The 4-hour quote, itemized.

The clock starts when the email lands

The most-asked question we get from new buyers: "How is a four-hour SLA on a scoped quote even possible?"

Most AV vendors take 2-5 business days to send a quote. Some don't quote at all and reply with "let's get on a call to discuss." AnyDay Live commits to four hours from inbox to scoped quote. Here's the operational mechanic.

Hour 1 — Triage + structure

Every incoming brief gets a tier within ten minutes of landing in the hello@ inbox:

• Tier 1 — Real. Named company, real date window, real venue or city, real headcount. Most briefs from corporate event leads, brand creative directors, or in-house production teams hit Tier 1.
• Tier 2 — Maybe-real. Generic email, vague timeline, no venue yet. These get a clarifying-question email back (three specific questions) and pause the clock until we have what we need.
• Tier 3 — Tire-kicker. "Just want to know your pricing." We reply with a short explanation of why we don't publish prices and invite a real brief if one exists.

For Tier 1 briefs, we open a structured scope document and fill in what we have from the brief. Anything missing gets a [?] marker so we know what to ask the client before locking the quote.

Hour 2 — Rig spec

For a Tier 1 brief, the second hour is rig spec. We size the gear list backward from the event format, headcount, and venue. For a 500-person corporate keynote in an LA ballroom, the default is something like:

• L-Acoustics K2 or Kara II flown L/R + KS28 sub array
• DiGiCo Quantum 338 at FOH (redundant)
• Shure Axient Digital wireless on talent + Sennheiser 2050 backups
• ROE Black Pearl 2.6mm LED on a 30 × 17 ft canvas, Brompton SX40 processor
• Robe Forte + Ayrton Domino on talent + audience uplight, grandMA3 console
• Disguise d3 on the playback chain, hot-spare server, redundant SDI to LED
• Riedel Bolero comms with 12 belt packs + 2 IFB channels
• Show caller + FOH engineer + LD + V1 + A2 + content op + 4 stagehands

That rig spec gets shaped by the brief's specifics — corporate-launch reveals get cinematic LED + spark integration; conferences get smaller breakout rigs + a comms backbone; hybrid shows get a broadcast cut + bonded cellular uplink + a second engineer for the broadcast mix.

Hour 3 — Day-by-day calendar

By hour three, we've got a complete day-by-day calendar from truck-load through load-out. For a single-day keynote that's typically 6 calendar days of crew labor (Day -3 truck load, Day -2 travel, Day -1 load-in + dry tech, Day 0 show, Day +1 load-out, Day +2 travel return). For a multi-day conference, add a programming day + a tech-rehearsal day + a contingency window.

The day-by-day matters because pricing only the show day is the single biggest BOM mistake. A real quote covers all six calendar days. A bad vendor quote covers only Day 0.

Hour 4 — Write the email + ship

The last hour is the email itself. We use a template (we publish the templates on this site under the brief-intake skill — they're public), fill in the specifics, and ship.

The email contains:

• Acknowledgment of the brief (one sentence proving we read it)
• Day-by-day scoped quote with line-item gear + crew + content
• Total all-in, with a range when there are unknowns, or a single number when there aren't
• "What's included that wouldn't be on a vendor's invoice" — usually 1-2 specific things like redundancy planning, content QC pass, or speaker rehearsal philosophy
• Three specific things we'd need to lock the date
• Quote validity (14 days)

That's the four hours. Twenty minutes for triage. Three hours for scope. Forty minutes for the email.

The holding email — when 4 hours won't fit

Sometimes a brief lands at 4pm on a Friday with a venue we haven't worked. Or the brief is for a hybrid show with international IFB requirements that need a specialty consultant. Or we're in a venue scout when the email arrives.

The holding-email move: send a one-line acknowledgment inside the first 30 minutes, with one clarifying question and a revised SLA. Something like:

Received. Heads down on the scoped quote now. One thing to confirm before I send: [specific question]. Scoped quote inside the next [X] hours after I have that.

The buyer knows we're working on it. The SLA gets renegotiated to a time we can defend. Trust holds.

Why the 4 hours matters

Most corporate event leads have one specific frustration with the vendor-AV market: the time between "I'd like a quote" and "here's a quote I can defend to my finance team" is measured in days. By the time the quote arrives, they've already started talking to two other vendors and the comparison-shopping doom loop has begun.

A four-hour SLA short-circuits the doom loop. It says: we're in this conversation now, the scope is concrete, lock the date and we go.

It also signals operational discipline. A studio that can scope a 500-person keynote inside four hours is a studio that has its rig specs memorized, its day-by-day calendar muscle-trained, and its email template ready. Those are the same disciplines that show up on Day 0 when something breaks and 200 people are watching.

What we don't promise inside four hours

Some scope decisions can't be made in four hours and we won't fake them:

• Custom kinetics — moving scenic elements, custom rigging for product reveals. Those need a fabrication consultation. We'll send a quote with a placeholder line and a 48-hour follow-up.
• Complex hybrid stream architecture with international IFB and translation layers — we'll quote the in-room base and flag the broadcast tier as a separate scope.
• First-time venues we haven't loaded into — we'll quote against industry-typical assumptions for that room and flag that a site walk would tighten the number by 10-15%.
• Permits + municipal fees — those are city-by-city and we quote against typical assumptions, with the actual permit fees billed direct at cost.

For everything else inside the standard scope — gear, crew, days, content production, redundancy, broadcast handoffs, comms — the four hours hold.

How to send a brief that lets us hit the SLA

A good brief contains:

1. Event type (keynote, conference, product launch, all-hands, brand activation)
2. Date or date window (specific is best; a 7-day window is workable)
3. Venue OR city (if venue isn't locked, city alone is fine)
4. Headcount in-room (and stream/hybrid count if hybrid)
5. One paragraph on what the event is for and what success looks like

That's it. Five fields. Anything else helps but isn't required. We'd rather you send the brief at 2pm with five fields than wait until you've gathered ten more pieces.