Albuquerque, New Mexico

I build the systems that let small organizations run like big ones.

Erik Zimmer. Twenty-five years running P&Ls, sales organizations and turnarounds — a $670M telecom region, a $5.6M portfolio grown five-fold, and two terms as city manager of a Texas town that went from insolvent to more than $10M in reserves.

GAIN AI is what I build with now. Two practices, one method: put the record in order, build the system that runs on it, then teach the team to operate it without me.

See the two practices Book a 15-minute call
68% → 143% Colorado market against target in twelve months. Last of eleven markets to first nationally.
500% Growth on a $5.6M strategic account portfolio in year one.
$10M+ Cash reserves built at a city that was insolvent on arrival, with a 43% debt reduction and clean audits.
$50M Annual contract closed, lifting company-wide EBITDA by 60%.

What I do

Two practices. They serve different buyers and they do not pretend otherwise.

Both start from the same conviction: most small organizations are not short on effort, they are short on a record they can act from. One practice builds that record for physical things. The other builds it for how the business runs.

Practice 01 · Asset Indexing

Know what you own, and be able to prove it.

Photo-verified, professionally documented inventories of physical assets — delivered as a record your insurer, your auditor, your attorney or your heirs will actually act on. Not a spreadsheet you have to defend.

  • Collectors, homeowners and high-value households
  • Estates, trusts and probate documentation
  • Small and mid-size businesses with real equipment
  • Local government fixed assets, GASB reporting and FEMA claims
  • On-site indexing, valuation research, secure digital delivery
Asset indexing for households and business Asset indexing for local government

Practice 02 · Systems & Consulting

A working business system, and the training to run it.

I build the operating system a small company is missing — pipeline, quoting, proposals, bids, job tracking, reporting — on their own data. Then I sit with the team until they run it without me. The build is the easy half.

  • CRM and business-development engines
  • Quoting engines with scope libraries and exclusions that hold
  • Proposal generation, standard or matched to an RFP
  • Solicitation tracking and compliance matrices for public bids
  • Job workflow from award through payment, and the reporting behind it
  • AI-assisted workflows with governance built in, not bolted on
How an engagement runs

The method

The software is not the product. The transfer is.

Anyone can hand a small business a tool. Most of those tools are abandoned within a quarter, because nobody stayed long enough to change how the work actually gets done. Every engagement here runs the same three stages, and the third one is the one that matters.

STAGE 01

Put the record in order

Before anything gets built, the existing mess gets mapped. What is tracked, what is in someone's head, what is in a truck. Most of the value shows up here, and it is uncomfortable.

STAGE 02

Build the system on it

The system runs on your data, your trades, your scopes, your customers. Not a demo you have to translate. It works the week it goes live or it was not built right.

STAGE 03

Teach the team to run it

Working sessions on your real deals, with your people, until they stop asking where the button is and start asking better questions of the data. This is where a tool becomes a habit.

Who is behind this

I have sat in the chair I am building for.

I have carried a number, run a P&L, hired and fired, presented to a council in open session, and signed the check. That is the difference between a consultant who recommends a system and an operator who knows what a Tuesday actually looks like when the system fails.

I write about this weekly in The GAIN Report, mostly for people running small businesses and small governments who are being sold AI by people who have never run either.

Read The GAIN Report Connect on LinkedIn
City Manager, City of Alpine, Texas
2013–2017 · 2019–2021
95 staff across seven departments on a $14M budget. Took an insolvent city to $10M+ in reserves, cut debt 43%, and restored clean audits.
Vice President, CenturyLink
2007–2012
Up to 1,000-person teams and $670M in sales responsibility. Turned Colorado from last of eleven markets to first nationally in twelve months.
Director of Strategic Accounts, Trident Solutions
2021–2023
Grew a $5.6M portfolio 500% in year one and closed a $50M annual contract that raised company EBITDA 60%.
Founder, GAIN AI
2023–present
Applied AI, systems and business development for contractors, small business, nonprofits and local government across New Mexico and Texas.

Public sector

Built by someone who has run the government on the other side of the desk.

Small governments get sold enterprise software written for cities ten times their size, and AI pitches written by people who have never sat through a budget workshop. The work here is scaled and priced for a town, and it starts from the reporting obligations that already exist.

Asset inventory for local government
  • Fixed-asset inventory that stands up to GASB reporting and the Single Audit
  • Building-contents documentation that survives a FEMA claim
  • Records and procurement workflow that a two-person clerk's office can actually run
  • AI governance — acceptable use, records retention, and the questions a council should be asking before anything is signed

How I work

What I will not build, and why that is the point.

A system that makes work faster and accountability looser is a liability wearing the costume of a productivity gain. These are standing rules in every build, and they exist because the downside lands on the client, not on me.

The tool drafts. A person certifies.

Nothing I build pre-fills or executes a certification, an affidavit, or a sworn disclosure. On a public bid a false certification is a debarment exposure, and on some forms a criminal one. The system's job is to make sure the form is in the stack and unsigned until a person reads it.

No asserted compliance without a name on it.

A requirement is not "met" because a tool wrote a paragraph. It is met when a named person checked it against the source and dated the row. Automation that skips that step is not saving time, it is moving risk.

Your data stays yours.

I own the engine, the schema and the method. You own your customer, prospect and bid data, and you get a clean export whenever you want it, including on the way out the door.

Facts that expire get flagged.

License numbers, insurance limits, bonding capacity, safety ratings, reference contacts. Every one of them is a certification the moment it appears in a proposal, and every one is exactly what a template carries forward silently. They get dated and re-checked, not copied.

Start here

Fifteen minutes, and you will know whether this is worth your time.

Bring the thing that is actually broken. If I am not the right answer I will say so on the call and point you somewhere better. That costs both of us less than a proposal neither of us wanted to write.

Book a 15-minute call erik@getgainai.com 505.585.1744