Larger companies had the systems. Smaller ones had the grit. AI helps level that out.

I spent more than 20 years on the sales and operations side of small businesses, family-owned companies, and private equity environments. The day-to-day looked a lot like yours probably does: payroll, AP/AR, sales oversight, customer operations, processes that worked (and some that didn't), all while the pressure to grow, or just keep it all from going off the rails, never seemed to let up.

I know what a 'system' held together by a spreadsheet someone built in 2011 and good intentions looks like. And I know what it looks like when the whole thing is one person's departure away from falling apart.

That spreadsheet built with good intentions? I've built those. The email inbox that was a filing cabinet for everything? Mine was once like that, too. In smaller businesses, we cobbled together whatever tools we could find and made it work. When I moved into a private equity environment, that changed. They had sophisticated business intelligence software, CRMs, and reporting systems that talked to each other. The gap between what those organizations could do and what the smaller ones were doing manually was significant. And this is before AI was what it is now.

But even there, something stuck with me. I once spent days extracting sales data and building a massive spreadsheet just to get reliable numbers for one important decision. My boss needed it, the clock was running, and the whole thing felt like it should not be taking this long. Even with macros, pivot tables, and nested formulas.

Then AI started showing up on my radar. And what started as chatting and writing emails turned into data analysis, automation, and specialized applications doing things that used to take hours, days, or a dedicated person. There is an entire world beyond using a chatbot to write emails, summarize a meeting, or find a recipe. I've seen behind the curtain, and I like to show people what's there.

Today I think a lot about the small businesses that aren't getting that access while larger, better-resourced competitors move faster, serve customers better, and operate leaner because they're leveraging AI. Not because they're smarter or work harder, but because they have better tools, and those tools are getting better every day. But the good news is that those tools are now available to just about anyone. The issue now isn't access, it's time and strategy. Which tool? For which purpose and for which outcome?

That's why I started Strategence AI. Not as a technology company, but as a way to make sure small businesses aren't the last ones to benefit from something this significant and to help them make the right decisions when using it. Owner-operators don't have time to go down every rabbit hole with everything else already on their plate. That's what Strategence AI is here for.

Every consulting engagement starts the same way: with your business, not with a preconceived agenda.

Before anything gets recommended or built, I look to understand how your operation runs each day: where the time goes, what breaks when someone is out, and which decisions are slow because the right information isn't where it needs to be when it needs to be there.

From there, the goal is about identifying where AI and automation create a measurable return, building what fits, and making sure the people using it can actually use it. Employee adoption is one of the most common failure points in AI projects, so addressing it is part of every engagement, and not an afterthought.

If a simple fix solves the problem, that's what gets recommended. The goal isn't to implement as much technology as possible, it's to make your business easier (and perhaps more enjoyable) to run.