What a results-based advisory firm is
A results-based advisory firm ties its fee to a measurable business outcome instead of a retainer or a fixed monthly bill. Common Ground agrees the metric, the baseline today, and the deadline up front, then gets paid on whether that number moves.
This is the structural difference from a traditional consulting firm. Most advisory and consulting firms charge for time, deliverables, or a recurring retainer, and the fee is settled whether or not the engagement changes anything on the client’s books. A results-based model puts the advisor and the client on the same side of the same number. The metric is hit and the fee is paid, or the metric is missed and the fee is zero. There is no in-between.
Why the model exists
The deliverables that defined advisory for two decades have collapsed in price. Websites, decks, CRMs, outreach copy, research memos, and brand systems are all close to free to produce now. When the production is commodity, charging a retainer for it is charging for the wrong thing. What stays scarce is a number on a contract, and the judgment and the track record to move it.
So Common Ground prices the outcome, not the output. The work product is the means. The metric is the deliverable.
How an engagement is structured
- Free first conversation. A working call, not a paid audit and not a discovery sprint. The business gets looked at with the client to find the metric that actually matters.
- The conversation is the contract. If both sides agree on a metric, a baseline, and a timeline, the engagement starts there. There is no proposal funnel and no follow-up deck to wait on.
- Pre-agreed metric, baseline, and deadline. The starting number is measured honestly the same way it will be measured at the finish. Finding the real baseline is usually the first real work of the engagement.
- Pay on the result. The fee is paid when the metric is hit by the deadline and is zero when it is missed. The advisor absorbs the outcome risk.
- Assets stay with Common Ground, licensed to the client. The systems built during an engagement are licensed while the work is underway. A client can re-up for another cycle, or buy the assets outright at a price agreed up front. Growing assets create an equity-like position in the relationship.
What the client is actually buying
In a results-based engagement the client is not buying a deliverable. They are buying judgment, taste, and a system that compounds. Technology gets a business roughly eighty percent of the way to an outcome. The remaining twenty percent is the expert read: the pattern recognition, the call when the data runs out, and the discipline to keep the system improving after the obvious wins are banked. Common Ground embeds that twenty percent on top of the technology stack and stays accountable to the number.
This is also a filter. The buyer who wants advisory says yes to a metric-priced engagement, because they want the system to keep compounding. The buyer who hesitates was buying production and is better served by a fixed-price catalog. Both are honest. They are different contracts.
Who it is for
Common Ground works with founder-operators running companies at roughly $10M and up in revenue, typically businesses that have hit a ceiling where brand, capital, execution, legal, and AI all need to move at once. Engagements below that threshold are routed to APEXX AI, the group’s AI agency, which delivers fixed-price productized services. One group, two delivery models: results-based and entrenched at Common Ground, plug-and-play and predictable at APEXX.
Results-based advisory vs traditional consulting
| Pricing | Fee tied to a pre-agreed metric, not a retainer or hourly rate |
|---|---|
| Diagnostic | Free first conversation; the conversation is the contract |
| Risk | Advisor carries the outcome risk; zero fee on a miss |
| Deliverable | The metric moving, not a document or a deck |
| Assets | Built assets licensed during the engagement; buyout priced separately |
| Standing claim | Everything recommended has already been implemented inside the group’s own portfolio |
The standing claim
Everything Common Ground recommends, it has already run on its own portfolio first, including the AI systems operating inside its own ventures. The model is proven on the group’s own companies before it is sold to anyone, which is what earns the right to take the result risk in the first place.