My Favorite Zapier Automations That Save Founders 10+ Hours/Week

Category: Systems & Automation | Estimated read time: 5 minutes

If you’re a founder, chances are your week is packed with repetitive tasks that quietly eat away at your focus, energy, and time. You’ve probably thought, “There has to be a better way to do this.” There is—and it starts with automation.

As a virtual Chief of Staff, one of the first things I do is find friction points: manual workflows, lost leads, forgotten follow-ups, unnecessary clicks. With Zapier, I eliminate dozens of those problems in a few simple Zaps.

Below are 5 of my go-to automations I install for clients that actually save them 10+ hours every week.

1. New Lead → CRM + Slack + Email Follow-Up

What it does:
- Captures new leads from your site form, Typeform, or Calendly
- Adds them to your CRM (like Airtable, Notion, HubSpot)
- Sends your team a Slack alert
- Triggers a personalized email follow-up

Why it matters: You follow up automatically. Your team stays in the loop. You stop losing leads in the inbox void.

⏱️ Time saved: ~2–3 hours/week

2. Gmail → Task Manager (Asana, Notion, ClickUp)

What it does:
- Tag/star an email
- Zapier turns it into a task with due date, assignee, and link

Why it matters: Inbox zero becomes real. You stop forgetting things.

⏱️ Time saved: ~1.5 hours/week

3. Calendar Event → Auto-Created Meeting Notes Template

What it does:
- Books a new event → auto-creates a Notion/Google Doc
- Pre-fills with agenda template, guest list, and links

Why it matters: You're always prepared. Meetings get sharper.

⏱️ Time saved: ~1 hour/week

4. Stripe/PayPal Sale → Google Sheet + Slack Win

What it does:
- Logs every transaction to a live revenue dashboard
- Posts a win to Slack (with emoji celebration, of course)
- Optionally tags the customer in your CRM

Why it matters: Real-time visibility + team motivation + no forgotten payments.

⏱️ Time saved: ~1–2 hours/week

5. New Content → Newsletter Draft (YouTube, Instagram, etc.)

What it does:
- New video or post → title, link, and description auto-added to your newsletter draft (ConvertKit, Mailchimp, Flodesk)

Why it matters: Content you’ve already made gets repurposed automatically.

⏱️ Time saved: ~1–1.5 hours/week

Final Thoughts

These automations aren’t fancy—they’re just smart. They run quietly in the background so you can get back to the work only you can do: making decisions, leading your team, growing your business.