SySTEMS FOR MESSY JOBS

AI lives on screens.
The businesses we work with do not.

We build the AI and automation that runs on job sites, in trucks, and behind the counter. For operators with crews, schedules, inventory, and customers who walk in the door.

10+ years of building AI products has taught us, your people are the strategy. That’s where we start.

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Two men operating an old scientific or medical machine with gauges and controls, labeled as hazardous with a warning of 20,000 volts.

We get our clients time or money. Usually both.

Fitness
The Block Climbing
Hospitality
All Day Kitchens
Construction
AM Drywall
Health & wellness
Bloomlife Health
Real estate
Engel & Völkers
Brokerage
Compass Realty
Mobility
Uber
Delivery
Instacart

What we do

We are an AI Lab. We do three things.

Learn it. Build it.
Or just use it.

  1. 01. Learn from us

    Courses & training.

    Courses and training that get your team building with AI. Cohorts, group workshops, and corporate sessions, run on the work already in front of you.

    A speaker at a stand microphone, 1940s press photo. AI workshops and training for operator teams.
  2. 02. Let us build for you

    Automations, tools & apps.

    Your automations, internal tools, and apps. Built on the stack you already run. Done right. Shipped. Actually used by your team.

    A technician working a control console with a monitor, 1960s. Custom AI builds and automations for field businesses.
  3. 03. Use our products

    Off the shelf tools.

    AI tools we build and run ourselves for crews like yours, starting with Jefe, which schedules and runs your field team, over text, in any language you want.

    A cameraman operating a hand-cranked film camera on a tripod, 1920s. Off-the-shelf tools we build, like Jefe.
A woman with long dark hair smiling, standing with her back against a white wall with yellow and orange wooden window shutters on either side, wearing a sleeveless beige vest, dark jeans, and brown sandals.

Why This Works

Hi, I’m Cris, Founder of MSO. I know what it costs to hold a business together with grit.

I've watched it happen at every level — scrappy startups, $500M operations, Main Street businesses doing $5M on a good year. The constraint looks different each time. The exhaustion doesn't.

15+ years building at Uber, Instacart, and IDEO taught me where systems break under pressure. It also taught me something nobody in the AI space wants to admit: most of it creates more work than it solves.

I’ve been building with AI since before it was a course topic. I know where it earns its place inside a real operation, and where it’s just noise dressed up as a demo.

That distinction matters.

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AI for Messy Jobs

Weekly field notes from inside $3M+ businesses with crews, schedules, inventory, and customers who walk in the door.

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A woman in a 1920s dress writing on a notepad. AI for Messy Jobs, the weekly newsletter for field-based operators.

What Our Clients Say About Working With Us

A black and white photograph of a man in a suit playing a clarinet.

"While working with MSO, we saw our event revenue increase by 96% and regular customer attendance jump 31%. But the personal shifts matter just as much—I'm paying attention to the data now and using it to create more business."

— Linda, Boutique retail

“Cris has the right tools, knowledge, and team to take a business to the next level of success.”

— John, Trades org

“Cris is the best. Her experience and intelligence are evident in everything she does. She is also ridiculously hard working and professional and will over-deliver on her promises.

— Matt, Gym

“Cris and her team have helped us leverage new A.I. tools to our advantage. We have turned a stagnant data source into something usable and valuable. This is critically important for our business. ”

— Rachael, Real estate

"Cris has this ability to hear the important nugget buried in my many questions and wild ideas, then distill it into something actionable. With grace and humor."

— Jack, Commercial contractor

AI isn’t magic.

The operators who win with it aren't the ones who adopted it fastest. They're the ones who knew where to put it.

We help you figure out where.

An operator at a 1960s control desk, phone to his ear, dials and gauges in front of him. AI isn't magic; we help you figure out where it fits.
OUR Approach

Your business runs on three forces. Most operators have never seen them clearly.

Every owner-operator juggles three realities at once — what your customers expect, what your team and systems can reliably deliver, and what works financially without burning you out. When these three align, the business scales without breaking. When they don't, you get firefighting, margin leaks, and exhaustion.

Triangular diagram illustrating business success, with three sides labeled 'Business reality,' 'Customer reality,' and 'Delivery Reality.' The center contains text stating 'A business that scales without breaking,' emphasizing balanced realities.

Most operators feel all of this but can't name it. That's where we start: making the invisible visible, so you know exactly where the real problem lives and what to fix first.

Inaction has a price tag.

Two more years of this isn’t neutral.

The operator that doesn't figure out where systems and AI fit doesn't just stay stuck. They watch margins compress, lose good people to competitors who have figured it out, and make the same expensive mistakes with less runway to recover.

The problems don’t go away. It just gets more expensive.

Profit should fuel the life you want — not consume it.

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