Frequently asked questions

What do you actually do?

Set Earth works with executives to build how they operate with AI: your own practice first, then your team’s. A controller who knows freight invoices and month-end close can hand AI the journal entries. A person who doesn’t know the operation can’t tell whether what AI built is right. The work is hands-on, on your stack, with the first pieces running inside the first month.

Anyone can build an app in an hour now. Why do I need you?

Anyone can build an interface in an hour. The hard part is whether it attaches to your data the right way, whether it understands the schema, and whether the result is right. You can’t see that, and you wouldn’t know to ask it to explain. The weakest link is the person who can’t evaluate the output. Operating judgment is what catches what the fast build misses.

What does it cost?

The retainer is $6,000 for a month, $5,500 a month for a quarter ($16,500), or $5,000 a month for nine months ($45,000). The length you commit to sets the rate; most engagements start with the month. The workshop now runs under LightForge Works, the software firm Braydon is part of; its pricing lives at lightforgeworks.com. For early-stage work, equity can stand in for part of the fee. After any term, renewal is monthly; thirty days’ notice either way.

Why not hours?

Metering every message turns a relationship into a support desk. You’re buying attention on your operation at an agreed rhythm. If you consistently need more than the rhythm, the scope changes instead.

What happens in the first month?

Week one is inside your work: your week, the people one level down, your tools and data, and whatever’s already running that nobody sanctioned. By the end of the week the scope is written. In weeks two to four the standing work moves over and runs: the first pieces go live on your stack, the first judgment sessions start, and what comes next gets written up. If it’s not working by the end of the month, you stop. Details: the retainer.

Is this a course? Will you train my team?

No. Training teaches tools, and the tools change monthly. The retainer builds the practice with you: workflows, governance, habits. Your team learns it by running it. The team workshop is a LightForge Works offering now, at lightforgeworks.com.

What if my team resists?

Usually they don’t. They’re already using it and would rather it be sanctioned. The resistance is more often the executive’s: the fear of not understanding it, or of the team being ahead. The work starts with you, so that by the time it gets to the team you’re the one who knows how it works.

Who on my team should be involved?

The people already using it. Most companies have one or two quiet power users: the person whose spreadsheet everyone else depends on, and the one already pasting work into a chat window to save an hour. They become the core of a small cross-functional group, with one person from operations, one from IT or compliance, and one from the business side. The group runs it after the engagement; the tinkerers make it stick.

We’re regulated or audited. What touches our data?

Only what your policy has cleared. Day one starts with fifteen minutes with whoever owns IT or compliance, so the rules are known before anything is touched; the work stays inside them. The regulated work behind this practice has run under FDA and pharma compliance; if your constraint is an ISO registrar or a customer audit, that same conversation is where it gets mapped. The detail is on the data-handling page.

Do you build software?

The retainer builds the practice: workflows, tooling on your existing stack, small automations, the operating model. When the work turns up a real application that needs building, LightForge Works (a firm Braydon is part of) can build it, rather than stretching a retainer into a software project.

How many clients do you take?

Set Earth runs five seats at a time and onboards one at a time, so only one is ever in the dense first months. When the seats are full, you get a start date rather than a worse first month.

Can we start smaller?

Yes. Take one month at $6,000 and decide at the end of it. If your team wants the workshop first, that lives at LightForge Works now.

What’s your background?

Braydon has run companies across pharma, devices, and software; raised capital; reported to boards; taken a company through a regulatory pathway; shut one down. He writes software and runs his ventures on a system of agents he designed for them. Before all that, a PhD in composition. The short version is on the about page.

Can I talk to a reference?

Where clients allow it, yes. Much of the work is under NDA in pharma and devices, which is why the examples are anonymized. On a call, those cases get walked through from the inside, and a reference gets connected where the client has cleared it.

How do I start?

Book a fit call at the booking page, or reply to b@mcco.us if you’d rather write. The reply lays out what the first month looks like for a shop like yours.