Dear Founder,
If you own a real business — somewhere between your first million and your first twenty — and you know, somewhere underneath the day, that AI should be doing more for you than it is, this letter is for you.
Most of the things you've tried haven't stuck. A course that sounded right in the first hour and faded by the third. A prompt pack that went into a folder you haven't opened in four months. A consultant with a deck full of "AI strategy" and nothing concrete to actually do on Monday morning.
None of those were bad. They just didn't start in the only place this work actually starts — which is your specific business, the way it actually runs, on a specific Tuesday, with the specific people you actually employ and the specific customers you actually serve.
What follows is different. And I'm going to tell you exactly how, exactly what it costs, exactly what you walk out with, and exactly how to say yes if it's for you. No dancing. No "let's hop on a quick call to see if there's a fit." No $15,000 discovery process disguised as conversation. A letter. A decision.
Section OneWhat's actually going on here
Here's what I've learned from doing this with thirty-something owners over the last eighteen months.
Almost every one of them had the same shape of problem. Not a lack of motivation. Not a lack of AI literacy. Not a lack of tools. What they lacked was one specific, identified place in their actual workflow where a change would compound.
Everything else — the courses, the tutorials, the forty-seven browser tabs of half-read articles — was a substitute for that one thing. Smart owners don't need a generic education in AI. They need someone to look at their real work, find the bottleneck that is actually holding the business back, and say here. This part. Start here. And here is exactly how.
When that one place gets found, and the change actually gets made, three things happen:
- The specific thing that was slow stops being slow.
- The owner gets time and attention back — time that was being spent carrying context around in their own head.
- The rest of the business becomes legible in a new way. You start seeing the next place. And the one after that.
This compounds. That's the word. Not "transformation." Not "unlock." Not "AI journey." Compound. Like interest. One change, made correctly, in the right place, that changes what becomes possible next.
Section TwoThe one pattern I keep finding
I want to tell you the pattern up front, because if you recognize your business in it, you'll know whether this letter applies to you without having to read the rest.
The pattern, almost without exception, looks like this:
There is one piece of work in your business that runs through you personally. You inherited it, or you grew into it, or the business grew in a shape where nobody else learned to do it the way you do. It might be proposals. It might be hiring. It might be client communication. It might be pricing decisions. It might be research synthesis. It might be pipeline triage.
Whatever it is, this piece of work has three properties:
- It happens a lot — at least weekly, often daily.
- It requires judgment, context, and care that your team doesn't fully have yet.
- It's a rate-limiter on how much the business can actually do.
And this is the thing — this is almost always where the leverage is. Not in flashy automation. Not in some clever agent. In the one piece of work that has been held hostage by your own involvement, which could be redesigned so that AI does the compilation, the structuring, the first pass — and you do the judgment, the last 20%, the taste.
Nine out of ten serious founders I've worked with have a piece of work that fits that description. Most of them can name it in under ten seconds if you ask the right way. Most of them have never had anyone sit down and work out, with them, in specific terms, what the redesigned version of it looks like.
That's what the Discovery session is for. Find the piece. Map what the new version looks like. Decide whether to make the change.
Section ThreeThree cases, with real numbers
I don't want you to take any of what I just said on faith. Let me show you exactly what I mean, with three businesses and three specific results.
The founder was rewriting every proposal his team drafted.
When we started, proposal turnaround was five days from first inquiry to sent document. The founder was rewriting most of them himself. AI use across the team was inconsistent — a few people were using it well, most were barely using it, nobody had a shared pattern.
In the 90-minute Discovery session, we found the bottleneck. It was not AI literacy. It was not tooling. It was that the proposal workflow had no intermediate handoff — anything his team drafted, he ended up redoing end-to-end. We redesigned the handoff and installed an AI-assisted first-pass the team could actually run.
Six weeks later:
The founder was carrying every project in his own head.
His team couldn't see the full picture on any project without asking him. He was the bottleneck on everything, and he knew it. He'd tried Notion. He'd tried shared docs. He'd tried hiring a project manager. None of it took.
The Discovery session didn't lead to a build. It led to a workflow redesign. We set up a pattern where every project had a living, AI-maintained context document that the whole team could read, and which updated itself from emails, calls, and docs.
Three months later:
Twenty research briefs a month, and each one took 8–12 hours.
Known problem: research synthesis. The team was producing 20+ client-facing research briefs a month and each one was taking 8–12 hours to compile from scattered sources. The owner suspected AI should be helping and had tried three things that didn't work.
The Discovery session found the issue: they were trying to have AI do the whole synthesis. What actually worked was AI doing the compilation and structuring, humans doing the judgment pass.
Six weeks later:
These are three examples. There are others. Every one of them came out of a single 90-minute session where we found the one place where a change would matter.
And this is the important part — none of these required a big build. All three were mostly workflow redesigns with the right AI pattern installed in the right place. That's the shape of the work, more often than not.
Section FourThe offer, stated plainly
THE LEVERAGE DISCOVERY SESSION
A single 90-minute working call between you and me.
By the end of the call, we will have identified one specific place in your business where a change would actually make a difference — and we will have agreed on the right way to act on it.
I'll spend the first part looking at your business the way you see it. Where it's painful, where it's slow, where it's held together by you personally. Then I'll spend the middle of the call walking through one or two of your actual workflows with you — a real proposal, a real pipeline, a real decision you made this week. Then we'll find the place where a real change would compound, and we'll map what that change is.
You walk out of the call with:
- One specific leverage point, identified.
- The right way to act on it — Workflow Upgrade, Hybrid, or System Build.
- A written summary sent within 24 hours that you can refer to later.
- No obligation whatsoever to buy anything further.
No surprise invoice.
Full guarantee (see below).
Applied Leverage — the actual work of implementing the change after Discovery — is priced separately, after the Discovery call, based on what the leverage is worth to your business. Most Applied Leverage engagements fall between $8,000 and $40,000 depending on scope. You'll know the exact number before you decide to proceed.
Section FiveMy guarantee to you — and I mean it
REFUND
OR IT'S ON ME
If we don't find the leverage, you pay nothing.
By the end of our 90-minute session, we will have identified a specific leverage point in your business and agreed on the right way to act on it. If we haven't — if for any reason we leave the call without that clarity — here is what happens.
You pay nothing for the Discovery session. I either continue working with you at no cost until we find the leverage, or I refund you in full. Your choice.
Not "I'll give you a discount on something else." Not "we can try again with another session you also pay for." Full refund. Full stop.
This is how I run the practice. It's how I sleep at night. And it's why I can charge what I charge for the sessions that do find the leverage — because the ones that don't don't cost you a thing.
Section SixWho this is for, and who it isn't
I want to be direct about this, because the cost of the wrong fit is too high for both of us.
This is for you if
- You own a real business doing $1M to $20M in revenue.
- You have real motion — customers, team, cash flow.
- You know AI should be doing more for your business than it is.
- You've tried generic approaches and been burned or stalled.
- You are willing to change how you work, not just talk about it.
- $1,500 feels significant but sane for a 90-minute working session with a serious operator.
This is not for you if
- You want another course.
- You want someone to explain what AI is in the abstract.
- You want a prompt pack or a template library.
- You want to outsource your own thinking entirely.
- You're pre-revenue or exploring whether to start a business.
- You are looking for the cheapest possible entry point.
If you fit the left column, keep reading. If you fit the right, there are better uses of your time than booking this call, and I'd rather tell you so now.
Section SevenAnswers to the questions you're already asking
What if I don't know what my leverage point is going in? Isn't that the whole problem?
Yes, and that's exactly what the session is for. You don't need to show up with a theory about where your leverage is. You need to show up with your actual business. I'll ask the questions that surface it. Most owners, when asked the right way, can name the candidate within the first 20 minutes. The rest of the session is making it specific and mapping what the change looks like.
Why $1,500 and not $500, or $5,000?
$500 would filter for the wrong buyer — people who want cheap exploration, not serious working sessions. $5,000 would turn every call into a sales event and kill the working quality of the session. $1,500 is the number where a serious owner shows up having thought about their business beforehand, treats the 90 minutes as their own, and walks out with something they can act on. It's the price that makes the session work.
Can we do this over Zoom or does it have to be in person?
Zoom is fine and is how most of these sessions happen. If you'd prefer in person and you're in Southern California, I can come to you or you can come to me — add $500 for travel if it's outside a 30-mile radius. Zoom sessions work just as well in practice, because what matters is having your real workflow visible (shared screen is enough).
What do I need to prepare?
15 minutes of prep, nothing more. Before the call I'll send you a short note asking you to have three things handy: (1) a real example of the piece of work you most want to improve — a recent proposal, a recent client doc, a recent decision; (2) a rough sense of your team structure and who does what; (3) one sentence on what "this worked" would mean for your business in six months. That's it. No pre-reading. No pre-work.
What if the leverage point requires a build I don't want to pay for?
The Discovery session is designed to end with the right shape of intervention, not a forced upsell. About 40% of the cases I've done end up as workflow redesign only — no build needed. About 40% are hybrids. About 20% call for a real system build. You'll know which yours is by the end of the session, and you can take the identified leverage and implement it yourself, with another vendor, or with me. There's no lock-in at the Discovery stage.
What makes you different from any other AI consultant?
Three things. (1) I charge a fixed, disclosed price for the first session and guarantee the outcome. Most consultants won't. (2) I design the session to surface leverage in 90 minutes, not over six weeks of free discovery. (3) The work after the session is priced from the value of the leverage to your business, using your own numbers — not from my hourly rate. None of this is uniquely mine, but putting all three together and being willing to refund when it doesn't work is rare.
How fast can I actually book?
Current lead time is about 10–14 days. Urgent sessions inside 5 days are possible for an extra $500 if my calendar allows.
Section EightHow to book it
If what I've described sounds like the shape of what you need — and if you've read this far, it probably does — the right move is simple.
Book the Leverage Discovery session. $1,500. 90 minutes. Full guarantee. Written summary within 24 hours.
You come in with the part of the work that matters most right now. We look at it together. You leave with one specific change worth making and the right way to make it. If we don't find that, you don't pay.
That's the offer. I'd be glad to work with you.
With respect,
Jonathan
Jonathan — Partner, The Leverage Practice
P.S.If the timing isn't right today, here is the other thing.
Once in a while I write a short letter about one specific place I've seen AI leverage hide in a real business. No schedule. No pump. No "here are 10 tips." Just the actual pattern, when I see one worth writing about. Founders on this list tell me it's the one AI-related thing they actually read.
Leave your email below and I'll send you the next letter — plus a copy of The 6 Places I've Seen AI Leverage Hide Most Often in Services Businesses, which is the short piece I wrote for people who wanted to see the pattern library before booking a call.
No spam. No sales sequence. One letter now, another when I have one worth sending. Unsubscribe anytime.
P.P.S. Yes, the letter style on this page is deliberate. Most AI-consultant sites read like a pitch deck that ate a thesaurus. This one reads like a letter because it is one. If the voice is the wrong voice for you, the service probably is too — which is a favor to both of us.
Related reading: How the session actually runs · A few past letters