Recommended
Full-Time
Monthly retainer $20,000/mo
Lock 6 months $18,000/mo
- Cadence
- 4 days/wk
- Days/mo
- 20
- Per-day
- $1,000
- Estimated runway
- Default: 3 mo full time + 3 mo halftime
- Best fit when
- Concentrated, fastest path, max value.
This document confirms the scope, operating model, and investment for the Interim CTO engagement at Top Notch Products, as discussed on April 20, 2026.
Recommendation: Full-Time cadence, starting as soon as Kathy confirms the start date.
Full view 01 The situation
The team is solid. The systems underneath them are not. Work that should be automatic is manual. Knowledge that should be written down lives in a few people's heads. The office move is a month out, and the business is running at full load while it prepares.
The goal: make the day easier on Kathy and the team. Get more done in less time. Build a foundation that holds when someone is out.
02 The work
Document the workflows. Automate what can be automated. Train the team on AI, and set up where and how they use it. Build human-in-the-loop checkpoints where automation cannot fit. Cut waste in money, time, and tools, so the team spends more time on what moves the needle.
03 Where it starts
Department by department.
Starting with Pete and Operations. The work runs the same way each time. I sit with the team. I capture how things actually happen today. I document the workflows in a form that humans and AI can both use. I find quick wins. I scope larger automations and bring them to you for approval before they run. Then we move to the next department.
Quick wins ship as we go. Larger automations queue for your review.
01 Operations · Pete
02 Accounting · Janine
03 Sales · Jen
04 Management
04 AI enablement
Train the team. Set the guardrails.
Train employees on using AI. Set up access where it makes sense and not where it does not. Build guardrails and harnesses so the AI runs on real Top Notch context, not generic outputs.
Where automation cannot fit, build human-in-the-loop checkpoints so a person reviews before anything goes out.
See the harness example 05 Engagement structure
Built to continue.
Three cadences. All deliver the same kind of work. The choice is how concentrated the time is. The opening months are the starting investment. We decide the cadence after that together. There is no forced end date.
06 ROI
Where the value tends to come from.
Five categories the engagement tends to produce. Bar widths are directional, not committed totals.
07 Why me
The shape of business I have run before.
I live in Danvers, ten minutes from the new office. I run ExecuServices from Beverly, a practitioner-led IT firm focused on automations and AI integrations.
Before ExecuServices, I was Director of IT at SwervePoint, a B2B ecommerce and fulfillment agency running 600+ programs for Fortune 500 clients (Fidelity, Dell, HubSpot, NFL; sole technical contact on BlackRock). Same shape as Top Notch: multi-line wholesale distribution, inventory-driven fulfillment, warehouse at the center.
At SwervePoint I took over a stalled ERP migration and ran the system myself after go-live. The implementation consultants told the owner they had never seen a client pick it up that fast. Same shape of problem as Blue Link: understand the system deeply, build around it, and decide together if anything ever needs to change.
A few systems I have built: a dynamic proposal and quote generator for Emergency Restoration Inc, a four-agent live system for International Fishing Tournament, a content engine that runs across multiple websites, an enterprise email security tool. The same patterns power the work I will run at Top Notch.
Featured expert on the Adventures in Legal Tech podcast ("Site Unseen," March 2025). Profiled in the NECC alumni feature on AI innovation, Fall 2023, described as "a natural entrepreneur in the AI innovation realm."
More systems I have built for businesses like yours 08 How to engage
Three cadences. You pick one.
All three deliver the same kind of work. The choice is how concentrated the time is. That sets the timeline and the per-day rate.
Halftime
Monthly retainer $12,500/mo
- Cadence
- 2 days/wk
- Days/mo
- 10
- Per-day
- $1,250
- Estimated runway
- Roughly 2 years to fully optimize
- Best fit when
- Spreading the cost, steady tempo.
Part-Time
Monthly retainer $6,000 to $12,000/mo
- Cadence
- ~1 day/wk
- Days/mo
- 4 to 8
- Per-day
- $1,500
- Estimated runway
- Roughly 2 years to fully optimize
- Best fit when
- Advisory cadence, lowest monthly.
09 Three things I want to be explicit about going in
Named risks, named mitigations.
01
Cadence drift.
Gaps between sessions add re-orienting overhead and slow the review cycle. Mitigation: weekly written recap to you, monthly explicit re-commit on whether the cadence still fits.
02
Tribal knowledge takes time to capture.
Janine's 25 years of know-how cannot be transferred in a week. Mitigation: I sit with her, capture her process through dictation and quick notes, and we shape it into an SOP she owns. Short verification cycles confirm accuracy before anything is locked down.
03
We work around Blue Link, not against it.
We work around Blue Link where possible and build with it. If something needs to change fundamentally with the underlying infrastructure, that is a bigger conversation. We will scope it together, identify the resources needed, and I will work through the implementation with the team. Any tool that costs more than the current spend requires your explicit approval before I act on it.
10 Close
To proceed: sign and confirm the start date.
· Next steps
- 01 Pick the cadence that fitsDecision by Friday, May 8.
- 02 Schedule the kickoffTuesday May 5 at 10 AM or Thursday May 7 at 2 PM. 45 minutes.
- 03 Start date holdReserved through Monday, May 11.