The things people ask before they start.

You do not have to. The intake asks what has stalled and what you have already tried, and the answer to which engagement fits comes back with the reply. Most companies arrive asking for Growth Operations and need the Diagnostic first, because building well against the wrong constraint is the most expensive thing a growth team can do.

If you ask for the wrong one you will be told that before any money changes hands.

Usually not, and it is worth saying why rather than being vague about it. Before traction the question is normally which channel works at all, which is a different job and a cheaper one. The three failure modes describe companies that had traction and lost it, not companies that have not found it yet.

If you are close and the growth curve has genuinely flattened rather than never started, say so in the intake and it will get a real read.

It helps. The diagnosis sits upstream of execution, so a team that can act on a plan makes the work worth more, not less. Nothing here competes with people who are already good at their jobs. It tells them which job is the one worth doing this quarter.

An agency sells execution capacity. A fractional CMO sells ongoing judgement by the day. Both are useful and both assume the constraint has already been identified correctly, which in a stalled company is usually the thing that is wrong.

This sells the decision about what to execute, in writing, as a single deliverable you keep. If the answer turns out to be that you need an agency, that is what the document will say.

Writing forces a precision that talking lets you avoid. On a call an argument can sound right, get a nod, and never be tested. On the page it has to hold up, and finding out that it does not is most of what you are paying for.

It also leaves you with something. Six weeks after a good call what survives is somebody's notes. Six weeks after a good document the document is still there, and your new head of marketing can read it without anyone translating.

Yes, when a conversation genuinely improves the work. What does not happen is a discovery call as a sales step, or a standing weekly meeting that exists to demonstrate progress.

Questions on a deliverable are answered in writing, because the answer is then attached to the thing it is about rather than lost in a recording.

The intake is about ten minutes. After that, answering follow up questions in writing and giving read access to the numbers you already have. Then reading the document and deciding what to do about it.

There are no standing meetings during an engagement. That is the point of running it this way.

Whatever exists on five things: who is already paying and staying, what the message promises, where people arrive from, what happens between signup and value, and who stays. Analytics, billing exports, a customer list, the sales conversations you remember.

Where a number does not exist, that is not a blocker. It is usually a finding, and it goes in the document as one.

That happens, and it is worth more than it sounds. A suspicion cannot be acted on across a company, because the person who disagrees with it also has a suspicion. Evidence settles the argument, and the argument is usually what has been costing you the quarter.

The part that is genuinely new is more often the ranking than the list. Most teams can name their problems. Far fewer can say which one is load bearing.

The document says what would have to be true for the diagnosis to be wrong, and what to watch for, because a conclusion you cannot test is an opinion with formatting. It is also written so you can disagree with one step without discarding the whole thing, which is why the reasoning sits next to each recommendation instead of at the end.

One round of revisions is included in every engagement. If something is unclear or you think a piece of evidence has been read incorrectly, say so and it gets addressed in writing.

Then that is what the document says. A diagnostic that can only ever conclude that marketing is at fault is not a diagnostic, it is a pitch, and it will find a marketing answer every time because it is being paid to.

That case comes up often enough to be written out in full under Work.

No. Growth depends on things outside any engagement, starting with what you choose to act on, and anybody promising you a revenue number is either guessing or selling.

What is promised is the work described in the scope, to the standard a competent professional would apply, inside the stated turnaround. Every claim in the deliverable carries its evidence, so you can check the reasoning rather than trust the conclusion.

Yes. If you go on to the Positioning and ICP Sprint or to Growth Operations within thirty days, the $2,000 comes off the first invoice.

A written scope and price is agreed first, then the engagement is invoiced in advance and the work starts on payment. Prices are in US dollars and exclude any tax due in your jurisdiction.

You do, on payment in full. Use it, edit it, forward it internally, act on it without limit. The right kept here is to describe the engagement in general terms, and nothing that names you or publishes a figure goes anywhere without your written agreement first.

Yes, by default, and that obligation outlives the engagement. It does not cover anything already public or anything the law requires be disclosed. If your legal team needs a signed agreement of their own, ask in the intake.

You are told plainly, and told why, inside two business days. Where there is somewhere better to send you, you get pointed there.

Declining work that will not go well is cheaper for both of us than taking it.