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The practice is disciplined about the engagements it accepts, because it is a one-person firm and because diffuse work produces diffuse thinking.

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We work with owner-led businesses.

Founder-led, second-generation family-led, or genuinely owner-operated. €10m to €100m in revenue, 50 to 400 employees. Belgian or Dutch-speaking by default; English-first engagements work when the top team is internationally staffed. The owner is in the room for the consequential moments, because an owner-led business that treats strategy as a delegated function is not a business the practice can usefully serve.

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We work on brand and category decisions.

Commercial Scan, Where to Play / How to Win, positioning reset, pricing architecture, go-to-market, category vision, leadership offsite. These are decisions the owner has to hold, not tasks the owner can outsource. The practice facilitates the decision; it does not take the decision.

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We do not take turnaround work in financial distress.

Financial distress requires a restructuring partner, not a brand partner. If the business is in a cash-flow spiral, the first call is to a CFO advisor, not to LIVE FROM THE WHITE HOUSE.

 

We do not sell creative execution.

No ad creative, no media planning, no agency-of-record work. The practice writes briefs; it does not produce the work. A separate execution partner is selected case by case.

 

We do not do retainers.

Each engagement has a beginning, a middle, and a decision point at which the practice's involvement either renews against a new question or ends. Retainers erode diagnostic discipline, and diagnostic discipline is the practice's working capital.

 

We do not co-pitch.

Engagements come through direct referral, keynote, podcast, or LinkedIn — never through competitive pitch against a shortlist of agencies. Pitching reduces strategy to sales theatre; the practice declines the theatre.

 

The refusals above are not gatekeeping. They are the only way a one-person practice can hold the standard this site's thinking argues for. Strategy is saying no to the hundred other good ideas available. (Porter 1996; decaedere, to cut off).