How to Prepare for an Ai Readiness Assessment: A 20-Minute Pre-Call Checklist
Twenty minutes of focused prep before the discovery call roughly doubles what we can find for you on the call. Here are the five steps, with the worked examples we wish every owner brought to the table.
What to bring
A short list of repeated tasks, a rough loaded hourly cost for each, two places revenue leaks, three tool names, and one constraint. Twenty minutes total. No logins, no screenshots, no spreadsheets.
Step 1: List the 5 most repeated tasks on your week (5 min)
Open a blank note and write the five tasks you or your team do most often each week. Be specific. "Email" is not a task. "Replying to the same five customer questions about appointment times" is. The aim is to surface the small, repetitive work that quietly fills the calendar.
For each one, write the person who does it and roughly how long it takes per week. A rough number is fine. You will revise it on the call.
Use these prompts to get unstuck:
- What did you or your team do this Monday that you'll do again next Monday in roughly the same way?
- What is the first thing your office manager opens every morning?
- What task gets you the most "did you see my email?" follow-ups?
- What is the thing that, if it skipped a week, would cause cash flow or customer noise?
- What does your team complain about quietly without expecting it to change?
Step 2: Estimate the loaded hourly cost of who does each (3 min)
Next to each task, write the rough loaded hourly cost of the person doing it. Loaded means salary plus benefits plus overhead, divided by working hours. If you do not know the exact number, use the band below. We just need order of magnitude.
Quick reference
Admin / front desk: $25 to $40 per hour. Mid-level (estimator, coordinator, marketer): $50 to $80. Senior (lead, manager, licensed professional): $100 to $200. Owner / partner: $200 and up. These are rough US small-business loaded costs in 2026; close enough for prioritization, not for payroll.
The point of this step is not accounting precision. It is to make sure the conversation focuses on the tasks where the math is biggest. A 2-hour-per-week task done by the owner is worth far more attention than an 8-hour-per-week task done by a part-time admin.
Step 3: Write down the 2 places revenue currently leaks (5 min)
Name two places where revenue is actively walking out the door. Not "we could grow faster." Specific leaks. These are usually the highest-ROI items in the entire assessment, and the ones owners avoid writing down because they feel like admissions.
Common examples to spark the answer:
- Invoices that go out late or do not get chased when unpaid.
- Inbound leads that wait more than 24 hours for a first reply.
- Quotes or estimates that go quiet and never get a follow-up.
- Repeat customers we do not contact between purchases.
- Refund requests, reschedules, or cancellations that nobody analyzes.
- Reviews we never ask for.
If you genuinely cannot name two, write "don't know" and we will figure it out together. That is a valid answer.
Step 4: List your top 3 software tools by usage (2 min)
Names only. Three tools your business actually depends on. Examples: QuickBooks, Jobber, Gmail, HubSpot, Calendly, Square. We are not auditing your stack on the call. We are getting the lay of the land so we can recommend Ai tools that fit, not Ai tools that fight your existing systems.
Do not log in to anything. Do not share screenshots. Do not pull up usage reports. The goal is two minutes, not two hours. If you cannot name them quickly, that is also a useful answer.
Step 5: Note one constraint we should respect (5 min)
Write down one thing the assessment should not try to change. Constraints make recommendations sharper, not weaker. They keep us from suggesting things that would be technically correct and operationally impossible.
Common constraints owners bring:
- "I am not replacing my office manager. Don't propose anything that does."
- "We are staying on QuickBooks. Don't propose migrating accounting."
- "No customer-facing voice bots. Our brand is a human picking up the phone."
- "Budget for new tools is $300 per month combined, not per tool."
- "I have 4 hours a week to spend on this, not 4 hours a day."
One is enough. More is welcome. The point is to make sure the report you get back is one you would actually act on.
Want a head start before the call?
The 3-minute Ai Readiness Scorecard covers Steps 1, 3, and 5 in light form, and gives you a rough read on where you sit. Free, no email required to see the result.
Take the 3-minute scorecardWhat you do NOT need to bring
Just as important as the prep list is the list of things that waste your time. You do not need to prepare any of the following before the discovery call.
- A financial statement, P&L, or balance sheet. We do not need them and would not analyze them on a 20-minute call.
- Logins to any of your software tools.
- A list of Ai tools you have already researched. We will ask, but you do not need to come with a comparison matrix.
- A strategy document, mission statement, or org chart.
- Specific metrics, KPIs, or dashboards. Rough numbers are fine.
- Your team on the call. The owner or office manager alone is the right room.
The 24 hours after the call
The discovery call is 20 minutes. What happens in the 24 hours after it is where the assessment earns its keep. We write up an initial read while the call is fresh and send you a short email confirming the scope of the report, the three to five priorities we will dig into, and anything we need clarified before we start. If something does not look like a fit, we say so in that email and refund. If it is a fit, the full written report follows within 3 working days. There is no separate "kickoff call" or onboarding sequence; the call is the kickoff.
Frequently asked questions
What if I'm not the owner but the office manager?
Office managers are usually better at this prep than owners are, because the repetitive tasks live closer to them. Bring the answers you can confidently fill in, and flag the ones that need owner input (especially Step 3 on revenue leaks). If you can get 15 minutes with the owner before the call to confirm Step 3 and Step 5, the assessment lands on much firmer ground. If you can't, we'll work with what you have.
What if I can only think of 3 tasks for step 1, not 5?
Three is plenty. The five-task target is a forcing function, not a quota. Three confident, specific tasks beat five vague ones every time. If three is what you have, write down three and mark the prep complete. Vague entries like "admin stuff" or "follow-ups" do not help us; specific entries like "manually re-keying invoices from email into QuickBooks" do.
What if my answer to step 3 is, "I genuinely have no idea where revenue leaks"?
Write that down as the answer. It is one of the most useful inputs you can bring. "Don't know" tells us where to spend the first half of the call. Often the leaks are obvious once we ask three or four follow-up questions, and the fact that they were not visible from the inside is itself a signal about what to fix. Do not invent an answer to look prepared.
Ready when you are
Twenty minutes of prep, a 20-minute call, and a 3-day written report. That is the whole shape of the engagement. If you want to see what the report looks like before you book, the sample is below. If you are ready to book the call, the button does the rest.