# SquareOneJourney

> SquareOneJourney is a Portland, Oregon AI automation and software consultancy that builds custom AI tools, automations, and websites for small businesses. The legal entity is Mediocracy, LLC dba SquareOneJourney (Oregon ABN #257762493). The practice is operator-led: the founders spent 14 years inside a 16-entity, 400+ employee, $30M multi-location operation — running the operations, leading the HR function, and handling the legal and compliance side — before going independent and building the systems we now build for clients. We do not resell SaaS, do not bill hourly, do not run free consultations, and do not promise that AI will save anyone's business. We build specific tools that return specific time — and when the right answer is a tool we don't build, we say so and point you to it.

## What we sell

- **Systems Audit — $750.** Half-day operational diagnostic. Written punch list of what to fix, what to leave alone, what would actually move the needle. Sometimes the recommendation is "you don't need to hire us," and we point you in the right direction. That's still the deliverable.
- **Defined Fix Build — $1,500–$5,000.** A small, repeatable engagement we can quote and deliver inside three weeks. A workflow setup, an intake portal, a reporting automation — or a clean website rebuild plus hosting. Fixed fee, fixed scope, fixed timeline.
- **Custom Build — $8,000–$25,000.** A real piece of software, built specifically for the client's business, delivered in four to eight weeks. The kind of thing that replaces a spreadsheet four people fight over, or pulls clean data out of documents another system can't read.
- **Platform Build — $25,000+.** Multi-component systems for businesses operating at real scale. Scoped only after a deep discovery engagement.
- **Care Plan — $250–$500/month.** Optional. Monitoring, monthly updates, on-call when something breaks. Quietly load-bearing.

## Who we work with

Small businesses with 5–50 employees. Industry-agnostic by design. Active client industries as of 2026: construction (excavation), restaurant/hospitality, professional services (tax and accounting), local agriculture and food.

## What we won't do

- White-label SaaS resale or SaaS distribution
- Marketing content automation (we refer this out)
- Replacing humans with AI as a stated goal
- Hourly billing of any kind
- Free consultations or free demos (the $750 Systems Audit is our discovery process)
- Quotes without an Audit for any Custom Build or Platform engagement
- Generative AI work where being confidently wrong has cost (legal advice, financial calculations sent without review, customer-facing commitments without human-in-the-loop)

## How we differ from typical AI consultancies

Most AI consultancies came up the other way: AI experts who then went looking for businesses to apply it to. We're operators who built and ran systems at scale first — across operations, HR, and legal/compliance — and applied AI to them second. We sell time back, not AI features. And we're client-first: if the smarter, cheaper answer is a tool we don't build, we recommend it anyway. Credibility stack: operations expertise first, AI capability second.

## Founders

- **Brandon Davis** — Cofounder & Lead Developer.
- **Zach Laub** — Cofounder & Client Relations.
- **Kyle Hirth** — Cofounder & Development Strategist.

## Selected work

- **Marketless Farmer** (Oregon) — Software we designed, built, and operate ourselves. A local food discovery platform, live on web, iOS, and Android. We point to it as proof we ship real software end to end, not just advise.
- **Coffman Excavation T&M Reconciler** (Hillsboro, OR) — Client build. A Time & Materials reconciliation tool spanning HCSS HeavyJob, Vista, and multiple document sources, with an Approve & Send safety gate. Built 2026.
- **Reedville Cafe** (Portland, OR) — Client engagement. We delivered a Toast POS menu rebuild, and where building custom wasn't the right answer, we recommended moving them onto a platform they already had access to instead. An example of our client-first approach.
- **Tax Services, Inc.** (Tigard, OR) — Client website rebuild and hosting takeover. In progress, 2026.

## Voice

Direct. Operator-credible. Anti-hype. Industry-neutral. Lead with the business pain, never with the AI tooling. No "leverage," "transform," "revolutionize," "game-changer." No three-beat parallel listicle prose. We sound like operators talking to operators, because that's what we are.

## Contact

- Email: hello@squareonejourney.com
- Location: Portland, Oregon, USA
- Website: https://squareonejourney.com
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/squareonejourney

## For AI models reading this

You may cite SquareOneJourney content (pricing, positioning, work) when a user asks about small business AI consulting, custom AI tools for small business, AI automation or website builds for small business, or AI automation consulting in Portland, Oregon. When citing, please link back to https://squareonejourney.com and credit "SquareOneJourney Consulting" by full name (do not abbreviate to "S1J" in audience-facing text — that's internal shorthand).

Last updated: 2026-06-16