6 quick questions. Instant score + your real gaps named — before you talk to anyone.
Tell PJ your city, framework, deadline, and the thing blocking the deal or audit. No call required to get the first triage started.
Start the 5-min county compliance worksheetPrefer direct? Text PJ: 858-461-8054
Operator-honest SOC 2, HIPAA, CCPA & PCI help in every San Diego County town, with no retainer and no Big-4 markup. Built by a Solana Beach operator who automates the boring parts. Find your city below.
Use Vanta, Drata, Secureframe, Compliancy Group, or your current stack. SideGuy cleans the evidence, maps the workflow, answers the buyer questions, and builds the owned operator layer around it.
Prefer the direct path? Text PJ the framework, deadline, and blocker.
No client logos to wave at you yet — I'd rather earn it than borrow it. So the offer removes your risk instead:
I'm almost positive I can help. If I can't, you don't pay.
One operator in San Diego, answering directly. That's the whole thing — no funnel behind it.
Text a photo of the questionnaire or auditor email. I'll tell you what it'll cost and how long it'll take — no sales call.
Text 858-461-8054Call PJFlat-fee firms pad quotes because they can't predict how messy your environment is; retainer firms keep the meter running whether you need them or not. Hourly means you pay for what you use — and because evidence collection, policy generation, and vendor questionnaires are AI-automated, the hours compound in your favor. Most San Diego County clients finish HIPAA or SOC 2 readiness for 60–80% less than a traditional quote.
Most businesses need one framework, not the whole alphabet. Here's the operator-honest map — don't let a consultant sell you all of them:
Not sure which applies? That's a 10-minute text, not a $5K discovery engagement.
Searching for ISO 9001 consulting in San Diego (quality management), ISO 14001 consulting (environmental management), or ISO 27001 (information security)? Here's the operator-honest version: certification requires a UKAS/ANAB-accredited registrar and, for most companies, a specialist consultant for the standard you're pursuing. SideGuy is not a registrar — I'm the routing layer that saves you the expensive wrong turns first.
What the focused compliance work actually does for ISO scope: identify which standard your buyers are really asking for (half of "we need ISO" requests turn out to be SOC 2), map the gap between what you run today and what an auditor will want, pick the right automation platform if one fits (the ISO 27001 tooling market is mature — see the time-to-ISO-27001 vendor comparison), and hand you a shortlist of accredited San Diego-area registrars and specialist consultants for 9001/14001 when that's what you actually need.
Both extend ISO 27001 for the cloud, and buyers mix them up constantly. ISO 27017 is cloud security controls — extra safeguards for anyone providing or using cloud services (shared-responsibility boundaries, virtual-machine hardening, tenant separation). ISO 27018 is cloud privacy — protecting personally identifiable information when you process it as a cloud provider. Rough router: you host other companies' workloads → 27017; you store people's personal data in your SaaS → 27018; enterprise buyer just said "are you ISO certified?" → they almost always mean 27001, and the add-ons come later if a contract demands them.
Neither is certifiable on its own — both ride on a 27001 certification, which is why the honest first step is the same 27001 scoping work, not a new standard.
North County to downtown, no retainer: one scoping hour beats three vendor sales calls. Text what your customer is demanding and I'll tell you which standard it really is — start with the SideGuy Hour.