Sneeze It · Blog · October 2026

Notes from the work

Data, playbooks and what we are building, from the agency that runs on its own software.

An open studio door at dusk, with a trail of magenta dots running from the sidewalk up to a phone, a calendar and a payment card

Your next customer won't visit your website. Their assistant will.

In six weeks this fall, Meta launched an agent that buys things, Amazon blocked it, and agent orders more than quadrupled. Part 1 of Beyond the Four Walls: what changes when the customer stops walking in and starts sending software.

David SteelOctober 10, 20267 min read

An agency desk with an empty outbox tray and a sealed envelope set aside, while a magenta sticky note on a folder marks the one piece of information still missing.

Inside Sneeze It · Inside Sales

When we have nothing to say to a prospect, our sales system says nothing

Our outreach brings a short report built from a business's own ads, market and website. If that report would be empty, the system refuses to make it, and tells us what is missing instead.

David SteelOctober 10, 20266 min read

An illustrated small fitness studio front door with four door frames in a row in front of it, each a different width, one with a magenta handle, and a small robot courier carrying a clipboard toward them.

Inside Sneeze It · Inside the AI layer

How Agent Ready checks a website: 17 checks, two passes and a wall detector

Our free scanner asks whether an AI assistant can actually book or buy on your site. Here is exactly how it decides, and the rules that keep the score honest.

David SteelOctober 10, 20267 min read

A gym owner and two staff stand at a whiteboard covered in sticky notes after closing, each holding a marker to score the ideas, while a laptop on a bench offers one more magenta note.

Inside Sneeze It · Inside the AI layer

The AI suggests, your people score: inside our brainstorming room

Ideate takes one hunch through six steps and ends with the cheapest test you could run this week. Claude adds ideas when asked. It is never allowed to rank them.

David SteelOctober 10, 20266 min read

By the numbers

3report angles in rotationWhen we have nothing to say to a prospect, our sales system says nothing →18,920graded ads in the yardstickWhen we have nothing to say to a prospect, our sales system says nothing →4pillars an agent passes throughHow Agent Ready checks a website: 17 checks, two passes and a wall detector →17scored checks, 100 pointsHow Agent Ready checks a website: 17 checks, two passes and a wall detector →

Sections

2 storiesBenchmarksWhat the numbers across our accounts actually say.1 storyPlaybooksStep by step: what to change, in what order, and why.10 storiesAI and AgentsHow AI agents find, read and book with local businesses.0 storiesFranchise GrowthMarketing a whole system of locations from one place.20 storiesInside Sneeze ItThe tools we build and how we use them.

Latest

Inside Sneeze It · Inside the AI layer

Correct it once, and every one of our tools learns

When someone on our team fixes something an AI wrote, that fix becomes a lesson six Sneeze It tools read before they write again. Here is how the Brain decides what counts, and what never goes agency-wide without a human yes.

David SteelOctober 10, 20266 min read

A strategist at an agency desk crosses out one line on a printed ad proof with a magenta pen, and thin lines run from the mark to six small workstations around the room.

Inside Sneeze It · Inside the AI layer

Why our AI connector will never show you another franchisee's numbers

We let our team ask every Sneeze It tool a question from inside Claude or ChatGPT. Before we built the door, we wrote down who may never walk through it, and what may never come back out.

David SteelOctober 10, 20266 min read

A franchise office with a row of identical mailboxes, one per location; a single hand opens only its own box, while a magenta latch keeps every neighboring box closed.

Inside Sneeze It · Inside Coach

We let an AI write our client reports. It is not allowed to invent a number.

Coach uses AI to write the plain-English paragraphs of a client report. Code computes every figure, a checker rejects any number the AI was not given, and a person reads it before it goes.

David SteelOctober 10, 20266 min read

An editor's desk where a typed page passes under a magnifying glass; one number on the page is circled in magenta and crossed out, while a short list of approved figures sits pinned beside it.

Inside Sneeze It · Inside Coach

Why our client reports open with the truth, not a list of wins

A report built to find good news teaches everyone to miss the bad news. So we took the Wins section out of Coach and put five plain comparisons in its place.

David SteelOctober 10, 20266 min read

A gym owner at a front desk reading a single printed page, with one line on it circled in magenta, while a wall of celebratory sticky notes behind them sits faded and out of focus.

Inside Sneeze It · Inside Audience

A circle is not a trade area. Why we draw real drive times.

The three-mile radius is the most common map in site selection, and it is wrong in ways you cannot see on the map. Here is how Audience draws the market instead, and what changed when it did.

David SteelOctober 10, 20265 min read

A paper map on a franchise owner's desk with a drawn circle around a pin, and a second, irregular shape following the roads, cut short where a river crosses the town

Inside Sneeze It · Inside Audience

Demographics did not predict cost per lead. Comparable locations do.

Before building a forecast for new sites, we tested the industry's favorite inputs against 865 ZIP codes and about $102,000 of real ad spend. Here is what Audience uses instead.

David SteelOctober 10, 20265 min read

A franchise development desk with a paper map, a stack of census printouts pushed aside, and a row of small location cards being lined up next to a magenta pin

Inside Sneeze It · Inside Studio

The browser button that puts everything we know about a business one click away

Our team spends its day in two places, the public Ad Library and other people's websites. So we built a Chrome extension that brings our own tools to both, in four versions over two days.

David SteelOctober 10, 20266 min read

An illustrated browser window on a strategist's desk, with a small magenta button sitting on a blurred ad card and a slim panel opening down the right edge of the screen.

Inside Sneeze It · Inside Studio

We judge ads by cost per lead, not by what Meta chose to spend

Meta grades your ads by where it puts the money. We grade them a second time, by what a lead actually cost, and that second grade decides what our team makes next.

David SteelOctober 10, 20266 min read

A creative strategist at a long agency table sorts printed ad cards into two piles under a desk lamp, with one card marked by a single magenta dot

Inside Sneeze It · Inside Studio

From an ad you like to your brand in about four minutes

Our team can take an ad design that is working in the market and rebuild it in your brand, your words and your approved offer. The AI does the design work. Software guards your logo, your prices and your reviews.

David SteelOctober 10, 20266 min read

Inside Sneeze It · Inside Studio

We test every new ad against your own results before you see it

Before a new ad reaches your inbox, Studio checks it against what has actually brought you leads at a good cost. If the read it is checking against is more than a week old, it refuses.

David SteelOctober 10, 20266 min read

A creative strategist at an agency desk holds a new ad card up against a wall of sorted ad cards grouped into tidy columns, with one column marked by a magenta tab

Benchmarks

What the numbers across our accounts actually say.

All Benchmarks

A grid of small storefront doors, almost all closed and grey, with a single magenta door slightly open

Benchmarks · Beyond the Four Walls

We scanned 98 fitness and wellness websites. None was ready for agents.

Gyms, studios, med spas, salons and recovery chains, scored on whether an AI assistant can find them, understand them and book. The median was 46 out of 100. Not one site lets an agent book a class or appointment.

David SteelOctober 10, 20266 min read

Benchmarks · Creative Benchmarks

What 18,920 Meta ads say about cost per lead

We graded every Meta ad we ran for gyms, studios, med spas and salons. The popular formats are not the cheap ones, and Meta's favorite ad is often not yours.

David SteelOctober 10, 20263 min read

AI and Agents

How AI agents find, read and book with local businesses.

All AI and Agents

A studio front door with a velvet rope, where a small robot holds up a glowing magenta badge to a front desk while a crowd of grey shadow bots waits behind the rope

AI and Agents · Beyond the Four Walls

Who gets through the door: bot walls, verified agents and the new front desk

Banks, card networks and Cloudflare spent the last year building ways for an AI agent to prove who it is. Most local business websites are still checking everyone at the door the old way. Part 9 of Beyond the Four Walls.

David SteelOctober 10, 202610 min read

A studio front desk with a booking form on a screen, and a small paper robot hand holding a pen to fill in the form while a customer relaxes in the waiting area

AI and Agents · Beyond the Four Walls

The browser is becoming the assistant. Your booking form is its next test.

Google, Microsoft, Anthropic, Perplexity and Opera have all put an agent inside the browser that can click, type and fill in forms. OpenAI built one and shut it down. Part 8 of Beyond the Four Walls: what that means for the form on your website.

David SteelOctober 10, 202610 min read

A front desk where the appointment book has turned into a search box, with a magenta dotted line running from the box straight to an open treatment room, past the shop window

AI and Agents · Beyond the Four Walls

Google's AI Mode wants to book the appointment, not just find you

Google can already call a salon for prices, book through three beauty and wellness platforms, and take payment for a hotel inside a chat. Part 7 of Beyond the Four Walls: why your Business Profile now matters more than your homepage.

David SteelOctober 10, 202610 min read

Inside Sneeze It

The tools we build and how we use them.

All Inside Sneeze It

A regional manager at a gym front desk holds a phone showing an ad inside a social feed, while a printed version of the same ad lies on the counter with its headline cut off at the edge

Inside Sneeze It · Inside Studio

Approve exactly what will run, not a picture of it

Most ad approvals happen on a flat image in an email. In Studio you approve the ad inside the real Facebook, Instagram or Google frame, and the version you approve is the version that runs.

David SteelOctober 10, 20266 min read

An agency desk with a laptop showing an abstract chat thread, a single magenta speech bubble rising from it and dropping a small card into an open filing drawer labelled only with a dot pattern

Inside Sneeze It · Inside the Hub

Our team updates client records by talking to a Slack bot, and every change keeps a name

One" lives in our company Slack. It answers questions, takes notes, changes facts and files requests in plain words, and every change it makes is recorded in the Hub under the name of the person who asked.

David SteelOctober 10, 20265 min read

A long agency worktable covered in a fanned-out stack of old paper request slips, with a neat set of new printed forms beside them and one magenta paperclip holding the top form

Inside Sneeze It · Inside the Hub

We read 99 old requests and rebuilt every form to ask what we used to chase

Our request desk now asks for the deadline, the other locations and the files up front, files every request on the location it is about, and stays in sync with the Jira desks our team already works in. Here is what is live, and the one part we have not proven yet.

David SteelOctober 10, 20266 min read

See your own locations in it.

Book a walkthrough with David Steel. Bring last month's lead count and one location you are worried about.

Book a walkthrough See the eight tools