Find the one thing AI should be doing for your business. Then buy it.
Not a strategy deck. Not a months-long transformation program. A free 5-minute call that tells you where AI actually pays off, and fixed-price builds — starting at $1,500 — that go live in days, not quarters.
That's David Berube — author of Practical Ruby Gems, 20+ years building and fixing production software, now applied to the AI automation that actually moves the needle for a local business.
Published, spoken, and consulted across two decades — from the Ivy League to the Fortune 100
When to call
AI isn't the hard part. Knowing where to point it is.
For the owner or manager of a local or small business who keeps hearing that AI could help, but hasn't seen anything that fits how the business actually runs. You don't need a strategy deck — you need one thing automated that's currently eating your week.
The hours going into busywork
Someone on your team spends half their week writing the same social post, answering the same five questions, or copying the same data between two systems. That time never shows up on an invoice, but it's real money leaving the building.
Content that never gets made
You know you should be posting, writing, following up — the stuff that brings in business. It keeps losing to the stuff that's already on fire. Marketing becomes whatever's left after the actual work.
Watching competitors move faster
Somewhere in your industry, someone's already using AI to answer customers faster, publish more, and quote jobs quicker. You don't need to catch up on everything — just the one or two things actually costing you customers.
What's on offer
Fixed-price automation, not an open-ended AI strategy engagement.
Most small businesses don't need a transformation program. They need the one or two workflows that are actually costing them time or customers, automated well and handed off clean.
Watch your competitors for you
AI Competitor Watch tracks the competitors you name — pricing, promotions, new services — and sends a digest only when something actually changes. No dashboard to check.
Content, written in your voice
The AI Content Engine drafts social posts and blog entries trained on how you actually talk to customers — not generic marketing copy. You review before it goes out, or let it run once you trust it.
Support & FAQ triage
The AI Customer Service Bot is trained on your documentation and past customer questions. It answers the routine ones on its own and routes the rest to a human, with the context attached.
CRM & workflow automation
Lead follow-up, intake forms, scheduling, data moving between the tools you already run — wired together so it happens without someone doing it by hand every time. Part of the Custom Build.
Not sure which one? We'll tell you
A free 5-minute call exists to answer one question: which of these is actually worth your money, if any.
Plain-English handoff
Every build ships with a short doc explaining how it works and what to check on — no black box you're afraid to touch once we're done.
Engagements
Fixed prices. Buy the small ones right now.
Pick a build if you already know what you want automated. Not sure yet? Start with a free 5-minute call instead. Everything here is flat-fee and buyable on the spot except the Custom Build, which is scoped and quoted before it starts.
An hour a day spent on manual busywork costs more, every week, than the smallest tier here does once.
I know what I want
Productized builds — pick one, pay, and it gets built.
AI Competitor Watch
Know what your competitors change before your customers tell you.
Flat fee · 6 months of monitoring
- ✓ We track the competitors you name — pricing, promotions, new services
- ✓ A digest whenever something meaningful changes, not constant noise
- ✓ Six months of monitoring included, set up in days
- ✓ No dashboard to check — it comes to you
- ✓ Written content or a support bot (that's the Content Engine or the Bot)
- ✓ Ongoing monitoring past 6 months
AI Content Engine
Social posts and blog drafts in your voice, generated on autopilot every week.
Flat fee · live in 1–2 weeks
- ✓ An AI trained on your business, your tone, and your past posts
- ✓ Weekly social posts and blog drafts, drafted automatically
- ✓ Built on the tools you already use — no new platform to learn
- ✓ You review and approve before anything goes out (or turn on autopilot)
- ✓ Set up, tested, and handed off with a plain-English how-it-works doc
- ✓ 30 days of tuning included after launch
- ✓ Multi-system builds (CRM + support + content together)
AI Customer Service Bot
Answers the routine questions on its own, and knows when to hand off to a human.
Flat fee · live in 2–3 weeks
- ✓ Trained on your documentation, FAQs, and past customer questions
- ✓ Answers the routine questions instantly, day or night
- ✓ Routes anything it can't handle to a human, with the context attached
- ✓ Deployed on your site, in your inbox, or wherever customers already reach you
- ✓ Set up, tested against real past questions, and handed off clean
- ✓ 30 days of tuning included after launch
- ✓ CRM or multi-system integration (that's the Custom Build)
Need more than one of these at once?
Something bigger than one workflow — CRM automation, a multi-system build, or several of the above wired together. The Custom AI Build starts from $8,000, scoped per engagement.
Talk through the build →Not sure which one fits? Book a free 5-minute call and describe what's eating your time — you'll get an honest read, including "you don't need any of these yet."
How it works
From buy-it-now to live, without a month of back-and-forth
Buy a build, or start with a free call
Know what you want automated? Buy Competitor Watch, the Content Engine, or the Customer Service Bot straight from the pricing above. Not sure? Book a free 5-minute call instead.
A short intake, not a discovery project
A short form (and a quick call if needed) covering how your business runs, the tools you use, and — for the Content Engine — samples of how you already write. Scoped to take minutes, not weeks.
We build, you review
On the free call, you get a direct answer on what's worth automating, if anything. For a build, you see early drafts or a working version before anything goes live, and it's tuned against your feedback.
Live, with a plain-English handoff
The system goes live, you get a short doc on how it works and what to watch, and 30 days of tuning is included on the productized builds. Bigger builds come with ongoing support through Durable Programming.
Who does the work
Someone who's spent 20 years figuring out what a business actually needs from its software.
Berube Consulting is David Berube's advisory practice. AI automation is the newest tool in a career spent making software fit the way a business actually works, rather than the other way around. That's the product — not a ticket queue.
- ★ 20+ years of production software work, the last several years increasingly spent on AI-driven automation
- ★ Architected the Rails platform behind an 800,000+ actor database used across 45+ of the Fortune 100
- ★ I've worked on everything from Ivy League colleges to salvage motorcycle dealerships to news sites and the commercial casting industry
- ★ Author of Practical Ruby Gems (Apress) and several other books on software development
"You get what customer relations are supposed to be about."
"Extremely fast and efficient."
"Highly recommended."
Feedback from past clients across two decades of software and consulting work.
A straight answer
Sometimes the honest answer is "don't automate this yet."
Not everything is worth automating, and a rushed AI build on top of a broken process just makes a broken process run faster. If the free call finds that your real problem is something other than AI — a process that needs fixing first, or a task that's genuinely cheaper to keep doing by hand — you'll hear that plainly instead of a pitch dressed up to justify a build.
Questions
What people ask before they hit buy
Can I really just buy this without a sales call?
Yes — every tier except the Custom Build is flat-fee and buy-it-now. Pay through the button on the card, answer a short intake form about your business, and we get started. No discovery call required. If your situation is more complicated than the productized offers cover, we'll tell you during intake and point you at the Custom Build instead of quietly under-delivering.
I don't know which one I need. Where do I start?
Book a free 5-minute call. Describe what's eating your team's time and you'll get a direct answer on which tier fits, if any — including "you don't need one yet." No pitch, no pressure, and it doesn't cost anything to ask.
How does the Content Engine learn "my voice"?
We start with a sample of what you've already written — past social posts, blog entries, emails, whatever represents how you actually talk to customers — plus a short intake on your business, offers, and the topics you want to stay away from. That becomes the basis for the prompts and guardrails behind the system. First drafts come back for your review before anything is tuned further; most clients need a round or two of feedback in the first couple of weeks before the voice is dialed in.
Do I have to post whatever the AI writes, or let the bot answer everything?
No, on both. Default setup for the Content Engine is review-before-publish: drafts land in a doc or your scheduling tool and a human approves before anything goes out. The Customer Service Bot only answers what it's confident about and hands off anything else to a person, with the conversation history attached — it's not designed to bluff its way through a question it doesn't know.
What's the difference between these tiers and the Custom Build?
Competitor Watch, the Content Engine, and the Customer Service Bot are each one productized workflow, built the same way for every client at a fixed price. The Custom Build is for anything that doesn't fit a fixed template: several of those combined into one system, automation wired into your specific CRM, or a multi-system build touching several parts of the business at once. It costs more because it's genuinely more work, and it's scoped and quoted before anything starts.
We're not a tech company. Is this actually for us?
That's exactly who the productized tiers are built for. You don't need an engineering team, a data pipeline, or an existing AI strategy. If you can describe your business and hand over a handful of writing samples or past customer questions, that's enough to start. The Custom Build is where deeper technical integration comes in, and even there, we handle the technical side — you just need to know what's actually slowing your team down.
What if the free call says AI wouldn't actually help much right now?
Then that's what you'll hear. There's no productized tier to upsell you into on that call — if fixing one broken process would help more than automating it, you'll hear that plainly instead of a pitch dressed up to justify a fee.
Who actually does the work?
David Berube, directly, on the free call and the productized builds — not a junior assigned to your account. He co-founded Casting Frontier and was its technical lead through a 2020 acquisition by Talent Systems, has written multiple books on software development including *Practical Ruby Gems* (Apress), and has 20+ years of production software experience. Larger Custom Build engagements are built and supported through Durable Programming, the implementation studio he also runs.
Not sure where to start?
Book a free 5-minute call. Get an honest answer.
Describe the task or workflow that's draining the most time, and you'll get a read on whether it's a quick automation, the Content Engine, or a bigger Custom Build — usually within one business day.