The rules I work by.
These hold for every client, whether it's a 90-minute audit or a full build. Most of them come from ten years in data and AI consulting, where the hard part was rarely the technology. The rest I learnt from my first clients.
I watch before I recommend
I don't start with a list of tools. I ask you to share your screen and walk me through how the work actually gets done, including the boring bits, and I watch. Most of what I learn comes from what you do without thinking about it - the workaround, the copy and paste, the step you do twice - not from what you'd tell me in an interview.
Your numbers, not my guesses
We work out what it's costing you together, on screen, with your figures: how often, how long each time, on a busy month rather than a good one. If something varies too much to estimate, it comes out. Anything I put in writing afterwards traces back to something you actually said.
I'll tell you what I'd never automate
Every business has a part that is the product - the judgement call, the conversation, the thing people come to you for and not to a system. I name those parts early and leave them alone. The rest of what I suggest is only worth something if you can trust me on that.
Everything lives in your accounts
Whatever we build is set up under your logins, written down, and yours. None of it depends on me being around afterwards, and if we stop working together nothing stops working.
Sometimes the answer is not yet
If something won't bite for months and you're coping fine now, I'll say so and leave it out of the price. A fix built before you need it is easy to forget about, so it goes on a later list with a note on when it would start to matter.
It starts with 90 minutes.
If this sounds like how you'd want it done, the audit is where we'd start. The one or two biggest time sinks in your business, looked at properly, and a written plan within two working days.