For Small Business Owners
Get 5 Hours a Week Back From Your Business. Guaranteed.
An AI Tools Assessment for small businesses with 2–20 employees. Guided pre-work in a private client portal, focused interviews with the people who do the work, and one prescriptive report of off-the-shelf AI tools that fit how you actually operate. No jargon, no custom software, no retainer required. Based in Atlanta, working with businesses anywhere.
You Don't Have an AI Problem. You Have a Time Problem.
You're running a real business. Payroll, customers, the truck that broke down Tuesday. Meanwhile every vendor, every podcast, and probably your brother-in-law keeps telling you AI is going to change everything.
They might be right. But evaluating forty tools you've never heard of is a part-time job, and you already have three of those. So AI stays on the someday list while the admin work keeps eating 10, 15, 20 hours of your week: the email, the scheduling, the invoices, the follow-ups.
The assessment does the evaluation for you. Your team tells us how the business actually runs, through guided pre-work and short interviews. I come back with the short list of tools that actually fit it, plus the math on the hours they buy back.
How It Works
Five steps. Pre-work happens on your schedule, interviews are short and focused, and the analysis is entirely on our side of the desk.
Pre-Work in Your Client Portal
Right after checkout you get a private portal link. No account, no passwords, works on your phone, and it saves as you type. Six short sections, about an hour total, done on your schedule:
- Answer in as many sittings as you need; your progress keeps
- Forward the link to whoever on your team knows an answer best
- Upload the documents that show how the business actually runs
- Tell us who we should interview and how to schedule them
Stakeholder Interviews
Short, focused conversations with the people who feel the pain: about an hour with you, 30-45 minutes each with leads like scheduling, billing, and HR. Every interview is recorded and transcribed so nothing gets lost. We dig into:
- A walk through yesterday, hour by hour: where the day actually went
- The tasks people dread and the ones that keep getting pushed
- Where work piles up waiting on someone
- What you already tried that did not stick, from tools to automations
Analysis (Our Side of the Desk)
The part that costs you zero hours. I take everything from the portal and the interviews, analyze your workflows against the current AI tool landscape, identify the 5-7 highest-value opportunities, and pressure-test every pick against tools I use daily in my own business and client work.
Prescriptive Report
Within a week of the last interview you get a report built to be acted on, not filed. It opens with an executive summary naming your top 3 moves and ranks every recommendation by impact against effort. No "explore your options" filler. Full contents below.
30-Minute Review Call
We screen-share the report and walk each recommendation together. You leave with three things decided:
- Which recommendation is most urgent for your business
- What you will do yourself and where you might want help
- Your rollout timeline, starting day one
- Then questions by email for 30 days after the call
What's in the Report
- An executive summary naming your top 3 moves, in order
- A priority matrix ranking every recommendation by impact against effort
- 3–7 specific tool prescriptions matched to your actual workflows, each with what it replaces, monthly cost, and setup time
- Hours-reclaimed estimate per tool, against the baseline from your pre-work and interviews
- A week-by-week rollout order, so you're never adopting more than one thing at a time
- A quick-start plan for the first four days: one 10-minute action per day
- The financial math: hours returned × what your time is worth − tool costs
- What NOT to buy: the tools and categories that don't fit a business your size, and why
The Guarantee
Reclaim 5 hours a week within 30 days, or the assessment is free.
We baseline your hours during the pre-work and interviews, so "reclaimed" means measured against real numbers, not vibes. Implement the report, and if you're not at least 5 hours a week lighter after 30 days, I refund the full $999. The average client gets back more than that from the first two tools alone.
Who This Is For
A good fit
- 2–20 employees, roughly $500K–$5M in revenue
- Service-heavy operations, where the money comes from people doing work
- The owner still does admin: email, scheduling, invoices, follow-ups
- You know AI could help but haven't had time to figure out how
Not a fit
- Enterprises with an IT department (you need a different engagement)
- Anyone wanting custom software built (this prescribes existing tools)
- Businesses looking for someone to run the tools for them. That's the AI Concierge, offered after your assessment
Pricing
AI Tools Assessment
$999flat
Everything in one price: pre-work portal, stakeholder interviews, analysis, prescriptive report, review call, and 30 days of email questions. Checkout takes about two minutes, and you book your kickoff interview as soon as payment goes through.
Backed by the guarantee: reclaim 5 hours a week within 30 days, or the full $999 comes back.
The $999 Is Just the Door
Most clients take the report and run with it. For the ones who want more, this is what comes after. It never gets pitched during the assessment.
The Upsell, Plainly Stated
AI Concierge
Two working sessions a month where we implement together: automations, Claude skills, the bigger projects your report flags. Async questions between sessions. From $1,200/month, capped at six clients so every engagement gets real attention.
We discuss it after your assessment and report, once you've digested everything and know whether you want to implement the changes yourself or would rather have help.
Prefer a one-off project? Automation builds, knowledge systems, and full implementations are scoped case by case after your assessment, and the $999 credits toward any build of $3,000 or more.
Who's Behind This
I'm Ed Gaile: 25+ years building and running technology, and a small business owner myself. I've done the payroll, chased the invoices, and answered email at 10pm, which is exactly why this assessment prescribes tools you can adopt in an afternoon instead of transformation roadmaps.
I'm based in Atlanta and happy to work in person with local businesses, or remotely with anyone. I use these tools daily, build with AI professionally, and have no affiliation with anything I recommend.
Questions, Answered
What kind of tools do you recommend?
Off-the-shelf software you can sign up for the same day: AI note-takers, email triage, scheduling, document automation, industry-specific tools. I have no affiliate relationships and no stake in what you pick. If the honest answer to a problem is a $15/month tool, that's what goes in the report.
Do I need technical staff to use what you recommend?
No. Every tool in the report is chosen partly for how quickly your team can adopt it. Setup time is listed per tool, and most are under an hour. If a recommendation would need a developer, it doesn't go in the report. It goes in a separate section labeled as a bigger project, clearly marked optional.
We already use ChatGPT. Is this still useful?
Almost certainly. Using ChatGPT puts you ahead of most small businesses, but it's one tool applied generically. The assessment finds the specific tools that attach to your actual bottlenecks, the places generic chat doesn't reach: the invoicing, the scheduling, the follow-up emails.
How is the 5-hour guarantee measured?
During the pre-work and interviews we baseline how many hours a week the target tasks currently take. The report estimates hours reclaimed per tool. Implement the recommendations, and if after 30 days you haven't reclaimed at least 5 hours a week against that baseline, I refund the full $999.
When do I pay?
Up front. Checkout takes about two minutes, and you book your kickoff interview as soon as payment goes through. Your private pre-work portal link follows by email, and we schedule the remaining interviews with the people you name there. The guarantee carries the risk from there: if you have not reclaimed at least 5 hours a week within 30 days of implementing the report, the full $999 comes back.
Is my business information confidential?
Yes. Your pre-work, the interviews, and everything derived from them stay between us. If I ever want to reference your results in marketing, I'll ask first, and anonymize it either way.
In person or remote?
Either. I'm in Atlanta, and for local businesses I'm happy to do the interviews at your office. Remote works fine everywhere else; interviews and the review call run on Zoom or Google Meet.
What happens after the assessment?
Most clients implement the report themselves. It's designed for that. Some want the tools built into their business with help, and that's the AI Concierge: two working sessions a month where we implement together, from $1,200/month, capped at six clients so every engagement gets real attention. It only comes up once you've digested your report and know whether you want to implement it yourself or with help. Prefer a one-off project instead? Automation builds, knowledge systems, and full implementations are scoped case by case, and the $999 credits toward any build of $3,000 or more.
Your Time Back, or Your Money Back.
The assessment asks for about an hour of pre-work, a handful of short interviews, and $999. The guarantee stands behind all of it: reclaim at least 5 hours a week within 30 days of implementing the report, or the full amount comes back. The only thing you can lose is the admin work.