Emmett James Talk
From a founder, not a consultant

How much of your team's effort goes into operating the business
instead of growing it?

Emmett James is a business change company. I redesign your business around AI, and I install everything I recommend. One agreed price.

I've made this shift in my own companies, the manual work now looks after itself, and the time went back into product, customers and growth.

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02 · Sound familiar?

If any of this sounds familiar.

01
Your week is firefighting. Checking, chasing, unblocking; the business depends on you being everywhere at once.
02
The admin creeps up as you grow, until the answer to "we're stretched" is another salary, spent operating the business rather than growing it.
03
Your best people spend their days on spreadsheets, re-keying, and reports that don't change anyone's behaviour, work that doesn't need their judgement.
04
You can't see the numbers you want without someone spending half a week building them.
05
Everyone says AI could help. But nobody offering it has ever sat in your chair.
03 · Why this company exists

The most expensive waste in any established business is talented people doing work that doesn't need their talent.

Two years ago I was about to lose my whole team at Format Games. It got really close, 2025 was pretty brutal.

I had to keep a business trading in fifteen countries operating with almost nobody, so I had no choice but to learn every job and work out how to keep the output up without the people.

That's where the AI came from.

It came from necessity, not theory.

What I put in place then now operates the five businesses I work in every day.

Redirecting that talent is the whole job. Here's how I do it.

04 · The method

Don't prompt an AI.
Recruit one.

Every AI in my businesses is hired, not prompted. It gets a job title, a job description, a set of beliefs, decision rights, and a folder that acts as its brain. Then it goes on permanent probation: I check its work, and every correction gets written into its instructions, so it's never wrong the same way twice. You don't need to know the domain, I set up a marketing department knowing nothing about marketing. The method never changes. What gets installed with it always does.

05 · Proof of range

My businesses are built on a team of them.

Format Games trades in fifteen countries and operates day to day with a handful of people, because every department, and the finance across the whole group, is staffed by an AI employee, each one recruited the way I've just described.

Yours might need a different team entirely. Plenty of companies already have decent software, the job there is making what you own agentic: trained agents working inside it, not replacing it. And what works for my small team wouldn't suit a floor of thirty. I don't pre-diagnose. Finding out what's actually required is the job.
06 · What changes

What changes for you.

Growth absorbed.
without hiring
New accounts, new retailers, new products, handled by the redesigned machine, not by new headcount.
Your best people, back.
same team
Off the spreadsheets and the re-keying, back on decisions, customers and product, the work that actually needs their talent.
The business stops depending on you.
your job back
The checking, chasing and unblocking moves into the system, you stop being the thing holding it all together.
Cash redirected.
from operations to growth
Money that went into managing the business, freed for growing it.
07 · Services

How to work with me.

There's a first step, an assessment, and the full programme, and none of them starts with me guessing what you need.

Claude Cowork: Set-Up & Training
£500
Half a day · one-to-one

One morning, you and me, on your own data. We pick the one hire that would take the most off you and recruit it together, job spec, contract, folder, training.

You leave with it live and working
My printed Owner's Guide, the method, the do's and don'ts, and how to operate it week to week
Fourteen days of support afterwards, with two calls to keep it on track
See how the half-day works
The Diagnostic
from £4,500
In your business · agreed with your team

I come into the business and map where the effort actually goes. You get:

The evidence of where the biggest gains are
A redesign of how the company should operate
A department-by-department install list, every line costed two ways, your team puts it in or I do

Agreed with your team rather than done to them.

See the full Diagnostic
The Operational Rework
The full programme
Priced from your Diagnostic's install list

The redesign installed, the systems, the reporting, the AI doing the heavy lifting underneath, and your team re-shaped around the capacity it frees.

One agreed price.

See the full programme

Not sure which? That's what the first call is for, 30 minutes, free, and you'll know.

08 · Why me

I'm not a consultant. I'm the operator.

Both groups are full. The overlap is nearly empty, operators never get the hands-on hours, and AI specialists have never sat in the chair. I ended up in the overlap the hard way: two years of doing every job myself, across five businesses, because I had no choice.

20
years · 6 industries
Twenty years operating companies. Director or CEO across six industries, logistics, recruitment, franchise services, retail, butchery, board games.
£25.8m
the Biffa acquisition
The costing system I designed at 25 was still pricing the work when Biffa bought the business for £25.8m.
~4×
gross profit growth
Eight years as director and co-owner of a scientific recruitment firm, gross profit roughly four times higher when I left than when I joined.
£3m+
group turnover
Finance director of a butchery group grown from one shop to three, plus a wholesale operation alongside, over £3m turnover.
15
countries
9
new titles in 2026
Founder of Format Games: fifteen products, sold in fifteen countries, into Target and Walmart. Nine new titles releasing in 2026, operated day to day by one person, on the systems I put in place.

I know the work because I still do the work.

Laurence Emmett, Founder, Emmett James
Laurence Emmett
Founder, Emmett James
Horsham, West Sussex · CEO, Format Games · FD, the Butchery Group

Based in West Sussex. Married, two boys. Half decent footballer and can hack around a golf course.

09 · Questions

Four questions worth asking.

What does this cost? +

The half-day set-up and training is £500. The Diagnostic starts at £4,500, with the exact figure scoped to your business after a short pre-assessment. The Operational Rework is priced from your Diagnostic's install list, I won't guess at a number before I've seen the business. The first conversation is free.

We already have systems. Do you rip them out? +

Almost never. If your systems are decent, the answer is usually making it agentic, trained agents working inside the systems you already own. The Diagnostic tells us which. I install what's required, and nothing more.

How long does it take? +

The £500 session is half a day. The Diagnostic is a week or two in and around the business. The Rework is months, not weeks, the length and the finish line are agreed alongside the price, before anything starts.

What happens to our data? +

It stays yours. Everything stays on your systems and your accounts, and the AI providers I use don't train on your data. Anything sensitive, we agree how it's handled before anything is installed.

10 · Talk

Let me show you what this could look like in your business.

A 30-minute conversation. No pitch deck. No follow-up sequence. You leave with one or two specific ideas, useful even if we never work together.

Your details come straight to me and go nowhere else. privacy.