Most consulting starts with an answer. Someone looks around for a week and hands you a deck telling you what to change. Ours starts with three phases built to make sure the answer is actually right before anyone acts on it.
Every engagement we run follows the same sequence, in the same order, on purpose: Decode, Map, Conquer. Decode is where we actually learn the business, and the owner, before recommending anything. Map is where that knowledge turns into a real route to the goals we now know you're chasing. Conquer is where the route gets walked, with us next to you at first and increasingly out of the way as you go.
Skip the first phase and the other two are just guessing with extra steps. That's not a philosophy, it's a pattern that shows up in the research on structured change processes generally.
Decode isn't a kickoff call. It's genuinely getting to know how you operate, and how the business operates around you. What that looks like depends on the client and the situation: for owners open to being coached through it, that can include a personality and working-style assessment. For others, it's in-depth conversations where you walk us through how things actually run, time spent with your team, or shadowing you directly for a stretch. Which of those we use depends on what actually gets us an honest picture, not a fixed checklist we run through regardless of fit.
We're also collecting the raw material Map runs on while we're here: your 10-year, 5-year, and 1-year goals (the 10-5-1 framework, if you haven't worked through it yet), and a real sense of how you talk about the business, who it's actually for, and what makes it different from the next option a prospect is considering.
Most of Decode is information only you have. You can start handing it over before we ever sit down, write your own 10-5-1 now and we'll already have it on file when we talk.
Write Your 10-5-1 →Decode typically runs a couple of weeks at this stage of an engagement, mostly bounded by how quickly information comes back from your side, not by how fast we can ask questions.
This is where Decode's findings and your own 10-5-1 actually get used. We lay out everything we've learned, literally all of it, side by side, and work out how it fits together. Then we build the actual route: what has to happen, and roughly when, for the 1-year goal to land, the 5-year goal to stay on track, and the 10-year goal to still be real. A goal without a mapped route to it is just a wish with a deadline attached.
Map usually runs on a similar timeline to Decode, a couple of weeks, depending on how much needs reconciling once everything is actually on the table together.
Conquer is where the Map actually gets walked. It's also where the engagement shifts into PROPEL: ongoing monthly coaching rather than a fixed project with an end date. Meetings run monthly by default, but you can call whenever something comes up, we're not waiting for a calendar invite to be useful.
From here the focus moves to the more specific, ongoing work of growth, and increasingly, to helping you run it without needing us in the room. That's the actual goal of Conquer and PROPEL both: not a business that depends on us, but an owner positioned to take it further than they could on their own.
Decode, Map, and Conquer together typically run three to four months end to end, before PROPEL settles into its ongoing monthly rhythm.
This isn't three unrelated ideas. It's one sequence. Owner Involvement is why Decode starts with you, not the org chart. Dream Big is where the goals that Map actually plans around get written down in the first place. Pull any one of the three out and the other two lose the thing they were built on.
If you want to see this described from the business side rather than the process side, that's covered in our Services page, or in Case Studies from owners who've actually been through Decode, Map, and Conquer themselves.
Fix the Foundation. Fuel the Future.