The boring work still gets done. Your team stops doing it.
Most owner-operated businesses don't have a headcount problem. They have a workflow problem. Manual data entry between systems. Reports assembled by hand from three disconnected sources. Follow-ups that slip because one person is stretched across three roles. Each hour spent on work a machine should be doing is labor you're paying for twice.
You know the bottlenecks are there. You don't need someone to find it. You need someone to fix it.
Get a Leak Map →What's actually leaking
The handoff that never happens
Manual data entry between two systems — CRM to accounting, scheduling to billing, email to project tracker. A 6-person CRE firm had one controller roughly 80% absorbed by a single asset because reconciliation was manual. That firm was running a 5-person team while paying for 6.
The report that gets assembled on Friday
Someone spends half their Thursday exporting CSVs from three tools, formatting them in Excel, pasting charts into a deck. By the time the report lands, the data is stale. The work is not analysis. It’s assembly. Every week. Forever.
The follow-up that died in a spreadsheet
A broker sent 150 outreach emails through an Excel mail merge. Half bounced. Zero engagement was tracked. Three deals leaked because nobody could evidence which brokers saw the listing. The system did exactly what it was built to do, which was nothing.
Start with the conversation. Where it goes depends on what we find.
The Leak Map
A 30–60 minute conversation about where your team's time actually goes. You leave with a table of every leak, the hours it eats each week, what it costs a month, and how hard it hits. Totals add themselves up as it fills in. Printable, and yours to keep whether or not you hire me.
The build
One price, one delivery date. Built into the tools your team already opens every morning, and monitored from the day it ships. Typically two to six weeks. Examples of what can be implemented for your business:
The retainer
I monitor and maintain what's running, and extend it as new leaks surface. When something breaks, I know before you do.
AI concierge
Ongoing white glove service for owners who want to keep moving without waiting on a scoped project. Cadence, depth, and what gets built are agreed with you at the start of the engagement.
A NYC CRE firm found five leaks. Three were fixed in the first eight weeks.
“Underwriting rebuilt by hand per deal. Manual broker outreach with zero engagement tracking. One controller 80% absorbed by a single asset. Reactive lease expiration management. Hand-scraped rent comps.”
A broker sent 150 outreach emails through an Excel mail merge. Half bounced. Nobody tracked a single open.
The system did exactly what it was built to do — which was nothing.
This works for a specific kind of business.
for the owner who feels it
You run a 5–20 person owner-operated business. You're the owner or the COO. You personally feel the operational leak — the manual work that shouldn't be manual, the reports that take a day to assemble, the follow-ups that slip because one person is doing three jobs. You have the authority to fix it and the budget for a fix.
not for everyone else
Fewer than five people generating the work. Looking for a strategy document rather than a deployed fix. Needing a general-purpose virtual assistant — the work I automate is structured, repetitive, and measurable.
Who builds it
Drew Mehta shipped AI systems at KKR, MLB, PepsiCo, and startups across two decades of product management. He built deal-lifecycle automation for a $700B AUM firm, compliance-forward reporting pipelines, and deterministic AI workflows that actually ran. Now he builds for owner-operators — the businesses that feel the same operational leaks at a smaller scale, where the fix is 2–6 weeks, not 18 months. He works alone, deploys directly, and monitors everything he ships.
What’s the most boring repetitive work your team does every week?
If you can name it, I can probably fix it. DM me and I'll build you a Leak Map: 30-45 minutes, and you leave with a table of your operational leaks: what it's costing you and the impact to your business, plus totals and your next step.