The choice is yours. We help local merchants own their customer-acquisition infra so 15-30% of every transaction stops getting extracted to Seattle / SF / NYC.
There is too much commerce being done getting extracted by big companies that local economies can solve without sending it all over the world for extraction.— PJ Zonis · SideGuy doctrine
What you're paying every month to send margin to people who never set foot in your town.
| Vertical | Middleman | Extracted |
|---|---|---|
| Restaurant | DoorDash · UberEats · Grubhub | 25-30% per order |
| Hotel / STR | Booking.com · Expedia · Airbnb | 15-25% per booking |
| Salon / services | Booking SaaS · Square · Mindbody | 2.6-25% + monthly fee |
| Contractor | Angi · HomeAdvisor · Yelp Ads | $30-150 per lead |
| Retail | Amazon FBA · Etsy | 15-45% all-in |
| Rideshare / delivery | Uber · Lyft | 25-30% per trip |
Math: A restaurant doing $15K/mo on DoorDash sends $4,500/mo to Seattle. That's $54,000 a year. Out of your local economy. Permanently. The Tier 1 install is $2,500. Recovery: ~17 days at 50% direct-order shift. Tier 2 ($5,000) for a hotel doing $40K/mo on Booking.com: ~21 days.
Seven concrete components. Owned by you. Not rented. Forever.
Captures the search that matters: "best [your category] in [your town]." Full schema, AEO infrastructure, operator-honest content. Yours forever.
Calendly-replacement / table-reservation / room-booking. Owned by you. No SaaS rent. Stripe-funded webhooks for any flow.
Stripe / Square / cash-app integration. Customer pays you. No 30% middleman shaving. You hold the relationship + the data.
Capture once, retain forever. Repeat customers don't need to find you on a platform a second time. Resend + Twilio under the hood.
Free but most merchants don't do it right. Photos, hours, posts, Q&A, attributes. We handle the full optimization + monthly post cadence.
llms.txt + schema completeness + AI crawler allowlist. ChatGPT / Claude / Perplexity / Google AI Overviews cite YOU when locals ask "where in [town]."
Adjust ranking page based on Search Console data. A/B test booking flow. Set up email re-engagement sequence. Hand-off documented for your team.
Half due at kickoff, half on delivery. All tiers ship in 14 days regardless of size.
Skip the Local Merchant Pack if: your business is brand-new (under 6 months — fix product first, then think distribution), you have under $5,000/mo in platform-extracted commission (math doesn't justify the install), you're in a vertical that genuinely benefits from the platforms (occasional Etsy seller, weekend Airbnb host with 1 unit, drop-shipper with no local fulfillment), or you don't have someone who can take direct phone calls / DM responses (the funnel terminates in human contact — if no human, the funnel breaks).
Also skip if you want a deck or a strategy session. We ship installations. Not advisory.
Stop renting your productivity tools forever. Build your own. The choice is yours.
Notion subscription? Build your own with Claude + a markdown folder in 30 minutes. Asana? data/tasks.json + 50 lines of HTML. Calendly? Self-hosted scheduler in an evening. Slack DMs across small teams? Group SMS thread + a shared doc.
Most "productivity SaaS" is monthly rent for what an operator with a terminal + Claude can ship once and own forever. Same extraction problem. Different vertical. Read the on-ramp →
Keep paying tribute. Or build the infra once and keep the margin forever.
We help local merchants and operators do the second thing. Ship the install. Stop renting.
Text PJ. We'll qualify in 10 minutes — what you're paying now, what tier fits, when we can ship. If we're not the right fit, we'll say so.
Text PJ · 858-461-8054 Or email pj@sideguysolutions.com · reply within hoursI'm almost positive I can help. If I can't, you don't pay.
No signup. No seminar. No bullshit.