Published 18 Feb 2026  ·  Depesh Vyas

The $2,300 Trial: Why We Start Small and What Happens in 30 Days

Most COO engagements ask you to commit to 6–12 months upfront, based on a few sales calls and a proposal. You're making a significant financial and operational commitment before you've seen anything real.

The VBOG model works differently. After the Operations Audit, if a Full Partnership is the right path, Month 1 runs as a paid trial — $2,300 for 30 days of embedded operational work. At the end of Month 1, we make a joint decision on whether to continue and how.

Here's why the trial exists and exactly what happens during it.

Why the Trial Exists

Operational work is high-contact. I'm embedded in your business — in your team calls, in your delivery workflow, making decisions that affect how everything runs. That requires a level of trust and working chemistry that can't be fully established in a sales conversation, no matter how good the conversation is.

The 30-day trial solves this. After a month of actual embedded work, both sides have enough real information to make a well-informed decision about a longer engagement. You know how I work, how the team has responded, what the initial results look like, and whether you can genuinely hand off operational ownership. I know whether the business is at the stage where the engagement will work, whether the founder can make the delegation shift, and whether the constraints identified in the audit are the real ones or if there are deeper issues underneath.

Some Month 1 trials don't convert to Full Partnerships. That's the correct outcome when it happens. An operational engagement that isn't working well is worse for everyone than one that doesn't start.

What Gets Built in 30 Days

Month 1 follows a consistent sequence based on the audit findings, though the specific priorities vary by business. Here's the typical structure:

Week 1: Full operational immersion. No changes yet. I'm mapping how the business actually works — how decisions get made, how work flows from assignment to delivery, where the team gets stuck, what the current quality standard is. I'm looking for the gap between how things should work and how they actually work. This week produces a clear operational map and a prioritised list of what to build first.

Week 2: The operating cadence. The first thing built is the weekly operating rhythm — daily standups, Monday planning sessions, Friday retrospectives, KPI review. This is the infrastructure that makes everything else maintainable. Before building specific systems, the business needs a heartbeat. The cadence creates one.

The most immediate, visible effect: ad-hoc interruptions to the founder drop within the first two weeks. Questions that previously went to the founder immediately now wait for standup. The team starts planning work rather than reacting to it. Most founders report the first meaningful relief from operational pressure within 10–14 days of the cadence going in.

Week 3: Highest-leverage operational fix. Based on the audit and week 1 observations, we go after the single biggest operational constraint first. For most service businesses, this is one of: removing the founder from the quality review loop (building a peer review system with a definition of done), fixing delivery inconsistency (documenting the delivery workflow and setting quality standards), or addressing decision concentration (building the authority framework that lets the team make calls without escalating). One meaningful operational function is running without founder involvement by end of week 3.

Week 4: Measurement and decision. We review what's changed. How many fewer decisions are routing to the founder? What does delivery quality look like through the new review process? Are the standups producing useful output? What do the numbers tell us about operational health? Then we have a direct conversation: is this working, and what's the right next step?

What the Decision Looks Like at End of Month 1

At the end of Month 1, three paths are available based on what we've seen:

Full Partnership: If the business is at the right stage, the engagement is working, and the founder is making the delegation shift — we move into a 12-month Full Partnership from Month 2. The structure (profit share percentages, scope, reporting) is confirmed based on what the audit and Month 1 actually revealed, not what was assumed going in.

Operations Sprint: If the business needs focused help on 1–3 specific problems but isn't at the stage for full operational ownership, we scope an 8–12 week Operations Sprint at $3,000–$6,000 total. More targeted, less comprehensive than a Full Partnership.

End of engagement: If the fit isn't right, if the business isn't at the stage where the model works, or if the founder isn't ready to hand off operational ownership — we part ways. The $2,300 covered a month of real work and a clear operational picture. That has value independent of what follows.

What Founders Typically Notice by End of Month 1

These aren't guarantees — they're consistent patterns. By end of Month 1, most founders who have genuinely engaged with the process report: ad-hoc operational interruptions dropped by 60–80%, 8–12 hours per week freed from operational tasks, at least one meaningful function running without their direct involvement, and a clearer view of business performance through the operating dashboard than they had before. The team is beginning to function with genuine independence rather than constant founder oversight.

The full operational transformation takes longer — most of the compounding effects happen in months 3–6. But Month 1 should produce visible, tangible change. If it doesn't, the engagement isn't working and we're honest about that.

One Honest Caveat

Month 1 requires real engagement from the founder. Not hours of their time — the whole point is to free up founder time — but genuine willingness to hand off operational decisions and hold the new structure even when it feels uncomfortable. Founders who intellectually want to step back but instinctively override every operational call get less from Month 1 than founders who commit to the handoff.

The structure built in Month 1 only works if it's non-negotiable. If the standup is optional, people stop showing up. If the "no ad-hoc interruptions" rule has exceptions, the interruptions come back. The 30-day trial is partly about seeing whether the operational systems work — and partly about seeing whether the founder can actually make the shift they say they want to make.

Most can. Some can't yet. Either way, Month 1 tells you.

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The starting point is the Operations Audit, not the trial. The audit determines whether a Full Partnership makes sense before you spend a month finding out. Apply for the $500 Operations Audit here. VBOG works with a maximum of 3 companies at a time.