✦
You know you want to build a business and you have an idea or strong direction you’re serious about pursuing.
Make It Make Sense
You know you want to build a business that works.
Before you spend the next six months executing, let’s make sure the business itself makes sense.
A private business intensive for women who are serious about building and want an experienced outside perspective on what holds up, what still needs to be figured out or tested, and what needs to happen next.
Book Make It Make Sense →$550 founding rate·$750
About me
Ex-Meta✦Ex-Twitter✦Ex-Accenture✦Wharton MBA✦Built a multi-six-figure business
You’re used to being good at getting things done.
You have a business idea or a strong direction you’re serious about pursuing.
At this stage, there are usually several reasonable things you could be working on. You could be refining the offer, talking to customers, figuring out pricing, building an audience or trying to understand how the business will actually make money.
The challenge is not finding something to do.
It’s knowing what actually matters now.
Give you a complicated project, an ambiguous problem or a goal that needs hitting and you can figure it out.
Building your own business is different. There is no boss telling you which problem matters first, no existing strategy to work from and no team whose work helps define where yours begins.
Almost everything can look like a reasonable next step.
You are capable of doing all of it.
The problem isn’t your ability to execute.
The problem is knowing what actually deserves your execution.
When you need this business to work, spending six months getting very good at doing the wrong work is expensive.
Before you build, let’s look under the hood.
Make It Make Sense is a private business intensive where I pressure-test the business you’re considering building and give you my read on what holds up, what still needs to be resolved or tested and what needs to happen from here.
It’s an opportunity to step back and get an experienced outside read before you go much further.
I’ll look across the business you’re considering building to understand what is already solid, where the thinking is still weak, what you are assuming, what needs evidence and what you may be worrying about too early.
We are not trying to solve every part of the business at once.
We’re trying to figure out where the real work is.
You may discover that the idea is further along than you thought and only a few things need testing before you move. You may uncover something more fundamental that needs attention before you invest heavily in execution.
Either way, you leave knowing what I see and what I believe should happen next.
Sometimes you’re too close to your own business to see it clearly.
I recently spoke with a woman who had spent her career in marketing and communications and knew she wanted to build something of her own.
She came into our conversation with several ways she could turn her experience into a business. As I listened, I could see that they weren’t actually separate ideas. There was a thread running through all of them.
What she really wanted was to build a marketing and communications business helping other businesses navigate important moments of growth and change.
Once we could see that, the work ahead became clearer.
She needed to figure out who the business should serve first, what she should sell them, whether one of the businesses she was already supporting could become an anchor client and what the model would need to look like to make the money she wanted it to make.
She didn’t need another list of business ideas.
She needed someone outside of her own head to look at everything she was considering, see what was actually there and identify the work that needed to happen next.
That’s what we do in Make It Make Sense.
How it works
What happens in the session, and after.
- 1
Before we meet
You’ll complete pre-work about what you want to build, what you’ve already done, what you’re trying to figure out and what you want the business to make possible for you.
Set aside approximately 20–30 minutes for it. I’ll review everything before we meet so we can get straight into the work.
- 2
We spend 60 minutes making it make sense.
I’ll have reviewed your pre-work before we meet privately on Zoom. Bring me what you’ve got: the idea, your notes, the customer you think you want to serve, the offer you’ve been imagining, the research you’ve done and the decisions you keep revisiting.
We’ll put it all on the table.
I’ll ask questions, challenge assumptions and follow the threads that don’t quite add up. Something that looks like an offer problem may turn out to be a customer problem. A decision you’ve been trying to think your way through may actually require evidence from the market. Work that feels urgent may turn out to be premature.
The goal isn’t to leave with every part of the business solved.
It’s for me to understand the business deeply enough to tell you what I see.
- 3
Then I give you my read
Within three days, I’ll send you your Make It Make Sense Brief.
This is where I step back from the conversation, put the pieces together and tell you what I actually think.
I’ll show you what I believe already holds up, where the important gaps or assumptions are, what needs to be resolved or tested, what deserves your attention now and what can wait.
The final part of your Brief lays out what I believe the work ahead actually is.
Sometimes the recommendation will be relatively contained. Other times, it will reveal a larger body of work around the buyer, problem, offer, validation, revenue model or go-to-market.
Either way, you’ll know what I think needs to happen and why.
This isn’t a transcript of our conversation or a generic checklist.
It’s my read on your business and the work I believe it needs from here.
- 4
One week later, we talk it through
You’ll have time to read your Brief and sit with my recommendations.
Then we’ll meet for 30 minutes to talk it through, answer questions about my assessment and make sure you understand what I’m recommending and why.
Who you’re doing this with
Hi, I’m Tomide.
Before building businesses of my own, I spent my career solving messy business problems inside companies including Meta, Twitter and Accenture, working across strategy, operations and product. I also have an MBA from Wharton.
I’ve built businesses outside corporate too, including a multi-six-figure product business.
Now I work with accomplished women who have decided they want to build businesses of their own and make returning to corporate optional.
One of the things I’m particularly good at is listening to everything someone is thinking about a business, seeing the pattern underneath it and spotting the question they’re actually trying to answer.
That’s what you’re hiring me to do here.
Not hand you another business-building checklist.
Look at your business, ask the questions you may not know to ask yet and tell you what I see.
Make It Make Sense is for you if…
✦
You may have left corporate already, or you’re still there and want to build a path that gives you the option to leave.
✦
You’re willing to do the work. You just don’t want to spend months executing without knowing whether the thinking underneath the business holds up. You may be circling the same decisions, or you may already feel fairly clear and simply want an experienced outside perspective before you go further.
You don’t need another list of things you could do. You need to know what actually deserves your attention.
What this isn’t
This isn’t idea generation or career exploration. You should already know that you want to build a business and have an idea or strong direction for what that could be.
This also isn’t ongoing coaching or an attempt to solve every part of your business in one 60-minute conversation. We may look across your buyer, problem, offer, business model, validation, marketing and revenue strategy, but the job is to determine what holds up, what doesn’t yet and where the real work is.
The investment
What it costs.
$550
founding rate
Full price: $750
Your investment includes the pre-work and my review, our 60-minute private session on Zoom, your written Make It Make Sense Brief within three days and a 30-minute follow-up one week later.
After booking, you’ll complete your pre-work and choose your 60-minute session from my available dates.
Book Make It Make SenseWhat happens after MIMS?
What happens next depends on what we uncover.
Sometimes you’ll leave with a relatively contained recommendation and decide to take it from there yourself.
Other times, your Make It Make Sense Brief will uncover a larger body of work. You may need to sharpen the buyer, validate the problem, develop and test the offer, work through the revenue model or get support taking the business to market.
If I believe I can help with the work we uncover, I’ll tell you.
That’s where The Self-Authored Blueprint, my deeper private coaching engagement, may come in.
There’s no obligation to continue working together.
If we do decide to continue, your $550 Make It Make Sense investment will be credited toward your coaching investment.
Frequently asked questions
Common questions, answered.
How much do I need to have figured out before I book?
You don’t need a business plan, website, audience, finished offer or perfectly articulated ideal customer.
You do need to have moved beyond “I want to start a business but I have no idea what it could be.”
Come with a business idea or strong direction you’re genuinely interested in pursuing and enough thinking that there is something real for us to examine.
What if my idea is still rough or I’m considering a couple of versions?
That’s fine, as long as the idea is concrete enough for us to examine.
You don’t need all the pieces figured out, and you may be weighing two audiences, different ways to structure the offer or a couple of versions of the same underlying business.
Part of the point of Make It Make Sense is to find out which parts of the thinking are already strong and which need more work.
If you’re starting from “I have five completely unrelated ideas and no idea what I want to do,” this isn’t the right place to start.
What if I’ve already started building?
That works too.
Having already started gives us real decisions, assumptions, experiments and evidence to examine.
Make It Make Sense gives you an opportunity to step back from execution and look at the business as a whole before you keep going.
Will you tell me whether my business idea will work?
No one can honestly guarantee that.
What I can do is pressure-test your thinking, identify assumptions and gaps, tell you what looks strong or concerning to me and identify what I think you need to learn before investing heavily in the idea.
Sometimes the next step isn’t another decision.
It’s getting evidence.
What exactly happens in Make It Make Sense?
What we cover depends on your business. We may spend more time on the buyer and problem, or we may discover that the bigger issue is the offer, the business model, validation or what you’ve been prioritizing.
This isn’t a standardized workshop where I take everyone through the same checklist.
Afterwards you receive the Make It Make Sense Brief, my written assessment of what I see: what holds up, what is unresolved, what needs evidence and what I think matters now.
The final part of your Brief gives you my recommendation for what happens next.
What if I already know I want deeper coaching?
If you already know you want ongoing support, we can talk about that on a Compass Call.
I still want to understand the business you’re building, what already holds up and where the real work is before we start executing together. That same kind of assessment is where our deeper work begins.
In most cases, Make It Make Sense is the best place to start. If it’s clear from our conversation that moving directly into deeper coaching makes more sense, we can do that too.
If you book Make It Make Sense first and then continue into The Self-Authored Blueprint, your $550 investment will be credited toward your coaching investment.
Make It Make Sense
You’re serious about building this business.
Before you give it the next six months of your time, let’s make sure the business underneath all that execution holds up.
Book Make It Make Sense →$550 founding rate·$750
Not sure if Make It Make Sense is right for you?
Book a complimentary Fit Call →