Builder · Operator · Dad

Great dad first,
killer operator second.

I sit at the intersection of generative AI and consumer growth. Currently President at CreativeOS, an AI-powered platform supporting 25,000+ brands. Founder at Automatic, an AI consultancy for consumer-facing companies. Decades building companies, products, and teams that don't just grow, they endure. From my first business at twelve to leading organizations through acquisition and scale, I still architect systems, audit code, and ship.

[email protected] · LinkedIn · Automatic

Best of Arizona Business ×4

Two things, in parallel.

Where I'm operating today, and what I'm open to next.

Operating

President at CreativeOS, an AI-powered SaaS platform supporting 25,000+ brands across creative production, ad optimization, and conversion improvement. I own full P&L and lead architecture decisions for production AI deployments including LLM-based content generation, image generation pipelines, and AI agent workflows for marketing operations.

Consulting

Founder at Automatic, an AI consultancy shipping production LLM systems, custom GPT and Claude integrations, AI agent workflows, and growth automation for consumer brands. Advisory on AI strategy, vendor selection, and AI Center of Excellence design.

Looking for

VP AI, AI Transformation, Fractional CTO, or Head of Growth roles at consumer-facing companies. Remote, Phoenix metro, or Monterey Peninsula. Also taking selective AI consulting engagements through Automatic.

What I've built.

The short version. Companies acquired, teams scaled, revenue moved, AI systems shipped.

President Present

CreativeOS

AI-powered SaaS platform supporting 25,000+ brands. I lead full P&L, product, engineering, and go-to-market across production AI deployments: LLM-based ad and email generation, image generation pipelines, AI-powered creative scoring, and AI agent workflows. Combines 20,000+ high-converting templates with AI tooling that helps brands ship campaigns in minutes, not days.

Founder 2024 – Present

Automatic — hireautomatic.com

AI consultancy for consumer brands. Production LLM systems, custom GPT and Claude integrations, AI agent workflows, growth automation, and AI Center of Excellence design.

Advisor 2023 – Present

Magic Mind

Growth and marketing advisory for the world's first mental performance shot.

SVP, Marketing 2023 – 2024

ISSA — International Sports Sciences Association

Led the marketing organization and AI-enabled operations infrastructure to position ISSA as the global leader in fitness, health, and wellness education. Predictive analytics for customer segmentation, automated creative testing, and channel-level attribution. Owned full marketing P&L.

~23% ecomm revenue growth Increased new customer revenue by ~24% Improved paid media efficiency 2.3x
Partner, Head of Optimization 2023

Acadia

Led the agency's CRO and experimentation practice across the DTC client portfolio. Architected an agency-wide optimization framework with pre-registered hypotheses, sample size calculation, stopping rules, and standardized analytics dashboards.

27.8% avg conversion lift across clients
CEO 2022 – 2023

SplitTesting.com — Acquired

Founded and sold a CRO consultancy at ~11x EBITDA by productizing a data-driven experimentation system: structured hypothesis testing, automated stopping rules, and standardized analytics. 88% of clients hit record revenue under our watch.

~800% growth in <9 months Acquired at ~11× EBITDA
Head of Growth 2019 – 2022

NASM — National Academy of Sports Medicine

Architected the full marketing technology stack (Ensighten, React, VWO, GA4, marketing automation, attribution infrastructure, data pipelines) supporting 7 health and fitness brands. Grew the team from 3 to 34 across web engineering, data analytics, CRO, paid media, SEO, and lifecycle marketing.

34.4% total revenue growth 110.6% e-comm growth ROAS 160% → 800%+
Sr. Director of Growth 2021 – 2022

Veyl Ventures

Owned six-figure daily paid media spend across DTC supplement subscription funnels at nine-figure scale. Built attribution discipline, daily performance dashboards, and incrementality testing infrastructure across Meta, Google, YouTube, and native channels. Delivered ~17% MoM revenue growth on flat media budget.

Director of Marketing Operations 2011 – 2019

Enjoy Arizona — 9 resorts, 2 restaurants

Built the marketing engine from scratch. Data-driven strategy across digital, e-commerce, and offline. Grew portfolio from 2 resorts to 9.

57.6% avg annual revenue growth
Founder 2008 – 2020

My Discount Tech → Fast Fix Computer Repair

Built two #1-ranked computer repair businesses in Phoenix metro. Voted best local service nine consecutive years. Grew from $35K to $1.3M. Both sold.

Earlier

Director of IT — MasTec Network Solutions 2012 – 2016
Sales Manager — OfficeMax 2006 – 2007
Geek Squad Manager — Best Buy 2004 – 2006
Founder — CompuVid (age 12) 1992 – 1994

Education

Building and Leading Effective Teams — MIT Open Learning
Advanced Strategy — MIT Open Learning
Practical Leadership — MIT Open Learning
Executing Strategy for Results — MIT Open Learning
Readings in Optimization — MIT Open Learning

I help operators build
things that actually work.

Not theory. Not frameworks for the sake of frameworks. I work with founders, executives, and operating teams to solve real problems with real constraints. Two service tracks, both rooted in shipping production-ready systems.

01

AI strategy & production deployment

Translating enterprise AI strategy into execution-ready initiatives. LLM systems, AI agent workflows, custom GPT and Claude integrations, AI Center of Excellence design, and the change management work that makes AI initiatives actually land. I build SaaS products, audit codebases, and ship production systems with AI daily.

02

Growth strategy & paid media

Campaign architecture, creative performance diagnosis, tracking infrastructure, attribution, and scaling — primarily Meta, Google, and native. I've managed spend from $500/day to hundreds of thousands per day at nine-figure scale.

03

Conversion & customer experience

CRO, funnel architecture, landing page strategy, UX optimization, structured experimentation systems. The work that turns traffic into revenue. I built and sold a company doing this at ~11x EBITDA.

04

SEO & content positioning

Technical SEO, content strategy, AEO, and the positioning work that puts you in front of the right people at the right time. I've taken brands from single-digit market share to category leader.

If you're building something real and need a thought partner who's been in the seat — not watching from the sidelines — let's talk. I take selective consulting engagements through Automatic and I'm open to AI leadership and growth roles at consumer-facing companies.

Get in touch Automatic →

The work happens before
you ever touch the tool.

This is a V1 framework. 90% of building with AI is thinking. The other 10% is typing.

50%

Problem identification

Think long. Seek extreme clarity on what you're actually solving. Most people skip this entirely — then wonder why the AI can't help.

50%

40%

Outcome and goal alignment

Define what "done" looks like. What must this thing do to be accepted? Acceptance criteria kill revision loops before they start.

90%

10%

Building and validation

Execute with the system. Validate output against your criteria. By now, the AI isn't guessing — it's finishing a solved problem.

100%

90% thinking. 10% prompting.

Front-load the leverage. The tool becomes execution, not exploration.

First principles protocol

How to think before you ever write a prompt.

01

Strip

Remove all assumptions

What do I actually know vs. what am I assuming?

If I'd never seen a solution to this, what would I see?

What's convention and what's truth?

02

Decompose

Break to irreducible parts

What is the smallest true statement about what needs to happen?

What are the real inputs? What are the real outputs?

What transformation actually needs to occur?

03

Constrain

Define the real boundaries

What must be true for this to work?

What cannot change? What's actually flexible?

What resources, time, and tools do I really have?

04

Define done

Build acceptance from truth

What specific thing must this produce to be accepted?

How will I know it's right without subjective judgment?

What's the minimum viable proof it works?

05

Instruct

Now talk to the system

Your prompt is a specification, not a wish.

State the problem, the constraints, and the acceptance criteria.

The AI fills the last 10% — you already did the work.

Clarity is the prompt. Everything else is typing. V1 Framework — Nick Harris