Most AI consulting websites have a contact form where pricing should be. "Custom pricing based on engagement scope." Translation: I want to find out how big your company is before I tell you what I charge.
This post does the opposite. Here is what $2,500 buys in my AI audit, line by line. Here is what the alternative looks like at $15,000 a month in retainer fees. And here is the math for why one shape fits a $1M to $10M operator and the other does not.
I write this from the operator side. I run 5+ businesses across e-commerce, B2B distribution, retail, education, and AI consulting. The audit I sell mirrors what I do to my own operations every quarter. Forbes featured the playbook in a Gene Marks piece. Real numbers throughout this post; none of them are illustrative.
The audit is a complete deliverable, not a teaser. The structure is locked: five business days, three deliverables, one ten-page report.
| Day | What happens | Output |
|---|---|---|
| Day 1 | 60-minute discovery call. Five to seven structured questions. What is the bottleneck, what has been tried, what is off-limits. | Discovery notes, scope of audit confirmed. |
| Day 2 | Workflow shadow. Two to three hours watching how the team actually works. Screen share or in-person. | Click-by-click workflow map for one inbound lead or one order. |
| Day 3 | Tools landscape map. 12 to 15 software categories scored against your workflows. | What you have, what is missing, where the integration gaps are. |
| Day 4 | Leak-rank build. Top five automation candidates with dollar estimates calculated two ways. | Ranked list with time-cost and revenue-cost estimates per candidate. |
| Day 5 | 20-page PDF report plus 60-minute walkthrough call. | Full report, decision tree, and a specific recommendation on which leak to fix first. |
The 20-page report has eight sections. A current-state workflow map. A five-candidate leak rank with dollar estimates. A tools landscape map. A recommended stack per leak with specific tool names (not generic categories). A buy versus build recommendation. A risk and compliance list. A 90-day implementation calendar if you want to move forward. A one-page executive summary for stakeholders who will not read 20 pages.
If during the five days I find nothing worth automating in your business that pays back at least three times the audit fee in year one, you do not pay. That is the no fit no fee promise. It puts the risk on me, not you.
Important to be clear. The audit is not a sample build. No code ships during the five days. No agent gets deployed. No tool gets purchased on your behalf. The deliverable is the diagnosis and the prescription. If you want the build, that is a separate Sprint engagement at a separate price.
The audit is also not a four-hour workshop. Some competitors sell a "AI Leadership Kickstart Day" at $12,000 (this is a real competitor product, ChiefAIOfficer.com sells it). That is six times the price for one fifth of the work. The kickstart sells a feeling of momentum. The audit sells a specific automation candidate with a dollar number attached.
If the audit identifies a candidate worth building, the Sprint takes that one automation and ships it end-to-end in four weeks. Sprint pricing starts at $5,000. One leak, one fixed scope, one measurable target, one deadline.
I detailed the full 30-day calendar in a separate case study. The short version: days 1-5 are the audit (already done), days 6-12 are tool decision and sandbox setup, days 13-20 are integration and production wiring, days 21-28 are polish and handoff, day 30 is live.
Every Sprint ends with a side-by-side baseline comparison. Inbound lead response time before was 4 hours, after is 11 minutes. Hours per week on manual reconciliation before was 14, after is 2. If the needle did not move, I do not count it as a success even if the system is technically running.
The standard tier in fractional AI officer retainer pricing is $5,000 to $15,000 a month (this is the published range from FS Agency, MannVenture, and several other competitors). The standard contract is 6 to 12 months. The standard deliverable is "strategic AI leadership."
Let me show you the math at the $15,000 ceiling.
The retainer makes sense at the enterprise level. A bank with 18 business units and a Fortune 500 risk profile needs sustained leadership across the AI portfolio. The retainer does not make sense for a $3M-revenue paint distributor or a $2M-revenue ecommerce brand. The math collapses.
| Dimension | $2,500 audit + Sprints | $15K/mo retainer |
|---|---|---|
| First deliverable lands | Day 5 | Month 2-3 typically |
| What you get on day 5 | 20-page PDF, leak-rank, specific recommendation | Onboarding workshop notes, methodology overview |
| First shipped automation | Day 30 (if Sprint follows) | Month 4-6, sometimes later |
| Cost at month 12 | $2,500 + Sprints actually run | $180,000 regardless of output |
| What you own at the end | Working system on your API keys | Documents and decks |
| Exit cost | Zero (no contract) | Often 90-day notice clause |
I ran the same audit on my own paint distribution business (Kompozit USA) three months ago. The leak-rank put one item at the top by a wide margin: inbound contractor inquiries arriving through three channels (phone, email, contact form) with response time averaging 41 hours.
Dollar estimate of that leak: about $3,400 a month in either lost-deal value (industry quote-conversion rates drop sharply past 24 hours) or replacement labor (a part-time SDR at NYC rates would cost more). The Sprint that fixed it: a unified intake queue with Claude-drafted first-touch replies, an n8n routing layer, and a daily summary report. Build time: 11 days. Cost to operate: under $30 a month.
If I had hired a $15K/month retainer for that same problem, the consultant would have spent two months scoping. The fix took less time than the scope call would have. The point is not that retainers cannot work. The point is the math is rarely in the buyer's favor below $10M revenue.
Three concrete options.
One, you take the AI Readiness Quiz. Eight questions, five minutes. You get a score and a recommendation on whether to audit now, audit in a quarter, or fix process issues first. Free.
Two, you book a 30-minute Calendly call. We walk through your business and I tell you whether an audit makes sense for your size and stage. I will tell you to wait if it does not. Book here.
Three, you read the services page and email [email protected] to schedule the audit directly. The productized AI Growth Audit is $2,500 flat with no fit no fee. Sprint starts at $5,000 for one leak in four weeks. Full Install starts at $20,000 for three to five systems in 8 to 14 weeks. No retainer ever.
Want to know what your top automation opportunity is worth before you spend a dollar?
Book a 30-min callA 60-minute discovery call, a 2-3 hour live workflow shadow, a tools landscape map across 12-15 software categories, a ranked list of your top five automation candidates with dollar estimates and complexity ratings, and a 20-page PDF report. Delivery is five business days. The productized $2,500 AI Growth Audit ships with a no fit no fee promise: if I find nothing worth automating in your business, you do not pay.
A one-time audit produces a deliverable on a deadline. The deliverable lives on after the engagement and you can hand it to anyone, including another builder if you want. A monthly retainer is a subscription to someone's time. By month four most retainer clients cannot tell you what was delivered that month, because the work is open-ended by design. The right structure for a $1M to $10M business is a paid audit, then a fixed-scope Sprint if you want to build.
Eight sections. A workflow map of the current state across the four to six most important business processes. A five-candidate leak rank with dollar estimates calculated two ways (time cost and revenue cost). A tools landscape map showing which categories you already have, which are missing, and what the integration gaps are. A recommended stack per leak with specific tool names. A buy versus build recommendation for each candidate. A risk and compliance list. A 90-day implementation calendar if you want to move forward. A one-page executive summary for stakeholders who will not read 20 pages.
If during the five-day audit I find no automation candidate worth at least three times the audit fee in first-year value, you do not pay. That is a high bar. Most $1M to $10M operations have at least one leak worth $20,000 to $50,000 a year in either labor cost or lost revenue. The no fit no fee rule exists to keep me honest about which businesses are ready to build now and which need to clean up data or process first.
A $15,000 a month retainer over 12 months is $180,000. That is enough to build five to seven complete automations end-to-end as separate Sprints. The retainer structure consumes more of the budget on meetings and ongoing strategy than on shipped systems. For a business under $10M in revenue, that math almost never holds up. The retainer makes sense at the enterprise level where the AI roadmap touches dozens of business units. It rarely makes sense for a 5 to 50 person company.