How we work · method and the first ninety days

The interview becomes an operating asset.

Seven decisions turn lived expertise into a reusable authority archive. Each one leaves a visible output you can inspect. This page is the diligence: what happens after you sign, when, and what it costs you in time.

Engagement · what exists at day 90
Voice Standard · illustrative
Positions written
3
with boundaries
Pieces published
60
20 a month
Approval time / wk
48 min
▼ from 3 hrs
Rungs moving
2 of 5
quality, authority
Weekly approval time, minutesThe calibration curve
180W1140W295W370W460W652W848W12
Quality
Authority
Influence
Pipeline
Value
Chapter 01 · method

Seven decisions. Each leaves a visible output.

01
Capture
Voice, source material, lived evidence.
02
Position
Claim, proof, counterargument, boundary.
03
Select
A calendar tied to authority gaps.
04
Argue
One idea, translated for each room.
05
Edit
Senior judgment on thesis, cuts, sequence.
06
Ship
Surface-ready, approved by you.
07
Measure
Authority, influence, commercial movement.
01 · Capture

You should not have to draft from scratch. You should have to think clearly.

Recorded conversations, source documents, customer calls and prior writing become a reusable voice archive. The raw material is not prose. It is the claim, the evidence behind it, and the example only the operator can give.

01Recorded interviewForty-five to sixty minutes with the named executive. Not a briefing call. A structured extraction.
02The archivePrior writing, internal memos, board decks, investor updates, product docs.
03Customer callsThe language buyers actually use, and the objection they raise before the third meeting.
04Lived evidenceThe numbers, the incident, the decision that only this operator was in the room for.
Voice capture · transcript excerpt
46:12 · position candidate · tagged
“The company keeps describing the symptom. The market is pricing the cause.”

One sentence from a forty-six minute recording. It became the founder's position for the following nine months, and it appeared in a byline, a keynote, an investor update and a sales deck.

PositionEvidenceBoundary
The interview is the only part of the process that cannot be delegated, automated or skipped.
QuestionWhat it settles
ClaimWhat do we believe the category has not said clearly?
EvidenceWhat numbers, experience and sources make it defensible?
CounterargumentWhat would an informed critic say, and where are they right?
BoundaryWhich claims are opinion, which are fact, and what stays confidential?
02 · Position

A voice becomes credible when its boundaries are explicit.

Four questions convert an opinion into a defensible position. The answers become the voice library, which is a decision system rather than a folder of writing samples.

Decision rule

A position without a boundary is only a louder opinion. The counterargument is written down before the first piece ships. It is the difference between a voice that survives a hostile question and one that only works in friendly rooms.

03 · Select

A calendar tied to authority gaps, not publishing slots.

A topic is not an angle. A keyword is not a position. Every publishing decision has to answer four questions before it earns a place on the calendar.

The questionA real answer looks likeA weak answer looks likeWhat it proves
Why now?A regulation changed on a known date and nobody has explained the operational consequence.Competitors are posting about it.A decision window has opened.
Why us?We hold proprietary transaction data, or we ran the fourteen submissions.We have a point of view.The claim can be owned rather than borrowed.
Who needs it?The CFO and the board, who will ask the question in the next cycle.Prospects at the top of the funnel.The next room is identifiable by name.
What happens next?Sales opens the follow-up with the finding, then sends the piece.We add it to the resource hub.The artifact has a job after publication.
What gets cut

Roughly half of what a team wants to publish fails at least two of these. Cutting it is the part of the calendar that creates the compounding.

04 · Argue

The idea stays stable. The language changes with the room.

One position, carried across four surfaces
“The market rewards tools that remove decision latency.”
LinkedIn and X
A sharp position.

One tension. One operator example. One sentence worth repeating. No preamble, because nobody scrolled to be warmed up.

Article
A defensible argument.

Evidence, counterargument and context that survive scrutiny from someone who does this for a living.

Deck
A decision path.

Status quo, cost, intervention and the proof the champion can carry into a room you are not in.

Report
A cited finding.

Transparent method, an original number, and a claim worth borrowing under someone else's byline.

Why this is the economics. Four artifacts, one act of thinking. Most content operations pay the thinking cost four separate times and then wonder why the four pieces contradict each other.

05 · Edit

Senior editing is the product.

Every material claim traces to evidence, context or named experience. A human editor decides the thesis, the cuts, the sequence and the argument.

01SourceEvery material claim traces to evidence, context or named experience.
02VoiceThe draft sounds like the person after they have thought clearly.
03JudgmentA human editor decides the thesis, cuts, sequence and argument.
04RiskLegal, confidential and reputational claims surface before approval, not after.
Draft 04 · editorial markup
The market has a serious efficiency problem decision-latency problem. Buyers do not need more information; they need a better solution language that survives finance.
Name the actual cost. Write for the next room.
06 · Ship

Approval should be about judgment, not formatting cleanup.

Nothing publishes without your approval, and nothing arrives needing work before you can read it. Five stages, with what you owe at each one.

StageWhat we deliverWhat we need from youTypical
DraftArgument and evidence, in your voice, formatted for the surface it will publish on.Nothing. This is our step.From the calendar
ReviewComments, source checks and the counterargument we could not resolve.One read. Comments in the document.One pass
FormatSurface-specific delivery. Carousel, thread, byline submission, deck copy, report layout brief.Nothing.Included
ApproveThe final artifact, ready to publish, under your name.Your sign-off. Explicit, in writing.Required before publication
MeasureWhat moved, against the signals agreed at the start of the engagement.Access to the systems that hold the numbers.Monthly
The standing rule

We do not publish work without your approval, and we do not send drafts to anyone but you. That is a term of engagement, not a courtesy.

Measurement ladder
Agreed before the first piece ships
Rung chosen
Pipeline
judged on
Baseline captured
Day 14
CRM, analytics
First read
Week 2
quality rung
Reported
Monthly
against the rung
Five rungsReported against the rung you chose
QUALITYAUTHORITYINFLUENCEPIPELINEVALUE
07 · Measure

Attention is the first signal, not the final result.

Five rungs, from the cheapest signal to the one your board already tracks. We agree which rung the engagement is being judged on before the first piece ships.

RungWhat we readSourceSeen by
QualityRead depth, saves, substantive replies. Not impressions.Platform analyticsWeek two
AuthorityCitations, byline placements, speaking and testimony invitations.Media monitoring, citation indexMonth two to four
InfluenceContent cited inside sales conversations. Buyer recall on first calls.CRM, call recordingMonth three
PipelineInbound volume and quality, RFP inclusion, deal velocity.CRM attributionMonth four to nine
ValueRetention, revenue mix, pricing power.FinanceYear one onward

The honest part. Rungs one and two move inside a quarter. Rungs four and five take longer, and they are the ones worth buying. Any practice promising pipeline movement in month one is selling you rung one and calling it rung four.

Chapter 02 · engagement

Ninety days, and what each of them costs you.

The method is ours. The time commitment is yours, and it is small enough to state precisely.

Days 1 to 14
Two weeks to build the archive everything else draws on
  • Voice capture session, 45 to 60 minutes, recorded. The one meeting that cannot move.
  • Archive intake: prior writing, memos, board and investor material, product docs, call recordings.
  • Position drafting: claim, evidence, counterargument, boundary. Returned to you for correction.
  • Calendar build: angles mapped to your pipeline and authority gaps.
  • Baselines captured, so month three is measured against something real.
At day 14: a voice library, a calendar with reasons, a baseline
Days 15 to 45
The first month of publishing is also the month the voice is calibrated
  • First drafts land, written against the agreed positions.
  • Approval loop opens. You comment, we revise, you sign off. Nothing publishes before that.
  • Your edits go back into the voice library. Correction rate falls sharply after piece six.
  • Cadence settles: twelve, twenty, forty or sixty pieces a month depending on tier.
  • First long-form: the byline or flagship the short-form has been building toward.
Expect to be more involved here than in any window that follows
Day 90
What exists that did not exist at day zero
  • The asset: a voice library and an archive of thirty to sixty pieces that all argue the same thing.
  • The cadence: a calendar that runs itself. The approval pass takes under an hour a week.
  • The signal: rungs one and two moving. Read depth and replies, then citations or inbound naming a piece.
  • The decision: scale, hold or stop. Thirty days notice in writing, at any point.
  • Yours in full if you leave tomorrow.
The first honest checkpoint
Pause is a real trade-off, not a free option

Voice compounds. Editorial compounds. Category authority compounds. If you pause in month two you paused before the flywheel started, and when you resume the compounding clock resets. We built the option because you should have it. What you do with it is your call.

Your time, quantified

The only thing we cannot buy from you is the hour.

What we needHow oftenFrom whomWhy it cannot be delegated
Voice captureOnce, at onboarding. 45 to 60 min.Named executiveNothing downstream is better than this hour.
Approval passWeekly. Usually under 45 min.You or a delegateNothing publishes without it. A term, not a preference.
Strategy callMonthly on Starter, weekly from Standard.You and the editorThe calendar is only as good as what you know about next quarter.
Expert interviewAs the calendar requires, from Pro.Your expertLong-form citing nobody internal reads like it.
System accessOnce, at onboarding.Whoever holds itMeasuring against a baseline needs the baseline.
The arithmetic
~1 hrper week, steady state

One recorded conversation produces a month of short-form, a byline and the raw material for a keynote. That ratio is the commercial argument for the model.

If the named executive will not sit for voice capture, we decline the engagement.

Next

Bring the idea worth owning. We will send the audit before we speak.

Then we will recommend the smallest engagement capable of making the idea travel.

Method hero · an editor's desk, transcript and markup