Episode 79: Your AI Assistant Is Just a Bucket of Files

Oct 28

"It's not like an artificial intelligence. It's just a bucket of files that you run an AI agent over."

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TL;DR: Key Takeaways

Chris Bolton spent 15 years at Murmur, a Portland agency that grew to 26 people and nearly $4M in one year. Then it shrank to about 15 and had layoffs.
He left to go solo. He planned to hire an assistant once he got busy. He never did, because he kept finding ways for AI to do that work.
His big idea: an AI assistant isn't really an intelligence. It's your own files with an agent run over them.
So he keeps one folder per client, with notes, tasks, contacts and email in it, and launches an agent inside that folder.
The risk he sees: AI companies want to hold your folders and data for you. Then you pay them forever.
He runs agents on a schedule too. One sends him a morning SEO "weather report" for every client. Another tracks what he did in each project, so billing is easy.
Test for today: where does your agency's client history live right now? If the answer is "in six different tools," that's the place to start.

Does This Sound Familiar?

Every week there's a new AI tool for one more job. One writes emails. One takes notes. One tracks keywords. One summarizes calls.

So you sign up. Then you sign up again. And every tool wants its own login, and every one keeps a slice of your client data.

Chris Bolton saw this up close. When he went solo after 15 years at an agency, he hit what he calls "tool and login overload." Every new client added five more logins. Every login pinged his phone for a code.

His answer wasn't another tool. It was a folder.

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Meet the Guest

Chris Bolton is the founder of Diviner, a Portland marketing agency focused on SEO and AI visibility. Before that he spent 15 years at Murmur, the agency he ran with his brother, where he led strategy and later the web team.

He also builds his own software. Crystl is a terminal for running many AI agents at once, and Diviner One is the marketing suite he uses with clients.

Visit diviner.agency →

Episode Summary

1. Fifteen years, and a $250K warning sign

Chris and his brother turned a freelance design practice into Murmur, with four people sharing leadership. It grew fast. At one point it had 26 people and did close to $4 million in a year.

But the money came in big projects, and the projects weren't making money. Chris remembers the moment it hit him. Murmur signed a $250,000 website project, and he told the team, "Guys, we've never profited on a website project." Losing money on a job that size is a much bigger loss than on a $20,000 one.

He saved that project by getting the client to sign a $70,000 change order when they paused it. Then he took over the web department and spent about a year and a half trying to fix it. It was still too damaged. So he hired his replacement and left.

2. Off the rollercoaster

Starting over at 49 was scary. He had to work with smaller clients and figure out what to even offer. It took about a year and a half before he could say, "Okay, I've got clients now. It's working. I can pay my bills."

But he knew one thing for sure. He'd ridden the project rollercoaster for 15 years. Lots of work, lots of money, then nothing. So he built the new business on retainers.

"That's why I'm relaxed talking to you right now," he said, "because I can predict how much money's gonna come in next month."

He also named the habit that kept Murmur on the ride. "We were a little bit addicted, honestly, to the big new business." New wins got celebrated. Existing clients got less energy.

Watch this moment (6:39) →

3. The assistant he never hired

Chris thought about starting a software company, or doing consulting. In the end he followed the money into ongoing services, and kept building his own tools on the side.

As he got busier, he figured the first hire would be an assistant. It never happened. "I seem to just keep on finding more efficiencies with AI that just I don't need it."

His first wins were simple. Stop logging into everything, because the AI can reach most tools through their APIs. And stop copying and pasting. He's lost whole days at agencies to moving content from one place to another. Now he just asks the agent to do it.

4. It's just a bucket of files

This is the heart of the episode. Chris explained something about AI that changed how he works. Every message you send starts a fresh AI. It reads everything it's given, answers, and is gone. As he put it, "it is born and it dies."

So the only thing you control is what it reads on the way. That's why he keeps a folder for every client, with notes, task lists, contacts and email. When he launches an agent in that folder, it already knows the client. He can ask what's going on with a client this week, or tell it to send an email with his exact words.

"It's not like an artificial intelligence. It's just a bucket of files that you run an AI agent over."

And here's the warning that came with it. AI companies want to hold those folders for you. "You'll pay them forever, and if they keep raising the price you just get screwed."

I think this is the most useful thing an agency owner can hear about AI right now. The tool isn't the asset. Your context is. Your client history, your voice, the way you work. That only stays an asset if it lives somewhere you own.

Watch this moment (18:28) →

"You don't need to use like 10 different services. You just need one AI to look at your data and help you out when you need it."

5. Own it before someone else does

Chris thinks most companies, even the ones doing AI well, are still running on disconnected systems. Project notes live here, sales notes live there. Nobody has a perfect setup yet.

That's what makes the big vendors' pitch tempting: give us your data and we'll handle it. His view is the opposite. "I think that the real solution is to own it yourself."

He told a story about a client in agriculture who has years of crop photos, each one with notes. Now an AI can read that whole library. When a farmer calls with a problem, he can say, "It's probably this. Send me some pictures."

6. Agents that run on their own

Chris has agents that run on a schedule without him. One checks Search Console, analytics and keywords for every client site and emails him an "SEO weather report" each morning. "This website is sunny. This website is rainy." Then it says why.

Another tracks how much time he's spent in each project. That fixes a problem every agency owner knows. The client asks, "What have you even done for us lately?" Now he can just look and answer.

He has others that check his software for bugs and watch his sites' health. Setting them up is easy, he said. He tells the agent it's a good idea, and it's done.

Notable Quotes

"It's not like an artificial intelligence. It's just a bucket of files that you run an AI agent over."
"I seem to just keep on finding more efficiencies with AI that just I don't need it."
"Guys, we've never profited on a website project."
"That's why I'm relaxed talking to you right now, is because I can predict how much money's gonna come in next month."
"I think that the real solution is to own it yourself."