Build the System.
Automate the Chaos.
Scale with Freedom.
Derek Hazelwood helps entrepreneurs build businesses that can grow beyond the owner, combining business consulting, AI automation, and years of high-pressure fire service into systems that run without him.
Why Ricochet exists.
Ricochet wasn't born out of a need for income or a desire to start another company. It came out of necessity.
Nina, my wife, was working 100 hours a week at Raleigh Cleaning Company, doing five people's jobs, because five people's worth of information lived only in her head. On Halloween night I found her on the floor of the fire station, unable to breathe. Either you rest or your body makes you rest.
I built the systems to solve that problem for us first. Ricochet is what happened when other business owners needed the same fix.
Three things that
actually moved.
Every scheduling decision, finding an efficient route, finding an open slot on the master schedule, used to take 45 minutes to an hour by hand. Multiply that across everything getting scheduled in a single week and it added up to hours and hours of manual work every week. Now it happens in seconds.
AI handled the full quote to close to booking pipeline, with zero added salaried headcount.
Retention at Raleigh Cleaning Company went from months to years after building a dedicated hiring and screening process, one that reaches candidates around the clock and runs background checks automatically once someone clears.
Boardroom to stage to garage.
One strip, every side of the work.
My grandfather taught me about ricochet with a BB gun when I was seven. He said whatever you send out doesn't just disappear, it comes back, one way or another. I didn't understand it then. I've lived it since.
Every hit I took, in school, in marriages, in a church that should have protected me, was its own kind of ricochet, energy I didn't choose, coming back at me anyway. For a long time I just absorbed it. I didn't decide what to send out next, I just took the hit and moved on.
This isn't a comeback story. I'm not trying to get back to something I lost, because a lot of what I'm talking about, I never had in the first place. This is just, let's go. Whatever energy you put out from right where you are, beat down or not, is what starts ricocheting back. I built these businesses to put out real energy on purpose. And I want to stand in front of people who are still just absorbing hits and tell them it's time to decide what they're sending out next.
Bring him to your stage,
or bring him into your business.
Book Derek to Speak
For podcasts, events, and shows that want a guest who teaches audiences to build smarter businesses and lead under pressure.
Request a booking →Work With Ricochet
Fix broken systems, sharpen hiring and sales, then automate what's left so the business runs without you in every decision.
Visit Ricochet ↗The Social Architect
with Derek Hazelwood
A podcast for people who did the work, made the sacrifices, and are still waiting for their shot.