Most people book a free consultation with one quiet worry: that it is a thirty-minute setup for a sales pitch. You sit through the polite questions, wait for the price reveal, and leave feeling like you owe someone a decision.
That is not how this one works, and it helps to know exactly what is going to happen before you book. So here is the whole thing, start to finish: what the call is, what it is not, how to prepare so you get real value out of it, and what lands in your inbox afterward.
What It Actually Is
The free consultation is a 30-minute video call with me, João. Not a sales rep, not a chatbot, not a junior screening you before the "real" call. You are talking to the person who would design and build the system, which means the conversation can go straight to the substance.
In those thirty minutes the goal is simple: map the repetitive, time-eating parts of how you work, and figure out which one is the best candidate to hand over to a custom AI system. By the end we both want the same answer to one question: is there a clear, high-impact automation here, and is it worth building?
You do not need slides, a brief, or a budget approved. You need to be able to describe, in plain words, where your time goes and what a better week would look like.
Why It Is Not a Pitch
A pitch starts from the answer ("buy this") and works backward. A consultation starts from your problem and works forward, and sometimes forward leads to "you do not need me yet."
There are real cases where the honest recommendation is to wait, to fix a process before automating it, or to use an off-the-shelf tool instead of a custom build. If a no-code tool like Zapier genuinely covers your case, I will tell you, because a build that should not exist helps nobody. (That exact line, when each one wins, is the subject of a separate post linked at the bottom.)
This matters for a practical reason: an honest first call is the only way you can trust the scope and price that come out of it. If everything is a yes, nothing is a real recommendation.
How to Prepare
You can show up cold and still get value. But fifteen minutes of prep turns a good call into a precise one. Before we talk, it helps to have rough answers to these:
- Where does your time actually go? Name the two or three tasks that repeat every week and drain hours. Reporting, research, content drafts, data entry, client updates, lead follow-up. The boring stuff is usually the gold.
- What does the task look like end to end? Where the data starts, what you do with it, where it ends up. Even a messy description is fine. The shape is what matters.
- What would a good outcome free you to do? More clients, fewer late nights, faster turnaround, less context-switching. Knowing the prize helps prioritise the right automation.
- Any tools already in the mix? The apps, spreadsheets, and systems your work currently flows through. This tells me what a build would need to plug into.
The 30 Minutes, Step by Step
Every call is different, but the shape is consistent. Roughly, the time breaks down like this.
| Phase | Roughly | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Context | First 5 minutes | You describe the business and where the friction is. I ask questions to find the parts that repeat and the parts that hurt. |
| Diagnosis | Next 10 minutes | We zoom in on one or two workflows and trace them end to end. This is where the real automation candidate usually surfaces. |
| Direction | Next 10 minutes | I sketch what a system could do, which AI stack fits, and roughly how big the build is. You hear a plan in plain language, not jargon. |
| Next steps | Final 5 minutes | We agree on what happens next: a written summary, a proposal, more discovery, or simply nothing for now. No pressure either way. |
Throughout, the language stays plain. You will not be asked to understand model names, token limits, or orchestration patterns. That is my job. Your job is to know your business, which you already do.
What You Walk Away With
Whether or not you ever become a client, you leave the call with something concrete:
- A named opportunity. The single highest-impact automation in your workflow, identified and described, not a vague "AI could help here."
- A rough scope. An honest sense of how big the build is: a few days, a couple of weeks, or a larger multi-agent system.
- An indicative price range. Where the project would likely land, so there are no surprises later. Custom builds follow clear ladders, broken down in the cost and budget post.
- A short written summary. The above, in your inbox after the call, so you can sit with it, share it internally, or take it to another builder. It is yours.
That summary is deliberately useful on its own. If you decide to build it in-house or with someone else, the thinking still holds. (Whether to hire out or build internally is its own decision, walked through in the hire vs build post.)
Is It Right for You?
The consultation is worth your time if you recognise yourself in any of these:
- You run a company or a solo practice and the same manual tasks keep eating your week.
- You suspect AI could help but you are not sure where it actually fits, or whether it is worth the cost.
- You have tried no-code tools and hit the ceiling, where the logic got too complex or the output too generic.
- You want a straight answer from someone who builds these systems, not a generic "AI strategy" deck.
It is probably not the right call if you are shopping purely on lowest price with no specific problem in mind, or if you want someone to rubber-stamp a decision you have already made. The call works best when there is a genuine problem on the table and an open question about how to solve it.
How to Book
Booking is one step. Head to the contact page and request your free consultation, or fill in the pre-call form first if you want the call to start at full speed. Pick a time that works in your timezone; the call runs remotely over video, and being based in Porto is never a constraint on working with US, UK, or European clients.
Thirty minutes, no pitch, a clear answer at the end. Worst case, you leave knowing exactly which part of your work is ready to automate and what it would take. That is a good place to start, whatever you decide next.