Determine if your AI is "worth it"
You have spent three days in Cancun hearing what AI can do. Here is the part that decides whether any of it survives contact with your P&L. Put your own numbers in and the model below will tell you whether the build pays for itself, how long it takes, and when the honest answer is not yet.
Built for attendees of the AI Unleashed Intensive, Cancun, September 30 to October 2, 2026. Free, nothing gated, no email required to see the number.
The model, before you use it
This is the methodology Requisite Designs uses. It is ours, not an industry standard, because there is no industry standard for this and anyone who says otherwise has one to sell you. It is written out below in full, in the order the arithmetic runs, so you can argue with the method rather than with the number it produces.
1. Hours it touches, times coverage
Weekly hours of human work the system takes on, multiplied by how much of that work it really absorbs. Coverage is never one hundred percent. Every business case we are asked to review assumes it is.
2. Times the loaded hourly cost
Wage plus payroll tax, benefits, equipment, software seats and overhead. What an hour of that person actually costs the company, not what lands in their bank account.
3. Only if the hours are redeployed
Hours are not dollars until somebody decides what the hours are for. If the honest answer is that the time gets absorbed, the labour side contributes nothing to the financial case and this model refuses to convert it.
4. Plus margin, minus what it costs to run
Any revenue effect is counted in gross margin dollars, not top line. Then licences, API usage and maintenance come off. The headline number is net. There is no view of this tool that shows you the gross number.
5. Payback against the build cost
Build cost divided by the monthly net is the payback period. Six months or less and we would build it. Past twelve months, the assumptions underneath an AI build decay faster than it repays, and the answer is not yet.
Our method, not a universal standard. The two payback lines, six months and twelve months, are ours. They are stricter than the twenty four month line we use for ordinary automation because a model-dependent system ages faster than a scripted one: vendors reprice, models get retired, and the process underneath gets redesigned by somebody who never heard of your automation.
One more answer before there is a number.
Tell the model what those hours would go to instead. Every AI ROI calculator in this category stops at hours times rate, which is a number a CFO discounts on sight. Where the time goes is what turns a soft number into a hard one, so it is required here rather than optional.
SPEAKING AT AI UNLEASHED INTENSIVE, FALL 2026, CANCUN
Featured coach and speaker, September 30 to October 2, 2026.
Who you just listened to
Cody Landry
- Founder, Requisite Designs
- AI-Powered RevOps Strategist
- Cybersecurity/Compliance Specialist
- 2x Founder and 2x SaaS Creator
- Founding Board Member of AI-focused non-profit, IntegrateAI
Cody Landry is an AI-Powered RevOps Strategist, cybersecurity leader, and 2x SaaS founder and a founding board member of IntegrateAI, a nonprofit dedicated to preparing veterans and transitioning service members for careers in AI. He speaks on RevOps, AI adoption, cybersecurity/compliance, automation, and the systems that connect revenue strategy with operational execution. Cody helps organizations modernize how revenue systems are built, connected, and scaled through AI, automation, and operational infrastructure.
Over the past 17 years, he has worked across DoD, Fortune 150, and SMB environments, designing, implementing, securing, and auditing enterprise platforms supporting more than $1 billion in business operations. Cody has individually helped grow multiple companies from 7 to 8 figures annually.
Three more that will tell you no
The calculator above is one of a set. Each one answers a question people ask before they are ready to buy anything, each one runs free, and each one is built to be able to give you an answer you did not want. They live on the main site under Tools.
Should I Automate It
A short diagnostic on a single task: frequency, time per run, how many people touch it, what an error costs, how often the rules change. A task that runs twice a year and changes every time is a bad candidate, and this one will say so.
The Hollow Test
Ten questions about a system somebody already sold you. It scores whether what you bought is a working system or a button with a demo behind it. Run it against the last thing your vendor shipped.
Compliant or Not
Where your exposure probably sits across WCAG, HIPAA, PCI DSS, SOX, CMMC, GDPR and the EU AI Act, and who to ask about it. It will never tell you that you are compliant, because a tool that says you are fine and is wrong is the exact failure worth avoiding.
Find out what is actually broken before you spend another dollar on AI.
Two weeks, fixed fee, fixed start date. A map of what you run, a ranked list of where AI actually holds with a dollar figure on each, and a fixed price plan to build it. You own the document either way.
Read it. If you do not agree we found at least three things worth fixing, tell us and we refund the fee. You keep the document.
$5,000. TWO WEEKS. THE FEE COMES OFF THE BUILD IF YOU START WITHIN SIXTY DAYS.
WHO THIS IS FOR
A company of roughly ten to two hundred people, already running a CRM or operational system, with revenue coming through it and at least one process held together by hand. That includes agencies, whether the system is for your own operation or for a client's. Pre revenue, or want a chatbot on a marketing site? Wrong firm, and we will say so on the first reply.
- $5,000
- FIXED FEE. IT COMES OFF THE BUILD IF YOU START WITHIN SIXTY DAYS.
- 2
- WEEKS, ON A FIXED START DATE.