§ 01 — The offer
The Operating
Audit
Three weeks. A map of how your business actually runs, and a ranked plan for what to fix first.
$1,750 · fixed price · agreed in writing before anything starts
§ 01a — What happens the moment you say yes
The agreement
A one-page letter, not a contract you need a lawyer to read. You reply to confirm. Payment link follows — work starts once it's settled, never before.
The kickoff call
Thirty minutes. I tell you exactly what I need access to and from whom — usually just you, occasionally one or two people who touch delivery. Nothing else pauses.
The walkthrough
A live call where I hand you the plan and explain it, not a PDF that arrives with no context. You leave the call knowing exactly what to do Monday morning.
Most operations problems are not effort problems.
They're structure problems wearing an effort costume. The work is getting done — by you, late, again — which makes it very hard to see that the structure never existed in the first place.
The audit exists because you cannot fix what you haven't mapped, and because scoping a long engagement before anyone has looked at the business is guesswork with an invoice attached.
§ 02 — The three weeks
Collect & map
A kickoff call, access to how the work actually moves, and short conversations with anyone who touches delivery. I map lead-to-revenue, delivery, and the daily operating rhythm — then mark every point where you are the dependency.
Diagnose
Constraint analysis: where work waits, piles up, or comes back for rework. Root-cause on the top two or three, past the symptom to the missing decision, rule, or owner. Then every issue run against the six systems a business needs before it scales.
Prescribe & sequence
The fix for each constraint, specified: what gets built, in what order, who holds it once it exists, and what standing it up actually takes. Impact against effort — quick wins this week, structural work this month, and the things worth deliberately not doing. Delivered written and walked through live, so you can execute it alone if you choose to.
§ 03 — The instrument
The Founder
Dependency Index.
Most founders describe the problem as a feeling — too involved, too necessary, unable to step back. A feeling can't be sequenced or fixed. So the audit scores it: six dimensions, measured from evidence in the business rather than from a self-assessment, producing a single number out of a hundred.
Decision authority
How many recurring material decisions cannot proceed without your approval.
Institutional knowledge
How much of the critical process exists only in your head, with no second person who could execute it to standard.
Client dependency
How much revenue sits in relationships where your departure would be a material change to what the client bought.
Financial control
How many pricing, spend and margin decisions still route through you.
Escalation gravity
What proportion of escalations end at you regardless of where they start. The most diagnostic of the six, because it measures behaviour rather than structure.
Functional ownership
How many core functions lack an independent owner with real authority, a named backup, and a measurable outcome.
The score is taken in Week 1 and again at the close of any continuing work. It's the number the engagement gets judged on — which is a deliberately uncomfortable thing for a consultant to agree to, and the reason it's worth agreeing to.
§ 04 — The scope
What you get,
and what you don't.
§ 05 — Reasonable questions
What does it cost?
$1,750, fixed, agreed in writing before anything starts — never hourly, never open-ended. If the audit isn't the right thing for your business, I'll say so on the call rather than sell it to you.
What about ongoing work, if I want it?
Retainers start from $2,500/month with a three-month minimum. The exact figure is set after the audit, once I actually know what the engagement requires — quoting it blind, before either of us has seen the business, would be a guess dressed up as a price.
How much of my time does it take?
A kickoff call, a handful of short conversations, and read-only access to how work moves — roughly two to three hours of your time across the three weeks. If it required more of you, it would be reproducing the exact problem it's meant to solve.
What happens after?
Most people want the plan built, not just written — that conversation happens after the walkthrough, when you've seen the work and can judge it. Some take the plan and run it themselves. That's a legitimate outcome, and the plan is written so it's possible.
Do you need access to our systems?
Read-only, and only what's necessary. Confidentiality is mutual and in writing. Clients are never named publicly unless they explicitly consent — discretion is part of what you're buying.
Isn't this what an online business manager does?
An OBM runs your operations. A COO decides what your operations should be. I'm not looking to become the new person everything routes through — the job is making sure the work stops routing through any one person at all.
Start with a conversation.
Thirty minutes, no deck. You describe the mess, I tell you what I think is actually going on, and we both decide whether the audit is worth doing.