The AI Revolution Is Happening on Main Street, Not Wall Street or Silicon Valley

In early 2025, Evan Carlton was on the cusp of a dream. After a decade-long career in technology, he was searching for the right established business to acquire and operate.

After searching for months, he found it—a B2B service business in California doing approximately $10 million in annual revenue. The owner was burned out and wanted to sell the business in order to move on to more passive investments. The business had 45 employees, a tenured management team in place to handle day-to-day operations, and was the third-largest company in the state by market share. Not only that, it ticked all of his "buy box" criteria, with growth opportunities that aligned with his skill set and an owner he respected. The path to ownership seemed clear. Then, during due diligence, the numbers told a different story.

Buried in the operational data were inefficient, manual processes that were silently eroding margins as the business grew. The discovery changed the valuation, and ultimately, despite a strong relationship and shared intent, the deal collapsed. It was a classic story of diligence uncovering risk, but what happened next was not classic at all. It became the founding insight for a new kind of advisory firm, one that focuses solely on the most underserved market in the artificial intelligence revolution—Main Street.

Instead of parting ways permanently, Carlton made an unconventional suggestion to the seller: put the deal on hold, hire an AI consultant to systematize and automate the very inefficiencies that scuttled the deal, and revisit the deal in 2026. The seller agreed. Less than a month later, the owner of the business had already addressed one of the bottlenecks, resulting in a 20% annualized increase in EBITDA. The solution wasn't a massive overhaul—all it took was adding some simple AI automation and an AI voice agent to handle customer intake.

"That was the epiphany," says a colleague familiar with Carlton's journey. "He realized this wasn't a one off. He had seen the inside of a business that looked perfect on the surface but was leaking value. AI plugged the leak almost immediately. The question became: how many other small and midsized businesses are in the same position?"

This question led to the founding of Main Street AI Advisors. Their mission is simple yet profound to—to give owners of small and mid-sized businesses the confidence to start using AI automation and AI agents to create value. His thesis challenges the prevailing narrative that AI is primarily the domain of tech giants, venture-backed startups, and large private equity portfolio companies. The greatest untapped opportunity, he argues, lies in the small and midsized businesses that form the backbone of the economy.

AI automation and AI agents represent a transition from Generative AI tools like ChatGPT that simply "talk" to autonomous systems that actually "do," acting as digital employees capable of executing multi-step workflows. AI agents are grounded in your proprietary data to perform goal-oriented tasks without constant human prompting. This shift creates a massive force multiplier, allowing small and midsize businesses to enhance operations, improve customer experience, and improve profitability.

SMBs are already using AI automation and AI agents in high-impact use cases, such as AI voice agents with hyper-realistic voices that handle inbound leads and schedule appointments 24/7 so leads are never missed. Other high-ROI examples include Accounts Receivable AI agents that autonomously manage collections and reconciliation to improve cash flow, and customer service AI agents that leverage CRM data to provide a "white-glove," personalized experience for every customer interaction.

These are just a few examples—there are countless applications, and each business's needs are unique. That's where Main Street AI Advisors comes in. Most owners of small and mid-sized businesses are curious but skeptical about AI, and don't know how to get started. Off-the-shelf solutions don't always meet their needs, and they don't know how to set up custom AI automation or AI agents themselves.

The service offerings of Main Street AI Advisors are built for the key moments in a business's lifecycle where value is most transparently assessed, created, or lost.

For the business owner who is curious but skeptical about AI, the firm offers AI Impact Assessments—a diagnostic tool to identify high-impact use cases and calculate potential ROI, demystifying the technology's practical applications.

For the seller looking toward an exit, AI Exit Preparation is a service born directly from Carlton's experience on the buyer's side. It involves documenting standard operating procedures, reducing owner dependency, and systematically eliminating the kind of operational inefficiencies that deter buyers and lower valuations. It turns AI into a tool for maximizing the sale price.

Conversely, for the buyer of a small business, AI Roadmaps provide a post-close implementation plan to enhance the newly purchased asset from day one, offering a clear path to create value based on opportunities they've identified during diligence

And for businesses that simply want the results without building an in-house team, the firm offers full Design & Implementation of custom solutions and ongoing Managed Services. This 'Done For You' model is perhaps the most critical for Main Street businesses, where bandwidth and expertise are the scarcest resources.

Carlton's model identifies an incredibly valuable market opportunity: the disconnect between the availability of sophisticated AI tools and their practical application in the everyday operations of small and midsized businesses.

The story of Main Street AI Advisors is more than a startup launch—it's a signal of a maturing market. The first wave of AI was about building the technology itself. The second, current wave is about widespread consumer and enterprise applications. Carlton is betting on the third wave: the operational deep dive, where AI automation and AI agents become a core part of how small and midsize businesses operate—just like how the Internet, cloud computing, and Software as a Service are now integral parts of their operations today.

By transforming their real-world operational experience into a scalable advisory service, Evan Carlton is helping small and midsize businesses bridge the gap between curiosity and impact. He focuses on equipping owners with the strategic insights needed to make informed decisions, stripping away the complexity and empowering them with the confidence to start using AI to create value in their own business.