This is the long version. If you want the short pitch, the service page covers it in two minutes. What follows is the actual order of operations: how a Summit County business goes from curious to having an AI system doing real work, step by step, with the honest parts included.
Summit County runs on small operators. Akron is the county seat and the biggest name on the map, but a lot of the businesses here are small firms spread across Cuyahoga Falls, Stow, Barberton, Green, Hudson, Tallmadge, Fairlawn, and Norton. Almost none of them have an operations person. The owner is the operations person.
I am Jacob King, and I work out of Akron. I spent 16 months as an employee benefits advisor at Ohio Health Benefits before starting King Intelligence, and I run my own company end to end on the system described below.
Step 1: Pick one job, not a strategy
The mistake I see most often is trying to decide what AI means for the business. That question has no answer and it stalls people for months. The useful question is smaller: which single job do you repeat every week, hate, and could describe to a new hire in five minutes?
Usually it is quote follow-up, invoice chasing, meeting notes, or answering the same ten questions. Pick that one. Everything else waits.
Step 2: Check whether there is a trail to learn from
A system can only know what your business has written down somewhere. Email threads, calendar entries, invoices, notes, past quotes. If that exists, you are ready. If your business runs on memory and a paper notebook, the honest first step is getting the basics into software, and that is not a job worth paying my rate for.
Step 3: The setup session
Two hours, paid, $997 (includes the first month of Cruise), on your own business. Not a demo. We open your real email, your real calendar, and your real invoicing, and we build the thing while you watch and correct me. You leave with it running.
I charge for it on purpose. It means you get a working system out of the first meeting instead of a proposal, and it means neither of us is pretending the first conversation is free consulting. It comes with every plan, built into your first payment.
Step 4: Live with it for a month
Early on it drafts and you rewrite a lot. That is the system learning your voice. The more you correct it, the closer it gets, until you are changing a line and sending. Do not judge it on day two.
This is also when you find out whether you picked the right first job. If the thing you handed over turns out not to be the thing eating your week, we move it.
Step 5: Choose how much of me you want
After the setup, the plans are simple. $147 a month keeps the system running with no one-on-one time. $547 a month adds an hour with me. $1,197 a month adds three hours and is capped at three seats, so it is genuinely limited. Outside a plan, my time is $497 an hour. Annual is roughly ten times the monthly rate.
Step 6: Add the second job
Once the first one is boring, add another. Businesses that try to automate six things at once end up with six half-built things nobody trusts. One at a time is slower on paper and much faster in practice.
Where this does not work
It does not fix a business with no customers. It does not replace judgment, and it should never send anything on your behalf that you have not seen. And it does not do well with work that is different every single time, because there is no pattern to learn. Some conversations end with me telling someone they do not need this yet.
Why local matters less than you think
I am twenty minutes from most of Summit County and I will sit down with you. But the building happens inside your email over a screen share, which works the same whether you are in Hudson or Arizona. Hire on whether the person will actually build it with you, not on the drive time.
Talk it through with Jacob
If you can name the one job you would hand over first, you are ready for the setup session. Book a call and we will scope it.
Book a call with JacobFrequently asked questions about AI consulting in Summit County
Where do I start if I have never used AI for work at all?
Start by naming one job you repeat every week and dislike, then leave the technology question alone entirely. Almost everyone lands on the same shortlist: quote follow-up, invoice chasing, meeting notes, or answering the same handful of customer questions. You do not need to understand the tools to pick the job, and picking the job is the part only you can do.
How is this different from just buying another software subscription?
A subscription gives you a tool that starts empty and expects you to configure it. This is the configuration. The two-hour session exists to load your business into it: your customers, your prices, your way of writing, your calendar. That is why two businesses on the same plan end up with systems that behave completely differently.
What does AI consulting cost in Summit County?
The setup session is $997, paid, two hours, and it comes with every plan. Your first payment is $997 with no one-on-one time, $1,397 with one hour, or $2,047 with three hours and a cap of three seats, then $147, $547, or $1,197 a month after that. Outside a plan, my time is $497 an hour, and annual billing runs about ten times the monthly rate.
Will you come to Akron, Cuyahoga Falls, or Barberton in person?
Yes, and I do. I am based in Akron so anywhere in Summit County is a short drive. The honest caveat is that most of the building goes faster over a screen share, because we are working inside your email and both of us need to see the same screen. In-person tends to be the first meeting and the occasional check-in.
How long before it is doing real work?
It is doing real work at the end of the first session, which is the whole reason that session is two hours and not twenty minutes. The quality curve is the slower part: expect to rewrite a lot at the start and less as you go, because every correction teaches it something about how you write.
What happens when it gets something wrong?
You catch it, because nothing sends without you. The system drafts and you approve, which is a deliberate design choice rather than a limitation. When it gets something wrong repeatedly, that is a setup problem and fixing it is what the monthly plans are for.
