How many things in your business are broken—little things you see every day but haven't fixed?

Frictions: Scott captures every broken or inefficient process he sees. He calls them frictions. They go on the automation loop worksheet. Then he prioritizes by closeness to revenue and team efficiency, and fixes one or two at a time.

The hot mess: In Scott's loan servicing business, the collections process was tracked in a spreadsheet. It worked—but it wasn't scalable and wasn't something to be proud of. It became the next priority.

The process:

Opened the spreadsheet, brought Claude in, explained the process end to end

Asked Claude for a product requirements document (PRD)

Read the PRD over two days, pushed back, refined it

Applied the SCALE framework

SCALE applied:

S (Scope): Collections process only. Not the whole internal tool.

C (Clarify the Flow): Whiteboard. Drew the future state.

A (Automate the Trigger): Notify humans when new cases arrive. Don't automate judgment—humans decide before anything fires.

L (Leverage the Data): Know when it's working AND when it's broken. "Automated processes die silently."

E (Elevate the Experience): Make sure people can always get back to a human.

The build: Fed the refined PRD to Claude Code. Built an internal tool replacing the spreadsheet—better tracking, security, visibility into who changed what and when.

The principle: Think first before you build anything. Don't jump to "how do I automate this?" Think through the entire process first.

Got a business question? Ask Scott here: scotttodd.net/ask