For Advisors— Diagnosis Before Recommendation
“An advisor is not simply a consultant who arrives with a deliverable and exits. An advisor stays. You sit alongside the business owner across months and years, building accumulated context that no engagement letter can describe. Your value is not a report—it is judgment, continuity, and the trust that comes from being in the room when the consequential decisions happen. But experience with the business does not automatically establish which condition deserves priority. The $89 Business Constraint Diagnostic™ adds structured diagnostic evidence to the judgment and context you already bring—so the next advisory conversation can begin with a clearer understanding of what may actually be limiting performance.”
— Lawrence M. Schneider, Founder & CEO, Schneider Axiom Institute — Founder of U.S. Lock Corporation, now owned by The Home Depot
The $89 Business Constraint Diagnostic™ gives advisors a structured diagnostic starting point before recommendations, scopes of work, or improvement initiatives are built around the presenting symptom. The Diagnostic is designed to identify the probable governing constraint class indicated by the diagnostic evidence and the structural condition within that class that appears to be limiting performance. A personalized 2,200+ word written finding is delivered within 72 hours.
Find your advisory practice category below to see how diagnostic capability can strengthen the work you already do.
Select Your Advisor Practice Category
Every advisory profession encounters recurring client situations—but similar symptoms can arise from very different structural causes. Select your practice category to see how the SAI diagnostic approach can complement your existing expertise without replacing your professional judgment.
Your profession provides context. The evidence determines the finding.
Executive Coaches and Business Coaches
Your client is engaged. The conversations are productive. The action items are getting done. But before the coaching plan is built around the most visible problem, what does the evidence indicate deserves priority?
SMB Business Coaches
Your most committed client is doing the work. The same problems keep returning. Before adding another tactic, accountability mechanism, or improvement initiative, determine whether the coaching plan is addressing the condition that actually deserves priority.
Financial Advisors and Wealth Managers
The financial plan may be sound while the business funding it is not producing what the plan requires. Before adjusting the financial strategy around the symptom, determine what condition in the business may actually be limiting performance.
Insurance Advisors
Recurring claims, rising premiums, operational exposures, and changing risk patterns can reveal important conditions inside a business—but they do not establish the cause by themselves. Diagnostic evidence can help distinguish the visible risk event from the business condition that may deserve attention.
Family Business Advisors
The business problem and the family dynamic have become the same conversation. They may not have the same cause. A structured diagnostic process can help distinguish the operating condition from the family dynamics surrounding it before recommendations are directed at the wrong source.
Vistage Chairs and EO Forum Facilitators
Your member has been bringing the same problem for three sessions. The group gives excellent input. But if the presenting problem is not the condition that deserves priority, even excellent advice can be directed at the wrong starting point.
CEO Peer Groups and Mastermind Facilitators
Peer-group discussion becomes more useful when the conversation begins with better diagnostic evidence. A written finding can give the member and the group a more disciplined starting point for determining what deserves attention before solutions are proposed.
EOS Implementers and System Practitioners
A proven operating system can improve execution without eliminating the need to determine what deserves priority. When progress stalls or the same issues keep returning, diagnostic evidence can help distinguish a system-execution issue from a different structural condition limiting performance.
M&A Advisors and Business Brokers
Twelve to eighteen months before a business reaches the market, there may still be time to improve conditions affecting earnings quality, transferability, growth, or valuation. Diagnosis helps determine what deserves attention before the seller spends that window improving the wrong thing.
Exit Planning Advisors
A well-designed exit plan can still depend on assumptions about what the business must improve before transition. Diagnostic evidence helps determine which condition deserves priority before time, capital, and advisory effort are committed to the improvement sequence.
Commercial Real Estate Advisors
A lease, relocation, expansion, contraction, or property acquisition can be one of the largest commitments a business makes. Before the real-estate decision becomes the presumed solution, determine whether it addresses the condition actually limiting the business—or responds primarily to a symptom.
Use the Diagnostic Before the Engagement Begins
For an advisory or consulting engagement that may be worth thousands of dollars, an advisor-funded $89 Business Constraint Diagnostic™ can be a small pre-engagement investment in determining what the evidence indicates should be addressed first.
Recommended workflow:
1. YOU PURCHASE THE $89 DIAGNOSTIC
The Advisor pays for the Diagnostic.
2. YOUR CLIENT COMPLETES IT
The client or prospect completes the 81 targeted questions personally, with your assistance if desired.
3. SAI SENDS THE WRITTEN FINDING TO YOU
Under the advisor-funded workflow, SAI furnishes the written finding to the Advisor who purchased the Diagnostic.
4. YOU DECIDE HOW TO USE IT
You may review the finding with the client and use it to inform the advisory conversation, engagement scope, or proposed starting point.
Then:
$89 BEFORE A MULTI-THOUSAND-DOLLAR ENGAGEMENT CAN CHANGE THE STARTING POINT.
If the client purchases the Diagnostic directly from SAI, the written finding is delivered directly to the client. The advisor may then ask the client to share the finding for joint review.
If your written finding does not identify a clear, actionable governing constraint, your $89 will be refunded.
Find Your Client's Business Context
Industry and operating context can shape the symptoms a business experiences, but they do not determine its governing constraint. Select the category closest to your client's business to see how the SAI diagnostic approach applies in that environment.
Similar symptoms can have different causes. The evidence determines the finding.
Ready to Deploy the discipline Professionally?
The $89 Business Constraint Diagnostic™ gives you direct experience with SAI's structured diagnostic process and a written finding for an individual business. The Certified Axiom Strategist (CAS) develops the diagnostic capability to apply the SAI Business Constraint Discipline™ professionally across advisory and consulting engagements.
CAS includes the FDC curriculum and provides the deeper discipline, application, and professional credential appropriate for advisors and consultants who want diagnostic capability to become part of how they work with clients.
Explore the CAS — $1,997 → Compare All Programs →Are You a CPA, an Accounting Professional, or Part of an Accounting Firm?
SAI has built dedicated programs specifically for your role in the accounting profession. Find yours below.
For Advisory Practice Leaders in Accounting Firms
What Can a CAE-Holding CPA Do in a Client Conversation That No Competitor Without It Can Do?
Take the client from the financial presentation of their problem to the governing structural source producing it — across all seven constraint classes — before a single advisory recommendation is designed. No competing practice currently offers this.
See the Advisory Capability →For Individual CPAs
The Numbers Have Always Been Right There. The CAE Gives You the Instrument to Take Them Further Than the Profession Ever Has.
Not a better accountant. A different category of advisor entirely. The first in your profession trained and certified to cross the line the accounting profession has been standing at for a hundred years.
See What the CAE Does for Individual CPAs →Not Sure Where to Start?
Before introducing the Business Constraint Diagnostic™ to a client, consider completing it for your own business or advisory practice. Experiencing the process yourself gives you firsthand knowledge of the questions, the diagnostic experience, and the written finding before you decide whether it belongs in a client engagement.
Or use the advisor-funded workflow with a client or prospect when you want a structured diagnostic starting point before determining the scope of an engagement.
81 targeted questions · approximately 30 minutes · 2,200+ word written finding · delivered within 72 hours
[Complete the $89 Business Constraint Diagnostic™ →]
[Explore the Certified Axiom Strategist (CAS) →]
Strengthen the individual.
Strengthen the family.
Strengthen the company.
Strengthen America.
Schedule Coffee with Larry
If you want to discuss how the diagnostic fits your advisory practice — or whether the CAS is the right credential for your situation — this is where that conversation begins. Free. 15 minutes. No agenda.