For executive leaders of companies scaling through $5 million to $25 million in revenue, this brief delivers the playbook for solving the silent killer of margins and retention: slow time-to-first-value (TTV). Most leaders misdiagnose TTV delays as sales or product problems, but they are a failure of operating architecture. We replace that chaos with a 14-Day Time-to-Value Operating System, detailing how to implement the "Golden Path" to standardize client wins, how to use the "48-Hour Unblock Clock" to enforce urgency, and how to stop customizing everything to make your cash flow predictable and turn every new client into an instant, powerful reference.

This episode installs a pricing system that works without you in the room. You’ll replace end-of-month discounts with a repeatable playbook: publish list/bands/floor, trade scope instead of price, design renewals with protection and indexation, stand up a 24-hour deal desk, and wire your quoting tool to default to discipline. We’ll close with a 14-day rollout and the single metric to track - price realization by segment - so margins rise without heroics and deals close clean.

If you run a $5–25M company, guessing on demand is how you miss payroll. Today you’ll install a predictive pipeline: evidence-based stages that kill phantom deals, a real coverage ratio so hiring and pricing aren’t gambles, channel CAC caps with 12-month payback, a weekly Pipeline Delta both sales and finance trust, and a 14-day sprint to cut time-to-first-value in half. Walk away able to forecast with confidence and fund growth without flinching.