About
I'm Sam. There isn't anybody behind me.
No account manager, no offshore team, no sales rep who hands you off after the contract is signed. If you hire First Coast Group, you get me, and if you call, I am the one who answers. That is a real limit on how much work I can take at once. It is also the entire point.
Where this comes from
My day job is organ transplantation.
I work in organ donation and recovery and have been part of thousands of cases. It is not a job most people have a mental picture of, so here is the short version. When a donor is identified, a small window opens. Inside that window, hospitals, surgeons, labs, couriers, aircraft, regulators, and receiving transplant centers across several states all have to move in sync, with documentation that has to be exactly right. Nobody gets a second attempt.
That is where I learned to read a workflow. Complicated operations almost never fail because someone was lazy. They fail at the seams, in the handoffs, at the point where information has to be retyped by a tired person at two in the morning.
Small businesses break in exactly the same places. Lower stakes, same failure mode. The lead that came in through Facebook and never got entered anywhere. The estimate sitting in a text thread. The spreadsheet only one employee understands. When I walk into a business, that is what I am looking for.
The rest of it
How I ended up doing this.
I started using AI tools on my own business before I ever thought about selling the skill. I run a small e-commerce operation, and the work that was eating my evenings was auditing listings, chasing information, writing the same messages, and trying to see the numbers clearly enough to make a decision. I automated the boring parts one at a time. It worked well enough that I stopped treating it as a hobby.
Around the same time I started an MBA in IT Management, which included a six-week business development program. The useful part of that program was not the technology. It was the discipline of finding the customer's real problem before proposing anything, which turned out to be the same instinct I use in an operating room.
Then friends and local business owners started asking me questions. How do I stop losing leads. Can you look at my website. My employee spends every afternoon on this, is that normal. I answered enough of those to realize the demand around here is real and mostly unserved, because the firms that do this work are not interested in a six-person company in St. Johns County. So I started one that is.
Mission
Keep locally owned businesses competitive in an economy that is changing faster than any owner can reasonably keep up with.
The tools that used to require a large company and a large budget are now within reach of a business with six employees. Most owners have not been told that, because nobody makes money telling them. Closing that gap is the work.
Vision
Local businesses that stay independent because technology is on their side of the table too.
This is not an argument against large companies. They are good at what they do and they got there honestly. But the same technology that makes a national competitor more efficient should be available to the shop on A1A, and right now the difference is mostly access and explanation. That is fixable, one business at a time.
Outside of work
The parts that aren't on a resume.
I surf, golf, and run, in descending order of skill. I fly recreationally, which taught me more about checklists and honest self-assessment than any class ever did. I have traveled a good deal, mostly alone, and it made me better at sitting with someone whose world I do not understand yet and asking questions until I do. That turns out to be most of consulting.
I speak fluent Spanish and am glad to work entirely in Spanish if that is easier for you or your team. I also spend weekends helping clear litter off our shoreline, which is less noble than it sounds and mostly involves a bucket.
I write at samcornell.org about healthcare, technology, and how institutions work. If you want a longer look at how I think before you call me, start there.
- HomeSt. Augustine Beach, Florida
- FromNortheast Florida, born and raised
- SchoolUniversity of Florida. MBA in IT Management in progress.
- Day jobOrgan donation and transplantation
- Also runsA small e-commerce business, since 2022
- LanguagesEnglish and Spanish
- ServesSt. Johns, Duval, Alachua, Flagler, Clay, Putnam, and the counties around them
- Writes atsamcornell.org
Coffee is on me
Easiest way to find out if I'm useful is to talk.
Thirty minutes, free, no pitch at the end. Worst case you get an outside opinion on your operation from someone who is genuinely curious about how it works.