I built the automation before I had enough customers

I think I made a pretty common mistake while building my digital product business.

I automated too much, too early.

I had Payhip for selling products.

Make for connecting things.

Telegram for notifications.

Notion for tracking.

Then I added email automation.

On paper, it looked great.

A customer buys something.

The order gets processed.

The information gets recorded.

I get a notification.

The customer gets follow-up emails.

Everything is supposed to happen automatically.

The problem?

I didn't have enough customers yet.

So instead of spending most of my time improving the product or getting people to see it, I was spending time checking whether my automations were working.

A webhook didn't behave the way I expected.

A field was missing.

One workflow needed to be changed because another workflow depended on it.

Then I would think:

"Maybe I should automate this part too."

That's when I realized I was solving a problem I didn't really have yet.

The automation itself wasn't the problem.

The timing was.

I was building for the business I imagined having instead of the business I actually had.

So I've started changing how I build.

Now I ask myself:

Does this happen often enough to automate?

Will this actually save me time?

What happens if it breaks?

And probably the most important question:

Would I still build this if I only had a few customers?

Sometimes the answer is no.

And that's okay.

I'm still building automation systems.

I just don't want the system to become another thing I have to manage.

Right now, I'm trying to build the smallest workflow that solves the real problem in front of me.

Then I'll add more when I actually need it.

I'm curious how other indie hackers handle this.

Do you build your systems ahead of growth, or only automate after the manual work becomes painful?