This page isn’t a menu. It’s a path.
Everything here follows one sequence: an intro call to find out whether this is a fit, a diagnostic that maps where you are and what’s blocking, then a flagship engagement that runs the first lap with you. Each step earns the next. By the time you’re ready for the full engagement, you’ll already know what working together feels like, because we’ll have already worked on your actual situation.
That’s deliberate. It’s how I’ve opened consulting engagements for twenty years: diagnose before you prescribe. If you come from the design world, you’ll recognize the shape. It’s the double diamond, pointed at your own practice.
Intro Call
Thirty minutes. Free.
The job of this call is triage, not sales. Together we figure out three things: whether you’re inside the first lap, whether the gap is really the work around the work, and whether the timing is right.
You’ll leave knowing your next step, whether or not it’s with me. For some people the right next step is the newsletter, a referral, or a well-timed “not yet” with a reason attached. The call is where we find that out cheaply.
First Lap Diagnostic
A 90-minute working session, plus a written plan. $750.
Here’s what it’s for. You know there’s a lot you don’t know. What’s paralyzing isn’t the size of the gap; it’s that you can’t see its edges. The Diagnostic turns “I know there’s a lot I don’t know” into a list with an order.
We spend the session mapping where you are on the first lap: what’s already in place, what’s blocking, and what has to happen in what sequence. Your written plan follows within the week, sequenced against your actual runway. Not a generic playbook. Your constraints are the plan’s inputs: your savings, your family, your timeline. Because it’s not a beer budget you’re working with anymore. It’s your mortgage.
The diagnostic fee credits fully toward The First Lap if you enroll within 60 days of receiving your plan. And the plan is yours either way. Some people should take it and run the lap on their own.
The First Lap
Four months. Eight biweekly sessions. $8,000.
One full revolution of the consulting cycle: position → find → pitch → price → run → wrap → follow-on.
Every First Lap starts with the Diagnostic. If you’ve already done one, that was step one. Your written plan becomes the route for the whole engagement: what we build, in what order, at what depth. Nobody starts from the same place, so no two routes are identical. The plan flexes. The finish line doesn’t.
Every client finishes with three things:
- A positioning statement you believe
- A price you can say out loud
- A pipeline routine that doesn’t depend on luck
Around that core, we build what your situation calls for: your offer, named and scoped. Your first proposal. A working SOW. An overview deck. A case study format. The wrap and follow-on playbook, so the first project produces the second. The lightweight systems that run the business: tracking prospects, invoicing, staying in touch. Which of these we build, and how deep we go, comes straight from your plan. Deep on what your lap needs, not a shallow pass at everything.
The capstone: your positioning, shipped publicly. Not a post that scrolls away by Friday. The permanent version: the new title in your list of positions, or a site that says the same. It becomes the first thing you say when someone asks what you do, not the second or third.
You don’t have to arrive ready for that. The arc of the engagement is research, then small experiments, then shipping. We start with discovery: conversations, market signals, low-visibility tests that tell you what your market actually values. The artifacts are the proof of that work, not a substitute for it.
We meet every other week. In the week between, I review what you’ve built and get you unstuck. How much you take on between sessions is yours to calibrate: the more time you give the lap, the more you’ll get from it. When time is tight, we spend it on the highest-leverage work.
The finish line isn’t the shipped positioning. It’s that you can run the next lap without me.
You’ll be one of no more than four clients at a time. Coaching engagements are promises, and I don’t make more of them than I can keep.
The First Lap fits if four things are true.
You’re going independent, or you already are. If you’re still weighing whether, that’s a real question, but it isn’t this engagement. Start with the newsletter.
You’re roughly director or VP level, fifteen-plus years in. The gap is the commercial side: positioning, pricing, proposals, pipeline. Not the work itself.
Pre-launch through the first year or two. The real test isn’t your title or how long your LLC has existed. It’s this: have you ever positioned, priced, sold, run, and wrapped an engagement you originated yourself? If yes, you’ve run the lap, and you don’t need a first-lap coach. You might like the newsletter, though.
About four months of biweekly sessions, plus real work between them: research, conversations, small experiments. You don’t have to arrive ready to go public. Building that readiness is most of what the engagement does. The one thing the engagement can’t do is build a practice designed to stay invisible forever. Shipping your positioning is the capstone; we’d be working toward a destination you’ve ruled out.
Not sure whether you fit? That’s what the intro call is for. Honest answers include “yes,” “no,” and “the Diagnostic first.”
Do you bill hourly?
No. Every engagement is priced against what it produces, not hours logged. Hourly pricing punishes speed and rewards drag. I don’t use it, and by the end of the lap, neither will you.
How does the Diagnostic credit work?
The full fee credits toward The First Lap if you enroll within 60 days of receiving your written plan.
When can I start?
I hold a maximum of four concurrent First Lap clients, so start dates depend on open slots. You’ll get an honest read on timing during the intro call. If capacity is the only thing in the way, the credit window won’t be what stops us.
What happens after the lap?
You run the next one without me. That’s the design. Some alumni continue with The Next Lap, a monthly advisory session; it’s not something you need to think about now.
Can’t I just do this with AI?
Yes, partly, and you should. AI compresses the mechanical overhead of the lap: the drafts, the research legwork, the boilerplate. What it doesn’t compress is the expensive lessons, because those were never information problems. The underpriced first project, the price you can’t say out loud, the pipeline gap after your first engagement wraps: you don’t fix those with better drafts. The twelve-to-twenty-four-month figure was never about typing speed.
Is this coaching or done-for-you?
Coaching. You write the positioning, you set the price, you send the proposal. My job is that you can run the next lap without me. If someone writes it for you, you’ve outsourced the one thing you came here to own.
Start with an intro call.
Thirty minutes, free, and honestly framed: the job is finding out whether this is a fit, and pointing you somewhere useful if it isn’t.
Already know you want the Diagnostic? Skip the call and book the working session directly.
Prefer email? Drop me a note at hello@gregobaker.com.