AI Strategic Assessment · Founding clients

Find out where AI pays off in your business before you spend on it.

We interview your team, map how the work actually gets done, and score every AI opportunity we find by value and how ready you are for it. You get an AI Strategy Blueprint that says what to build first, what can wait, and what to skip.

The first conversation is free. We're taking on a small number of founding clients now.

Your best opportunitiesranked by value and readiness
A first projectwith the evidence for why it goes first
A 90-day planwith owners and the decisions you need to make before anything gets built
Why AI spend stalls

Most teams have plenty of AI ideas. What they're missing is the order.

Someone wants a chatbot. Someone else wants AI to write the reports. A vendor has a demo. Every idea sounds reasonable, and nobody can say which one will move a number the business already tracks.

So the loudest idea gets the budget, and three months later nobody can prove it paid back.

Sound familiar?

  • People are using AI tools, but nobody owns the results
  • Every department has a different idea of where AI should go first
  • You've been pitched tools before anyone looked at how the work gets done
  • Leadership wants a return before signing off on a real build
  • You'd rather not spend serious money on the wrong project
Any business, any department

Run marketing? We start there. Don't? The method works the same.

If you run marketing of any kind

Ads, email, social, a sales team chasing leads: we start where the money is already counted. Ad spend, leads, cost per sale and revenue are numbers you already report on, so it's the fastest place to prove what AI is worth. That's where we've spent nearly a decade.

If you don't

The Assessment works the same way on operations, finance, customer service and admin. We look for repeated manual work, numbers that don't agree between teams, and jobs only one person knows how to do. Wherever two of those overlap, there's usually an AI use case that pays back within a quarter.

The deliverable

The AI Strategy Blueprint

One document your leadership team can read in 20 minutes and make a decision from. Every recommendation traces back to something your own people said or your own data showed.

  1. Company profile. Your goals, systems, constraints and the people involved, written up before we examine a single workflow.
  2. Interview findings. What the people closest to the work told us, grouped by theme, with the places they agree and disagree.
  3. Workflow map. Where work slows down, gets copied between tools, waits on one person, or leaks money.
  4. Opportunity matrix. Every AI opportunity scored on impact, feasibility, confidence and fit with your priorities, then placed on one chart.
  5. Value estimate. A conservative estimate for each shortlisted opportunity: hours freed, money saved or protected, revenue added.
  6. 90-day roadmap. What happens first, second and third, who owns each step, and what has to be true before anything gets built.
  7. Your first project. One clear starting point, with the evidence for why it beats the others.
2 to 4 weeks, start to Blueprint

How it works

  1. Understand the business. We read what you share (your site, reports, process docs, past AI attempts) and build a company profile. At the kickoff you correct it, and we agree who we'll talk to.
  2. Interview the people closest to the work. 30 to 60 minutes each with leaders and the people doing the work. Leaders tell us the plan. The people doing the work tell us where it breaks.
  3. Map the work. We trace how jobs move across people, tools, spreadsheets and approvals, and mark every handoff where time or money leaks.
  4. Score the opportunities. Each one gets scored on four things and placed on the matrix. The ideas that sounded good but don't hold up get cut, with the reason written down.
  5. Present the Blueprint. We walk your leadership team through it, answer the hard questions, and agree what happens next.
Scored on evidence

Four scores per opportunity, one chart

Impact: what changes if this works. Hours freed, money saved, revenue added, risk removed.

Feasibility: whether your data, systems and team are ready for it now.

Confidence: how strong the evidence is. Something three people raised on their own beats one person's hunch.

Fit: whether it serves the priorities leadership already has.

Impact ↑   Examples from our own Assessment (below)

Plan for laterWorth doing once the foundations are in.

e.g. an ad autopilot with spend guardrails

Start hereYour first project comes from this box.

e.g. find the early signals that predict a sale

Skip for nowRarely worth the money yet.

e.g. automated image checks nobody asked for

Quick winCheap early proof, not the main bet.

e.g. point the daily AI brief at the real targets

Lower feasibilityFeasibility →Higher feasibility
We ran it on ourselves first

What the Assessment found in a business we know inside out

Before offering this to anyone, Daniel ran the full Assessment on his own digital-products brand in the parenting space: ads on Meta, a low-ticket funnel, email automation, about $13,700 in ad spend since its July 2026 relaunch.

It took four deep-dive interviews, one each on product and content, data and reporting, funnels and email, and paid ads. They surfaced seven themes and eight scored opportunities: four quick wins, three bigger projects and one long-term bet.

The first quick win was a question nobody had answered: which early signals actually predict a sale? AI went through the ad-level history of 40+ creative templates. The two numbers the business had been using to judge new ads, link click-through rate and CPM, pointed the wrong way. The new stop rule, tested against past spend, would have saved $2,328 of the $6,668 spent on ads that never sold.

4deep-dive interviews
8opportunities scored and ranked
26slide AI Strategy Blueprint
$2,328of ad spend the new stop rule would have saved

The stop rule was built and tested on the same historical data, so treat the saving as directional until it's proven on new spend.

What happens next

Four ways forward. None of them lock you in.

Build the first project

We can build it with you, or hand your team a spec detailed enough to build it themselves.

Fix the foundations first

Sometimes the data or the process has to be sorted before AI makes sense. The Blueprint will say so.

Follow the roadmap

Use the ranked matrix to fund projects in order of value, not urgency.

Pause

If nothing clears the bar, the Blueprint says why and what would need to change.

Founding clients

We're taking on a small number of founding clients

You work directly with Daniel from the first call to the Blueprint presentation. Founding clients get founding terms. In return, we ask for honest feedback and, once the work's done, a case study we're allowed to share (you approve every word).

Email Daniel about a founding spot →
Who it's for

A good fit if...

  • You run an established business with a team behind it, in any industry
  • You run marketing of any kind and want to know where AI pays back first, or you don't and want to know where else it can
  • Your team is already trying AI tools, but there's no plan, no owner and no way to prove what it's worth
  • You're thinking about a real AI investment and want evidence before you commit
  • Someone senior can give us access, answer questions and make decisions while we work

Mid-sized companies are welcome to reach out. Tell us a bit about the business and we'll say honestly whether we can help.

Probably not a fit if...

  • You want a quick tool recommendation without anyone looking at how the work gets done
  • Nobody on your side can give us time, access and decisions
  • You're already halfway through an AI build with another partner

Questions

What is an AI Strategic Assessment?

A structured look at how your business runs, done before any AI gets built. We interview your people, map the work, score every opportunity and hand you a Blueprint that says what to do first.

How long does it take?

Usually 2 to 4 weeks from kickoff to Blueprint, depending on how many people we interview.

Who needs to be involved?

One senior owner on your side, plus 3 to 8 people for interviews. Each interview is 30 to 60 minutes.

Do we need to be using AI already?

No. Some clients have tried a dozen tools, others none. The Assessment starts with how the work gets done, not with which tools you have.

We don't do much marketing. Is it still for us?

Yes. Marketing is where we start when it's there, because the numbers are already counted. The same method works on operations, finance, service and admin.

Do you build what you recommend?

We can. We run our own business on AI systems we built, so we can build your first project with you. If you'd rather your own team or another partner builds it, the Blueprint includes a spec they can work from.

What does it cost?

It depends on the size of the business and how many people we interview. We'll scope it with you after the first conversation, before you commit to anything.

What happens to our information?

Interview recordings and documents are used only for your Assessment and stay private. Any example we share later is anonymised unless you approve otherwise.

Next step

Know what's worth building before you pay for it.

Send a short email: your company, roughly how many people work there, and the problem you'd most like solved. Daniel replies personally, usually within one working day.

Email Daniel about a founding spot →