Strategy, operations, planning
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 what you refuse. For an experienced practitioner who has recently gone independent, or is about to.
They have a structure problem. They can do the work. What they do not have is a decided answer to what they sell, to whom, at what price, how they prove it before they have a case study, how the first conversation happens, and what they refuse. So the first year gets spent discovering those answers one expensive experiment at a time, usually while runway shortens.
The product is correction. You will not agree with all of it, and that is the design.
Every recommendation comes with the reasoning, what it costs if I am wrong, and a plain statement of whether it is my call or yours. Where a decision is properly yours, your prices, your runway tolerance, your entity structure, it says so rather than pretending otherwise. If what you want is your current plan reflected back with more confidence, you can get that anywhere, and from almost anyone.
Fit
If any of these describe you, I will say so in the first conversation rather than after you have paid.
What you leave with
It arrives as eight documents, because a decision you can reread and argue with is worth more than one you remember from a meeting. Here is what each of them settles.
The nine decisions your practice runs on. What you sell, to whom, at what price, what your method is, how you prove it with no case study yet, how the first conversation happens, what you refuse, and where each part of your business belongs.
Each one with the reasoning, what it costs if I am wrong, and whose call it is.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.
Deliberately not a method. Yours to build, in about three days.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 you decline.
Language you can use tomorrow, in your own words by the end of the week.Week by week, in the order that matters, with the weekly numbers to watch and what each one means when it goes wrong.
Where each business or brand you run belongs, and the rules that keep them from eroding each other. Omitted if you run one.
What has to be true before you take a client conversation. The short list, not a technology survey.
Governance, agreements and vendor detail, for when procurement sends you a security questionnaire. Not for reading front to back.
How it works
Whether this is right for you. If it is not, I say so and tell you what I think you need instead.
Work begins on cleared payment.
Everything you use to describe or sell your work, including the superseded versions. The contradictions between your own documents are the most useful thing in the pile.
Your questions, not a presentation. You will be asked to bring the recommendation you disagree with most.
Fees
Eight written documents, the intake, and one working session. About two weeks from cleared payment.
Paid before work begins. A limited number of engagements each quarter.
The nine decisions re-run against six months of evidence: what sold, what did not, your actual delivery days, and whether the recommendations held.
There is no third step. No retainer, no standing call, no ongoing advisory.
Boundaries
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.
That is Fellowship Intelligence, a separate practice of mine, and it stays separate.
No interim executive seat, no ongoing presence, no standing meetings. This engagement ends on delivery.
Start
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.