Stephen Gardner
Founder & AI Consultant · Fractional CAIO · Former Google Search Team · Las Vegas
The operator behind the agents
I've spent twenty years building businesses online, five of them inside Google. I'm the AI consultant service businesses call when they want AI doing the work — not answering questions about it.
Where it started
Computer science at RIT, then five-plus years on Google's Search team — the years that taught me how information systems actually decide what matters. Then two decades of building, ranking, and scaling businesses online, most of them for founders who'd rather run their company than learn the plumbing.
The $50M problem
In 2020 I joined The Life Coach School as CMO when it was just past $1M in revenue. Three years later it was at a $50M run rate. The hard part was never the marketing. It was doing it without turning the company into a fifty-person org chart. Systems, automation, and ruthless clarity about what a human should be spending time on — that was the job.
That's the problem every growing service business eventually hits. AI made it solvable.
What I do now
I build AI agent teams — coordinated agents with roles, approval gates, and proof of work — for law firms, medical practices, coaching and consulting companies, and other service businesses that want to scale without scaling headcount. For businesses that want me in the room, I serve as fractional Chief AI Officer: the executive who owns the AI roadmap, part-time.
I've built AI paralegals. I've deployed local models on in-house servers for HIPAA and legal work where cloud AI was never an option. And I still do most of the technical work myself, which is why the answer to “can it do that?” comes fast.
How I think
- Strategy first. Execution follows. Nobody gets an agent before they get a plan.
- If it isn't doing work, it's a demo. Every deployment has a number attached.
- Humans approve what matters. Speed is nothing without a stop line.
- Earn it monthly. Engagements run month to month. I'd rather be re-hired every month than locked in.
Off the clock
Las Vegas, by way of western New York. Pepsi over coffee. Outdoors whenever the temperature allows. And a rescued husky named Everest, who supervises every build and approves none of them.
Bring the workflow that eats your team's week. Book a strategy call →
Recent writing
- Hermes Agent Skills: Build Reusable AI Workflows — August 22, 2026