How a Scoping Engagement works.
Every engagement starts the same way: a 30-minute intro call to see if it’s a fit, then a 2-week Scoping Engagement at $5,000. Here’s exactly what happens.
The 30-minute intro.
You book through the calendar link below. We get on a video call. You tell me about your business and what you’ve tried so far with AI. I ask questions. By the end of the call, one of three things is true:
- We have a clear fit, and we book the Scoping Engagement.
- We don’t have a clear fit, and I point you at a better next step.
- We need a second conversation to know.
The 30-minute call is free.
Week 1 of the Scoping Engagement.
Once we’ve booked the Scoping Engagement, you get an invoice for $5,000 (Venmo, PayPal, or ACH) and a calendar invite for the 60-minute scoping interview.
The 60-minute interview is the load-bearing conversation. I live-transcribe it (with your consent). I ask you about:
- The operation you want to start with (which department, which workflow, which bottleneck)
- The team running it today (who, how many, what they do)
- The tools you’ve already tried (what worked, what didn’t, what you spent)
- What you’ve heard about AI from peers, from press, from your accountant, from Reddit
- What “this worked” would look like 6 months from now
Behind the scenes that week I do the work: operation mapping, tool research, an honest tool-by-tool fit assessment, ROI shape estimation, brand-voice constraint capture.
Week 2 of the Scoping Engagement.
I write the document. 10-15 pages designed to read like the deliverable it is, containing:
- The operation map. What you have today, with the bottlenecks named.
- Three projects worth building. Each scoped with an investment range, a timeline, and what stays human.
- The tool recommendations.Driven by fit, not by referral fees. Includes an honest “do not buy this yet” list where tools don’t yet belong.
- The ROI shape. Not a guarantee. The honest math on what the three projects would save or generate, with the assumptions named so you can challenge them.
- What I’d do first. My single recommendation if you can only build one of the three.
You get the document by Friday of week 2. Then we book the 60-minute readout call.
The readout call.
We walk through the document together. You ask questions. I answer.
By the end of the readout call you have:
- A written plan you can show to your board, your CFO, your spouse, or another consultant.
- An investment range for what you want to build.
- The freedom to say “yes let’s build it together,” “yes but I want to do it in-house,” “yes but I want to get a second opinion first,” or “no thank you, this isn’t the right time.”
If you decide to build with me, the $5,000 credits forward into the first month of the build engagement.
Is this for me?
Yes, probably, if:
- You’re founder-led, family-owned, or mission-driven (B Corp, accelerator, nonprofit, or small business)
- You’ve tried one or two AI tools and want a plan, not another tool
- You can write a $5,000 check this month and decide what’s next based on the document
- You want operational AI built into how the business actually runs, not a slide deck
Probably not, if:
- You need a single tool installed for under $3,000 (a different shape of engagement)
- You’re enterprise-tier and need an AI strategy across 1,000+ employees
- You want someone to train a custom model from scratch (different specialty entirely)
- You want to be told that AI will replace your team. I won’t.
Questions you might have.
Do we sign an NDA before you look at my systems?
Yes. A mutual NDA is standard before any scoping conversation that involves access to your data, financials, customer records, or proprietary workflows. I send a template. You can use yours instead.
Does your AI send my data to a third-party server?
Depends on the tool. For the scoping conversation itself, transcription and synthesis run locally on infrastructure I control. For any build engagement, the tool selection report includes the data-handling posture of every tool I recommend (where data is stored, what it’s used for, who has access), and you make the call on which tools to use. I do not deploy a tool that touches your data without your explicit sign-off.
What happens to my interview recording?
It stays on local infrastructure I control during the Scoping Engagement and is deleted at the end unless you ask me to keep it.
Will anything I say show up in a public case study?
Nothing identifying gets published without your written approval. The case studies on this site describe the operational shape; client names and proprietary details stay private.
What data privacy claims can you make?
None of the work I do touches HIPAA-regulated data. I am not a security or compliance attorney. For SOC 2 or HIPAA implementation, refer to a specialist. For B Corp evidence packaging and general audit-ready documentation, I have direct standing.
What if the scoping document tells me not to build?
I run scoping where it earns its place. If your operation doesn’t have the pattern AI Operations works on, the document will say so and recommend the better next step (sometimes that’s a different consultant, sometimes that’s a six-month wait, sometimes that’s a single tool install instead of a build). The honest answer is the deliverable.
30 minutes. On video. Free.
You book, we get on, you tell me about your business, I ask questions. By the end of the call we know whether the Scoping Engagement is the right fit, or whether I’m pointing you at a better next step. Questions before booking? Email dohertykariann@gmail.com.
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