Questions before you start
These are the questions that arrive by email before someone answers the ten questions on this site. The answers are the same ones the scope document gives, written once so nobody has to ask. Nothing here quotes a price, names a client or describes a tool. If your question is not on this page, the address at the foot of the page reaches me directly.
What is a second brain for a company?
One connected map of what the company already knows. Every client, deal, person, figure and service gets one page, and pages link the way the facts link in real life. It lives in ordinary files on storage the company owns, with the originals kept exactly as they arrived, and every fact names the document it came from.
Is this the same as Building a Second Brain?
No. That is a method for organising one person’s notes. This is a record of a company: its decisions, numbers, clients and services, owned by the company, kept current by software, and readable by everyone who needs it. The phrase is shared; the thing is not. If you are looking for a personal note-taking method, this is not it.
Who owns it, and where does it live?
You do. The knowledge base is plain files you can read without me, in a repository that is yours. It runs either in an isolated environment I operate for you, or on your own infrastructure and your own keys; you choose at the start, and you can take it fully onto your own keys at any time. Access is granted by you, scoped by you and revoked by you. When an engagement ends, you keep everything and I keep nothing.
What do the agents actually do?
They are software workers with one job each, running inside your brain’s environment. They file what arrives, update what changed, and flag contradictions and stale facts. Every fact they write names the document it came from. How many there are follows from how many jobs your organization actually repeats, and they keep running after handover.
What is the dashboard, and who can see it?
A private address where the state of the company is visible at a glance: what is contradicted, stale or unowned; where the money went and what is committed; which clients have gone quiet, and for how long. It is regenerated by the agents, never by hand, with read access for everyone who needs it.
What can we ask it once it exists?
Anything from a lookup to the questions nobody can answer today. Which contracts expire in the next ninety days, and who owns each one. Which figures in the board pack disagree with the bank statements. Which suppliers quietly became a single point of failure. If this person left tomorrow, what would only they know. What an auditor would ask first, and whether we could answer it today.
How long does it take, and how much of our time?
It depends on how much of the organization comes in and how much material already exists, so the timeline is named in your scope rather than promised in advance. What it asks of you is access and one person who can settle a question; your scope names those hours before you agree to anything. A larger organization with more of itself coming in takes longer, ten working days, and about twelve hours. You get a note each day: what was built, what was found, and what I need from you next.
What do we have at handover?
The knowledge base, in plain files you can read without me. A dashboard on a private address, live against the base. The keeper agent, running daily. One page of rules: what goes in, and who owns which figure. The first audit, listing what the structure already found wrong. And a free first month of the continuing work, so it is not abandoned.
What is not included?
No migration, no custom software built on top of the record, and no licence to renew. Replacing a system you already run is separate work with its own scope. If the work runs over because I sized it wrong, that is mine to absorb. the overrun is mine. If the honest answer to your ten questions is that you do not need this, the scope will say that instead.
How is the price decided, and why is it not published?
It comes back with your scope, inside 24 hours, and it is fixed, with what would change it stated in writing. It depends on the size of the company, how many areas come in, and how much material already exists. The ten questions are how that is worked out without taking an hour of your time. Anyone quoting a number for this service is guessing.
Do we need to buy software?
No licence is sold or renewed here. The knowledge base is ordinary files in a repository you own, the agents run inside its environment, and the dashboard is a private address regenerated from the base. Hosting is either mine, in an isolated environment per company, or yours; the price does not change with that choice. What you pay for is development work priced against your scope, never by the hour, and nothing is charged until a scope has been agreed.
What happens if we stop the monthly work, or you are not available?
You keep everything. The files are readable without me, the agent runs in your account, the training is recorded so the next person watches instead of asking, and the rules fit on one page. The monthly work exists so the record does not go stale, and the first month of it is included, but nothing recurs unless you choose it.
Do you have client references?
No, by rule. A mutual NDA is signed before a single document of yours is opened, and it runs both directions, which is why no client is named anywhere on this site. The one reference is the system I built for myself first. In its first seventy-two hours it found a wrong published phone number, sixteen rejected inquiries, and a posting gap between the bank statements and the journal.
What size and kind of company is this for?
Companies where decisions, numbers and clients live in heads, email, chat and scattered drives, and where the AI that has been bought has nothing to read. The ten questions ask which industry you are in, from financial services and legal to manufacturing, real estate and professional services, and how many people, from one to more than fifty. The work is built for businesses that get audited.
Is there a sales call?
No. The ten questions replace the discovery call and take about four minutes. Nothing to look up, no document, no figure, nobody else in the room, and every question is optional except your email and the consent tick. What comes back is a one-page document you can forward to whoever signs, not a brochure.
Who does the work?
I do, personally. It is development work rather than a configuration, so I take a small number of organizations at once. The scope, the work, the daily note and the handover session come from the same person who answers this address.