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Levels 1–2 of a 5-level series. This guide walks you through building a real lead capture + automated follow-up system for a small service business — from a working form, to an instant welcome email, to a scheduled follow-up that runs on its own. Future levels (lead qualification, CRM, AI scoring) will be added as separate guides.

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Tools used in this guide:

🧩 What We're Building

Someone visits a website and requests a free consultation. Instead of a human manually checking the form, copying info into a spreadsheet, and sending a welcome email — this automation does it for them.

👤 PROSPECT
   ↓
📝 TALLY FORM
   ↓
⚙️ MAKE AUTOMATION
   ↓
┌───┴───┐
↓       ↓
📊 SHEETS  📧 GMAIL
Save lead  Welcome email

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Why this is a good portfolio project: it's not just "I connected two apps." It demonstrates a real business process — lead capture → data management → communication → follow-up.

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Part 1 — Create the Imaginary Business

Use a fictional business your audience can easily understand: BrightPath Consulting, offering business strategy consultations, with a lead magnet of a Free 30-Minute Business Growth Consultation.

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The problem we're solving: BrightPath currently gets leads through a form, but the team manually checks submissions, copies info, emails the lead, and tracks them in a spreadsheet. We're automating all of that.

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Part 2 — Decide What Information You Need

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Rule to teach your followers: always design the workflow before opening the automation tool.

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Collect these fields: First Name, Last Name, Email, Company, Business Type, Biggest Challenge.

Part 3 — Create the Tally Form

Go to Tally and create a free form.

Questions to add: