Everyone's talking about AI. Nobody's told you where to start.

Especially for you. The whole point of the audit is that you don't need to understand the technology — that's my job. If you can send an email, you can work this way. I explain everything in plain English, and if I ever use a word that means nothing to you, stop me. Most of the conversation is about your business, not about AI.

Possibly not, and that's a genuinely fine answer. I deliberately don't quote a number here — every business is different, and the whole point of the audit is working out your real figure rather than repeating an industry average. But even a modest, permanent reduction in the work you like least — the difference between finishing at six and finishing at eight, or getting a Sunday back — adds up over a year for a lot of owners. If your number comes back small, I'll tell you plainly, and you can decide with the real figure in front of you.

Then I'll tell you, and you'll have saved yourself a lot of money and wasted effort for £97. That's a genuinely good outcome. I'd rather lose a sale than sell you something that doesn't pay for itself — it's a small area and reputation is everything here.

Nothing of yours is touched during the audit — it's a conversation, not access to your systems. If you go further, anything I set up runs with the minimum access needed, agreed in writing, and anything touching payments or customer records is set to "you check" by default. See the full security section and the privacy notice for the details.

You genuinely can do some of it, and the audit will tell you which bits — that's part of what you're paying for. What you're paying for beyond that is having it set up properly, connected to the tools you already use, and someone to fix it when it breaks. If doing it yourself is honestly your best option, I'll say so.

Not the way I set it up. It takes the repetitive, boring work off people's plates so they can spend their time on the things that actually need a human — customers, judgement, craft. The aim is fewer bad hours, not fewer people.

Nothing reaches a customer unchecked on anything that matters. You approve before it goes out, so a mistake gets caught by you rather than sent to a customer. And for the fully handled jobs, you can always see exactly what it did.

You stay in charge, and the setup makes that real rather than a slogan: anything with judgement, money or reputation in it waits for your approval, so a bad draft gets caught by you instead of reaching a customer. For the small, safe jobs that run handled, we agree the rules together first — and if something ever misbehaves, I'd rather switch it off and fix it than let it guess. You're never left holding a mystery.

Usually no — most first workflows run on tools you already have, or on free tiers. If something is genuinely worth paying for, I'll say so with the monthly cost in plain figures, and it's your call. I don't resell anything and I don't take commission, so I have no reason to talk you into a subscription.

Yes, and some of it's good — HIE and Business Gateway run free AI sessions, and HIE has a six-month programme for growth-track businesses. If that's the better fit for you, I'll say so and send you the link. The audit is for something different: one specific workflow in your business, looked at properly, in a week — not a course to find time for.

The audit is one hour, plus a 30-minute walkthrough. If you go on to a setup, it's a few short sessions up front to teach it your way and test it. After that, it should take less of your week than the job did, and the audit tells you beforehand whether that's likely.