The written report
Always included. Where AI fits in your business, ranked by payoff, with costs attached. Written so you can actually read it. If a sentence needs a committee to decode it, it comes out.
The next step after the hour
The AI Systems Assessment
At the end you hold a written report and a presentation: where AI actually pays off in your business, and what it will cost to run. Built by the person who would build the system.
There is no buy-now button on this page, and that is on purpose. The only door into the engagement is a conversation with Chuck.
How it runs
One hour, then two weeks
Everything starts with the $500 consultation. That hour is where we find out whether an assessment even makes sense for you. If it does, the $500 counts toward the $3,000 and we schedule the two meetings.
The engagement itself takes about two weeks, bookended by those meetings. Between them we do the digging. We map what your team actually spends time on, look at the data you have, and price the options. You can reach Chuck the whole time, not just at the meetings.
One piece of advice from experience: wait to book until you can actually run those two weeks. If your busy season starts Monday, do the hour now and schedule the rest for when your team has room to breathe.
The shape of it
- Hour one, $500: fit check and scoping. Credited if you continue.
- Meeting one: we go deep on your operation
- Two weeks of analysis, with Chuck reachable throughout
- Meeting two: report, presentation, and the decision
Deliverables
What you walk away with
Two things are in every engagement. The rest depends on your situation, which is exactly why the scope gets set in a conversation and not on a pricing page.
The presentation
Always included. We walk you and whoever else needs convincing through the findings at the second meeting, and you keep the deck.
Access to Chuck
For the duration of the engagement you have a line to the person doing the thinking. Something comes up on day six, you call or email and get an answer that day. You are not in a ticket system.
Cloud versus private
Every engagement includes the deployment call. Local machine, cloud, or a mix, priced out against your actual data and workload rather than in the abstract.
Architecture map
When your situation calls for one. How the pieces connect: your existing software, the model, the data layer, and the approval points where humans stay in charge.
A working prototype
When it makes sense for the engagement. Sometimes the fastest way to answer "would this work here" is to build a small version and let you try it.
Straight talk on the money
Two prices, no games
If you just want to buy time, buy time. Consulting is $500 an hour and you can stop whenever you have what you need.
The $3,000 assessment is for when you want the full pass: the interviews, the analysis, the report, the presentation, and a recommendation you could hand to your bank. The first $500 hour credits toward it, so continuing costs $2,500 more, not $3,000 more.
What the $3,000 does not do is credit toward a build. The assessment stands on its own. Plenty of clients take the report and do the work with their own people, and the report is written so they can. If you hire us to build afterward, that gets scoped and priced as its own project.
Why we price it this way
Firms that fold the assessment fee into the build have a reason to recommend a build. We would rather sell you an honest document. If the honest answer is that a $4,000 machine and twenty hours of your own admin's time solves it, the report will say that, and we still got paid fairly for finding it.
Most firms selling something like this charge more and send an analyst. Here the person doing the assessment is the person who would build the system, and $3,000 is the whole price.
Fit
Who should not buy this
Saving you $3,000 here saves us an awkward two weeks. This engagement is wrong for you if any of these fit:
You have not talked to Chuck
The only way in is the $500 consultation. A lot of people who ask about the assessment turn out to need something smaller, and the hour catches that before you spend real money.
$500 feels like a gamble
If an hour with the person who builds these systems is not obviously worth $500 to your business, the $3,000 engagement will not be worth it either. No hard feelings. The Learn section is free and it is genuinely useful.
You have money but no time
This is the one that surprises people. Someone on your team has to put real hours into this, during the assessment and long after it. An AI system is not a dishwasher you install and forget. Somebody at your company has to own it, during the assessment and long after. If nobody has the hours, the report ends up decorating a shelf, and neither of us wants that.
Practical details
Common questions
Can the scope change once we start?
The scope gets agreed at the consultation, before money changes hands on the engagement. If we discover something mid-stream that changes the picture, we talk about it. Nobody gets surprise-billed.
Remote or in person?
Either. If you are in Coeur d'Alene, Post Falls, Hayden, or Spokane, at least one meeting on your floor is usually worth it. Everyone else does fine on video.
Is our information safe with you?
Yes. We sign NDAs, and confidential data handling is half of what we advise on. We practice what we recommend.
What if the answer is "AI can't help you yet"?
Then that is what the report says, along with what to fix first so the answer changes. That outcome is rarer than you would think, but it happens, and finding it out for $3,000 beats finding it out after a build.
Why not just book more hourly time?
You can, and some clients do. The assessment exists because "poke at it an hour at a time" rarely produces a document you can act on. The fixed price buys a finished piece of work with a beginning and an end.
Start here
Book the first hour
Tell us about your business and what made you look into AI. We confirm a time for the $500 consultation, and if the assessment is the right move, that hour is your first payment on it.
- $500 consultation, credited toward the $3,000 engagement
- Two meetings, two weeks, report and presentation
- Not sure yet? The free 20 minute discovery call still exists.
Reach us directly
(208) 648-3977
212 S 11th St Unit #4A
Coeur d'Alene, ID 83814
Request a time
We reply within one business day.