automations firing at the wrong time, or worst of all… systems that require constant babysitting.
That’s how people end up saying “automation didn’t really save me time.”
It did, they just automated the wrong layer.
Tool #1: GoHighLevel
I run my entire digital product business on GHL .
This is literally where everything lives.
Your pages. Funnels. Emails. Automations. CRM. Calendar.
All of it in one place.
And before you think “oh great, another all-in-one tool”…
Well the reason GHL actually works is because everything talks to each other without you duct-taping a bunch of shit together.
Someone buys?
Perfect. I get a “cha ching” notification, tag it so I can segment it and drop it into the right sequence automatically.
Someone wants to book a call?
They fill out their info, gets booked, calendar syncs, reminders go out, follow-ups trigger.
Someone upgrades?
Access granted, onboarding starts, etc.
Once you set it up the right way (esp with AI), the system can actually make decisions FOR you.
Like this is just 1 automation I have setup where I have AI built into it…
Who to email when.
What to show them based on what they clicked.
When to push vs. when to back off.
You set the rules once and it does what it’s told every time which ends up with you making more money.
Tool #2: OpenRouter
Most tools lock you into one AI model.
You’re stuck with just ChatGPT. Or just Claude.
OpenRouter lets you plug multiple AI models into whatever tools you’re already using.
For example…
- You can use Claude for long-form reasoning, or
- OpenAI for structured outputs, or
- Gemini for other specific tasks, or
- Any other models for literally anything you want
The point isn’t about having all the models, its about the flexibility.
Different models are better at different things. OpenRouter lets you route tasks to the right one without rebuilding your system every time.
And all you do is set it up once.
Tool #3: Activepieces
This is basically Zapier, but WAY cheaper.
I grabbed this as a lifetime deal a while back and gotta say it has been one of the best purchases I’ve ever made.
It fills the gaps for anything GHL can’t do natively, and man lemme tell you, it is…AWESOME.
IMO, Zapier’s gotten super greedy with their pricing. Activepieces is pennies in comparison, so you can actually build out all the automations you need without worrying about selling your kidney.
Need to make tools talk to each other?
This bridges it.
Want to set up complex workflows without paying $200/month?
This is how.
More automations = less manual work = more time building offers instead of babysitting processes.
How They Work Together
Here’s where people usually mess this up.
They collect a bunch of tools, but never design a system.
In my setup:
✅ GoHighLevel runs the ecosystem
✅ OpenRouter handles the AI decision layer
✅ Activepieces connects everything else
Leads come in.
They get nurtured.
They get sold to.
They get onboarded.
They get upsold.
Automatically.
I don’t manage tasks…I just look for signals and optimize when needed.
The Bottom Line
You don’t need to be glued to your laptop to run an online business.
You just need the right tools doing the work.
✅ GoHighLevel for the ecosystem.
✅ OpenRouter for flexible AI.
✅ Activepieces for everything else.
Think about what’s eating up most of your time right now.
Write it down.
Then DM me and I’ll send you some resources on how fix it with any of these.