Productized engagement · 02 of 05

The Operating Teardown: AI Edition

Two weeks inside how your business actually runs, and where AI pays.

Nearly 15 years at McKinsey and Deloitte, advising Fortune 50 clients. Now independent, serving the mid-market from Richmond.

A fixed-fee diagnostic for the owner of a mid-market company. I spend two weeks inside your operation: where the working hours go, what they cost, and which of them AI can genuinely return to you. You receive a written memo with ranked, priced recommendations, then a 90-minute readout to challenge it. One person does the work, and signs every page.

What happens

Day 0	You pay. The intake packet arrives the same day: a short questionnaire, a document list, and a one-page AI inventory request.
Documents in	The clock starts when your intake is complete.
Within 2 business days	A 45-minute discovery call. I will have read everything before we speak.
Within 10 business days	The memo lands in your inbox, eight to fifteen pages.
Within 3 business days	A 90-minute readout with you and anyone you invite, then two weeks of email access for follow-up questions.

What you receive

A memo in plain English, every figure built from your own numbers. Eight to fifteen pages:

The situation as I found it, including a market read on how your operation is currently positioned for AI
Where the working hours go, mapped against where AI is producing real returns in 2026 and where it is not
Five to eight opportunities, ranked by payback, each scored on viability with current tools and naming a build-or-buy call with vendor recommendations
What to leave alone and what to stay human, often the most valuable section
Cultural and decision-rights moves the leadership team has to make for any of it to land
A 90-day execution sequence with expected costs in dollars

Where I look

Operations, sales, finance, customer service, and reporting, plus the existing AI inventory if one exists. The mid-market pattern is consistent: a few vendor pilots that have not graduated, a few workflows where the AI fit is obvious to me but not to the team, and a board starting to ask what the AI line item is producing. The teardown finds your version and prices the fix.

“Three vendors were quoting us on the same problem. The memo told us one of the three was actually solving a workflow we did not have, the other two were solving the wrong thing first, and the real problem was upstream of all of them. We saved the cost of the engagement eight times over by not signing the wrong contract.”

CEO, Specialty manufacturing, $28M revenue

Illustrative. Composite of recent mid-market engagements, not a single named client.

The person you pay is the person who reads your numbers and writes the memo.

Ryan King · RLK Consulting

Fixed fee

$7,500

Paid up front, by card or invoice. No proposal, no scope call.

A fraction of one new back-office hire. A fraction of a traditional firm’s six-figure study.

Fit

Owner-led companies, roughly $5M to $100M in revenue, with a dozen or more people in the office.

Capacity

I run at most two teardowns a week.

Confidentiality

Your documents are covered by an NDA and deleted within 90 days of the readout.

The arrangement

Full refund any time before the discovery call. If I conclude on that call that a teardown will not pay for itself in your business, I will say so and refund every dollar. Once analysis begins, the fee is committed.

To begin

Pay by the link that accompanies this sheet, complete the intake, and book the discovery call. The two weeks start when your documents arrive. Questions first? Reply to hello@rlkconsultingco.com.

To begin

Pay the fee, complete a short intake, and book the discovery call. The two weeks start when your documents arrive.

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