Native Operator

An AI back office for businesses run by two or three people

Native Operator sets up agents that file your receipts, book them in QuickBooks, write your listings and turn your inbox into a to-do list overnight, so the paperwork is done before you open in the morning.

Last night, while we slept

  1. The day's receipts filed and matched to the card charges they belong to
  2. Each purchase booked in QuickBooks with its receipt attached
  3. Spending checked against the month's budget, sales tax against Ohio's rules
  4. Email, texts and comments read; anything that needs a reply turned into a task
  5. Sales, site traffic and social numbers pulled into the morning dashboard
  6. A plain-English diary of the day's work written and filed
  7. Every run from the night checked, and anything that broke posted to Slack
  8. Coffee. Nothing left over from yesterday.

That is a real night at Collected North, the vintage store I run with Anne. Native Operator sets up the same kind of overnight back office for small businesses that could do wildly well if the paperwork stopped eating their evenings.

Book a call

What it takes off your plate

Native Operator takes the after-hours admin off your plate, starting with whichever of these eats the most of your evenings.

Receipts and books
Every purchase filed, matched to its card charge and booked in QuickBooks.
Listings
A few photos and a line of notes become a researched, priced listing that waits for your yes.
Social
Posts drafted and queued for your review instead of written at 10 pm.
Email and messages
Anything that needs a reply lands on your task list.
Numbers
Sales, site traffic and social results in one dashboard each morning.

One purchase, start to finish

The night shift is half of it. During the day the same agents pick up whatever we hand them, as it happens.

Chris holding a turned wooden candlestick up to the light in a crowded vintage shop
Most of what we sell starts like this, in someone else's shop.

  1. boughtPaid for

    Anne buys a lot of five Bakelite clips on ShopGoodwill and posts the receipt in Slack from her phone. That is the only thing she does.

  2. + 1 hourRecorded

    The lot is in our inventory with an ID and a cost for each piece, the receipt is filed for QuickBooks, and a lot card prints so it can travel in the box.

  3. listing dayListed

    A few photos and a line about a piece become a listing: researched, priced against what similar pieces sold for, and held until one of us says yes.

  4. same dayPosted

    The approved listing comes with its Instagram posts drafted and waiting for review, so nobody sits down at 10 pm to write captions.

A printed Collected North lot card for lot P-2610-002, five carved Bakelite clips
The lot card the agent printed for those clips.
Hands turning over an end-grain teak board to read the label on its base
Reading the label before the listing gets written. The agent checks it against the maker's known marks.
A Mac mini on a small wheeled rack in a stone-walled basement, with a monitor and keyboard on top and a battery backup below

Yes, that's a Mac mini in my basement

Collected North's agents run on a small Mac in a rack next to my network gear. It is scrappy on purpose.

I test every agent on my own business first, where a bad night costs me and not a client. When I set yours up, most of it runs in the cloud on accounts you own, and it has already been through its mistakes on mine.

Who I'm building this for

I'm building it for small businesses where two or three people do everything, whether that's a shop, a studio, a practice or a trade. In those businesses the work customers see gets done in the day, and the evenings go to receipts, listings and the email that never got sent.

It is a small market. I think it is also the one that stands to gain the most, because a few hours back each week is a much bigger share of a small business than a large one.

I would start with one job, usually the receipts and the books, and add the rest once it has earned your trust.

Chris and Anne on a rooftop in Over-the-Rhine, Cincinnati
Anne and me. Collected North is ours, and it is where every agent runs first.

Starting small

We talk through where your week goes. You run the first agents for a few weeks and see what they did and whether they saved more than they cost to run. If it is worth keeping, it moves to a monthly plan and I keep it running as the business changes.

On tools I already run
Scheduling, social and email run on accounts I operate, with the usage billed through to you. It is the quickest way to start.
In your own accounts
Everything lives with you. I set it up and keep it running, or hand it over with written guides if you would rather own it yourself.

Why I'm doing this

Bigger companies have always been able to hand off the paperwork. They hire people to close the books and keep the inventory straight, and they build systems so the follow-up gets sent without anyone having to remember it. For more than 20 years I helped them do that, which means I spent most of my career handing that advantage to the companies that already had the most of it. Now AI puts the same kind of automation within reach of a business with two or three people in it. I want to build it for the people who love what they do and have their livelihoods on the line. They're my people.

Book a call

Tell me about your business and I will reply within a day. The first call is free, and if you are in Cincinnati I am happy to meet in person.

Chris St. Pierre

Chris St. Pierre, Native Operator