You know, when people in print ask my last name, I usually get one of two reactions.

Either: “Farquharson… like… Bill Farquharson?”

Or: “Oh! You’re Bill’s daughter.”

So let me start there, because it explains a lot about why SharedIntel AI has rapidly become the leading AI and automation consultants and educators in the print space!
If you’ve been around this industry for a while, you know my dad, Bill Farquharson. For decades, he’s been on your stages, in your sales training, in your newsletters. In print, it can feel like he’s everywhere.

Which means I didn’t just stumble into this industry as an outsider with a shiny AI toy.
I grew up in print.

Some of my earliest memories are being dragged through convention halls, sitting "quietly" in the back of conference rooms while my dad talked about sales and prospecting and relationships. As a child, I remember it was… a lot: the noise, the people, the sensory overload.

But even then, I still remembered that it felt less like “just another industry” and more like a very odd, very warm family reunion.

It was cozy. It was messy. It was full of family legacies. People who knew each other’s kids, each other’s stories, each other’s shops, for decades.So yes, I’m Bill’s daughter. But my path into this space took a very different route...[ahem, NERD]

I started my career in STEM, in a lab working with viruses.

My work was to engineer viruses to produce colors—so contaminated water or food would literally change color—giving families in high-risk areas a visible warning before their kids got sick.

The mission was simple to say and hard to do: “Fewer children under five should die from things we already know how to prevent.”From the beginning, my work was about translating privilege into practical protection: taking the education and resources I had, and turning them into something that helps people who don’t have that safety net.

That’s my internal compass. And strangely enough, that’s exactly what led me back here… to print.
On paper, going from colored viruses to print shops and sign franchises sounds like I took the wrong exit off the highway.

But as I moved through my career, I kept noticing something:
- Disease is everywhere.
- Philanthropy is everywhere.
- And print — in one form or another — is everywhere.

Whether you’re in a wealthy country or a developing one, there’s:
- a label on the medicine bottle,
- a sign telling you where to go,
- packaging on the shelf,
- a piece of direct mail on the table.

Print creates touchpoints that don’t care about your GDP or how rich your country is. That fascinated me.

At the same time, I was an early beta tester for ChatGPT, YEARS before it was released to the public. So when it did launched publicly, I was not surprised by what the tech could do for print.I was alarmed by how it was being used, however:
- manipulation tactics,
- aggressive targeting of an aging population and an aging-technology population—which, realistically, describes a huge chunk of this industry.

And that’s when my upbringing and my science background collided in a flurry of passionate fist waving.

Because I wasn’t looking at print as “some market.” I was looking at it as the extended family I grew up around. No one messes with my people. No one.

Here’s what I saw…..A lot of print and sign businesses are:
- older/aging (hell-yeah tribal wisdom!),
- tightly knit,
- and running on very thin margins of time and attention.

They’re buried under:
- MIS systems,
- CRMs,
- web-to-print portals,
- RIP software,
- production automation,
- and now an avalanche of AI tools everyone says they “must” adopt.

Meanwhile, the very things that made them special:
- the thoughtful follow-ups,
- the handwritten notes,
- the above and beyond quality,the deep,
- consultative relationships—those are the first things to get sacrificed,
- because everyone is in survival mode.

Shops that used to feel like family now feel like they’re just fighting fires, one job at a time.That is not the print industry I grew up in.

And this is where the neuroscience becomes personal.We know, from research and from experience, that:
When you live in a constant state of stress and overload, your frontal lobe — the part of your brain responsible for creative, strategic thinking — literally shuts down.So what’s happening?

We’ve taken an industry full of experienced, relationship-driven problem-solvers…
…and buried them under so much workflow bloat and tech chaos that they no longer have the brainspace to be brilliant.

This is why I chose to make print my industry, and AI and automation my tools.

When people say:
“Emma, why not prospect more with healthcare, or legal? Or finance? Or some giant horizontal market that’s already on the ball with AI and automations? I mean, why not bag those big fish? Why dig your heels in and niche out so specifically within the print industry of all places?”

My answer is:

1. Because print is both ancient and underestimated. It’s a mature industry with a very modern problem in the front of the house.
2. Because print quietly powers everything. You show up in every other vertical, whether you get credit for it or not.
3. Because print is full of GOOD humans who built their businesses on service and trust… …and who are now at risk of getting left behind not because they can’t learn, but because they have no time to learn.

And I know — from the lab, from neuroscience, and from growing up among you — that:

If we can remove enough bloat and noise to free up that frontal lobe again… the creativity, the leadership, the relationships come back online.

So this is what I do now:
I’ve made it my work to be the AI and automation strategist, consultant, and educator for the print and sign industry.

- Not “one of many.” This is my lane.My family is from here.
- My career was built on complex science and behavior.
- My obsession is in translating the complex into grounded initiatives.
- My focus is squarely on helping print professionals and companies use AI and automation in a way that actually works in their world.
- Now. Not later. Now. And not with a million tools, but with a focus on what moves the needle.

That means:
- I’m not here to add another layer of abstraction or hype.
- I’m not here to drop a few prompts on you and disappear.

I am here to be the person who walks into a shop or a franchise network and says:
- “Show me your MIS, your CRM, your email inbox.”
- “Let’s map your bloat. Let’s see where your people are drowning.”
- “Here are the three automations we start with in sales and customer communication.”
- “Here’s how we train your team so they feel safer and more capable — not like they’re training their replacements.”

That’s what my company, SharedIntel AI, exists to do:
- Strategy: where AI and automation actually fit in a print or sign business.
- Implementation: orchestrating the workflows, not just installing a tool.
- Education: translating AI from buzzword to everyday practice, in your language, in your reality.

So yes, I am Bill Farquharson’s daughter.

He spent decades teaching this industry how to sell.

I’m here to spend the next decades teaching this industry how to scale and protect those sales with AI and automation……without losing the human, relational, family-business core that made print powerful in the first place.

I’m not here to replace the humans in print.

I’m here to give this industry its brain back — so the same people who built it can be the ones who lead it into whatever comes next. Not sure where to start?

Let’s book a call, and I’ve got your back.We’re family, after all.