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Cover note
Where to start, what is still provisional, and what I need from you. Two pages, read first.
Thomas Tornatore Practice Advisory
The Practice Charter
The decisions your practice runs on, made and written down. What you sell, to whom, at what price, how you prove it before you have a case study, and where your effort goes. For an experienced practitioner who has recently gone independent, or is about to.
You did not lose your judgment when you left. You lost the structure that used to carry it.
A large organization supplies the thresholds, the gates, the approval paths and the if-this-then-that, and it supplies them invisibly. In a firm that has had them for generations, nobody can point to where they live. You just work inside them.
You know how to do the work. What you have never had to settle is which of it to sell, who to sell it to, how it gets delivered, and what has to be running underneath before any of that holds. There is more of it than anyone counts from the outside.
Go independent without that and nothing stops you doing ten things at once, so you do. The first year gets spent finding out one expensive experiment at a time what should have been settled in the first month.
This is that structure, rebuilt out of your own material and owned by you this time.
- Decisions made
- Nine
- Your own method
- Built, not supplied
- Shape
- 90 days together (multiple times a week), 90 days running it, then a review
- Afterwards
- No retainer
Most of it narrows what you are doing. You will not agree with all of it, and that is the design.
Every decision is yours to make. What you get is a recommendation and the reasoning under it, written plainly enough that you can disagree with it precisely rather than vaguely. Where the answer turns on something only you know, your prices, your runway, your entity structure, it says so instead of guessing. None of it is written to be agreeable.
Fit
Who it is for, and who it is not.
For
- An experienced practitioner who has recently gone independent, or is about to
- A real delivery record. Years of work behind you that a practice can be built out of
- Range without a sequence. You can do several things well and nothing is telling you which comes first
- You can name your own part in the work you have done, not just the team's
- You want the blunt answer more than you want the comfortable one
Not for
- You have not left yet and are still deciding. This assumes the decision is made
- Your plan is settled and you want a second opinion on it. This assumes it is still open
- You are building a product. This is for practices that sell judgment
- The work is still ahead of you. The review is built from delivery you have already done, so some has to be behind you
- You want someone to do it. You leave with decisions and drafted language. Acting on them is yours
If any of these describe you, I will say so in the first conversation rather than after you have paid.
What you leave with
Nine decisions made, and your own method built.
Each one made, written down, and yours to reread, argue with, or hand to someone else. These are the nine.
- Vertical. Which market you narrow to, and what the adjacent second one is
- Buyer. Who has to say yes before anyone can buy from you
- What you sell. Which offers, how many, and how many you actually deliver
- Your method. Named, staged and documented before you sell it
- Pricing. What the number is set against. Never against days
- Proof. What stands in for evidence before the first result exists
- First conversation. How it opens, the warm motion, and the one cold instrument
- Concentration. One market in the marketing, and what gets checked before you commit
- Portfolio structure. Where each business or brand you run belongs
The documents
The Charter, and eight documents around it.
The Charter holds the nine decisions, each with the reasoning, what it costs you if I am wrong, and what would change it. The eight are what you need in your hands to act on it.
The spine
The Charter
All nine in one document, in the order they have to be decided, with the recommendation and its reasoning on each.
Three days of your work
Building your method
A construction guide for your own diagnostic method: how to excavate the one you already have from the engagements you have already run, and the screen that separates a method a finance director will accept from one they will dismantle.
Language you can use tomorrow
The artifacts
Drafted language, as worked examples you overwrite. Your positioning line with alternates, a rewritten one-pager, three outreach notes, a script for the call that converts them, and a written standard for what to check before you commit.
The sequence
The first 90 days
Week by week, in the order that matters, with the weekly numbers to watch and what each one means when it goes wrong.
If you run more than one
Property separation
Where each business or brand you run belongs, and the rules that keep them from eroding each other. Omitted if you run one.
Before your first client call
Practice infrastructure
What has to be true before you take a client conversation. The short list, not a technology survey.
The one you work from
Before you take money
Every open question the review leaves you with, in one place, ordered by when it actually stops you: before you quote, before you sign, before you invoice. Each says who answers it and what it holds up.
Reference, not reading
An infrastructure appendix
Governance, agreements and vendor detail, for when procurement sends you a security questionnaire. Not for reading front to back.
One of the nine, free, right now.
Decision five is pricing: what your number is set against, and how much of your own margin you are willing to spend on a particular client. That one is now a worksheet anyone can run.
Your floor, your ceiling, and four judgment calls. Out comes the number to quote, the founding client investment folded into it, and the date that investment reverts to the standard fee. It runs entirely in your browser, keeps nothing on any server, and asks for no email.
Not a discount. An investment in this client, made on a date you set.
The other eight are the Charter.
How it works
Five steps, across two quarters.
1
A 30-minute conversation
Whether this is right for you. If it is not, I say so and tell you what I think you need instead. Nothing to prepare, and nothing to send me beforehand.
2
Letter and payment
A letter of engagement and a single fee. Work begins on cleared payment, and the ninety days run from that day rather than from the conversation.
3
An hour, then your material
First an hour of you describing the work, before I have read any of it. Then everything you use to describe or sell it, including the superseded versions. How you talk about the work is rarely how your documents talk about it.
4
Ninety days, worked through
You get the Charter, you build your own method with me, and you leave with your artifacts. We meet multiple times a week for the full ninety days. This is worked through together, not handed to you and checked on later. What we cover each session is set to where the work actually is, not to a fixed agenda, and you will be asked to bring the recommendation you disagree with most.
5
Ninety days running it, then a review
You run what we built. Then we look at what actually happened: what sold, what did not, your real delivery days, and whether the recommendations held.
Fees
What it costs.
Whether there is a fee, and what it is, gets settled in the first conversation. Either way it is agreed in writing before any work begins.
Ninety days
The Practice Charter
Where there is a fee it is a single one, agreed before work starts, covering the whole ninety days and everything you leave with. The ninety days run from the day the letter is settled rather than from the conversation.
A limited number of engagements each quarter. Where there is a fee, it is fixed for the engagement and does not change once the work is underway.
Ninety days more
You run it, then we review
Included, with nothing further invoiced for the review and nothing invoiced after it.
The review is where the engagement ends. No retainer, no standing call, and no ongoing advisory after it.
Boundaries
What I do not do.
Financial advice
No tax, accounting, insurance or investment advice. I read financials well and use that as a lens, because most operations advisors cannot connect an operational decision to its financial consequence. It is not what I sell.
AI strategy and governance
I do not take AI work under the Charter. That is Fellowship Intelligence. If a Charter turns one up, I name it and point you there.
Fractional roles
No interim executive seat and no open-ended presence. The frequency during the ninety days is real work toward your artifacts, not a standing retainer, and it ends on delivery.
Start
30 minutes. Nothing to prepare.
If it is not the right fit, I will tell you on the call, and tell you what I think you need instead. Questions first are fine: thomas@thomastornatore.com.