about*
Owner of Award Coatings. Builder of the AI systems that run it. I share what survives a real Monday, in plain English.
I own a floor coating company in Phoenix and I build the AI systems that run it — lead follow-up, quoting, scheduling, the back office. Award Coatings isn't a case study I read about. It's the business that has to still work on Monday if I get the automation wrong.
how ai runs the business*
Most AI advice comes from people who have never had to make payroll. Mine comes out of a coating business with crews, callbacks and a phone that rings during a pour. Three things AI actually does here:
Web forms, missed calls and Google messages land in one place and get a response automatically, instead of sitting in somebody's phone until the evening. The lead that goes cold is the most expensive thing a service business owns.
Measurements in, priced estimate out, same format every time. Quoting used to be the task that decided how long my day was.
I pulled nine apps — messages, notes, tasks, files — behind a single front door, ran it as its only user for 55 days, and spent $14.15 in model costs doing it. Then I published everything that broke.
measured, not estimated*
The assistant that runs the back office, as actually metered over its first 55 days. The full teardown — including the two weeks it silently broke — is in the case study.
background*
I came up in sales, not engineering. I taught myself to build because the software I needed for a floor coating company either didn't exist or cost more per month than it saved. So I started writing my own, badly at first, and kept the parts that survived contact with real jobs.
That's still the filter. If a system holds up through a full week at Award Coatings, I'll show other owners exactly how it works, in plain English, including what it cost and what broke. If it doesn't hold up, you'll never hear about it.
elsewhere*