We answer the question you actually have.
No methodology section. You tell us what you are trying to decide, the work happens before we meet, and the hour is yours to spend asking.
How an engagement runs
1 · The conversation
What are you trying to decide, and by when. No method, no instruments, no proposal. We also ask who else in the business has questions — an hour spent there often means one piece of work serves marketing, sales and product rather than only the person who commissioned it.
2 · The build
Everything you give us in one place, measured on a common frame: studies you already ran, syndicated and secondary, sales and behavioural records, media data, and the text nobody has analysed. This is the part that takes time, and it happens before we meet.
3 · The analysis
Your question, and the questions behind it. Where it cannot answer, we find that out early rather than at the meeting.
4 · The session
An hour, in person wherever possible. You ask, we answer, in real time. No presentation.
5 · The write-up
After the session, not before: what was asked, what came back, what it rests on, and where the limits are.
6 · Whatever is next
More questions, more data, or nothing at all. Your call, not ours.
What you get
Answers to the questions you asked, in the room, with the reasoning available for as long as you want to push on it. A written record afterwards. And a measurement that stays built, so the second question costs a fraction of the first.
What you do not get
No presentation. Nothing gets walked through. The hour is yours to spend asking.
No methodology section. We will explain how it works in as much detail as you like, and the evidence page is already more candid than most. It is just not the deliverable, and it is not how we open.
No junior staff. The person who did the analysis answers the question. State that as a limit before anything else: it caps how many engagements can run at once, which is why the client list stays short and why there are weeks when the answer is that we cannot take it on.
How good an answer you get depends on what you hand over
Four levels. Each one is a better answer and a heavier lift to arrange. You choose the level, and nothing above the first is ours to decide.
| Level | What it uses | What it asks of you |
|---|---|---|
| One | Public information only — filings, published research, syndicated | Nothing. No permission, no paperwork |
| Two | Plus research you already own | An NDA |
| Three | Plus your sales and behavioural data | A security review |
| Four | Plus data collected for the question | A contract and a field budget |
The first conversation always runs at level one, so nothing has to move anywhere before you have seen what it produces. Every level above that is your decision, asked for when you want a better answer.
Levels two and three are cumulative and carry most of the value, largely because they are made of things you have already paid for once.
Level four is honest rather than discouraged. Collecting data for the question takes weeks rather than days and is quoted separately. We recommend it where the question genuinely cannot be answered without it, and we say so just as plainly when it can. A recommendation does not get shaded to protect how quickly we would otherwise have answered.
What this is not
It is not a canned example built in advance and replayed. The analysis is prepared. The answers are not.
It is not a proposal with a number at the end. The first conversation runs on public information and there is nothing to sign to get it.
And it is not a full study. Public information alone will not give you a fielded answer with a confidence interval on it. What it gives you is a structure, a distance, and a view of whether this is worth doing properly.
Bring a decision you are about to fund.
Tell us what you are trying to decide. The first conversation runs on public information only, so there is nothing to arrange on your side and nothing to get approved.
Chuck Woelfel
[email protected]
716.903.1030