Saratonin Independent automation studio Est. 2025 · Columbia, SC Blog →

For small businesses that need the work behind the work handled.

The work behind the work.
Handled.

I help small businesses cut the manual loops that eat their week. AI when it fits, custom tooling when it doesn’t, scoped to what your business actually does.

§ 01 Diagnostic

Running a small business shouldn’t mean running a parallel admin job.

You started this because you’re good at the thing: making, serving, fixing, advising. But the day-to-day quietly fills up with paperwork, copy-pasting between tools, follow-ups, and reconciling what doesn’t talk to what. There’s no budget for a full-time engineer, and off-the-shelf software keeps almost-fitting.

  1. S.01

    Manual where it shouldn’t be

    Tasks you do every week that a clear process could automate, if only anyone had time to set it up.

  2. S.02

    Tools that don’t talk

    Your POS, your inbox, your spreadsheets, your booking system. Each one knows part of the story.

  3. S.03

    Nobody to build it

    Hiring a full-time engineer doesn’t pencil out. Generic SaaS doesn’t fit your specifics.

§ 02 Practice

I sit down with you, learn the actual shape of how your business runs, and build the small custom pieces that take the daily grind off your plate. Sometimes that’s an AI workflow. Sometimes it’s a five-line script. The right answer is whatever holds up when you stop paying attention to it.

¶ 01

AI where it pulls its weight. Email triage, intake summaries, drafting follow-ups, parsing receipts: places where language work is the bottleneck and a model genuinely helps.

¶ 02

Custom tooling where it doesn’t. Small internal scripts, integrations between the tools you already pay for, dashboards that show what actually matters. Boring on purpose.

¶ 03

Yours to run, or yours to use. Same build either way: plain stack, documented, accounts in your name. After launch, take the keys and run it yourself, or pay a flat monthly fee and have me keep it updated and the infrastructure managed. No lock-in either route.

§ 03 Case notes

Note. These are illustrative. Most engagements start with a discovery call to find the loop that’s costing you most. The diagrams below are sketches of typical engagements, not screenshots of a product.

Case 01

Customer intake → quote, automatic

A new lead fills out a form. By the time you read the notification, the intake is summarised, the relevant pricing pulled, and a draft quote is sitting in your inbox waiting for a quick edit.

Lead form Pricing rules Intake summary Margin notes Draft quote async
Fig. 01 / intake to draft, ~40s end-to-end.
Case 02

Invoicing that closes its own loop

Jobs flow from your booking system into invoices, payment status syncs back, overdue accounts get a polite nudge, and you never open a spreadsheet.

Booking Invoice Payment Reconciled Polite nudge if overdue status sync (async)
Fig. 02 / the loop closes itself; the spreadsheet stays closed.
Case 03

Inventory and orders, one source of truth

POS Online store Supplier sheet One ledger Low-stock alert Restock draft

Your POS, online store, and supplier sheet finally agree. Low-stock alerts go to the right person, restock orders draft themselves.

One ledger downstream; everything upstream still works the way it did.

Case 04

A weekly snapshot that’s actually useful

A short, plain-language summary of the week (what came in, what shipped, what needs attention) in your inbox every Monday morning.

sources Sun 22:00 Mon 09:00 cron inbox

And plenty more. If you can describe the loop, it’s probably worth automating.

§ 04 Engagement

Small steps, real outcomes.

Memo. Three steps. Each one has a shape; none of them are open-ended. Pricing is on the table before any work begins.

  1. Step 01 ~30 min · no cost

    Discovery call

    Thirty minutes. You walk me through how your business actually runs. I listen for the loops that hurt most and what’s worth tackling first. No pitch deck.

  2. Step 02 2 – 8 weeks · fixed price

    Scoped build

    A fixed-scope, fixed-price engagement on the highest-leverage workflow. You see progress weekly. We adjust if the real shape of things differs from the plan.

  3. Step 03 ongoing · monthly or self-run

    After launch

    At go-live you get the keys, the docs, and a running system. From there, run it yourself if you’d rather own it end to end, or pay a flat monthly fee and have me keep it updated and the infrastructure managed. You can switch routes later if your needs change.

§ 05 Notes on method

Small enough to care. Technical enough to ship.

Note 01

One person, one bill.

No layers, no account managers, no quarterly check-ins about value. You talk to the person building the thing.

Note 02

Honest about AI.

By day I work at a cutting-edge AI company, shipping production AI systems. I know firsthand where a model earns its keep, and where it’s overkill. You get AI where it pulls its weight, and a simpler fix where it doesn’t.

Note 03

Built to outlive me.

Boring technology, on purpose. The proven, well-understood pieces that still work in five years. Accounts in your name, clear documentation, no vendor lock-in. Whatever happens to me, your business keeps running.

Note 04

Transparent pricing.

Fixed scope and fixed price for the build. Flat monthly if you want me to keep it managed after launch. Either way the number is agreed up front, and any change in scope is a conversation, never a surprise on the invoice.