“Audit” sounds like something an accountant does to you. This one is the opposite: it’s two weeks spent understanding how your business really runs, so that anything we build afterwards fixes the right problem.
Clients often ask what they’re paying for before they book. Here’s the whole process, day by day, with nothing held back. You could even use it as a checklist to run a lighter version yourself.
Why start with an audit at all?
Because most operations fixes fail for one reason: they solve the problem the founder thinks they have. “We need a CRM” turns out to be “nobody follows up after the first call”. “We need automations” turns out to be “the intake form asks the wrong questions, so every job starts with three days of back-and-forth”.
Building before you understand the system wastes money twice: once on the build, and again when you rip it out. An audit is the cheapest way to make sure the build is right.
Before we start: what I’ll ask you for
You don’t need to prepare much. I’ll send a short intake form and ask for:
- Read-only or guest access to the tools you use day to day: your project tool, CRM, shared drive and inbox rules if relevant. I never need your passwords; we use guest seats or invites.
- A list of every subscription you pay for. Your card statement is the fastest source.
- Your last three months of numbers, roughly: leads, clients won, revenue, and anything else you track.
- Two hours of your time across the two weeks, split into a kickoff call and a findings call.
- Short conversations with your team or key contractors, 20 minutes each, if you have them.
Week one: mapping how the business really runs
Day 1–2: Kickoff and the lead-to-cash map
We start with one long call. I’ll ask you to walk me through what happens from the moment someone hears about you to the moment their payment clears. Not how it should work. How it worked for the last three clients.
I turn that into a map with every step, who does it, which tool it lives in, and how long it usually takes. This is often the first time a founder has seen their business drawn out end to end, and the gaps are usually obvious within minutes.
Day 3–4: Where your time goes
I ask you to keep a light log for a few days. No timesheets, just a note at the end of each day of what you actually spent time on. I sort it into three piles:
- Only you should do this. Sales calls, key client relationships, creative direction, big decisions.
- Someone else could do this with a clear process.
- This shouldn’t happen at all. Chasing, re-explaining, copying data between tools, fixing avoidable mistakes.
Most founders find 30–50% of their week sits in piles two and three.
Day 5: The tool and AI inventory
I go through every tool and AI subscription and ask four questions of each:
- Is anyone actually using it, and how often?
- Does it overlap with something else you already pay for?
- Is it connected to the tools around it, or is someone copying and pasting?
- Is the AI producing output that someone checks before it reaches a client?
It’s common to find two project tools, three places where client information lives, and an AI subscription nobody has opened in a month.
Week two: finding the leaks and building the plan
Day 6–7: Team and contractor conversations
If you have a team, I talk to them. They always know where the friction is: the approval that takes four days, the brief that’s always missing information, the tool nobody trusts. These conversations are confidential and focused on process, never performance.
Day 8–9: Ranking the fixes
Every issue I’ve found goes on a list with three ratings:
- Impact: the hours, money or client risk it represents each month.
- Effort: how hard it is to fix.
- Dependency: whether something else has to be fixed first.
From that, I build a plan. Quick wins go first, because momentum matters. Foundational fixes (usually your operating hub and intake process) come next. Nice-to-haves go at the end, or get cut.
Day 10: The findings call
We spend 60–90 minutes going through everything. I’ll show you the map, the time analysis, the tool inventory and the plan, and you can push back on any of it.
What you walk away with
Three documents, all yours to keep, whether or not we work together afterwards:
- Your operations map. The lead-to-cash flow with owners, tools and the bottlenecks marked.
- A ranked fix list, with what each fix protects in hours or revenue, and which tools to keep, connect, upgrade or cancel.
- A 90-day build plan. What to do in what order, who should own each part, and which steps can safely use AI.
Cancelled subscriptions alone can go a long way towards covering the audit fee.
What the audit isn’t
- It isn’t a sales pitch in disguise. If the plan says you should hire a part-time assistant and run it yourself, that’s what it’ll say.
- It isn’t a judgement of your team. Process problems are almost never people problems.
- It isn’t a pile of theory. Every recommendation is tied to something specific I saw in your business.
What happens after
You have three options:
- Run the plan yourself with the documents you have.
- Hire me for the build. A fixed-price project scoped straight from the audit. If you start within 30 days, the audit fee is credited against it.
- Build and run. After the build, I stay on a monthly retainer to run the operating rhythm, maintain the systems and catch what slips.
Want to try a mini version yourself?
Block out two hours this week and do three things: draw your lead-to-cash flow for your last client, list every subscription on your card statement, and write down every task you did last week that someone else could have done with clear instructions. You’ll learn a lot.
If you’d rather I did it with you properly, book an audit call.