"I have to make you more than I cost you."
Todd Schreier is a business advisor, keynote speaker and author who has spent 25 years doing the work he now teaches. He is Principal of Schreier Group, the family advisory firm he and his wife, Amanda Schreier, run from Johnstown, Colorado. That line above is the one he says to every owner before they work together, and he means it as a bet, not a slogan.
Sales first
Todd's career started in sales and never really left it. Over 25 years he led sales organizations, including a 300-person pharmaceutical sales organization. In real estate, his job for years was hiring and training agents and teaching them how to win listings. In the early 2000s he was already training from large stages.
The sales rules he still teaches came out of those rooms: never ask a yes-or-no question you expect to hear "no" to, offer two paths instead, and always use specific numbers, never vague ones.
Real estate
Alongside the sales work, Todd and Amanda were principals in more than 200 real estate transactions over 25 years. The list covers a lot of ground: developing entire communities, master-planned communities among them, plus apartment complexes, mobile home parks, single-family renovations, flips, shipping-container homes, and commercial and industrial properties.
Twenty-plus years of that taught him the lesson he repeats most: the deal on paper and the deal in real life are two different animals.
Main Street operator
From 2018 to 2023, Todd and Amanda owned, operated and developed 14 brick-and-mortar businesses across Kentucky, Ohio and West Virginia, creating more than three dozen jobs directly and more than a hundred indirectly. One of them was a bakery.
Those are the years behind the way he talks to owners now: payroll, leases, staffing, and the Friday-afternoon calls nobody wants to make. He is an operator, not a theorist, and he speaks fluent Main Street because that is where he has always worked.
Schreier Group
Today Todd runs Schreier Group, a business advisory firm that uses AI. Strategic advisory comes first. Done-for-you AI systems, websites and marketing are the tools that help owners go further, faster. Todd's lane is sales and marketing, sales team training and profit generation for growing businesses. Amanda, a fractional Chief People Officer with an MBA and SHRM-SCP, runs the people side.
The firm's mission fits in one line: leave people better than we found them. Its front door is a free Business Checkup that tells owners the truth, even when the truth is "you don't need us."
Todd also runs the AI Hype Audit, a free public fact-check of the viral AI claims owners see on their feeds. As of October 2026 it has tested 525 claims, and most turn out to be partly true at best. No email wall, no course at the end.
Stage, book and mic
Keynotes. Todd gave a keynote at the 2026 Oregon Business Conference in Lebanon, Oregon: 47 minutes on AI, small business and building things that outlast the hype. Most people remember it for the unplanned slide the organizers put on the big screen mid-talk, asking why he was wearing a Buc-ee's onesie. Watch the full keynote.
In February 2027 he leads a breakout session, "Beyond the Booth: Turning Conference Connections into Customers," at the Oregon Festivals and Events Association annual conference in Seaside, Oregon.
The Money-Back Mastermind. Todd created and hosts the Money-Back Mastermind, a one-day live business event in Loveland, Colorado, sold with a handshake guarantee. The first one, on October 24, 2026, sold out all 15 seats with zero refunds. Round two is February 6, 2027.
The book. Todd wrote Put Your Phone Down!: A Modern-Day Guide to Grassroots Marketing (January 2026), a short guide to the relationship-first marketing that won customers before the algorithm existed, and still beats it.
The podcast. He hosts ToddTalk, straight-talk conversations with business owners, community leaders and local voices, also on YouTube.
How he works
Todd teaches from receipts, and his favorite one cost nothing. A small apparel shop in Kentucky, run out of a basement, wanted one dream account: the owner of a local gym. Todd picked up the phone on the spot and asked the gym owner one question, what shirt sizes he and his wife wore. No price, no pitch. "Zero American dollars. Worst case, we shake hands and we're friends." Two shirts were hand-delivered. The owner held them and said, "I need a hundred of these." That account became about 40 percent of the shop's revenue for five years.
The other lesson he teaches most is about price. You never drop the price; you change the shape of the yes. A $6,000 elephant is four bites of $1,500, and the client picks the payment dates.
How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
Plain English, specific numbers, and no corporate jargon. If Todd wouldn't say it out loud, it doesn't go on paper. He lives in Northern Colorado with his family, and he answers his own phone.