Out of Hours • Japan • June 2027

Become the founder who builds at the speed they think.

You've built a really good business, and there's more you want from it than your week can carry. So come spend a few days in Japan with a handful of studio founders and see where the money is leaking, map the standards in your head to build a setup that knows your business. You'll fly home with it running, knowing what to build next, and owning every piece of it.

Register interest

Osaka · Kyoto · Tokyo
You get to decide

The five-storey pagoda above the town, with Mount Fuji behind

The idea

You've run out of hours. It's costing you more than money.

Good work brings more work. More work brings more hours, and the hours have to be yours, because the standard that makes it good has never left your head. Every studio hits that ceiling at its best.

A few days in Japan is how we get you past it. Find where the money is leaking. Write the standards down. Build the repeatable production so it runs without your hands. You fly home with the first piece running, and a studio that earns past your hours.

Where this comes from

It started as a post at 12:16am.

I'd bought the flights the day before. This is the post, as it went up.

Dillon McIntosh

7 October 2026

I bought flights to Japan yesterday. And I'm considering something pretty audacious. It's 12:16am, I should be asleep but I've just had a wild idea... let's host an event while I'm there. I'm starting to picture what that might look like. My trip is from the end of May to early June 2027. I'll be there for fifteen days, landing in Osaka, maybe up to Tokyo, I haven't worked out the details yet. I'm thinking one day, a small group, with plenty of time to work together. We'd work on: - Finding where your money is leaking - Writing down the rules you already follow - Building the first fix before you leave It'd be completely free to attend. You'd simply pay for your own flights and accommodation. That's as far as the idea has got. If you'd be interested in coming, leave me a comment to wake up to. 🇯🇵

Dillon in front of Mount Fuji

Who this is for

You've built a really good business. And it feels overwhelming to earn what you're worth.

Founders of design, brand, architecture and landscape studios, and anyone else whose studio sells its judgement by the job.

This is for you if…

  • The studio only earns what your own hours can get through
  • There's demand you can't take on
  • You hand work over and it comes back to you to fix anyway
  • You repeat the same steps on every job, and none of it is written down
  • You'll bring one real job and leave with something running

It isn't for you if…

  • You're after a course to watch
  • You're hoping a machine will make the judgement calls for you
  • You can't open your own files and work on them in the room

What happens

Money. Standards. Build.

Three parts, in that order. Money first, because the numbers decide which fix is worth building. Then the standards, because the build only works if it runs the way you do. Then the build itself, on your own files, before you leave. And a call before you fly, so nobody arrives cold.

Before you fly

The call

A call with me to pick the one thing worth building, and a short primer on how the tools work, so the days in Japan go on your business rather than on setup.

01

Money

Where your studio's money is leaking. It might be in how work comes in or in how it gets delivered. Your own numbers will show which.

02

Standards

You walk me through how you operate, and I write the standards down as you talk. The decisions you've made so many times they've stopped feeling like decisions.

03

Build

The first fix, built from those standards and run on your own files before you leave.

And dinner. There's always a dinner.

"That one and a half hours was just gold. What I've done in the last five days would have taken me well over a month from just the conversation we had, what you showed me, how to implement it."

Amar runs a design consultancy in London. We met at a mastermind in Bali. One evening I sat with him for an hour and a half and set up the knowledge base his business now runs on, the same setup we'd build in Japan. Five days later, this is where he was.

In five days

  • New landing page built and live
  • Two lead magnets live, one updated and one built from scratch
  • Content templates for LinkedIn carousels and single-image posts
  • A promotion running for one of the lead magnets
Amar Gudhka

Amar Gudhka

AG Design and Consultancy

The details, as far as they go

It's early. Here's what's known.

Where
Japan. You decide between Osaka, Kyoto or Tokyo.
When
June 2027. Dates are set once the city is.
How many
A handful of founders, working side by side. I sit with each of you while your fix gets built on your own files, and everyone is building the whole time. Laptops open all day. Something running by dinner, not a notebook of ideas.
How long
One to three days. The form asks what you'd prefer.
Cost
The post said free, with you paying your own flights and accommodation. Since then I've been looking at somewhere special for us all to stay together, which would come with a price. The form asks which you'd choose. Nothing to pay to register.

Before we fly

The road to Out of Hours 2027.

Between now and June I'll run a workshop on each part of how I run Dreams Dept, live. No dates yet. Tick the ones you'd join and you'll hear first when they're set.

01

Foundations

The setup everything else runs on. Your positioning, your standards and your files, in one place every tool can read.

02

Outreach

How I find the right people and open a conversation worth having.

03

Leads & Pipeline

How enquiries get triaged, tracked and followed up, and what happens to the ones that go quiet.

04

Delivery

One repeated process, taken from hours to minutes and built from your own standards.

05

Content

How content gets produced from thinking and work you've already done.

Out of Hours · Japan · June 2027

Tick a workshop and your choices come with you to the registration form.

Dillon McIntosh

Who's running it

I'm on a mission to create a billion dollars for the studios the world is writing off.

I've spent over a decade across design, agencies and software. Hundreds of clients, time inside startups and product teams, freelancing, and businesses of my own. That mix means I know what it feels like when the work is good, clients are buying, and your week is still the limit on what the studio earns.

The whole industry is being told the machines are coming for the work. I see it differently. The studios that know their own standards, run the business as well as they run the craft, and own what they build are the ones best placed to use them. That bet is my business.

Every studio runs on standards the founder has never written down. The decisions made so often they've stopped feeling like decisions. Written down, they become something a system can run to, and the repeatable production stops needing your hands while the judgement stays with you. I've been doing this with one studio at a time. In Japan it's a room of us, and everyone flies home with theirs built.

Dillon McIntosh

Register interest

Put your name down, and pick the city.

Nothing to pay, and nothing to commit to yet.

  • Vote for Osaka, Kyoto or Tokyo
  • Hear the city and the dates first
  • Get the workshop dates first
  • Be first in line when applications open

Step 1 of 2

Where should it be?