porch light studio · durham, n.c.
Come on in.
Every room in this house is a different way I can help. Pick one and walk in.
Scroll to walk in, or pick a room on the plan.Scroll to walk in.
The Front Porch
See who's coming up the walk.
Calls, texts and email in one view. Catch the chance drop-by and the delivery you've been waiting on.
Meet the front desk →The Kitchen Table
Pull up a chair.
Already working with me? Everything we're building is on the table. Clients sign in here.
Returning guests, sign in →The Studio
Eleven designers at their desks.
Brief the Studio and get matched with the designer whose eye fits your business.
Meet the designers →The Workshop
Bring me the job that eats your week.
Ready-made tools on the shelf, or a custom Teardown: I follow one real job start to finish, find the leak, and build the fix with tools you already pay for.
See the tools →The Gallery
See it at work.
Real tools, running in real small businesses right now.
See the case studies →The Post
Make something worth sharing.
Turn this week's work into posts for your community, in your voice. Nothing goes up until you say so.
Start posting →Why a creative director does this
AI tools for human directors.
The tools got fast. Taste didn't. Every tool here runs on your voice, shows you its work, and waits for your thumb before anything goes out. You stay the director. The AI takes the chores.
- Working, not slidesEvery engagement ends with something you can open and use the next morning.
- Your tools, not mineBuilt on Claude, Quo, Metricool, JobTread, Wix, whatever you already pay for.
- Your voice, keptAssistants are trained on how you actually talk to customers, so nothing sounds like a robot wrote it.
Three ways in
Pick the door that fits the week you're having.
Most people arrive through one and stay for another. All three run on your voice and your approval.
Ready-made tools · The Workshop shelf
Installed in a week.
A free tone-of-voice tool, a voice EA, a review engine, the Community Post, content repurposing. Piloted with real owners, built on what you already pay for.
See the tools →Design Studio · AI creative
Brief. Match. Generate.
Eleven designers, each with a real point of view and a lineage they draw from. Five minutes of brief, a packet you can actually use.
Open the Studio →Custom Teardown · Workflow consulting
Find the chore that hurts most. Build the tool.
An Online Presence Report, one real job followed start to finish, and a working tool at the end. For owners whose list doesn't match the shelf.
How a Teardown works →Common questions
What owners ask before we start.
The honest answers, including the ones about money and the ones about iPhones.
What does this cost per month, once it's built?
Most small businesses I work with land between $100 and $250 a month in tools, and the pieces are ordinary: Claude or ChatGPT at about $20, a work line like Quo at $15 to $30, Metricool for social at $20 to $50, and whatever you already pay for your website and books. The Teardown itself is priced by package and the first conversation is free. I'll tell you if the tools alone would get you there.
Can you automate my iPhone, iMessage, or Apple Notes?
Mostly no, and I'd rather say so up front. Apple doesn't let outside tools read or send iMessages, and Notes and Reminders are closed too. That's why the work line matters: business texts go through a number that tools can see (Quo), so the missed-call text-back, the transcripts and the follow-ups all work, and your personal iMessage stays personal. For Apple-only stuff we use Shortcuts where it helps, and we look outside the box for the rest.
Will AI replace my team?
No. The goal is to remove busywork, not people. The assistants take the retyping, the chasing and the posting so you and your crew spend the hours on the craft and the customers.
Do I need to be technical?
No. If you can send a voice memo, you can run everything we build. Part of week three is watching you use it on a real job and fixing whatever made you hesitate.
What if I'm on Wix, Squarespace, or a site my nephew built?
Fine. Ash & Pine is on Wix and Game Face is on Wix. We work inside what you have, and I'll tell you plainly if the platform is the thing holding you back.
What do I get at the end of three weeks?
A working tool installed in your day, a short written playbook for it, and a private client workspace on this site where your research, plan and tools live so you can find them again.