About Colin Taylor
Built by running it on myself first.
Asset Alchemy didn’t start as a method. It started as the answer to a problem I kept watching go unsolved, in every business I worked with, for twenty years: the expertise that made the business valuable never left the founder’s head.
The path here
Three roles. One pattern I couldn’t stop seeing.
Each role taught me something the next one needed.
U.S. Navy Search and Rescue Swimmer
Where I learned that process beats heroics.
Rescue work doesn’t reward improvisation. It rewards procedures carried out under pressure by people who weren’t there when they were written. The work only survives the conditions if the knowledge is transferable. Expertise that lives in a person is heroic. Expertise that lives in a system is reliable.
“The system is the difference between a story and a survival rate.”
Co-founder, Sleeping Giant Music
Where I learned the asset is what you already have.
We started a record label in San Diego in 2004, just as the music industry began to collapse. Instead of chasing the next trend, we looked at what we already owned: working DJs, deep artist relationships, and a reputation for knowing who was good. We built a booking and events agency on those assets. It’s still operating, 20+ years later, in San Diego, Miami, Los Angeles and Las Vegas.
“We didn’t pivot to chase a trend. We pivoted because the value was already in what we owned.”
Apple Business Consultant
Where I learned the pattern wasn’t just mine.
I spent every day with small and mid-sized business owners. Different industries, same shape underneath. Real expertise, the kind that set them apart from competitors, and almost none of it written down. After a few hundred of those conversations, the method started to assemble itself.
“Every business I sat with had the same problem. None of them knew it.”
Then AI showed up
For most of my career, trapped knowledge was a problem you could survive. Buyers were patient and margins were forgiving. Then AI learned to copy the surface of anyone’s work in seconds, while the judgment underneath stayed locked in founders’ heads. *AI didn’t create the trapped-knowledge problem. It just made the cost of staying trapped terminal.
So I start with extraction, not tools.
If the most valuable asset in a service business is the expertise inside it, one move matters more than the rest: draw it out before you amplify it. Name the method. Write down the judgment. Then build systems that carry it.
I’m hands-on with AI every day: the prompting, the automation, the systems most consultants only talk about. That’s exactly why I start where I do. I’ve seen what these tools produce with nothing documented underneath them.
Every framework on this site came from the same place. Not a workshop, but years of conversations with founders, run first on my own business. I’m still running it.
What I believe
Five things you’ll hear me say if we work together.
Documentation is respect for the work.
If your work has produced results across hundreds of clients, it deserves to outlive any one conversation. Not because you’re going anywhere. Because it’s the right way to treat what you’ve built.
AI amplifies what you already are.
It doesn’t replace expertise. It replaces undocumented expertise. The owners who come through this will be the ones who gave AI their actual judgment, instead of using it as a substitute for thinking.
Numbers should argue with you.
The point of using your real data is so the math can disagree with your gut. Most of the time the math wins. When it doesn’t, you’ve found something worth looking into.
The right clients recognize themselves.
This work is for owners who’ve already proven the business works and are asking what comes next. If these pages don’t read like they were written for you, they probably weren’t, and that’s fine.
A business should run without you, even if you never sell it.
Documenting your method isn’t exit planning. It’s planning for the next ten years. The strongest firms are the ones whose founders stay because they want to, not because nothing works without them.
How I work
Three to four clients at a time. On purpose.
Drawing out someone’s judgment takes real attention, so I cap how many firms I work with. You get my full focus, quicker turnaround between sessions, and a system fitted to your firm, not averaged across a crowd.
You bring the expertise. I do the technical work, so you get the benefit of AI without becoming the person who has to build it.
I build in the open, on my own business alongside yours. The version you work with is the one I’m running this quarter, sharpened by every client I’m working with now.
The person you talk to is the person doing the work.
- No hand-offs
- No junior associates. Every session is with me.
- No homework
- The work runs on strategic conversation. I handle the documentation and the build.
- No guesswork
- Everything starts from your real numbers and your own words.
A note from me
Thanks for reading this far.
That’s already more time than most people give a stranger’s website, and I appreciate it.
This site goes into this much detail for a simple reason. This isn’t work you hand off lightly. The investment matters, the access matters, and whether I’m the right person to do this with you matters.
If something here sounded like you, the best next step is the Profit Compass Blueprint: one hour with me, using your real numbers, before you commit to anything larger. If you’re not ready for that, the scorecard takes six minutes.
Start where you are
Two ways in. Both start with your expertise.
Still working out where AI fits?
The D.I.B.S. scorecard
Six minutes. See where your expertise is trapped, and what it’s costing you.
Free
Your results are sent to this address. No payment, no sales call.
Ready to see your own numbers?
The Profit Compass Blueprint
A one-hour diagnostic with me, using your real numbers. You get your Profit Compass, a 90-day plan, and a clear answer on what your system would be built from, delivered within 24 hours.
$1,497, fully credited toward the Foundation Sprint
Book the BlueprintBefore you commit, the Blueprint estimates the dormant revenue in your business, using your own numbers. For most firms I work with, it’s $20K to $50K. The Foundation Sprint is built to identify that revenue within the first 30 days and start capturing it. If it isn’t identified by day 30, the clock on your 90 days stops, at no extra cost, until it is.