Your team keeps asking you because SOPs hold your steps, not your decisions.

The steps are written down. The decisions are not.

SOPs record what to do. What your team needs from you is how you decide: the rule, the line, the exceptions and why. That part is written down nowhere, so the questions keep coming.

• Your team runs every little thing past you, so the day goes to operations instead of growing the business.
• You point them to the SOP. They still call, because asking you is faster than finding it.
• The answers that are written down sit in old Slack threads, six apps and a drive nobody can search.
• You have not had a week off without the phone since you started.
• Your newest hire has spent three weeks asking you how things are done.

Notion was supposed to fix this. It became a graveyard.

What it costs to stay the help desk in your head

• A week away is a week of checking your phone, because the calls only you can make do not stop.
• A key person resigns, and the decisions only they knew leave with them. That is key person risk, and today the key person is you.
• Every new hire takes weeks before they work without asking you.
• Another year of your best hours goes to questions you have answered before.
• The AI tools you buy answer from nothing, because nothing is written down in a form they can read.

Your judgment, one decision at a time

Nobody can write down judgment in the abstract. You can answer one question at a time, out loud, and say why. Do that for the 25 to 40 calls in your Question Log, and the pattern of your judgment is on the page, with the reasons attached. You talk; I write.

The reason travels with the rule, so your team can handle the case the rule does not cover. “Who may decide” turns “ask the owner” into “ask the owner above $5,000”. And the review-by date sends every decision back for a check before it goes stale. Some calls should stay yours; the note says so.

You do not need a better wiki. You need to answer once.

Your last wiki failed at one of three points.

The tool was never the problem. Nobody captured your answers, nobody kept them true, and nobody on the team looked.

What changes in your team’s day: one new Slack channel. Notion, your drive and your project tool stay where they are. Up to 50 of your existing documents move in; everything else stays put, and the notes can point to it.

How it works: Capture, Garden, Connect, Delegate

The method is the Seedling System. Some people call the result a second brain for your business; here it is a company knowledge base built from how you decide.

1. Capture: you talk, it is written. Everything lands in one inbox. We call each rough capture a seedling. It gets in from a keyboard shortcut, your phone, a voice memo, or one forward of an answer you just wrote in Slack or email.
2. Garden: fifteen minutes keeps it true. Each morning you spend 15 minutes tidying what came in: keep or delete, give it a kind, fill in the fields. One person on your team keeps it tidy for 30 minutes a week (the Garden Keeper).
3. Connect: every answer has a path to it. Each note is one kind (a decision, a process, a client, a project, a person, an idea or a rough capture) and links to the notes around it.
4. Delegate: your team asks the system, not you. Because each note has a kind and links, an AI can find the right one. Your team asks it in plain words and gets your answer with the note it came from. It never signs off a decision; only you do.

Answer it once. When the system does not know, your team asks you, as before. You answer once, forward the answer, and nobody asks you that again. Every question you answer twice is a capture that was missed.

How your team asks it

• In Slack. Your team types @Claude and the question in one channel, #ask-the-vault, on a laptop or a phone. Nothing to install.
• The answer names its note. It comes back in the thread, quoting your rule and naming the note it came from.
• When it does not know, it says “Not in the vault yet — ask [your name], then forward the answer to the inbox.”
• Who needs a paid seat: only the people who run it, usually you and the person who keeps it tidy. The people asking in Slack do not each need one.
• Not on Slack? Your team asks in the Claude app on their laptop or phone instead, from the same notes, with a seat for each person who asks.

What to know before you buy. Claude in Slack is in public beta, so its features may change; the Week sets up the Claude app as a switch you can make in under an hour. An edit reaches answers within about 10 minutes while the publishing computer is on. Everyone in the channel can read everything in the notes, so nothing goes in that the whole channel may not see.

Map Day first, then four build days

Before (included, about four weeks). A 60-minute kickoff call. Then, for five working days, you and your team leads log every question that comes to you: who asked, what, how it was answered, and how long it took. About a minute a question, from a form or a Slack shortcut. Before Day 2 you pick 20 questions for the Friday Test, including at least five your team did not ask that week, and seal them in an envelope. I never see them before Friday.

Map Day — $6,000, your first paid step. One remote day. We sort your log into clusters, see where answers live today, and interview up to four team leads. In the afternoon I capture three of your decisions while you talk, you check each one, and your ops lead asks the AI about them, so you see your own judgment come back before you decide on the rest. You keep:

• a one-page map of where your answers live (the Knowledge Map);
• the ranked list of decisions and processes to write down (the Capture List);
• three Decision notes, checked by you;
• my written recommendation within one business day: book the four days, take the course, or do neither.

If you stop here, you keep all of it and owe nothing more.

Days 2–5 — four consecutive weekdays, ending on Friday.

After (included). Support in a shared Slack channel for 30 days, with a reply within one business day, and two scheduled evening calls. A check-in on Day 7. In week 4 you re-run the Question Log with one added column: “asked the system first?” A 90-minute review at Day 30 with 20 new questions. Then Garden Check through Day 90.

What exists on Friday afternoon

Each item exists on Friday or it does not.

• The system. Your notes, in files you own: at least 20 decisions signed off by you, your key processes, your clients, projects and people, and up to 50 of your documents.
• How your team asks it. The Slack channel, a one-page “How to ask” card, your data rules written down, and a runbook so it keeps working without me.
• The habits. Ways to drop something in, your 15-minute morning as a checklist, and a trained person who keeps it tidy.
• The record. The Friday Test scorecard, the map, the Capture List, training recordings and the 30-day plan.

Built for the three moments that cost you most

Included in every Decision Week:

What the Week asks of you

• About 20 hours across Map Day and the four build days. Day 3 is yours almost entirely; clear it of client calls.
• About three hours before: the kickoff call, an intake questionnaire, and sealing your 20 questions.
• Five days of the Question Log from you and your team leads, about a minute a question.
• Your leads for 25 minutes each on Map Day, and your team for 90 minutes of training on Friday.
• One person who will keep it tidy: about 30 minutes a week after the Week.
• Your 15-minute morning, every working day. That is about 58 hours a year. If 15 minutes a day is more than you will give it, do not buy the Week.

Weeks are booked four weeks ahead, because the log, the sealing and the access need that long. If intake is not finished three days before Day 2, the four days move to the next open slot at no charge.

Built for owner-led agencies and consultancies at $1–2M

Who builds it, and what you can check before you apply

I am Jay West. I run my own work on the same kind of system: ideas, decisions and drafts go in every day, and an AI answers from it with links to my notes.

What you can check today

• How to Think (howtothink.ai): a curriculum on how one person thinks, built as linked notes of one idea each — the same structure the Week builds for a business.
• Physics of Connection (physicsofconnection.com): a linked body of work on improv and communication — how to share a thought.

I wrote the test I want to be judged by. Use it on anyone you consider, me included.

What I do not have yet: clients. The founding Weeks are the first. There are no case studies, testimonials or logos on this page because none exist yet. They appear only when a client has finished and agreed.

One Week a month, and why. I run every Week myself, alongside a day job, so I take one a month, and I am choosing too. Everything after Friday is in writing or in the evening, by design: a reply within one business day for 30 days, two scheduled evening calls, then a reply within two business days to Day 90. If I am unavailable for more than three business days, your support period extends by the same number of days. Every account is yours, and the runbook covers running it and switching it, so the system does not depend on me.

What does it cost you that everything goes through you?

Put in your numbers: how many questions come to you in a week, how long each one takes, what your hour is worth, and what the last week away or resignation cost you. The calculator subtracts what the system costs to run (your 15-minute morning, half an hour a week from the person who keeps it tidy, and the software) and shows how many working weeks the Week takes to pay for itself.

These are your estimates, not a promise. For the illustrative 14-person agency in the worked example below, time savings alone come close to break-even in year one. The Week earns its price when a week away, a resignation or a hiring wave is close. If your numbers say it does not pay back, the calculator says so and points you to a cheaper start.

What it costs: Map Day, then four build days

Five build days at $6,000 a day. It is a build, not a subscription.

Founding terms. Founding clients pay $30,000 and receive a $7,500 credit at Day 90 for completing the measurement data and two interviews, whatever the results. Net cost: $22,500.

• What going first gets you: the founding price, the $7,500 credit, and everything in the three-moments list above.
• What it asks: your Question Logs, the Day 5, Day 30 and Day 90 scorecards, and a 45-minute interview at Day 30 and at Day 90. A case study is published whatever the results, checked by you for accuracy, named or anonymous as you choose. A testimonial and an introduction are optional and never tied to price.

I am running the Friday Test on my own system first.

Full terms, with definitions and limits, are in the proposal before you sign.

Capacity. One Week a month, because I run each one myself. Weeks are booked four weeks ahead because intake takes four weeks.

What owners at this stage pay for the alternatives

Files you own, software you pay for directly

• You own every file. The notes are plain files in your company’s accounts. If you stop working with me, everything keeps working.
• I resell nothing. You pay vendors directly. For a 15-person agency where 10 people ask: two Claude Team seats ($25 each a month), Obsidian Sync for three writers ($5 each a month) and a free private GitHub repository — about $65 a month plus usage on the Slack route, or about $265 a month on the Claude app route. Prices are re-checked in the proposal.
• Only the writers use Obsidian (you, the person who keeps it tidy, and up to three leads). Founding Weeks use Obsidian; it is free. Everyone else asks in Slack and installs nothing.
• You set the data rules on Day 2. Who writes, who asks, and what never goes in: HR files, pay, client credentials, and anything a client contract keeps from AI services.
• Copies and offboarding. Only writers hold a copy, on company-managed laptops. When a writer leaves, you remove them and wipe the device. People who only ask hold no copy.
• Remote by default. On-site on request, travel at cost up to a cap in the proposal.
• Claude in Slack is not available to Claude accounts set up with zero data retention, customer-managed encryption or the HIPAA configuration. We check this on the call.

Questions owners ask before applying

More questions