"I've heard about AI. I'm sure it can help me in my business. I just don't know for sure or how we would use it."
That's how most of these conversations start. The answer is usually yes, there's something there. Just rarely what people think.
Figuring out which part is real for your business is the job. That means looking at how your business actually runs first and the tools second. Sometimes the answer is AI. Sometimes it's a system that should have been written down 3 years ago, and once that exists, AI has something to work with.
I'm Tyler Boudreaux. I run Good Business Group out of Youngsville and work with business owners across Lafayette, Broussard, and the rest of Acadiana. Being close enough to sit at your table matters more than it sounds like it should. Most of what I need to see doesn't come across on a call.
What does an AI consultant actually do?
A distributor I work with has close to 100 clients and one question he couldn't easily answer: which of them hadn't ordered in 90 days.
He knew it mattered. A doctor who goes quiet for 3 months is usually ordering from someone else or about to. But his client list was in a monthly spreadsheet, his notes were in his phone, and his follow-up was in his memory.
That's the kind of thing sitting under most AI questions. Owners don't want AI. They want to stop losing customers they already earned, stop answering the same question 40 times a week, and stop being the only person in the building who knows how everything works.
So I start with the problem. How work comes in the door. How it gets done, and who it waits on. Where things stall, get dropped, or take 3 days when they could take an hour. And what only lives in one person's head. Then we build what closes the gap.
Where AI is worth it
Anything that should happen every time and doesn't. A customer goes quiet, a job wraps up and nobody asks for the review, a file sits waiting on somebody to notice it. AI can handle the reminding and the drafting, and tell the right person when it's time for a real conversation instead.
Anything you explain over and over. The same 20 questions from customers, the same answers for a new hire, the same form filled out the same way every time. An assistant that knows your business can take most of that and hand it off to a person when it's out of its depth.
Anything that turns talking into records. Reading forms and paperwork, summarizing a meeting, turning a voice memo from the truck into clean notes. Not exciting. It gives you back a few hours a week.
Anything you'd look at if it were easy to see. Most owners have a question or two they quit asking because pulling the answer took too long. That's usually a smaller job than people expect.
For a sales organization, I built a system that listens to calls and writes the coaching notes. In a clinic or a shop it looks like something else entirely. The question is the same one: what should happen every time and what gets in the way of it happening?
Where AI is not worth it yet
Remember the distributor. The fix for him wasn't AI, at least not first. It was getting every client into one place and setting a rule: 60 days without an order, a helpful email. 90 days, a different one. 120 days, a flag to pick up the phone.
AI helps write those emails. But the win was the rule, and the rule could only exist once the information lived in one place. That's the pattern I run into most. If the same information lives in 3 places, AI will just be confused in 3 places. If the way something gets done lives in one person's head, AI has nothing to follow.
None of that means wait. Getting your information in one place and writing down how the work actually happens is most of the job, and it pays whether we add AI or not.
If you already know something's off and you'd rather just talk it through, book the call. It's free and it's 30 minutes.
What does it cost?
The first meeting is a Vent to Me Meeting. It's free and takes about 30 minutes.
Then comes Where to Start, which is also free. It's the plan and the proposal in one short document. If you want the full written read before deciding, the Operational Diagnostic is $1,500 and credited toward the project.
Projects start at $3,500. Getting your information into one place, building the process that runs on top of it, and a way to see what's actually happening without asking 3 people.
AI work starts at $5,000. Custom software starts at $7,500, for when the thing you need doesn't exist yet.
After we're done, I stay reasonably available. When that turns into real work, it's $200 an hour or a separately agreed project price. No retainer, no monthly minimum. You only pay for work that gets billed.
You get a fixed price before any work starts.
How long the build takes depends on what we're building, and you'll know before you agree to it.
How it works
It starts with a Vent to Me Meeting. You don't need to prepare anything for it. Just vent. Tell me what's frustrating, what takes too long, and what keeps falling through the cracks. I'm listening for the bottlenecks and inefficiencies, which in my experience are sometimes not the ones you'd expect.
Usually the same day or the next, you get a First Read. It's a short, free write-up of what I heard and what each problem is costing you, and it stops before telling you what to do about it.
After that comes Where to Start. It's the plan and the proposal in one short document, built from that same conversation, and it's free too. Most of what's in it comes out of your own mouth. My part is noticing which pieces matter and what they add up to. If you'd rather see the full written read before deciding, the Operational Diagnostic is $1,500 and credited toward the project.
Once you pick the work, you sign a plain-language agreement, and once it's signed and the deposit is in, the work starts. We build it with you and whoever it touches instead of handing it over at the end. You can stop after any phase.
Then everything we built is yours, documented and handed over.
Who you'd be working with
I build the software myself, AI included. A lot of people who sell AI are really reselling somebody else's product, so the answer to "do I need this?" is always yes. I don't have that problem. If AI isn't the answer for you, I'd rather say so and fix what actually is.
One client put it better than I can: the landscape around AI moves fast enough that it's hard to keep up with, and what he wanted was somebody honest and upfront about what's real. That's my job.
I also hold a master's in cyberpsychology, which is the study of how people actually behave around technology. I think that's why adoption ends up being most of the job. A system nobody uses isn't a system.
Start with a conversation
You don't need to know what you want or where AI fits. Book a free 30-minute call, vent to me, and I'll take it from there. You'll get an honest read either way.
If a calendar link feels like too much too soon, email me at hello@goodbusiness.group and tell me what's going on.