Strategy Process
An operating decision. Then the path to build it.
Two weeks of paid diagnostic work that ends in a costed implementation plan — and the full fee comes back off the build.
- $2,000
- Flat, not hourlyPaid before work begins. Nonrefundable.
- 10–14 days
- Start to deliverableFocused diagnostic and design work, not a retainer.
- 100%
- Credited to the buildApplied to your first related Mission implementation. No expiration on the credit.
What the two weeks consist of
- Mapping & diagnostics
- How the relevant work actually moves: people, tools, handoffs, exceptions, bottlenecks, and failure modes under growth.
- Architecture & recommendations
- What to keep, improve, integrate, automate, replace, build, or leave alone — proportional to evidence and economic return.
- Implementation plan
- Priorities, scope, assumptions, cost range, ROI model, risks, controls, and the recommended work sequence.
What you leave with
A decision, a path, and the credit.
The Strategy Process produces a valuable outcome even when the highest-return move turns out to be process change rather than software.
An operating decision
What to keep, improve, integrate, automate, replace, build — or leave alone — grounded in evidence and economic return, not a product catalog.
An implementation path
Priorities, scope, assumptions, cost range, ROI model, risks, and controls. Process and responsibility changes count when they beat software.
Credit toward the build
The full $2,000 is credited toward your first related Mission implementation.
Sample density
What a complete plan looks like.
A synthetic outline for a fictional trade shop — Riverside Mechanical. Not a real client; real deliverables stay private.
Riverside Mechanical
Process in scope: Service dispatch → invoice close
Call → schedule → parts check → tech dispatch → job notes → invoice → AR chase. Constraints: double entry between phone and board; missed status texts; invoice lag after job close; owner as default exception path.
Illustrative only: ~11 hours/week re-entry and chase; overtime spikes on Mondays; slow cash on completed jobs. Assumptions listed; not a customer claim — sample density for a real plan.
Keep the FSM; improve job-note capture; integrate board ↔ invoice path; automate confirmations and AR queue; leave estimating human. Process changes named where software is not the fix.
Phase 0 foundations (roles, sources, approvals). Phase 1 two high-leverage lines. Phase 2 deeper handoffs. Phase 3 AR and reporting. Cost ranges and build modes per line.
How we value the work
A formula you can audit.
Not a case-study number — a skeleton filled with your rates, volumes, and failure modes, so the business case is method rather than theater. Three inputs shape it: hours & capacity, margin & leakage, risk & continuity.
Value ≈ (hours recovered × fully loaded rate)
+ capacity unlocked (throughput or revenue path)
+ risk avoided (failure cost × likelihood)
− cost to build & run
- Hours & capacity
- Time lost to re-entry, chase, and handoffs — valued at the rates of the people doing it, plus the volume you cannot yet take.
- Margin & leakage
- Where growth adds coordination cost, and where demand dies between inquiry and cash.
- Risk & continuity
- Owner dependence and single points of failure — priced as failure cost × likelihood where the evidence allows.
How it runs
Focused work over ten to fourteen days.
Deep enough to decide, short enough to act — built for operators who cannot stop running the business for two weeks.
Confirm the situation, the workflow in scope, the people and systems we need, and the economic questions the plan must answer.
Trace how the work actually moves: steps, people, tools, data, decisions, handoffs, exceptions, and what fails first under growth.
Recommendations proportional to the evidence, then the sequence, ranges, and controls — written so you can challenge every assumption.
We go through the deliverable together and answer the only question that matters: what would you do first — and should Mission build it?
Who does the work
You are buying two weeks of my attention.
I run the Strategy Process myself. There is no analyst pool and no junior team doing the mapping while I present the slides — the person tracing your dispatch board is the person who writes the plan, and the person who would build it.
Before Mission I founded Aila, and was a founding engineer at Handshake AI, where I led product and engineering work on reinforcement-learning environments and AI training systems during a period when the company grew toward a $1B valuation. That was a company outcome, not a personal one — I mention it because it is where I learned what these systems actually do and do not do, which is most of why I am willing to tell you not to build one.
We keep concurrent engagements limited so this stays true. When capacity is full we say so on the first call rather than take the work and thin it.
Before you pay
The reasonable objections to spending $2,000 here.
- Why would I pay for a plan when everyone else scopes for free?
- Because a free scope is a sales document and is priced accordingly — it exists to produce a proposal. This is paid work with a deliverable, which is also why we can tell you to buy nothing. You are paying for the answer, not for the pitch that follows it.
- What if the answer is “don’t build anything”?
- That is a legitimate result and we hand it over in full. You keep the maps, the economics, and the reasoning — which is worth having the next time someone tries to sell you a platform.
- Is the $2,000 really credited, or is it credited against an inflated price?
- The full $2,000 is credited toward your first related Mission implementation. Implementation is priced per line in the plan, and you see those numbers inside the deliverable — before you have decided whether to build with us at all.
- What if I want to build it myself afterward?
- Then you do. The plan is yours to keep and is written to be executed by someone other than us — that is a normal outcome, not a failure case.
- We don’t have clean data or documentation.
- Nobody does. Tracing the work is how the documentation gets created; if you already had it, you would not need the engagement. We work from how people actually describe their week.
- How is this different from a consultant’s report that sits in a drawer?
- A report ends at recommendations. This ends at a sequenced implementation plan with cost ranges per line and named owners — and the same people who wrote it can build it, so it never gets handed to someone who has to re-learn the operation.
- How much of my team’s time does it take?
- 10–14 days elapsed, but the demand on you is a handful of focused working sessions plus access to the people who do the work. It is designed around operators who cannot stop running the business for two weeks.
- What if we’re not ready?
- Then map one workflow yourself with the Operational Leverage Map — it costs nothing. If the constraint turns out to be obvious and narrow, tell us; some work does not need a full diagnosis first.
Ready for the operating decision?
$2,000 for 10–14 days, credited in full toward the build. Not there yet? The free 30-minute assessment comes first — it exists to tell you whether this is the right pass — and the Operational Leverage Map is yours to work either way.