The problem
You've used ChatGPT. Some days it feels like a superpower. Some days it feels like the thing that quietly replaces you.
Meanwhile the questions pile up and nobody around you has real answers. Can client information touch these tools without breaching confidentiality? Which of the fifty AI products your inbox pitches every week actually matter? Is your competitor down the street already doing this?
You're not behind because you're not smart enough. Whether you work alone or run a firm of twelve, you carry a company's worth of liability with no IT department, no compliance officer, and no time to become a technologist. A course won't settle any of this, and neither will another demo. The question is where AI fits in your work and where it should stay out — and answering it takes someone who has looked hard at both.
What I help with
Automate the context. Keep the core.
We start with a map of how your work actually moves — from "yes" to "paid," with the waits timed. The waits are where the money leaks. Then the repeatable parts become routines: AI does the gathering and the first draft, drops the result in a folder you control, and waits for your approval. Some of the places that shows up:
From yes to paid: where the money leaks
- Research and analysis. Reading a stack of source material, pulling out what matters, and showing its work so you can check it.
- Writing and client communication. First drafts in your voice — letters, memos, proposals, follow-ups — that wait for your edit before anyone sees them.
- Document-heavy work. Contracts, reports, filings, plans: summarized, compared, and checked against your own standards.
- Knowledge management. Your notes, files, and past work made searchable, so the answer you gave three years ago is there when you need it again.
- Meeting preparation. Everything you know about a client, gathered before the call instead of after it.
- Tools, routines, and automation. Which subscription, configured how, on accounts you own — and a recurring job set up so it does its part and stops at your approval.
- Private and local AI. When confidential work shouldn't touch a cloud service at all, and what to run instead.
Who I work with
Independent professionals and expert-led small businesses.
Consultants, advisors, attorneys, CPAs, coaches, recruiters, creative and entertainment professionals, fractional executives, real-estate professionals, and the boutique firms built around people like them. Different fields, one shape: you're established, your clients pay for what you know and how you judge, and nobody else in the building is going to figure out AI for you.
If the value of your business lives in your expertise, your judgment, your relationships, or the work you create, this is built for you.
Why me
I've spent 30 years building the thing you're worried about.
A decade writing software, a decade running product, a decade translating technology for people who don't live in it. I've been on the inside of every major technology shift in that time — and I've seen what separates the professionals who come out ahead: never the ones who chase tools, always the ones who protect their judgment and point the technology at everything else.
I'm an independent AI advisor. I run a practice of my own, and this is what I do for a living, so I'll tell you plainly: my job is to make AI useful to your business, in your language, without putting your clients' confidential information or your name at risk.
I've built software for internet startups and for highly regulated banks. Security, compliance, and governance were never an afterthought in that work — they were built into how it got delivered. That discipline comes with me to your business.
How I work, and why: About. The formal version — roles, companies, the whole arc — is on LinkedIn. This page is about your business, not mine.
How we work together
Everything starts with a free conversation. From there, three ways in, depending on how deep you want to go. Each one is a fixed fee, agreed before any work starts — no hourly billing, no meter running, no invoice you didn't see coming. We settle the number on our call, once I understand your business. Most people start at the top of this list.
Start here
AI Clarity Session
Ninety minutes, plus a written roadmap
Ninety minutes, one-on-one, then a written roadmap: where AI genuinely helps your business, what it threatens, what to ignore, and the privacy ground rules for your profession — built from a walk through how your work actually moves, so the roadmap names the first routines to build, not just the tools to buy. You leave with a plan whether or not we ever work together again.
What you pay for it credits 100% toward the Playbook Build if you continue within 60 days.
The main work
Playbook Build
A menu, priced piece by piece
Your judgment, written down and put to work. Not a package — a menu, sized and fixed-priced in your Clarity Session, and you pick from it. A recurring job that comes off your desk and stops at your approval. An asset that encodes the playbook in your head. A foundation — the right account, the right walls, the training to run it. Everything on accounts you own; when we're done, you run it without me.
Staying current
AI Advisor Retainer
Monthly, month to month
The tools change monthly; you shouldn't have to track them. Two working sessions a month, straight answers inside two business days, and a plain verdict on any tool someone pitches you. "Skip it" is a complete answer, and the one you'll hear most. Cancel anytime — an email is enough.
Who this is built for: an established business where you are the owner, the expert, and the person who decides — and where clients pay for your judgment rather than your headcount. The field matters less than the shape. You're busy, you're good at what you do, and you'd rather pay once for a clear answer than spend six months experimenting. If that's you, the fees are a rounding error against what your time is worth, and I'll say so plainly on the call.
What an engagement actually looks like:
- Interview. We spend a morning on how you work — your voice, your judgment calls, the work only you can do.
- Encode. I turn that into working assets: instructions that make the AI sound like you, and tools tuned to your business.
- Install. Everything goes onto your own subscription, on your own machine.
- Train. Hands-on, until you run it without thinking about it.
- Hand off. You're independent. I'm a phone call away — by choice, not by dependency.
Every engagement: your data stays yours, your voice stays yours, everything runs on accounts you own, and nothing goes out under your name without your judgment on it.
And one thing I won't do: I never build your storefront — no website, no marketing, no logo, nothing a client sees and judges you by. The work sits behind you, and anything that reaches a client leaves only after your yes.
Writing
The One-Person Enterprise
Latest articles. The full list, with both LinkedIn series, is on the writing page.
Shortcuts that bill you later
Why is AI making my week busier, not shorter? Speed lets you cut more corners, and every corner comes back later as work.
Article · ConfidentialityCan confidential client information go into ChatGPT or Claude?
Sometimes, yes. It depends on the information, your obligations to the client, and how the account handles what you share.
Speaking
AI for the Independent Professional: Threat, Tool, or Both?
One talk, built for the rooms where independent professionals and firm owners gather — bar sections, financial-planning chapters, CPA societies, consultant and creative-industry groups, and business-owner peer groups. I'm not a professional speaker; I'm a practitioner who shares what I'm learning.
Previous speaking: IBM SHARE, industry conferences, corporate events, and a long-running webinar series.
Ask about speakingContact
Twenty minutes, no pitch. We talk about your business and where AI might fit — and where it shouldn't.
Or reach me directly: mark@marklevy.ai · LinkedIn