Derek
Johnson

I ran a business for two years. Now I build the AI systems I wish I'd had while I was running it.

Gilbert, Arizona johnson.thomas.derek@gmail.com 801-831-8728 derekjohnsonai.com

I came at this from the operator side, not the engineering side.

I cofounded an indoor golf coaching business, ran it for two years, grew it to $35K a month, and sold it to a private equity buyer. In those two years I did the marketing, the ad buying, the sales calls, the scheduling, the pricing, the hiring, the software troubleshooting, and 300 hours of coaching on the floor. Small business owners wear every hat. I have worn most of them.

Which means when I look at a company's workflow, I am not guessing where the pain is. I have personally lost afternoons to the exact tasks that AI is now good at. That instinct for which process is actually worth automating is the part of this job that cannot be taught in a bootcamp.

The building I taught myself, and I have been doing it for paying clients for a year. I am not going to pretend to be a software engineer. I am the person who sits between the owner and the tooling, figures out what the business actually needs, builds it, and then teaches the team to use it without being afraid of it.

Derek Johnson
$35K

Monthly recurring revenue reached within 10 months of launch

11x

Return on ad spend from the acquisition system I built

300+

Hours coaching one to one, explaining technical things to people who did not want a technical answer

1

Business built and sold, at 24, to a private equity buyer

Put your company in. I'll go research it and tell you what I'd automate.

This is a live research agent I built. It searches the web for your business, reads what it finds, and comes back with three specific automation opportunities. You'll see every search it ran and every source it read, so you can check its work. Takes about thirty seconds.

Nothing is stored. It researches the business, not people.

Or paste a job description and get an honest fit read instead

What I've built for clients

Paid work from the last year, running solo from first conversation through delivery.

2026

Deliciously Fit N Healthy

Site rebuild and a custom lead-qualifying quiz

Rebuilt the site for a nutrition and fitness coaching business and designed an embedded quiz that scores a visitor's answers and routes them to the right offer. Owned scoping, design, build, and the client relationship.

2026

Elevate

Application rebuild on Firebase

Rebuilt a client application on Firebase, directing a specialist on the integration work while owning product decisions, timeline, and client communication.

2025 to now

A multi-agent operations system, running on my own company

Internal build, used as a live demo in sales conversations

A manager agent coordinating four specialists for customer service, scheduling, research, and inbox triage, built on n8n, the Claude API, Postgres, Qdrant, and Notion. I run my own business on it, so prospects see a system that already works instead of a slide about one.

The path here

Sep 2025 to now

Derek Johnson AI Consulting

Founder, Gilbert AZ

  • Advise small business owners on AI adoption, translating technical concepts into decisions they can actually make.
  • Design and build websites, automation systems, and AI agents, managing every engagement from first call through delivery and training.
  • Built the practice from nothing: brand, pricing, proposal system, client onboarding, and the internal frameworks that keep delivery consistent.
Oct 2023 to Sep 2025

Lighten Golf Club

Cofounder

  • Started a Trackman-based indoor golf coaching business with a friend and ran daily operations end to end.
  • Grew it to $35K in monthly recurring revenue within 10 months of launch, on an acquisition system returning 11x on ad spend.
  • Delivered 300+ hours of one-to-one coaching while handling client management, staffing, and the technical systems behind the bays.
  • Sold the business to private equity buyers in September 2025.
2023 and 2024

HXP Humanitarian Experience

Trip leader, Kullu India and Taveuni Fiji

  • Led a group of 19 teenagers on a month-long international service project, responsible for logistics, safety, and group dynamics.
  • Returned the following year to lead a second trip in Fiji.
2016 to 2018

Full-time service mission, Czech Republic and Slovakia

Two years

  • Reached fluency in Czech and Slovak through full immersion, and spent two years teaching and building trust across a hard language and culture barrier.
2023

Brigham Young University

Bachelor of Science, Neuroscience, Provo UT

What I bring, and what I don't

Build

  • Claude API and Claude Code
  • n8n workflow automation
  • Multi-agent architectures
  • Firebase, Postgres, Qdrant
  • Notion, Go High Level, Stripe
  • Web builds and front-end work

Own

  • Finding the process worth automating
  • Scoping and requirements
  • Client and stakeholder communication
  • Documentation and internal training
  • Paid acquisition, SEO, sales
  • P&L, pricing, unit economics

Also

  • Fluent in Czech and Slovak
  • Jazz piano, golf, ultimate frisbee, disc golf

Where I'd lean on your team

  • I don't have a computer science degree and I've never worked inside an engineering org. If you need someone shipping production code on a team of engineers, that isn't me yet.
  • My deployments so far have been small business scale. I haven't operated at enterprise volume or under a formal compliance regime.
  • I learn fast and I'd rather be told directly when I'm wrong than be managed around it.

What I'm looking for

Somewhere to point all of this at one business instead of twelve. The part I love is going deep enough into an operation to find where the hours are actually leaking, building the thing that stops it, and then watching someone's face when they realize what just got handed back to them. I have been geeking out on this for a year on my own dime. I'd like to do it somewhere it compounds.

johnson.thomas.derek@gmail.com 801-831-8728 derekjohnsonai.com