Understand what's worth changing before you pay to change it.
The Read is a 90-minute working session and a written report. You leave with the constraint in one sentence, the economics it touches, and one bounded first move worth proving.
- 90-minute working session, with an optional 30-minute follow-up
- Written report within two business days
- A private client page where the Read and everything after it live
- The report is yours whether or not we continue
A real answer, or I tell you to stop.
If I can't find one economically credible opportunity worth investigating, I recommend stopping and tell you why. You keep the report either way.
This is the standard every Read is held to.
Most help arrives with the answer already decided. A software shop sells software; an automation shop sells automation. The Read exists so that what gets built, if anything, follows from what the business actually needs.
The written Read.
Every report has the same anatomy. A busy owner should get the answer in the first fifteen seconds; the method and the evidence follow.
The primary constraint, in one sentence
The one structural problem that, resolved, changes the next six months. Named plainly, with the cost it creates.
The five functions, rated
Sensing, signaling, processing, deciding and regulating, each marked against evidence from your company.
Functional Degraded Absent
The AI Gap map
Today, the inherited constraint, the new possibility, and the economics affected: hours, delay, capacity, leakage or revenue.
What routes to you
The specific decisions, exceptions and approvals that still flow through one person, and which of them should.
One bounded first move
A change worth proving, with a baseline and a way to check whether it helped. Executable inside thirty days.
A recommendation about continuing
Blueprint, a smaller build, your own team, another provider, or stop. With the reasoning.
Example constraint sentence, from a composite read
Every price still routes back to you, so the team stalls and cash stays foggy.
Bring the business as it actually runs.
You do not need to clean anything up, prepare a deck, or decide what kind of consultant you want first.
- 1Before
We agree the question on the workflow call. You gather two or three real examples: a quote that took too long, a job that stalled at handoff, a report that needed three people to assemble.
- 2During
Ninety minutes, on a call. You walk me through the examples. I follow each step and ask what people needed to know at each one. The exception to the rule usually tells me why the rule exists.
- 3After
Within two business days you receive the written Read as a PDF and a private page. An optional 30-minute follow-up answers questions on the report.
Each next step is a separate decision.
Most Reads recommend one of three things. All three are priced before you decide.
The Blueprint
Your company designed in full as an AI-native operating system, from your own words: the operating records, the library of policies, written skills, named agents with approval rules, end-to-end workflows, a rollout plan, a clickable demo and short films of each workflow. You own it, and can have me build it or take it to another builder.
Prove
One workflow gets a baseline and a redesign. The build or integration it needs runs beside the live business until the economic difference is clear in hours, delay, capacity, cost or revenue. This is the first measured proof.
Steward
I stay accountable for the AI portfolio: opportunity priority, architecture, deployment cadence, builders and vendors, measurement, the human-machine boundary, governance, adoption and executive reporting. You run the business. I own the transition.
Read + Blueprint: $14,500 through design. A focused problem may need only a small build after the Read, priced separately; a smaller build does not require the full Blueprint. Prove is scoped from evidence; Steward is priced as ownership of the executive function.
What the Read covers.
The film explains the session and the report, including how I decide what to recommend.
Before you start.
Do I need to know which AI tool I want?
Bring the business question and examples of the work. The recommendation may involve AI, software you already have, a clearer process, or further investigation.
Is implementation included?
The $2,500 covers the session, the optional follow-up and the written report. Designing a larger system, building it and looking after it are separate decisions with their own prices.
Is this only for companies using Notion?
The Business Nervous System is an operating model. Notion may be part of a build; the Read can also point to decision rights, process, information architecture, automation, code, or no new software at all.
What if there isn't a worthwhile project?
I say so, and I explain why. The fee covers the diagnosis and the report, and the report is yours.
What size of company is this for?
Established owner-led companies from $500k in annual revenue, including one-person firms. The fit question is whether one consequential workflow, redesigned, changes your economics.
Show me your workflow.
Twenty minutes, free. We pick the question for the Read together, or agree there isn't one yet.