I live south of Lincoln on a six-generation family farm. I also build AI systems for a living.

There's a particular kind of tired I see in business owners around Lincoln. Not physical tired, though there's that too. It's the tired that comes from doing three jobs when you should be doing one. You started the company to do the thing you're good at, and now you spend half your week on the stuff nobody else will handle. Invoicing. Scheduling. Chasing down the same information in four different places.

I know that tired because I've lived it. I co-founded a fractional CFO firm called 1610 Advisory with Mike Scheffert. I run the finances for a construction company doing $3M to $5M a year. I run a farm. I run a mobile coffee bar called Solace. My wife Analise and I have two kids under four. There are not enough hours.

AI didn't fix everything. But it took specific, concrete things off my plate that I was doing out of obligation, not ability. And that's what I think it can do for you, if we're honest about what it's good at and where it falls short.

How we figure out if AI helps you

I don't come in with a pitch about what AI can do in theory. I come in wanting to understand what your week actually looks like.

1. You walk me through a normal week. Where does your time go? Where does your team's time go? What are the things you keep meaning to fix but never get to? I'm listening for the gaps, not selling into them.
2. I'm honest about what fits. Most businesses have two or three places where AI genuinely helps. They also have a dozen places where it doesn't. I'll be specific about both.
3. You get a plain answer, not a document. Here's what I'd do first. Here's what it costs. Here's how long before you see the benefit. If the answer is "not yet," I'll say that.
4. You decide. If you want to move forward, I do the building. If you don't, no hard feelings. You'll know more than you did, and that's worth something on its own.

What I've actually built

I think when someone is going to give you advice about technology, you should be able to see what they've done with it. Not what they've studied. Not a client list. The actual work.

I built an open-source AI system called the AI CMO. It handles content strategy, SEO auditing, performance tracking, and client management for businesses with real revenue. Multiple companies run on it. The whole thing is public so you can judge for yourself.

I use these tools every day in businesses I own, with money I can't afford to waste. That changes how I think about what to recommend.

This is home

I shop at Runza. My kids will go to school here. I buy fence posts at the co-op. When I talk to business owners in Lincoln, I'm not flying in from somewhere else with a framework I learned at a conference. I'm talking to my neighbors about the same problems I'm solving in my own businesses, on the same roads, in the same economy.

The businesses I work with here, construction, agriculture, trades, professional services, they don't need an enterprise AI platform. They need to know if this thing can save them five or ten hours a week and whether the cost makes sense. Those are the only questions that matter, and I'd rather answer them over coffee than over a slide deck.