Six strategy areas. Six value drivers. One operating system for marketing.
6 To Fix is the proprietary framework developed to increase value creation to benefit owners and operators at every stage. Six strategy areas (Brand, Customer, Offering, Communications, Sales, and Management). Six corresponding value drivers. Together they form a marketing operating system that grows revenue today and business value tomorrow. All leading to a higher valuation and premium that buyers will pay for the business you've worked so hard to build.
What grows the business is what makes it valuable.
Most marketing frameworks pick a side. They optimize for growth — leads, traffic, conversion rates, top-line revenue. Or they optimize for operations — process, documentation, systems. They rarely connect the two.
6 To Fix connects them. Six strategy areas split cleanly into two halves: the first three drive growth through assets (brand, customer, and offering), the remaining three are systems (communications, sales, and management) that foster value creation and make growth transferable. Done right, they're the same investment. Every dollar that grows the business is also a dollar that grows business value.
The implication: marketing is more than a department or a budget line. It's business infrastructure. The six strategy areas in 6 To Fix are how that infrastructure gets built — and how it shows up in goodwill on a buyer's offer years later.
Growth
- Brand
- Customer
- Offering
Drives revenue, margin, and customer base. The classic top-of-the-funnel work.
Value Creation
- Communications
- Sales
- Management
Makes growth predictable, scalable, and ownable by someone other than you.
One framework. Two halves. One bridge.
The three areas on the left are assets — they're the engines of growth. The three areas on the right are systems — they're what make growth transferable. Both create and compound value creation.
Growth — left side of the bridge (Assets)
Brand, Customer, and Offering are about creating demand and creating margin. The classic three. They make the business bigger.
Value Creation — right side of the bridge (Systems)
Communications, Sales, and Management make growth predictable, transferable, and ownable by someone other than the founder. They make the business worth more.
Each area is a discipline — not a checklist.
Every Strategic Glue engagement assesses each of these six areas against two independent criteria: how mature the activity is, and whether the documented strategy behind it actually exists. Both have to be there.
Brand
→ Brand Worth
- Positioning & differentiation
- Voice and tone
- Target audience definition
- Visual identity
- Brand-on-a-page reference
Brand is what your business stands for, who it's for, and how it sounds. It's also the most owner-trapped function in most small businesses — the founder can articulate the differentiation clearly in conversation, but it isn't written down anywhere. That's not a brand problem; it's a transferability problem.
Your brand isn't your logo. It's purpose, passion, and promise. It's the internal team. It's the bigger picture. What you do on the inside that makes it desirable on the outside. The work is making the strategic substance behind the brand — positioning, differentiation, articulating the message. Done well, the brand commands a pricing premium today — and shows up as goodwill on the balance sheet later.
The differentiation is documented and a new hire could write a customer email in the brand voice on day one.
Voice varies across email, social, and website. New hires guess. The 2022 positioning work has aged out.
Customer is the most-neglected area in owner-operated businesses, and the one with the highest valuation leverage. Most owners can describe their "best customers" anecdotally (like what they buy) but can't often articulate much about them beyond that. There's no documented ICP (Ideal Customer Profile). No persona. No documented acquisition strategy. Or retention strategy. Or defined customer experience.
Buyers in due diligence open the customer file first. They want CAC (customer acquisition cost), CLV (customer lifetime value), payback period, retention curves, cohort quality, concentration risk. By the way, as an owner, you should know these, too! The absence of this info isn't just an operational gap — it's a direct hit on Customer Yield, the Customer value driver.
ICP is documented with firmographic + behavioral criteria. Retention has a strategy. CAC and CLV are measured.
"Good customers" exist only in the founder's head. Leads are inbound and undirected. No retention program.
Customer
→ Customer Yield
- ICP definition (firmographic + behavioral)
- Primary persona document
- Acquisition strategy by channel
- Retention program
- Customer experience map
Offering
→ Category Claim
- Value proposition
- Unique Selling Proposition (USP) documented
- Primary & secondary offerings
- Pricing strategy and rationale
- Competitive positioning
Offering is what you sell, how it's priced, and where it sits in the competitive set. Of the six areas, this is often the strongest in owner-operated businesses — owners have usually done the strategic work on what they sell. The work that's missing is making it articulable to outsiders.
Category Claim is the value driver. It's about owning a clear position in your market — being the company customers think of first, with no obvious alternative. A defensible position earns you a premium price when you sell. A muddled one earns you the average.
USP is one sentence the team can recite. Pricing has a documented rationale. Competitive matrix is current.
The "what makes you different" answer is different from three different team members. Pricing is "what feels right."
Communications is the plumbing — the channels, content, and campaigns that turn brand and offering into reach and reach into pipeline. It's also where the line crosses from growth into value creation: a documented channel strategy with attributable pipeline doesn't just produce leads, it reduces the perceived forecasting risk a buyer carries into diligence.
The value driver here is Demand Engine. Owned audience, measurable pipeline, documented funnel — the things that make tomorrow's revenue look like today's, only bigger.
Channel strategy is documented. Editorial calendar runs without owner approval. Attribution is wired.
Posts happen when the owner has time. No editorial cadence. Attribution is "we asked them how they heard about us."
Communications
→ Demand Engine
- Channel strategy
- Messaging framework
- Editorial calendar & cadence
- Owned audience strategy
- Attribution & funnel measurement
Sales
→ Revenue Quality
- Sales playbook
- Qualification framework
- Marketing-to-sales handoff Service Level Agreement
- Pipeline stages & conversion benchmarks
- Objection-handling library
Sales and Marketing are two fingers on the same hand. And while they are separate functions, playbook gaps are inevitable without alignment. The marketing strategy area we call Sales is about the documented process that turns interest into revenue.
Revenue Quality is the driver. Recurring vs. new mix. Pipeline visibility. Sales and marketing integration. This is where institutional-knowledge departures do the most damage — and where playbook discipline before key people leave creates significant valuation lift.
Playbook documents qualification, handoff, objections. A new rep is productive in 30 days, not 6 months.
Two senior reps hold 80% of the institutional knowledge. A departure often means revenue walks out the door with them.
Management is the measurement and accountability layer that makes the other five visible. KPI framework. Marketing dashboard. Budget vs. actuals. Reporting cadence. Without it, the other five areas might exist — but no one can tell.
This is the area that holds the other five together. It's also the area that owns the most consequential value driver: Transferable System. The driver that asks the question every other driver depends on — does this marketing function run without the founder?
Monthly dashboard. Quarterly re-score. Budget tracked. The marketing function is auditable in 30 minutes.
"How's marketing going?" gets a different answer every time it's asked. No KPIs. No budget. No cadence.
Management
→ Transferable System
- KPI framework (leading + lagging)
- Marketing dashboard, refreshed monthly
- Annual marketing budget
- Reporting cadence (monthly / quarterly / annual)
- RACI for marketing decisions (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed)
How each value driver shows up in a buyer's diligence.
What it actually is. And what it moves at the valuation table.
* Multiple: Buyers don't pay for your revenue — they pay a multiple of your profit. If your business profits $1M a year, a 4× buyer offers $4M; a 6× buyer offers $6M. What separates the two is everything in the table above.
Six areas. Six drivers. Six places where marketing adds dollars to the buyer's offer.
Two scores per area. Activity, and whether the strategy is documented.
Every 6 To Fix engagement scores each of the six strategy areas against two independent criteria. Activity Score (0–10) measures the current amount and type of marketing work — what's actually happening. Documented Strategy measures whether the strategic foundation under that activity exists in writing.
The two scores are independent on purpose. The most common pattern in owner-operated businesses is high activity, no documented strategy — work is happening, but it's all in the owner's head, occurring sporadically, or both. That's not just a marketing problem. It's a transferability problem.
Together they produce a Marketing Activity score out of 60. They also produce the most useful number in the audit: Documented Strategy Coverage, scored 0 to 6.
An abbreviated version of the same scoring methodology Tier 1 clients see in the full audit. Free, no email required to start.
Diagnose. Document. Deploy.
The 6 To Fix methodology ships in three productized tiers. Each is a standalone deliverable. Each builds on the last. The audit always comes first.
The 6 To Fix
Audit
The diagnostic. Scores your marketing across all six areas. Tells you what to fix first — and which tier comes next.
Documented
Strategy
The full strategic record. Six chapters, every area documented, working assets ready to operationalize. The playbook you hand off.
Full-Service Marketing Department
The ongoing engagement. fCMO leadership, marketing management, and human + AI-powered execution — the transferable marketing system, built and run for you.
The audit will tell you exactly what to fix first.
A 6 To Fix Audit takes three weeks. You'll know your Marketing Activity score, your Documented Strategy coverage, and the prioritized 90-day roadmap to close the gap.