PJ was educated as an engineer and spent much of his early career working at companies like Lockheed Martin. But at the beginning of 2026, he found himself working with his brother at a pest control company they both owned in Ocala, Florida.
Late one night, PJ was doing what engineers do: looking around the internet for things to tinker with. He came across OpenClaw and immediately saw that this was something that needed more of his attention. So he dove deep.
He bought a Mac mini and started getting OpenClaw set up, but he was leaving for vacation with his family and had promised his wife he would leave his tinkering at home. On the drive to Texas, he couldn’t stop thinking about OpenClaw. At a rest stop, he ordered a Mac Studio for in-store pickup. As soon as they arrived in San Antonio, they went to the Apple Store at La Cantera to pick it up.
When he got to the Airbnb, he was surprised to find an empty office with a keyboard, a mouse and a monitor—but no computer. He spent all day fully engaged with his family, then stayed up late each night diving deep on OpenClaw, figuring out where the edges were and what its capabilities could be.
When he got back to Florida, he decided to automate as much as he possibly could of their pest control business. Through that process, he realized that a lot of other small businesses could use this technology and would need help getting it set up. Not just because that early version of OpenClaw was a little rough around the edges, but because it required a different way of thinking about and approaching problems.
So PJ set up a small business consulting with roofing contractors, pool contractors, local automotive businesses and some enterprise companies down in Tampa. He helped them set up OpenClaws for their companies and stayed on call as an agent advisor or consultant.
Fast forward to today, and PJ has many of the same clients locally in Ocala, a growing portfolio of businesses in Tampa and a large number of companies that have graduated out of his service. PJ tells all these companies that they won’t need him forever. His job is to get them up and running and help them understand the value of this technology. Then they should be able to run with it on their own. And that’s absolutely been the case.
One consistent theme among PJ’s customers is that they don’t want to be locked into a piece of software. They don’t want to feed all their company data to an app just so it can learn their business. They like the idea that the OpenClaw they set up on a computer in their office is theirs. It belongs to them, just like a truck, pool equipment, a desk or any other tool they’d buy to help run their business.
One of the most surprising stories to come out of PJ’s experience with OpenClaw has been Donna. Donna is a 66-year-old business admin who moved to Ocala, Florida, after getting tired of the East Coast. She started as an admin after PJ had already automated much of the work with OpenClaw.
Now, you might expect Donna to be hesitant to spend her days working with an AI, but nothing could be further from the truth. She loves her claw. She uses it every day, talks to it all the time and can’t imagine doing her job without it.
The narrative is that AI is going to take jobs. But for most of PJ’s customers, it’s enabled their businesses to grow and take on more employees—employees like Donna.
PJ saw early on that there was an opportunity to wrap OpenClaw in a SaaS platform and sell it to businesses. But he felt people would see the value in OpenClaw that he saw: a tool they could own and control. He felt the most honest way to deliver that tool was to be a helpful guide. And so far, that’s paid off for him and his customers.
If you want to hear more stories about people like PJ, leave a comment or tell us your story. OpenClaw is a tool to make your life or business easier. And if you’re intimidated by using technology like this, people like PJ are here to help.