EthosPowerAIWrite the five-year plan first
Steps 1 and 2 are yours to write: what your clients will need from you in five years, and which of their problems never ends. I help you think them through. Sometimes the honest answer is to change nothing yet.
Book a 20-min call“Our customers arrive with a quote their AI wrote.”
Their AI sized the job, named a make and model and listed your competitors. You are quoting on price, and putting AI on your own quoting only makes you quicker at it.
Advisory starts one step back: what will your clients need from you in five years, and what can you give them that their AI cannot? The answer decides which tool to build, if any. The argument in full is on the approach page.
Sound familiar?
- •Prospects arrive with a bill of materials and your competitors' names.
- •You're running pilots — a chatbot here, a Copilot licence there — and none has changed what you sell.
- •A failed pilot already burned budget and goodwill.
- •You need someone who'll tell you when not to use AI.
What you get
A five-year plan (step 1)
Yours, written with your managers: what your clients will need from you, and how you will help them succeed at their own business.
The problem to build for (step 2)
The chronic cost in your clients' core work to tackle first, and why that one before the others.
A data map (step 3)
Which test results, logs and field records you and your clients hold, where they sit, and who must agree before anyone uses them.
A costed first build (step 4)
Scope, price and a go/no-go for the prototype, including a clear “don't bother” when that's the answer.
How it works
Your plan and your decisions. I ask the questions, do the digging and write it down.
I listen
Conversations with the people who own your client relationships, and pointed questions about where the margin went.
I investigate
Quotes, service records, test data and the processes around them: how the work really flows, not how the org chart says it does.
I analyse
Where your clients' AI already does your job, and where it cannot reach.
I recommend
A written plan and a working session, in plain English.
I make the case
An outsider can say what an internal team cannot, and put it to the board.
I help implement
If you want it, I stay on to build the first tool. Delivery is priced separately.
What I won't do
Obscure my observations
You get a clear, honest assessment even when the findings are uncomfortable.
Manufacture problems
I address real issues, not invented ones that conveniently justify a longer engagement.
Sell you AI you don't need
If the right answer is a simpler fix or no AI at all, that's what I'll recommend.
Overcommit
I take on only the work I can do well.
Hand you off
You work directly with me — the engineer doing the thinking, not an account manager.
Pretend to know everything
I'm clear about what I don't know and bring in the right expertise when it's needed.
Pricing
Hourly advisory
For a focused question, or a second opinion on a plan you already have. Pay for the time you use.
Fixed-scope plan
The plan, the problem, the data map and a costed first build — one fixed price, no surprises.
All prices in USD (converted from NZD), exclusive of GST. Advisory rate: $125/hr.
What this looks like in practice
Illustrative scenario
A battery-charger designer and maker wanted staff and distributors in every Australian state to check stock and place and track their own orders, instead of phoning head office. I began by scoping where AI and a properly configured ERP would pay off and where they wouldn't. That grew into about six months of work, customising ERPNext around the firm's own stock, pricing and distributor rules rather than bending the business to fit off-the-shelf software. Distributors got a self-service ordering and inventory layer they could reach from anywhere, built from the same pieces as my Autonomous Supply Chain and Mission Control Field Agent solutions, with purchase orders drafted for a person to approve.
Nothing here cuts headcount. Your staff hear first what they gain, and the plan points them at work their clients' AI cannot do.
Start the five-year plan
Tell me who your clients are and what their AI told them before they called you. The first call is free, and there's no pitch.