The workbench
Start here. It takes about a minute.
This is not a quote form and the answer does not arrive three days later. Five questions, an honest read at the end, and one of the possible answers is “do not automate this yet.”
Workflow Fit Check
How this goes
Four steps, and you can stop after any of them.
Nobody sensible hands a stranger access to their business on day one. So the first two steps cost nothing, the third is a small fixed fee that produces something you keep, and only the fourth is a real commitment.
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The Fit Check
Five questions, right here on this page. You get a read on whether the work you are describing is a sensible candidate, what should stay human, and whether it is worth going further.
Free 60 seconds. No account.
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A 20-minute fit call
We work out whether the problem is expensive enough to be worth solving, whether it repeats often enough and follows clear enough rules, and whether I am actually the right person for it. If the answer is no, I will say so on the call.
Free 20 minutes, with me.
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The Workflow Opportunity Map
A paid working engagement on one recurring process. We document how the work happens today, where it breaks, what can safely be automated, what decisions stay yours, and what building it would actually involve. You keep the map either way.
$750 Credited toward a build signed within 30 days.
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The build, and then your call
One scoped system, built around the tools you already use, tested and documented. Afterwards you take the keys, keep me on to maintain it, or hand the day-to-day running to me. The build price is the same whichever you pick.
from $2,500 Scoped from the map, never guessed.
Proof from the floor
Not a logo wall. The actual work.
Systems built for clients stay private unless they give me permission to share them. These examples come from systems I own and operate myself, with the real numbers attached, including the unflattering ones. I built and operate every one of them myself.
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Work order 01
Outreach engine
Green Felt Club · my brand, my list, my numbers
- 534
- emails sent
- 15
- replies
- 2
- qualified opportunities
Built for my own venue brand: list sourcing, the sequence, the sending schedule, deliverability monitoring, reply handling. It watches its own bounce rate and pauses before a sending domain gets burned, which is the part most people find out about too late.
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Work order 02
Heartwood
My own platform — built, not sold; now archived
- 216
- automated tests
- all green
- enforced on every commit
An email platform with configurable state-specific sending windows, a circuit breaker that pauses everything at a 2% bounce rate and refuses to re-arm itself, one-click unsubscribe, and per-recipient suppression that survives a provider swap. This is the standard I build to when the thing has to hold up.
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Work order 03
Content pipeline
Running today · operator approval on every send
- 4
- brands published from one pipeline
- every post
- human-approved
Drafts the copy, generates the imagery, tailors each post to the platform it is going to, then holds everything at an approval gate until a person says yes. Nothing publishes on its own. It runs daily across several brands, including this one.
Ask on the call and I will tell you what I can about the client work.
A machine cell on the shop floor — one arm working inside a lit enclosure, behind a closed barrier
Customer review
“I built a simple but efficient web site that was delayed for a year because my version required a lot of manual input. Bryan took over and automated absolutely everything about the backend workings while leaving the customer-facing part intact. He saved me hours, perhaps weeks, of busy work. And now my service is ready to go, months sooner than I could have released it using my manual methods.
Every step along the way, Bryan explained what he was doing and laid out my choices so I could understand them.”
Tim Rowan
Public 5-star Google review
Disclosure: Tim is my stepfather — which is how I got the job, and why he had no reason to be polite about it. The review is public on Google.
The entry product
What a Workflow Opportunity Map actually gets you.
Most people in this business will happily spend two unpaid hours designing your system, because it is really a sales meeting wearing a hard hat. I would rather charge a small fixed fee and give you something genuinely useful, including the parts that argue against building anything.
You keep the map whether I build the system or not. If you take it to someone else, or build it in-house, or decide the honest answer is to fix the process before automating it, the document still does its job.
Workflow Opportunity Map
Contents · 10 sections
- How the work actually happens today, mapped step by step
- Where it breaks, stalls, or gets dropped
- What can safely be automated
- What should stay human, and why
- The approval and safety boundaries the system would run inside
- Tools, access, and dependencies it would need
- The recommended first build
- How we would measure whether it worked
- Implementation scope and a price range
- A phased roadmap for anything that comes after
Automation with boundaries
You decide
what runs on its own.
The fear is not really the technology. It is sending something embarrassing to a customer, or depending on a machine you cannot see inside.
So before anything gets built, we agree exactly what the system is allowed to do. Every meaningful action receives one of these three control settings, and you can change them later.
The point is not that nothing is automatic. It is that nothing gets authority by accident.
Whichever settings you choose, the system keeps a visible activity log, tells someone when a run fails, and has a pause switch that you control.
What it costs
Published, so you can rule me out without a call.
Two separate things: a one-time build, then your choice of how involved I stay afterwards. The build costs the same either way, so you are never paying extra just to keep your options open. Real numbers get scoped from the map, not guessed from a form.
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Step 01 · start here
Workflow Opportunity Map
$750 credited toward a build signed within 30 days
One workflow. One recommended first build. One decision-ready plan.
- A working session, not a sales meeting
- The full written map, yours to keep
- Implementation scope and price range
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Step 02 · one-time build
The build
from $2,500 most land $3,500 to $9,000
Mapped, built, tested, documented, handed over with training and a post-launch bug-fix window.
- Built around the tools you already use
- Same price whether you take the keys or keep me on
- 50% up front, 50% at launch
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Step 03 · after launch
However involved you want me
$0 from $750 from $2,000a month
Take the keys and run it yourself, keep me on to maintain it, or hand me the day-to-day running of it. Month to month, change or cancel whenever.
- Keys: you operate it yourself, training included
- Maintain: monitoring, fixes, tool-change adjustments
- Run: day-to-day operation and exception handling
Need to start smaller? When the workflow supports it, the build can be phased around one measurable first win.
Tool subscriptions, AI usage, hosting, and third-party platform costs are billed separately unless included in your proposal.
Who you are dealing with
One person, and he answers.
I am Bryan. I spent 21 years in corporate customer experience and digital operations before going independent, which means I have been on the other side of the table watching an agency bill for a discovery phase that produced a slide deck. The person on your first call is the person who builds your system and the person maintaining it a year later.
- You talk to the builder. There is no account team and no game of telephone.
- Every system is documented, monitored, and transferable. If I get hit by a bus, you have the manual, the credentials, and a system somebody else can pick up.
- I run these systems inside my own businesses first. I am not selling you a theory I have not used.
- If the honest answer is that you should not build this, that is the answer you get.
Coaches, consultants, and fractional operators
Already advising the client?
I build what you recommended.
01
Refer it
02
Work alongside me
03
Bring implementation into your own offer
Nothing is quoted to your client until I have reviewed the workflow.
Straight answers
The questions owners actually ask.
What if the honest answer is that I should not automate this?
Then that is what the map says, and I will tell you on the call before you spend the $750 if it is already obvious. Some work is not frequent enough to be worth building around. Some of it needs the process fixed before a machine is pointed at it. Some of it is genuinely a judgement call that should stay with a person. Selling you a build in those cases produces a system nobody trusts and a client who never comes back.
What happens to my data?
I will not tell you “it is completely safe,” because no honest systems person can promise that in one word. What I can do is tell you exactly where it goes.
Before anything gets built, you get it in writing: which data the system touches, which third-party services process it (hosting, AI providers, whatever tools you already use), what is stored and for how long, who has access, what is deliberately excluded, and what happens to the connection when we stop working together. If a piece of that is not acceptable to you, we design around it or we do not build it.
Do I own it, or am I renting it from you?
You own and control the project-specific system built for your business. You get the credentials, the configuration, the documentation, and a plain-English owner’s guide: everything needed to run it or hand it to someone else. The build price is the same whether you take the keys the day it launches or keep me on for years.
Two honest caveats. Third-party tools keep their existing licenses, so you hold those accounts directly. And the reusable frameworks I build every client’s system on top of stay part of my toolkit unless your proposal says otherwise. Making it easy to leave is deliberate; it is the only version of this business I would want to buy from.
You are one person. What happens if you disappear?
Fair question, and the answer is not to pretend it cannot happen. Every system is documented well enough for another competent technical person to pick it up, monitored so failures announce themselves instead of going quiet, and built on tools you can access without me. You are never holding a black box whose only key is my phone number.
What happens when one of my tools changes and breaks it?
It will happen eventually. Software vendors change things. That is exactly what the monthly maintenance option is for: I watch for it, fix it, and adjust the system as your tools and workflows change. If you have taken the keys instead, you can call me and pay for the fix, or handle it yourself with the documentation.
Do I need to be technical?
No. You do not touch code or settings. You tell me what keeps repeating and what it costs you when it slips, I build it, and you go back to running your business. The part you do stay involved in is deciding what the system is allowed to do on its own, and that conversation is in plain English.
Do you work through business coaches and consultants?
Yes. I work directly with a client’s trusted advisor, join an existing coaching or consulting engagement, or contract separately as the implementation specialist. Your advisor does not need to design or manage the technical system. Responsibilities get agreed before the project starts, and nothing is quoted until I have reviewed the workflow.
If you are the advisor rather than the owner, here is how partnering works.
Start at the bottom of the staircase
Sixty seconds, and you will know whether this is worth another minute.
No account, no calendar, no waiting for a reply. Run the Fit Check and you get the read on your own screen. If it says the work is worth mapping, the next step is a free 20-minute call. If it says leave it alone, you have lost a minute and I have lost a customer I should not have had.
Or just write to me: bryan@perseidechocreations.comor call 425-243-3473