I help small and mid-size businesses hand their repetitive work to AI: sorting leads, reading documents, moving data between systems. I scope it, build it, wire it into the tools you already use, and keep it running.
Most owners I talk to aren't short on ideas. They're short on hours, because too many of them go to work like this:
None of that needs a person's judgment every single time. That's what I automate.
Most people know AI as a chat window you type questions into. That's worth getting good at, and I can help your team get more out of it. The bigger payoff comes from going beyond chat: connecting AI to your email, your systems, and your data, so the work gets done end to end. Here's what that makes possible:
Figure out what each message is about, how urgent it is, and who should handle it.
Write a first draft in your voice, ready for a person to approve and send.
Weigh a lead, request, or review against your own criteria: is it a fit, what kind is it, does it need a person?
Tell a hot lead or a serious problem from something that can wait, and put the rest in order.
Look up customer, order, and job details in your CRM, accounting, or scheduling software.
Pull the details out of invoices, contracts, PDFs, and forms.
Answer questions from your policies, price sheets, and past work, for your team or for customers on your website or by text.
Turn long email threads, calls, and reports into the few lines that matter.
Update records, book appointments, send follow-ups, and flag a person when something looks off.
Put together, these become end-to-end automations that run on their own, with a person in the loop wherever it matters.
My approach is simple: let people do what people are good at, and let automation handle the boring stuff and the heavy lifting you don't have time for.
I build in checkpoints wherever judgment matters, like approving a reply before it goes out in your name. Your data only goes where we've agreed it can.
Approvals arrive as an email or a notification on your phone. Read it, tap a button, and you're done. I take care of everything behind the scenes.
You know your business and your customers better than anyone, and your personal service is what got you here. Automation gives you the leverage to do more of it.
Automation isn't all or nothing. When the system is confident, it can handle things on its own. When a decision is tough or needs your judgment, it hands off to a person. We decide together where that line sits, and we can move it as your trust grows.
My bread and butter is getting information into your business and making sure the right thing happens next.
People who need work done often contact several businesses and book whoever answers first. When a lead comes in while you're busy on a job, it gets a reply right away, with your real availability and a way to book, so you win the job instead of calling back too late.
Leads, contact forms, customer messages, and online reviews get sorted by fit and urgency. A hot lead or a serious problem reaches you right away. A cold lead or a minor question waits for your daily summary, with a draft reply ready. You get bothered when you need to be, and not otherwise.
Invoices, PDFs, intake forms, and email attachments get read, and the details land where they belong: your accounting system, your CRM, or a spreadsheet. Anything unusual gets flagged for a person.
When your CRM, email, spreadsheets, and accounting don't talk to each other, someone on your team becomes the glue. I connect them so nobody retypes anything.
Something else on your mind? If it's repetitive, happens often, and follows the same rules most of the time, it's probably a good candidate.
The usual path is a free discovery call, one build, and then Support to keep it running. Everything else is there when you need it.
I start with the business problem and the math, not the technology. If an automation won't pay for itself, I'll tell you.
A free 30-minute call, then a closer look at the process. We agree on what success looks like and write down today's baseline, so the results are measurable.
I build the automation and connect it to your tools. You see it working on real examples before it goes live.
It goes live with monitoring, and with a person in the loop wherever judgment matters. From there, an optional monthly Support plan keeps it healthy and improving.
Everything runs in accounts you own: the AI assistants, the workflows behind them, and the services they use. Nothing is held hostage. If we ever part ways, you keep all of it, with documentation.
I'm choosing two businesses for a free pilot, picked for fit from the businesses I talk with. I build one automation, or take on a one-off data project, at no charge. You cover your own tool and API costs, and we measure the results against a baseline over 90 days.
Client case studies will appear here after the first pilots finish. In the meantime, here's an automation I built and run for my own business.
My own project
Finds new App Store reviews, decides which need a reply, and drafts one with Claude. Nothing is posted until I approve it.
n8n · App Store Connect API · Claude · TypeSafe
Read the case study
I'm Duane Fields. I've been building software and leading engineering teams for more than 30 years, from Netscape Navigator to VP of Software Engineering at GLG. Most recently I ran technology at Sur La Table, where I led the company's AI adoption, from the technical rollout to training people in every business function.
I'm still hands-on every day. When you work with me, you get the person who does the work, not a handoff to someone junior.
I build. I design the automation, build it, connect it to the tools you already use, and support it after launch. You won't get a slide deck and a list of subscriptions to sign up for.
The discovery call is free. After that, pricing comes in two parts. First, a one-time fee to build, quoted up front for a defined scope once we've looked at the process together. Then, if you want it, a monthly Support plan covering monitoring, fixes when something your automation depends on changes, and minor improvements. Automations aren't set and forget, since vendors change their systems and your business changes, which is why Support exists. But it's your choice: you can also take a documented handoff and run it yourself. New automations, audits, one-off data projects, and training are quoted as their own projects.
Separately, the tools your automations run on are billed to your own accounts, not marked up by me. An automation platform like n8n starts at about $20 a month. AI services charge by how much you use them, a few cents at a time, so the cost tracks your volume. I'll estimate both for your situation before we start.
Your automations run in accounts you own, and I only ask for the access a given job needs. Before I build anything, we decide together what data the automation can see and which AI services it may send it to. I use the business APIs from providers like Anthropic and OpenAI, which don't train their models on your data by default. That's different from the free and personal chat apps, which use conversations for training by default unless you opt out. If your team uses those today, that's worth a look. For anything sensitive, a person reviews the output before it goes anywhere.
The goal is to take the repetitive part of their jobs off their plates, so they can spend their time on the work that needs a person: customers, judgment calls, and the things that grow the business. In most small businesses, that's the work that's falling behind right now.
n8n, an automation platform, for most workflows, Claude and OpenAI for most of the AI work (or Gemini and Microsoft Copilot when you're already on Google Workspace or Microsoft 365), Zapier or Make when you already use them, and custom code when nothing off the shelf fits. I pick what's right for your business, not what's fashionable.
On a Support plan, I get alerted when an automation fails, and I reply within one business day. I don't offer after-hours emergency coverage, so I design each automation to fail safely: when something goes wrong, it pauses and flags a person instead of pushing ahead. Without Support, you have the documentation, and I'm happy to help as a separate project.
You do. It runs in your accounts, and you get documentation. I keep my own general-purpose tools and templates, but anything built specifically for your business is yours.
Yes. I work with businesses nationwide over video, and I'm happy to meet in person around Austin.
I help small and mid-size businesses stop losing hours to repetitive work: answering new leads, handling paperwork, and moving data between the tools they already use. If that sounds like someone you know, I'd be grateful for an introduction.
Tell me about it on a free 30-minute call. You'll leave with a clear sense of what's worth automating, whether or not we work together.
Book a discovery call