Find out what is actually wrong.

A company with real traction whose growth has flattened has usually already tried the obvious things. The Diagnostic is the step that decides what to try next, on evidence rather than on whoever argues hardest in the meeting.

Price: $2,000
Turnaround: Seven business days
Starts with: The intake

Who it is for

A B2B company with real traction whose growth has flattened, where the team is competent, the effort is real, and the number is not moving anyway. That last part matters. If nobody has tried anything yet, you do not need a diagnosis, you need to ship something and see what happens.

It is also for the situation where everybody in the room has a different theory and all of them are plausible. That is the specific condition this engagement resolves, and it is more common than any single failure mode.

The situation it addresses

Growth has been flat for two quarters or longer. Acquisition may still be working. Revenue may still look level rather than falling, which is the version that takes longest to notice. Someone has proposed a rebrand, someone else has proposed more spend, and a third person thinks it is the product.

All three might be right. Acting on all three at once is how a company spends a year and arrives back where it started, slightly poorer. The Diagnostic exists so that the next quarter is spent on one thing, and the right one.

What we examine

The same five areas every time, in the same order. That is deliberate. A diagnosis that follows the client's hunch tends to confirm it, so the examination runs the same way whatever you tell us in the intake.

ICP clarity: Who is already paying and staying, what those accounts have in common, and whether anybody inside the company can name them without hedging.
Positioning: What the message promises, who it is addressed to, and where the promise and the product stop agreeing with each other.
Acquisition: Where people come from, what they believe by the time they arrive, and what that belief costs you to create.
Activation: What happens between signing up and the moment the value is obvious, and how many people never get there.
Retention: Who stays, who leaves, and whether the two groups differ in a way that was visible on the day they arrived.

The five are examined in relation to each other rather than scored separately. Most of the useful findings sit in the gaps between two of them, and a scorecard would hide exactly those.

What you provide

Gathering this takes most companies under an hour. Nothing here needs preparing or tidying first.

Read access to your analytics, whatever you use.
A revenue or billing export by account, with signup date and current status.
Access to the site, the onboarding, and any sequences a new customer receives.
Whatever you have already written about who the customer is, however rough.
Two or three customers we can email a short set of questions to, if you are willing. Optional, and useful.

What we do

We read the business the way a buyer reads it, then the way the numbers describe it, and look for where those two accounts of the company stop agreeing. That gap is nearly always where the answer is.

Then the five areas, in order, with the evidence written down as it is found rather than assembled afterwards to support a conclusion. If two of the three failure modes remain live halfway through, we say so in the document and set out what would separate them.

The work is done in writing throughout. There is no phase where findings exist only in somebody's head.

What you receive

One document, roughly twenty pages, in this order. It is written to be forwarded, argued with, and acted on without us in the room.

The diagnosis, in the first paragraph. Which of the three problems you have, said plainly, before any of the working.
The evidence for it, and the evidence that rules out the other two. This is the longest section and the one a sceptical reader should start with.
What to do about it, in order, with the reasoning attached to each item so you can disagree with a step without discarding the document.
What to stop doing. Usually the most valuable pages, and the ones people forward.
What would have to be true for the diagnosis to be wrong, and what to watch for over the next quarter.
A plain note on anything that could not be checked, and what it would take to check it.

One round of written questions and revisions is included. If a conversation would genuinely resolve something faster than another exchange of documents, we can have one.

Timeline

Seven business days from a complete intake and access, to the document landing in your inbox.

The clock starts at complete rather than at payment, because the usual cause of delay is waiting on an export. If something is missing you hear about it on day one, not on day six.

What happens after delivery

You read it, and you send questions. Those are answered in writing, and one round of revisions is included.

Then one of three things. You act on it yourself, which is a perfectly good outcome and happens often. Or the diagnosis was a positioning problem and the Sprint is the repair. Or you know what to build and want it built and operated, which is Growth Operations.

If you continue into either within thirty days, the $2,000 comes off the first invoice.

What this is not

A marketing audit. An audit lists everything that could be better. A diagnosis names the one thing that is in the way, which is a smaller and more useful document.
A deck. It is a written document, meant to be read rather than presented.
A plan we then execute for you. What to do about it is included; doing it is a separate engagement, and plenty of companies take the document and run it themselves.
A guarantee. Nobody can promise a growth outcome, and anybody who does is selling you the promise rather than the work.

Why it costs $2,000

It is priced to be a real decision and a small one. High enough that the companies who fill in the intake have genuinely decided something is wrong, which makes the work better on both sides. Low enough that it is not a procurement exercise, and you are not committing a quarter of a budget to find out whether we are any good.

Set against what it replaces, it is a rounding error. A quarter spent rebuilding onboarding for a problem that was never in the onboarding costs more than this in salary alone, before counting the quarter.

It is also the reason the fee is credited if you continue. The Diagnostic is not meant to be a revenue line. It is meant to be the step that makes the next decision obvious.

How to start

Fill in the intake. It takes about ten minutes, and the answers are the first input into the work rather than a form somebody files. You get a reply within two business days, and if this is the wrong engagement for you, that is what the reply will say.

Start with the intake

All three engagements

Ready to find out which of the three you have?

That is what the intake is for. It takes about ten minutes, and the answers go straight into the first read of your business.

Start with the intake