Big-company AI, built for a business your size.
Most small businesses get told AI changes everything, then get handed a chatbot. This practice runs on twenty years of digital strategy and digital product development for Lexus, IHG, IBM, and Coca-Cola, now pointed at businesses with five to fifty people, for a fraction of what a hire would cost.
Not strategy decks. Working systems.
Every one of these starts as a task somebody on your team does by hand, every week, forever.
Finding the Hours
Two hours with you and your team produces a ranked list of where AI saves real time, what each fix costs, and what it returns. Most AI projects skip this step and that is why most of them fail.
Answering Every Lead
Missed calls, unread form fills, and after-hours inquiries cost more than most owners realize. An AI agent, designed around how your business actually answers the phone, handles the first response around the clock: it qualifies, routes, books, and hands a real person the ones that matter.
Also coversEstimates, invoices, job packets, intake forms, and follow-ups drafted from information you already have, so you review and send instead of starting from a blank page.
AI-First Marketing Strategy & Content Development
Marketing that runs as a system instead of a scramble. Campaigns planned against real numbers, content produced and tested continuously, local search and reviews kept current, and the whole thing reporting on itself every week without anyone remembering to pull a report. AI does the production and the reading of results. Deciding what is worth making, and what the numbers actually mean, is the twenty-year craft, and it is the part AI does not replace.
Also coversReviews requested at the moment a customer is happiest, responses drafted for your approval, and a plain read on what people actually say about you.
Training, Guardrails & Governance
Your people using AI well, and a written policy so it never becomes a liability. Who is allowed to use what, which data never goes near a chatbot, and how output gets checked before it reaches a customer. Customer data and client confidentiality handled in a way you can show a client, an insurer, or an auditor.
Every agent gets three thingsA set limit on what it is allowed to decide by itself, a named person it hands off to the moment it is out of its depth, and an off switch that any one of your people can reach. Nothing talks to a customer unsupervised without all three.
AI-Driven Product Development
Some businesses do not need a faster Tuesday. They need something new to sell. This is a real software product built end to end: the thing itself, the site it lives on, and the agents that run its operations after launch. AI does the heavy lifting, which is why a small team can ship what used to take a large one. Gulf Coast Bite, in the case study below, was built exactly this way.
One person, no engineering team, a working product.
Gulf Coast Bite tells anglers whether today is worth the trip across six waters from Pensacola to Dauphin Island. Built here, run here, and operating itself most days. It is the clearest available answer to what AI-driven product development actually produces.
What it does
- Scores the bite each day from live NOAA tide and weather feeds
- Float Plan, a trip planner with live marine forecast and routing
- A directory of 32 verified charter operations
- A community catch board anglers post to
- Guides for every species and water in the region
What runs it
- Ten serverless functions doing the work of a small team
- Branded social cards generated from that day's real data
- Scheduled publishing to Instagram and Facebook, with a retry if one fails
- A weekly email digest written per water and sent automatically
- A private dashboard showing what published and what it earned in attention
"The interesting part is not that AI wrote the code. It is that a business with no engineering team now has the output of one."
Five ways in. All of them finish.
Every engagement is scoped before it starts and has a date it ends. The open-ended retainer that quietly renews forever is somebody else's business model.
AI Readiness Assessment
A short conversation about how your business actually runs, and an honest answer about whether AI is worth your time yet.
- Where your team loses hours today
- The two or three highest-return opportunities
- A straight answer if the answer is "not yet"
The Audit
A full read of your operation and a ranked roadmap you could hand to anyone to implement, in-house or not.
- Workflow and tool review across the business
- Ranked opportunities with cost and time-saved estimates
- Specific tool recommendations, vendor-neutral
- A written AI use policy for your team
The Build
The two or three workflows worth the most get built, deployed, and handed over, with your team trained to run them unsupervised.
- Everything in the Audit
- Two to three agents or workflows designed, built, and live
- Connected to the tools you already use
- Team training and written documentation
- Thirty days of support after handoff
Fractional AI Officer
The role a large company would hire for, at the fraction of the time a business your size actually needs.
- New workflows as they come up
- Tuning and maintenance of what is already running
- Monthly read on what is working and what is not
- Your team's standing answer for "can AI do this?"
The Product Build
For when the goal is a new thing to sell rather than a faster version of what you already do. A working product in the market, not a prototype in a deck.
- The idea pressure-tested against a real market before a line is built
- A working product, deployed and running
- The brand, site, and content around it
- Agent-run operations: publishing, email, reporting
- Analytics and a plain read on whether it is working
- Handover with documentation, or ongoing operation
Half-day team workshops run on their own or alongside any package. Fees depend on the size of your business and what the assessment turns up, and you get the number in writing before anything starts. Nonprofits and pre-revenue businesses should ask about reduced rates.
Twenty years of enterprise work, now pointed at your size.
Two decades of paid media, CRM, research, analytics, and conversion work for national brands. The budgets were bigger. The expertise is the same one you get, and it is what decides where AI is worth pointing at all.
A booking path that lost people before it took money
Role · Digital strategy and user research
Ran the testing that found where the path broke, then rebuilt the sequence around what people actually did rather than what the funnel assumed. Conversion improved 300 percent without additional media spend. That same discipline decides which AI workflow is worth building first.
A launch with no existing buyer to aim at
Role · Digital communications strategy
Defined the audience for a vehicle the brand had never sold before and sequenced the channels behind the launch of the first all-electric Lexus SUV, from first awareness through to dealer handoff.
A B2B audience that is hard to reach and harder to convert
Role · Campaign strategy and performance
Built and ran a large-scale digital campaign into a narrow logistics buying audience. It set company records for impressions, click-through rate, and measurable conversions.
Nothing gets built without knowing what it saves.
Watch the work
Nothing gets recommended before someone has watched how your business actually runs. Where the hours go, what gets dropped, what nobody wants to do.
Pick the winners
Most AI ideas are not worth the setup. You get a ranked list with real numbers attached, and permission to ignore most of it.
Ship something small
One working thing running in your business before anything else gets built. On tools you already pay for wherever possible.
Make it yours
Your team runs it unsupervised. The goal is a business that does not need a monthly retainer, not one that gets sold a retainer anyway.
Small businesses, not small ambitions.
Local service businesses
Contractors, home services, lighting, landscaping, marine. Businesses that live on quotes going out fast and calls getting answered.
Shops, restaurants & specialty food
Independent retail and food, where marketing is whatever is left after the day is done and reviews decide the week.
Professional practices
Law, accounting, insurance, dental, and medical practices. Intake, scheduling, follow-up, and documentation, handled with the confidentiality the work requires.
Small B2B firms & agencies
Teams of five to fifty who sell expertise and need AI inside how the work gets delivered, not bolted onto the marketing.
Things worth knowing before you spend money.
Short pieces from inside the work. Almost everyone advising a small business about AI is also selling it something. These are written for the moment before you decide.
What a product costs now that the code is cheap
Running a live software product costs less per month than a phone line. That changes whether to build one. It does not change the part that decides whether it works.
Most AI projects die before week three
The failure pattern is always the same, and it starts before the tool is chosen. What to do with the two hours that would have prevented it.
Write this page before your team opens a chatbot
Five things every small business should decide about AI in writing, and the two kinds of information that should never go near it.
Where the numbers actually moved.
You are not hiring these companies. You are hiring the people who learned what works inside them, and would rather apply it somewhere it makes a bigger difference.
The gap that keeps turning up.
Twenty years inside agencies including SapientNitro, IQ, IMM, and Trevelino/Keller, leading digital strategy for IBM, Coca-Cola, Lexus, Chili's and IHG. Paid media, CRM, research, analytics, and conversion work, at the scale where those disciplines get tested properly. Those companies had budgets, analysts, and a vendor for everything.
Then came the businesses down the street. A meat shop on the Gulf Coast. A lighting contractor outside Atlanta. A media buying firm losing days to post-campaign reconciliation. Same problems, no team, no budget, and a wall of AI hype with almost nothing in it built for them.
"Nobody needs an AI strategy. They need Tuesday to take less time than it did last Tuesday."
That is the whole practice now. Find the hours a business is losing, build the specific thing that gets them back, and teach the team to run it. If AI is not the answer, you hear that before you pay for anything.
- Founded2015, Atlanta, Georgia. Working with businesses across the Southeast and nationally.
- FocusApplied AI and digital marketing strategy for owner-operated businesses
- DisciplinesAI agent design, workflow automation, AI-assisted content and search, AI governance and policy, applied product development, and the paid media, CRM and conversion craft underneath it
- Agency HeritageSapientNitro, IQ, IMM, Trevelino/Keller, Factory Design Labs
- ToolsThe leading AI models, including Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini, working inside the software you already run on. Nothing new to learn unless it earns its place
- Also RunsSeveral small businesses of his own, which is where most of this gets tested first
Find out what AI would actually save you.
Twenty minutes, no charge, no deck. Talk through how your business actually runs and get an honest read on where AI helps, where it does not, and what it would cost. If there is nothing worth doing yet, that is a fine answer and you will hear it.