The Green Thumb Method
The whole method, quarter by quarter.
The long version of how we work: every stage, rhythm, assessment, and tool we use with your founder, integrator, and exec team to build a new growth engine — and get your team running it beyond the founder.
The shape of it
Built to end.
Every engagement moves through the same four beats. The point isn’t a longer contract — it’s more green thumbs in your organization.
The 90-Day Growth Sprint: the team, the systems, and the growth engine, built in order with your exec team.
The rhythm runs and the first growth projects ship. We lead the rooms while your team learns them from the inside.
We hand over the wheel one room at a time and coach from the passenger seat.
A 60-day Graduation Sprint hands over the tools and trains the people who replace us.
Who’s in the room
Four seats, plus us.
The method works because the right people are in the right rooms at the right time. The tags below mark who’s involved at every step.
Founder
The visionary this method exists to free up. Deeply involved early; by the end, spending their time on the things only a founder can do.
Integrator
Your second-in-command — the operations leader who runs the organization day to day. We coach this seat hardest, because they inherit the engine. Don’t have one yet? Finding or developing this person is often part of the work.
Exec team
The leaders who own the Growth Playbook: they set it at the offsites and run it in the weekly rhythm.
Whole company
Everyone else. The method reaches them at the soil line — through the Growing a Greener Thumb workshop and the rhythms their leaders run.
Green Thumb
Craig leads every engagement personally. Our production team ships the growth-execution work when it’s part of the plan.
Before day one
First, find out what’s actually true.
No proposal theater. Before we recommend a single change, we find out where your organization still runs through you.
Step one · 30 minutes · Free
The intro call.
A short call to see if we’re a fit. We’ll ask about your organization, where growth has come from, and where things feel stuck. If a Soil Test makes sense, we’ll say so. If it doesn’t, we’ll point you somewhere better.
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Step two · 2–3 weeks
The Soil Test.
Gardeners test the soil before they plant anything. Four moves across three weeks:
- A 90-minute founder interview — your vision, where growth has come from, and where things still wait on you.
- An anonymous leadership survey — 15 minutes per leader on where decisions, approvals, and momentum still depend on the founder.
- A growth review — your website, email, social, and core numbers: does growth run on a system, or on you?
- A 90-minute readout — we walk through what we found, together.
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Quarter one
The 90-Day Growth Sprint: build the engine.
Ninety days with your founder and exec team to build all three parts of the tree, in order — the team, then the systems, then the growth engine.
Weeks 1–2 · Pre-work
Five assessments, before anyone books a room.
Your leadership team completes five short assessments, so the offsite starts with evidence instead of opinions:
- Working Genius — what each leader is naturally wired to do, and which work drains them.
- A Five Dysfunctions of a Team baseline — an honest read on trust, conflict, commitment, accountability, and results.
- A time audit — where the founder’s and each exec’s hours actually go, against where they should.
- A funnel audit — how growth actually happens today, from first touch to closed and retained.
- 4 Helpful Lists — each leader’s private read on what’s going right, going wrong, confusing, and missing.
FounderIntegratorExec team
Month 1 · Roots
A two-day offsite to rebuild the foundation.
Day one is the team. We debrief the assessments, align seats to each leader’s Working Genius, work the cohesive-team ladder — trust, healthy conflict, commitment, accountability, results — and codify the handful of values you actually run on.
Day two is the plan. We name your unique potential, set the quarter’s thematic goal and its defining objectives, pick the standing numbers that mark business health, assign rocks with clear RACI owners, and agree the meeting rhythm that keeps it all moving.
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Month 2 · Trunk
A working day to install the systems.
A full day with the exec team to build your operating rhythm — weekly, monthly, quarterly — the leadership scorecard that tracks it, and the execution discipline that keeps goals moving between meetings (we lean on the Four Disciplines of Execution here). This is the month decisions stop routing through the founder.
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Month 3 · Branches
Design the growth engine — then take it to everyone.
A final working day on the growth engine itself: positioning and messaging, funnel design, and a growth-engine plan with its first 90 days mapped. Then the sprint breaks the surface: Growing a Greener Thumb, a workshop for your whole company. Everyone learns the Working Genius language, how good meetings run, and who owns what — so the method lands in the organization, not just the leadership room.
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All sprint long
The rhythm starts in week one.
These meetings run through the whole sprint — and they’re the same rhythm your team keeps long after we’re gone:
- Weekly tactical — the exec team, on progress and blockers.
- Bi-weekly coaching — the founder and integrator, with Craig, so the changes hold between sessions.
- Monthly strategy session — the exec team, to assess course and adjust.
FounderIntegratorExec team
Quarter two
Run it together.
The engine exists. Now it has to become how you operate. We lead the rooms this quarter — your team learns them from the inside.
Opening the quarter · 2 days
The first quarterly offsite.
We review the sprint honestly against the scorecard, reset the thematic goal, and set the quarter’s rocks. Every quarter opens this way from now on — we lead it and prep it.
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Every week
The rhythm, running for real.
The weekly tactical, bi-weekly founder-and-integrator coaching, and monthly strategy session keep running — joined by a monthly scorecard review: performance, return, and the next opportunity worth going after.
FounderIntegratorExec team
Throughout the quarter
The first growth projects ship.
Chosen from the project menu below by what the Soil Test and offsite surfaced — never a standard package. If Growth Execution is part of the plan, our production team runs a monthly content calendar with a weekly production check-in, cycling ideate → capture → edit → post → assess and learn.
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Quarter three and beyond
Hand over the wheel.
Each quarter compounds on the last. Same rhythm, deeper work — and a deliberate handoff, one room at a time.
Quarter by quarter
Your team takes the rooms.
Your integrator starts running the weekly tactical. The exec team co-preps the quarterly offsite with us. The founder’s calendar refills with the work only a founder can do — and we re-run the time audit to prove it.
FounderIntegratorExec team
As needed
Workshops for what the quarter surfaces.
A key hire, a conversion problem, a team reset — we run ad-hoc workshops when something emerges, instead of pretending the plan saw everything coming.
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Each quarter
Measure it, don’t feel it.
We re-run the team-health baseline and the funnel numbers against quarter one, so progress shows up in evidence — and so does anything drifting.
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The last quarter
Graduation: the engine runs beyond the founder.
The goal was never a longer contract. When the honest answer to “could they run it without us?” is yes, we plan our exit like we planned everything else.
60 days, side by side
The Graduation Sprint.
Training for the people who take each room. The tools and templates, handed over. A full cycle of the rhythm run side by side. And help hiring the in-house and outside mix that replaces us.
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The toolbox
What we bring into the room.
Our frameworks carry the method. Proven tools from others get put to work inside it — named here so you know exactly what you’re getting.
Ours
The Tree: Roots, Trunk, Branches
The order good growth is built in: the team, then the systems, then the growth engine. Each part depends on the one below it.
Unique potential
Defines the specific thing only your organization can become, so growth has a direction and not just a number.
The Founder Dependency Map
Scores where your organization still runs through the founder, across all three parts of the tree.
The soil line
Separates the work the exec team does together from the work that reaches the whole company, so changes land in the right order.
The Growth Playbook
Your written plan: owners, dates, rhythms, and the growth engine, built to run without us.
Growing a Greener Thumb
The whole-company workshop that takes what the leadership team built and makes it everyone’s.
Proven tools we put to work
- Working Genius — aligning leaders, and eventually everyone, to the work they’re wired for
- The Five Dysfunctions of a Team — the model behind our cohesive-team work
- The Four Disciplines of Execution — keeping goals moving between meetings
- 4 Helpful Lists — going right, going wrong, confusing, missing: honest snapshots, fast
- Time and funnel audits — evidence over anecdotes, at the start and every quarter after
- RACI and meeting-rhythm design — who owns what, decided where
See it mapped onto your organization.
It starts the same way every time: a free intro call, then a Soil Test. In two to three weeks, you’ll know where your organization still depends on you.
Someone with an unusual ability for growth. Adept at growing and making healthy. A natural talent for growth.