Local. Small. Anti-hype.

I'm a small business like you. I'm not looking to sell you a chatbot.

I'm local, and I understand business. I work with you to identify bottlenecks — something that can be automated to reduce your labour time. Not to reduce your staff, but to make them more efficient.

AI helps. The human in the loop keeps it real.

Learned it the hard way, starting in 1981: garbage in, garbage out. Still true today →

Markus, founder of OptimisedLead, at his desk

Markus — founder. Real photo, real desk. Not a stock agency headshot.

Ten years of contacts. Be honest — how many of them are still even there?

This is one bottleneck, picked because it's common. The pattern — audit, score, act, human decides — is the same one I'd apply to whatever's actually slowing your business down. This isn't the limit of what's possible, it's a way of showing you how I think.

Phase 1 — know who's actually still worth talking to

01 audit

Your existing database

Every contact you've built up — most businesses have never had time to check who's still live.

02 agent

The agent checks who's real

Live email, live number, live website, recent activity, still trading — checked, not guessed.

03 human

You get a scored, ranked list

Not a bigger list — a truer one. Ranked by how live and relevant each contact actually is.

Phase 2 — reach them where they already are

04 agent

Agent maps the right channel

Google, Facebook, TikTok, email, or content — matched per contact, not blasted at everyone.

05 agent

Soft, educational content runs

Not a cold call — content and outreach built to inform, so the contact comes to you.

06 human

They reach out — a real person follows up

Your caller's time now goes entirely on warm, confirmed leads. Same person, more valuable hours.

"This is exactly the kind of thing a Working Diagnosis surfaces — a report on your bottlenecks, one clear place to start, yours to keep either way."

Before and after
Before£800/month paying someone to cold-call the whole list — most calls unanswered, the rest "not interested"
AfterSame caller, same wage — now spending every hour on leads already confirmed live and relevant, not dead numbers
BeforeCold calls that interrupt people who've long since moved on
AfterSoft, educational outreach — the contact reaches out when they're ready, not the other way round
The receipts, not the pitch deck
Live, ongoing

Markus IT Support

A real local IT service business, run in public — including the ad spend that didn't work and the channel that did.

Read the process breakdown

Pivoted from buy-refurb-resell to a repair service. Google and Facebook ads didn't convert; SEO's largely dead now that traffic runs through reels and YouTube. Currently testing short-form video for reach — too early to call it a win, which is the honest version.

Shipped and sold

A B2B platform, built and sold

A bespoke wholesale ordering platform, built with heavy AI assistance, shipped, and sold to a real buyer.

Read the process breakdown

A year-plus bespoke build compressed to weeks with AI assistance, fully audited for compliance along the way. Designed around one hard problem: the people using it are notoriously tech-averse, so friction had to be designed out, not documented around.

Read the full case studies →

From the learning hub

Weekly and monthly writing on what's actually working — and what isn't — building these businesses with AI agents.

Start here

What is AI, actually? A plain answer, not a sales pitch

What ChatGPT/Claude/Gemini actually do, why agents beat chatbots, whether it's hype, and who's really qualified to advise you on it in 2026.

Foundations
Try this

Five AI prompts to try today — no experience needed

Free, copy-paste prompts — check a marketing email, spot buying signals, clean up phone numbers, and more. Five minutes, no sign-up.

Foundations
Craft — how it works

Inside Hermes: one office, several specialist models

What multi-model routing actually is, and how Hermes routes work across AI models with a human always signing off.

Craft note

Browse the learning hub →

Step 1

Find out more

No pitch — a plain read on what this means for a business like yours.

Step 2

Free chat consultation

No pressure, no pitch — a real conversation about your business. I reply personally, usually within a day.

Free
Step 3

Working diagnosis

I consult with you to identify bottlenecks based on your real working day and habits. You get a detailed report, plus one small AI tool or prompt for an easy win, ready to use immediately. The report is yours to keep.

£199 (refunded off your first invoice if you engage me)

See how it works in full →