Engagements

Three engagements. No fourth.

Each one has a defined scope, a fee agreed in writing before the work starts, and an end date. None of them turn into a monthly relationship you have to cancel. They answer three different questions, and most companies only ever need the first two.

Where to start

Pick the one that matches your question.

Engagement 01
Baseline
One-time engagement
Five business days from the day we have what we need
Credited in full against a Diagnostic started within ninety days of delivery.
The question it answers

"What am I actually paying for a new customer — and what happened to the inquiries I already paid for?"

What we do

  • Review what you spend on marketing, where each dollar goes, and who can account for it.
  • Trace every inquiry from the last ninety days through your own records — how long each one waited, who followed up, and which ones nobody answered at all.
  • Reconstruct from your books what you actually paid for each new customer over the last twelve months.

What you get

  • One number you can verify yourself. Your cost per new customer, with the arithmetic shown, so you can check it without us.
  • A minimum annual figure for what the gaps we found are costing you, with every assumption written out next to it.
  • Three things worth fixing immediately — the ones your own team can do this week without hiring anyone.
  • A thirty-minute call to walk through it.

What we need from you

Read-only access to the accounts where your marketing runs. An export of your inquiries for the period, with customer names and contact details removed. Your marketing invoices for the last twelve months. A mutual NDA is signed before any of it changes hands.

Why this exists. Most owners have never seen these three numbers side by side, because no vendor has a reason to put them there. It is also the honest way to find out whether a full engagement is worth your money — including the possibility that it isn't.
Most engagements start here
Engagement 02
Growth System Diagnostic
One-time engagement
Scoped per company, with a fixed end date agreed before it starts
Runs in weeks, not months. A long discovery process is a cost, not a sign of rigour.
The question it answers

"Which part of my growth system is capping the others, what is it costing me, and what should we build first?"

What we do

  • A kickoff interview with you — what you believe is happening, what you have already tried, and what a good outcome would look like.
  • An assessment across the six parts of your growth system: how you get customers, how inquiries become paying work, how you keep them, what you measure, what you have tested, and how the spending decisions get made.
  • All of it worked from your own records — spend, invoices, inquiries and what happened to each one — rather than from anyone's summary of their own performance.
  • Short conversations with the people who run the work day to day, because the gap between what a system is supposed to do and what it does is usually known to them already.

What you get

  • One verifiable number first, before any projection or estimate appears anywhere in the document.
  • An assessment of each of the six parts, with the evidence behind each judgement and where it came from.
  • The constraint named, with a dollar figure attached — and every assumption behind that figure written out so you can disagree with it and recalculate.
  • A written specification of what your growth system should be and what is missing from it today — detailed enough to hand to whoever builds it.
  • A ninety-day build plan in order, sized for your own team or your existing vendors. No new hires assumed.
  • A sixty-minute working session to go through it, and a week of follow-up questions by email afterwards.

What we need from you

Everything the Baseline requires, plus read-only access to wherever inquiries are recorded. Sixty to seventy-five minutes of your time for the kickoff, and about thirty minutes each with whoever runs the marketing and whoever answers the inquiries. If any of that does not exist in a usable form, that is itself a finding, and we will say so rather than invent a workaround.

If we find nothing wrong, that is the finding, and you get it in writing. A confirmation with evidence behind it is a legitimate outcome of an engagement — and it is worth more than a list of problems invented to justify a fee.
Optional · after a Diagnostic
Engagement 03
Independent Oversight
Quarterly
Cancel at the end of any quarter, without a reason
Available only after a Diagnostic. Without a specification to check against, there is nothing to oversee.
The question it answers

"Did what we specified actually get built — and is it producing what it was supposed to?"

Each quarter

  • A review of the inquiry record from your own systems, and what it produced.
  • A review of the spend and what each vendor delivered for it, checked against what was agreed.
  • A check of the specification against reality: what was built, what wasn't, and what changed along the way.
  • One memo — what moved, what didn't, and the single decision that is now in front of you.
  • One sixty-minute decision call, with you and whoever else you want in the room.

What we need from you

The same read-only access, refreshed each quarter, and an hour of your time. Nothing else.

This is not account management. We do not sit between you and your vendors, we do not manage them, and we do not attend their meetings. We read the evidence and tell you what it says, four times a year.
How it runs

From first call to delivery.

No proposals that take three weeks to arrive, and no discovery phase billed as work.

01
A 15-minute call

You describe what you spend and what you are unsure about. We tell you whether there is a system question worth answering — and if there isn't, we say so on that call.

02
Scope and fee in writing

Within two business days you get one page: what is included, what is not, what we need from you, the delivery date and the fee. Nothing starts until you sign it.

03
NDA, access, kickoff

A mutual NDA is signed first. Then read-only access and the records we listed. The clock starts the day we have everything, not the day you sign.

04
Delivery and the session

The document arrives before the session, so you read it without anyone talking over it. Then we go through it, and your questions stay open by email for a week.

How fees work

A fixed scope and a fixed fee, agreed in writing before any work starts. One-time — nothing recurring unless you ask for Oversight. We quote on the call, because the scope depends on how many channels, systems and locations you run. Invoiced, payable by transfer.

What we will not do

We do not bill by the hour, we do not run open-ended retainers, and we do not take a percentage of anything. If the scope changes mid-engagement, the work stops and we agree a new one in writing — you are never billed for something you did not approve first.

Every engagement ends with a recommendation we cannot be paid to carry out.

That is the whole design. We specify what your growth system should be; your own team or your existing vendors build it. If you ask us to build it, the answer is no — and we will tell you what to ask whoever does, and how to check the work afterwards.

Read the full standards →
Before you book

What owners ask about the engagements.

Can I start with the Diagnostic and skip the Baseline?

Yes. The Baseline exists so you can see real numbers before committing to something larger, not as a gate. If you already know you want the full engagement, we go straight there.

Our records are a mess. Is that a problem?

It is common, and it is usually part of the answer rather than an obstacle to it. We work with what exists. Where something cannot be reconstructed, we say so plainly instead of estimating around the gap — and the gap itself is often the most expensive thing we find.

Do you need to talk to our agency?

Not necessarily, and never without your say-so. We work from your records, not from theirs. If a conversation with them would settle a question faster, we ask you first and you decide.

How much of my time does this take?

A Baseline needs about half an hour of yours. A Diagnostic needs sixty to seventy-five minutes for the kickoff, an hour for the working session, and roughly thirty minutes each from two or three people on your team. That is the whole ask.

What happens to our data afterwards?

Access is read-only and revoked on delivery. Records are held only for as long as the engagement requires, then returned or deleted at your instruction. A mutual NDA covers all of it from before the first file moves.

Who ends up owning the specification?

You do, outright. It is written to be handed to whoever builds it — your team, your current vendor, or a new one. There is nothing in it that requires us, and no platform of ours to log into.

Start with a 15-minute call.

Bring your last marketing invoice. We'll tell you which engagement fits, or that none of them do — and you'll have the scope and the fee in writing within two business days.

Book 15 minutes → See how we work
No obligation · Nothing sold on the call that we could be paid to build