EWHC CONSULTING
808-779-7637But one of them spends half a day on it every week, because it has to get done and there's nobody else to do it. We build a small system that just does that job, and then it keeps doing it, week after week, without ever turning into somebody's new job.
WHO WE ARE
I'm Patrick Brooks. There's no sales team here and no account manager — the person you talk to on the phone is the person who builds the thing and the person who looks after it afterwards.
My background is energy and operations. Most of what I did was getting messy numbers out of systems that disagreed with each other and working out which one was telling the truth. One job I spent a month on: a power plant everyone thought was running fine. Three of its units were quietly down about ten percent, and the monitoring system hadn't caught it because the thing it was checking against was wrong. It cost them a ladder and an afternoon instead of a warranty claim.
That turned out to be a general habit rather than an energy one. We've built twelve of these systems so far, across a handful of different trades. We work remote, we'll come out if there's a reason to, and we don't charge you for the drive.
Nothing about your business is broken and you're not doing anything wrong. You've built something that works. It just has a few jobs inside it that are pure administration — necessary, repetitive, nobody's idea of a good week — and they get done because somebody stays late or gives up a Sunday.
This is one small, reliable system, built around one of those jobs specifically. It isn't a product with your name typed into it. We watch how the job actually gets done at your place, and then we build the thing that does that — your forms, your files, your way of working, including the parts that are peculiar to you and that no off-the-shelf anything would ever handle.
It runs on its own, on a schedule. The finished work turns up where your paperwork already turns up, and somebody still gives it a look before it goes anywhere — two minutes of checking instead of two hours of doing, and it's the same glance they'd give it today. Nobody learns a new program. Nobody gets another screen to sit in front of.
A real example: it reads your emails and your phone calls, and every morning it hands somebody a list of what actually needs doing — who's waiting on a quote, who asked twice, what you said you'd send and haven't. That's the whole thing. You start with one. What happens when there are two or three of them is section 04 — but nobody sensible starts there.
Six of the ones we get asked for most, with roughly what each takes us to build. Yours might be on here — and if it isn't, that's normal.
Every morning: who's waiting on you, who asked twice, what you promised and haven't sent.
Sorted, totalled, and matched against what you ordered. Instead of a shoebox and a Sunday.
Quotes, follow-ups, scheduling — waiting in your drafts folder to check and send. Never sent on their own.
"What did we charge the Hendersons in 2019?" Without interrupting the one person who remembers.
So a permit, a claim or an invoice doesn't come back three weeks later over one missing page.
Jobs done, money in, what slipped, what's coming. One page, on its own, every week.
We've built these before, so we're not starting from scratch on yours. If your job is close to one we've already done it's three to six hours rather than fifteen — and we'll tell you that up front rather than charging you for the version we already know how to build.
And that list is not a menu — it's only what we get asked for most. Every business has its own particular thing, and it's usually not on anybody's list: a filing cabinet that gets cross-checked against a spreadsheet every Friday, the same numbers re-typed into three different places, one person who's the only one who knows where something lives. If you can describe the job on the phone, there is almost always a version of it we can build. The odd ones nobody else has thought to automate are often the best value, precisely because nobody has ever measured what they cost you.
Most jobs are ten to sixteen hours, so somewhere around three to five thousand. You'll have that number in writing, along with roughly when it'll be done, before you commit anything.
Before we start, you tell us what an hour of that person's time is worth. We time the job before, and again after. The difference is what it saved. If it saves you nothing, we get nothing.
We work the number out once, at the three month mark, and then it stops moving. We won't come back and re-measure it and it won't go up. That's what keeps it working when something it relies on changes, and gets it altered when your business does.
ON A TYPICAL JOB
It pays for itself
in month four.
After that you're paying about a tenth of what it's saving you, every month, for as long as you want to keep it.
| A job that took your office manager 8 hours a week now takes 45 minutes | 35 hrs / mo |
| You told us her time is worth $40 an hour | $1,400 / mo |
| Building it | $4,500 |
| Months one to three, at 70¢ | $980 / mo |
| Every month after that | $140 / mo |
ONE THING, PLAINLY
This is not about getting rid of anybody.
You're already paying these people. The whole point is getting them off the paperwork and back onto the work you hired them for — and we'd turn a job down if that weren't the point.
One of these takes a few hours a week off somebody. Two or three of them running together is a different thing entirely — and it's worth knowing that before you start.
Every one we build sits on the same foundations: the same connection to your email, your files and your accounting, the same way of checking its own work before it hands anything over. So the second one costs less than the first, and the third costs less again, because most of the plumbing is already in and already paid for.
BUILT FROM SCRATCH
MOST OF IT IS ALREADY THERE
AND THE ONE AFTER THAT
The more interesting part is what happens once they can see each other. The system reading your email knows what your invoice system has already been paid for, so it stops chasing people who've settled up. The Monday summary stops being a list of jobs and starts being an actual picture of the week, because the money, the schedule and the paperwork are all in front of it at once. Each one you add quietly makes the ones already running better.
That's the ceiling on this, and it's higher than people expect. A business running four or five of these has moved a real share of its administration off its people — not by buying a big system and retraining everybody one grim Tuesday, but one job at a time, each one usually paid for by the one before it.
Nobody sensible starts there. Start with the single job you'd most like off your plate. Live with it for a few months. Add a second only when you can see exactly where it fits — and if we don't think there's a second one worth building, we'll say so.
This is the part people worry about, so here it is plainly. Your people don't have to run it, learn it or babysit it — but they're not cut out of it either.
A FEW HOURS, ONCE
EVERY WEEK, ON ITS OWN
IN THE BACKGROUND
It sits on your own computer or your own online account, not ours. If we parted ways tomorrow it would carry on doing its job. Nothing switches off, ever.
Four things, and we've tried hard to only put things here that we can actually keep.
What you pay us each month isn't a flat bill — it's a share of what we measured the system saving you. If it saves you more, we make more. If it stops being worth anything, so does our fee.
We're not trying to sell you a subscription and hope you forget about it. There's no version of this where we do well out of you keeping something that isn't working.
It's an estimate, not a hard deadline, and we'd rather be straight about that. Sometimes a job looks simple from the outside and turns out messier once we're into the actual files. That happens, and anybody who promises otherwise hasn't done many of these.
What we will promise: if it's going to take longer or cost more than we said, you hear it from us before we do the extra work — not afterwards on an invoice. And you can stop there if you want to.
A phone call, about twenty minutes. You tell us which job you'd most like off your plate and we tell you honestly whether there's anything in it.
Then, if it sounds worthwhile, about half a day. Mostly over the phone and screen. We watch the job actually get done, time it properly so we both know what it's really costing, and look at the files it uses. At the end you get a written estimate.
Nothing is signed and nothing is owed. If we can't find something worth clearly more than it costs to fix, we'll tell you that and leave it there — that does happen. Anything we work out along the way is yours to keep and use, including doing it yourself or handing it to somebody else.
You own it outright. It sits on your machine or your own online account, not ours. There's no contract and no notice period — stop the monthly whenever you like and it keeps running exactly as it did. You'd just stop getting us when it needs repairing or changing.
If we part ways for good: your data is left exactly where it is and we never log into anything again. We don't keep copies, we don't take anything with us, and everything on our side stops that day. You keep the system, the files, and every bit of work it ever produced.
Twenty minutes. You tell us which job you'd most like off your plate. If there's nothing here worth doing, we'll say so on that call.
About half a day, over the phone and screen. We time it properly, so we both know what it's actually costing you. Nothing signed.
A real number and a real estimate of the date. You say yes or no. Nothing happens until you do.
You compare the two before you trust it. That week is where people stop worrying about it, because they can see it's right.
The work turns up done. Three months in we measure once more, settle on the monthly number, and after that you mostly won't hear from us.
Nobody likes finding this out later, so here it is before you ask.
If you call it off part way through the build
You owe the rest of the quoted price, and you keep everything we've built so far plus the written description of how it works. We turned down other work to hold that time — that's the honest reason, not a penalty.
If you stop the monthly
Nothing happens, at first. It keeps running and we don't come and take anything away. What stops is us — no repairs when something it relies on changes, no alterations when your business does. Eventually something upstream changes and it breaks, and it stays that way until you call.
If you want us back later
Call. We'll quote the repair, and there's a restart charge of six months of your monthly amount. Not to punish anybody — just so somebody who stopped for a year isn't better off than somebody who stayed.
If we part ways for good
Your data is left exactly where it is and we never log into anything again. No copies kept, nothing taken, everything on our side stops that day.
Do we have to learn anything?
Close to nothing. There's no new program to log into and no training day. The finished work turns up where your paperwork already turns up, and somebody gives it the same once-over they'd give it now. If it hits something that needs a real decision, it asks one of your people in an email, in plain English — and that's the only time it needs anybody. We're not going to pretend it's literally zero: the goal is that it's easy, not that it's invisible.
Is this AI? I don't know anything about that.
Yes, in part — it's one more tool in the toolbox, not a replacement for how you run the place. You don't need to know anything about it, and we're not going to make you sit through an explanation. The only thing you have to judge is whether the job got easier and by how much — and we'll have measured that together, before and after.
$300 an hour sounds steep.
It is, and the number to look at isn't the rate — it's the total, once, against a job that comes round every week forever. You'll have the full estimate before you commit a penny, and you can say no with nothing spent.
We're pretty small. Are we too small for this?
Probably not, and we'd rather you rang and found out. There's no minimum. If one person does the same job every month and it eats a chunk of their week, there's something here. If there genuinely isn't, we'll tell you on the call — and we'd still rather have had the conversation.
What if it gets something wrong?
It's built to catch itself first. Every time it runs, it checks its own work against something separate, and if that doesn't line up it stops and emails us rather than handing you something that looks right and isn't. Anything needing real judgement, it asks a person.
Are you going to tell me to let somebody go?
No, and we'd turn the job down if that were the point. You're already paying these people. The whole idea is getting them off the paperwork and back onto the work.
Who else have you done this for?
Twelve of these so far, though most of it is work we can't put names to. We'd rather tell you that straight than show you a wall of logos. The first look is free precisely so you can judge the work instead of the reference list.
What if you get hit by a bus?
It's on your machine and it keeps running. Everything it's made is already in your files. You get a written description of how it works at handover, so somebody else could pick it up — and the old way of doing the job gets written down too, on purpose, so there's always a way back.
Twenty minutes, no charge, and no follow-up unless you ask for one. Tell us what's eating your week and we'll tell you straight whether there's anything in it.
No forms. No sales call. No follow-up emails you didn't ask for.