The Work — Signal the Narrative

III. Why a fixed scope

Open-ended advisory engagements produce expensive friendships.

The work is fixed in scope and time on purpose. Most strategic consulting is sold as monthly retainer because retainers are easier to sell and harder to leave. The structure rewards the consultant for staying close to the founder indefinitely, not for finishing the work.

This practice runs the opposite way. Twelve weeks. Three phases. A finished body of work the business owns at the end. The cadence is tight because clarity is not a casual deliverable. Strategic work that drags becomes strategic work that dies. Founders who hire me at the start of a quarter have a usable narrative system before the next quarter begins.

If the engagement does not finish on time, that is a failure of the engagement, not a feature of it. The discipline is part of the value.

IV. The three phases

The work moves in three movements.

i. Diagnostic Weeks 1–3

Get inside the actual business.

The first three weeks are unromantic on purpose. I get inside the business. Customer interviews, sales call transcripts, website copy, the team's internal Slack, the content the founder has already produced, the proposals that won and the proposals that lost.

The job is to find where the language fractures. The places where the founder believes they are saying one thing and the customers are hearing something else. The places where the team uses three different vocabularies for the same offering. The places where the website argues for one positioning and the sales calls argue for another. The diagnosis is rarely what the founder expected. If you already knew where the fracture was, you would not need a strategist.

Most consulting engagements skip this phase or compress it into a kickoff workshop. The kickoff workshop is theater. The diagnostic phase is the foundation. Without it, the rest of the work floats on assumptions.

Deliverables

i.Customer interview synthesis (5–8 interviews)
ii.Sales transcript analysis
iii.Existing content and language audit
iv.Diagnostic report: where the language is fracturing

ii. Intensive Weeks 4–9

Decide what the business means.

Six weeks of structural strategic work. This is the phase where the founder commits to a single point of view the market can understand, and lets go of the four other points of view they have been hedging between.

The hedging is what made the story muddy. The commitment is what makes it land. Most founders arrive at this phase carrying multiple positioning concepts they have been "considering" for months or years. The work is to choose. Choosing is psychological labor disguised as strategic labor. The frameworks help. The decision is the point.

The intensive phase moves through positioning, messaging architecture, narrative spine, and authority design in that order. Each builds on the last. By the end, the business has a single coherent answer to the question "what do you mean," and a system for expressing that answer consistently across every surface where the company shows up.

Deliverables

i.Positioning framework
ii.Messaging architecture (audience, message, proof)
iii.Narrative spine document
iv.Authority design recommendations

iii. Codification Weeks 10–12

Make it usable without me.

The final three weeks turn the work into a written narrative document the team can execute against the day after the engagement ends. This is the phase that separates the engagement from a typical consulting project. Most consultants leave the client with a deck. The team reads the deck once, gets excited, and then forgets it within six weeks because the deck does not survive contact with the actual operating rhythm of the business.

The codified deliverables are designed to live inside the team's daily work. The positioning brief gets used in every new hire onboarding. The messaging architecture gets used in every sales call. The narrative playbook gets used by anyone writing copy or producing content. The rollout roadmap tells the founder what to do in the next 90 days to install the new narrative across every customer-facing surface.

If the engagement is successful, the team uses these documents for years. They become the operating system of the company's external voice.

Deliverables

i.Positioning brief (the canonical document)
ii.Messaging architecture (full reference)
iii.Narrative playbook (for the team)
iv.Rollout roadmap (90-day implementation plan)

V. The weekly cadence

What a typical week looks like.

The work runs on a steady weekly rhythm. Predictable, structured, no surprise demands on the founder's calendar. The cadence is designed so that the engagement integrates with how a $1M founder-consultant actually operates rather than asking them to clear their schedule for it.

One working session per week

Ninety minutes. Video. Both parties show up prepared with specific decisions to make. The session ends with written conclusions, not next steps. Sessions are recorded for the founder's reference and team distribution.

Asynchronous Slack access

A shared channel between sessions for high-leverage feedback, document review, and questions that come up during the week. Response within 24 business hours. Used for sharpening, not for new work.

Document delivery at phase boundaries

Major deliverables arrive at the end of each phase. Founders review on their own time and bring questions to the next session. No surprise reveals; documents are co-developed throughout.

One checkpoint per phase

At the end of each three-to-six-week phase, a one-hour checkpoint to confirm direction, surface concerns, and adjust the trajectory. This is when small course corrections happen, before they become large ones.

VI. The terms

Stated openly.

Most consulting practices hide their pricing behind a sales process. This one does not. Transparency is itself a positioning move. Buyers who balk at the price filter themselves out before booking. Buyers who recognize the price as appropriate for the work move forward.

$36,000

Core Engagement

Twelve weeks. Billed monthly at twelve thousand. Includes all phases, deliverables, weekly working sessions, and Slack access throughout. A sixteen-week extended version exists when the scope genuinely demands it. Six months is not the default; six months is a different product.

$4–5K/mo

Extend Layer (Graduates Only)

For past clients who want continued advisory access after the core engagement ends. One monthly strategy call. Slack availability for high-leverage questions. A quarterly narrative review. Reserved for graduates because the trust is built and the work is denser. Cancellable with thirty days' notice.

Active Engagements at a Time

The capacity is capped at four. Not five. Not six. Four. Past four, the work degrades from strategy into project management. The cap is not a marketing position. It is a mathematical reality of how strategic work compounds in a single mind. Sixteen engagements per year, plus the Extend book.

VII. The fit

For whom this work is built.

The work is for founder-led experts whose business gets stronger when the founder becomes more legible. Below are the indicators that point one way or the other. If the left column describes you, this is the right pond. If the right column describes you, the practice is not the right fit, and that is information worth respecting.

This is for you if

Your work is good but your market story is not landing
People hire you after they meet you, but your brand does not do enough before the call
Your content feels like a treadmill in search of a coherent message
Your team cannot pitch the company without you in the room
You are being compared on price to people who do not actually do what you do
You sell expertise, judgment, or transformation rather than commodity execution
Your business is in the $300K to $2M range and growth has plateaued in the last 12 months

This is not for you if

You sell to local consumers and need leads this quarter
Your business is ecommerce, services, or generic SMB
The founder is not the primary trust asset
You need ad management, funnel building, or done-for-you growth execution
You do not believe narrative and authority are commercial levers
You are looking for a monthly retainer rather than a finite engagement
You are pre-revenue or in the first year of business

Twelve weeks. Three phases. One usable narrative.

Open-ended advisory engagements produce expensive friendships.

The work moves in three movements.

Deliverables

Deliverables

Deliverables

What a typical week looks like.

One working session per week

Asynchronous Slack access

Document delivery at phase boundaries

One checkpoint per phase

Stated openly.

For whom this work is built.

This is for you if

This is not for you if

The first step is a conversation.