The next shape
of Enquirer.
What was said on Tuesday, both sides.
Dan
Michelle
Three companies, one shared bench, under ten people.
| Entity | What it is | Who holds it |
|---|---|---|
| Enquirer Media Group | Business Enquirer magazine, editorial, the podcast, media sales. Fifteen years of relationships with operators worldwide. | Jamie, wholly. |
| Enquirer AI | The outbound engine: LinkedIn, email, the data, the reply desks, the daily editions, the client AI brains. | Dan and Jamie, equal. |
| Enquirer Consulting Group | The high-ticket layer: design, staff and run a client's outbound unit for a fixed engagement, then hand it over. US medical mid-market first. | Dan and Jamie, equal. Dan runs point. |
Live delivery since the summer: several client engagements running and invoiced across the UK and the US, and our own engine live in the US market. Bootstrapped, and staying that way for as long as humanly possible.
| Person | Today |
|---|---|
| Dan Reeves | Founder. Every client build, every proposal and close, the engine, the AI, the finance rails, and most of the day-to-day. |
| Jamie Waite | Co-founder. CEO of the media group. The relationships. The podcast is about to become his lane. |
| Ben Beattie | Go-to-market director. Delivery lead, lists, email infrastructure, runs point on the smaller client accounts. Dan's childhood friend, brought in this year, "smashed it out of the park". |
| Matt Marani, Paul Smaldone | US sales. Chicago and New Jersey. Both run first and second discovery calls alone. Paul is also the medical-industry mentor. |
| Natoya Rimmer | Head of finance since August. Billing, collection, reconciliation. Already running on her own AI finance brain. |
| Paris | Social and video, across both businesses. |
| Roisin, Sophie | Media group operations and billing. |
Everything routes through one person. Ad hoc, all day.
Dan's own diagnosis on Tuesday. Not a complaint about anyone: it is how a bootstrapped business looks the month before it decides to grow up. The next eight slides are the shape he wants by 31 December. Your job in this hour is to tell him where it is wrong.
Six lanes, each with an owner, each with a daily edition.
| Lane | Owner | Owns by year end | Dan's part by then |
|---|---|---|---|
| Relationships and the top of the funnel | Jamie | The podcast funnel: US operators invited on, interviewed, warmed, introduced. The media group kept in good order. Every guest handed to sales inside 24 hours. | Receives the introduction. Nothing else. |
| Sales, end to end | Matt, Paul | Discovery one and two (already), the proposal call, the number, the close, the agreement, the kickoff. Their own AI brains. | Reviews the deck before it is presented. Not on the call. |
| Deployment and operations | Ben | Client builds, campaign writes, the daily editions, the reply desks, the portal, the client AI brains. What Dan does now. | Architecture, the first of any new kind of build, the hard technical cases. |
| Money | Natoya | Billing, collection, reconciliation, month end (already). Plus the operations admin around it: subscriptions, cards, supplier terms, the podcast production run. | Approves anything that changes what a client owes. Signs. |
| Content and social | Paris | Clips and posts from every podcast, the group's social calendar, client social where sold, on an AI-assisted pipeline. | Sets the doctrine once. Reviews monthly. |
| The product and the engine | Dan | The engine, the AI, the new client-brain product, the enterprise push, the proposals until the sellers can. | This is the job. Everything above is what has to leave it. |
The mechanism is the same one running for a US client's sales team today: a daily edition per person, built overnight from the systems, that says what to do today and why. No daily list, no lane.
Five fixed slots a week. Nothing else needs a meeting.
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Everything outside these slots goes in the person's daily edition, or in a written note that the edition picks up. WhatsApp is for the urgent and the social, not for decisions. Times are Dan's first draft; the structure is what we are asking you to pressure-test.
Relationships as the job. Two or three conversations a day, and no more.
The engine invites
US operators in the markets we sell into get a personal invitation onto the Business Enquirer podcast. No pitch. The engine finds and writes; Jamie approves.
Jamie hosts
Thirty to forty minutes on their business and their industry. A conversation, not an interview. The microphone arrives today.
The warm handoff
Within 24 hours: "that sounds like exactly what we do, you should talk to Dan." The introduction is the product of the hour.
Sales takes it
Matt or Paul, or Dan while they ramp, books the discovery call. The episode goes out and the guest shares it.
Content flows
Paris cuts the clips. The group's social calendar fills itself. Every guest becomes a month of posts.
The day shape
Mornings are the media group. Afternoons are the US: recordings at 14:00, 15:00 and, at a push, 16:00 UK. Three days a week, never five. Ten to twelve conversations a week at full tilt, and a hard stop so it stays fun.
What we read
Invitations sent, guests booked, recorded, introduced, discovery calls booked. The hand-off rate is the number that matters. Jamie's Monday edition carries it.
A daily list he did not have to write, and six weeks to make him dangerous with it.
His 7am edition
- Today's guests, with a two-minute brief on each: the business, the person, three questions, the thing we would sell them.
- Yesterday's guests, owed the thank-you and the introduction. Nothing ends on the guest.
- The media group, what needs him today: an advertiser, an editorial sign-off, a rep who needs a decision.
- The group, two lines: cash position, one thing Dan needs a yes on.
- Mondays, the week's numbers for his lane.
Six Friday sessions with Dan
| Week | He leaves able to |
|---|---|
| 1 | Research any guest or company in three minutes and trust the result. |
| 2 | Draft an invitation, a thank-you and an introduction in his own voice, from his own brain. |
| 3 | Read his edition, correct it by replying to it, and see the correction land the next day. |
| 4 | Turn a recording into show notes, a description and five posts, without Paris. |
| 5 | Run the media group's weekly numbers and the reps' follow-up list from his own brain. |
| 6 | Explain what we sell, on the engine's evidence, to a guest who asks. |
The same pattern already built for Natoya and for a US seller: a workspace in the browser, his voice and his rules in files, drafts by default, nothing installed.
"Mini-me" is the wrong word. The right one is: nothing waits on Dan.
What "like Dan" means, in plain jobs
- A client build from a call recording to a live campaign, including the list, the messages, the approvals and the write.
- The daily editions: build one for a new client, change one on a client's word, read the morning log.
- The reply desks and the hand-offs without a hold behind Dan.
- A client AI brain, packaged and installed on a two-hour call.
- The portal, the pages, the deploys. Stand a site up, take one down, know when it is really live.
- The proposal deck and the package sheet, costed, for a seller to present.
- The money rails, read-only: what is owed, what is due, what a client's account looks like before a call.
The ladder, one rung a fortnight
- Shadow. Ben watches Dan do it once, with the recording kept.
- Do it with Dan reading back. Ben does the second one; Dan checks the readback, not the work.
- Do it alone, readback only. Third time: Ben runs it, the readback goes in the log, Dan reads the log on Tuesday.
- Own it. The fourth time it is Ben's, and it appears in his edition, not Dan's.
The house rule already written down in August: anything done the same way three times becomes a script or a checklist. That is what makes the fourth rung safe. Dan keeps the first of anything new. Ben gets the second and the third. By year end the list on the left has been through the ladder, in that order, top to bottom.
From two calls to the whole cycle, one rung a month.
| By | The sellers do | Dan does |
|---|---|---|
| Today | Discovery one and two alone. Second call booked live on every first call, no check-in. They own their own follow-up by text and phone when email goes quiet. | Builds the proposal deck and the package, presents the number live, closes, signs, kicks off. |
| End of September | One of them shapes and prices a live proposal himself, with the number and the terms his call. A named experiment, one deal, already agreed this week. | Writes it up, sits on the call, says nothing unless asked. |
| End of October | Present the proposal call themselves from a deck the engine built from their own two transcripts. Handle the objections with the house sheet. | Reviews the deck the day before. Off the call. |
| End of November | The close, the agreement and the kickoff booked, in their own diary, with finance copied. | Signs. |
| 31 December | End to end. Their own AI brains carry the offer, the proof, the objections and every past call they have had. Their commission follows the deal, not the hand-holding. | Rides only the enterprise deals, and the first of any new kind. |
The kit that makes it possible exists: the three-call cycle written down, the deck built from the transcripts, the objection sheet, the package sheet, and an AI brain each, paid for by the business since this week. What was missing was a date on each rung.
One primary hat, two secondary, and an AI that makes the second and third possible.
| Person | Primary | Secondary hats by year end | The AI that carries it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jamie | Relationships, the funnel, the media group | Group decisions with Dan on a fixed hour. Explains the offer to a guest. | His brain: guests, invitations, introductions, the media numbers. Six sessions. |
| Ben | Deployment and operations | Proposal packages costed. Client onboarding calls. The build day when Dan is away. | The house workspace itself, the scripts and skills, with the write gates he already operates. |
| Natoya | Money | Operations admin: subscriptions, cards, supplier terms. The podcast production run. Contracts filed and dated. | Her finance brain, live since August, widened one playbook at a time. |
| Paris | Content and social | Podcast clips and posts. Client social where sold. The website's content pages. | A content brain: the doctrine, the voice per brand, the clip and post pipeline. Two sessions with Dan. |
| Matt and Paul | Sales end to end | Client relationship after the sale. Sales-team training inside a client engagement, priced in. | Their own brains, one built in July, one in build now. |
| Dan | Product, engine, enterprise | Proposals until the sellers can. The first of anything. | The house brain. The one that builds the others. |
Hiring only when a hat has been carried for three months and is still full. Revenue funds the hire, and the hire is the tenth person only if the ninth could not be trained into it.
"Too technical for anyone else" is the sentence to retire.
- The rule of three. Done the same way three times, it becomes a script or a checklist, and it leaves Dan's desk with a named owner.
- The first of anything is Dan's. The second and third are Ben's. Written down, so nobody argues about which is which.
- Readback, not trust. Nobody hands over work by saying it is done. The system reads it back, and the reader reads the readback. This is how Dan stops checking and starts reading.
- Every routine has an owner who is not Dan by 31 December. The list on slide 9 is the list.
- Decisions in the slot, not in the chat. Anything that can wait for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday waits. The edition carries it there.
- The hold list is his own. Architecture, the enterprise deals, anything that changes what a client owes, anything with the company's name on a contract. Everything else is somebody's lane.
- Menial goes first. The daily, the repeatable, the checkable. The technical stays until the ladder reaches it, and the ladder reaches it on a date.
- A wrong hand-off is not a reason to take it back. It is a reason to fix the checklist. Twice wrong, and it comes back to the ladder, not to Dan.
This is where your buffer method applies. On Tuesday you described the founder who steps back, the team that panics over a small thing, the founder who comes back and micromanages, and the business that implodes. Someone has to sit between. We think it is the edition and the readback, plus you in the room fortnightly. Tell us if that is naive.
No outside money. Every hire is paid for by a signed engagement first.
How an engagement is shaped
A fixed four-month build, paid up front or quarterly, with an optional managed service behind it. The front-loaded work is exactly the exposure you described on Tuesday, and the first question for your hour.
Who watches the money
Natoya, daily, from a brain that reads every rail and never writes to one. Anything that changes what a client owes is Dan's approval. Nobody chases a client the founders have decided not to chase.
What we will not do
Raise. Hire ahead of revenue. Discount on first pushback. Stretch a build to twelve months without the terms changing. Sign paper we have not had read.
The push upmarket from January
Enterprise buyers bring procurement: insurance, data handling, contract templates, escalation, references, the register looking tidy. "Squeaky clean" is a checklist, and we would like you to write it.
What the numbers look like to you
No commercials on this page on purpose. Client book, invoices, rails and terms are on the table in the hour, on Dan's screen, for the questions where they matter.
Six things we want from you, in the order Dan would choose.
- The director prenup. Roles, decision rights, what happens if one wants out, who owns the engine, who signs client paper. Across three entities where Jamie holds the media group and Dan runs point on the rest. "His baby, my baby", as you put it.
- The paper. The four-month build that a client stretches to twelve: where it leaves us exposed, and how you word "keys to the castle". Ownership at handover. Placing a person inside a US client: what protects us, what insurance you would insist on.
- Professionalising for the enterprise push. The checklist a procurement team will run on a small firm, and the order to fix it in.
- The buffer. Your method for the founder who steps back without the team panicking, applied to slides 5 to 12. Where does Dan let go first, and who holds it.
- The cadence and the roles, slides 5 and 6, red-penned. Is five slots too many or too few. Is the ladder too slow.
- Your commercial review, on us. Your own product, applied to Enquirer: how we price the work, how we contract it, how we manage it, what data we decide on, what we take for granted. You offered a commercial overview as the first workshop. We would like to take it.
What is open on Dan's screen when you ask to see it.
| Document | What it is | Where you will find the holes |
|---|---|---|
| The current client pilot agreement | Thirteen sections and a data-handling annex: what the pilot is, channel and accounts, targeting, message approval, lead routing, start, no guarantees, data handling, ownership and confidentiality, liability, beyond the pilot, notices, governing law. Commercial section skipped on screen. | UK versus US law, the liability cap, what "no guarantees" actually protects, the ownership clause at exit. |
| The public terms | Use of the website, engagements, intellectual property, liability, contact. Short. | Whether it does anything at all for a consultancy engagement. |
| The signature templates | Statement of work, master services agreement, managed-service retainer, mutual NDA. US-drafted, for the US medical market. | The UK gap is exactly your question. Insurance, indemnity, placement. |
| The longest-form draft | A master services agreement drafted for a US equipment manufacturer's request for quotation. | The twelve-month stretch, the front-loaded first month, the exit. |
| Nothing between the directors | There is no shareholders' agreement, no roles document, no exit provision written down. That is the point of item one. | Start here. |
Tech-specific gaps you would rather route to your associate or your litigator, we take as a recommendation, on their own terms. Nothing was offered to either of them on Tuesday, and nothing is.
If we only get through five, these five.
Three things in writing, one date, and the next session's shape.
From you, in writing
- The three or four things you will send us after today.
- Your red pen on the cadence and the roles.
- The first three items on the enterprise checklist.
From us, in writing
- The reconciled record of both hours, to you by Monday.
- The paper you asked to see, in a folder you can read at your pace.
- The Dan and Jamie conversation booked before your next session.
Next session
- Hour one: build your brain together, read the first editions.
- Hour two: the prenup, with Jamie in the room.
- A date today, in the week of 7 September.
Recorded on both sides, transcript kept, the record written from the transcript and not from a summary. Anything you tell us in confidence stays out of every document, as it has so far.