The ProQ Era: Learning from The Past to Build a Strong Future

$100,000. One hundred thousand dollars.

THAT is the amount of money I spent on my first big business coach back in 2016.

And I’ll never forget the words that resonated in my head as I talked to my wealth advisor, pulled the money out of my 401(k), and wired it to their account:

“Everything you need is on Planet SASSY.”

It was one of their slogans.

Coming directly out of a corporate job where I had never needed to use my own personal money to fund business expenses, I took that to mean this big chunk of cash was all it would take. I assumed their services were all-inclusive and that I wouldn’t have to spend another dime to make my business dreams come true.

I was wrong.

That was not what they meant. And, in all fairness to their business, that wasn’t exactly what they had said, either.

What they meant was that they would connect us to everything we needed. We could find service providers across all aspects of our personal and professional needs—marketing, HR, health, nutrition, even parenting—within their highly curated community. And they weren’t wrong. Those connections were incredible, and I still rely on some of them to this day.

I don’t believe the owner was intentionally deceptive in her approach. I think she was being intentionally persuasive, accepting the risk that she might be mildly misinterpreted. Let’s just say the quality of the connections they curated outlived their business.

The Harsh Reality

I did not get what I expected out of that investment.

In fact, my business didn’t even recoup that expense in the full year I worked with them.

In hindsight, the reason was simple.

She was awesome with saplings.

I had seeds.

What that means is that when businesses—like my original coaching and consulting firm—came to her with firm foundations and a solid business model, she helped them grow by delivering high-revenue-producing models and strategies.

What I had was an idea. A good, solid, worthy idea. I had the work ethic, the business acumen, and the capacity to turn it into something great.

What I didn’t have was a business—built.

But I wanted the shortcut she offered, and she wanted my business, so she said yes to a client she should have made wait.

She had nothing to help me take my handful of seeds and turn them into a sapling.

Discovering that was painful—for both of us, I imagine.

It was a hard lesson.

An expensive lesson.

And one that shaped not only our business model but also the parameters of our approach when my business partner and I merged our successful consulting firms to create ProQ in 2023.

Building ProQ: Learning from Past Mistakes

Knowing who you serve, where they are in their journey, and what they actually need is critical to building something that can grow—not just fast, but sustainably.

If you sell the wrong thing to the wrong person, you rob yourself of future business.

If you sell the right thing at the wrong price, you rob yourself of either future business or future financial capacity—often both.

So we knew exactly who we wanted to serve: business owners generating their first few million in annual revenue.

What Our Clients Actually Need

We knew that businesses in the $1M–$3M up to the $7M–$9M range need support with sales and marketing, finance, culture, and operations. They need help building the team that can take them to the next level. They need to develop their leadership skills and upskill the leaders within their teams—or hire the ones they’re missing.

We knew they were still in build mode, meaning money could be tight depending on where they were in their growth cycles.

We also knew they were busy. Really, really busy. They were still operators in their own businesses—whether on the sales side or the service delivery side.

And finally, we knew that, like me, they had probably been burned by a coach or consultant who overpromised and underdelivered.

It was a lot.

But the more we examined it, the more excited we became.

Because, despite what our competitors said—that it would be impossible to deliver everything they needed, as quickly as they needed it, at a price that felt approachable—we knew we could deliver it all and more.

We started by focusing on three factors:

Time – Our ideal client needs a full-service solution and doesn’t have the time to figure everything out on their own.
Money – They are willing to invest, but it must be at a rate that makes sense for where they are now and where they have the capacity to grow.
Trust – They deserve the full truth. The truth from the stage, the truth in our marketing, and the truth every step of the way as they work with us.
And so, we created ProQ—a flexible framework designed to educate, inspire, guide, and equip our clients for the success they’ve always imagined.

Gone were the made-for-big-business-but-downsized-for-you solutions.
Gone were the consultants with big ideas you didn’t have the team, time, or money to implement.
Gone were the years-long rollouts that fell short and fell flat.

Now was the time for Progressive Intelligence—ProQ.

The Birth of ProQ

Now is the time for us to help business owners, not just by giving them great ideas or teaching them to ask great questions, but by providing them with the exact steps they need to take each week to create the growth they want.

Gone were the days of big overpromises, as we ushered in an era of radical transparency—examining all aspects of the business and telling the truth about what needs to change, grow, and develop to prepare for breakthrough growth.

Gone were the one-off tactics. Instead, we ushered in the era of predictable, repeatable, sustainable outcomes, driven by incremental progress leading to exponential results.

This is the moment for small business owners to rise.

This is the moment for ProQ.