I help owners of established Sonoma, Napa, and Marin businesses see where AI creates real value — then build the first one so you know it works before you invest in it.
Business technology experience from 1982 to today.
Free 60-minute consultation, by video call or in person. No obligation.
It's knowing which of the forty possible things actually matters for your company — and which will cost you money, attention, and credibility with your team.
You know AI matters. What you don't know is where it would create real value in your business, what to pursue first, and what to deliberately ignore. Disconnected experiments aren't a strategy.
Employees are using AI whether it's been discussed or not. The open questions are whether they're using it well, what company information is going into it, and who is accountable for the output.
Every option seems to require a significant investment before you learn whether it works. So the safe move becomes waiting — while competitors who guessed right pull ahead.
The expense isn't a bad AI purchase. It's the year spent deciding, while the work that could have been automated stays manual, the people who could have been more productive stay stuck, and the competitor who moved first builds an advantage that gets harder to close.
Schedule a ConsultationI started working in business technology in 1982, when the personal computer was still a radical idea for most companies. In the 44 years since, I've helped businesses evaluate and adopt several generations of technology — and watched which promises held up and which didn't.
I founded and led The Power Store, an IT consulting and custom software company, for 17 years — growing it to 55 people. Since then I've worked as a technology executive, business owner, and advisor to small and midsize companies.
AI may be the most consequential shift yet. But the questions leadership has to answer are the ones I've been helping people answer for four decades: what creates real value, what introduces unnecessary risk, and what should we do first.
More About My BackgroundUnderstand the business first, the technology second.
Separate lasting value from hype.
Prepare the people who will be affected.
Invest only where it produces a meaningful result.
AI will affect your entire company. The response should start with the whole picture — not with whichever department happened to ask first.
Leadership priorities, recurring workflows, sales, marketing, operations, administration, reporting, workforce readiness, current employee AI use, existing systems and data, security and confidentiality, and competitive pressure.
A prioritized plan: where AI could create the most value, what to pursue first, what to defer, what to avoid entirely, what training your people need, which tools deserve evaluation, and what to do in the next 30, 90, and 180 days.
Reviews typically run two to four weeks. Scope, deliverables, and schedule are agreed before we begin — you'll know exactly what you're getting and when.
See What the Review CoversMost AI consulting ends with a document. Mine doesn't have to.
When the review surfaces an opportunity worth testing, I can build a focused working application — internal tool, dashboard, client-facing service — in weeks, so you learn whether it delivers before committing to a larger investment.
An advisor who never implements bears no cost for a bad recommendation. I might have to build what I recommend, which is a useful discipline — it keeps the plan grounded in what can actually be delivered.
Every plan I write includes what I recommended against — and it's often the most valuable section. I don't resell software and I'm not anyone's partner, so when the answer is "defer all three vendors who approached you," that's what the plan says.
Prepare owners, managers, and employees to use AI confidently and responsibly. Start with practical foundations, then train specific teams against their actual workflows.
Learn more →Turn the highest-value opportunity into working software your people or customers can actually use — built fast, scoped tightly, and tested with real users before you scale it.
Learn more →Optional monthly access to an experienced advisor as tools and priorities change — without creating an internal AI leadership position you don't need yet.
Learn more →Five minutes, no sales call attached. You'll get a readiness summary showing where your company stands and which areas are most likely to produce value.
Your responses also feed an anonymized study of how North Bay businesses are actually adopting AI — which I'll share with everyone who participates.
Take the SurveyWhere AI is already being used in your company
Which workflows consume the most manual effort
How prepared your team is to adopt new tools
What information needs protecting
Where the clearest early opportunities sit