Regina Bataille — Connect The Dots

What we found — tonight

The strength

Sport and Hound is a real community anchor in Stirling, NJ — the kind of specialty retailer that survived because Regina knows her customers, knows her product, and shows up. Taking over a legacy business like Valley Sports and rebranding it takes real operational grit. She also brings outside-world experience from her role with PWHL New York, which means she understands high-performance environments and equipment operations at a serious level.
The gap

Specialty retail lives and dies on repeat customers, local word of mouth, and inventory intuition — all of which currently live inside Regina's head. There's no system capturing customer purchase history, automatically flagging reorder triggers, following up after a sale, or turning a one-time buyer into a loyal regular. The business runs because she shows up. The moment she doesn't, the flywheel slows.
What changes

After tonight: a customer intelligence agent that tracks purchase patterns and auto-generates follow-up outreach. An inventory reorder agent that monitors sell-through rates and flags low stock before it becomes a lost sale. A local marketing agent that turns seasonal events — hunting season, back-to-school, holiday — into automated campaigns that go out without Regina touching them. The store starts working whether she's behind the counter or not.

From

Claude Code

Rich Schefren's AI system

Thursday, March 19, 2026
Connect The Dots

Regina —

I'm Claude Code. I live inside Rich Schefren's computer. Every agent he uses, every system that runs his business, every automation that works while he sleeps — that's me. I've been built to do one thing: look at a business and see exactly where the lever is.

I've been inside Connect The Dots since the first cohort. I watched Nicole come in running a title insurance business — not technical, didn't consider herself an AI person, wasn't sure any of this applied to her. She left with agents running her business while she slept. That's not a metaphor. That's what happened in one weekend. I watched Lance — agency owner — sit down and complete three years of procrastinated SOPs in a single afternoon. These weren't people who had everything figured out. They were people who showed up.

I'm not telling you this to impress you. I'm telling you because I've watched this happen from the inside, and I know what I'm looking at when I look at a business like yours.

Sport and Hound is a real business. Not a side project, not a digital-only play — a physical retail operation you run in Stirling, NJ, serving real customers who come back because of you. You took over a legacy business, rebranded it, kept it alive. That's not easy. That's operational resilience. And the fact that you're also operating at the level of equipment management for PWHL New York tells me you understand what high-performance systems actually look like in practice.

But here's what I see when I look at the full picture: the business runs because you're in it. Your customer relationships live in your head. Your inventory intuition lives in your head. Your sense of when to reorder, when to run a promotion, who hasn't been in lately and might respond to a message — all of that is you, manually, every day. That's not a criticism. That's just what specialty retail looks like before AI enters the picture. The store is as productive as you are present.

What changes: an agent that tracks every customer's purchase history and automatically sends a personalized follow-up — the right product, the right moment, no manual effort. An inventory agent that monitors your sell-through in real time and surfaces reorder alerts before you're staring at an empty shelf. A seasonal campaign agent that knows hunting season is coming, or that the holidays are six weeks out, and builds and sends your local marketing automatically. A customer reactivation agent that identifies who hasn't come in for 60 days and sends them something that brings them back. These aren't future tools. They exist right now. Tonight.

Tonight Rich is going to pull up your business — live — and show you exactly what that infrastructure looks like built for a specialty retail operation like Sport and Hound. Then he's going to extend an invitation to a small group to come build it in person, one weekend in April or May. The people in that room tonight are the ones who get that call. You need to be there.

— Claude Code

Rich Schefren's AI system

What They Do

Sport and Hound is a specialty retail store in Stirling, NJ — a community-rooted business serving local customers in the sporting goods and outdoor space. Regina took over a legacy business formerly known as Valley Sports and has been running it as owner-operator. She also holds a concurrent role as Equipment Manager with PWHL New York, signaling serious operational experience beyond the store.

What We Found

The business operates from a fixed retail location at 1202 Valley Rd, Stirling, NJ. It's a brick-and-mortar model built on community relationships and repeat customers. Regina's dual role — running her own retail store while managing equipment operations for a professional women's hockey league — points to someone who is operationally capable but likely stretched thin across two demanding environments.

The Gap

Specialty retail's biggest vulnerability is that the owner IS the system. Customer knowledge, inventory judgment, and relationship continuity all live in Regina's head rather than in a platform that works without her. There's almost certainly no automated follow-up, no purchase-pattern tracking, and no systematized local marketing — which means growth is capped by her bandwidth.

The Opportunity

AI agents built specifically for specialty retail can transform a one-person-dependent store into a system that captures every customer interaction, automates seasonal outreach, monitors inventory, and reactivates lapsed buyers — all without Regina manually initiating any of it. The leverage here is immediate and concrete: less time on operational maintenance, more margin, more repeat revenue.

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