Twelve AI
Workflows.

1. AGREE AND ADVANCE
"Thanks for the heads-up. Before we book a call, send the renewal terms in
writing with the increase broken out by line item. If the numbers hold up
I will sign this week; if not, the call is where we fix them. Friday 2pm
or Monday 10am work."

2. PUSH BACK
"I want to renew, and 20 percent is not a number I can take to my CFO.
Our volume is up 30 percent year over year, which usually earns a better
rate, not a worse one. Send me a revised figure that reflects that and I
will turn it around in 48 hours."

3. GRACEFUL STALL
"Renewal is on my list this week. I am mid-quarter-close through next
Wednesday, so I will come back to you Thursday with either a signature or
questions. If the deadline moves before then, tell me now."

THE MESSAGE
"You have been clear from day one that the September date matters, and
your team has put real work into this launch. I want to be straight with
you: we will not hit September 12, and the honest new date is September
26. The asset approvals we needed by August 1 closed on August 19, and I
chose not to compress testing to swallow the gap, because you would pay
for that later. Here is the reset: revised timeline attached today,
approvals now have a 48-hour turnaround window on both sides, and I will
send a two-line status every Friday so nothing surprises either of us
again."

SHORT VERSION
"September 12 is no longer honest, and I will not pretend otherwise. New
date: September 26, driven by the August approval slip. Revised plan
attached; Friday updates from here on."

DO NOT USE
1. "We may experience some delays" (it already happened; own it)
2. "Due to circumstances beyond our control" (blame-shifting mush)
3. "Hopefully we can" (hope is not a plan)

DECISIONS MADE
1. Launch moves to October 3. Nobody re-litigates this before September 15.
2. Pricing page ships with three tiers, not four; the enterprise tier
   moves to a "talk to us" link.

ACTION ITEMS
| Owner     | Task                                    | Deadline    |
|-----------|-----------------------------------------|-------------|
| Dana      | Revised launch plan to the channel      | Fri, Aug 8  |
| Marcus    | Three-tier pricing page copy            | Wed, Aug 13 |
| [UNCLEAR] | Update the sales deck for the new tiers | [UNCLEAR]   |

OPEN QUESTIONS
1. Does the annual-plan discount survive the tier change? Raised twice,
   decided never.
2. Who owns the launch-day support rota? Two names floated, no owner.

SITUATION
The scheduling tool breaks roughly weekly and two people spend most of a
day each week patching it. The vendor ended support in March. Every month
of delay costs about one person-week of engineering time.

OPTIONS
| Option          | Cost           | Risk                    | Speed    |
|-----------------|----------------|-------------------------|----------|
| Keep patching   | 1 wk/mo, rising| Fails during peak season| n/a      |
| Replace, buy    | License fee    | Migration surprises     | 6 weeks  |
| Replace, build  | 2 eng-months   | Scope creep, key-person | 10+ weeks|

RECOMMENDATION
Buy. The patching cost passes the license cost within a quarter, and
peak season starts in nine weeks, which only the buy option beats.

WHAT I NEED FROM YOU
Approval to start the two-week migration pilot by Friday, August 15.

THE OUTCOME
The Monday client email is in the client's inbox by 10am, accurate
against all three sources, and requires zero corrections during the week.

THE STEPS (of 7, trimmed)
1. Open the project tracker board; filter to "Done last 7 days."
2. Copy the three most client-visible items into the WINS section of the
   template (template link in the shared drive, "Client Weekly" folder).
3. Check the support queue for anything tagged [client name] and open
   longer than 5 days; those go under RISKS, each with a next step.
...
DECISION RIGHTS
Decide alone: wording, ordering, which wins lead. Check with me first:
anything touching money, dates we committed to, or an apology.

QUALITY BAR
[ ] Every claim traces to one of the three sources
[ ] No item copied from last week unchanged
[ ] A named next step under every risk

COMMON MISTAKES
1. Padding WINS with internal work the client cannot see.
2. Listing a risk without an owner and a next step, which reads as alarm.

PREMORTEM (5, trimmed to 3)
1. You hired for the work you HAVE, and the work changed in a quarter;
   now you have a salary and no role.
2. You skipped writing the role down, so they became your assistant
   instead of the owner of anything, and you are still the bottleneck.
3. Revenue stayed flat; the salary compressed runway and every decision
   after month two was made scared.

HIDDEN ASSUMPTIONS
You assume the drowning is a volume problem, not a process problem. You
assume you know which tasks transfer; you have never listed them. You
assume full-time is the only shape that fixes this.

THE CHEAP TEST
Write the delegation packet for the top three tasks first, then buy 15
hours a week of contractor time for one month against those packets. If
the hours stick and the packets survive contact, hire.

THE VERDICT FRAME
Go ahead if the contractor month clears 12 of 15 hours a week and at
least one task leaves your head entirely. Walk away if you cannot write
the three packets, because then the problem is process, and a hire would
inherit the chaos instead of ending it.

CRITERIA (weighted): ease of daily use 30, will-the-team-actually-use-it
25, client-facing reporting 20, migration effort 15, admin overhead 10.

VERDICT BY SCENARIO
Choose A if the team's real problem is forgetting tasks, not planning
them; it wins on daily ease and loses on reporting.
Choose B if a client-facing status view matters weekly; it carries the
best reporting and the worst first-month adoption curve.
Choose C only if someone on the team volunteers to own setup; flexible,
and flexibility unowned becomes mess.

THE GOTCHAS
A: fine at 6 people, strains at 15, and migrations out of it are manual.
B: the reporting you buy it for lives in the higher tier. UNKNOWN whether
   the entry tier exports client views; ask before signing.
C: every team builds a different system in it; yours is only as good as
   its most disciplined user.

ASK BEFORE SIGNING: What does export look like the day we leave? Which of
these features are on the tier we would actually buy? What does support
cost after the first year?

LEVEL 1: RAG means the AI looks things up in your documents before it
answers, instead of answering from memory.

LEVEL 2: It is an open-book exam instead of a closed-book one. A model
answering from memory is a smart student recalling what it studied
months ago; sometimes wrong, always confident. RAG hands that student
your binder first: the answer comes from the pages it just read, and it
can show you which pages.

LEVEL 3 (trimmed): Retrieval Augmented Generation. Your documents are
split into chunks and indexed; your question retrieves the most relevant
chunks; the model answers using them. It matters when the knowledge is
yours, changes often, or must be traceable. Its limit: retrieval quality
caps answer quality; if the right chunk is not found, the model reasons
beautifully from the wrong pages.

WHAT PEOPLE GET WRONG: RAG does not "train the model on your data."
Nothing is learned or retained; it is lookup at question time.

THE MEETING TEST: "Before we budget for fine-tuning, would RAG over our
own docs get us there, since our content changes monthly?"

TONE: Direct, warm, unhurried, concrete, lightly dry.

RHYTHM: Short sentences, median around ten words. One-sentence
paragraphs for emphasis. Lists of exactly three.

SIGNATURE MOVES: Opens with the point, never a greeting ramp. "Here is
where I landed." Ends with a single concrete next step and a date.

NEVER: Exclamation marks. "Just checking in." Hedges like "I think
maybe." Corporate verbs: leverage, circle back, align.

INSTRUCTION BLOCK
WRITE AS ME: Open with the point in the first sentence; no greeting
warm-up. Short declarative sentences, about ten words. One idea per
paragraph; single-sentence paragraphs allowed for emphasis. Lists come
in threes. Warm but never effusive; zero exclamation marks. Close with
one concrete next step and a date. Ban: just checking in, leverage,
circle back, I think maybe.

SORTED: 5 MUST, 6 SHOULD, 8 COULD.

THE THREE WINS
1. Send the proposal (it unblocks revenue; nothing else on the list
   does).
2. Prep Thursday's client workshop (fixed date, reputation-priced).
3. Write the overdue invoice and the follow-up (money already earned).

THE WEEK (trimmed): Mon 2h proposal draft, 1h invoice + follow-up. Tue
client day, untouched. Wed 2h proposal finish + send, 1h workshop prep.
Thu client day + workshop. Fri 2h buffer, then the park list only if the
three wins are done.

PARK LIST (8 items): website refresh, podcast idea, tool migration,
inbox zero, the course outline, new CRM research, headshot, LinkedIn
banner.

SAY NO TO: the "quick advisory chat" with no agenda. The sentence:
"I keep a tight calendar mid-quarter. Send me the two questions in
writing and I will answer this week; if it needs more than that, my
first open slot is in three weeks."

PURPOSE: Every new client starts with the same clean first week, without
the founder touching it.

WHEN TO RUN IT: The day a signed agreement lands.

STEPS (of 8, trimmed)
1. Duplicate the "Client Template" folder in the shared drive; rename to
   the client name.
2. Send the kickoff email from the saved template ("Kickoff v3" in
   drafts); attach the intake form; set the reply-by date to +3 business
   days.
3. Create the invoice from the template; terms as signed; send from the
   billing tool, not email.
...
IF THIS THEN THAT
If the intake form is not back by the reply-by date, send the one-line
nudge template. If payment terms differ from standard, stop and confirm
with the owner before sending the invoice.

DONE LOOKS LIKE
[ ] Folder exists and matches the template structure
[ ] Kickoff sent, intake date in the calendar
[ ] Invoice sent from the billing tool, copy in the folder

COMMON MISTAKES: Sending the invoice from email (it skips the payment
tracking), and personalizing the kickoff so heavily the reply-by date
falls out.