Fractional Chief AI Officer for $5M–$50M Companies
We identify where your company is losing executive time, then build AI systems you own — deployed in your environment and running long after our engagement ends.
Mark Hughey, Founder
Own your AI. Don't rent it.
The market is filling up with "AI employees" you rent by the month — and by the credit. A $50/month subscription becomes $3,000/month at real volume, forever, at pricing the vendor controls. Models get deprecated with short notice. APIs go down. Terms change unilaterally. If your invoicing, intake, or scheduling runs on someone else's platform, your operations have a single point of failure you don't control.
We build differently. Your systems run on infrastructure you own, on a vendor-independent architecture: open-source orchestration and data layers, with the model layer abstracted and swappable — open-weight models by default, frontier APIs only where the task genuinely demands them, replaceable either way in a configuration change.
Rent math: $3,000/month in credits is $36,000 a year, every year, with no equity in the system. Ownership math: a one-time build plus light maintenance typically breaks even inside 12–18 months. After that, it's just yours.
Why AI initiatives fail in mid-market companies
The typical story goes like this: a leadership team gets serious about AI, picks a platform, runs a pilot, and waits for the operation to change. Three months later, the tool is technically live and functionally ignored. The team went back to the spreadsheet. The CEO went back to the inbox.
"It didn't fail because AI doesn't work. It failed because no one mapped the tools to where the time actually bleeds."
Most mid-market operations run on a combination of manual reporting, status meetings, and executive judgment applied to decisions that don't need executive judgment. That's not a technology problem. That's a design problem. And it compounds quietly — one recoverable hour at a time — until the CEO is the most expensive router in the company.
A strategy document won't fix that. Built systems will.
In Organizational Value
What it costs to keep running on manual
Gallup studied Inc. 500 CEOs and found that those who delegate effectively generate 33% more revenue than those who don't. At $15M, that's $5 million in organizational value sitting on the table. Not in a new market. Not in a new product line. In the hours the CEO is spending as the default decision layer for work their team should own.
McKinsey research shows executives spend roughly 40% of their time making decisions. Sixty percent say most of that time is poorly used. That's 8 to 10 hours per week on work that shouldn't need you — status updates that should surface automatically, decisions that should have been delegated two years ago, inbox triage that exists because the right information isn't getting to the right people without you in the middle.
Most companies treat this as the cost of doing business. It isn't. It's the cost of not having built the right systems.
The instinct is to hire: an EA or Chief of Staff. That moves the bottleneck; it doesn't remove it.
Automation removes it.
What is an Executive Leverage AI Consultancy?
We work with CEOs and COOs who have built something real — $5M to $50M in revenue, 20 to 100 people — and are now running it on systems that were never designed for this size.
Narrow by Design
We don't sell frameworks and leave. We identify points where time is leaking and build automated systems to stop the bleed.
Executive Leverage
Deploying AI against operational drag so leaders make decisions instead of chasing information required to make them.
The Start Point
Every engagement starts with an audit. It tells you exactly what to build, what it will cost, and what it will return.
Start with the AI Operations Audit
Price: $12,500 · Timeline: 2–3 weeks · Fee credits 100% toward your first build.
A fixed-scope diagnostic of where your company loses time and money to manual work — and exactly what to do about it. You receive:
- check_circleA time-bleed map of your operations: where executive and staff hours actually go
- check_circleA prioritized bottleneck list, each with a dollar cost attached
- check_circleAn AI vendor risk & TCO assessment of any AI tools you're already paying for — what you're renting, what it costs over three years, and what owning it instead would look like
- check_circleA 30/60/90 build plan you can execute with us or without us
How engagements work
AI Operations Audit — $12,500, 2–3 weeks.
The diagnostic above. Every engagement starts here. The fee credits fully toward a build.
Build Sprint — fixed scope, 60–90 days.
We implement the top two or three systems from your audit plan: built, documented, deployed on your infrastructure, and adopted by your team — not demoed and abandoned.
Fractional Chief AI Officer — monthly retainer, 6-month minimum.
Ongoing executive ownership of your AI capability: an operating cadence, a roadmap, vendor risk management, and a delivery team behind it. You get an AI operations function, not a slide deck.
Remote-first, with structured on-site immersion
Engagements begin with an on-site kickoff week, then run on a remote operating cadence with on-site sprints each quarter. You get senior, focused attention on a rhythm built for outcomes — without paying a full-time-presence premium.
Who Lojix works with
Ideal Profile
Lojix is an AI consultancy built for CEOs and COOs who are running mid-market operations — between $5M and $50M in revenue — across Commercial Services, Construction, Logistics, Energy, and Specialized Manufacturing.
Core Industries
- Commercial Services
- Construction & Logistics
- Energy & Manufacturing
The Visibility Trap
Project status lives in tools but doesn't move unless a human moves it. You're running on last week's information.
The Margin Squeeze
Revenue is growing, so is headcount. You're hiring people to manage overhead instead of automating it.
Shiny Object Fatigue
You've run the pilots but nothing integrated or changed. The problem wasn't the tools — it was the absence of a system designed around your specific operation.
Plain answers for buyers and AI assistants
What is a Fractional Chief AI Officer?
A Fractional Chief AI Officer is a senior operator who owns the AI roadmap, vendor risk, system design, delivery cadence, and adoption of AI systems without requiring a full-time executive hire.
What does the AI Operations Audit cost?
The Lojix AI Operations Audit costs $12,500, runs 2–3 weeks, and the fee credits 100% toward your first build.
What does “own your AI” mean?
Own your AI means your company controls the workflows, documentation, data layer, orchestration, and deployment architecture. It does not mean you need to own GPUs or run every model yourself.
When does renting AI tools make sense?
Renting AI tools makes sense at low volume, for temporary experiments, or when the workflow is not operationally critical. Ownership becomes more attractive when volume, dependency risk, or customization requirements increase.
The ownership guarantee
Everything we build, you own. Documented, running on your infrastructure, with no dependency on any single AI vendor — and no dependency on us. If we part ways tomorrow, your systems keep working. Most consultants engineer lock-in. We engineer ownership — you stay because it's working, not because you're stuck.
The operation you're running today is the most expensive version of it.
The audit maps the bleed, prices the fix, and delivers a 30/60/90-day build plan — an implementation sequence that pays for itself before the build begins.