Diagnosis Before Prescription

A recommendation without a diagnosis is just an opinion. Before I prescribe anything, I find what's actually constraining growth. That's where every engagement starts.

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Michel Fortin speaking at a B2B founders mastermindMichel Fortin speaking at a B2B founders mastermind
The Philosophy

Deck ≠ Diagnosis

The audit that doesn't end with a report.

The Pattern

Most strategic engagements follow the same path: gather information, form opinions, produce a deck, hand it over. The deck describes what's happening. It rarely explains why.

The Difference

My approach starts with a diagnostic instead of a deliverable. Before I prescribe anything, I need to understand the system as it actually operates, not as it was designed or as leadership believes it does.

The Result

When I know what's actually broken, I can build something that fixes it. That's the difference between a 40-slide deck and a revenue architecture that changes the trajectory of the business.

How I Think About Growth Problems

Growth problems are rarely what they look like on the surface. Three principles guide how I find what's actually broken.


Gather Diagnostic Intelligence
The most expensive mistake in consulting is treating symptoms as if they were the cause. I spend the first stage of every engagement auditing systems, mapping what's real and not what looks real. This process changes everything that comes after, including what questions are worth asking next.
Name The Root Cause
Most audits surface symptoms. Mine name constraints. There's almost always one lever (e.g., a positioning gap, a broken handoff, an offer that doesn't match the buyer's actual decision) that, if pulled, would change the most downstream outcomes. Finding that lever is the whole point.
Build In Feedback Loops
A single pass doesn't fix a growth problem. The work has to loop: execute, measure what actually happened versus what was predicted, revise the diagnosis, and improve. Every engagement produces intelligence that makes the next one sharper. That's how expertise compounds.
Proprietary Methodology

The IDEAL Framework

It's a five-step diagnostic loop that I run on every architecture engagement. It's a strategic data-informed model designed to audit, find, and fix broken revenue systems, and engineer predictable, sustainable growth.

Step 01

Investigate

I map the system as it actually operates, not as it was designed. AI handles competitive data, content gaps, and pattern analysis before the first stakeholder conversation ends.

Step 02

Decide

Most audits stall here. I name the root cause, separate symptoms from the actual constraint, and identify the one lever that, when pulled, would move the most downstream outcomes.

Step 03

Execute

This is where I build the intervention based on what the diagnosis found. It might be content architecture, positioning, handoff between marketing and sales, or the metrics framework a board reviews each quarter.

Step 04

Analyze

Did it work? I measure what actually happened against what the diagnosis predicted, and the gap between prediction and outcome becomes a diagnostic signal for the next engagement.

Step 05

Learn

The loop closes here. I update diagnostic templates, revise benchmarks, and feed what worked (and what didn't) into the next Investigate stage so the engine gets sharper with each iteration.

Common Questions

Clarity on how we can transform your revenue engine.