Everyone uses AI to write emails. In a week, yours could be running the jobs.
The chat window doesn’t know your jobs or where your numbers live, so it stays a toy that drafts emails. Point it at your real systems and it stops being one. What’s outstanding on every job and what happens next, without somebody checking five places to find out. A payroll run that doesn’t wait on one person being in the building. A week gets you the first piece running on your own data. One morning tells you where to start. It’s free.
You’ve priced the build. Have you priced being wrong?
Four sentences I hear on nearly every first call. Here’s my answer to each.
- 01
“We did a discovery and got a deck.”
The usual engagement bills you six weeks to delay the only question that matters: does it work on your data? The First Day answers that question first, and it costs you nothing.
- 02
“Every vendor call has three people on it, and none of them will write the code.”
Here there is one person on the call, and that person writes the code. Every handoff between the person with the problem and the person writing the code loses something. I removed the handoffs instead of managing them.
- 03
“We know we should be doing something with AI. We don’t know where to start.”
That is most of my calls. It is the right place to start. The morning finds the highest-value moves and the reasoning underneath them. The afternoon kills the weak ones cheaply, inside your real systems.
- 04
“The features we were promised still aren’t here, and nobody uses what did arrive.”
The longer software goes unused, the more likely it was the wrong software. The First Day is built backwards from that: something your people can react to inside a week, so a wrong turn is caught while it still costs nothing.
What traction on day one actually looks like.
The risk isn’t what software costs — it’s how long you go before you know. Six components, arranged to cut that to a week: the call before, the day itself, the week after.
- 01 Before the day On a call
The fit call
Start with 20 minAn intro, to see if this is a good fit. Are we aligned — and if we aren’t, can I point you to someone better?
a booked day, and a first guess at where the trouble is
- 02 The day itself On site, together
The morning map
One morningYou, me, and the people who live inside the work. Everything that hurts and everything worth chasing goes on the table, and each one gets sized in front of the room.
every opportunity weighed, nothing decided yet
- 03 Laptops shut
Lunch
One hourWe stop and open it up. Some of the best moves of the day surface here, on the agenda or not.
the context that changes what matters
- 04 In your systems
The deep dive
One afternoonI sit with the people who are in these systems every day, and together we test the assumptions against what actually happens. Ideas that die here die cheap, before they cost you a build.
the assumptions that survived — and a place to start
- 05 The rest of the week Mine
The build
5+ hThe first working piece, touching your real systems and your actual data. You open it and click through it.
working software comes aboard
- 06 Yours and mine
Session two
45 minYou watch it run. I walk you through what it took to build and where it goes from here. Then you pick the direction and the pace — or a clean stop.
a direction and a pace, chosen with the evidence in front of you
Something real, and a direction
Not a mock-up and not a document: the first piece built at high fidelity, against your own data and inside your own systems, at a standard you can put in front of the people who do the work. And a direction you can back with evidence instead of a proposal.
you know what to build next, because you have used it
$0 — and one morning of your time. No proposal, no sales call, no invoice at the end of it.
Compare it to the usual: six weeks of discovery, scheduling, and proposals, at consulting rates — and what you hold at the end is a document. I would rather spend 13 hours proving a direction than a quarter writing one up. It is cheaper for me, and it is free for you.
Three guarantees, against the one fear that stops people.
It is the same fear every time: months of billing, and a document at the end of it. Each guarantee below is written against that fear — your invoice, your ownership, your vision. All three hold whether or not we ever work together again.
- 01
The invoice guarantee.
There is no refund policy, because there is nothing to refund. The call, the day, the build, and session two carry no invoice. The whole risk of the first week is mine, by design. That is what the free day is for.
- 02
The ownership guarantee.
Everything the day produces — the code, the specifications, the working notes — is yours from day one, whether or not we ever speak again. No licences, no lock-in, nothing held back to make leaving expensive.
- 03
The vision guarantee.
If I can’t put a clear vision in front of you after about a day of my time, it was the wrong first move. I say so at session two, out loud, instead of proposing phase two. You never wait a quarter to find out.
4–6 clients, total. That is the whole practice, on purpose.
There is nobody to hand you off to. No juniors, no account managers, no team behind me. So when you call again later, I already know your business — your systems, your constraints, and why you asked for it in the first place. Nobody needs bringing up to speed.
Whether I have room right now. I’ll tell you on the call, either way. If the answer is no, I’ll say when, or point you somewhere better.
The six things that stop people booking the call.
“Free means there’s a catch.”
There is — you have to show up. Whoever can say yes has to be in the room for the morning, and on the call for session two. Someone has to give me system access that week. Without those the day doesn’t work, and I’d rather say that on the phone. That’s the entire catch. There is no invoice hiding behind it.
“Why would 13 hours of your time be free?”
Because 13 hours is what it costs me to find out whether this is worth both our time, and it’s cheaper than either of us being wrong for months. A day of building tells me more about whether we should work together than a month of selling ever would, and I would rather find that out fast. If the answer is no, we both learned it for the price of a day.
“I already know what I want built.”
Then the morning runs backwards: your idea goes on the table first, and we chase the number behind it and the reasoning under it. If its assumptions hold in the afternoon, the build aims straight at it. If the problem behind it turns out bigger — or cheaper to hit another way — you learned that on a free day instead of halfway into a build.
“We’ll get locked in.”
You own the code, the specs, and the notes from the first day, whether or not we ever speak again. The retainer that may follow prices velocity, not scope. You set the pace, including to zero. The First Day is built to be the opposite of lock-in.
“What if the thing you build isn’t right?”
Then you found out in a week instead of a quarter, and it cost you nothing. Sometimes the most valuable thing the week produces is knowing you were headed the wrong way, early. That outcome is a win, and it happens.
“Can we do the day remotely?”
No — and that is the one place I don’t bend. The afternoon happens inside your systems with the people who live in the work standing next to me, and what surfaces there is what nobody thought to mention: the workaround, the second spreadsheet, the step everyone does differently. That comes out in a room and it does not come out on a call. So I come to you, wherever the work is. Travel is the one cost I don’t cover. We arrange it on the call, before anything is booked, so it is never a surprise.
One call. One day. A clear direction. Then you decide with evidence.
The whole offer, one more time: a fit call, a morning that maps the problem, an afternoon inside your systems, 5+ hours of building against your real data, and a 45-minute session where we put the direction in front of you and test it. You own everything it produces. There is no invoice. The only thing you risk is a morning.
Or write to dan@arbutusinsight.com. I answer my own email.