Most "free consultations" in tech are sales calls wearing a lab coat. Some guy reads from a script, asks a few qualifying questions to figure out your budget, and spends the last ten minutes trying to close you. I've been on the receiving end of those. I hated them. So when you call me, none of that is happening.
Here's exactly what the first call is, what I'll ask, and how it ends. No mystery.
What actually happens
The call is about 20 minutes. Sometimes 30 if we get going. It's not a demo. It's not a pitch. There's no slide deck. It's just you and me on the phone, figuring out together whether I can genuinely help your business — or whether I can't, and we shouldn't waste each other's time.
Here's the rough flow:
First 5 minutes: your business, in your own words
I start by listening. Tell me about your business — not the elevator pitch. The real version. What you sell. How many people. How it's going. What's working, what isn't. What keeps you up some nights. There are no wrong answers. I'm a business guy — I've been in your chair, and I can usually tell inside two minutes whether I can help you or not.
Next 10 minutes: how you actually run it
Here's where it gets interesting. I'll ask about the stuff you use every day — QuickBooks, Excel, your POS, your time clock, your accountant, your bookkeeper, the Excel file your manager updates on Fridays. I'm mapping where your numbers already live. Most owners are surprised how much gold they already have, sitting in systems that don't talk to each other.
Then I'll ask about the questions you wish you could answer but can't. "Which of my customers is actually making me money?" "Which location is leaking?" "Is this supplier ripping me off?" "Is my sales guy actually pulling his weight?" Every owner has three or four of these. Most of them have the answers sitting in their own data — they just can't get to them.
"I hadn't thought about my business that way. You asked questions my accountant never asks. I saw a couple things I need to fix — regardless of whether I hire you."
Next 5-10 minutes: what I'd actually build for you
Based on what you told me, I'll sketch out — on the phone, in plain English — what your Orca would actually look like. Not a generic pitch. Specifically, for your business:
- What systems I'd plug into and why
- What the screen you'd open every Monday morning would show you
- What kind of heads-up alerts you'd get in plain English
- Which of those questions you've been carrying in your head I'd finally answer
- Roughly how long it'd take and the exact monthly number
This is the part where owners usually lean in. Because it stops being abstract. You can suddenly picture it — your own business, your own numbers, your own answers, on one screen.
Last few minutes: am I going to take the job?
At the end, I'll tell you straight: yes or no. If I don't think I can actually change how your business runs, I'll say so right there. It happens. Maybe your business is too small, or the data is too rough, or it's not really a problem I can solve. If that's the case, we shake hands over the phone, I might point you somewhere better, and we move on. Nobody's time wasted.
If I am going to take the job, I'll tell you exactly what the monthly will be, exactly how long the build will take, and exactly what happens next. Remember: you're not paying a dollar until you've used the real, finished system in your business.
Who this call is really for
- Owners of real, profitable businesses ($2M-$30M in revenue, 10-80 people) who feel like they're running it half-blind
- Owners who know there's gold in their QuickBooks and POS and payroll, but have no time or patience to dig it out themselves
- Owners who keep hearing about "AI" from everyone and want to cut through the noise and actually use it
- Owners who've been burned by software projects before and won't do another one where they pay upfront
- Owners who'd rather hire a person than learn another piece of software
Who it's NOT for
I'd rather be honest than waste your time:
- If you're looking for a generic off-the-shelf dashboard, Tableau and Power BI exist and you can buy them today
- If you have no data at all (no accounting, no POS, no records), there's nothing for me to work with yet — fix that first
- If you want a one-time report and not an ongoing system, you want a bookkeeper, not me
- If you're not genuinely willing to use data to make decisions, no system will help you
Three things before you call
- You don't have to prepare. Don't pull reports. Don't organize anything. Don't make a list. Just show up. I'll guide it.
- No pressure. At all. If at any point you feel like I'm pushing for a close, you have my permission to call me on it. There's literally nothing to buy on this call. My whole model is "see it first, pay later" — that starts with the call.
- Bring your toughest question. The one thing about your business you've been trying to figure out for a year and haven't cracked yet. Bring that. Let's talk about whether the answer is already in your data. Even if you never hire me, you'll leave the call having thought about your business in a way you hadn't before.
You'll be on the phone with me — not a sales rep, not an SDR, not an account exec. The person who will build your system, on the other end of the phone, directly. That's how this works, every time.
Ready?
20 minutes. No cost. No commitment. No follow-up email spam. No "just checking in." Just a real conversation about your business — and a straight answer about whether I can help.
Worst case, you walk away having thought about your business from a new angle. Best case, you've just found your guy.