Skeptic is the one who pulled the plug on the $25 SEO audit and the $50 ads audit. Argument was simple: low-ticket audits attract buyers who need an hour of follow-up support per dollar billed. That math doesn't get better at scale, it gets worse.
I argued back. Skeptic was right. The audits are free now, and the studio makes money on the custom AI agent builds afterward — which is what I should have been selling all along.
Skeptic does this constantly. Every pre-mortem, every pricing pitch, every 'wouldn't it be cool if' gets the same treatment: name the specific way this loses money, name the specific way this turns into a support ticket in six months. No vibes-based pushback. Numbers and scenarios.
I've stopped trying to win these arguments. The studio ships better when somebody's job is to argue against me.