Executive-Level Operations & Marketing Strategy — Without the Executive Salary
A real COO costs $120K–$250K, and at 5–30 employees you can’t afford one — so the job defaults to your gut, at 11 p.m., in your truck. This is an operating system for that problem: dashboards, cadence, and proven playbooks for $5,000 down and $997 a month. We’ll say the quiet part first: this does not equal a human executive — and if you want the honest version of what it is, call (704) 741-3141 and Ava will book you 20 minutes with Dominick.
What it actually does
Businesses between 3 and 50 people live in a gap: too big to run on feel, too small to pay $200K for someone to run the numbers. What fills that gap isn’t a robot executive — it’s a system. Ours has four parts, and none of them are magic.
First, a weekly numbers dashboard: revenue, job margin, AR aging, lead flow, close rate — the six or so figures that actually predict whether next quarter hurts, delivered every Monday instead of assembled in a panic before tax season. Second, a cadence of priorities: the system turns those numbers into this week’s short list, so “work on the business” stops being a guilt phrase and becomes a Tuesday agenda. Third, a marketing calendar that runs on schedule whether you’re inspired or not. Fourth, structured pricing reviews — because most service businesses underprice for years simply because nobody sat down and did the math.
All of it is built on playbooks proven across service businesses, and reviewed monthly with Dominick — a human — who looks at your dashboard and asks the questions the software can’t. The AI does the assembling, tracking, and nagging. The judgment stays human. Anyone selling you an “AI COO” that makes strategic decisions is selling snake oil.
The math
The comparison isn’t really “AI vs. executive,” because at your size the executive was never a live option. The real comparison is $16,964 in year one ($5,000 placement, $997/mo) versus the status quo: decisions made blind. A fractional COO runs $3K–$10K a month for a few hours of attention; a full hire is $120K–$250K before the 1.40–1.57× load that pushes real cost toward $170K–$390K. The employee cost calculator puts those numbers side by side if you want to wince at them directly.
What’s the return? Honestly: it depends on what your numbers reveal, and we won’t invent a figure. A pricing review that finds 4% of hidden margin, or an AR dashboard that shortens collection by a week, can each cover the fee on their own — but those are modeled examples, labeled as such, not promises. We also run a small number of pay-per-result pilots — $0 upfront, in exchange for a named case study — if you’d rather we bet on it first.
When it hands off to a human
This offering is built around the handoff — that’s its honest architecture. The system produces dashboards, flags, and drafts; every decision that matters happens in the monthly review with Dominick, or in your own head with better information than you had last quarter. Raise prices? Drop a service line? Make a hire? The AI will show you the numbers that frame the question. A human answers it. Always.
Your dashboards, playbooks, and data are yours, and they remain useful even if you cancel — which takes one email, any month. Start with the free 20-minute audit: Dominick will tell you whether you’re actually at the stage where this pays, and if you’re not, he’ll tell you that instead.
Questions Owners Actually Ask
Is this actually a replacement for a COO or CMO?
No, and we’ve stopped pretending otherwise — an earlier version of this page overclaimed and we rewrote it. It’s an operating system plus a monthly human review: structure and visibility, not executive judgment. For a business under ~50 people, that’s usually what’s actually missing.
Where does the data for the dashboard come from?
Your existing systems — QuickBooks, your CRM or job platform, your phone data. We wire the connections during setup; you shouldn’t have to type numbers into anything.
What does the monthly review with Dominick cover?
Your dashboard trends, the priority list for the next 30 days, and one deeper topic — pricing, capacity, marketing spend — chosen by what the numbers are signaling. It’s a working session, not a slideshow.
What if the system isn’t moving the needle?
The Replace-or-Retrain Guarantee applies here like everywhere else: underperforming components get rebuilt free. And since it’s month-to-month, the real guarantee is that you can leave any time it stops earning its fee.
Who owns the dashboards and playbooks if I cancel?
You do. Data, dashboards, documented playbooks — everything transfers to you, and cancellation is a single email. No lock-in, because lock-in is what you use when the product can’t do the convincing.