AI that earns its keep in your business.
Not a chatbot bolted onto your homepage, and not a subscription nobody opens after the first week. I help small businesses find the handful of places AI genuinely saves time, set it up safely in the tools you already pay for, and teach your team to use it well.
I build AI systems, so I know where they break.
Most AI advice for small businesses comes from people selling a product or collecting affiliate fees. I am a developer who has been shipping production software since 2002, and I use AI tools every working day. I have also built AI into real systems, including an assistant for a Georgia law enforcement agency that answers officers' questions only from the state code it has been given, cites the section it relied on, and says so plainly when the answer is not in its sources.
That last part is the lesson most businesses learn the hard way. AI is extremely good at drafting, summarizing, sorting and searching. It is also confidently wrong often enough that you should never let it speak for your business unsupervised. The value is in knowing which is which for your work, and setting things up so a person stays in the loop where it matters.
Straight answer: AI will not run your business for you, and I will not pretend otherwise. For most small teams the real gain is a few hours a week per person on writing, paperwork and finding information, which adds up quickly. If the honest answer for your business is "not yet," that is what the roadmap will say.
From a first plan to a custom build
Most clients start with the roadmap and training, then pick one or two things to build once they see where the time actually goes.
AI Opportunity Assessment
I sit down with you (and ideally one or two staff) and walk through a normal week: what gets typed, retyped, searched for, chased and copied between systems. You get a short, ranked list of the places AI will actually pay off, and the places it will not.
Get More From Tools You Already Pay For
Microsoft 365 Copilot, Google Workspace with Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude: many businesses are paying for AI features nobody has switched on or configured. I set them up properly, connect them to the right files, and turn off what you do not need.
Hands-On Team Training
Not a slideshow about the future of work. Your team brings real tasks, like the email they dread writing or the report they rebuild every month, and we do them together. Everyone leaves with a prompt library written for your business.
AI Usage Policy & Data Safety
A plain-English policy your staff will actually read: which tools are approved, what customer, employee and financial information must never be pasted in, which plans keep your data out of model training, and who reviews AI output before it goes out the door.
Assistants Grounded in Your Documents
An internal assistant that answers from your own handbook, policies, price sheets and past proposals, and shows the source it used. New hires stop interrupting the one person who knows where everything is, and nobody gets a made-up answer dressed as policy.
Workflow Automation
The quiet wins: web form submissions summarized and routed to the right person, inbound email sorted and drafted for review, meeting notes turned into follow-up tasks, quotes drafted from an intake form. Built into your existing forms, inbox and CRM, including Formidable Forms and WordPress.
Customer-Facing AI, Carefully
Website and after-hours assistants that answer the common questions from your approved content, collect the details, and hand off to a human for anything else. Scoped tightly, with logging so you can see every conversation it had in your name.
Vendor & Cost Sanity Check
Somebody is pitching you an "AI-powered" platform for a monthly fee. I will look at what it actually does, what it would cost to do the same thing with tools you already have, and what happens to your data if you ever leave.
Ongoing AI Partner
The tools change monthly. A standing check-in keeps you current on what is worth adopting, answers your team's questions as they come up, and adjusts the setup as your business changes, without you having to follow the news.
Where small businesses get hurt by AI
None of these are reasons to avoid AI. They are reasons to set it up on purpose rather than letting every employee improvise with whatever free tool they found. Each one is covered in the roadmap and the usage policy.
If you are in a regulated field (healthcare, legal, financial, anything touching children's data or criminal justice information), tell me up front. The rules on what can go into an AI tool are stricter, and I will say so plainly.
Customer data pasted into personal accounts
The most common problem by far. Staff paste client emails, invoices or employee details into a free personal chatbot account to "just clean this up." Depending on the tool and its settings, that content can be retained or used for training, and it is now outside your control. Business plans and a written policy fix most of this.
Confident answers that are wrong
AI invents prices, policies, legal requirements and citations that sound entirely plausible. Anything that goes to a customer or into a contract needs a person reading it first, and assistants should answer from your documents, not from memory.
A chatbot speaking for your business
Businesses have been held to promises their chatbot made. A customer-facing assistant needs tight limits on what it can say, and a clean handoff to a human when a question falls outside them.
Subscriptions nobody uses
Seats bought for the whole team, opened twice. Adoption comes from training on real tasks and a few shared prompts that work. Licenses alone do nothing.
Surprise bills and lock-in
Usage-based AI pricing can creep, and some platforms make it hard to take your data and workflows with you. Anything I build comes with a cost estimate, a spending cap, and documentation so you are never dependent on me or on one vendor.
Fixed price, agreed before anything starts
You get a written scope and a fixed number. Software costs for the AI tools themselves are paid directly by you to the vendor, never marked up by me.
AI Roadmap
Find out where AI fits
About one week
- 90-minute working session on how your week actually runs
- Review of the software and AI subscriptions you already have
- Written roadmap: three to five ranked opportunities, with cost and risk for each
- What not to use AI for in your business
- Starter AI usage policy for your staff
- 30-minute follow-up call
Roadmap & Rollout
Plan it, set it up, train the team
Two to three weeks
- Everything in the AI Roadmap
- Your top two opportunities set up and working in your tools
- Business accounts configured with data-safe settings
- Half-day hands-on training for up to ten people
- Prompt library written around your real tasks
- Finalized AI usage policy
- 30 days of email support while the team settles in
Custom AI Build
An assistant or automation made for you
Three to six weeks
- Assistant grounded in your own documents, or an automation wired into your forms, inbox or CRM
- Human review built in wherever output reaches a customer
- Logging so you can see what it did and why
- Running-cost estimate and a hard spending cap
- Documentation and handoff: you own it outright
- 30 days of adjustments after launch
Just want a second opinion on a tool someone is selling you, or a one-off training session? Tell me what you need and I will quote it.
The tools change every month. You should not have to keep up.
After the rollout, most teams want someone to call when a new feature lands, a vendor changes its pricing, or a staff member asks whether they are allowed to use something.
Check-in
For a small team that wants to stay current without effort.
- Monthly 30-minute call
- Short monthly note on what changed and whether it matters to you
- Email questions answered within two business days
- Usage policy kept up to date
Partner
For businesses actively building AI into how they work.
- Everything in Check-in
- Three hours of hands-on work each month for new prompts, automations and fixes
- Upkeep of anything I built for you
- Quarterly refresher training for new staff
- Priority email support
Month to month, billed by Square invoice you can pay by card. Cancel any time, no contract and no termination fee.
Small, useful, then bigger
The businesses that get real value from AI start with one annoying task and expand from there. This is the sequence.
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01
Listen
We walk through how the work actually happens: who does what, which tasks get put off, where information gets lost. No software is discussed until this part is done.
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02
Pick the first win
One or two tasks where AI clearly helps, the risk is low, and the result is easy to measure, usually writing, summarizing or finding information. Everything else goes on the roadmap for later.
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03
Set it up safely
Business accounts, data-safe settings, a usage policy, and a clear rule for who reviews AI output before it leaves the building. This happens before anyone is told to "go use AI."
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04
Train on real work
Your team does their own tasks with me in the room, and keeps the prompts that worked. That is what makes the habit stick after I leave.
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05
Check it is working
A few weeks later we look at whether it is actually being used and actually saving time. Keep what works, drop what does not, and choose the next thing.
The questions people actually ask
Will AI replace my staff?
For a small business, almost certainly not, and I do not recommend setting it up with that goal. What it does well is take the drudgery off the people you already have: the first draft, the summary, the search through old files. Your team gets time back for the parts of the job that need a person, which is usually the part customers are paying for.
Which AI tool should we buy?
Often none. If you are already on Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, their built-in AI may cover most of what you need. When a separate tool makes sense, I will recommend it based on what your team does, not on who pays referral fees. I take no commissions from any vendor. You pay the vendor directly.
Is it safe to put our business information into AI?
It depends entirely on the tool and the plan. Business and enterprise plans from the major providers generally commit not to train on your data; free personal accounts often have weaker terms. Part of every engagement is setting up the right accounts and writing down, plainly, what may and may not be entered. Regulated data such as health records, financial account numbers or criminal justice information needs extra care, and sometimes the answer is that it stays out entirely.
Do I need a chatbot on my website?
Usually not first. A website assistant is the most visible use of AI and one of the riskiest, because it speaks for you to customers. Most businesses get more value sooner from internal uses. If a customer-facing assistant does make sense, I build it to answer only from your approved content and hand anything else to a person.
What does it cost to run once it is set up?
For most small teams, the ongoing cost is the per-seat subscription for the tools you choose. Custom builds usually run on usage-based pricing, which for a small business is typically modest, but I give you an estimate before building and set a hard monthly spending cap so there are no surprises.
What if the roadmap says AI is not worth it for us yet?
Then that is what it will say, with the reasons. You will still leave with a usage policy (your staff are very likely using AI already, whether or not anyone approved it) and a clear idea of what would need to change for it to be worth revisiting.
We are not technical. Is this for us?
Yes. That is who it is mainly for. Everything is explained in plain English, the training is built around your team's real tasks, and nothing is left behind that only a developer can maintain.
Can you connect AI to our website forms or WordPress site?
Yes. I have been building WordPress and Formidable Forms systems for over two decades, so summarizing form submissions, drafting replies to inquiries, or routing entries to the right person is well-trodden ground. The same goes for custom applications.
Tell me about your business
A few minutes here saves the first half of our first call. It goes straight to my inbox. It is not stored in a database, and it is never shared.