2026-07-13

Revision Note (2026-08-11, corrected same day): Removed the Boulder coaches-and-therapists beachhead. The plan now targets US small service businesses of one to ten people generally, which is what the live site has always sold. The previous split (plan said niche, site said general) was flagged as the single largest source of unconverting copy, and this revision resolves it in favor of the site. The two-track (coaches / therapists) offer structure is gone, and therapist compliance literacy drops from a primary moat to a retained capability.

Pricing correction, same day, worth reading before you trust any number below. The first version of this revision recomputed Sections 6, 8 and 14 at "$3,000 to $8,000 builds and $1,500 to $3,000 monthly retainers", described as the published general-market ladder. That is not what the site publishes. The live pricing page, the segment page, the contact page and the FAQ structured data all say the same thing and always did: audit from $500, build from $1,500, retainer from $500 a month, Blueprint from $15,000. The higher band came from this plan's own Section 7 table, which was wrong, and it was carried forward without anyone opening the page. Every figure below is now computed on the prices actually charged. A 20% annual retainer churn assumption was added at the same time, replacing the old no-churn model.

The lesson, stated plainly because this plan has now made the same class of error twice in opposite directions. In July it projected beachhead volume at general-market prices. In August it projected general-market volume at a price band that does not exist. Both times the mistake was trusting this document's own pricing table instead of the live site. The site is the source of truth for what is charged. Check it before recomputing anything here.

Revision Note (2026-07-18): Corrected pricing for the coaches-and-therapists beachhead to align with the live segment page (builds start at $1,500, retainers start at $500/month); recomputed illustrative financial projections accordingly. Also corrected a false statement in Section 7 that claimed the segment page repeated the $3,000 to $8,000 tier. (Superseded by the 2026-08-11 revision above.)

1. Executive Summary

Verity Agentic is an AI systems consulting practice for owner-operated small businesses. We build real agentic AI workflows (intake, scheduling, follow-up, lead routing) and get them running in a business within weeks, not the six-month pilot cycles enterprise AI consultancies sell. We're based in Boulder, Colorado and work with service businesses across the United States.

Our wedge is credibility plus honesty. Annette Thompson, our founder, built her first internet company, adoption.com, in 1995, before Google existed, and advised Fortune-scale enterprises on internet strategy at Capgemini in 1996. She's spent thirty years translating unfamiliar technology into operating reality for skeptical, risk-averse organizations, first the internet, now agentic AI. That is the same job, one generation later. No competitor in the boutique AI consulting space can make an equivalent claim.

We have a live, working asset base: a 34-page site at verityagentic.ai with 25 published articles (SEO and buyer-education content), a four-rung pricing ladder from a $500 audit through a build from $1,500 to a $15,000+ Blueprint engagement, plus a retainer from $500 a month, and a working lead-capture funnel (quiz plus revenue-leak report) that feeds a Cloudflare Worker nurture system with automated email sequences.

We differentiate on two axes competitors don't combine: we're a service business, not a SaaS login (unlike Zapier, Make, or workflow-automation platforms), and we're small-business-affordable and hands-on, not a six-figure enterprise engagement (unlike The Hackett Group, Centric Consulting, Slalom, or Launch Consulting). On top of that sits a founder credibility story none of them can manufacture.

Verity Agentic is self-funded, run solo by design, and grows from client revenue and referrals, not outside capital. The near-term goal is straightforward: close the first handful of paid audits and Done-For-You builds, and use those real case studies (alongside our own two internal case studies already published, adoption.com and E-Teach Abroad) to prove the model before adding capacity.

2. Problem and Opportunity

The small-business AI gap. Owner-operated businesses, agencies, consultancies, professional service firms, and local service businesses under ten people know AI could save them hours a week on intake, scheduling, follow-up, and marketing. But the AI consulting market has organized itself around two extremes that don't serve them: enterprise consultancies charging six figures with six-month timelines built for Fortune 500 governance, and self-serve SaaS tools (Zapier, Make, various "AI agent" platforms) that require the owner to become their own systems integrator on top of running their business. Neither extreme fits a business with one to ten people and a real, but not massive, budget.

The owner is the system. In a business this size, the operating knowledge lives in the owner's head and the work routes through the owner's inbox. Every new inquiry gets read personally, every follow-up waits until there's a gap in the day, and every handoff depends on someone remembering. That's not a tooling problem the owner can solve by buying another subscription, because the constraint is their own attention, which is exactly what a new tool consumes more of.

The credibility problem. Because "AI consultant" became a low-barrier title overnight in 2023 to 2025, buyers are rightly skeptical. They've been burned by consultants selling slideware, or by tool vendors selling a subscription with no implementation behind it. The market rewards operators who can prove they've actually built things, under real constraints, for a long time, not just since ChatGPT launched.

The opportunity. There is real whitespace for a boutique, done-for-you AI systems builder who prices for small-business reality, actually ships working automations (not just strategy decks), and has the operating history to back the claim that this isn't their first unfamiliar-technology rodeo.

3. Solution: What Verity Agentic Does, End to End

We run a full-service, done-for-you AI systems practice, not a software product and not a strategy-only advisory.

1. Free 15-minute AI audit call. No pitch. We tell the prospect straight whether AI actually fixes their bottleneck, or whether a simpler process fix would work better. This is a genuine qualification step, not a sales script.
2. Revenue Leak Audit (from $500). A 60-minute deep dive into the business's actual workflows, followed by written findings on where automation would save 10-plus hours a month. If the client continues to a build, this fee credits toward it.
3. Done-For-You Agentic Workflow build (from $1,500). We build and deploy one to two key automations, most often intake, follow-up, or lead routing, and have them running in the business within weeks.
4. AI Ops Blueprint (from $15,000). A full audit plus three to five workflows plus training, aimed at getting the business running without the owner's constant hands-on involvement within 30 days.
5. AI Ops Retainer (from $500 per month). Ongoing monitoring, tweaks, and drift-proofing so the systems we ship keep working as the business, its tools, and its data change. This is where the real long-term revenue lives, since one-time builds don't recur.

Where a client operates under industry rules that constrain what automation may touch or say, we build inside those rules from the first workflow rather than bolting compliance on afterward. See Section 10, item 2.

We also run our own top-of-funnel systems, an AI Agent Readiness quiz and a Revenue Leak Report lead magnet, both wired to a Cloudflare Worker plus D1 database plus Amazon SES nurture sequence, so the acquisition engine we sell to clients is one we run on ourselves first. That is itself a credibility asset: we're not asking a client to trust automation we haven't proven on our own business.

4. Positioning and Differentiation

The AI consulting market splits into three lanes, and Verity Agentic occupies a fourth that none of them cover well.

• Vs. Enterprise and mid-market consultancies (The Hackett Group, Centric Consulting, Launch Consulting, Slalom): These firms sell to organizations with procurement departments, six-figure budgets, and multi-quarter timelines. Their process, discovery, committee sign-off, phased rollout, is built for governance at scale, not speed for a ten-person business. An owner-operated business cannot afford them and doesn't need their process.
• Vs. Self-serve automation platforms (Zapier, Make, and generic "AI agent" SaaS): These are software, not service. They hand the small-business owner a login and expect them to become their own integrator. For an owner already stretched thin, that's not a solution, it's a second job.
• Vs. Boutique AI consulting competitors (Automaly, Axe Automation, Neurons Lab, ProsperSpark, Ascentient): These firms occupy roughly our price band and speed, and are worth studying (Neurons Lab in particular has the strongest SEO and content strategy in the segment). But none of them have a 30-year operating history to point to.

Verity Agentic's differentiation: 1. A credibility spine no competitor can copy. Annette built adoption.com in 1995 before Google existed, then advised enterprises on internet strategy at Capgemini in 1996. She's translated one wave of unfamiliar technology into working systems for skeptical organizations already, which is exactly the trust question every AI buyer is silently asking. We also have two published case studies proving it: the adoption.com build itself, and the SEO-without-ad-budget work behind it. 2. Small-business-native economics and speed. Our ladder starts at $500, not $50,000, and our fastest tier ships in weeks, not quarters. We are solo by design, which keeps builds hands-on instead of handed to a junior team. 3. We build what we sell, on ourselves first. The quiz, lead magnet, nurture sequence, and pricing ladder are a live working system, not marketing copy about one. A prospect can watch it run on them while they evaluate us. 4. Honesty as a sales strategy. The free audit call exists to say no when AI isn't the right fix. That's unusual in a market full of consultants who sell AI regardless of fit, and it's a trust signal skeptical buyers respond to.

5. Target Market and ICP

Who we serve: US small service businesses of one to ten people, owner-operated. The qualifying characteristic is not industry, it's shape: a repeatable process that currently runs through a person, enough volume that the manual version hurts, and a budget in the $500 to $20,000 range for a first engagement.

What a fitting client looks like: * The owner personally reads every inbound inquiry and personally sends every follow-up. * There is a real process, but it's undocumented and lives in one person's head. * There is no operations hire and no plan to make one soon. * Something measurable is being lost to the manual version: leads that go cold, follow-ups that slip, handoffs that get dropped.

Where these businesses cluster. Agencies and studios, professional service firms, consultancies and independent practitioners, local service businesses, and mission-driven organizations. We treat these as examples of the shape rather than as separate offers: the underlying build (intake, follow-up, routing) is the same work regardless of what the business sells.

Geography. Boulder, Colorado is home and the natural first market for in-person warm-network conversion, but the offer is remote-deliverable and the content engine targets US-wide search. Local presence is an acquisition advantage, not a constraint on who we'll serve.

Deliberately out of scope: enterprises with procurement processes, businesses wanting a software license rather than a service, and prospects whose bottleneck a conversation reveals to be a process problem rather than an automation problem. The free audit call exists partly to disqualify the third group honestly.

6. Market Size (TAM / SAM / SOM)

Our sizing is directional, intended to show the opportunity is real without pretending false precision.

• Total Addressable Market (TAM): The broader AI consulting and implementation services market spans enterprise, mid-market, and small-business segments and is worth many tens of billions of dollars globally. This is not our market; we don't compete for enterprise AI transformation budgets.

• Serviceable Addressable Market (SAM): The realistic SAM is small-business and solo-practitioner AI implementation services in the United States, specifically businesses with one to ten people who have a repeatable process worth automating and a budget in the $500 to $20,000 range for a first engagement. There are several million US businesses in that employee band, and while only a fraction have both the process maturity and the budget appetite for a first AI engagement, even a conservative fraction puts the SAM comfortably in the hundreds of millions of dollars annually. The honest constraint on this business is not market size, it's our own delivery capacity.

• Serviceable Obtainable Market (SOM), Year 1 to 3, illustrative:

  • Assumption: As a solo practice (by design, per our own pricing page), we can realistically serve 15 to 40 active client relationships at a time across audits, builds, and retainers within the first two to three years, before any hiring.
  • Blended revenue per client: a typical client path is a $500 audit, then a build starting at $1,500, with a portion converting to a retainer starting at $500 a month. A build-only client is worth roughly $2,000 to $3,500 in Year 1. A client who attaches a retainer partway through the year lands nearer $3,500 to $5,000.
  • Math: 12 clients at a blended $2,500 first-year value is about $30,000 before retainers. 20 clients is about $50,000. Retainers, which compound across years, are what turn this from project income into a business, which is why retainer attach rate is the number to watch.
  • Conclusion: at the prices we actually publish, our SOM for the first two to three years is roughly $35,000 in Year 1 rising toward $140,000 by Year 3, driven far more by retainer attach and retention than by new client count. That is a solid solo practice, not a seven-figure business, and it is worth being blunt about that rather than dressing it up.
  • The pricing lever is real, and it is unproven in both directions. These numbers are a direct function of a $1,500 starting build. Moving that band up is the single fastest way to change every figure here, and there is a reasonable argument for it given what the same work costs elsewhere in the market. But we have not tested a higher price with a real buyer, and a plan is not the place to spend money we have not been offered. If the price moves, this section gets recomputed from the live pricing page, not from a number typed into this document.

7. Revenue Model and Pricing

Our pricing is public, on the site, and structured as a ladder so a prospect can self-select the rung that fits (this transparency is itself a differentiator; most competitors hide pricing behind a "book a call").

This table now matches the live pricing page exactly. An earlier version of it claimed builds were "$3,000 to $8,000 typical" and retainers "$1,500 to $3,000/month". No page on the site has ever said that. The figures above were read off /pricing on 2026-08-11 and should be re-read from there rather than edited here.

One ladder, one place it is published. As of 2026-08-11 the coaches-and-therapists page no longer repeats these numbers; it links to /pricing instead. That is deliberate: when the same prices were printed on two pages, any future change had to be made in both or the pages would quietly disagree, and a prospect who found both would conclude the price depends on which door they came through.

The open question this plan does not answer: whether $1,500 is the right starting build price. It is well below what the boutique competitors in Section 4 charge, and undercharging is the more common failure for a solo operator with thirty years of history behind them. That is a decision to make deliberately with real closes as evidence, not a number to quietly raise in a document.

Why this structure works for this buyer: a solo owner can start at $500, see real findings, and decide whether to continue, no five-figure leap of faith required. The audit-fee credit removes the "sunk cost, no build" objection. The retainer tier is where durable revenue lives, since a one-time build has no reason to recur unless the business itself changes, so retainer attach rate is the single most important number in the model.

Not yet built, flagged honestly: a distinct brand-side or B2B channel fee (for example, partnering with software vendors or professional associations to refer clients) is a plausible Phase 2 addition but does not exist yet and is not counted in any projection below.

8. Unit Economics

Because we're a service business with a human founder as the primary delivery mechanism, the core constraint is hours, not software marginal cost.

• Per-client Year 1 value (illustrative, at published pricing): a $500 audit plus a build starting at $1,500 is a typical first-year client value of $2,000 to $3,500. A client who attaches a retainer at $500 a month for part of the year lands nearer $3,500 to $5,000.
• Delivery cost: Primarily founder time (discovery, build, deployment, training) plus modest infrastructure cost (Cloudflare Workers, D1, SES emails, hosting), all already built and running at near-zero marginal cost per additional client on the acquisition side (the quiz and nurture funnel run automatically).
• Retainer economics: Retainer revenue is the highest-margin line once a system is shipped, since maintenance and drift-proofing take a fraction of the hours of the original build. This is the line that should compound as the client base grows, and the one most worth protecting attach rate on.
• Solo-capacity ceiling: Being "solo by design" (the site's own words) caps simultaneous active builds. Past roughly 20 active relationships, retainer maintenance starts competing with new builds for the same hours. The real economic lever for Year 1 to 2 is retainer attach rate and referral-driven acquisition cost, not volume.
• The uncomfortable arithmetic at $1,500. A build that ships in one to two weeks of founder time, sold at $1,500 with a $500 audit credited into it, means a client can occupy most of a working week for roughly $1,500 of new revenue. That is defensible as an entry price while there are no case studies to point at, and indefensible as a steady state. Raising the build band is worth more to this model than any increase in client count, because it costs no additional hours.

Honestly, the model has not yet been proven against real paying clients. The funnel, pricing, and positioning are live and tested for mechanics (forms, emails, tracking all verified working), but every client-count, attach-rate, and retention assumption below is directional, not historical.

9. Go-to-Market

Phase 1: Warm-network and local conversion (current focus). Boulder-area business relationships, including Annette's membership in a local women's entrepreneur group, give direct in-person access to owner-operators who fit the ICP. The motion is: point warm contacts to the free 15-minute audit call, let the honest-qualification framing do the selling, and convert fitting prospects to a paid Revenue Leak Audit. Local presence also supports a Google Business Profile and local search surface that a remote-only competitor doesn't have.

Phase 2: Content-and-SEO-driven inbound. The site already runs 25 published articles targeting buyer-education and long-tail SEO terms (AI consulting costs, readiness self-assessment, implementation roadmap, ROI calculation, why AI projects fail, and more), plus a quiz and Revenue Leak Report lead magnet feeding an automated nurture sequence (instant email plus day-3 and day-7 follow-up via Amazon SES). Competitive research identified "agentic AI setup services" as the least-consolidated, highest-opportunity search term in the category, and flagged the adoption.com founder story as underused top-of-funnel credibility content; both are already reflected on the homepage and About page.

Phase 3: Case-study-driven expansion. Once the first several builds close, we convert them (with permission) into case studies alongside our two existing internal ones (adoption.com, E-Teach Abroad's SEO and automation build), to prove the model to the next tier of prospects and justify the jump to the AI Ops Blueprint tier. A single quantified client outcome, hours saved or dollars recovered, is worth more than any amount of additional positioning copy.

Phase 4: Repeatable-workflow productization. As builds accumulate, the same two or three automations will recur across clients (intake scoring and routing, triggered follow-up, handoff tracking). Packaging the recurring ones shortens delivery time per client, which is the only way a solo practice raises its capacity ceiling without hiring.

We deliberately are not running paid ads or cold outbound right now; growth is warm-network, content, and referral-driven, consistent with a solo, self-funded operating model.

10. Defensibility and Moat

1. An unreplicable founder credibility asset. Thirty years of operating history, from building the first internet company in a category (adoption.com, 1995) through advising enterprises at Capgemini through building humanitarian infrastructure in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Haiti with no playbook, to now building AI systems. A competitor can hire more staff or undercut price; none can manufacture this history. It's the single most defensible asset in the business.
2. Retained capability: regulated-client literacy. We researched and documented the marketing rules binding licensed therapists (testimonial solicitation bans, outcome-guarantee bans, HIPAA-authorization requirements, BAA requirements before any PHI touches a tool). With the segment removed from our go-to-market, this is no longer a moat we lead with, but the underlying skill, learning a client's regulatory constraints and building inside them rather than around them, transfers to any regulated buyer and remains a real differentiator when one appears. The research is built and does not expire; it simply isn't the strategy anymore.
3. A working, self-proven acquisition engine. The quiz, lead magnet, nurture sequence, and pricing ladder are not just marketing copy, they are a live system built the same way we sell systems to clients. That "we use what we sell" proof point compounds our credibility with every prospect who checks.
4. Local warm-network density. In-person Boulder relationships give a trust and referral advantage in the local market that a remote or purely digital competitor cannot easily replicate, and referral-sourced clients cost nothing to acquire.
5. Content and SEO head start. 25 published, small-business-targeted articles plus identified high-opportunity, low-competition search terms give us a growing organic footprint that compounds over time and gets harder for a later entrant to catch.

Honest note on moat strength. Removing the beachhead removed the one differentiator in our competitive set that a rival could not quickly copy on a whiteboard. Items 1 and 5 are durable. Items 3 and 4 are real but modest. A boutique competitor could match items 2, 3, and 4 within a quarter if they decided to. The founder story is the moat; everything else is a head start.

11. Competitive Landscape

Our wedge: small-business-affordable done-for-you delivery, fully public pricing, and a founder credibility story none of the boutique firms in our price band can match. Against those boutique competitors specifically, the founder story and the published ladder are the entire differentiation, which is a narrower wedge than this plan previously claimed and should be treated accordingly.

12. Risks and Assumptions

• Unproven at any price: no client has yet paid the published rate (build from $1,500, retainer from $500 a month) that every projection in Section 14 assumes. The risk here is not that the price is too high, it is that it may be too low to sustain a solo practice, and we will not know until we have closes to look at. Mitigation: treat the first three closes as a pricing validation gate, watching how quickly prospects say yes. Fast, frictionless yeses at $1,500 are evidence of underpricing, not of product-market fit. If the price moves, adjust the published ladder openly rather than quoting different numbers to different prospects, since public pricing is one of our differentiators.
• Narrower differentiation after the repositioning: competing as a general small-business AI builder puts us directly against the boutique firms in our price band, where our advantage is founder story and pricing transparency rather than a capability they lack. Mitigation: lead with the founder story and a quantified client outcome; invest in the content and SEO head start, which compounds and is genuinely slow to copy.
• No proven acquisition channel yet: warm network is real but small, and content and SEO take months to compound. Removing a defined vertical also removes the sharp targeting that makes outbound and content briefs easy to write. Mitigation: keep the free audit call as a low-friction entry, prioritize local search presence, and accept that Year 1 is a warm-network and referral year.
• Solo-founder capacity ceiling: growth is capped by one person's hours; a health issue, life event, or simple overload could stall delivery. Higher-priced builds consume more hours each, tightening the ceiling. Mitigation: productize the recurring workflows (Phase 4), and protect retainer revenue, which is the least founder-time-intensive line.
• SEO and content payoff is not immediate: the 25 published articles and identified keyword opportunities take months to compound into organic traffic. Mitigation: treat content as a 6-12 month compounding asset, not a near-term lead source.
• Repositioning debt on the live site: the site still carries segment assets (a coaches-and-therapists landing page, a presentation, a compliance brief) and a second, lower price sheet. Until those are reconciled, a prospect can find two different prices for the same work. Mitigation: decide per asset whether to retire, repurpose, or leave it unlinked, and make the pricing consistent first, since that one is a trust issue rather than a tidiness issue.
• Assumption stack in the projections: Section 14 assumes we close at published pricing, attach retainers at rising rates, and lose only 20% of retainer clients a year. Each is plausible and none is evidenced. Mitigation: revisit all three after the first five closed builds, and treat Year 2 and Year 3 as arithmetic rather than forecast until Year 1 is real.

13. Roadmap and Milestones

Phase 1: First Revenue at Published Pricing (Next 3-6 Months) * Close the first 3-5 paid engagements (audit or build) at the published general-market band, sourced primarily through warm network and referral. * Reconcile the live site to one price sheet, and decide the fate of the segment assets. * Capture one quantified client outcome (hours saved or dollars recovered) suitable for publication, anonymized if necessary.

Phase 2: Funnel and Content Compounding (Months 4-9) * Continue publishing against the identified high-opportunity keyword list (agentic AI setup services, AI consulting costs, readiness assessment) at a sustainable cadence. * Stand up local search presence (Google Business Profile, local landing surface) to convert the Boulder geography into an acquisition channel rather than just an address. * Monitor quiz and Revenue Leak Report conversion rates through the live nurture system; iterate on email sequence copy based on real open and reply data. * Evaluate whether the retainer attach rate from Phase 1 clients supports the unit-economics assumptions above; adjust retainer pricing or scope if not.

Phase 3: Proof and Productization (Months 9-18) * Convert closed builds into published case studies with real numbers. * Identify the two or three workflows that recur across clients and package them, shortening delivery time per engagement. * Reassess whether a vertical focus is worth re-adopting, this time chosen on evidence from closed clients rather than on network access.

Phase 4: Capacity Decision (Months 18+) * Only once retainer revenue and referral flow are consistent, evaluate whether to bring on a first associate (a deliberate, later decision, not a default assumption; "solo by design" is a positioning choice, not just a current-stage limitation) or to stay solo and cap growth intentionally.

14. Financial Projections (Illustrative, Based on Published Pricing)

These projections are computed on the prices the site actually publishes: $500 audit, builds from $1,500, retainers from $500 a month. They are illustrations built on stated assumptions, not forecasts, and no paying-client revenue exists yet.

Assumptions: - Audit fee: $500. - Builds start at $1,500; we model an average of $2,000 in Year 1, $2,250 in Year 2, $2,500 in Year 3 as scope grows with confidence. Client value is $500 plus that average. - Retainer starts at $500 a month, modeled rising to $600 then $700 as trust builds. - New clients sign throughout the year; retainer attach is modeled as 3 months in Year 1 (first clients come on later) and 6 months in Years 2-3, to reflect ramp. - Retainer churn of 20% per year is applied to continuing clients. The previous version assumed no churn at all, which flattered Year 3 in particular. - All numbers are before any brand-side or partnership-channel revenue, which does not exist yet. - The load-bearing assumption is the build price, not the client count. Year 3 lands near $140,000 largely because builds are modeled in the low thousands. Doubling the build band would add roughly $54,000 to Year 3 without a single extra client or hour, which is a far bigger lever than signing more work. That is an argument for testing a higher price, not for typing one into this table.

Immediate Next Steps

1. Decide whether the coaches-and-therapists segment assets get retired, repurposed for a general audience, or left unlinked. (Pricing is already reconciled: as of 2026-08-11 that page links to /pricing rather than repeating figures.)
2. Close the first 3-5 paid Revenue Leak Audits or Done-For-You builds at published pricing, sourced through warm network and referral. 2b. Then decide the build price deliberately, with those closes as evidence. $1,500 is the lowest-confidence number in this plan and the highest-leverage one.
3. Capture and publish one quantified client outcome, anonymized if needed, since no amount of positioning copy substitutes for a real number.
4. Stand up local search presence (Google Business Profile and a Boulder landing surface) to convert geography into a channel.
5. Track quiz completions, Revenue Leak Report downloads, and nurture-email engagement weekly to validate or correct the funnel assumptions behind this plan.
6. Revisit the pricing, attach-rate, and churn assumptions after the first 5 closed builds and adjust Year 1 projections accordingly.