The Method (one-pager)
The whole method on one page. The steps go in order, and the order isn't decoration: it's the difference between cutting your costs and cutting your own throat.
Expose the bloat.
Every piece of software, every agency, every job that's really a person moving information by hand, on one page with a yearly cost next to each line. You can't cut what you can't see.
Decide build, buy, bolt-on or borrow.
Four questions, in order, first yes wins. The system of record for the dangerous stuff stays bought. The four-fifths-you-never-touch problem gets built. Nothing gets cancelled yet.
Lay the foundation.
Your real numbers in one place a machine can reach. Your processes written down the way you'd hand them to a sensible new starter. The dull step that decides whether everything else works.
Build tools that take action.
Not a tool that hands you a nice answer to copy and paste. A tool that does the job: fills the document and sends it, checks the prices and flags them, chases the late payer without being asked.
Compound hand it over and let it spread.
One doorway your team already knows how to use, a human on the approvals, and the savings pointed back at growth instead of sat in the bank making you feel briefly safe.
The one rule that holds it together
One thing at a time.
When you change one thing and it breaks, you know exactly what broke it. When you change ten things at once, you've turned an afternoon's problem into a fortnight's. And confidence compounds: pick the biggest cost or the worst job, see it through, feel it work, then come back for the next. The owners who get the result aren't the cleverest ones. They're the ones who finished.