I'll give you an example from my own business. I'm head of finance at a construction company doing $3M to $5M a year. Every month, someone had to pull data out of QuickBooks, put it into a spreadsheet, format reports for the owners, and email them out. It took hours. Nobody enjoyed it. The reports were always a little late.
I built a system that pulls the data automatically, generates the reports, and puts them on a dashboard the owners can see anytime. The whole thing runs on its own. The person who used to do that work now spends those hours on things that actually require their brain.
That's what I mean by automation. Not a futuristic pitch about transforming your business. Just finding the repetitive work your team does every week and asking: does a person actually need to do this? If not, I build a system that handles it. If parts of it still need a human, I build the automation around those parts so the human work goes faster.
The kind of work we take off your team
Paperwork
"Someone has to process these"
Invoices, contracts, reports that land in an inbox and need to get into a system. AI reads them, pulls out what matters, routes them where they need to go. Your team handles the exceptions, not the pile.
Responses
"We're behind on email again"
Customer inquiries, form submissions, routine messages. AI drafts responses for the straightforward ones. Your team reviews anything that needs a human touch. Nothing sits unanswered for days.
Data
"I just need these numbers in one place"
Your CRM says one thing, your accounting software says another, and someone spends Friday afternoon copying between them. We connect the systems so the data moves itself.
Reporting
"Can you pull those numbers for me?"
Instead of someone assembling reports by hand every week, the reports build themselves and show up when you need them. Dashboards that update automatically, summaries in plain language.
How I think about what's worth automating
Not everything should be automated. I've seen businesses spend more setting up an automation than the task was costing them. So here's how I think about it:
| Question | If yes | If no |
|---|---|---|
| Does your team do this task at least weekly? | Worth exploring | Probably not |
| Does it follow a predictable pattern? | Good candidate | Needs a person |
| Does it take more than 30 minutes each time? | Strong ROI | Maybe later |
| Does it touch multiple systems? | High value | Simpler fix |
| Does a mistake here cost real money? | Priority | Lower stakes |
Most businesses I sit down with have three or four tasks that check every box. Those are the ones we build first.
Automations running in my own businesses right now
- The AI CMO manages content planning, SEO, and performance tracking across multiple clients. I built it because I couldn't afford to hire a marketing team for every business I run.
- Financial reports for a construction company pull from QuickBooks automatically, generate dashboards, and land on the owners' screens without anyone touching a spreadsheet.
- Client knowledge bases update themselves every six hours from internal notes. No manual publishing, no copy-paste, no "I forgot to update the site."
- Lead intake forms trigger email sequences and tracking automatically. Nobody has to remember to follow up.
The AI CMO is open source. I put the code on GitHub because I'd rather you see how I work than take my word for it.
Who I work with
Business owners in Omaha doing $250K to $10M in revenue who know their team is spending time on things that shouldn't require a person. You're in construction, trades, professional services, agriculture, or manufacturing. You're not looking to replace anyone. You just want the people you have spending their time on work that actually needs them.
If your team touches spreadsheets, email inboxes, and project management tools every day, there's almost certainly something I can automate that gives you real hours back. I'm Dawson Schrader, co-founder of 1610 Advisory, a fractional CFO firm. I run these same automations in my own businesses because I had the same problem you do: too much work that doesn't require me, not enough time for the work that does.
Tell me what's eating your team's time.
30 minutes. You walk me through the repetitive stuff, I'll tell you which parts I can automate and which ones I can't. No pitch. If it's not the right fit, I'll say so.