Any additional questions on your mind can be found here.
General Questions
We typically work best with founders, presidents, CEOs, or Principals of mission-based EdTech companies typically with 5-50 employees, $2M - $25M+ annual revenue or ARR, with a focus on STEM, language learning, higher education, career readiness, education management, adaptive learning, MOOCs.
You’re typically facing a significant hurdle or transition that keeps you up at night. Or feeling like you’re just feeding the machine rather than the business meeting your needs or the needs of your customers.
You’re open to having your assumption challenged, though likely testing each piece other than accepting it blindly, yet ready to implement with conviction...and a little bit of terror. The price won't be your objection compared to the possible impact on your firm.
Expect an honest, unfiltered outside perspective on how you’re really doing. We've seen the typical hurdles EdTech companies face. The patterns are familiar. What's different is how they show up in your specific situation and what you decide to do about them.
While we want to point you in the right direction, meaningful change ultimately depends on you because that's how change actually works. Our goal is to help you discover the insights and strategies you need to lead effectively, make informed decisions, and solve your own problems long after our engagement ends.
Chris Davis, our Practice Lead, will work directly with you throughout the engagement.
Three things, really:
- I'm not in your world. Industry insiders share your blind spots—they've normalized the same patterns you have. My value comes from being close enough to understand EdTech, but far enough to see what you can't from inside your jar.
- I won't steal your problems. Most advisors take the problem away, solve it themselves, and hand back an answer you don't own. That feels good in the moment, but it doesn't change anything. I help you discover the fix yourself—which means you have the conviction to act on it and the capability to solve the next one without me.
- Before we talk strategy, I've reviewed your financials, studied your materials, and immersed myself in your situation. My questions and recommendations are grounded in your reality rather than assumptions.
There are excellent firms in this space making solid contributions. If one of them would serve you better, I'll say so. That sounds modest, but it's how I protect the work that will actually help you.
Full payment is required upfront for all engagements. The reason isn't cash flow; rather, it gives us the freedom to be completely objective and transparent with you, without billing concerns shaping the conversation. We don't offer discounts.
For firms where cash flow is a consideration, we accept credit card payments (with a 3% processing fee).
I'd like to be as candid as I can with this one. No, and here’s why:
- We appreciate you wanting to vet our credibility, but for confidentiality reasons, we don’t provide personal client references. We have several case studies that illustrate our approach. You’ll get a clear sense of how we operate and the results clients have achieved by working with us.
- Our clients have not signed up to give you advice, and that’s usually what happens. They’ll be on the phone giving you an outline of the great solution that worked for them, in effect consulting you, and there’s no mechanism for payment. Or even any assurance that what worked for them applies to you.
- Ultimately, our reputation is defined by our work. We know we’re not the right fit for most, and that’s okay.
The most valuable deliverable isn't a document, it's your own clarity. The strategic insight and direction are discovered in the discussion, not a lengthy report.
- The main deliverable is a diagnostic assessment pinpointing your core challenges and opportunities.
- Recommendations are short, concise, and only in outline form.
- Before and after each advisory module, you’ll receive our perspective on the topic to review, and leave with specific next steps to put into action.
My role shifts from facilitation to pattern recognition during execution, helping you see when you're drifting and when resistance means something deeper. That includes up to 3 significant, agenda-driven interactions over 3 months (whichever comes first). Quick calls and emails don't count against this. These are usually initiated by you when there’s something you want help with, but sometimes from us if we feel like you’re avoiding us or may have lost some momentum.
During implementation, you provide some context (i.e., an agenda), and then we dig into whatever's surfaced: whether that's an obstacle, a drift from the strategy, or something that's changed. To make this efficient, these implementation calls are scheduled one at a time, and must always include the decision-makers.
For Business Deep Dive graduates who want the strategic direction carried into execution, we can move from an advisory relationship to an implementation partnership, without handing it off to an agency that wasn't in the room.
We’d have gone out of business years ago if we didn’t take client confidentiality seriously. Everything you share is protected by NDA, and we follow standard cybersecurity protocols to keep your materials secure.
The best way is to sign up for our weekly emails. They're free, and they're a preview of how I think: patterns I'm noticing, assumptions worth questioning, the kind of thing I'd say in a conversation whether you were paying me or not. If they resonate, you'll know. If they don't, you'll know that too.
Clarity Session Questions
I'm not trying to solve every challenge you face. Instead, this session is designed to help you see the one area where you feel stuck. The problem keeping you up at night. When you're drowning in everyone's opinions (including your own), 50 focused minutes can break months (or years) of spinning.
That depends.
At its best, you'll finally see the area you've been circling for months and what to do about it. When you stop second-guessing and move, everything downstream moves faster.
At a minimum, you'll have spent 50 minutes thinking clearly with someone who isn't inside your jar. That's harder to quantify, but most leaders can't remember the last time they had that.
One of the only reasons I can actually help you is that I am not in your world. I don't have decades in your specific corner of EdTech. That's the point. Industry insiders share your blind spots. They've normalized the same patterns you have.
I don't presume to know your business better than you do. What I see are the decision-making patterns that keep successful leaders stuck. Those patterns look remarkably similar across companies, even when the details don't.
Executive isolation is real. You're expected to have all the answers, so admitting you're stuck, even privately, takes courage. Everything you share stays between us. I'd have gone out of business years ago if I had abused that trust.
For a 50-minute session, no. Getting lawyers involved in an engagement this size makes little financial sense.
After working with leaders of EdTech organizations for several years now, here's what I've found to be true: while the details differ, the decision-making patterns are remarkably consistent. The executive who's paralyzed by investor pressure faces the same core challenge as one overwhelmed by team input—too many voices, not enough clarity on which direction actually works for you.
Put simply, the real problem is rarely what's visible on the surface.
I'm not just going to toss a grenade of hand-wavy ideas and then say 'Good luck!' as I run out the door. That doesn't serve you, and frankly, it's not how I operate.
So here's exactly what you can expect from our 50 min. call:
- You won't leave with a to-do list—you'll leave with a decision.
- If I've asked the right questions, you'll see your path forward and feel confident taking action. The breakthrough isn't me telling you what to do; it's you seeing which decision you need to make with the conviction to make it.
Don't over-prepare. Think about the area where you feel the most stuck. Then, just show up fully engaged and ready to be honest about what's holding you back.
Perfomance Diagnostic Questions
You’re likely tracking some useful metrics already. The problem isn't data, it's that you can't tell if you're winning or losing. You're tracking too much. Most of it is noise. The diagnostic helps you see which 3-5 metrics actually predict where you're headed—and ignore the rest.
Will it challenge some assumptions? Probably. Will it shine a light on areas that need work? Definitely.
We start with a conversation about your numbers, which ones you're actually making decisions from, and what you'd want to know 90 days before it happens. That conversation shapes everything that follows. Benchmarks are useful, but only if they're grounded in your reality—not generic industry averages applied blindly. The comparative data across EdTech companies grows with every engagement. What you're getting now is the analytical framework and your specific metrics. That's where the value is.
Typically, firms seek out this type of assessment in two scenarios:
- You suspect something is off track but lack clarity on exactly what or how to course-correct.
- You need an objective, data-driven perspective on your performance relative to industry benchmarks and competitors.
Most executives we work with already have instincts about what's not working, but they're either second-guessing themselves or struggling to convince their teams/boards to act on gut feelings without data to back them up.
As for whether you're ready: Can you act on what you discover? If you're looking for validation of decisions you've already made, this probably isn't the right fit. If you're genuinely willing to see patterns you've been missing—and have the authority to do something about them—you're ready.
Business Deep Dive Questions
This isn’t generic advice. It’s not a questionnaire. It’s not a report we drop on your lap.
It's a series of discussions with exercises designed to help you read the label on your own jar. You'll see the patterns keeping things stuck, and because you discovered them yourself, you'll have the conviction to act on them.
Anybody who’s been in business long enough realizes that there are no guaranteed outcomes. But if you're genuinely willing to see what's been invisible, this is built for that.
Transformative change rarely happens overnight. Clarity happens during the engagement. Results come from implementation over time. You can't shortcut that.
In our experience, it’s realistic to expect some initial positive indicators within 3-6 months. However, to see the full impact of your positioning may take 12-24 months to fully play out. The pace of change will depend on your specific situation and how decisively you act on what you've discovered.
You're likely ready if a few of these sound familiar: You're losing sleep—maybe not about one specific thing, but about a weight you can't quite name. Your team is executing, but results aren't following. Everyone's busy, but something feels scattered. You know where you want to go, but the path to get there is unclear. You have plenty of work, but the profits aren't matching your efforts. You're burnt out and suspect the answer isn't working harder. You've outgrown the decision-making approach that got you here.
The newsletter for when you know something needs to change.
You'll get an outside perspective on the patterns keeping EdTech leaders stuck. Every other Tuesday.