The problem
A small business today runs on a pile of separate things. A website from one company, a logo from another, a Facebook page, an Instagram account, an email inbox, a spreadsheet of prices, a Word template for quotes, a diary, a phone that rings while you are on a job, and lately a folder of pictures from ChatGPT. Six websites, six logins, and none of them knows about the others.
For the owner of a business of one to twenty people, keeping all of that going is a second job, and it is done in the evening. The person who fits the bathroom, cuts the hair or trains the apprentices also writes the posts, chases the quotes and tries to remember the password for the website. They are good at their trade. Nobody gave them a marketing department, and the usual answer from software is one more login.
What HQ is
Teknetik HQ is one place that holds a business’s brand and does the computer side of running it.
It starts with the brand, because everything else depends on it. We read the business’s website, ask a short set of questions and draft a logo, colours, type and a way of writing. The owner approves it on their phone. From then on the website, the adverts, the posts, the letters, the quotes and the presentations are all made from that one approved brand, so they match without anyone trying.
Beside the brand sits an assistant that knows the business: its profile, its facts, its prices and its history. It drafts the reply to an enquiry, the quote, the month of posts and the follow-up the way the owner would, and it reminds them what is due. It sends, posts and publishes nothing until a person says yes.
Behind all of it is a person. I set HQ up with each business, train the people who will use it, and build the workflows that are particular to them. The consultancy is not a separate business bolted on. It is how HQ is done properly.
How it is built
My background is in supporting complex production API platforms and building automation for real business operations, and HQ is built the way that experience says software like this should be.
Each part of HQ is its own service, and every one of them sits behind one gateway that checks who is asking and which parts their business uses. A business sees only its own parts, and any part can be improved or replaced without disturbing the rest.
The brand sits in the middle as a kept record. An approved brand is never edited; a change becomes a new version for the owner to approve, and every part reads the same approved one, so a new letterhead and a new advert cannot drift apart.
The AI work across every part draws on one spend allowance per client. Each job is costed as it happens, and when the allowance is used up the work stops and asks. Nobody finds a surprise bill.
Approval steps are everywhere, not added at the end. A post waits for a yes. A reply waits for a yes. A booking taken by the phone assistant is held until someone confirms it. Where AI is the wrong tool, such as safety advice or a price for a job nobody has seen, HQ hands the question back to a person.
Where it goes next
The parts deepen. The assistant learns more of each business’s history, so its drafts need fewer changes and its reminders arrive before the owner thinks of them. Customers and Phone draw closer together, so a missed call becomes a written-up job and a drafted quote by the time the owner is off the ladder. The shop grows with the businesses that sell things as well as their time. Every new part starts from the same approved brand, so adding one never means starting again.
The businesses HQ suits first are owner-run ones where the work is skilled and the computer side is done after hours: salons, trades, coatings firms, training providers and small shops. They share the same pattern: good people, a full day, and the admin left for the evening. If HQ works for them, it should work for businesses like them across the UK.
Get in touch
If you run one of those businesses, or you want to talk about where HQ is going, I would like to hear from you. Email me at [email protected], read what is in HQ, or book the free 30-minute call.
Book a free 30-minute call (opens Cal.com in a new tab)
Carl Draper, founder of Teknetik