Work with Billy · The Argument Sprint

When it’s time to make the case for your work, get the argument right.

Customers need reasons to buy, and yours may still be scattered across sales calls, customer stories, slide decks, and the heads of your team.

I help smart people pull those reasons together into one argument that lets customers make an informed judgment.

Tell us what you’re working on → For creators, educators and coaches, consultants and service providers, deep tech founders, scientists, and engineers.

What it looks like

Watch me work on a real argument.

Tiago Forte was preparing to sell his AI Second Brain cohort. Watch me challenge his answer to his customers’ biggest worry, using my Five Lightbulbs framework.

When to hire me for an Argument Sprint

Any of these on your calendar? Let’s dial in the argument first.

Entering a new market

Launching something new

Rebuilding your website

Preparing your team

What you leave with

The argument behind your business, written down.

Think of it as a brand manual for your argument. Your whole team draws from one coherent case:

What your salespeople say
What your website explains
Which customer stories and evidence to share
What your marketing team writes
What to stop saying
How future content supports the same claims

The Argument Sprint is six weeks of work together to produce it.

The smart person problem

You know your work so well that it’s hard to see what someone else needs to know.

Smart people hold an enormous amount of knowledge: methods, judgments, exceptions, stories, results. From the inside, every piece feels important, and the most basic ones feel too obvious to mention. A customer meeting your work for the first time needs a path through it.

An argument gives that path its shape. One question guides the work:

What does my customer need to believe in order to buy?

The purpose is to give customers claims, reasons, and evidence they can examine, so they can make an informed judgment.

How I help

We build the argument together.

The Sprint suits people who have already delivered their expertise to customers, because those experiences supply the evidence.

STEP 1

Interview

We talk deeply about your work. I listen for the judgments, recommendations, and experiences behind it. Then I propose ways of connecting those ideas, and you challenge and correct me until the argument reflects what you actually believe.

STEP 2

Test the argument

We organize what surfaces into the five beliefs, examine the assumptions underneath, test how the claims connect, and find where the argument needs evidence.

STEP 3

Put it to work

You leave with the documented argument and a clear sense of what to say, what to show, and what to stop saying on your website, in sales conversations, and in future content.

The structure

Five beliefs. One argument.

The Five Lightbulbs are the five beliefs a customer needs before buying. We work through them until the whole case is clear and coherent.

Status quo

Why the customer’s present situation deserves attention.

Other things tried

What else they could do, and where those options fall short.

Your approach

The reasoning behind the path you recommend.

Your offer

What you provide and how it puts the approach to work.

Their new life

What becomes possible when the work succeeds.

What this looks like

“Tutoring is reactive. Kumon is a habit.”

Bob Valenti runs a Kumon center on Long Island. Parents often mistake Kumon for conventional tutoring, and some enrolled without understanding what they had bought.

In our third interview I gave Bob two blanks to fill in: “Tutoring is ____. Kumon is ____.” Pieces had come up in earlier calls. Asked to fill the blanks, Bob put them in one sentence, and it became the center of his website’s argument.

Read Bob’s story →

What parents assumed

Kumon is another kind of tutoring.

The distinction the argument is built on

“Tutoring is reactive. Kumon is a habit.”

— Bob Valenti, in the third interview

From people I’ve worked with

“I was just throwing spaghetti (their problems) at the wall (random LinkedIn posts), hoping some of it will stick. Now it finally feels right for me, because I’m able to tell a complete story.”

— Andy Vinkenborg, E-commerce growth strategist, after his Argument Sprint

“We worked with Billy and it changed everything for us. If you’re a technical co-founder, you’re often really good at building a product, but you still need to get good at communication and messaging. What we got from Billy trickled into all parts of our high-level decision making—not just marketing, but product and which features we build. It could change your trajectory as a company.”

— John Li, Co-founder & CEO, VimCal (YC-backed)

Past clients include Tiago Forte, David Perell, Ali Abdaal, and a Y Combinator founder. See their results →

Fit

Who this works for.

My clients range from creators and coaches to deep tech founders and scientists. They have expertise built by delivering it to customers, and those customers can’t easily evaluate it from the outside.

If your argument is already clear and well supported, you may need distribution first.

Let’s talk

What are you trying to make the case for?

Tell us what you’re working on. Laura on my team reads every note and replies within 48 hours.

Tell us what you’re working on →