Fireside Ventures · AI operations for small business
I put AI to work inside the tools your business already runs on.
Built 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, I will tell you.
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. I 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 me to keep going.
- $12.5Mreconciled
- 1,726rows
- 94.2%clean match
- $230,860surfaced
That was a large organization. The method is the same one I bring to 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.
How an engagement works
Three steps. Four weeks. You end up owning the result, not renting it.
01
I watch where the time goes
Week 1. I sit with you for 90 minutes and follow the work that repeats. We pick the one workflow that costs you the most and is the safest to hand to a machine.
02
I build it inside your own tools
I set the work up where it already lives, in the systems you use now. I train it 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
I hand it off so your team runs it
You get the workflow, the knowledge it runs on, and plain documentation your team can use without me. No lock-in. No dependency on a consultant who has to be in the room. If you want me to keep extending it, that 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. You know the price before we start 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 we can both see the metric move, 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.
Who you are working with
I am Nick Fulton. Fireside Ventures is a one-person practice in Cleveland, Ohio. I spent 12 years running membership and ticketing operations for a college athletics program, which is a long way of saying I have spent my career untangling the exact kind of messy operational data that small businesses drown in.
I do the work myself. You talk to the person building the thing, every time. That is the whole point of keeping this small.
Start a conversation
Tell me what part of your week you would hand off if you could. I read every note myself and reply within a day.
Email me about the 90-minute look →
Or write directly: nick@firesideventuresai.com