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Steve Hooper AI
Steve Hooper AI · Practical AI consultancy

AI that earns its place in your business.

I help SME leaders find the AI work worth doing, then build it. The test is simple: does it save time, reduce cost or help the team do better work? If not, we leave it alone.

Book a strategy callSee case studies

Available now · 4 engagements per quarter

002 · Featured work

One engagement. Anonymised. Boring in the best possible way.

All case studies
Case 01
Professional services · 60+ staff

48h → under 2h. Response time cut, without adding headcount.

Lead qualification, built into the workflow

A 60-person consultancy receiving 200+ enquiries a month. Junior staff were triaging by hand and leads were going cold. We built AI pre-qualification directly inside their CRM.

The team got 15 hours back each week. Sales booked 25% more qualified meetings, with no extra headcount and no replacement system.

Read the full case
Response time
48h → <2h
Team hours saved
15 / week
Qualified meetings
+25%
003 · How I work

Audit, prioritise, build, hand over. In that order. Every time.

  1. Step 01

    Audit

    Two weeks with your team. Map how the work actually happens and put a cost on the friction.

  2. Step 02

    Prioritise

    Score each idea on impact, effort and risk. The result fits on one page: do now, not yet or leave alone.

  3. Step 03

    Build

    Build the smallest version that is genuinely useful. Test it in the real workflow and document it properly.

  4. Step 04

    Hand over

    Your team owns the result. I provide the playbook, training and 30 days of support.

004 · Second engagement£150K programme signed off by the board in one meeting.
Case 02
B2B SaaS · Series B

£150K programme signed off by the board in one meeting.

Readiness audit, roadmap and governance

A Series-B SaaS business with no shared view of where AI belonged. Three weeks of structured interviews and process mapping produced 12 viable use cases and four quick wins.

Governance, cost model and a board-ready roadmap, approved in a single meeting, because every recommendation was already costed.

Read the full case
Programme approved
£150K
Viable use cases
12
Quick wins
4
Meetings to sign-off
1
005 · Work together

Four ways in. All start with a paid strategy call.

All services
01

AI Readiness Audit

Two weeks. Opportunity map, quick wins, business cases and a board-ready roadmap.

Fit · You need a costed plan, not more opinions.

2 weeks
From £6,500
Details
02

Automation & Implementation

Build the automation. Tested, integrated, documented and handed over to your team.

Fit · You know the problem. You want it shipped.

4–12 weeks
From £12,000
Details
03

Fractional AI Leadership

One to two days a week. Strategy, vendor calls, board reporting, real oversight.

Fit · You need senior AI cover without hiring one.

3-month min · 1–2 d/wk
From £4,000 / month
Details
04

Training & Enablement

Half or full-day workshops with your team's real data, playbook and office hours.

Fit · Your people need practical AI skill, not theory.

Half / full day
From £2,500 / workshop
Details
006 · The person you deal with
SHSteve Hooper
AI consultant and builder

Steve Hooper, AI consultant and builder.

You deal with me throughout. I scope the work, write the code and hand it over. There is no sales team and nobody junior learning on your budget.

Most problems start when a team buys a tool before it has understood the job. I begin with the workflow, cost the friction and decide what is worth fixing. Sometimes that means building an automation. Sometimes the process itself needs sorting out. Sometimes the sensible answer is to leave it alone.

More about how I work

007 · How the decision gets madeSignal from noise: what to ship, what to park, what to leave alone.
001 · Signal from noise

Most AI ideas are noise. A few are signal. Knowing which is which is the job.

Every audit ends with the same three-column decision: what to build now, what to revisit later, and what to leave alone. Boring, uncomfortable, useful.

Cohort ADo now
  • Ship this quarter

    Sales inbox first-response drafting

  • Ship this quarter

    Proposal pull from CRM history

Cohort BNot yet
  • Revisit in six months

    Voice-to-CRM meeting notes

  • Revisit in six months

    Support tone auto-QA

Cohort CLeave alone
  • Wrong time

    Fully autonomous outbound

  • Wrong tool

    AI-written thought leadership

Audit output · illustrativeSee how this plays out
008 · Who I helpUK SMEs typically 10–200 staff. Serious about doing this well.
Fit
  • UK SMEs with 10–200 staff and a real operational problem to solve.
  • Leadership prepared to make calls and free up a small internal team.
  • Budget for one meaningful build, not a full transformation programme.
  • Preference for measurable outcomes over vendor demos.
Not the right fit
  • Looking for a slide deck to raise funding on. Talk to a strategy house.
  • Wanting to bolt AI onto a product to look modern. Talk to your engineering team.
  • Expecting a fixed-price 'transformation' inside six months. Nobody sensible sells that.
  • Under 10 staff or pre-revenue. Off-the-shelf tools will serve you better.
009 · AI Without the WaffleA short podcast about AI that actually ships. Coming soon.

Conversations with people running AI inside real UK businesses: buyers and builders, not vendors. No release date yet; when episodes are ready they'll live here.

More on the podcast

010 · Start here

Sixty minutes. One clear answer.

Book a paid 60-minute call. I'll read your context beforehand and give you a clear recommendation and a sensible cost range. If I'm not the right person, I'll say so and point you elsewhere. £450.

Book a strategy callNot sure where to start

Talk to the person who will do the work.

No sales team. No account manager. You email, Steve replies.

Book a strategy callOr send a message