Big companies have someone for this. You don't.
You're really a few businesses under one roof, on systems that don't talk, and nobody's job is connecting them.
Small operational faults that quietly cost a business work — a quote entered twice, an inquiry no one answered, a customer who drifted away.
The part of your business
that nobody was ever
hired to look at
Every business that's lasted twenty years does something slightly unusual, and that unusual thing is usually where the money is. It's also the part nothing was built for — so it gets done by hand, or from memory, or not at all.
You already know where it is. It's the thing you'd explain to a new hire and then say don't worry, I'll handle that part myself.
Nobody asks why the same address gets typed three times. Nobody works out why April's quotes never got followed up. It isn't neglect. It's that it was never anyone's job.
Fifteen years of this, mostly for companies that could afford to do it properly
I studied design, then spent fifteen years as a functional architect supporting SAP for supply chain — quoting, inventory, and everything that has to happen between an order and a shipment. American Railcar. Boeing.
That's not name-dropping. It's the whole argument. Sitting with a business and working out what's broken is an ordinary job at that size — and nothing about the method requires the company to be that size.
You're not Boeing. But the shape underneath is the same: a few businesses under one roof, systems that don't talk, work that falls between them, and no one whose job is to join it up. That's the problem I worked on at scale, just closer to the ground.
And it's me. One person. No account manager, no team you never meet. If you'd rather have a firm, hire a firm — they're good, and a first project will cost you somewhere between ten and forty thousand.
Mine is a small fraction of that, and it starts with a conversation — not an invoice.
I'm Michael. You work with me, start to finish — the same person who does the asking, the design, and the building.
St. Charles County, Missouri.
I checked 446 business websites in St. Charles County
Nobody asked me to. I wanted to know what was actually broken out here, so I went through every local business site I could find and wrote down what I found — every figure sourced, nothing rounded in my favour.
Among the businesses paying a vendor every month, more than one in three have nothing on the site that measures whether it's working at all. That's the same looking the diagnostic does, pointed at one business instead of four hundred.
It starts with a conversation.
First we talk — no charge, no pitch. You tell me what's going on; I tell you honestly whether I see anything worth chasing.
If there is, that's the diagnostic. A few hours following how the work actually moves — where enquiries go, what happens to them, where things get written down twice, what depends on someone remembering. I scope it to the job and price it to the work, and it comes off whatever you build next.
You get it in writing — what I found, what it's likely costing, what's worth fixing and what isn't. Yours whether or not you do anything else.
Sometimes the answer is don't spend money on this. That's a real finding and I'll say it plainly. A diagnostic that always concludes "hire me" isn't a diagnostic.
Start a conversation →Someone writes at 9pm. It answers and puts it on the calendar.
Fill in a fake request and watch an AI read it, offer real times, and book one. It actually runs — not a video, not a mockup.
This is the kind of thing I mean by a fix: the after-hours calls that used to go to voicemail get answered, and it's booked before you're back at your desk.
Watch it run →Start with how the work moves. Not with what to buy.
Most people who'd sell you something arrive with the answer already chosen. I don't know what you need until I've seen how a job actually gets from an enquiry to an invoice.
I ask.
What's slow. What gets done twice. What you'd hire someone for if you could. What happens when you're away for a week.
I follow the work.
Where a job starts, everywhere it stops, who touches it, what gets written down and where. Not your software — your work. The software comes into it later, and often it turns out you already own something that would have done the job.
I write down what I found.
In plain language, with what each thing is likely costing you. This is where you tell me I've misread your business, and you usually have.
I design a fix, on paper.
What it does, what it won't do, what it costs, what could go wrong. Arguable before it's expensive.
We go round again.
The first design is rarely right. That's the point of doing it on paper.
I build it, in phases.
Each phase works on its own and gets paid for when it's delivered.
I keep it running.
Things rot, businesses change, somebody has to tend it. Usually me.
Tools, not products
Only once we know what's wrong. Which ones get used depends entirely on what the diagnostic turns up.
Something that answers when you can't.
A form that reaches a person, a reply that goes out in minutes instead of days, a message back after hours.
One place to enter something, once.
So a quote doesn't get keyed again into two other places by somebody who has better things to do.
A list of who to call today, and why.
Built from what your own business already knows — who's overdue, who's gone quiet, whose anniversary it is — because nobody has time to work that out from a spreadsheet.
A screen that fits how you actually work,
instead of one you're fighting because it was built for a different kind of company.
A website,
if the one you've got is losing you work. Built, and then looked after.
AI where it earns its place —
reading what nobody has time to read, answering the phone when nobody can, turning what you said into what you'd otherwise have to type. One tool among several, used when it's the right one and not when it isn't.
Or nothing.
Sometimes what you've got is fine and the money's better spent elsewhere.
Sometimes the fix is a system. Sometimes it's just a site that works, and something watching it. If that's what you need, here's that.
No charge to talk.
The conversation costs nothing. If there's a diagnostic worth doing, I scope it to the work and we agree the price before I invoice a cent — no deposit, nothing before.
Sometimes the finding is don't spend money on this. Being paid either way is what lets me say so.
We'll talk when it matters.
Working out what's wrong, reviewing a design, testing, going live — those need a conversation. Status updates don't. Most of the back and forth is email and a shared document, and when we do need to talk I'll fit around you, including early or after hours.
Tell me what's going on.
I'm in St. Charles County. Most of my work is within half an hour of here.
I read every message myself. You'll hear back within a day.