Schenectady, NY
I'm Matt Dembling. I spent thirteen years in enterprise data and operations, and now I work with small businesses around the Capital District that are good at their actual work and stuck on the systems around it. Here is what you can hire me for.
One
A computer that sits in your office and runs an AI belonging to you. Your files, your notes and your history go on it. Nothing you put in leaves the room, and none of it gets handed to a company that keeps it.
I spec it, order it at cost on your card, set it up, and sit with you until you can actually use it. You hold the admin password. I don't keep remote access to it.
Good fit if your work is confidential, or you'd rather your material not sit in someone else's pool.
Not sure it has to be in your building? There are three places the same AI can run. Pick one in a minute.
Two
Most small businesses run on four or five apps that don't talk to each other, plus somebody's spreadsheet holding the part that actually matters. Getting your own information back out of those apps is usually the first job.
Most of the work is sitting with you and learning the real steps you take, before anything gets built. Then one system that does them: booking, client records, follow-ups, reminders, whatever yours turns out to be. You own it when it's done.
Good fit if your business runs on memory, sticky notes, and one spreadsheet nobody else can read.
Both start the same way, with a $500 discovery. That's a few hours inside your business and then a written plan showing where things are stuck, what it's costing you, and what's worth doing about it. You keep the plan either way. How an engagement works.
There's also a third, smaller thing: ninety minutes one on one, learning to actually use AI on your own laptop. That's here.
What that looked like
A local imaging practice ran on a booking app, its imaging software, and years of spreadsheets, none of them talking to each other, and the booking vendor offering no way to export his own client contacts. I pulled more than 1,200 client records and twelve-plus years of history together from every source into one system the practice owns: booking, records, and follow-ups in one place, on infrastructure that costs a few dollars a month. On day one it flagged about a thousand overdue follow-ups for the practice to work through, patients no one was ever going to find by hand.
12+ yrs
of records freed
1,200+
client records
~1,000
overdue follow-ups surfaced
~$5/mo
was a $50/mo stack
What I do
Years of your business, customers, appointments, history, locked inside a booking app, a point-of-sale, or somebody's old spreadsheet. I fight the export battle, clean what comes out, and hand you your own records in a form you can actually use. Your data in a rented tool is theirs until someone gets it back for you.
One system for booking, records, and follow-ups, built around how your shop actually runs, on infrastructure that costs a few dollars a month instead of a stack of subscriptions. Built once, documented, and yours, your accounts, your data, a written runbook, and a handoff plan.
After a build, most clients keep me on for a few hundred a month: monitoring, fixes, small improvements, and a monthly check-in. Priced for what it takes to keep your operation healthy, never by the hour.
The day-to-day things that go wrong: file-storage setup, data recovery from locked or failed machines, password and account recovery, security hardening. Per-job pricing, or a monthly arrangement if you'd rather have someone to call.
Need your business to show up in search, including the AI kind? That work lives at agent-built.com.
One on one
Not a webinar, not a course, not a sales pitch. You, me, and your own laptop. We start from whatever you already know, even if that's nothing, and work on your real questions: what these tools actually are, what they're good and bad at, how to use them safely for your work, and what to ignore. You leave with things you can do Monday morning, written down.
The question you think is too basic is the one half the room has. Bring it.
$95
90 minutes · your place or video
Ask
Lunch-and-learns · team sessions
The same session for your office, chamber group, or team, tuned to where the room actually is, not where a slide deck assumes it is. Tell me about the group and I'll scope it.
Ask about a groupHow an engagement works
Free audits produce sales pitches. A paid one produces the truth. A few hours inside your business, then a written map of where your data is stuck, what it's costing you, and what's worth doing about it, whether or not you ever hire me to do it.
$500
A few hours + a written plan
from $3,000
Project-priced, never hourly
If the discovery says a build is worth it: data extraction, one system for booking, records and follow-ups, documentation, and a real handoff. Priced for the outcome so nobody argues about hours.
$200–500/mo
Keep it healthy
Monitoring, fixes, small improvements, a monthly touch. Someone who knows your system by name, answering the phone in your own area code.
About
I grew up in the Capital District and never really left. My career has been data and operations inside large regulated companies, healthcare data serving tens of millions of members, and the constant pressure to do more with the same headcount. That pressure is the mother of automation, and I've spent 13 years building the tools that quietly handle work no one ever wants to think about again.
The honest truth is that the same playbook works just as well in a five-person law office, a contractor's back office, or a medical practice in Latham. The tools got cheap, the integrations got real, and most small businesses are still running their day on someone's spreadsheet. There's a lot of room to make things better, and I'd rather spend that time helping shops and practices around Schenectady, Albany, and Saratoga than another 5,000-employee org chart.
Away from the keyboard: I spent seven years on the board of a Schenectady community theater, two of them as president, which is where I learned that volunteers, small budgets, and duct-taped spreadsheets run more of this region than anyone admits. I'm a dad of two, I teach anyone who sits still long enough, and I like a business where the owner answers their own phone, because I'm one too.
I build with you, not for you. We sit at the same table with your real data on the screen, and the system takes shape around how you actually work, not how a consultant imagines you should. You understand every piece of what you own, because you shaped it.
And the honest reason my systems work for busy human brains: I needed them first. I know what it's like when the follow-up lives in your head instead of on a list, when remembering is the job that eats the day, when starting is the hardest part of every task. Everything I build takes remembering, tracking, and starting off the person and puts it into the system, because I built that for myself before any client ever paid for it.
If you'd like to talk, the form below is the fastest way. I read everything that comes in and reply within a business day.
Get in touch
A few sentences is enough. I'll respond within one business day, usually the same day. No call required.