fourteen questions
Questions people ask
Mostly asked on the telephone before a first meeting. If yours is not here, ring and ask it — the number is at the top of every page and it is answered by one of the six of us.
What does it cost?
A partner day is $2,200, a blended day is $1,800 and a consultant day is $1,400. Every project on this site is a number of days at one of those three rates, and the fee range printed against it is exactly that multiplication. The smallest piece of work here is four days.
Why do you publish your rates when almost nobody else does?
Because the alternative is that every first meeting spends twenty minutes on a question that has one number in the answer, and because a fee that is only revealed after you have explained your problems is a fee arrived at from your problems.
Is the first meeting really free?
Ninety minutes, no fee, no obligation, and no proposal at the end of it — you get an opinion. Roughly one in four ends with us saying that we are not the right thing for this, which is why we can afford to give the time away.
Do you do our accounts or our taxes?
No. We do not prepare, compile, review or audit accounts and we do not prepare or file returns. That is a licensed profession and a different one; your accountant does it. We read what they produce and work out what it says about the business.
Can you look at our contract?
No. We are not attorneys and nothing we say is legal advice. We will tell you when a question has become a legal one, which is genuinely useful and is where we stop.
Will you tell us what the business is worth?
No. We do not give investment advice and we do not put a value on a business — that is a professional opinion with a licence behind it. We work on the things that make a business worth more, which is a different sentence and an honest one.
How long does a piece of work take?
The smallest is about three weeks and the largest runs for two years. The days and the weeks are different numbers and both are printed against every engagement, because six days spread over five weeks is what actually happens.
Do you work on our premises or yours?
Mostly yours. You cannot follow a job around a spreadsheet. First meetings can be at our office on 61st Street if you would rather your staff did not watch, which is a normal thing to want.
What size of business do you work with?
Most of our clients are between four and a hundred people. Below four there is usually not enough structure for this to be the right spend, and above a hundred there are firms with more people than we have.
Do you take a commission from software companies?
No — not a commission, not a referral fee, not a rebate, not a reseller margin. It is the only thing that makes advice about which system to buy worth paying for.
What if we start and it is not working?
Either side can stop at the end of any week. You pay for the days that have been worked and you keep everything written so far. There is no notice period and no termination fee.
Is the assessment on this site any good?
It is a starting point and it says so on every screen. It reads twelve answers, has no data behind it, does not compare you to anybody and produces no figures. It is useful for arriving at a conversation with the right question already asked.
Do you sign a confidentiality agreement?
Yes, before the first meeting if you want one — we have a short one, and we will sign yours instead. Nothing about a client appears on this website: every case study here is a composite and says so.
Who actually does the work?
The person named in the proposal. There is no team of juniors behind us — there are six people in this firm and the one who sold you the work is the one who turns up.
The three that come up most
What does it cost? A partner day is $2,200, a blended day $1,800 and a consultant day $1,400. Every engagement on this site is a number of days at one of those, and the fee printed against it is exactly that multiplication. The smallest piece of work here is four days.
Do you do our accounts? No, and it is worth being exact about this. We read the statements your accountant prepares and work out what they say about the business. We do not prepare, compile, review or audit accounts and we do not prepare or file a return — that is a licensed profession and a different one.
What if it is not working? Either side can stop at the end of any week. You pay for the days worked, you keep everything written so far, and there is no notice period and no termination fee.
Every fee here is a rate times a number of days. Every fee on this site is a day rate multiplied by a number of days, and both numbers are printed. A partner day is $2,200, a blended day is $1,800 and a consultant day is $1,400. There is nothing else: no retainer to be quoted later, no percentage, no success fee.
We do not prepare or file your accounts. We read the financial statements your accountant prepares and work out what they say about the business. We do not prepare, compile, review or audit accounts, and we do not prepare or file a tax return — that is a licensed profession and a different one.
Either side can stop at the end of any week. Either side can stop at the end of any week. You pay for the days worked, you keep everything written so far, and there is no notice period and no termination fee.
$2,200 a partner day · ninety minutes free · about one in four we talk out of it
Start with the assessment, or just telephone
The assessment takes about four minutes and gives you a written summary of what your answers suggest and which engagement addresses each thing. It is indicative and not professional advice, and it is a better opening than a blank contact form. If you would rather skip it, the telephone works and the first meeting is ninety minutes and free.