For small and mid‑size business leaders

Put AI to work,
starting tomorrow morning.

See the full-day class Book a call
Stephen Akian and Eric Karofsky
STEPHEN & ERIC
Stephen Akian
An entrepreneur who scaled a business to $14 million and still runs it every day.
Eric Karofsky
An AI expert who has built for everything from global brands to small businesses.

Most AI advice for small and mid-size businesses comes from one of two places: marketers who have never met a payroll, or technologists who have never faced a customer.

We've done both.

There's no shortage of AI advice.
That's the problem.

So how do you know which ones are worth the money?

Every week there's a new tool, a new post, a new guy on YouTube telling you what you should be doing. Most of it isn't wrong. It's just not for you. None of it accounts for the fact that whoever owns AI at your company is learning it the same week you are, and the work doesn't stop while you figure it out.

So you end up with a folder of bookmarks and nothing running in your business.

We'll help you sort it. What's worth your time this quarter, what can wait, and what to leave alone.

The free advice isn't wrong. It's just not about your business. This is.

Build your AI chief of staff

A daily to-do list. A weekly scoreboard. Everything remembered.

A full day, live. You build a real AI agent, not a chatbot, and you leave with it running. You don't watch a demo. You build it, live, with us.

By the end of class it knows your customers, your people, and how you write, and it doesn't forget any of it when you close the laptop. It tracks who owes you what, drafts replies in your voice, catches scheduling conflicts you'd otherwise miss, and flags what is about to slip, so you're not the only one holding it all in your head.

What tomorrow morning looks like

7:40 AM. Coffee in hand. You open it up.

It has already read your inbox and your calendar. It doesn't hand you the raw pile. It tells you what needs you.

"There are five things that need your attention.

  • The Delgados emailed at 11 last night. They're not happy with what you sent Friday and they want a call today.
  • The vendor just moved your delivery date three weeks. You committed to Monday.
  • The bank meeting is Thursday. You told me to have the scoreboard ready by Tuesday. Drop in last month's export and I'll build it.
  • And the interview you booked for 2 PM lands right on top of the weekly team meeting. Should I reschedule?
  • Dave still hasn't responded to your email. Should I draft a follow-up?"

You say: draft an apology to the Delgados and get me on a call with them today, ask the vendor what they can deliver by Monday, here's the export for the bank, and yes, move the interview. Offer tomorrow, same time. And draft the follow-up to Dave.

By the time you've finished your coffee, drafts are ready, sounding like you because it learned from the emails you actually send. Six weeks of scoreboards are in one file, revenue and average sale both flagged, ready to print.

Five minutes. Everything that needs you, nothing that goes out without you.

What you will build in class

No coding, no technical background required. You build it step by step, on your own screen.

Set up your workspace. Three lists go live in the first hour: what you owe, what you're waiting on, what needs escalating.
Teach it to write like you. Pulled from your last 30 days of sent mail. You'll also learn to spot when a draft doesn't sound right, before it goes out.
Tell it who owns what. The callback that used to sit for two days because nobody claimed it now goes straight to whoever owns it.
Bring what you already run. QuickBooks, a CRM, your job or case system, a shared drive, or a clipboard. Drop in some exports, get your first real scoreboard that afternoon.
Walk out with it live. Your first daily to-do list and your first weekly scoreboard, talked through with you, not dumped on you as a spreadsheet.

What it can and cannot do

It's an agent, not a chatbot. You don't have to prompt it every time. It works a task through on its own, across your inbox, your calendar and your files, and comes back with the thing done. It also runs on a schedule, so the daily report is written before you sit down.

It reads what you connect: your inbox and calendar, your texts, and wherever else your team writes things down. It won't act without you saying so, it won't touch anything you haven't connected, and it won't pretend to know a number it wasn't given. Every draft, every list, every routing rule stays visible and editable. And it doesn't take weekends off: what you told it in March is still there in October.

How this is different from other AI chief of staff programs

On-device programs. Some run on a tool called OpenClaw. It runs commands and makes changes on your computer by itself, and it installs add-ons from a public library. In one audit this year, researchers found 341 fake add-ons there built to steal passwords. If it's ever hijacked, whoever controls it has the same access you do: your files, your email, your systems.
Do-it-yourself assistants. ChatGPT and Grok can now read your email and calendar and send you a morning summary. But you start with a blank box and set it up alone, so most people get a generic summary instead of their business: who owns the callback, what the bank needs by Tuesday, what a good week looks like in their own numbers.
Heavy setup programs. Deep research, a real workspace, real files, but no daily habit built in. You get a system that knows your business and then never gets used again after week one.
This class. You build it in one day, step by step, around your own inbox, your own crew and your own numbers. It writes like you, it knows who owns what, and nothing goes out without your yes. You walk out with it running.
$850
One person
$650
Per person, teams of 2 or more

Upcoming dates are posted here as classes are scheduled.

Best practice: bring your leadership team.

Ask about the next class
WHERE THIS GOES NEXT

Once we know your business, there are two deeper ways we work with a single company.

HALF OR FULL DAY, JUST YOUR COMPANY

Private workshops

Just your team, your numbers, your systems. Half a day or a full day on one subject, facilitated. We work through it with your people rather than presenting at them.

AI foundations for owners and ops managers.
Where AI fits in your business over the next 12 months, and what to ignore.
Mapping how work moves from first call to cash, and finding what it's costing you.
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BUILT, DEPLOYED, MANAGED

Implementation

We work out what's worth building, then build it into the systems you already run, whatever they are. We can manage it after, or hand it over and train your people on it.

Building it is the easy part. Getting your people to use it is the job, and we plan for that from the start.

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Two people who have done this from opposite ends.

Stephen Akian and Eric Karofsky

Stephen Akian

OPERATOR

15 years in home services, and still in it. He runs Akian Plumbing, Heating, Cooling and Electric in the Boston area, an eight-figure business: 20,000 customers, 50,000 work orders, crews, trucks, payroll, the whole thing.

He makes the same decisions you're making. Which software to buy and which to rip out. What to do when the phone rings after hours and nobody picks up. Whether the new hire is worth another month. The uniforms differ. The decisions don't.

Eric Karofsky

BUILDER

20+ years leading digital programs for companies like Michelin, Royal Caribbean, Fidelity, and The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.

A frequent speaker on AI innovation and adoption.

He starts with what the business needs and who has to use it, then builds something that people will actually use and that pays for itself.

Who this is for

Owners and operators of small and mid-size businesses.

Home services, construction, manufacturing, distribution, professional services, clinics and practices, restaurants and retail groups, logistics. If you run the place, this is for you.

You have revenue coming in and people depending on you
You have a business to run and not much time to figure out AI on your own
You want to know what's worth your time and what isn't
You would rather hear from people who have run a business than people who have read about one
You can't tell your team to trust the AI if you've never built one yourself
You're the one who notices when something is about to slip, and you're tired of being the only one

Questions

Who should come?
You and whoever helps run the business. Your GM, your office manager, whoever owns the phones and the follow-ups.
Does it matter what industry I am in?
No. You build it around your own business during the day, using your own mail, your own calendar and your own exports. Sitting next to someone from a different industry tends to help, not hurt.
Do I need to be technical?
Not at all. This is entirely no-code and text-driven. You can even simply talk to tell it what to do.
Do I need to bring numbers?
No, but it helps. If you can say where your work comes from and what's falling through the cracks now, we build something that fits your business instead of a generic version.
What do I actually leave with?
A working system. Your chief of staff is running before class ends, not sketched on a whiteboard. You're not leaving with a plan to build later.
Do you sell me something at the end?
No pitch. You leave with the system built. If you want ongoing help running it, that's a separate offer, and we say so plainly rather than folding it into the class.
Do you work with our existing software?
Yes. Most of what we build sits on top of what you already have, whether that's a CRM, a job or case management system, or accounting.

Talk to us

Tell us what you're dealing with and we'll follow up. No pitch. If we're not the right fit, we'll say so.

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