Fireside Ventures · AI operations for small business
AI, built into the tools your business already runs on.
Set up around your actual workflows, trained on how you work, and handed off so your team runs it. No new platform to learn. No tech hire. Less of the week lost to the same repetitive work.
A 90-minute look first. If there is nothing worth automating, that is what you will hear.
The work that never makes it onto anyone’s calendar
Every small business runs on a layer of work that no one was hired to do. The follow-up that goes out three days late, or not at all. The same five questions answered by hand a hundred times a month. The report that eats a Friday. The data sitting in four systems that never agree.
You already know where yours is. You feel it every week. It does not need a new software platform or a new hire. It needs the work itself to get done, quietly, inside the tools you already pay for.
One example
- Trigger
- A new lead comes in after hours
- What it does
- Answers, qualifies, and books the first call
- Outcome
- 6 booked meetings last month that used to slip away
One number, from real work
A college athletics development office had $12.5M in gifts spread across 1,726 rows that would not reconcile. Fireside built the match inside their own systems. It came back 94.2% clean at zero tolerance, flagged the 106 rows a person needed to see, and surfaced $230,860 in pledge payments ready to import. The client confirmed the pilot was worth what they paid and asked for more.
- $12.5Mreconciled
- 1,726rows
- 94.2%clean match
- $230,860surfaced
That was a large organization. The method is the same at a 6-person business: find the pile of work fighting your team, build something that does it inside your own tools, and hand it back so you own it.
The same office, after handoff
Not long after, the team needed a seating map of their arena: every seat clickable, tied back to the ticket holder in their own database. Building one had historically taken about three weeks. They made it themselves in about 10 minutes, with the setup that had been handed off. No ticket filed, no consultant in the room.
3 weeks → about 10 minutes · built by their own team
That is what the handoff is for. The tools stay. The speed stays.
How an engagement works
Three steps. Four weeks. You end up owning the result, not renting it.
01
A 90-minute look at where the time goes
Week 1. 90 minutes following the work that repeats, and one decision at the end of it: the workflow that costs you the most and is the safest to hand to a machine.
02
The workflow gets built inside your own tools
The work is set up where it already lives, in the systems you use now. It is trained on how your business actually runs, in your language, with your rules. You see it working on real data before it touches anything that matters.
03
Handed off so your team runs it
You get the workflow, the knowledge it runs on, and plain documentation your team can use on their own. No lock-in. No dependency on a consultant who has to be in the room. Extending it further is a choice, not a requirement.
What it costs
Pilot
$2,500 to $5,000
The standard first engagement. One workflow, built and handed off. The price is set before the work starts and it does not move.
Monthly support
$1,500 to $3,000
Keeps it running, fixes what breaks, and builds the next workflow when you are ready. Month to month. Cancel anytime.
Performance option
Pay on results
On workflows where the metric is visible to both sides, part of the fee can ride on the result. If the number does not move, you do not pay that part.
It starts with the 90-minute look. No charge for that conversation, and no obligation after it.
A one-person practice
Fireside Ventures is a one-person practice in Cleveland, Ohio. Behind it is 12 years running membership and ticketing operations for a college athletics program, untangling the exact kind of messy operational data that small businesses drown in.
The person you email is the person who builds the thing, every time. That is the point of keeping it small.
Start a conversation
Write down the part of your week you would hand off if you could. Every note gets read by the person who does the work, and answered within a day.
Send a note about the 90-minute look →
Or write directly: nick@firesideventuresai.com