Activation Counsel
Activation Counsel is a twelve-month advisory partnership between Raphael Thys — an AI activation operator with 28 years of practice — and one CEO navigating AI adoption decisions. Billed quarterly from €7,500, with a 90-day no-questions-asked opt-out. Based in Belgium, serving EU francophone markets.
Year One.
A twelve-month partnership with one CEO.
Billed quarterly.
From €7,500 per quarter.
One 90-minute standing call per month.
One dedicated async channel, next-business-day response.
One one-page Quarterly Close — written, signed, yours.
Ninety-day opt-out, no questions asked.
After Year One: renewal is a conversation, not a default.
The literacy training happened. The certificates were framed. Two or three people in the company now use a copilot well. And on Monday morning, you sit in a CODIR meeting where nothing about how the business actually runs has changed — except that the agenda now has "AI" on it.
The gap between what the team was taught and what the organisation decides to do is where AI adoption stalls. You are the only person in the room with both the context and the authority to close it. You are also, usually, the only person who can't openly admit how unsure you are of the next call.
Activation Counsel gives you a standing rhythm for those calls. One operator in your corner, month after month, so the next decision about AI is made from clarity — not from the last vendor deck that crossed your desk.
What the month looks like
Three components. Every month, same cadence. One signed document per quarter.
The Standing Call
Not an update meeting. A thinking session. You bring the question you can't ask anyone else in the building — the one you'd ask the board if the board knew enough, or the CTO if the CTO weren't also the problem.
The Async Channel
Not a Slack helpdesk. A place to surface the question between calls — "I'm about to greenlight X, what am I not seeing?" One operator. One CEO. No team noise, no ticket queue, no account manager.
The Quarterly Close
A structured assessment of where AI adoption stands, what shifted in the last ninety days, and what the next quarter's focus should be. A document you own — not a consultant's slide deck, not a dashboard, not a theme for next year's offsite.
What this is not
A retainer usually buys a bank of hours and an open calendar: reactive, sized to whatever you ask for, paid for availability. This is a different shape. A cadence, not a calendar.
“A standing cadence designed for one decision per month — yours.”
The partnership is between one operator and the one person who signs off on AI adoption decisions for their organisation. That's usually the CEO, founder, or managing director of a company with fifteen to a hundred and fifty people.
Single-signer matters because the Quarterly Close is a single-signer document. If AI adoption is a committee decision at your company, the decision isn't yet at counsel altitude — the Sprint is the better starting point.
If you're looking for team-level activation, the AI Activation Sprint is the adjacent offer. Counsel is a separate altitude. They're not sequential — they answer different questions.
Investment
From €7 500
Per quarter · billed quarterly
€30,000 per year. Twelve-month partnership. Quoted net of VAT.
Ninety-day no-questions-asked opt-out at any point.
Year Two renewal is a conversation, not a default.
Who you'd be sitting with
Twenty-eight years bridging complex technology to human adoption. The work behind this partnership is counsel-adjacent and documented: the Luminus adoption strategy, sessions with leaders at the European Parliament, standing teaching engagements at Solvay Brussels School of Economics & Management, IHECS Academy, and Bruxelles Formation. No list of capabilities — the list that matters is the rooms the work has already been in.
“Activation Counsel is a new public offering. The operator's 28-year track record is not new.”
Teaching
Solvay Brussels School of Economics & Management. IHECS Academy. European Communication School. Bruxelles Formation.
Languages
French. English. Dutch.
Base
Belgium. Serving EU francophone markets.
Structural guarantee
The 90-day opt-out exists because the first 90 days will speak for themselves.
A retainer buys availability. This buys a standing rhythm — one call, one channel, one written Quarterly Close. The shape is the product.
The 90-day opt-out exists for exactly this. No penalty, no questions. The fit call is a two-way assessment before either of us commits.
The Quarterly Close is a single-signer document. AI adoption decisions that stick require the person who can override the organisation's inertia.
That's the cost of one bad AI vendor decision avoided, or one quarter of clarity on a choice that compounds for years.
Yes. The Sprint activates the team. Counsel is a separate altitude — for the CEO's own decisions. They're adjacent, not sequential.
Renewal is a conversation, not a default. If the partnership delivered, we continue. If it didn't, ninety days was enough time to know.
Completely. Single-operator, no team, no subcontractors. What you discuss stays between one CEO and one operator.
Start with a conversation
A fit call to see whether the partnership is right — for both sides. No pitch, no deck, no obligation. Raphael is the operator; Raphael is the contact. There is no sales team.