A working session with us, organized around your project.
What the day looks like.
Five hours, by video, organized around your project. Three hours in the morning, a break, two hours in the afternoon. Whatever phase you’re in — evaluating land, choosing an architect, leveling bids, structuring a contract, financing the build, or working through trade issues mid-construction — we use the day on what’s actually in front of you.
The session is preceded by a structured intake we ask you to complete a week before our day together. We review it and build a working agenda from it, so we open the session already inside your project rather than introducing ourselves to it.
You leave the day with a written summary memo, sent within 72 hours, covering what we discussed, what we recommend, your top five next actions, and the templates and tools relevant to your phase. A 30-minute follow-up call is scheduled three weeks out, for the questions you didn’t know to ask the first time. For 30 days after the session, you have email access with us for up to three exchanges on anything that came up.
Most owners need nothing further. The course and the workshop, taken together, are the system. For the small number of projects where ongoing engagement is the right answer, the workshop is also how that conversation begins.
Includes the Full Blueprint ($500), which we ask you to complete before our session. The day is for your project, not for fundamentals.
Limited availability
Sessions are booked by application. After we agree the workshop is the right fit, we’ll send a proposal and an invoice — payable by ACH, wire, or card. The day-of cancellation policy applies once your date is set: full refund up to 14 days before, 50% inside 14 days, none on the day of.
Request a session →The work begins a week earlier.
The workshop is five hours, but the work begins a week earlier. The intake exists for one reason: by the time we’re on the call together, we'll have already read your project carefully enough to skip the first hour of getting-to-know-you and go directly to what’s actually unresolved. That’s where the value of the day lives.
The intake takes most owners about ninety minutes to complete honestly. We’ve kept the form to what we actually need. There are five sections.
i.Project posture
Where the project sits today, in plain language. Phase, location, parcel status, current team, current budget, current timeline. If you have a feasibility model or a project pro forma, attach it. If you don’t, we’ll send you ours and ask you to populate it before the session.
We also ask one open question: in two or three sentences, what is this house, and why this house. Not the architectural description, the underlying one. The answer reframes nearly every technical conversation that follows.
ii.Documents
An upload field for whatever you have. The list below is comprehensive, not required — send what’s relevant to where you are.
- Land: survey, title report, zoning analysis, soil or perc reports, environmental, easement documents, purchase agreement.
- Design: schematic or design-development drawings, current construction documents, specifications, structural and MEP drawings, energy modeling, any consultant reports.
- Pricing: contractor estimates or bids, subcontractor quotes, allowances schedule, value-engineering logs, change-order log if construction has begun.
- Contracts and financing: GC contract or draft, architect agreement, construction loan term sheet or commitment, draw schedule, insurance binders.
- Construction-phase only: schedule of values, current pay applications, RFI log, submittal log, recent meeting minutes, photographs of any conditions you have questions about.
We review everything. If a document raises a flag we want to discuss in detail, it goes on the agenda.
iii.The three questions
Every owner we’ve worked with has three questions they’ve been carrying for weeks that they haven’t gotten a clear answer to. We ask you to write them out.
Specific is better than tidy. “Should our retaining wall be poured-in-place or segmental block at this slope, and what does that change in our soils package” is a useful question. “How do I think about site work” is not. If you find yourself writing a tidy version, write the messy one underneath it. The messy one is what we’ll actually work on.
iv.The decisions in the next ninety days
A short list of the decisions you know are coming. Hire the architect. Sign the GC contract. Close on the land. Approve the value-engineering round. Release the foundation pour. We’ll prioritize the day around the ones with the largest dollar consequences and the shortest time fuses.
v.What you’ve already ruled out
The conversations you’ve already had and closed. The architects you interviewed and passed on. The bids you rejected. The parcels you walked away from. The financing structures you considered and dropped. This section is short but it saves an hour. It tells us what not to relitigate.
From application to your session.
You submit the request form below. we review it within two business days. If the workshop is the right fit, she sends a proposed session window and an invoice — payable by ACH, wire, or card. If it isn’t, she tells you why and points you to a more useful next step: the course on its own, an ongoing MAOR proposal, or simply “come back in six months when the project is further along.”
Once payment clears, you receive a confirmation email with two links: one to confirm your session date from our calendar, and one to begin the full intake. Most owners schedule first and complete the intake over the following week.
The intake is due seven days before your session. We will review it within 48 hours of submission and send back a draft agenda for the day, organized around your three questions and your ninety-day decisions, plus a short list of any documents we’d want before the session that aren’t in your upload. You confirm or revise the agenda; that becomes our working document for the day.
The questions people ask us most.
Who is this for?
Owners with a custom build or major renovation in the $1M–$10M range, at any phase from pre-land through mid-construction. The workshop is most useful when you have a specific project with real numbers and real documents. It is less useful if you’re still in the abstract “thinking about building someday” phase — for that, the course is the right starting point.
What if you decline my application?
We tell you why and where to go next. Most declines are timing — you’re earlier than the workshop is built for, or your situation calls for ongoing engagement rather than a single day. We’d rather lose the booking than take money for a session that’s structurally wrong for where you are.
Can I bring my architect, GC, or spouse to the session?
Yes. The session is for your project, not for one person. Most owners bring their spouse. Some bring their architect or owner’s rep. We ask that you let us know in the intake who will be on the call so we can prepare accordingly.
What if my project is outside the U.S.?
The strategic frameworks apply globally. Where U.S.-specific details come up — AIA contracts, domestic financing products, particular code references — we’ll flag them and translate the principles to your jurisdiction where we can.
What if I want to retain MAOR after the session?
If during the session or the follow-up it becomes clear ongoing engagement is the right answer, we will raise it as an option. A separate proposal follows.
What if I need to reschedule?
One reschedule is fine, with at least 14 days’ notice. Reschedules inside 14 days are at our discretion based on our availability.
Includes the Full Blueprint course ($500). Sessions are booked by application; payment by ACH, wire, or card on acceptance.
Tell us about your project.
A short form — about ten minutes. We review every request personally and reply within two business days.