AI consultant in Portland for owner-run businesses

Three things you should know

I build.

You get working systems, not slide decks. Four of them are public: Understudy, saybooks.io, VoiceLender, and EarnedList. In workshops I build live, in front of the room, on someone's real problem.

I've done this at scale.

Thirty years making enterprise software actually work. SAP delivery for Nokia, Nike, Apple, Delta, CVS Health. MSc in electrical engineering. Most local consultants have never seen systems this size.

I'm here.

Portland metro: Portland, Beaverton, Hillsboro, Tigard, Lake Oswego, Gresham and Vancouver. I come to your office, sit with your people, and watch how the work really moves before I automate any of it.

Two reasons owners call me

More customers.

Every call answered, every quote out the same day, every lead followed up, every past customer remembered. For businesses that sell to other businesses, a researched list of the next thirty. Where customers get lost, and what fixes it

Less time on paperwork.

Invoices out the day the job closes, bills and documents read into the accounting system without retyping, and answers from your own files instead of from whoever remembers. What a Build Sprint covers

How I build

AI proposes. Your systems check. A person approves anything that matters.

The model drafts the quote, the work order, the invoice. Your own records and rules check it: the price list, the customer, the totals. Anything that spends money, reaches a customer or changes your books waits for a person to approve it. That is how serious business systems have always been run, and it is why mine keep working after I leave.

Four ways to work with me

Start small. Each step pays for the next one.

Fixed scope, fixed price. You see something working before you spend more.

Step 0

The workshop

60 minutes, live

I build one real automation in front of the room, using a volunteer's actual problem. No slides beyond the title.

Freefor chambers, coworking spaces, associations

Step 1

AI Opportunity Map

Two weeks, fixed

Half a day at your office mapping where the hours go, role by role. You get a one-page map, the two or three automations worth doing first, and one of them built as a working prototype.

$2,500fixed

Step 2

Build Sprint

Three to six weeks, fixed scope

One system built, installed, documented, and handed to your staff. Phone and web intake, quoting, invoicing and collections, document processing, an assistant over your own files.

$5,000 to $15,000fixed scope, quoted after the map

Step 3

On-call AI operations

Month to month

Keeps what was built running, adds small improvements each month, and gives you a person to call.

$1,500 to $2,500 a monthUp to eight hours a month. I answer within one business day.

Full scope, timelines, and questions people ask · What AI automation actually costs

How it works

Three steps, and you can stop after any of them.

We talk for 30 minutes.

You tell me what eats your week. I tell you honestly whether AI helps with it. Sometimes it doesn't, and I'll say so.

I map the work and build one thing.

Half a day at your office, role by role, where the hours go. Then I build one prototype so you can see it run on your own data.

I install it and stay reachable.

One system at a time, documented and handed to your staff. If you want, I keep it running and add to it monthly.

Proof

What I've built, and how I work.

Workshops. First sessions are being scheduled for fall 2026. Recordings and photos from each one will appear here.

Understudy, a tool that maps how work moves through a role

Understudy is the method.

Before automating anything, I map how the work really moves through your people. Understudy is the tool I built to do that. I used it first on my own role. understudy.team

saybooks.io, a business system where an AI agent and a person share the same books

saybooks.io is the kind of system I build.

Invoicing, customers, and jobs in one system of record, where an AI agent and a person operate the same books through the same rules. Your AI should work inside your system of record, not beside it. saybooks.io

VoiceLender, voice assistants grounded in a business's own data

VoiceLender is the phone getting answered.

A voice assistant that talks in real time, knows your customers and your schedule because it reads your own systems, and can act: look up an account, book the appointment, open a ticket. Built for phone and web intake. voicelender.com

EarnedList, a researched list of target customers with every claim sourced

EarnedList is AI doing the homework, with receipts.

Paste a website and within a few days get up to thirty target customers, each with a reason, a dated trigger, and a named contact or an honest gap. Every claim carries its source. For businesses that sell to other businesses, this is the outreach list. earnedlist.com

Afterquiet, a tinnitus tool that measures the quiet spell after each sound it plays

In development

Afterquiet is the same discipline on a different problem.

A tinnitus tool that measures the quiet spell after each sound it plays, and uses the result to choose the next sound to try. A different field, the same rule as the business work: measure what happened before deciding what to do next. afterquiet.app

About

An engineer, not a strategist.

I spent thirty years making enterprise software work for companies with tens of thousands of employees. Then I built a tool to map how work moves through a role, and used it on my own job first. Now I do the same thing for businesses where the owner still answers the phone.

More about me

Most businesses have tried AI and gotten nothing. Let's fix that in person.