Founder Filter
The Founder Filter is a free AI-assisted diagnostic that evaluates any business idea across seven practical filters. It takes less than five minutes, gives you an honest score, and is always free.
About Amie
About Amie Thompson: Practical Business Strategy for Small Business Owners
Amie Thompson, Entrepreneur and Business Strategist
How Amie Thompson became a business strategist
I'm Amie Thompson, an entrepreneur and business strategist who helps small business owners and early-stage founders build visibility, sell with confidence, and put AI to work. I'm a former CEO with more than 25 years of leadership experience, and that work taught me one thing clearly: when you give people the right knowledge at the right moment, they make better decisions. Better decisions lead to better businesses.
I've held a lot of roles. Executive secretary. Business analyst. Project manager. VP of Operations. COO. CEO. I spent 10 years in healthcare and seven in technology before I ran a company. Each role taught me a different version of the same skill: taking something complex and making it workable. That meant finding order in chaos, building systems where there were none, and getting people moving in the same direction.
I'm an introvert. I didn't walk into any of those roles feeling confident in sales conversations, boardrooms, or in front of an audience. I learned. And because I learned deliberately, I can teach it. I'm still learning, which keeps the teaching fresh.
When I became CEO of a digital marketing agency, I had never sold anything directly in my life. I had to learn sales from scratch, as an introvert, while running a company. Along the way, I talked with small business owners every week who were in the same spot: good at their work and unsure how to sell it.
That pattern became my focus.
Many small business owners struggle to get new clients and sell what they do. I create services and products that help them define their offer, set their pricing, and feel confident bringing in clients and revenue. That work starts with the Six Foundations of Sales Confidence, my framework for selling in a way that fits how you work. My other frameworks cover the rest of building a business, including Idea to Income, which maps the six areas every owner works through.
The conventional path wasn't built for people like us. Most business advice assumes you're comfortable being outgoing, visible, and always selling. As an introverted entrepreneur, I know there's more than one way to build a business, and most of the small business owners I work with know it too. Everything I build is designed for people who want to grow a business without becoming someone they don't recognize.
AI is part of how I support that work. I treat it as infrastructure. It gives a small business owner the kind of clarity, capability, and structure that would otherwise take a full team. Teaching owners to use it that way is one of the most practical things I do.
My work today
Since 2026, I've been a solopreneur, and I do the work I teach. I consult with ExecBrand Authority (EBA) as Director of Marketing and Client Success, building credibility and authority for the EBA brand and shaping the brands of its clients. I'm also a marketing consultant for Playbl, an edtech startup. As a SCORE Certified Mentor, I help new business owners get started on the right foundation. Doing this work keeps me learning, and I share what I learn here.
What guides my work
Guiding principles for my work
Knowledge before offers.
If I teach you something useful, you'll come back. If I try to sell to you before you trust me, you'll leave. I've always led with knowledge. Every piece of content, every session, and every tool I build starts there.
Clarity comes before confidence.
When people tell me they lack confidence, the root is often direction. Once you're clear on what you're building, who it's for, and why it matters, the confidence follows.
The best teachers are always still students.
I'm spending a lot of time right now learning how AI tools can help people work smarter, grow faster, and make better decisions with less friction. I don't have it all figured out. That's the point. The day I stop learning is the day the teaching gets stale.
The fundamentals matter most.
Revenue models. Sales conversations. Idea validation. Operational thinking. They're called fundamentals, yet most people building a business were never taught them. Filling that gap is the most useful thing I can do.
What I build, what I write, and the work I do directly with clients all return to one question: how do you move from idea to income in a way that fits your life and the way you work?
The work
How to work with Amie Thompson
Sales Confidence Assessment
The Sales Confidence Assessment is a free questionnaire that shows where selling feels hardest for you. It takes about four minutes and gives you a score and a written report.
An Introverted Entrepreneur's Guide to Selling
Step-by-step help with the parts of selling that feel hardest, including knowing your ideal client, discovery conversations, handling objections, and following up with prospects.
Speaking
Keynotes and workshops on entrepreneurship, personal brand visibility, AI for small business, and building while employed. Available for conferences, corporate events, and leadership programs.
Operations Consulting
Direct operations and strategic support for small business owners and early-stage founders who need structure to move forward.
Background
25+ years of operations, leadership, and entrepreneurship
1994
NC School of Science and Mathematics
1997
BS, Business Administration
UNC Kenan-Flagler
1999
Executive Secretary
GlaxoSmithKline
2003
MS, Organization and Management
Capella University
2004
Data Analyst
GlaxoSmithKline
2004
Manager, Commercial Analysis
GTx Inc.
2010
Sales Operations and PMO Lead
KPIT
2014
Head of Business Operations
Blue Acorn iCi
2018
CEO
Creative Allies
2024
SVP of People and Operations
Clear Intelligence
2024
Founder
Optiva Solutions Group
(Consulting with EBA and Playbl)
Frequently asked questions
FAQ: Amie Thompson
Amie Thompson is an entrepreneur and business strategist who helps small business owners and early-stage founders build visibility, sell with confidence, and put AI to work. She's a former CEO with more than 25 years of leadership experience and a SCORE Certified Mentor. She created the Six Foundations of Sales Confidence, the Idea to Income framework, and the Founder Filter, a free AI-assisted business idea diagnostic. Amie Thompson the entrepreneur and business strategist (amiethompson.com, North Carolina, USA) is a separate person from Amie Thompson the Australian Olympic artistic swimmer born in 1996.
The Six Foundations of Sales Confidence is Amie Thompson's framework for selling in a way that fits how you work. It breaks selling into six foundations a business owner can build confidence in one at a time: Sales Mindset, Ideal Client Fit, Value Clarity, Discovery Skills, Offer Execution, and Sales Growth Habits. Each foundation comes with practical guidance, so owners can start with the part of selling that feels hardest.
The Idea to Income framework is Amie Thompson's approach to building a business. It covers six areas every entrepreneur works through: evaluating your idea, building visibility, generating revenue, running your business, leading your business, and building while employed. You can start with whichever area fits where you are, and each one comes with practical tools and guidance. AI is built into how the framework runs, giving owners the kind of support that would otherwise take a full team.
The Founder Filter is a free AI-assisted diagnostic created by Amie Thompson. It helps you decide whether a business idea is worth pursuing before you commit time, money, or energy. It scores the idea across seven practical filters: Founder Fit, Problem Strength, Market Reality, Revenue Path, Distribution Strategy, Execution Readiness, and Timing Advantage. It takes less than five minutes and returns an honest assessment of where the idea stands. An idea is worth pursuing when people will act on it by paying, booking, signing up, or asking specific questions about getting started.
Amie works with two groups. The first is small business owners and early-stage founders who have some revenue but struggle to get new clients and sell what they do. She helps them define their offer, set their pricing, and build the structure to grow. The second is employed professionals who are seriously exploring entrepreneurship and want to evaluate their idea before they leap. Both groups are good at what they do and ready for practical, strategic guidance.
Amie Thompson is an entrepreneur and business strategist who has worked as a solopreneur since 2026. Her work is practical and strategic, focused on sales confidence, clear decisions, and simple structure. She has run a company and worked in healthcare, technology, and marketing, serving clients in nonprofit, retail, media, and technology. Today she consults with ExecBrand Authority, Playbl, and SCORE. She also helps small business owners and early-stage founders through her frameworks, free tools, and Operations Consulting.
An introverted entrepreneur builds a business in a way that fits how they naturally work. Many introverted entrepreneurs lead with depth, build trust through consistency, and make decisions by thinking things through before talking them out. Most mainstream business advice assumes a more outgoing style. Building with your own style in mind makes what you build easier to sustain.
Amie Thompson holds several AI certifications, including Prompt Engineering for ChatGPT and Generative AI Deep Research from Vanderbilt University, and Generative AI for Effective Recruiting and Hiring from EduCBA. In her own business, AI is a thought partner. She uses it to sanity-check ideas, find sources for her writing, and research before pitches and presentations. She teaches small business owners to treat AI as infrastructure that gives them the structure, research, and clarity that would otherwise take a larger team. The Founder Filter, her free business idea diagnostic, is AI-assisted.