/ Pricing
We don’t publish prices. We publish how we price.
BusinessDawg engagements are custom-scoped on a 15-minute call. We don’t publish numbers because the cheapest engagement and the biggest one share zero ingredients — quoting either would lie about the other. What we can publish is how we actually quote, what affects the scope, and exactly what you will know before you sign.
Why no public prices
A landing page that ships in two weeks and a full web product with AI workflows that ships in twelve do not belong on the same price sheet. Listing “starting at $X” would either over-quote the small engagement or under-quote the big one. Both options cost the operator-founder real money.
We also do not run a productized retainer model where the price is the same every month regardless of what shipped. That model is fine for some studios. It is not ours. Our engagements end. The hand-off ends them.
Hiding the number is not a sales tactic. It is an accuracy tactic. The number we quote on the call will be the number on the SOW.
How we quote
Every engagement starts with a 15-minute call. No decks. We ask for the outcome you need, the timeline you have, and the bottleneck you think the engagement is pointing at. By the end of that call we either tell you which system from the Systems Stack fits, propose a custom scope built on one or two systems as the anchor, or tell you honestly that we are not the right studio for what you need.
After the call, we send a written scope within 48 hours: outcome, deliverables, timeline, price, and what hand-off looks like. If you sign, the engagement starts that week. If you do not, the call cost nothing.
What affects the price
Four variables move the number. Naming them upfront lets you self-scope before the call.
- Scope depth — a brand identity is a different shape than a full marketing infrastructure rollout. One system is cheaper than three. Productized is cheaper than custom.
- Timeline pressure — a 4-week engagement compresses what a 10-week one absorbs. Compression has a price; so does patience. We quote both.
- Hand-off complexity — engagements that include team training, runbooks, and live operating support cost more than engagements that hand off a static doc set. We default to real hand-off.
- Ownership of stack — using your existing tools is cheaper than us picking and configuring new ones. Migration work earns its scope.
What you will know before you sign
- The outcome the engagement is scoped to move — the specific number, by the specific date.
- The deliverables, named explicitly and ordered by week.
- The price — fixed for the scope, not estimate-to-actual.
- The hand-off — what artifacts you own, what training is included, and the day we leave.
- The escape — what happens if the engagement is not working at the halfway review. We do not lock teams into engagements that have stopped shipping.
Productized first. Custom on top.
The Systems Stack is five productized systems. Each one is sized to a known shape: outcome, timeline, deliverables, hand-off. Productized engagements are quoted at the call.
When the work is genuinely multi-system or genuinely deep, we scope a custom engagement built on one or two productized systems as the anchor. The custom work earns its scope from the proven shape underneath. Custom engagements are still quoted fixed-price — we just need a longer call (30 minutes) to scope them.
If you are not sure which one you need, that is the call. We will name it with you.
Scoped on a call
Find out what your system would actually cost.
15 minutes. No decks. You leave the call with a clear sense of scope, timeline, and whether the engagement is worth booking. The call itself is free.