Worked With
Here's what "getting into AI" looks like for most businesses.
$150K+ and the better part of a year. Maybe a PDF to show for it.
Here's what we do instead:
Your team has AI running in production within weeks.
The systems do actual work. Process invoices, qualify leads, move data between tools.
We train your people on what we build. They don't need us to keep it running.
You'll know exactly what changed: hours back, dollars saved, capacity freed up.
No 200-slide decks. No "circle back." Just results.
Everyone's tried AI.
Almost nobody's actually using it.
Here's the dirty secret of the "AI revolution": most businesses have played with it. Asked ChatGPT to write an email. Drafted a LinkedIn campaign. Analyzed a data set for a deck. Closed the tab and went back to work.
That's not using AI. That's kicking the tires.
Real adoption is AI processing your invoices while you sleep. Qualifying leads and booking appointments without a human touching it. Workflows that used to take 10 hours a week running in 10 minutes. All on your systems, with your data locked down. That level? Almost nobody's there yet.
Only 5%
of companies are truly built for AI. Everyone else is still figuring it out. Or pretending it's not happening.
(BCG, 2025)
2x to 6x
The shareholder return gap between AI leaders and everyone else. Same industries. Same markets. Wildly different outcomes.
(McKinsey, 2025)
72%
of business owners say the #1 reason they haven't gone deeper with AI is they don't know how. Not skepticism. Not cost.
(ICIC & Intuit, 2025)
The gap isn't between "using AI" and "not using AI." It's between playing with a chat window and having AI do actual work inside your business. The first group is huge. The second is tiny. And that tiny group is compounding their advantage every single month while everyone else thinks they're keeping up because they asked ChatGPT a question once.
"We tried AI. It wasn't that impressive."
We hear this all the time. You tried it. It wrote a mediocre email. It hallucinated something confidently wrong. Trust gone.
Fair. But here's what you missed: AI isn't a tool you try once. It's a skill you build. The people pulling ahead aren't smarter. They just started earlier. They built the muscle memory. They learned what to ask, how to ask it, and when to trust the output. That compounds.
The models improve every other day. But the gap isn't about the models. It's between the people who decided to learn this and the people who decided it wasn't for them. One group compounds. The other doesn't know what they're missing.
And the tools are moving fast. Two years ago, AI couldn't multiply 7 times 8. Last week, a founder described what he wanted in plain English, walked away, and came back to a finished product. Tested. Deployed. Users on it by lunch.
The AI you played with in that chat box? That's a free sample at Costco. You haven't tried the actual meal yet.
"The people winning with AI aren't smarter. They just started."
Why Us
Why growing businesses?
Every AI consultancy chases the Fortune 500. The enterprise contract. The company with a $50M innovation budget.
You're doing $5M to $50M with strong margins and zero venture debt. You're one of the healthiest businesses in your market.
And nobody in AI is building for you. That's the gap we fill.
We don't talk about AI. We wire it into your business.
You don't need a full-time AI executive. You need the capability on tap, from someone who's done it before. We serve as your fractional AI partner with roots in world-class consulting and early-stage startups. The companies we work with look a lot like yours.
Diagnose
Operations + AI Diagnostic | 2 weeks
We pull your business apart process by process. Where are you bleeding time? Where are your competitors already ahead? You get a roadmap with real numbers: hours saved, dollars recovered, opportunities you didn't know existed. The kind of math that makes the next decision obvious.
Build
AI Transformation Sprint | 30-90 days
We take the highest-impact opportunities and build them into your operations. Custom workflows. Automation. AI systems that do the work. Integrated with your tools, running in production, used by your actual people.
Lead
AI-Native Partnership | Ongoing
We become your AI function. Embedded leadership, new opportunities shipped as models improve, your team upskilled quarterly. AI gets dramatically better every few months. This is how your business keeps pace.
A real week
What we actually do inside a client's business.
Not a framework. This is one week.
Monday
On-site with the operations team. Watching how work actually moves. The real version, with the workarounds and the sticky notes.
Tuesday
Pulling 12 months of data and running it through models that spot what humans miss. Every client has money on the table. They just can't see it from inside the day-to-day.
Wednesday
Building or configuring the tool that fixes the biggest bottleneck. Whatever gets it done fastest.
Thursday
Training the team on the new system. Making sure it fits how they actually work, not how a manual says they should.
Friday
Presenting findings to the owner. Hard numbers. Clear plan. One decision needed.
That's one week. No decks. Just work.
Aligned Incentives
We don't just bill hours. We structure our work so you never wonder if we're on your side.
Fixed scope
Clear deliverables, clear price. No surprises, no scope creep. You know exactly what you're getting.
Outcome-based
Base rate plus bonuses tied to the targets that matter to you. If we don't deliver measurable results, we don't earn the bonus.
Embedded partnership
We come in at cost and bet on your growth. When you win, we win. That's real alignment, not a tagline.
We ship on Monday
what most firms promise by Q3.
This isn't theoretical. Here's what it actually looks like:
$5M+ Service Company
Michigan
Full digital rebrand. Website. 20+ SEO articles. Automated booking. 93% faster page loads.
What used to take an agency 3 months took us 3 days.
Growth-Stage Marketplace
Local commerce
Operations and CX redesign.
30%
cost reduction
25%
volume lift
20%
CSAT lift
Not a recommendation deck. A rebuilt operating model.
Healthcare Practice
Single location
Automated SEO pipeline. Blog content. Internal linking. Schema markup. Sitemap overhaul.
400%
organic traffic growth
Three new patients from organic search paid for the entire engagement within weeks.
OpenTee vs. Everyone Else
| Traditional Consulting | Fractional CAIO Firms | OpenTee | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Focus | Strategy decks | AI advisory | Operations + AI (builds and operates) |
| Builds software | No | No | Yes |
| Timeline | 6-12 months | Months | Weeks (days for some) |
| Understands ops | Sometimes | Rarely | Always (we embed on-site) |
| After they leave | A PDF and a handshake | A roadmap | Systems running, team trained |
Here's what we don't do.
We don't do 6-month discovery phases.
We don't produce 200-slide strategy documents.
We don't "align stakeholders" for three months before touching anything.
We don't bill by the hour and drag it out.
We don't hand you a report and disappear.
We show up, build the thing, measure whether it worked, and adjust. That's the whole process.
The big firms are excellent at what they do. I spent years inside one of the best. But that model wasn't built for speed, and it wasn't built for you.
If you want AI wired into your business by next month, you need a builder.
I learned how to break down a $500M problem. Then I left to build the fix.
I'm Tom Hamilton. I spent years at McKinsey solving problems for Fortune 500 companies. I learned how to take a $500M problem and break it into pieces small enough to actually solve. That skill transfers. The 200-slide deck? That part I left behind.
So I left. Ran ops and product at startups. Coached executives through hard pivots. When AI got serious, I didn't wait for someone to tell me what it meant. I started building with it. Every day. On real problems, for real businesses.
Today I use AI to ship work that would've taken a team of five a year ago. Websites in weekends. Marketing pipelines in days. Production code overnight. I'm not special. The tools are just that good now. And they're getting better every month.
That's what OpenTee is for.
You already know if this is for you.
This is for you if...
- →You run a business doing $5M to $50M and the phrase "AI strategy" makes your eyes glaze over, but you know you can't keep ignoring it
- →You tried ChatGPT, thought "so what," and went back to doing things the hard way
- →You're watching younger, smaller competitors move faster and you can't figure out why
- →You want someone who'll have it running before most firms finish their discovery phase
- →The phrase "let's schedule a follow-up to discuss next steps" makes you want to throw your laptop
Not for you if...
- →You want a pretty deck to show your board
- →You think AI is overhyped and will blow over
- →You need consensus from 12 people before making a move
- →You're shopping for the cheapest option
- →You're comfortable with where things are headed
Think you're keeping up?
Let's find out.
Ten questions. Most business owners stop feeling comfortable by question three.
0 of 10 answered
Can you name one process in your business that AI handles end-to-end right now?
Has anyone on your team used a paid AI tool (not the free version) for real work in the last 30 days?
Do you know which of your competitors are using AI, and for what?
Could you explain to a new hire how AI fits into your operations today?
Have you measured how many hours per week your team spends on tasks AI could handle right now?
Is there someone in your business whose job includes identifying AI opportunities?
Have you shipped a single AI workflow into production? Not a test, not a demo. The real thing?
Do you know the difference between what AI could do six months ago and what it can do today?
If your best employee quit tomorrow, could AI handle any of their workload while you backfill?
Do you have a plan for what happens when your competitors can answer "yes" to all of these?
Answer all 10 questions to see your results
The people building AI are telling you what's coming.
Listen.
A year ago, AI could handle tasks that take a human expert about ten minutes. Then an hour. Then several hours. Latest measurement: nearly five hours of independent, complex work. That number is doubling every four to seven months.
Follow the math: AI working independently for days within the next year. Weeks within two.
Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, predicts AI "substantially smarter than almost all humans at almost all tasks" by 2027. He predicts 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs eliminated within five years. A lot of people in the industry think he's being generous.
90% of businesses already using AI plan to add more tools in the next 12-24 months. They're accelerating. If you're still on the sideline, the gap isn't holding. It's widening. Every single month.
Your competitors aren't waiting. Some of them figured this out six months ago.