Keep your hands
on the work.
Mountain Labs teaches makers, creators, and small businesses how to use AI to run their back office, so they can focus fully on their craft.
A new letter lands every Thursday.
Most of your week isn't your craft anymore.
You started your business to do the work you love, and now most of your week goes to everything but that. Emails, messages, marketing, pricing, planning, strategy, research, and the books have taken over. The business has become a job you have a love/hate relationship with, and your craft has been buried under all the admin work.
“I spend more time reacting to my business than actually doing what I love.”
The same problem, whichever door you came in.
Makers, small businesses, and creators all run into the same wall, where the business side keeps crowding out the thing they set out to do. The fix is the same for all of them.
Your hands stay on the making.
Most of what buries a maker is marketing, managing materials, production, and building effective product listings. That whole pile of work you can teach AI to run for you, while uninterrupted hours at your bench come back to you.
Back to the work you're known for.
For a small shop, work is nonstop, so most admin tasks take a back seat. Quotes need chasing, schedules are constantly shifting, invoices go out late, marketing plans die in a Word document somewhere, and reviews of the great work you are doing sit unacknowledged. Hand that whole pile over to AI, and your business grows because you aren't dropping the ball anymore.
It never writes what you sign.
Inbox chaos, planning, building, and posting content can swallow a creator’s entire day. AI can take over key parts of your workflow and give you back huge chunks of your time—and when used properly, you never have to worry about AI slop.
AI handles the repetitive and heavy-thinking work while keeping your unique business perspective intact. It never touches your craft.
In every business, there is a stack of repetitive jobs and tasks, and these are the things AI is good at. With Mountain Labs, you will learn the skills needed to hand each one over deliberately, so you can focus on the work that matters the most to you.
Listings, descriptions, and product copyQuotes, invoices, receiptsThe back-and-forth over email and DMsScheduling, reminders, and the follow-upsInventory counts and restock notesReviews, posts, and repurposing what you already made
AI runs the boring, repetitive, deep-thinking parts of your business so you can stay focused on your craft. It never touches your voice or the work you put your name on, so you keep the authenticity people know you for.
I lived it before I taught it.
I started a candle company, Clear Mountain Provisions, pouring wax late at night on the kitchen counter, and in the first four months we did over $12,000 in sales. Then the back office started eating the week. Making became the thing I got to last, if I got to it at all.
Since then, I’ve built the same kind of back-office AI systems for three other businesses: my family’s land-clearing company in Georgia, Makers Manager—a SaaS product I developed with AI as my assistant developer and engineer—and Mountain Labs itself. Nineteen years in AI, intelligence, and cybersecurity taught me the methods I bring to Mountain Labs: how to engineer practical time-saving automations that keep the authentic voice of your business, never take what a tool gives us on faith alone, and always check it against what we know as ground truth, all while building processes that catch mistakes before they happen. That’s what I want to teach you.
I'm not teaching from a mountaintop I haven't already climbed. This isn't hype theory - this is practical knowledge I use every single day.
Chris Cooley, Founder
A newsletter now. A working lab is coming soon.
Coming soon, I will open a lab where I will help people like you every step of the way in building AI solutions for their business. I will teach you everything from the foundational knowledge you need to get started to advanced concepts that will help you build tools that run and manage the tasks consuming the most time in your business.
This isn't a self-paced course or a PowerPoint deck that you need to study. I will be in the room, building right alongside you, holding the Lab's work to the same standard I use to build AI solutions for major enterprises. You will be working alongside others whose weeks get eaten up the same way.
It opens soon, and the weekly newsletter is your first step to solving problems with AI and getting first dibs at access to the community before the doors open to the public.
Stay on your craft.
One newsletter a week, written by someone who is solving complex problems and building AI solutions every single day.
It's free to read, a new issue lands every Thursday, and you can unsubscribe anytime.