How an engagement actually starts
Send the facts about the business. Receive a written Operating Brief. Decide whether you want a seat after you have read it.
1. You send the facts
The form asks for the things a technology assessment cannot fake its way around. The business name. A point of contact, with a phone number and an email. The address. The website, if you have one. How many people work there, how many locations you operate, and how many servers are on site — zero is an honest and useful answer.
It also asks where email lives, who handles technology today, whether a large contract is coming up, and which systems you would name if someone asked you in a hallway.
Do not send passwords, patient records, or client files. A description is enough.
2. You get the Operating Brief
The brief is a written technology assessment, not a slide deck and not a proposal with a product clipped to the back. It covers the shape of what you run, the risks that matter in your kind of firm, what to leave alone, and the decisions that should come first.
3. You decide whether there is a next step
There might not be. A clear “keep this, fix the ownership, do not buy that” is a complete outcome.
If you want a fractional CTO after the brief, the scope and the fee are put in writing before any work starts. Travel happens when seeing the building would change the answer. Otherwise the work is remote, from Waco or from wherever the firm already is.