The straw business
A few pages of website, nothing behind them. The business runs on foot traffic, word of mouth, and luck. Plenty of good operators live here for years, and it works right up until it doesn’t.
What knocks it down
One bad season.
Consulting & Strategy
Clarity First. Then Strategy. Then Growth.
Whether you're starting from scratch or untangling a mess, we sit down with you and build the roadmap.
Sound Familiar?
Most Businesses Are Busy. Very Few Are Strategic.
You're posting. You're running some ads. There's a website, maybe an email list nobody has touched since spring. Plenty of activity, and no way to say which piece of it actually brings in work.
We see the same thing over and over: a business with a website Google may have never crawled, no real presence on Maps, invisible to the exact people searching for what it does. Busy is easy. Strategic means stopping for a minute and building the map before you drive any further.
The Whiteboard Pitch
Straw, Sticks, or Brick?
Every first meeting ends up at the same whiteboard drawing. You know the story from when you were a kid. It also happens to be the most accurate picture of small-business marketing we've found.
The sticks business
A decent site and some paid ads. Better. But referrals are doing the heavy lifting, and the ads only work while you win the auction. A competitor with deeper pockets outbids you, or the referrals slow down, and the whole thing wobbles.
What knocks it down
One lost ad auction. One quiet month of referrals.
The brick business
Your business shows up everywhere your ideal customer actually spends time: search, maps, social, video, their inbox. Any one channel can have a bad month and the others hold the roof up. No single hit takes this house down.
What knocks it down
No single channel can.
Every engagement we take is about the same thing: getting you into the brick house.
The Growth Loop is the build plan for it. Each pass around the loop lays another course of brick.
The System
Where This Fits in the System
Consulting is the strategy stage — the drawing that decides what gets built, in what order, and why. Every other service is a wall of the brick house. This is the blueprint.
It is also the cheapest place to catch a mistake: on paper, before anything gets built.
How It Actually Runs
Your First 30 Days
No mystery phase, no black box. This is the cadence, start to finish — the last business that ran it was fully live, Google stack wired, 30 days after signing.
The consult — one hour, free
You tell us the whole story. How the business started, who your best customers are, what you've tried, what you refuse to do. We mostly ask questions and take notes. There's no pitch deck on our side of the table.
We go build the research
Your market, your competitors, and your full service list with local market pricing next to every line. It comes back as a worksheet, not a slide deck. You mark it up: circle what's right, cross out what's wrong, write in the margins.
Strategy takes shape around what you confirm
The plan gets built from your markups, not from a template. What you circled becomes the priority list. What you crossed out never makes it into the scope.
Build starts
Site, pages, copy, the works. And if you go dark mid-build, we pause until you're back. We build when you're with us — nobody pays for work they never engaged with.
Launch day, at your place
We come to you. Domain, email, lead capture — switched on together, in person, so nothing gets left half-connected while everyone assumes someone else handled it.
The Google stack gets wired
Search Console, Analytics, an optimized Business Profile, call tracking, site speed verified. At least one of those five is almost always missing when we meet a small business. When we leave, none of them are.
Then, and only then, paid ads
Ads go on top of the foundation, not in place of one. And we run them ourselves — this isn't advice-only consulting. When the plan calls for execution, we're the ones executing.
Research → Results
The research found a 47-mile gap. The launch filled it.
Iron Forge is a 13-year-old DOT inspection and truck repair shop in Sedalia, Colorado. When we mapped their market — every service, every competitor, local pricing — the research turned up something the owner half-knew but had never seen on paper: the nearest competing DOT inspection was 47 miles away. Google had no idea. Search Console had never been set up in 13 years of business.
Three weeks after launch, the business went from invisible to 1,500 Google impressions.
Read the Iron Forge case study0 → 1,500
Google impressions in the first 3 weeks — up from 0, because the site had never been indexed.
30 days
From signed contract to fully live, with the whole Google stack wired.
Reporting
Every analytic we have. In plain English.
Our reporting policy is simple: you get everything, with a summary a human can read on top. We'd rather send you every number than have you wonder what's being left out.
What lands in your inbox
- Search Console: the exact queries, impressions, and clicks Google gave you
- Analytics: who came to the site, from where, and what they did
- Call tracking: which calls came in and what drove them
- Ad spend and what it returned, down to the campaign
- A plain-English summary on top: what happened, why, and what we're doing about it
Client Results
“Phil didn’t just tell me what I wanted to hear. He told me what I needed to hear — and then showed me exactly how to fix it.”
CEO
Colorado Manufacturing Business
$100M+
Revenue range of businesses served
All stages
Pre-revenue startups to established brands
Straight Answers
Sometimes the honest answer is “not yet.”
We have no interest in closing a deal that ends with a client upset because the scope was too small to bring results. So if the scope you can afford right now won’t actually move your numbers, we’ll tell you that on the call — and point you at what to do in the meantime, most of it free — instead of taking your money.
Same with timelines. If you need the phone ringing next week, there are honest ways to get there. If the expectation is a market takeover by next month, you’ll get a realistic answer, not a signed contract that disappoints everyone.
The consult is free either way. Worst case, you walk out with a clearer picture of your market than you walked in with.
Investment
Consulting Pricing
Start with the audit. Move into any retainer within 60 days and 100% of the audit fee is credited — you pay for clarity once.
Recommended
Growth Audit + 90-Day Roadmap
$7,500
one-time · 2–3 weeks
- Full-funnel audit of your site, content, and channels
- Analytics and competitive review
- Prioritized 90-day roadmap
- 100% credited toward any retainer started within 60 days
The lowest-risk way to start working with us.
Standalone consulting: $300/hr
The tiers are the framework. Every contract gets tailored on the strategy call to what your business actually needs.
All four services together: The DIGG Growth System from $8,500/mo →
Questions
Frequently Asked About Consulting & Strategy
The Playbook
Related Reading
Brand Strategy9 min read
One Agency or Four Vendors? The Real Cost of Fragmented Marketing
A web shop, a social freelancer, an ads guy, and a content writer can each be good at their job while your marketing goes nowhere. Here's the coordination tax nobody invoices you for, and how to tell whether your vendors are actually aligned.
Brand Strategy9 min read
Marketing Agency vs. In-House Team: What Each Actually Costs
A mid-level marketer costs $70–90K before overhead. A functional multi-channel team clears $300K a year. Boutique agencies run $3–10K a month. Here's the honest math on both paths — including when in-house is genuinely the better buy.
Brand Strategy9 min read
Why Your Marketing Isn't Working: The Case for an Integrated System
Most businesses have a website vendor, a social media person, and a random ad spend — and wonder why none of it compounds. Here's why fragmented marketing fails and what an integrated system looks like.
Let's Figure Out What Your Business Actually Needs.
Book a free 30-minute strategy call. No pitch. No pressure. And if you start with the Growth Audit, 100% of the fee is credited toward any retainer you begin within 60 days — the audit ends up costing you nothing.
What would this cost? Get a 60-second estimate →Or call us directly: 720-575-8721