Appalachia Gets Technology Last. Not This Time.

Appalachia gets technology last. That's the story we've all heard. The coasts get the tools, the capital, and the talent. The mountains get the leftovers, ten years later, if at all.

I don't buy it. Not anymore.

Three years ago I moved my family here on purpose. Born in Texas, raised in Nebraska, I could have landed anywhere. I chose East Tennessee. Not because I ran out of options somewhere else, but because I looked at this region and saw people as sharp and as tough as any I've worked with anywhere, running real businesses, and getting told over and over that the future would reach them eventually. I didn't come here to wait for that with them. I came to help this place win.

The Gap Was Never the Technology

Frontier AI is now cheap enough to be a rounding error. This week DeepSeek shipped a model that produces near-frontier work for about 28 cents per million words of output. The premium models the big companies pay for run closer to 25 dollars for the same volume. Both are absurdly cheap for what they do. A salon owner and a Fortune 500 now reach for the exact same tools.

So the gap between a small Appalachian business and a coastal one is no longer about who can afford the technology. Everyone can afford it. The gap is about who actually uses it.

That's the whole ballgame. The technology is a commodity. Implementation is the advantage. The business that puts AI to work on Monday beats the one that read an article about it and moved on.

Most small businesses are stuck in that second group. Not because they're behind. Because nobody has sat down with them and their actual problems and worked the thing through.

Your Problem, Not a Demo

Here's what I won't do. I won't stand at the front of a room and show you a slick example that has nothing to do with your business. You've seen enough of those. They're entertaining, and then you go home and nothing changes.

So this workshop has no script. You bring a real problem from your business. The quote process that takes too long. The customer follow-up that never happens. The scheduling mess. The marketing you don't have time for. Whatever is actually costing you hours or money right now.

Then we roll up our sleeves and work on it together, live, in the room, for two hours.

Some problems we'll crack on the spot. Some we'll get halfway and see the path. Either way you leave knowing exactly what AI can and can't do for your specific business, because we tried it on your specific business, not a made-up one. That's the difference between learning about AI and actually using it.

You'll learn from the person next to you too. Their problem is different from yours, and watching us work it teaches you something you didn't know to ask.

Why I'm Doing It in a Room

You don't learn to use a tool by watching a video about it. You learn by putting your hands on it while someone who knows it is standing next to you, working your actual problem.

First Friday of every month, two hours, in person, at the Jobe Opera Building board room in Johnson City. Five seats. Five, because I want everybody in the room to get real time on their real problem, not sit in the back and nod.

Bring one problem you're tired of fighting. That's the only prep.

This Isn't Charity

Seventy-nine dollars a seat. I priced it so a solo operator can say yes without a meeting, and I capped it at five so everyone gets worked with. This isn't a handout, and it isn't a pitch for something bigger down the line. It's two hours of real work on a real problem, and it pays for itself the first time it saves you an afternoon.

I chose these mountains. My family is here. I'm not selling Appalachia the future from a distance. I'm in it, and I want the businesses around me to win with the same tools everyone else already has.

The tools are here now. They're cheap. They work. The only question left is whether we pick them up and get to work.

Appalachia has spent a long time waiting for someone to bring the future to it. Nobody's coming. We don't need them to.