Quick orientation: here's the most useful path depending on where you are. The site has a lot of pages because cold search traffic needs different things than LinkedIn traffic does. You already know me a little (or you wouldn't have clicked) — so this page skips the corporate intro and just points you somewhere useful.
Three honest answers, three honest next steps. None of them require booking a call.
You're early in the process — exploring whether AI is real, whether it would work for your shop, what the use cases actually look like. The right starting point is the playbook (~12 min read) and the live demos (10 min of clicking).
You've heard the AI pitch, you're skeptical, and you want hard numbers before you take any sales call. The right starting point is the cost calculator (real ROI math for your shop) and the ROI deep-dive blog post.
You've already read enough — you want to see pricing and book a call. Pricing page is on this site (no NDA, no "contact for pricing"). Calendly is one click away.
If you've seen one of my posts, it was probably about one of these. Here's the why behind each.
Most "AI for trades" content online is hype written by people who've never deployed a system. I post about what actually works (lead response, follow-up, reviews) and what doesn't (yet) — pricing AI, schedule optimization, automated estimating without human review.
Real shops, anonymized, deploying AI. What broke, what worked, what the team thought. Includes the engagements that didn't proceed and the engagements that pivoted mid-stream. Less "case study," more "field journal."
Not strictly AI. Storm season prep, lead response benchmarks, insurance work patterns, hail-belt economics, GAF Master Elite mechanics. The boring operations content that AI consultants usually skip but contractors need.
Houston roofing market specifically — storm patterns, neighborhood economics, insurance dynamics, the storm chaser problem after every event. Hyper-local content. If you're outside Houston, you can skip these without missing anything important.
Five most-shared LinkedIn posts. Each links back to the original. (Placeholder slots — actual links populated as posts go live.)
The pattern: a vendor sells a $30k/year platform, the contractor signs, the platform gets configured for ~3 weeks, then quietly stops being used by month 4. I post the actual reasons — and they're not what most vendors will tell you.
Math walk-through of what a 60-second AI responder does for a contractor doing 80 leads/mo at 20% close rate. Numbers checked against three real Riptide engagements.
Three operational things that are way easier to set up before a hail event than during one. Not AI-specific — most of these are CRM hygiene that any operator can do in a weekend.
The trade-offs of hiring a one-person consulting practice. The cases where I'm the right fit and the cases where you'd be better off with an agency. Honest version.
The single highest-leverage configuration step in any AI rollout. Most vendors skip it. I post sample voice patterns from a real Houston deployment — and what happens when you skip the tuning week.
One. Posting forces me to articulate what I actually believe about AI for trades. Most consultants can't — they've outsourced their thinking to whatever framework their firm sells. Writing a post a week keeps my views sharp and tests them against pushback in real time. The roofers who comment with "that's wrong" do me a bigger favor than the ones who comment with "great post."
Two. Most of the contractors I want to work with are not on Twitter, not at industry conferences, and don't read consulting blogs. They are, however, on LinkedIn — usually because they joined years ago to find subs, vendors, or recruits. LinkedIn is where I can show up consistently in front of the right small audience. Honest posts → trust → discovery calls → sometimes engagements. The funnel is slow but the conversions are high-quality.
Three. Public writing is a filtering mechanism. Anyone who books a call after reading my posts has self-selected for someone who values honest analysis over sales pitches. That's the relationship I want to start. If you've followed me for three months and decide to book — we'll get along. If you found me through a generic search and bounce off the pricing page — also fine.
Get the Roofer's AI Playbook + ~1 honest essay per month about AI for trades. No spam, no drip campaigns, no upsell sequences. If you want LinkedIn but in your inbox, this is it.
Both, but functionally Matt. Riptide AI is the consulting practice; I'm the only person who works in it. When you see "we" on this site, it's mostly because plural pronouns read better — but the work is done by me alone. If you've connected with me on LinkedIn, you've connected with the entire company. There's no separate brand persona.
Selectively. Most of my engagements are with roofing contractors, but I've done work with electricians, restoration shops, and one HVAC operation. The 8-system stack adapts to most field-services trades. I don't take SaaS, B2C apps, healthcare, or anything that isn't trades-shaped — those aren't where my expertise lives. If you're in a related vertical and the use cases line up, ping me on LinkedIn or email and we'll talk fit.
Personally and quickly. Connection requests with a note → I'll usually respond within a day. Direct messages → same. If your LinkedIn message asks me a specific question I can answer in 2-3 sentences, I'll usually just answer it. If it's a "want to chat?" opener, I'll point you here and ask you to book a 30-min call so I can actually be useful instead of doing small-talk over LinkedIn. Both responses are honest — I'm just trying to make the time investment match the question.
Book a 30-min call if you're ready to talk shop. Email me if you have a specific question. Sign up for the newsletter if you just want to keep reading. None of these obligate you to anything.