The Relevance Engineering Program
Build a growth system the company can run. And keep improving.
Every month you get a clearer picture of where your growth system is weak, active work on the biggest constraints, and a team that can run more of it without you. Six-month initial commitment, then month to month.
Why a program, not a project
A good plan doesn't stick on its own.
Most founders I meet have bought strategy before. Someone ran a few workshops, handed over a clear plan, and left. The plan was often good.
And six months later the same thing is true. The plan lives in a document. The growth system still lives in the founder's head. Revenue is still feast and famine. The founder still carries the positioning, the relationships, the pipeline, the pricing calls, and the follow-up personally.
So the deliverable here isn't a strategy document. It's capability moved into your company, then continuously improved. That takes longer than a few weeks, and it doesn't have a natural end date, the same way SEO or conversion optimization doesn't. There's always a next constraint.
The founder shouldn't have to disappear from growth. But the company shouldn't depend on the founder to grow.
How it works
Find the weak point. Fix it. Transfer it. Measure it. Repeat.
Every engagement runs the same loop, and it doesn't end when the first problem is fixed.
The radar tells us where the system is weak. The backlog tells us what to work on. The number of active tracks decides how fast we get through it. That's the whole model. Everything below is detail.
The assessment
Six pillars of a growth system
The radar shows the shape of your growth system, not one generic score. Most founder-led agencies are strong on delivery, uneven on Demand and Sales, and low on Transferability. The shape tells us where to start.
Five levels for each pillar
Level 4 is where founder dependence ends. Level 5 is where the compounding starts, and it's why the engagement doesn't need to end when you stop being the bottleneck.
What we actually work on
A prioritized backlog, and the tracks that clear it
The Growth Backlog
The assessment doesn't end in a big static strategy document. It ends in a Growth Backlog: a ranked list of the specific things holding your system back, each one scoped so it can become a track.
Each item carries the problem, the pillars it touches, current and target maturity level, expected business impact, priority, and the evidence that would show it worked.
Optimization Tracks
An Optimization Track is one clearly defined growth problem being actively diagnosed, changed, built, handed to someone on your team, and measured. Improving qualification is a track. Building a partner channel is a track. Sharpening positioning for one vertical is a track.
Your tier sets how many tracks can be active at once. That's what you're paying for: how many growth constraints get worked on at the same time. Not hours. Not meetings. Not the number of PDFs.
Higher tiers don't buy more access to me. They buy more throughput. A very large initiative can take two track slots, and I'll say so before we start it.
The first six months
What the first six months look like
We score the six pillars, draw the radar, set baseline numbers, and build the Growth Backlog. And we start at least one visible improvement in the first 30 days. You shouldn't spend six weeks waiting for strategy.
We run the highest-priority tracks. Assets and routines get built. Performance gets worked on. Internal owners get trained. Founder dependence starts coming down where it doesn't need to be.
Your team runs the changed system while we watch. We fix what breaks, re-score the pillars, measure business performance, and rank the next constraints.
Month six ends with "here's how far the system moved, and here's what's worth attacking next." Not "project complete, goodbye."
After month six
It keeps going, at the pace you need
After the initial six months the program runs month to month. You can move tiers up or down as your needs change.
Tiers move with you
A client might start at three tracks because there's a lot to fix, then drop to one track once the foundation is solid. That's not a failure. That's the system working. The reverse happens too: a new market opens or a sales hire lands, and you want more moving at once.
The rule I run by
Make Haus unnecessary for yesterday's problem and valuable for tomorrow's. You shouldn't need me to run the system. You should want me around to find and fix the next constraint.
Later tracks tend to be: new markets, new offers, more demand channels, partnerships, sales conversion, proposal improvement, sales hiring and onboarding, bigger deals, better proof, org changes, acquisitions, and getting the business ready for a transaction if that's on your horizon.
Pricing
Priced by throughput
The tier sets how many Optimization Tracks run at once. It doesn't set how many hours of me you get.
One constraint at a time, in sequence. Focused progress for agencies with one clear thing to fix first.
Most agencies. Usually one demand-side track and one sales or ownership track running at the same time.
Several big priorities at once: a new market or offer, a sales hire, an acquisition, or you want faster movement.
The Growth Maturity Audit
Every program starts with the Growth Maturity Audit in month one: the six-pillar assessment, radar chart, baselines, and Growth Backlog. Program clients get it at their normal monthly rate.
If you'd rather see the audit before committing to the program, it's available on its own. You get the full diagnostic, radar, priorities, and backlog with no ongoing commitment. Optionality costs more. Commitment gets the better economics.
Groups with multiple brands, acquired agencies, or separate go-to-market systems get scoped separately.
What gets measured
Two scorecards, every month
System maturity and transfer
- Movement on each of the six pillars
- Founder hours on recurring growth work
- Who owns each recurring growth job
- How consistently the team runs its routines
- Share of growth activity that happens without the founder
Business performance
- Qualified opportunities and qualified pipeline
- Opportunity quality and source mix
- Proposal rate, win rate, average deal size, sales cycle
- Revenue
I don't promise a revenue number on a timeline. Revenue gets measured, and it matters. But agency deals close in three to nine months and depend on things neither of us controls. I'm accountable for the maturity and operation of the system. Revenue is the lagging result, and we'll watch it together.
Your role
You don't disappear. You choose.
You may be the best salesperson in the company. Fine. The goal isn't to get you out of sales. It's that the company stops depending on you for growth.
You'll probably still join the important late-stage calls, hold the strategic relationships, publish the point of view, shape the offers, and close the unusually big ones. What you'll stop doing is being the only reason routine growth happens.
Fit
Who this is for, and who it isn't
For you if
- You run a founder-led technical or custom software agency, roughly $1M to $5M+, with a real team.
- Growth still runs through you, or through you and a partner.
- Someone inside the business can receive and own the work.
- The team has actual capacity, and you're willing to hand over recurring responsibilities.
- There's enough sales and market activity to observe and improve.
- You're willing to measure results.
Not for you if
- You want a one-off strategy document.
- You won't give your team ownership.
- You need results in 30 days.
- You're pre-revenue or don't have a team yet.
Without those, the program recreates the exact problem it's meant to fix: a great strategy nobody implements.
Common questions
What founders ask before they start
The questions that come up on almost every call. If yours isn't here, ask it on the call.
"I'm our best salesperson. Why would I remove myself?"
You don't. Founder involvement becomes intentional instead of required. You keep the late-stage calls and the strategic relationships. The routine growth work stops needing you.
"Why six months? Couldn't we do a shorter project?"
A strategy on its own doesn't stick. Six months is the minimum to write down what's in your head, hand each job to a named person on your team, and watch one full sales cycle run without you. Agency deals close in three to nine months, so nothing shorter tells either of us whether it worked.
If you only want the diagnosis, the Growth Maturity Audit is available on its own.
"So I pay you and my employees do the work?"
If I do everything, we replace founder dependency with consultant dependency. I draft and build until your owner can run it, then I move to the next constraint. The point is capability installed in your company.
"Why not just hire a salesperson?"
Hired into an unclear, founder-held system, a salesperson becomes another person who has to ask you what to do. Positioning, offer, and qualification come first. That's usually the first track.
"I just need more leads."
Maybe. The assessment tells us whether the real bottleneck is demand, positioning, offer, sales conversion, or founder dependence. We don't prescribe a channel blind.
"Why won't you guarantee revenue?"
Timing depends on variables I don't control. I can be far more accountable for the maturity and operation of the growth system, and we measure revenue as the lagging outcome.
"Do you have a case study for this exact program?"
Not for the full six-month program yet, and I'd rather say so. The pieces it's built from, positioning, offers, proof, demand, and sales, have results you can read on the Results page. The first Program clients become the case studies, and their before-and-after radars go up there as they land.
"What do you need from me?"
A named owner on your team by week eight, a weekly working session, and honest numbers. If the owner never appears, I pause the program instead of billing through it.