01 · Design & sales
Design & sales
Interior designers, architects, kitchen and bath teams, showrooms, sales leaders, and design-build operators.
- Interior designers
- Architects
- Kitchen & bath teams
- Showrooms · sales leaders
AI training, community, custom implementation
Chapter 01 / 04
Where to start
Start using AI in your building-industry business without getting lost.
Maybe you tried ChatGPT and got answers that were generic, wrong, or impossible to trust. Or you heard someone describe an AI workflow at a conference and thought: That sounds great, but I do not even know how I would do that.
Datum Consulting provides AI training, workflow design, custom AI implementation, and a dedicated AI-focused Discord community for the design and building industry: remodelers, general contractors, interior designers, suppliers, fabricators, distributors, showrooms, and trades.
We help you start with the basics: what to download, which AI tools to trust, what to ask, and how to give AI enough context to be useful. From there, you can reduce admin drag, organize information, draft better communication, support decisions, and eventually automate repeatable workflows with human review.
Built in real operations
Built inside KBF Design Gallery, Adam's own design-build firm in Maitland, FL. The AI training, workflows, and implementations Datum teaches are tested against real scopes, schedules, selections, procurement, reporting, and field operations.
Your first step can be small
Join the Discord community if you want the lowest-friction way to learn with peers. Reserve the cohort for hands-on training, book Discovery for a focused assessment, or ask about custom build and staff presentation options.
Operator credibility
KBF Design Gallery and its principals have source-backed press and recognition across Architectural Digest, Florida Design, Orlando Magazine, Interior Appeal, Passport Winter Park, Best of Houzz, Parade of Homes Orlando, Orlando Business Journal, Pro Remodeler, NKBA, Custom Builder Online, Pro Builder's Women at WIRC, and Qualified Remodeler.
Source-backed KBF recognition and press
Florida Design
Seaglass Awards
Orlando Magazine
Home Design Awards
Best of Houzz
Design recognition
Parade of Homes
Orlando recognition
OBJ Golden 100
Private company list
Architectural Digest
Excellence in Design
Florida Design
Seaglass Awards
Orlando Magazine
Home Design Awards
Best of Houzz
Design recognition
Parade of Homes
Orlando recognition
OBJ Golden 100
Private company list
Architectural Digest
Excellence in Design
Who this is for
The full building stack.
Datum serves the people who design the project, build the project, sell the products, fabricate the materials, distribute the goods, service the systems, and keep the schedule moving.
02 · Build & manage
Build & manage
Remodelers, general contractors, custom builders, project managers, superintendents, and estimating teams.
- Remodelers
- General contractors
- Custom home builders
- PMs · supers · estimators
03 · Supply & fabricate
Supply & fabricate
Suppliers, fabricators, distributors, cabinet shops, flooring and tile showrooms, procurement teams, and vendor reps.
- Suppliers · distributors
- Fabricators · cabinet shops
- Flooring & tile showrooms
- Procurement · vendor reps
04 · Service & trade
Service & trade
Electricians, plumbers, HVAC companies, trade contractors, warranty teams, and field service businesses.
- Electricians · plumbers
- HVAC companies
- Trade contractors
- Warranty & field service
Datum Consulting provides AI training, workflow design, and custom AI implementation for the design and building industry: remodelers, general contractors, interior designers, suppliers, fabricators, distributors, showrooms, and trades.
Case 01 · Proof from inside the firm
KBF Design Gallery — the firm Datum is built inside of.
Before Datum was a cohort, it was a method. A real story from a real business — one AI application built in a week that gave a designer nearly a quarter of her working year back.
7hrs
Per project on scope writing alone
490hrs
Per year consumed by one task
23%
Of her working year reclaimed
20%+
Increase in revenue capacity
“Our lead designer was spending 7 hours per job writing scopes, estimates, and proposals — before a single design decision had been made.” At 70 projects last year, that is 490 hours: nearly 23% of her working year consumed by a single repeatable task.
Datum built a purpose-built application in one week to handle scopes of work, pricing, proposals, storyboards, and material selections from a brief conversation about the project. That time is now reallocated to actual design work. The business increased the revenue capacity she can handle by over 20% without hiring anyone or adding overhead.
Every business has a version of this: a task hiding in plain sight, done manually, at scale, by someone whose time is worth far more. Datum helps find it, map it, and turn it into a controlled workflow.
KBF Design Gallery · Maitland · Winter Park, FL Architectural Digest · Excellence in DesignFlorida Design Seaglass AwardsOrlando Magazine Home Design Awards
KBF · Maitland, FL
What you'll walk out with Wednesday
What you'll know how to do by Wednesday.
01
Ground AI in your business context
Learn how to give AI the operating context it needs — your role, company, voice, services, market, constraints, and examples — so it stops giving generic answers.
Clear inputs · source context · useful outputs
02
Know which tasks AI should handle
Spot the admin drag, repeatable judgment calls, reporting work, and research tasks AI can help with now — and the messy, high-risk work to avoid for the moment.
Better targets · fewer distractions
03
Set up the practical AI tool stack
Understand Claude desktop versus web, core dev tools, terminals, GitHub, repositories, plugins, skills, and the settings that make AI useful for real operating work.
Setup · accounts · practical tooling
04
Prompt and meta-prompt effectively
Learn how to write prompts that work, ask AI to improve the prompt itself, test the output, and turn vague instructions into repeatable workflows your team can understand.
Better instructions · repeatable patterns
05
Connect your software stack to AI
See the ways AI can work with files, browsers, spreadsheets, documents, presentations, and business systems — including when exports or manual review are the smarter bridge.
Connect where useful · review where needed
06
Schedule AI work without your involvement
Learn the pattern behind timed automations: what should run daily or weekly, what inputs it needs, where the output goes, and where human review belongs.
Daily briefings · weekly checks · review points
07
Run several AI agents in parallel
Learn how to spin up multiple AI sessions or agents at once for research, analysis, reporting, coding, and workflow exploration — without losing the thread.
Parallel work · visible progress · human control
08
Turn data into reports and lightweight apps
Practice the pattern: deep research, interactive HTML reports, and lightweight app prototypes that make company data easier to inspect, explain, and act on.
Reports · prototypes · operating decisions
The cohort teaches the operating pattern behind these workflows: what source data grounds the AI, who starts the workflow, what can fail, what gets logged, and where approval belongs.
Four ways to work together
Join the room. Learn the basics. Then build what matters.
Met us at a conference and AI still feels hard to start? Here's the map. Begin with the community, go deeper in the cohort, book Discovery when you want a focused assessment, or ask about a custom build or staff presentation.
▸ Lowest friction · Founding community
Discord / Community Membership
$200 / month
Best forEveryone who knows AI matters but wants a practical place to ask questions, learn what peers are trying, share openly, and stay close to the first AI-focused community built for the design and building industry.
Join DiscordHands-on training · July 21 + 22, 2026
Cohort — Foundations of AI for the Building Industry
$2,500 · 15 seats
Best forBuilding-industry operators who want two hands-on evenings to learn what to download, how to set up AI, how to prompt it, where workflows fit, and how to keep practicing after the cohort.
July 21 + 22, 2026 · Virtual · 6-8 PM ET. Bring your laptop, your bottleneck, and your current stack.
Reserve seat1-on-1 assessment · Highest signal
Discovery Call
$1,500 · 1.5 hours, virtual
Best forA focused assessment of your business and a strategy for applying AI where it unlocks leverage: bottlenecks, services, revenue, capacity, or the operating work your team keeps repeating.
Book the callInquiry · Custom or team-wide
Custom Build + Staff Presentations
Email for quote · scoped to your team
Best forTeams that want implementation support around source-grounded workflows, connectors, review points, or a staff presentation that gets leadership and employees excited about practical AI.
Email AdamDiscord community · founding room
The first AI-focused Discord designed solely for the full building stack: remodelers, GCs, designers, trades, suppliers, distributors, showrooms, and the operators running them. It is not a passive newsletter and not a generic tech community. We share, experiment, and build together: workflows, AI news, tool changes, workarounds, wins, failures, and practical ways to increase capacity, protect margin, reduce admin drag, and move faster than the market.
Custom build + staff presentations
Staff Presentations introduce AI to your team — employees, leadership, management, and executives. We come in, show them what AI can actually do, and get them excited to leverage it themselves. Custom Build inquiries are scoped around your stack, your workflows, and the level of implementation support you need. Email Adam with team size, business type, and a rough goal.
Cohort details
Two evenings. A clear way to start.
Live working sessions, not lectures. Bring your laptop, your bottleneck, and your current stack. We'll move from basic setup to real examples, then into automation, research, reports, and agent workflows you can keep practicing after the cohort.
Day 01 · Tue Jul 21 · 6-8 PM ET
Map the work, set up the stack.
Foundations: what AI actually is and is not for operators. Desktop app versus website. Where Claude, ChatGPT, browser tools, spreadsheets, and coding assistants fit.
Setup + context: install the core tools, build a personal and company context layer, and learn how to feed AI the examples, constraints, and voice it needs to be useful.
Hands-on: write better instructions, ask AI to improve them, learn what makes a task a good automation target, and map the safest way to connect data from your stack.
Day 02 · Wed Jul 22 · 6-8 PM ET
Automate, research, and scale.
Schedule AI to work without you: daily briefings, weekly reports, research runs, follow-ups, and QA checks with guardrails, review points, and handoff.
Reports, apps, and parallel agents: use company data to create an interactive report, then see how the same data can become a lightweight app prototype while separate agents research the market.
Your 90-day roadmap: pick the next workflows to test, the tools to avoid for now, the team members to involve first, and the leverage points that matter most.
90-second diagnostic · first workflow worth testing
A fast, controlled triage. No magic-button recommendations, no private data required, and no promise that AI should touch everything. Pick your business type, where the work slows down, and what stack you already use. The safest first win is often turning messy notes, photos, and conversations into a cleaner brief for human review.
AI leverage map · public version
The pattern is the same across the building stack: controlled workflows, clear inputs, human review, and visible outputs. Remodelers, interior designers, builders, GCs, trades, suppliers, and distributors each have different first leverage points, but the operating pattern is shared.
After checkout · what happens next
Stripe confirms payment immediately. Community buyers go to Discord onboarding. Cohort and Discovery buyers get the relevant confirmation and preparation path. For the cohort, bring a laptop and one or two real bottlenecks. You do not need to upload private client data to get value.
The math on one task
Here's what scope-writing cost our designer. What does it cost yours?
At KBF Design Gallery · Maitland, FL
Our lead designer wrote scopes by hand. Every project. Seven hours each.
Last year, she ran 70 projects. At her loaded rate of $85 an hour, that's $41,500 spent on one task, by one person, in one year. After Datum built the workflow around that task, she does the same work in about 30 minutes. She got 490 hours back — about a quarter of her working year — for actual design work.
$41,500
One task · one year
490 hrs
Back · for design work
7 → 0.5
Hours per scope · measured
Run the math for your team
In hours
—
In dollars
—
In bodies
—
Numbers this big? You have multiple bottlenecks. Book a Discovery call — this is not a one-workflow fix.
Book a Discovery Call
And this is just scope writing. There are more operating areas above where the same controlled workflow pattern applies.
Honest comparison
Sure, ChatGPT is free. But what's it actually built for your team?
You could keep experimenting with generic AI tools for the next 12 months. Most building-industry owners who try are no further along than when they started. Here's the difference.
| Capability | Datum | ChatGPT / Claude direct | Generic AI consultant | DIY (in-house) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Built specifically for the building industry | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | depends |
| Controlled workflows with clear inputs, outputs, and review | ✓ | manual | varies | depends |
| Source-grounded work against your actual business context | ✓ | if you build it | depends | depends |
| Built by an operator who runs a real design-build firm | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | n/a |
| Practical first workflow selected before tools take over | ✓ | ✗ | sometimes | maybe |
| Your software stack evaluated for useful connection points | ✓ | ✗ | varies | maybe |
| Knows what "punch list" or "rough-in" actually means | ✓ | sort of | ✗ | ✓ |
| Your team learns the practical operating pattern | ✓ | ✗ | varies | maybe |
| Human accountability and review points stay explicit | ✓ | manual | varies | ✓ |
Bottom line — Datum is for controlled AI capability inside real building-industry work, not generic advice detached from the business.
Book a Discovery Call
About us
A design-build operator and a brand operator. Both still in the work.
Adam and Ashley have run the workflows they're teaching — from demo and trades all the way to $13.8M in revenue. Everything in the cohort is grounded in operating work at KBF.
Founder · Datum · KBF Design Gallery
Adam Vellequette
Adam grew up in his family's remodeling business — running demolition in high school, then working alongside KBF's tradesmen in tile, cabinetry installation, and framing. He shadowed project managers before moving into sales in 2017, and by 2019 was managing operations and building systems where there weren't any.
In May 2021, he and his sister Ashley bought the company at $5.2M in annual revenue. By 2025, KBF Design Gallery reached $13.8M. Datum grew out of that operating experience: every bottleneck Adam solved inside KBF became part of the method.
Florida Design · Seaglass Award · 2024, 2025
Architectural Digest · Excellence in Design
Orlando Magazine Home Design Awards · 2022-2026
Golden 100 · Top Private Cos. · OBJ
Qualified Remodeler Top 500 · since 2012
Custom Builder Online · AI in Building and Design · 2026
Revenue · 2021 → 2025 · $5.2M → $13.8M
Datum Collaborator · KBF Design Gallery
Ashley Sheaffer
Ashley started at KBF as a receptionist straight out of college. She moved into scheduling, earned her NKBA certification as a kitchen and bath designer, transitioned into sales, then rose to sales management before becoming co-owner alongside her brother Adam in 2021.
They've learned this business from the ground up — demo, trades, project management, sales, operations — and that's exactly why they understand the workflows they're leveraging AI to perform.
Women of the Year · Orlando Magazine · 2022
40 Under 40 · Pro Remodeler · 2025
NKBA Certified Kitchen & Bath Designer
NKBA Essence of Luxury · 2025
Women at WIRC · AI workflow feature · 2026
Parade of Homes Orlando · award-winning work
Orlando Magazine Home Design Awards · 2022-2026
Asked, answered
Questions we get a lot.
Real-person answers, including the things people email Adam about most often.
What will I know how to do after two days?
You'll know how to ground AI with context about your company, identify which workflows are worth automating, write stronger prompts and meta-prompts, connect AI to parts of your software stack, schedule AI work to run without you, and use multiple AI agents or sessions in parallel. The goal is practical capability you can take back to your business.
Do I own what I build in the cohort?
Yes. Any prompts, notes, workflows, reports, or examples you build from your own business context are yours to use internally. Datum's curriculum, frameworks, examples, recordings, and teaching materials remain Datum intellectual property.
What if my software isn't on the connector list?
We'll show you how to think through connection options and workarounds. Some tools connect directly, some need files or exports, and some are better handled manually for now. A big part of the cohort is learning what is worth connecting and what to avoid.
Who is this for?
Building industry operators — remodelers, general contractors, interior designers, HVAC, plumbing, electrical, tile distributors, cabinet suppliers, flooring showrooms, suppliers, distributors, and leadership teams. If your business touches a building, this is for you. Not for tech companies.
Do I need to know how to code?
No. We teach practical AI application, not programming. You bring a laptop, willingness to install a few pieces of software, and an open mind. We'll walk through the difference between the Claude desktop app and website, basic tooling, and the concepts you need to use AI productively.
What's the difference between the cohort and a Discovery call?
The Discovery call is a 1.5-hour assessment of your business and a strategy for applying AI where it can unlock the most leverage. The cohort is a two-day group working session focused on the foundations, tools, prompting, automations, and workflows building-industry operators need to get started.
Is the Discord community included with the cohort?
No. The community is a separate $200/month membership for people who want ongoing support, peer examples, shared experiments, and discussion with other building-industry professionals applying AI in real businesses.
Why isn't it free to join the community?
We're looking for serious professionals with intent. We want active members who are willing to share, ask questions, test ideas, and provide value. Skin in the game keeps the group focused.
Can I choose a later cohort date?
Yes. July 21 + 22 is the current cohort, and you can also select August, September, or October. The date you choose carries into checkout and the cohort confirmation path.
What happens after I pay?
Stripe confirms the purchase immediately. Community buyers are sent into the Discord onboarding flow. Cohort buyers get a preparation path for their selected dates. Discovery buyers start the business assessment handoff.
What should I have ready before the cohort?
Bring a laptop, access to the AI tools or accounts you already use, and one or two real bottlenecks from your business. You do not need to prepare private client data. The goal is learning the setup, workflow judgment, and review pattern.
Is this legal, financial, or cybersecurity advice?
No. Datum provides educational and operational AI training based on what we use in our own building-industry businesses. AI outputs and automations should be reviewed by qualified humans before use in legal, financial, cybersecurity, or client-facing decisions.
Can you just build it for us instead?
Yes — we offer custom implementation services beyond the cohort. Start with a Discovery call or email adam@datumconsulting.ai about custom build or staff presentation support and we'll scope what makes sense for your business.
How is Datum different from other AI consultants?
We run a $13.8M design-build remodeling and interior design company. Everything we teach is grounded in work we use daily. This isn't theory from outside the industry — it's an operating method built from KBF's growth from $5.2M to $13.8M in four years.
Still have a question? Email adam@datumconsulting.ai — real person, real fast.
Apply
Tell us where you are. We'll help you choose the right first step.
Start with the lowest-friction path: join the Discord community, reserve the cohort when you want hands-on training, book Discovery when you want a focused assessment, or email us about a custom build or staff presentation.
01 · Join Discord
02 · Reserve Cohort
03 · Book Discovery
04 · Custom + Staff