AI-run operations for the trades and small teams. The busywork runs itself, so your day goes back to the work only you can do.
The biggest thing between you and ten hours back a week is a handful of myths.
Here's the truth, in plain English.
It frees you up. The busywork runs itself, so you get more time to be you, and do the work only you can do.
You don't touch a thing. I build it all around how you already work. No new skills, no jargon, no software to babysit.
Setup has a start and a finish. You spend a little time up front telling me how you work. After that it runs on its own, and you stop thinking about it.
Not vague "automation." Finished things you would hand a client or read on a Friday. Here is what the agents actually produce.
Thanks so much, Mark. The crew loved working on your deck, and we are glad the railing came out just how you pictured it. We are around anytime you need us.
Not chatbots for the sake of it. Each one takes a recurring job off your plate and hands back a finished result. They're grouped by where they fit in the method, so you can see the path from getting organized to fully self-running.
Four moves from chaos to calm:
Get how you work out of your head and into something repeatable.
Captures your colors, fonts, logo, and voice into one source of truth, then applies it to everything you put out, so every estimate, post, and email looks and sounds unmistakably like you.
Trained on your documented playbooks. Answers "how do we do this?" so the knowledge stops living in one person's head.
Walks a new hire or new client through the documented steps, the checklist, and the first-week plan. No hand-holding required.
Hand the repeatable pieces to AI, running quietly in the background.
Watches inbound email, DMs, and voicemail. Answers FAQs from your playbook, books appointments, and routes anything real to you.
Pulls from your calendar, project board, and inbox, then writes the weekly status update or client report for you, before you ask.
Keeps your social presence alive without eating your week. Turns one job photo or update into ready-to-post content, on a steady schedule. No social-media hire needed.
Scans every receipt and purchase, sorts what's deductible from what isn't, tracks it where your CPA needs it, and hands over a clean, categorized export at tax time. No more shoebox.
Turn the running system into recovered revenue and reputation as you grow.
Chases unsigned quotes, no-shows, and lapsed customers with personalized nudges. Pays for itself the first month.
Asks for reviews at the right moment, drafts your replies, and flags an unhappy customer before the bad review ever goes public.
Untangle comes first. A one-time diagnostic maps where your time actually goes. These nine agents are what we build from there, so you start with the one that hurts most and add the rest as they earn it.
The Estimator is a quoting engine built around how you price. Upload the photos, measurements, and scope. It pulls your own markups, checks live vendor pricing and what is actually in stock, and hands back a clean, branded estimate in minutes, not the night after dinner.
Try it live. The estimate to the right is a working example. Tap a quantity and watch it reprice in real time.
This one is a custom build, wired into your vendors and your materials for your trade. It stands on its own, separate from the monthly agents.
Most operations and AI people can't design their way out of a paper bag. I spent two decades as a designer before I ran ops, so Surly & Serene doesn't just document and automate your business. It builds or rebuilds the brand underneath it.
A real engagement, kept anonymous until the client clears their name. Here is what the first week surfaced and fixed.
Before: the site's code told Google and AI assistants it was a generic, low-to-mid-price business. Credentials sat below the fold, the Business Profile had gone years unverified, and written quotes went quiet with no follow-up.
After week one: the structured data was rewritten so the machines read the real specialist, with manufacturer credentials, nine services, and the correct price tier, verified by Google's Rich Results Test on both crawlers in under an hour. A brand-new "AI Assistant" traffic channel showed up the same week, and the full 30-day readout is in progress.
Your next customer is asking ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI who to call. The answer comes from how the machines read your business, not your ad spend.
Most shops are invisible to those engines. I rewrite the signals the answer engines actually read, your credentials, your services, your real price tier, so the AI names you as the specialist instead of a generic listing.
Two levels: we watch it, or we run the whole thing. Every piece below is its own subscription somewhere; here they run as one system, one vendor, one report. Monthly is optional, start with the one-time build alone, and everything we build stays yours.
The one-time build, yours to keep. We map your operation, document how it runs, and stand up your first systems, with 30 days of it running included. Continue to a monthly plan only if you want it run for you.
Every engagement starts with The Spine, a one-time build, yours to keep. Monthly Embedded is optional, only if you want us running it for you. Not sure where you land? The first conversation's free.
We build AI-powered systems that run your business busywork. Operational design plus practical AI, so documentation, reporting, follow-up, and inbox triage handle themselves. You get those hours back.
The first conversation is free. Every engagement begins with a one-time build called The Spine, yours to keep, no subscription required. If you want it run for you, monthly Embedded is optional and scoped to your size, Lite (monitored) or Full (run for you), enterprise custom. Everything we build stays yours.
Teams of every size, from solo operators to multi-location companies, drowning in scattered knowledge, undocumented process, and tools nobody adopted. Service and trades, medical practices, and studios all fit.
Louisville, Kentucky, working remotely with teams anywhere in the United States.
Setup is a defined engagement with a start and a finish. We begin with the one task hurting most, prove it works, then add from there.
I'm a designer who fell in love with operations, which means I care as much about how a system looks and feels to use as whether it works. After two decades building the operational backbone for large, demanding brands, I kept hearing the same frustrations from friends running far smaller shops: the wallpaper installer, the medical office, the teacher buried in admin. Same problems. No enterprise budget.
Surly & Serene exists to close that gap for businesses of every size: enterprise-grade operational design and AI, run as an ongoing partnership instead of a one-time project. Surly about the chaos. Serene about the fix.
Tell me where it hurts. The first conversation is free, jargon-free, and there's no pitch deck waiting to ambush you.
Surly & Serene is new, and the first handful of clients get founding-client treatment: my full attention, honest pricing, and a system that earns its keep in the first few weeks.