Frequently asked questions
The questions people ask me most often before we work together. If yours isn’t here, ask me directly.
Before we start
Why hire an outside consultant instead of doing it in-house?
You’re the specialist in your trade. You picked your software in between two emergencies, and nobody ever had time to sit down and check whether it all holds together. You could get there by trial and error, but you’d pay for it in evenings and weekends. I’ve spent 25 years walking into different businesses, and the same snags show up from one to the next. Spotting them right away costs less than discovering them one at a time.
Is this only for big companies, or does it work for a small team?
Small teams are exactly my world. Most firms that do this work go after companies with 20 to 300 employees: you’re too small for them, and they’re too expensive for you. A five-person business has no IT department, and nobody whose job is looking after the tools. Whether your work depends on equipment and materials, you sell your time and expertise, or you sell online, we start from the same place: how things really run at your place today.
How long does it take?
A small snag gets fixed in a few hours. For the rest, your budget and your pace decide: a few hours a week if that suits you, and nothing is forced on you. The goal is for the tool I set up to pay for itself through what it saves you. If it wasn’t worth it, I’d tell you.
The project
What happens at the first meeting?
It’s 30 minutes of questions, with no presentation and no sales pitch. I want to understand what’s stuck, what you end up doing three times, and what keeps you from taking a week off. At the end, I tell you straight whether I can help. Sometimes the problem can be fixed with an adjustment you can make yourself, and when that’s the case I tell you that too.
What does a typical project look like?
I come to your place and look at how things really happen, not how they look on paper. Together we pick out the two or three things that cost you the most time or money. We make a plan, I put it in place, I train your team, and I leave. You keep a tool that belongs to you, written procedures, and a team that knows how to use it.
Do you just give advice, or do you also set things up?
Both. A recommendation that never gets put in place is a report sleeping in a drawer. We find the solution together, I build it, and I train your people. If part of the work goes beyond what I do, I tell you, and we find the right person.
I already paid for software nobody uses. Can it be saved?
Often, yes, and it’s the cheapest kind of project. A tool sitting idle was almost always installed without anyone deciding how it fits into the day of the people who are supposed to use it. We look at what you’ve already paid for before buying anything else. If it can work, I get it running again and train your people on it. If not, you stop paying for nothing.
Can I know ahead of time whether it’ll pay for itself?
That’s the math we do together before starting, and it’s also the math I hand over with the tool: what it cost you, what it saves you each week, and how long it takes to pay itself back. Three lines you can check yourself. If the math doesn’t hold up, you know before you spend.
Afterward
Do you stick around afterward for support?
Yes, until it holds. I don’t leave you with a half-finished system: I stay until it works, and if something snags after two weeks of use, I adjust it. After that, your team runs on its own. The goal is for you to stop needing me.
What do I keep once you leave?
The tool, and it belongs to you. Above all, the procedures, written from what your people already do rather than from a manual. That’s what’s left the day someone retires or changes jobs. A company’s memory lives in the people who are there now, and the work is getting it down on paper while they’re still around.
How much does it cost?
You only pay for time actually worked, by the quarter hour. We start with a block of hours, and the bigger the block, the better the rate. Every tool I deliver comes with its own payback table, so you can see for yourself whether it was worth it. As for the amount, it depends on what we find together: I won’t give you a number before I’ve listened to you.
Still have questions?
Book a 30-minute meeting with me, free and with no strings attached. You’ll leave with a straight answer.
Before that, you might want to see how I work or what it’s done for other businesses. And if a trade term slipped past you along the way, it’s probably explained in the glossary.