AI Systems for Owner-Run Businesses
Your Business, On One System
We take the repetitive work that eats your week and build it out of your business until everything runs on one system. Keeping up with AI is our job, not yours.
Construction · Trades · Renewables · Recruitment
Oliver Tatler · Jacob Stray
coldlava.ai
01The Problem
You've watched the videos. Opened ChatGPT a few times. Maybe paid for a tool that's still sitting there. And the quotes still go out at midnight. Owner-run businesses don't stall for lack of opportunity - they stall because every quote, every chase and every decision still routes through one person.
01
Quotes that live in one person's head - so pricing stops when that person does
02
The owner answering every WhatsApp, including the ones a system should catch
03
Leads going cold in the CRM - money you already earned the hard way, sitting dormant
04
The weekly spreadsheet ritual: the retyping, the version confusion, the formula nobody trusts
05
Software everywhere and nothing joined up - every tool another login, another export, another gap
06
New starters on paper forms, documents chased by hand
07
Hiring your way out of it, then watching the bottleneck move down the org chart and multiply
“You're not behind. You're just where every owner gets to on their own.”
02What We Build
We don't sell software off the shelf. We build your business its own operating system - projects, people, money and comms in one place - and grow it month by month around how you actually work. One client runs 81 live projects through theirs. Stop buying tools. Start getting work done.
Hire an AI Employee
Not a chatbot. A round-the-clock team member that answers, chases, books and files while you sleep. The conversation in the phone is real - an AI recruiter from one of our live client systems, qualifying a candidate, requesting documents and filing them, with no human involved until judgement is needed. Yours gets designed around your business.
And One for Your Team
That one faces the outside world. A second kind faces your team: ask in plain English - who is free this week, which documents expire this month, where did that job get to - and it answers from your live data.
Millie
online · 24/7
A real conversation from a live client system - tap the link the AI sends
Every step that used to be a phone call, a notepad or an email chain now runs automatically - and your team sees all of it in one place.
03What We Build
The weekly ritual retired - live figures on one screen, one version of the truth.
Every enquiry, message and decision captured in the system, not in someone's pocket.
Clients, pipeline and follow-ups where the work actually happens - with the chasing automated.
Dormant leads, unbilled hours, unanswered quotes - surfaced and chased by an engine that never forgets.
Onboarding, sign-offs and inductions - digital, signed, filed automatically.
Margins, money and risk visible on the day, not discovered when the accountant calls.
A website your staff edit like a document and publish themselves. No developer wait.
We replace, augment or add around what you already run. Nothing you trust gets ripped out.
04The Proof
Nothing in this deck is a concept. A £13M roofing group runs 81 live projects through their system, margins flagged daily, down from 359 chaotic boards. A £40M contractor had 1,177,240 files mapped and priced before we quoted their migration. A luxury travel operator had 300 pages rebuilt byte-exact, with 6,866 members rescued, when their old platform was switched off.
100+
Live deployments in client businesses
19
Client businesses, named on our site
1,320
AI build sessions this year
You are not buying a promise. You are buying systems that already work.
05The Method
You tell us how the business actually runs. We show you a system like yours running live.
We diagnose the business with the same hands that build it - where the hours go, what eats the week, where the pressure sits.
Biggest time savers first: the low-hanging fruit, what gives you the most back, the systems that drive revenue. You always know what is being built and why.
Not configured, not templated - built around how your operation actually works.
The moment a build is ready - mid-month if it is ready mid-month - you watch it run on your real work. Not a slide, not a demo environment.
Each build is approved by your people before we move to the next. Nothing you trust is switched off until its replacement is live.
On to the next thing on the roadmap - building, automating and advising as the system compounds. The backlog is yours to reorder any time.
One step at a time, biggest time savers first - until the repetitive work is built out of your business.
The Three-Month Trial
Our recommended structure is a three-month trial. It gives us enough time to deliver, enough time to understand how we work together, and it works both ways: at the end, either of us can walk away. No lock-in. Everything we build is yours from day one.
A defined exit, every build shown working on your real work, and nothing held hostage.
06AI Employees
Not chatbots. AI employees designed around how each business runs - answering the enquiry, chasing the document, filing the paperwork at 3am. Below is a selection from live client systems: a glimpse, not the catalogue.
The repetitive work runs alone. The judgement stays yours.
"Fine in theory. But would it work for a business like mine?"
Shipped and running
Just some examples, from live client systems - each one designed around how that business runs. Click any of them. If your business needs it, we can build it: yours get designed around you.
Each agent is marked Runs alone or Asks first. The line where a human decides is yours to set, and yours to move.
Candidates onboard themselves before a recruiter touches them.
The problem
Recruiters spend their first hour with every candidate gathering the same five fields and chasing the same documents. Most of those candidates don't even meet basic eligibility. Hours wasted before a real conversation happens.
What we build
A messaging-channel intake agent. The candidate gets a custom link, opens it, answers a short conversational set of questions, uploads a passport or right-to-work doc, and the agent verifies it. By the time a recruiter sees them, they're already in the system with everything attached.
Result
Recruiter time only spent on candidates who pass first-pass eligibility, with documents already verified. Time-to-shortlist drops from days to hours.
Plugs into
INTAKE TIME
COMPLIANCE CAPTURE
RECRUITER TOUCHES BEFORE INTERVIEW
Recruitment Intake
online
Key responsibilities
What you get
Availability
24/7. Candidates can start the moment they apply.
07Commercial Control
Projects, people, money and risk in one place - live during the day, not discovered at month end.
The dashboard is not a report. It is where the business runs.
08Ownership
Every password, every login, every line of code: yours from day one. If we vanished tomorrow, it all keeps running.
Ask the last company that sold you software for the same promise.
Straight Answers
By this point in any serious conversation there are five questions in the room, asked or not. We would rather answer them before you ask.
01
The low-hanging fruit lands first, and every build is shown working live on your real work the moment it is ready - then we move to the next thing on the roadmap. Your side of it is a short call a month. We do the rest.
02
Because nothing we build is templated or configured. It is built around how your business actually runs, shown working on your real work, and nothing is switched off until its replacement is live and your team has signed it off.
03
No. The repetitive work runs alone: chasing, logging, reminders, filing. Judgement stays human, your people can step into any conversation at any point, and we make them more powerful. We won't pretend otherwise.
04
You do. The code, the logins, the data: in your name from day one. If we vanished tomorrow, it all keeps running - and your data leaves with you.
05
We replace, augment or add around what you already run. Whatever your operation runs on, we wire it in - nothing you trust gets ripped out.
Whoever you talk to about AI for your business, ask them these same five questions.
09Who Does the Work
Cold Lava builds for owner-run, operations-heavy businesses. The people on the call are the people who build the system - and the team spans the UK, Europe, Bali and Tunisia, so building never stops for a time zone.
01
Technical Lead & Build Architect
Leads every build on Cold Lava's production line. Custom systems for how you work, not how Silicon Valley thinks you should.
02
AI Strategy & Architecture Lead
Turns how the business actually runs into what gets built. The person who maps your operation is the person who architects the system.
03
Engineers & AI Specialists
Engineers, AI specialists and automation consultants behind every engagement - the bench behind the 100+ deployments already live.
Working With Us
01
A standing tech team working through your roadmap - biggest time savers first, every build shown working live before we move to the next. Pick your pace, from a light-touch retainer to your own embedded tech department. The same team at every tier, and everything built is yours from day one.
02
One defined system, built properly, fast. You set the deadlines. We tell you the price. For businesses that need a specific thing delivered before committing to a monthly rhythm.
The best way to understand what we do is to see it running. We don't do slide-deck demos - every question is answered with a working system from a live client business, not a promise.
The conversation starts with your operation, not a product pitch.
Want the full picture, prices included? Explore coldlava.ai