Everyone is talking about AI. You still cannot tell what is worth doing, whether what you have tried is working, or how far behind you are. I find where AI pays off in your business, build it so it runs the work, and get your team running it. You get time back and stop guessing.
Built with you, on your tools, and measured every step on The 7 Levels of AI Proficiency.
I work with Chicago-area and national small and mid-sized businesses, remote-first. I am Indianapolis-based and serve clients across the Midwest and the country. Chicago runs on finance and trading, logistics and freight, manufacturing, healthcare systems, and professional services, and AI has already entered all of them through everyday tools: Office, Google, Adobe, Salesforce, the CRM, the email client. Most owners are still mapping what those tools are doing, and Illinois now has AI employment law on the books that raises the stakes. SAM builds an AI agent to run real work in your business, and The 7 Levels of AI Proficiency gives you the operating picture.
Common entry points:
If any of those describes your seat, the right next step is the free 7 Levels assessment, then a 20-minute conversation.
Illinois moved faster than most states on AI in the workplace, and the rules already reach Chicago employers. Three are on the books:
I follow this directly. I built AI Law Tracker, a free tool that follows federal, Indiana, and Illinois AI legislation in plain English, and the full Illinois breakdown lives in the Illinois AI Laws guide.
Knowing the law is the floor. Building AI your team can run inside those lines is the next step, and that is what the advising is for.
Short on time? We do the building. We design your core workflow, then build your own working AI agent to run it on your account, and run it with you month to month. You stay in the loop on the decisions; we carry the build. Scoped to your real business and measured on The 7 Levels of AI Proficiency at every step.
See how SAM works →10 minutes, built on SJT methodology and behavioral-science research. Returns your level (1-7) and a personal roadmap. The full instrument is in active psychometric validation.
Take the assessment →Bigger team? The work scales up. The 7 Levels Engagement is a six-week cohort program that scores and develops your team, and the Mastery Track keeps that going across the year. Pricing scales with team size and is quoted on a scoping call.
See the engagement →Keynotes for boards, conferences, leadership off-sites, and industry associations. AI strategy, AI readiness, The 7 Levels framework, and the human-skill spine that determines whether AI investment pays back.
Book Harrison to speak →For owners and leaders who need a sustained advisory relationship outside the cohort format. Board prep, deal-side AI diligence, M&A integration, post-pilot strategic reads. Quoted per engagement.
Book a scoping call →
Executive AI advisor, Indianapolis-based and serving Chicago-area and national clients. Founder and CEO of LaunchReady.ai. Creator of The 7 Levels of AI Proficiency. Author of You Have Already Been Replaced by AI and The White-Collar Factory is Closing. Host of the AI Ready Podcast. Builder of AI Law Tracker, a free AI legislation tracker. U.S. Navy veteran. Facilitator of Ivy Tech Community College's AI Certification Course. Featured in the Indianapolis Business Journal Spotlight.
Every engagement is measured on The 7 Levels of AI Proficiency, a published standard that scores how capable your team is of running AI well. We score it before we start and again at the end, so the change is something you can see and defend to your board.
An executive AI advisor works with owners and leaders on AI strategy, AI readiness, and the human-skill development that AI requires. Decision-grade work: what to build, who to develop, when to buy, how to measure. Different scope from AI development firms, who write software. Harrison Painter advises small and mid-sized business owners and leaders on AI readiness through The 7 Levels of AI Proficiency framework.
AI consulting and AI development firms build software: custom models, chatbots, data pipelines, agent deployments. An executive AI advisor builds capability inside your leadership team: the skills, the operating picture, and the measurement system that lets your company decide what to build and what to skip. The two roles compound. Most CEOs need the advisor first.
A Chicago AI advisor working with small and mid-sized businesses finds where AI pays off in the business, builds an AI agent to run that work, and gets the owner and team running it. LaunchReady.ai delivers this through SAM (Strategic AI Manager): we design your core workflow, build your own working AI agent on your account, and measure progress on The 7 Levels of AI Proficiency. There is also a free assessment to start. Indianapolis-based and remote-first, serving Chicago-area and national clients.
Harrison Painter is an executive AI advisor working with CEOs and leadership teams on AI readiness, serving Chicago-area and national clients remote-first. He is the founder of LaunchReady.ai, creator of The 7 Levels of AI Proficiency, host of the AI Ready Podcast, and creator of AI Law Tracker (a free AI legislation tracker at ailawtracker.org). Based in Indianapolis.
Likely yes, if you employ or hire people in Illinois. The Illinois Human Rights Act AI amendment (HB 3773), effective January 1, 2026, bars employers from using AI that has a discriminatory effect in employment decisions and requires notice when AI is used in them. The AI Video Interview Act has required notice and consent for AI-analyzed video interviews since 2020, and the Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) governs any tool that reads faces or voices. An executive AI advisor helps you build AI your team can run inside those rules. The full breakdown is in the Illinois AI Laws guide.
HB 3773 is an amendment to the Illinois Human Rights Act, effective January 1, 2026. It prohibits employers from using AI that produces a discriminatory effect on a protected class in employment decisions, prohibits using ZIP code as a proxy for a protected class, and requires employers to notify workers and applicants when AI is used in those decisions. It is focused on employment and does not impose the broad, multi-industry obligations found in Colorado's AI law.
Executive AI advising at LaunchReady starts with the free 7 Levels of AI Proficiency assessment at assess.launchready.ai. Paid engagements include: SAM (Strategic AI Manager, from $5,000 setup), The 7 Levels Engagement (six weeks, $19,500 Standard or $35,000 Enterprise per cohort), The 7 Levels Mastery Track (12 months, $96,000 Standard or $180,000 Enterprise per year), and AI Keynote Speaking (starting at $5,000). Custom advisory scopes are quoted in the engagement-close proposal.
AI readiness is the measurable capability of a team or company to deploy, govern, and benefit from AI. It is a function of seven layers of human and AI skills measured by The 7 Levels of AI Proficiency framework. AI readiness is different from AI adoption (people using tools), AI literacy (understanding AI exists), or AI implementation (engineers building systems). It is the leadership-team capability question.
AI strategy consulting helps CEOs decide where AI applies in the business, what to build versus buy, how to sequence investment, and how to measure return. It precedes implementation. At LaunchReady, AI strategy work runs through The 7 Levels Engagement framework, anchored on a measured baseline of leadership-team capability.
Small and mid-sized businesses and their owners. AI has already entered through everyday tools, and most owners are still mapping what those tools are doing and what is coming from regulators. SAM builds an AI agent to run real work in the business, and The 7 Levels gives the operating picture. Larger cohort engagements are available for bigger teams.
The work is remote-first, which keeps cohort scheduling clean and serves Chicago-area and national clients equally. Harrison is Indianapolis-based. On-site kickoff and close are available as a proposal upsell on the Standard tier and included on the Enterprise tier.
The 7 Levels of AI Proficiency is the published framework by Harrison Painter that measures individual and team AI capability across seven roles grouped into four tiers. Foundational: Cadet (AI Aware) and Ensign (Prompt Engineer). Practitioner: Lieutenant (Critical Thinker) and Commander (Context Engineer). Builder: Captain (Design Thinker) and Admiral (Systems Integrator). Leader: Mission Director (AI Orchestrator). Each level pairs an AI capability with a human EQ skill.
We design your core workflow, build your own AI agent to run it on your account, and get your team running it with you. From $5,000 to set up. Want to test the water first? Start with the free assessment.
Done with you, on your tools, and measured on The 7 Levels of AI Proficiency.