Your expertise closes deals in the room and disappears everywhere else.
I build the operation that carries it out of the room. One argument your whole firm can repeat, and a system that publishes it without depending on your calendar.
You sell into college athletics, and trust closes the deal.
You run a 2- to 25-person firm selling into college sports. Departments, conferences, collectives, agencies, alumni organizations, or the vendors serving them, and probably several of those at once.
Three of those buyers do most of your revenue: departments, collectives, and agencies. They want different things, which is where most of this starts.
Four sentences I hear in the first ten minutes.
"Most of our business comes through relationships."
Referrals arrive knowing nothing about how you think.
Every sales conversation starts colder than it should.
"We've talked about doing a newsletter, but nobody owns it."
It ran for six weeks two years ago and stopped.
Nobody's primary job is this.
Nothing tells you which topics or channels produced anything.
Restarting costs more each time you do it.
"I don't have time to write."
Correct. Writing was never the bottleneck.
The sharpest thinking in the firm only escapes on live calls.
You re-explain the same argument forty times a year.
"We don't want to sound like every other firm."
Departments, collectives, and agencies want different things.
One message written to the average of all three lands with none of them.
Three questions about your own firm.
Nobody sees your answers. They're here because the answers are the argument.
Is anything committed past the next 30 days?
Does one person own this as their primary job?
Does anything tell you which topics or channels are working?
You forecast revenue. You forecast headcount. You forecast capital, and you review all of it on a cadence.
This function has none of that, and nobody noticed, because content was never treated as an operation.
Four systems, and two of them produce the other two.
The assessment determines the scope.
System 01
The Identity
One argument every person in the firm can repeat the same way, segmented for the departments, collectives, and agencies you sell to. Your buyers stop hearing the average and start recognizing their own situation.
System 02
The Content Operating System
The machine that turns the argument into published work. Who produces what, on what trigger, reviewed by whom, published where. It takes you out of the production loop, so output stops depending on whether you had a quiet week.
System 03
Body of Work
What the operating system publishes. The newsletter, the LinkedIn positioning and articles, and the pages sales sends after a call.
System 04
Chalk Talk
What the operating system sends a prospect before anyone asks him for anything. Your education sequence, telling him the truth about his own situation while he's still deciding whether to call you.
The Identity is the argument. The operating system is what turns it into work you can plan around.
The work leaves paper behind.
I've spent 35 years running operations as a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, and I run your engagement the same way I'd run any other function.
Four documents come out of it:
Current state map.
What your firm produces today, who touches it, and where it stops.
Standard work.
The written procedure for producing each thing, so quality doesn't depend on who's having a good week.
Control plan.
What gets checked, by whom, on what trigger, and what happens when a check fails.
Before and after measures.
Baselines taken at the start and read again at closeout, using your definitions and your numbers.
Where it stops today
Your buyer at 9:40 on a Tuesday never gets there.
The assessment finds the stall and measures how much of your expertise never clears it.
Four stages, with a defined finish.
Assessment
Current state map, baseline measures, written findings, and a scoped plan with a fee and a finish date.
The Identity
The argument gets built and written down. It comes out of interviews with you, because nobody can source it from your website.
The Content Operating System
The machine gets built around the argument. Owners, triggers, review, publishing.
Production and transfer
The system runs and produces your Body of Work and your Chalk Talk. Then it transfers to you, with a control plan, training, a closeout report, and the measures read against the baselines taken in stage 01.
Everyone starts at 01. It scopes the rest.
You're not explaining your market to me.
I've published Coaches Hot Seat on this market for years. Every week it ranks all 138 FBS head coaches, which means the pressure, the buyouts, the searches, and the politics your buyers live inside get tracked here as a standing obligation.
I don't read up on your market before a call. It's already the job.
Coaches Hot Seat
138
FBS head coaches ranked, every week.
Written by the person who'd run your engagement.
Four reasons I'd tell you no.
The assessment is a qualification step in both directions. If any of these describes your firm, you'll hear it before you spend anything on a build.
You want to keep talking to everyone.
I'll ask you to rank your buyers and write to the top of that list first. Departments, collectives, and agencies want different things, so a firm that refuses to rank them ends up back at the message written to the average.
You want volume.
If the request is more posts on more channels, you want a writing service, and good ones exist at a fraction of this. I'm here when the problem is that nothing published sounds like the person your buyers meet in the room.
You won't sit for the interviews.
The argument I build is yours, so the raw material has to come out of your head. Nobody can source it from your website. If you can't commit real hours during the assessment and the Identity stage, the build has nothing to work from.
You need a result this quarter.
You sell on long cycles through relationships, and the system compounds on that same clock. A firm evaluating this as a channel test with a short window will judge it before it's done anything.
The objections, answered plainly.
"We already have someone doing marketing."
Good. They usually have no system to work inside and no standard to work against, which is why the output stalls when the week gets busy. I build the operation they run.
"Can AI do this?"
Production was never the bottleneck. Your judgment about this market is, and it's trapped in your head. AI produces faster from an argument you haven't written down yet.
"How much of my time does this take?"
Heavier during the assessment and the Identity stage. About 90 minutes a month once it runs.
"What happens when the project ends?"
You own it. Most firms extend for a defined transition period, but the goal is that you don't need me.
"How many clients do you take?"
Five at a time. Two active builds, three in transition.
"What does it cost?"
The assessment is scoped and priced on the call, because a 3-person collective advisory and a 25-person agency are not the same job. What's fixed is the sequence: you get the assessment fee before the assessment starts, and the build fee and finish date before the build starts. Nothing gets quoted until I know what I'm quoting.
Find out where your expertise stops.
Five days, five diagnostics, run on your own operation.
Each email names one reason a firm's expertise never reaches its buyers, then hands you a diagnostic you run on your own firm. Most take under ten minutes. By Friday you'll have five findings and a number: the one costing you more than the other four combined.
Here's the whole sequence before you give me an email.
Day one
Your best thinking only happens out loud. You already wrote it, you just said it instead.
Day two
Why niching down is bad advice, and what to do in place of it.
Day three
The newsletter died at week six, and discipline was never the variable.
Day four
He decided about you before you knew he existed. Here's what he looked at.
Day five
The ten-minute test that says whether this is an operation or a good intention.
This is what an education sequence does. You're using one right now. When I build you one, it's called a Chalk Talk.
Email only. Five days, then it stops.
Already know where your expertise stops, and want it fixed? See if you qualify.
Five at a time, and I'm selective about which five.
The form takes about ten minutes, and it goes both directions.
I read every one. If it looks like a fit, I'll suggest a time to talk. If it doesn't, I'll tell you that directly and point you toward what I'd do in your position, which costs you nothing either way.
I respond within two business days.