Sistava is an AI workforce platform where solo founders hire AI employees to run their business around the clock. Each AI employee has a specific role like sales, marketing, or customer support, with real tool integrations, persistent memory, and the ability to work inside your existing apps like Slack, Gmail, and HubSpot.

What is an AI employee?

An AI employee is an autonomous AI agent with a defined role, persona, skill set, and tool access. Unlike a chatbot that only answers questions, an AI employee takes on recurring work like writing emails, qualifying leads, answering support tickets, and publishing content, and it works on its own around the clock without being prompted each time.

How is Sistava different from project management software?

Sistava is not project management software. You hire AI employees who do the work, not a tool that tracks work done by humans. Your AI employees run sales outreach, write marketing content, answer support tickets, and handle operations on their own, without constant supervision.

How much does Sistava cost?

Sistava has a free plan you can start without a credit card, plus paid plans that scale with how much work you hand to your AI employees. See the pricing page for current plans.

What can AI employees do on Sistava?

Your AI employees take on the recurring work that runs a business: qualifying and reaching out to leads, writing and publishing marketing content, answering support tickets, and handling day to day operations. Each one comes with a role and skill set, so it can start working the day you hire it.

Sistava is built for solo founders and small teams who need to run sales, marketing, support, and operations without hiring a full human team. It gives you the equivalent of a growth team you can hire in minutes.

How to Automate Your Coaching Back Office

How-to — 2026-08-07 — by Mahmoud Zalt

Automate the coaching back office with a pre-built AI Employee that handles scheduling, client follow-up, intake, invoicing reminders, and content in one workspace.

The work that drains a coach is rarely the coaching. It is everything around it: the back and forth to book a call, the intake form nobody filled out, the follow-up note you meant to send, the invoice reminder you forgot, the newsletter you keep postponing. Every hour spent on that admin is an hour you are not coaching or getting new clients, and it is the reason so many solo coaches feel busy but capped. This is a practical walkthrough of how to hand that back office to an AI Employee.

A coaching AI Employee is not a scheduling widget or a single automation. It is a pre-built teammate with a role, memory, and tools already wired in. It manages the calendar so booking stops being a five-message negotiation, sends the intake form and chases the client who did not fill it out, drafts the post-session recap and next-step note in your voice, and reminds clients about payments before you have to. It remembers each client across sessions, so the follow-up sounds like it came from someone who was actually in the room with them.

At a Glance

One workspace: Scheduling, intake, follow-up, and content
49/mo: Entry plan with a coaching AI Employee
Every client: Remembered across sessions and follow-ups
Hours back: Weekly admin off your plate

What back-office work should a coach hand off first?

The best first thing to automate is the work that is repetitive, time-sensitive, and low on judgment. Scheduling is the obvious start, because the back and forth to find a time is pure friction that a well-briefed Employee can close in a message or two. Right behind it is client follow-up, the recap and next-step note after each session, which clients value enormously and coaches skip most often because the day fills up before they get to it.

Intake and reminders are the next layer. A new client who never completes the intake form starts the relationship on a weak footing, and an AI Employee that sends it, explains why it matters, and gently chases the missing responses fixes that quietly. Invoicing reminders are the least fun part of any solo practice, and handing them off means you stop being the person who has to ask a client, awkwardly, for money they already agreed to pay.

The work you should keep is the coaching itself and the judgment around it: how to challenge a client, when to push and when to hold back, which program a person actually needs. An AI Employee is not there to replace the relationship, it is there to protect the time you spend in it. The clearer you are about that line, the more the automation helps rather than flattens your practice.

How do you set up a coaching AI Employee?

Setting up a coaching AI Employee is fast because the role is pre-built. You are briefing a new hire and connecting your tools, not designing an automation. The five steps below take under an hour for a coach who already has a calendar and a way to invoice. The step that matters most is the brief, because it teaches the Employee your tone and your boundaries, which is what keeps the follow-up notes sounding like you.

Five steps to an automated back office

Hire the coaching support role — Pick the pre-built AI Employee for admin and client management. No workflow to build to get started.
Connect your calendar and inbox — Authorize scheduling and email so booking, intake, and follow-up flow through one place automatically.
Write the practice brief — One paragraph: who you coach, your programs, your tone, your booking rules, and your payment terms.
Set your follow-up and reminder rules — Decide when recaps go out, how intake is chased, and when invoice reminders send, all on your cadence.
Approve the first messages — Read the first recaps and reminders, edit tone, and the Employee calibrates to how you actually communicate.

Two warnings from doing this the right way. First, read the first week of client-facing messages before they go out, because tone matters more in coaching than in almost any other business, and a recap that sounds cold undoes the warmth of the session it follows. Second, keep the payment and boundary rules explicit in the brief. You want the Employee to chase an overdue invoice politely and to never promise a program you do not offer, and both of those come straight from what you write.

Benefits

Scheduling

Turns the back and forth of booking into a message or two, respecting your availability and buffer rules.

Intake and onboarding

Sends the intake form, explains why it matters, and chases the clients who have not completed it.

Session follow-up

Drafts recaps and next-step notes in your voice so clients leave every session with clear direction.

Invoicing reminders

Sends payment reminders on your terms so you never have to awkwardly chase money yourself.

Once the admin runs cleanly, most coaches add content to the same workspace: a newsletter drafted from your session themes, social posts that turn a client win into a lesson, or a nurture note for prospects who booked a discovery call but have not signed on. The point is not to turn your practice into a content machine, it is to keep your visibility steady without stealing the hours you would rather spend coaching.

There is one honest limit worth naming. An AI Employee is excellent at the repeatable admin and communication work of a coaching practice, but it is not the coach. It cannot read the pause in a client's voice or decide what breakthrough they are ready for. Treat it as the back-office teammate that gives you those hours back, then spend the reclaimed time on the coaching and the growth that only you can do. Used that way, it makes a solo practice feel far less solo.

Frequently asked questions

FAQ

Will my clients feel like they are dealing with a machine?

Not if you brief it well. The Employee writes in your voice and follows the tone and boundaries you set, and you approve the first batch of client-facing messages before they go out. Most coaches use it for scheduling, reminders, and drafting recaps, then add their own personal touch to the moments that matter most. The relationship stays yours.

Which tools does it connect to for a coaching practice?

It connects to your calendar, inbox, and the tools you use for intake and invoicing, so booking, follow-up, and reminders flow through one workspace. You authorize the accounts in a couple of clicks during setup. The goal is to stop juggling separate apps that never talk to each other.

Can it handle client intake and onboarding on its own?

For the structured part, yes. It sends the intake form, explains why it matters, and follows up with clients who have not completed it, then hands you a clean summary before the first session. You keep the judgment about program fit, and it removes the chasing and paperwork that usually slows onboarding down.

How long does it take to set up?

Under an hour for most coaches. Because the role is pre-built, the only setup is connecting your calendar and inbox, writing the one-paragraph practice brief, and setting your follow-up and reminder rules. Most coaches have the Employee handling real admin the same day they hire it.

How much does it cost to automate my back office?

The entry plan starts at 49 per month with credits bundled in, and there is no per-seat surcharge to add the role to your workspace. For most solo coaches that is far less than a part-time virtual assistant, and the Employee covers the scheduling, follow-up, and reminders around the clock.

The takeaway for the whole category is simple. Automating a coaching back office is not about removing the human warmth clients pay for, it is about protecting it by handing off the admin that keeps stealing your time. Hire the role, write the paragraph that teaches it your tone and boundaries, connect your calendar and invoicing, and set your follow-up cadence. Read the first week closely, correct what feels off, and let it run. The hours you get back go straight into coaching and growth, which is the whole point.