AI Consultant on the North Coast — Encinitas, Solana Beach & North County San Diego
Local AI automation help for coastal small businesses along the 101. No retainers, no agency overhead — just someone who lives here and builds things that work.
Quick Answer
- Who: PJ Zonis — based in Encinitas/Solana Beach, working with owner-operated shops from Cardiff to Leucadia to Del Mar.
- Rate: $100/hr, no retainer, no monthly lock-in. You own every automation, prompt, and integration we build.
- Best for: Coast Hwy 101 boutiques, yoga & wellness studios, surf/skate retail, med spas, contractors, and service businesses juggling seasonal traffic spikes.
- How to start: Text 858-461-8054 with what's eating your time. Most first projects scope in 20 minutes and ship in a week.
Why a local AI consultant (not a national agency)
The North Coast isn't San Diego proper. The businesses here — the ones between the 5 and the 101, between Swami's and Fletcher Cove — run differently. Owner-operated. Seasonal. Tight teams where the owner is also answering DMs at 9pm. A national AI agency pitching you a $5k/mo retainer doesn't understand that rhythm. I do. I live off Birmingham, I surf Cardiff Reef on light days, I know why summer traffic on the 101 doubles your customer-service load from Memorial Day to Labor Day.
Coast Hwy 101 retail & boutiques
Automate inventory sync across Shopify + Square, generate product descriptions in your brand voice, handle after-hours customer questions without hiring.
Yoga, pilates & wellness studios
AI-drafted class descriptions, Mindbody integrations, automated waitlist nudges, and instructor scheduling that doesn't require a full-time ops person.
Surf shops & board builders
Seasonal demand forecasting, automated repair-ticket updates, and content systems that actually sound like you — not like a chatbot trained in Ohio.
Med spas, med offices & wellness brands
HIPAA-aware intake flows, review-generation automations, and lead routing so the front desk in Solana Beach isn't buried in voicemails.
Contractors & home services
Auto-qualify leads from your site, text-back-missed-call systems, and quote drafts generated from a 2-minute voice memo.
Restaurants & coffee shops
Review responses, reservation routing, menu updates across Google/Yelp/IG in one pass. The stuff you never have time for on a Saturday rush.
What "AI consulting" actually looks like here
Most of my North Coast clients don't need a PhD pitch deck. They need one specific thing automated — the thing that's currently costing them 6 hours a week or causing them to drop leads. We figure out what that is, build it, document it, and hand it over. If you want me to stick around monthly, cool. If you want to take it from there, also cool. You own the accounts, the API keys, the prompts, the workflows. Nothing lives on my laptop.
Common first projects on the coast: a website chatbot that actually knows your hours and services (not a generic widget), a Zapier/Make flow that takes Instagram DMs into a CRM, a GPT-powered email drafting system for the owner, or a review-response automation that keeps your Google profile fed without you thinking about it.
How pricing works
$100/hr. No retainer. No monthly minimum. I send you an estimate before any real work happens, and I track hours honestly. Most initial automations land between 3 and 12 hours of work. If a project is going to run long, you hear about it before the bill shows up — not after.
Ready to scope something?
Text me what's slowing you down. I'll tell you in plain English if AI can fix it and what it'd cost.
Text 858-461-8054