Engagements
Three stages. You can stop after any of them.
Nearly everyone starts with the audit, because neither of us can scope a build honestly without it. What you pay for the audit comes off the build if you go ahead, and the written plan is yours either way.
Stage one
The Workflow Audit
Two weeks. I sit with how your work actually moves, not how the org chart says it moves, and come back with a written answer to four questions.
Where is the manual work really?
Mapped step by step, with rough hours attached, so the expensive parts are obvious rather than assumed.
What is safe to automate here?
And just as importantly, what is not. Some steps should stay human, and I will tell you which and why.
What does your compliance already allow?
Existing agreements, what they cover, and where a new one would be needed before anything is built.
What would it cost and in what order?
A phased plan with prices, sequenced so the first phase pays for itself before the second starts.
You keep the plan regardless. If you take it to someone else, or build it in house, or decide the honest answer is that automation is not your problem right now, that is a fine outcome and you have still had the question answered properly.
Stage two
Build the system
One or two workflows taken all the way into production and actually used. The range is real rather than a placeholder: the low end is a single-phase build inside tools you already own, the high end is a multi-market intake and acquisition system.
Built on accounts in your name
Hosting, database, analytics, ad accounts. If we part ways you change the passwords and nothing breaks. No hostage situation.
Inside your existing compliance
Where an existing agreement already covers it, I build there rather than introducing a new vendor and a new signature.
A human checkpoint on anything consequential
Approval steps where the stakes justify them, and a fail-toward-a-person default everywhere else.
The audit trail from day one
Append-only record of what happened and why. Retrofitting this later is painful, so it goes in at the start.
Your team trained on it
Written runbook plus a working session. A system nobody understands gets abandoned in a fortnight.
Monitoring before handover
Alerting so a silent failure surfaces immediately. I have learned this one the hard way on my own systems.
Stage three
Run it with you
Optional, and genuinely so. Some clients take the build and run it themselves. Most would rather someone kept watching it, because an automation nobody is monitoring is a liability waiting to be discovered.
Watch
A built system that mostly needs to keep working.
- +Monitoring and alerting on the whole pipeline
- +Prompt and rule tuning as your work changes
- +Monthly report on volume, routing and exceptions
- +Small changes and fixes
Most engagements
Operate
You want the system improving, not just running.
- +Everything in Watch
- +A new workflow or phase each quarter
- +Reporting built for your leadership, not just for me
- +Priority turnaround on changes
- +Quarterly review of what to automate next
Own the outcome
You want one person accountable for the whole funnel.
- +Everything in Operate
- +Paid acquisition managed end to end
- +Search and answer-engine work ongoing
- +Compliance monitoring as rules change
- +Client-facing reporting on your approval
Things worth saying before you enquire
Software and ad spend are separate
Hosting, databases, tracking and any advertising budget are billed to your accounts at cost. I do not mark them up, and you can see every line.
I will turn work down
If your problem is a process problem wearing an automation costume, automating it makes it faster and worse. I would rather say that at the audit than six weeks into a build.
You are hiring one person
That means direct access and no account manager in between. It also means I take on a small number of clients at a time, so start dates are real constraints.
No long lock-in on the retainer
Build engagements are milestone-based and finite. Retainers run month to month unless a specific engagement warrants a term, in which case it is agreed up front and in writing.
The audit is the right first step for almost everyone.
Questions people ask
What does the whole thing cost, end to end?
The Workflow Audit is $2,500. A build is $6,000 to $25,000 depending on how many workflows it covers. Running it afterwards is $1,500, $4,500 or $9,500 a month. These are prices that have actually been charged, not a rate card written to look impressive.
Do I have to do all three stages?
No. You can stop after any of them. Plenty of people take the audit, get the plan, and build it themselves or hand it to their own team. That is a normal outcome and you owe nothing further.
Is the audit fee really credited against a build?
Yes. If you proceed to a build within ninety days, the full $2,500 comes off the build price.
Why is there no cheap monthly tier?
Because a system doing regulated work with a person in the loop needs someone accountable for it, and there is no honest version of that for a few hundred a month. Watch at $1,500 is the floor: monitoring, tuning as your work changes, and a monthly report. Below that I would be selling attention I could not actually give.
What happens to the system if we stop working together?
You keep all of it. Everything is built inside the systems and the accounts you already own, so there is nothing to hand back and nothing that stops working when I do. That is deliberate, and it is why nothing here is built on a platform only I can log into.
Who am I actually hiring?
Me. Playground Giants is one person, not an agency with a bench. That is the trade: you get a named senior person on your work, and I take on fewer engagements than an agency would.