I'm John Dietrich. Workahead is a one-person implementation practice built on nearly two decades across data systems, enterprise web engineering, and AI-driven digital strategy for national brands. When you hire me, the person who runs the discovery call is the same person who writes the code, tunes the prompts, and hands over the system. No juniors, no offshoring, no handoffs. The trade-off is I take on a limited number of clients a year — which is the point.
Database reconciliation project for the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality — delivered in under four months of a six-month contract. MIS intern at Trustmark National Bank working on check-image capture and IBM Websphere / DB2. BS in Management Information Systems from Southern Miss (graduated with honors), then two years as lead web developer at Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Mississippi — building bcbsms.com on Modx, MySQL, and JavaScript alongside Java application work.
Web developer at thinkWEBSTORE — building and optimizing WordPress sites, running large AdWords campaigns, and shipping full-stack projects. Moved into SEO and marketing consulting at Stone Temple Consulting and GPlusGeek, learning how search, content, and semantic web technology actually drive business outcomes.
Organic Search Strategist at Perficient (2018–2021), then Associate Director of SEO at Stella Rising (2021–2024). Ran technical SEO, web analytics, and web product work for large national brands and enterprise accounts. Led cross-functional teams across content, PPC, social, and development. Learned how to diagnose the bottleneck before designing the fix — and how badly teams get hurt when the order flips.
Principal SEO Consultant at Stella Rising since August 2024, leading AI-driven SEO strategy and mentoring teams on LLM-powered workflows. Built Workahead to bring that same diagnostic posture to owner-operated businesses — installing Claude Cowork as a working layer, not a chatbot bolted on.
Most implementation shops scale by hiring juniors and putting a senior on the pitch. The work suffers quietly; the client finds out at handoff. I'd rather take on three or four engagements a quarter and give each one the senior attention it needs from discovery to governance.
This means I'm often booked out. It also means the thing you end up with is the thing we agreed to — not a watered-down version someone less experienced could handle. If the fit is wrong, I say so in the readiness audit and we save each other the trouble.
You run the business day-to-day and make the calls.
You have repeatable work that's breaking, not just annoying.
You're willing to be specific about outcomes, not vague about "AI."
You care about governance, not just speed.
You want a chatbot bolted onto your website.
Your org has 5+ approval layers on internal tooling decisions.
You want to be billed hourly and get told it'll take a while.
You need an answer this week — audits take a week minimum.
The questionnaire tells me what I need to know to give you a straight answer.
Start the questionnaire →