// the exchange
What the number buys
Think of it as the fee of a part-time employee.
For that cost, you get a team whose whole job is managing, finding, and making available profit in your company - plus the tooling they bring with them. One part-time salary would buy you a person who still needs direction, systems, and someone to check the work. This buys the people who build the systems, the instrumentation that shows where profit leaks, and the automation that closes the leaks. The comparison is the price anchor because it is the honest one: if a part-time hire dedicated to profit would be worth it, this is that hire, arriving with their own equipment.