Why I Started an AI Company at 24

I didn't set out to start an AI company. Honestly, if you'd told me two years ago that I'd be building automation systems for businesses, I would have thought you had me confused with someone else. I graduated from the University of Akron with a degree in Sales Management. My plan was to get into sales, work my way up, and figure out the rest as I went.

Life doesn't work that way, though. At least mine didn't. So here's the real story of how I ended up starting King Intelligence at 24 years old, what I learned along the way, and why I think this is the most important work I could be doing right now.

The Sales Degree That Taught Me to Think Differently

I chose Sales Management at the University of Akron because I was interested in the psychology of how people make decisions. Sales, at its core, is about understanding what someone needs and showing them how you can help. That sounds simple, but it's actually a pretty deep skill set.

What I didn't expect was how much the business side of the degree would shape my thinking. I took classes on operations, strategy, and business analytics. I learned how businesses actually work. Not just the sales part, but the whole machine. How processes connect. Where bottlenecks form. Why some businesses grow smoothly and others grind to a halt even when demand is strong.

I started noticing something. The businesses that struggled weren't usually failing because of bad products or bad sales teams. They were failing because the operational stuff was a mess. Information got lost between departments. Follow-ups happened late or not at all. People spent their best hours on work that didn't require their talent. It was friction. And friction is expensive.

I didn't have the language for it yet, but I was starting to see the problem that I'd eventually build a business around.

16 Months at Ohio Health Benefits

After graduation, I got a consulting role at Ohio Health Benefits. It's a firm that helps businesses navigate employee health insurance. If you've never dealt with small business health insurance, just know that it is complicated. Lots of moving parts, lots of regulations, lots of paperwork, and a lot of business owners who are confused and frustrated by the whole process.

My job was to help employers understand their options, compare plans, and make smart decisions about benefits for their teams. It was a good role. I learned a lot about how small businesses actually operate, and I got to work closely with owners and decision-makers on a daily basis.

But here's the thing that changed everything for me. About three months in, I started using AI tools in my workflow. Not because anyone told me to. Just because I was curious. ChatGPT had been out for a while, and I started experimenting with it for things like summarizing plan documents, drafting client communications, comparing benefit packages, and preparing meeting agendas.

The results were immediate. Work that used to take me an hour would take fifteen minutes. A document summary that required reading 30 pages and condensing it into key points? Ten minutes with AI instead of ninety. Follow-up emails that I used to agonize over? First draft done in 30 seconds, then I'd edit for tone and accuracy.

I wasn't just saving time. I was doing better work in less time. The AI-assisted summaries were more consistent. The emails were more thorough. The preparation for client meetings was more comprehensive because I could process more information before walking in.

And people noticed.

The Question That Kept Coming Up

Colleagues would see me working and ask, "How are you getting through that so fast?" At first I'd just explain the tool and show them. But then the questions started coming from outside work too. Business owners I was meeting with would see how I organized information or how quickly I turned around analysis, and they'd ask what I was doing differently.

"Can you show me how to do that?"

"Could that work for my business?"

"Do you know anyone who sets this stuff up?"

The same conversation happened again and again. Small business owners who could clearly benefit from AI but had no idea where to start. They'd heard about ChatGPT, maybe tried it once or twice, but they couldn't see how to apply it to their specific workflow.

And here's what really got me: these weren't tech companies. They were insurance agencies, contractors, professional services firms, local businesses with 5-50 employees. People who are great at what they do but don't have time to figure out the latest technology. They needed someone to translate the possibilities into practical solutions for their business.

Every conversation reinforced the same thing. There was a massive gap between what AI could do for small businesses and what small business owners actually knew about it. And nobody was filling that gap. The AI consulting firms out there were focused on enterprise clients. The YouTube tutorials were too generic. The tech was moving so fast that by the time someone wrote a guide, half of it was outdated.

The Decision to Go All In

I spent a lot of late nights thinking about whether to make the jump. I was 23, I had a good job, and the responsible thing would have been to keep my head down and build a career at OHB for a few more years. My parents would have preferred that plan. Most people would have.

But I kept coming back to one thought: the window for this is right now.

AI is moving incredibly fast. Every month there are new tools, new capabilities, new ways to apply this technology to real business problems. The businesses that adopt it early will have a significant advantage over those that wait. And the people who learn to implement it effectively right now will be the ones that companies rely on for years to come.

I didn't want to be the person who looked back in five years and said, "I should have started when I had the chance." I'd seen the opportunity firsthand, over and over, in every conversation with a business owner who wanted help but couldn't find it.

So in late 2025, I started King Intelligence. I was 24 years old, working out of Akron, Ohio, with a laptop, an internet connection, and 16 months of real-world experience showing small businesses what AI could do.

It wasn't glamorous. There was no funding round, no co-founder, no office space. Just me, a clear idea of the problem I was solving, and a list of people who had already asked for help.

What I Actually Do

King Intelligence helps small business owners automate the work they hate. That's the simple version.

The longer version is that I work with businesses to identify where they're wasting time on repetitive tasks, then build systems that handle those tasks automatically. Sometimes that's as simple as setting up ChatGPT properly and showing someone how to use it for their specific workflow. Sometimes it's building a full automation system that connects their CRM, email, scheduling, and reporting tools into one seamless workflow.

My main services break down into three areas:

• AI consulting sessions ($249) where I audit your workflow, identify the biggest opportunities, and give you a clear action plan.
• Custom automation projects ($2,500-$10,000) where I build systems specifically for your business. Lead follow-up, client onboarding, reporting dashboards, content pipelines. Whatever needs to run without your constant involvement.
• Cold email lead generation ($5,000 setup + $2,500/month) for B2B businesses that need a consistent pipeline of qualified leads. I build and manage the whole system. Prospect research, email copy, sending infrastructure, follow-up sequences.

Everything I build is designed around one principle: your time should be spent on work that requires your brain, not work that a computer can handle. If a task is repetitive, predictable, and follows the same steps every time, it shouldn't be on your plate.

What I've Learned So Far

I've been doing this for a few months now, and here's what I've learned that I didn't fully appreciate when I started.

Small business owners don't need more tools. They need someone who understands their business. There are hundreds of AI tools available. The problem isn't access. It's knowing which ones matter for your specific situation and how to integrate them into the way you already work. Most business owners have tried one or two AI tools, gotten mediocre results, and concluded that AI isn't useful yet. That's not an AI problem. That's an implementation problem.

The best automation is invisible. When I build something right, the business owner barely thinks about it. Leads get followed up with automatically. Reports appear in their inbox on Monday morning. New clients get onboarded without anyone touching a button. The work just happens. That's the goal. Not flashy technology. Invisible efficiency.

Trust is everything. When someone hires me, they're trusting me with their business processes, their client data, and their reputation. A bad automation that sends the wrong email to a client or loses a lead is worse than no automation at all. I take that seriously. Everything gets tested before it goes live. Everything has a human review step where it matters.

Northeast Ohio has a real opportunity. I'm based in Akron, and most of my early clients are in the Cleveland/Akron area. There are thousands of small businesses here that could benefit from AI, and very few people offering practical, affordable help. The big consulting firms charge enterprise prices. The freelancers are hit or miss. There's room for someone who understands small business and delivers consistent results.

Why I'm Writing This

I'm writing this partly because I think transparency matters. If you're going to trust someone with your business operations, you should know who they are and why they do what they do. You should know that I'm not a tech bro who learned about AI from Twitter threads. I'm someone who used it to solve real problems at a real company and saw firsthand what it can do for small businesses.

But I'm also writing this for the person who's in the same position I was two years ago. The person who sees an opportunity and isn't sure whether to take it. Whether that's starting a business, adopting AI, or just trying something new that feels risky.

Here's what I'll tell you. The risk of doing nothing is almost always bigger than the risk of trying something. I could have stayed at Ohio Health Benefits for another five years. It would have been fine. But "fine" isn't what I'm going for. I saw a problem I could solve, for people I wanted to help, using skills I'd spent years building. That felt like a signal worth paying attention to.

If you're a small business owner who's curious about AI but not sure where to start, I'd love to talk. That's not a sales pitch. It's genuinely why I built this company. Reach out, tell me about your business, and I'll tell you honestly whether AI can help and where I'd start.

I'm 24, I run an AI company out of Akron, Ohio, and I'm just getting started.