Grounded Intelligence
AI Leadership Foundations

Three months of teaching the leaders across your firm, one-on-one, to delegate more of their work to AI, wherever they're starting from.

Who it's for.

The most impactful leaders across your business, the people who run each of its core functions. You need at least two of them, and it works just as well with two partners as it does with twelve division heads.

What happens.

Bonner and David spend Session Day in your office. The whole group starts together, and then each leader rolls into a ninety-minute one-on-one with us, on their own work. For most leaders, that means picking the part of their job that eats up their week and building a working skill for it in that same session. For a leader who's already building, it means taking the next step, like getting what they've built out to their team, or learning how to manage someone they hire to build it. For the next three months we continue to level each leader up, pushing them forward while they make what they built better and take on the next one. It ends with Demo Day back in your office, and a written roadmap for the whole firm.

What they actually learn.

We think of AI as labor, not software. Every time a leader hands part of their job to AI, it's a lot like hiring and training a new employee: AI needs to understand the process, it needs access to the right information, and somebody has to correct it and keep training it as the work changes. We teach that core skill while simultaneously applying it on real work and getting real results, so by the end your leaders can do it on their own.

Everyone starts wherever they are.

Whether a leader has never opened Claude or uses AI every day, each gets their own ninety minutes. We give every leader a grade level based on what they already know, anywhere from pre-K to PhD, then meet them exactly where they are and level them up from there.

Grade
What it looks like
Pre-K
Has never opened it, or only chats with it
Kindergarten
Has set AI up with their own documents and standing instructions, and uses it every week
Elementary
Has AI connected to their email, files and calendar, doing real work
Middle school
Has mapped their own workflow and built a skill on their own that they run every week
High school
Their team runs on what they built: three or more skills in daily use, a routine that runs without them, and they've taught someone else to build
College
Their team runs a library of skills they built, working across connected systems, with versions and a check before anything reaches a client
Graduate school
Their work is wired into the firm: shared skills IT approved, other divisions running on them, and a written standard people follow
Residency
Their whole division runs on AI, with a year of measured results, and it survived a model change without a rebuild
Fellowship
Makes other leaders better, and the firm runs on standards they wrote
Chief
Sets the firm's AI platform, policy and budget, and gives back to the field
The three months

Here's what the three months look like, about eight scheduled hours for each leader.

When
What happens
Leader's time
Before Session Day, your IT team
We start with your IT team the day you sign, because IT is the critical path. They get every leader's machine ready against our checklist and sign off on each one, so no one spends a session stuck on a login.
None.Your IT team gives about 45 min.
Before Session Day
Each leader maps where their hours go, with a custom guide and an AI-led interview about their work, so we walk in knowing their week and where they are with AI.
About 2 hrs
Session Day, the kickoff
One locked day in your office. It opens with an hour for the whole leadership team: what AI can and can't do today, how your data connects safely, why we think of AI as labor, and a skill built live in front of them.
About 1 hr
Session Day, one-on-one
Then straight into ninety minutes with each leader. Together we choose the workflow worth attacking and map it, and every leader walks out having built a new skill or advanced one they already had.
90 min
Months 1 to 3
Every two weeks we're back with each leader, alternating between a short email and a thirty-minute working session in their own Claude, plus a session any time they get stuck or need help. We keep track of what's outstanding, so they never have to remember what's next.
About 1.5 hrs
Month 3
Demo Day, in your office. We walk the group through where AI is today and how your firm is mapped, each leader demos their build, and we close on what we need from you and what comes next.
2 hrs
After Demo Day
Your AI roadmap: every opportunity we found, placed on the right leader and ranked, laying out what to build, what to buy, and what to teach next
None
→

Each month you'll also get a short written report on what each leader has built, what's still outstanding, and anything we need from you.

Bonner and David in conversation
What you end up with

Leaders who can build, and a picture of how your firm runs that nobody had before.

Each leader walks away with skills they built for their own work and know how to fix when the work changes. And because we sat down with every one of them, we end up mapping how the whole firm runs: who does what, where the work gets stuck, and where the same data gets typed in three times. Bonner says he would have done anything for that map when he was a COO, because it's hard to lead a team when you can't see what everybody is doing. Your roadmap is built from it.

A firm is only as fast as its slowest team.

In commercial real estate, the firm that turns the underwrite or the LOI around first usually gets the deal. Every business has its version of that race. That's what we think AI should buy your firm, more than hours back: speed. But we've watched a broker get dramatically faster with AI while the deal sat waiting on marketing, because when one team speeds up, the bottleneck just shifts to the next one.

So we work with the leaders across every part of the business at once, not one department or the one person who's into AI, and Demo Day spreads what's working to the rest of the firm.

How it's different

A build shop hands you tools. We hand you leaders who can build.

We started out building first, and the tools worked, but as outsiders we had to keep maintaining them, and because they started at the bottom of the org chart, the leadership team barely changed. Bonner saw the same thing as a COO, where AI stayed one group's side project. AI is labor, and only the people who know your firm deeply can keep training it, so we start with your leaders and build the big things alongside them.

Build shop
Grounded Intelligence
Starts with
A request from one team
The leaders who run the firm
Day one
User interviews
A working skill
When the work changes
A ticket
A leader-led adjustment
The big builds
From the outside
Side by side
Cultural impact
Only the tool's users
The entire org
A year in
Aging tools
A team that's building

Questions we get

Can we add leaders?

Yes, any time, with one email.

Should our CEO be part of it?

We strongly recommend that founders and CEOs take a seat too. In our experience, the firms that move fastest are the ones where the person at the top sat down and built something.

How much of a leader's time does this take?

About eight scheduled hours over three months.

Do we need to get our house in order first?

No. Most firms overestimate how much structure they need, and they put off AI waiting for it. You need a Claude Team or Enterprise plan and leaders willing to sit down with us, and we work out the rest with your IT team after you sign.

Should we just buy software instead?

Sometimes, yes. As we work through each leader's job, we ask whether a task is worth buying a tool for, building, or teaching them to do with AI, and when buying is the answer, we help them choose.

Are we locked in?

No. You can leave with thirty days' notice, and every skill, map and roadmap belongs to your firm.

What happens after three months?

The roadmap tells you what's worth doing next. Most firms bring in their next group of leaders, and some keep us on as their fractional Chief AI Officer, building the bigger things alongside the leaders who are ready for them.

Is this your own AI model?

No. We work in Claude, on your firm's own plan.

Do you only work with commercial real estate?

No. Commercial real estate is where we started and where most of our clients are, but nothing we teach is specific to it. A leader handing their own work to AI looks the same in any firm. We work with leadership teams outside CRE when they share how we think about people.

What does it cost?

It depends on how many leaders take part, and we'll walk you through it on a call.

Bonner and David at a window overlooking the city

Send this to whoever needs to see it.

Your partners, your IT team, and the leaders you have in mind.

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