Meeting
Unknown - Current
Gist
Chris and Andrew (presumably Sherman Phalen or similar internal team member) planned staffing and pricing for a prospective new client connected through Bobby, working through hourly allocations across Chris, Samson, and Dawn (PM) to build a quarterly retainer pitch. They landed on pitching roughly $8,000/month for Q1 (heavier senior dev time to handle expected technical debt), planning to shift to a lower-hours model after the first quarter, with a fallback lower-priced option in case it exceeds the prospect's $3-7K budget range. Chris also gave a quick tutorial on testing the Apex Trading API/cron job ahead of a DNS swap, and noted this deal would meaningfully lower his monthly new-business quota if closed.
Distilled from the transcript by claude-sonnet-5 · Jul 25
What came out of it
Decisions4
- Start with weekly meetings with the new prospect's team, with option to move to biweekly once technical debt is resolved
- Pitch a Q1 retainer of roughly $8,000/month covering ~20-25 hours of senior dev time, ~25 hours of Samson's time, and PM time from Dawn
- Bucket 2 hours/week (8 hours/month) for Dawn as project manager on this account
- Plan to front-load senior-level (Chris's) time in the first 3-4 months before handing more off to Samson
Risks and blockers3
- Prospect's stated budget of $3,000-$7,000/month may be below the $8,000/month the team wants to pitch
- Heavy technical debt on the prospect's site could require more hours than budgeted
- Risk of being too reactive and having Chris personally absorb too much of the work instead of delegating to Samson
Open questions3
- Whether Dawn actually wants to manage this account
- Whether weekly meetings will need to shift to biweekly later
- Exact final pricing structure and whether a lower-tier fallback plan will be needed
Next steps5
- MeReview recent Magic Spoon hours as a benchmark for estimating new client hours
- MePrepare a secondary lower-priced pitch option in case $8,000/month exceeds the prospect's budget
- MeConfirm with Dawn whether she wants to manage the new account
- MeDraft the email to Apex Trading before the DNS swap and have Andrew review it
- MeTest the Apex Trading API by running the cron job in WP Cron Control
A record of what was agreed, not a task list — nothing here was scheduled.
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