Your competitors are deploying AI.
You are still evaluating vendors.
I am a fractional Chief AI Officer for B2B mid-market CEOs running companies between $50M and $500M in revenue. In 90 days you have a working AI system shipped into production. In 12 months you operate at a 15–25% cost advantage your competitors cannot close in under two years. One operator. One accountable name. No deck.
90 days
First system shipped
15–25%
Cost advantage in 12 mo
3 slots
Active engagements — max
The Cost of Standing Still
You do not get this decade back.
AI compounds. Every month a competitor ships a working system, the gap widens. Here is what a year without an AI operating strategy actually costs at your revenue tier — in numbers you can verify against your own P&L:
1–2% of annual margin
lost every quarter to competitors whose AI-leveraged operations let them quote faster, ship faster, and bid 12–18% lower than you can match.
$50K–$500K per failed pilot
and the industry average is 70% of AI projects never reach production. Three failed pilots is a million-dollar education with nothing in the field.
$400K+ for a full-time CAIO
base, equity, recruiting fees, and 9 months to ramp — before they ship a single system. And the right hire at your revenue tier almost doesn't exist on the open market.
$100K–$2M in vendor lock-in
signing the wrong AI platform contract because no one on your side knew which questions to ask. By the time you find out, you're 24 months in.
Your best operators
leaving for shops that feel modern. Once your top 10% start updating LinkedIn, the cost of falling behind on AI compounds into a talent crisis.
12–24 months of irrecoverable ground
because the companies that figure out AI in this window compound. The ones that don't get acquired, get squeezed, or get replaced.
Why Every Other Option Has Failed You
You don't need another advisor.
You need an operator who has built what they are recommending.
Every option on the market today fails the same way: someone tells you what to do, then hands the work to someone else, and the system never ships. Four versions of the same failure:
Strategy consultants
Big Four engagement. Six-figure invoice. A 47-slide deck and a project plan they hand back to you to execute. They have never deployed an LLM in production. They never will. You are paying for a thesis, not a system.
Internal IT
You promote your smartest IT manager to "Director of AI." They are loyal. They are talented. They have never shipped a production agentic system. Twelve months in: three failed pilots, a frustrated team, the same question you started with.
AI software vendors
They sell you what they built, not what you need. The demo dazzles. The implementation collapses against your actual systems, your actual politics, your actual data. You bought a hammer for a problem that wasn't a nail.
A full-time CAIO hire
$300K base, $50K recruiting, six to nine months to ramp. At a $100M company, you are betting half a million dollars on one resume — and the right resume rarely exists on the open market at that comp level.
The pattern: the person telling you what to do has not done it themselves. The person doing it has no authority to tell you what is worth doing. You are paying both, getting neither, and your competitors are shipping.
What You Walk Into a Year From Now
In 12 months, AI is your operating advantage —
not a slide your competitors also have.
Your first AI system is live in production.
Not a demo. Not a pilot. A working system inside your real workflow with measurable dollar impact. The team has seen it work. The skeptics convert. The board has something concrete to point to.
Two or three systems operating in parallel.
Your highest-leverage workflows are AI-augmented. Cycle time is down. Margin is up. Your internal team is being trained, not replaced. A board-ready quarterly AI report is on the calendar.
A 15–25% operating cost advantage your competitors cannot match in under two years.
AI is no longer a project. It is an operating system. Your board stops asking "what about AI" and starts asking "what is next." You acquire smaller competitors who fell behind, or you sell at a premium because operators value what you built.
The Offer
Everything you need to deploy AI —
nothing you don't.
Here is exactly what is included when you engage. No surprises. No scope creep. No handoffs.
On-site discovery with your leadership team — I learn your business before I touch anything
A written 12-month AI roadmap ranked by dollar value, not by what is trending
Direct build leadership on your first production system — not a handoff to a junior team
A production-grade agentic AI framework built for mid-market operations (not a prototype)
Vendor evaluation and contract review — I tell you what to buy and what to walk away from
Integration into your real systems: ERP, CRM, document management, whatever you run
Internal team training so your people own what we build, not just use it
Board-ready monthly AI report: initiatives, spend, ROI, and what is next
Async access to me between sessions for vendor calls, contract red-lines, and second opinions
A hard cap of three active clients — you get me, not a delivery pod billing under my name
What this is not
A slide deck you take back to your team and figure out how to execute
Hourly billing for vague advisory calls
A junior delivery team in another time zone rebranded as senior work
A roadmap that ends when the engagement ends
Vendor lock-in disguised as "AI strategy"
A handoff to a third-party integrator the moment something needs to actually ship
The Process
Discovery → Roadmap → Build → Operate.
Most CAIOs do one phase. I do all four — and each phase has a written output you keep whether we continue or not.
Discovery
Week 1–2
On-site with your leadership team. Interview the people who actually do the work. Map systems, data, vendors, and the political terrain. By the end of week two, you have a written list of every AI opportunity in your business — ranked by dollar value, not by what is trending on LinkedIn.
You walk away with
A prioritized opportunity list ranked by dollar impact and time to value.
Roadmap
Week 3–4
A prioritized 12-month plan delivered as a written document, not a slide deck. Project sequence with budget bands and KPI targets. The first project scoped to ship inside 90 days. An executive summary your board, PE sponsor, or partners can fund without a follow-up meeting.
You walk away with
A written 12-month plan with sequence, budget bands, success metrics, and a board-ready executive summary.
Build
Month 2–3
I lead the actual implementation. Using a production-grade agentic framework, a senior internal team, your people, or your preferred vendors — whichever serves the outcome. Working systems in your environment. Not prototypes. Not demos. Production.
You walk away with
A working AI system live in production with measurable impact.
Operate
Month 4+
Keep what we shipped running. Improve it. Layer the next use case on top. Train your internal point person to take more ownership every quarter. The endgame is that you do not need me anymore — that is the success metric.
You walk away with
A running AI function, a trained internal team, and a quarterly review cadence.
Senior AI leadership. A fraction of the cost of a full-time CAIO hire.
Three active engagement slots. One accountable operator. Real systems shipped in 90 days.
Qualification
I work with a narrow type of client by design.
If you do not see yourself in the left column, save us both time and do not apply. The fastest way to disappoint a CEO is to take on a client who is not ready.
Apply if …
- You run a B2B company between $50M and $500M in revenue
- Your board, owners, or PE sponsor are asking about AI and you do not have a confident answer
- You have tried AI projects that did not ship — or you have been afraid to start because you do not know what to start with
- You want one accountable person, not another consulting engagement
- You can comfortably invest $10–25K/month in senior AI leadership but $400K/year for a full-time hire is overinvested for your stage
- You are ready to act in the next 30 days, not "exploring options" for the next six months
Do not apply if …
- You are an early-stage startup still finding product-market fit
- You want a slide deck to show your board, not a system that ships
- You are shopping for the cheapest AI advisor on LinkedIn
- You expect the work to be done by junior consultants and rebranded under a senior name
- You are not ready to make a decision in the next 30 days
- You want to "do AI for the sake of doing AI" without a business problem identified
Track Record
Real businesses. Real systems. Real outcomes.
Clients are named only on request and under NDA. The wins below are real, recent, and described by outcome — because that is what you are buying.
15+
Years operating B2B businesses with full P&L responsibility
$500M
Revenue of the federal contracting business I currently lead
40+
AI roadmap sessions delivered for mid-market operators
3
Active client slots — and never more
Steel and industrial services company
Quote-to-customer cycle compressed from 5 business days to under 6 hours. Sales team capacity effectively doubled without adding headcount.
Medical device manufacturer
Compliance documentation workflow rebuilt with an agentic AI system. Recovered an estimated 4,200 senior-engineer hours per year — redeployed to product development.
Federal hardware VAR
First production AI system shipped in 87 days. Now embedded in the bid-response workflow on contracts north of $10M.
National lab environment
Deployed an agentic AI assistant inside a restricted compute environment with full audit trail and data-residency compliance. Live in production.
Engagement Tiers
Three retainer tiers. One entry point.
Every retainer starts with a paid AI Roadmap Session — that is how we both find out if this is a fit before either of us commits to a long-term engagement.
Advisory
Strategy and senior judgment, no build.
$5K–$8K/ month
Price varies by revenue size, number of active builds, and on-site vs. remote cadence
- Monthly working session with the CEO
- Async access for vendor evaluation and contract review
- Quarterly AI landscape briefing for the leadership team
- Board-ready written update every quarter
- Best fit for companies with a competent internal builder who needs senior direction
Builder
Strategy plus delivery on up to two active builds.
$10K–$15K/ month
Price varies by revenue size, number of active builds, and on-site vs. remote cadence
- Everything in Advisory
- Full AI roadmap session included on engagement
- Hands-on build leadership for up to 2 active projects
- Access to a senior implementation team and a production agentic framework
- Weekly check-ins with the CEO during active builds
- Monthly written executive report — board-ready
Embedded
Acting CAIO. You stop thinking about AI staffing.
$18K–$25K/ month
Price varies by revenue size, number of active builds, and on-site vs. remote cadence
- Everything in Builder
- Weekly C-suite presence — sit at your leadership table
- Full AI function ownership across all initiatives
- Team training and internal capability build-out
- Board and PE-sponsor presence on the AI agenda
- Direct line — dedicated Slack channel, mobile, calendar
Start here: AI Roadmap Session — $2,500 + travel. Most clients start here.
A one-day on-site working session with your leadership team. You walk away with a written 12-month plan, a prioritized opportunity list with dollar values, and a board-ready summary — yours to keep whether we continue or not. If we move to a Builder or Embedded retainer within 60 days, the roadmap fee credits in full toward the first month.
Your Downside
If this doesn't work, you don't pay for the work that didn't.
On the Roadmap Session
If you finish the one-day session and do not believe the written 12-month plan is worth more than the $2,500 fee, tell me before you leave the room and I refund the engagement in full. The plan is yours to keep regardless. In four years of running these sessions I have refunded zero — but the policy stands.
On the retainer
If after the first 90 days you do not have a working AI system in production and a clear next-quarter plan — I refund the previous 60 days of retainer. No clawback games. No mediation. You email me, I wire the money back. This works because I do not take engagements I cannot deliver on. The qualification call is where I rule those out.
FAQ
Questions every CEO asks before applying.
How is this different from hiring another AI consultant?
Why fractional instead of a full-time CAIO hire?
You said "operator who builds." What does that mean concretely?
Can you work in our specific industry?
What is the time commitment from my team?
How do you handle confidentiality and our data?
What happens if we just want a one-time roadmap?
Why only three active engagements?
Stop renting strategy.
Start shipping AI.
If you are a CEO of a $50M–$500M B2B company and the board is asking about AI, the right move is not another consultant. It is senior AI leadership embedded in your business — without the $400K+ full-time commitment. Apply below. If we are a fit, you are on the calendar inside a week.
Applications reviewed personally. Reply within 2 business days. NDA available on request.