A handbook is a description of how things should work. A system is what actually happens on a Tuesday when two people are off and nobody's looking anything up. Everything here gets judged on the same test — could a stranger watch your practice for a fortnight and see it happening? — and if the answer is no, it isn't finished, whatever the document says.

Every session is recorded and you'll have it the same day, so a missed one costs you the conversation rather than the content. There's also a spare week in every month by design, which is where a rescheduled session goes. What doesn't work is missing them quietly and repeatedly, and I'll ask about it — the whole thing runs on the fortnight rhythm and it stops working without it.

Usually no, because there isn't a quiet year coming. Something is always mid-something, and waiting for the clear run is how three years go past. This is built for a practice with things going wrong in it, which is the reason it's two sessions a month rather than a day off-site. The one case where I'd say wait is if you're selling, merging, or genuinely unsure you'll still own the practice in twelve months — tell me on the call and I'll say so straight.

Usually, yes, and the sceptical one often gets most out of it, because they've watched something like this not work before and they're right to be wary. The design helps: nothing is taken on faith, every system gets built against your practice in the room, and by week three you're both looking at whether it actually held. What doesn't work is one of you attending and reporting back. That's the thing we know fails, and it's why both seats are non-negotiable.

We keep going until it is, at no extra cost. It isn't a clause I expect to use — it's there because the risk of this not working shouldn't sit entirely with you when you're the one paying up front. The condition is simply that you turned up and ran the projects between sessions. I can't install anything into a practice that didn't do the work.

Because you're not buying my hours, and if you price it that way you'll pick whichever programme exhausts you most. Twelve months from now the question won't be how many sessions there were. It'll be whether the practice runs without you, holds its standards when you're not in it, and is worth more than it was — and that's what the number is set against. A cheaper year that changes nothing is the expensive option.