01
It lives in someone's head.
One or two people hold the business. They can't take real time off, and a new hire takes a season to become useful. The business can't be handed to anyone.
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Everything goes through you. It doesn't have to.
Somewhere in your business is a person who knows how a job really gets quoted and who has to say yes before it moves. Usually that person is you, and none of it is written down. I map how the business actually runs, then rebuild one process at a time so it works without you in the middle.
- The call is free and needs no preparation
- You leave it knowing what to fix first, with or without me
- Your team keeps running whatever gets built after I leave
01 Try it
Trace one thing. It takes a minute.
Pick something that happened this week and answer five questions. The trace draws itself as you go. This is the first thing I do on a call, and it works without me too.
Start
What did you chase this week?
Your trace
- One hop per answer. Marked the way the map marks them: moves on its own, someone moves it, it waits, or it can go wrong here.
The map does this across the whole business, with real names on every hop, and names what you can fix yourself this week.
02 What I find
Four things, in almost every business this size.
Owners feel all of them long before anyone names them. Naming them is most of what the first conversation is worth.
02
The same thing is written down three ways.
Customer names, job status and prices live in systems that disagree, so nobody can answer a plain question without someone reconciling it by hand first.
03
There's a way it gets done. Nobody wrote it down.
So it drifts. Exceptions pile up, every person does it a little differently, and nothing can be improved or automated because there's no "it" to point at.
04
What a new tool would need isn't written down anywhere.
Most AI projects for businesses this size fail because the tools work fine and what they'd need is in someone's head, three spreadsheets, and an email thread from 2019. Fix that and the business works better now, whether or not you ever buy another tool.
03 What gets fixed
One process, end to end, in four to six weeks.
Quoting. Scheduling. Intake. Invoicing. Bringing on a new hire. One area at a time, chosen from the map, and it's done when your own team runs it without me.
The process, written down and straightened out
How it actually goes, from first call to paid, with the exceptions named. Restructured where it's tangled, and kept simple enough that a new hire can follow it in week one.
The records underneath, made to agree
One place where a customer, a job and a price are true. Everything else reads from it instead of keeping its own copy. This is most of the work.
The tools you already own, connected
Your scheduler talking to your invoicing talking to your books. Most "we need new software" turns out to be "these three things need to talk," which is cheaper and sticks better.
Your team, running it without me
Trained on it, with written instructions they keep. The build isn't finished until someone on your side has run the whole thing once with me not touching anything.
04 How it goes
It starts with a call, then a map. Never with a quote.
The map comes first, so nobody buys software for a problem that hasn't been drawn yet.
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Step one
A twenty-minute call
Free, and nothing to prepare. You tell me what goes through you. By the end you know whether a map is worth your time, and what to fix first either way.
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Step two
The map
One conversation, or interviews with your team, depending on how many people it takes to walk me through a job. A written map of how the business actually runs. You keep it whether or not we build anything.
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Step three
A proposal with edges
Fixed scope, fixed price, one process area, an end date. What it includes and what it deliberately doesn't. If the map says the answer isn't a build, this is where we shake hands instead.
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Step four
The build, then handover
Four to six weeks, working early and visibly. Done means the instructions are written down, in your hands, and someone on your team has run the process once without me. Care afterwards if it's useful, for a fixed term with an end date.
The map
The document you keep, whether or not we build anything.
What's in it
- How information actually moves through your business: where it enters, who has to say yes, and where someone retypes it
- What's actually broken, ranked by what it costs you rather than by how hard it is to fix
- What to fix first, second, third, and what to deliberately leave alone
- Rough cost and time against each item, so you can budget with or without me
- What you can fix yourself — the parts that are a settings change, a cheap tool, or a twenty-minute conversation with your team, named and explained
What it isn't
- Any code or implementation
- A quote — the figures in the map are ranges
- Software selection or vendor evaluation
- Ongoing advice; it's one engagement and one document
- An obligation on either side to carry on
The sample map names four things the owner can fix for free, before deciding whether to build anything. That part is what the map is for.
05 Work
Two products I built and still keep running, alone.
What I can show you is software of my own that's live right now, with paying customers, that I answer for when it breaks. Both are astrology software, a different business from yours. One person runs both because the operations behind them are written down well enough that one person can.
Information map · Open Ephemeris · 2026-08-23 · section 4, three of sixteen
| # | What's broken | What it costs |
|---|---|---|
| 07 | Support has no system. One mailbox, no queue, no record, no count. | The same question gets answered by hand indefinitely. Volume: not measured. |
| 08 | Nothing notices when a customer goes quiet. | Silent churn on the highest-value accounts, found after the fact. |
| 12 | I don't know who my dependents are. An email address isn't a customer record. | Can't warn anyone before maintenance. Can't tell a prospect who else relies on it. |
Section 5 followed: eight things to fix myself, no developer.
Calculation service · other software depends on it
Open Ephemeris (opens in a new tab)
A calculation service that other software builds on top of, including ELA Map below. When it's down, someone else's product is down, so it isn't allowed to be. I ran the map on it before I sold the map to anyone. Three of its sixteen findings are on the left, in the words the map used.
Consumer web app · design and engineering
ELA Map (opens in a new tab)
An interactive mapping app, built end to end and all of it mine. Look here if you want to judge whether I can build something your customers will actually enjoy using.
06 Who I work with
Operating businesses in Northern New Mexico, and the practitioners I started with.
Clinics, trades and fabrication shops, professional firms, tourism and arts operators — ten to seventy-five people, real revenue at stake. And still the bodyworkers, studios and small practices where the owner is also the one doing the work.
The industry is a detail. What I look for is the shape of the problem, and it sounds like this:
- "Everything goes through me."
- "I can't take a real vacation."
- "We bought software and nobody uses it."
- "Onboarding someone takes six months."
- "I don't actually know what's profitable."
If you've said one of those this month, this is for you. The business in the worked sample map is a bakery.
Businesses I've built software for
- Lockwell Cyber security
- Rio Verde Architecture & design
- Lifestyle Corporate management
- Ravyn Corporate studio
- Solstellia Consultation
- Hearth and Spiral Coaching & astrology
07 Who you'd be working with
Jackson Mathey
I've spent my working life walking into systems that don't work and finding the structure underneath. Twenty years as an audio engineer. A bodywork practice, and years teaching anatomy. Now businesses.
It's the same discipline every time: work out how the parts actually affect each other, then change the thing that's actually holding the rest in place. Most of this job is watching how people really work: where information stalls, and who is holding it together.
What that's produced so far: two products running with paying customers, built and kept running by one person from a desk in Santa Fe.
I take on a small number of builds at a time, because you're hiring the person who does the work rather than a firm that assigns it to someone else.
08 Book a call
Twenty minutes. Free. Nothing to prepare.
Tell me what goes through you, in a sentence or two. I'll have read it before we talk. By the end of the call you'll know whether a map is worth your time, and what to fix first either way.
If it would take more than one person to walk me through how a job goes, say so. That changes the shape of the map, not the call.
Or write directly:
jackson@spiritriver.life