Business Constraint Certification for SMB Business Coaches

Business Constraint Certification for SMB Business Coaches

"I have been the client in those coaching engagements — the business owner who showed up prepared, did the work, applied the frameworks, and returned six months later to the same business problem wearing a different name. The coaching was not the problem. The structural constraint governing my results had never been named before the coaching plan was designed around it. That is not a coaching failure. That is an unidentified constraint."

— Lawrence M. Schneider, Founder & CEO, Schneider Axiom Institute — Founder of U.S. Lock Corporation, now owned by The Home Depot

Your client is not a difficult coaching client. That is precisely what makes this conversation so hard to have with yourself.

They show up on time. They complete the homework between sessions. They engage genuinely with every exercise and framework you introduce. They leave each session with clarity, with intention, and with a specific action they committed to taking before you speak again. When you ask whether they followed through — they did. The coaching relationship is working exactly the way it is supposed to work.

And the business is not changing the way a business with a committed, prepared, action-oriented owner should be changing.

The revenue ceiling is still there. The team execution problem is still there. The cash flow pressure is still there. The sense that something structural is wrong — that they are working harder than the results they are seeing should require — is still there. Every session produces genuine progress in how they think about the business. The business itself keeps presenting the same fundamental challenge in a slightly different form.

You have coached long enough to know the difference between a client who is not doing the work and a client who is doing the work inside a business governed by a structural constraint that the coaching was never designed to identify. Your current client is the second kind. The constraint was present before the first session. It is present now. And every coaching plan designed around the symptom rather than the structural cause is a plan that will eventually run into the same ceiling.

The $89 Business Constraint Diagnostic identifies that constraint — in writing, in 72 hours — before the coaching plan is written.

Complete the $89 Diagnostic →

 

What your most committed client deserves to hear.

"You know this client. They show up every session. They do the work in between. They implement everything you give them. And the business result they enrolled to produce is not materializing. Not because they are not trying hard enough — because the governing constraint in their business was never identified before the coaching was designed around it."

The 12 Realities Every SMB Business Coach Recognizes

If that client description sounds familiar, the following twelve realities will feel like your current client roster.

  1. A client has been working with you for six months. The sessions are strong. The insights are genuine. The actions are completed. And the specific business outcome they described in the intake conversation — the revenue target, the team problem, the cash flow pressure — has not materially changed. The constraint governing that outcome was present when they hired you. It is present now. The coaching has made them a better thinker. It has not removed what is limiting the business.
  2. You have a client who describes their primary challenge as a people problem — a team member who will not perform, a partner who creates friction, a hiring situation that never resolves. Three sessions in, you are recognizing that the people problem is a symptom. The constraint is organizational or structural. But without a systematic diagnostic tool, you are working toward the root cause through conversation and reflection rather than from a written finding that names it directly. That is a slower path. And it is not always a path that arrives.
  3. A client completes your coaching intake. They describe their situation clearly and specifically. You design a coaching plan around what they described. Four sessions in, you are realizing that what they described was the most visible symptom of a governing constraint that sits one level deeper than the intake conversation reached. The coaching plan is aimed at the right problem as the client understood it. It is aimed at the wrong level of the actual problem.
  4. You are in the renewal conversation. Your client values the relationship genuinely. The sessions have been the best business conversations they have had. And when you ask them to describe specifically what changed in their business as a result of the coaching — the answer is harder to make concrete than both of you would like. The mindset is stronger. The thinking is clearer. The business metrics that brought them to you in the first place have not moved the way either of you expected.
  5. A client asks you directly — is this a me problem or a business problem? You give them an honest coaching answer. You hold the space. You explore both possibilities with them. What you do not yet have is a diagnostic answer — one that tells them specifically whether the constraint limiting their results is in their own patterns and behaviors, or in the structural design of the business around them. Those are different problems. They require different interventions. Your client deserves to know which one applies before you design another three months of coaching around an assumption.
  6. You have two clients in similar industries at similar business stages with similar levels of personal commitment to the coaching process. One is producing documented business results they can name and measure. The other is producing growth in self-awareness and thinking quality without a corresponding change in business performance. The difference between them is not the coaching. It is an unidentified governing constraint in the second client's business that the coaching has been aimed around rather than through.
  7. A client's business is carrying a constraint that is above their authority level to address directly — a market positioning problem that requires a decision the founder has not yet made, or a strategic misalignment between partners that requires a structural conversation neither has initiated. The coaching is developing this client's capability to navigate that environment. It is not removing the structural constraint producing it. The coaching is doing what coaching does. The constraint requires something the coaching was never designed to provide.
  8. You have a client who has worked with two coaches before you. Both engagements were described as valuable. Neither produced a specific business outcome the client can name with confidence. They came to you because someone they trust recommended you specifically. They are giving coaching one more serious attempt. You know — from experience, not from anything you would say out loud in session — that if this engagement does not produce a concrete, nameable business result in the first 90 days, they will not renew. The governing constraint in their business has probably been present through all three coaching engagements. It has never been identified.
  9. Your most successful clients — the ones who renew without hesitation and refer without being asked — are the ones whose coaching engagement produced something specific they can describe to a peer in thirty seconds. "My coach identified that my cash flow problem was actually an inventory allocation constraint — not a revenue problem. We redesigned how I make purchasing decisions and the cash position improved within 60 days." That description generates your next client. "My coach helped me think more clearly about my business" generates a polite nod and no referral. The difference between those two outcomes starts with whether the constraint was named before the coaching plan was designed.
  10. You want to raise your fees. You know your coaching is worth more than you are currently charging. The challenge is that fee increases require documented outcomes that justify them — and documented outcomes require that the coaching be aimed at a named structural constraint rather than a described symptom. The coaches who charge $2,000 to $5,000 per month and fill their practices through referrals are not better coaches than you. They are coaches whose clients can name what changed — because the structural constraint was identified before the coaching plan was written around it.
  11. A client is preparing for a significant business decision — a new hire, a new market, a capital investment, a partnership. The coaching has helped them think clearly about the decision. Nobody has identified the governing constraint that is currently limiting the business the decision is being made inside of. The decision will be made. The constraint will still be there on the other side of it — having absorbed the capital, the attention, and the opportunity cost of a decision made without a structural diagnosis.
  12. You want to be known as the coach who identified what was actually constraining the business before designing a single session around it. Not the coach who facilitated excellent thinking inside a business whose governing constraint was never named. That reputation is built one specific, documented, attributable outcome at a time — and it starts with one diagnostic step before the first session.

The Distinction That Changes Everything

There are two fundamentally different kinds of challenges your clients bring to coaching. Until they are separated systematically, every coaching plan is built on an assumption about which kind of problem the client is actually dealing with.

The first kind is a genuine coaching and development problem — a gap in self-awareness, decision-making, communication, leadership behavior, or personal effectiveness. These are problems coaching was specifically designed to address. The right intervention is developmental. The coaching works. The business changes because the person leading it changes.

The second kind is a structural constraint problem — a market positioning issue that no amount of leadership development will reposition, an organizational authority gap that no amount of communication coaching will restructure, a strategic misalignment that no amount of personal clarity will resolve at the level above the client where the misalignment lives. These are problems coaching cannot remove. Not because the coaching is inadequate — because the constraint is structural rather than personal. The most capable, most self-aware, most thoroughly coached small business owner cannot fix a structural constraint through personal development alone.

The single most consequential mistake an SMB business coach makes is designing a coaching engagement without knowing which type of problem they are actually working with. The $89 Business Constraint Diagnostic answers that question — in writing, before the first session, with enough structural specificity to design the engagement around what was actually found rather than what was described in the intake.

That is the distinction. It is not a small one. It is the difference between a coaching engagement that produces a documented business outcome and one that produces a more capable business owner operating inside the same structural constraint they arrived with.

The Seven Constraint Categories — Through the Lens of an SMB Coaching Engagement

Every structural constraint your client is operating inside lives in one of seven categories. Until the specific category is named the coaching is aimed at assumptions. Here is what each constraint looks like from inside an SMB coaching relationship.

A Market constraint is what your client is dealing with when they have a capable team and a real product and revenue that will not grow past a ceiling they cannot explain. They describe it as a sales problem or a marketing problem or a confidence problem. It is a positioning problem — the business is competing in the wrong segment or leading with the wrong value proposition. The coaching can develop their sales mindset. It cannot reposition the market. This one shows up in the intake as a growth challenge. It is almost always a market problem.
An Operational constraint is what your client is dealing with when they cannot fulfill demand at the rate the business needs to grow without things breaking. They describe it as a capacity problem or a systems problem or a team problem. It is a bottleneck in how work moves through the business — a structural flow constraint that more hiring and better systems management will not resolve until the flow problem is identified and redesigned. This shows up as a scaling problem. It is a flow problem.
A Financial constraint is what your client is dealing with when money becomes the topic in every session regardless of what was on the agenda. They describe it as a revenue problem — they just need more clients, more sales, more income. But the pattern you are observing as their coach is different from what they are describing. The business is generating enough revenue to sustain itself. The cash is disappearing into a structural leak — a decision-making pattern around how money gets deployed that no revenue increase will fix because the leak moves with the income. More sales fills the bucket faster. It does not plug the hole.
An Organizational constraint is what your client is dealing with when they have built a team they believe in and the team will not execute without the owner in the room. The silos. The dropped handoffs. The decisions that come back to the owner that should never have left the team. They describe it as a hiring problem or a culture problem or a training problem. The constraint is in how authority is structured — not in the quality of the people. This has been reframed as a team problem in every session for four months. It is a structure problem.
A Strategic constraint is what your client is dealing with when they have a clear vision for the business and no traction toward it. Every week is consumed by the urgent at the expense of the important. They describe it as a time management problem or a focus problem or a priority problem. The constraint is in how strategic attention is being allocated across the business — a structural misalignment between where the owner believes the priority should be and where the business is actually pulling their time and energy every day.
A Leadership constraint is what your client is dealing with when the business cannot operate at its own speed because every significant decision requires the owner. The team is waiting. The owner is the bottleneck. They describe it to you as a delegation problem or a trust problem or a team capability problem. The constraint is in the decision-making structure — not in the team's capability. The coaching can develop their delegation mindset. The constraint requires a structural intervention in how decisions are made and who has the authority to make them.
A Credibility constraint is the one SMB coaching clients describe most personally and most painfully — it is when they know exactly what the business needs and cannot get the people around them to move at the speed it requires. The team is not hostile. The partners are not obstructionist. The business simply has not yet granted this owner the authority their role assumes they hold. This shows up in coaching as a confidence problem or an influence problem or a leadership presence problem. It is a Credibility constraint — and naming it directly, as a structural finding rather than a personal failing, is one of the most valuable things you can do for a client who has been experiencing it as their own inadequacy for months.

What the Opening Session Looks Like When the Diagnostic Is Already on the Table

Most coaching engagements begin the same way. The intake conversation. The goals discussion. The assessment of what the client believes is limiting their results. The coaching plan designed around the description the client provided.

That intake is valuable. It is not the most valuable starting point available.

Here is what the opening session looks like when the $89 Business Constraint Diagnostic is completed before it begins.

Your client arrives having already named — specifically, in writing — the structural constraint governing their business results. They are not bringing you a vague sense that something is wrong or a description of the most visible symptom. They are bringing you a written diagnosis. The session does not begin with discovery. It begins with clarity. The constraint is named. The category is identified. The coaching plan is designed around what the diagnostic actually found — not around what the client believed was limiting them when they described it in the intake.

That is a different engagement. The progress is more specific. The outcomes are more documentable. The client can name what changed and why — not just describe that the coaching sessions were excellent. And when the engagement ends and the business metric that brought them to you has measurably improved — the outcome they describe to their peers is not "my coach helped me think more clearly." It is "my coach identified the specific structural constraint limiting my results before designing a single session around it. That is why the outcome was different from every coaching engagement I had before." That description is the referral that builds a practice.

Which SAI Credential Is Right for Your Practice

SAI credentials are standalone programs. No credential is a prerequisite for another. The right choice depends on the client base you serve and how you intend to deploy the diagnostic methodology.

FDC — Foundational Diagnostic Credential — $697

Best for: Coaching clients who want to build the permanent internal capability to identify and diagnose governing constraints in their own business — so the diagnostic skill lives in the business long after the coaching engagement ends.

Application: Most valuable as a recommendation to clients at a significant business inflection point — a transition, a growth stage, a new market — who want to own the methodology permanently rather than receive a one-time diagnosis. The FDC gives your client the same diagnostic capability you are applying to their business, permanently installed in how they make decisions going forward.

CAS — Certified Axiom Strategist — $1,997

Best for: SMB business coaches who want a verifiable systematic diagnostic methodology to deploy as the foundation step of every new client engagement.

Application: Complete the $89 analysis as the opening step of every new engagement. Design the coaching plan around what the diagnostic found. Document business outcomes with enough specificity to drive referrals from clients who can name what changed. Earn referral commission on every analysis and credential enrollment that flows through your practice. Most selected by SMB Business Coaches · Referral Network Eligible

CAE — Certified Axiom Executive — $4,997

Best for: Senior business coaches and organizational advisors working with larger SMB clients — businesses with significant team complexity, multi-location operations, or enterprise-level organizational dynamics — where the diagnostic needs to hold authority at the leadership level.

Application: Enterprise-level constraint diagnostic frameworks for coaches whose clients operate at a complexity level that exceeds the standard SMB coaching engagement. Priority placement in the SAI Practitioner Referral Network. Application required — reviewed personally by Lawrence M. Schneider.

Explore the CAS in Detail →Explore the FDC in Detail →Explore the CAE in Detail →Compare All Programs Side by Side →

 

The Axiom Leaders Circle

The constraint your most committed client is carrying has almost certainly already been resolved by someone in The Axiom Leaders Circle — often by a practitioner in a completely different industry who recognized the same structural pattern.

An SMB business coach whose client is navigating a Leadership constraint — the owner who is the decision-making bottleneck in their own business — will find the most precise input from a CAS-certified practitioner who has already helped a client remove that specific structural bottleneck. The constraint class is the same even when the business type, the industry, and the engagement model are completely different.

Every Circle member has completed the same 81-question Business Constraint Diagnostic. That shared diagnostic language transforms what peer exchange produces — because every conversation starts from a named structural reality rather than a described business challenge.

Membership is free. The only prerequisite is the $89 Diagnostic you may already be considering.

The Axiom Leaders Circle
Join The Axiom Leaders Circle — It's Free →

The Referral Commission — What It Looks Like for an Active SMB Coach

CAS-certified coaches in the SAI Practitioner Referral Network earn referral commission on every $89 Diagnostic and every credential enrollment that flows through their practice. For a coach with an active client base of fifteen businesses the math is direct.

Fifteen clients completing the $89 Diagnostic individually — your referral commission is earned on every one. Of those fifteen, if four decide they want to own the diagnostic skill permanently in their business and enroll in the FDC — that is $2,788 in credential revenue through a single deployment cycle. Every new client you take on is a new Diagnostic opportunity at the start of the engagement. Every client who deepens their relationship with the methodology is a new credential opportunity.

The sequence matters more than the math. Coaches who introduce the analysis as a personal recommendation — because they have completed it themselves and experienced what it produces — see high completion rates and genuine coaching improvement. Coaches who introduce it as a program feature see lower engagement and weaker outcomes. Complete the analysis on your own coaching practice first. The conviction that follows is what your clients will respond to.

Lawrence M. Schneider

"I have been the client in those coaching engagements — the business owner who showed up prepared, did the work, applied the frameworks, and returned six months later to the same business problem wearing a different name. The coaching was not the problem. The structural constraint governing my results had never been named before the coaching plan was designed around it. I built the SAI methodology because I know exactly what that costs a business owner — and what it costs the coach who worked hard and genuinely well inside a diagnostic gap that nobody filled." — Lawrence M. Schneider, Founder and CEO, Schneider Axiom Institute — Founder of U.S. Lock Corporation, now owned by The Home Depot

 

Lawrence M. Schneider spent more than 50 years operating real businesses at every stage from startup through acquisition — sitting in the same chair as the clients you coach today, dealing with the same market constraints, organizational constraints, leadership constraints, and credibility constraints your clients bring to their sessions. He did not build the SAI methodology by studying small business dynamics. He built it by living them — and by understanding that the most committed, most capable, most thoroughly coached business owner cannot produce structural business outcomes from coaching alone when the governing constraint has never been named. The CAS gives coaches the systematic diagnostic tool to name it before the first session begins.

Seven Documented Outcomes — All Seven Constraint Categories Represented

Market Category

Named a market positioning constraint in a home services business whose owner had been working with a business coach for eight months on sales confidence and marketing strategy. Revenue had not grown. The constraint was not in the owner's sales capability or their marketing effort — the business was competing on price in a market segment where their service quality and track record positioned them for a premium clientele. Result: After repositioning to a premium service model with pricing to match, revenue per job increased 52% within one quarter. The owner described it as the first time in two years that their sales effort produced results proportional to their capability.

Operational Category

Identified a fulfillment bottleneck in a professional services firm whose owner had been describing a capacity problem to their coach for five months. The coaching had focused on time management, delegation, and systems. The constraint was in the client onboarding sequence — a structural flow problem creating downstream delivery delays regardless of how well the owner managed their time. Result: Delivery time reduced by 40% within 30 days of redesigning the onboarding sequence. The time management coaching produced visible results immediately once the structural bottleneck was removed from its path.

Financial Category

Named a financial constraint in a services business whose owner brought cash pressure to every coaching session regardless of what was on the agenda. The coaching had focused on revenue generation and pricing strategy. The constraint was not in the revenue — it was in a recurring pattern of financial decisions deploying cash against the wrong priorities before the right ones could be funded. Result: Cash position stabilized within 45 days of restructuring the financial decision framework. The owner described it as the first month in over a year where they had not needed to make a difficult payroll decision — without a single new client added to the roster.

Organizational Category

Identified a structural authority gap in a ten-person services business whose owner had been describing a team management problem to their coach for six months. The coaching had worked on delegation, communication clarity, and management presence. The constraint was in how decision authority was distributed — every client-facing decision required owner approval regardless of how capable the team member was. Result: Owner reclaimed 11 hours per week within 30 days of restructuring decision authority at the team level. The team described the change as the first time they felt genuinely empowered to do the job they were hired to do.

Strategic Category

Named a strategic constraint in a growing e-commerce business whose owner had been bringing a focus and priority problem to coaching for four months. The coaching had worked on goal-setting, time blocking, and priority frameworks. The constraint was structural — the owner's attention was being pulled across three simultaneous growth initiatives, none of which had enough concentrated focus to reach traction before the next consumed available bandwidth. Result: First initiative reached its revenue milestone within 60 days of concentrating full organizational attention on a single priority. The owner described it as the first quarter in two years where the business moved forward rather than sideways.

Leadership Category

Identified a Leadership constraint in a family-owned business whose owner had been describing a team execution problem to their coach for seven months. The coaching had focused on leadership communication and accountability systems. The constraint was in the owner's decision-making pattern — every team initiative required owner sign-off before it could move, creating a bottleneck that no accountability system could resolve. Result: After restructuring decision authority and committing to specific boundaries around owner involvement, the team's execution velocity improved measurably within three weeks. The owner reported their first full week in two years without a team member escalating a decision that should never have left the team level.

Credibility Category

Named a Credibility constraint in a business whose second-generation owner had taken over operational leadership from their parent twelve months earlier. The coaching had focused on executive presence, communication, and leadership confidence. The constraint was structural — the organization had not yet transferred the authority the role assumed from the founding generation to the successor. Result: After the constraint was named explicitly — in writing, as a structural finding presented to both generations — and the authority transfer was formalized, the successor's initiative implementation velocity doubled within 60 days. The successor described the session where the constraint was named as the most professionally clarifying conversation they had experienced in a year of coaching.

A Note on the Programs and Frameworks Your Clients May Already Be Running

Many of your coaching clients are working within organizational frameworks — EOS, specific goal-setting systems, productivity methodologies, or accountability structures they have invested in alongside their coaching. The SAI diagnostic does not compete with any of those investments. It identifies the governing structural constraint that is preventing those frameworks from producing the results they were designed to produce.

A client running EOS with an unidentified market constraint will continue to hold clean Level 10 meetings and miss their revenue rocks — until the constraint is named. A client using a goal-setting framework with an unidentified organizational constraint will continue to set clear goals and fail to execute them at the team level — until the constraint is named. Every framework your client is already running works better once the governing constraint is removed from beneath it. And the coaching aimed at that named constraint produces outcomes both of you can point to when it matters most.

Who This Is Not For

The CAS is not the right fit for every SMB coaching practice and we are direct about that.

It is not the right fit if your coaching practice is primarily life coaching, wellness coaching, or mindset work where the engagement is not connected to specific, measurable business performance outcomes. The CAS produces the most value when the coach is working with business owners whose coaching goals are explicitly tied to business results that can be identified, measured, and documented.

It is not the right fit if your clients are not willing to invest 30 minutes completing a written structural diagnostic before the coaching engagement begins. The Diagnostic requires honest self-assessment about the business — not about the person. A client who is not yet ready to engage seriously with a structured business diagnostic is not yet ready for the constraint-informed coaching the CAS enables.

It is not the right fit if your practice is in the first year or two of operation and your primary development need is building core coaching skills rather than adding a diagnostic methodology to an established practice. The CAS adds the most value to coaches who already have strong coaching fundamentals and are ready to deepen the structural impact of their work.

If you are an SMB coach who wants every engagement to begin with a written diagnosis of what is actually limiting the business, produce documented outcomes your clients can name specifically and describe confidently to their peers, and build a practice defined by referrals from clients who got a structural result — this was built for your practice.

Recommended Reading

These volumes were written for the structural patterns that most commonly govern the SMB clients your coaching practice serves — the leadership bottleneck, the operational chaos, and the strategic diffusion that peer accountability alone cannot resolve.

VOLUME 3 — Delegate or Die

Delegate or Die

How to Build Real Leverage and Stop Being the Bottleneck
Bridge: The Leadership constraint is the most common governing constraint in the SMB business coaching client base — the owner who is the bottleneck in their own business. Volume 3 gives coaches and their clients the framework to identify where the delegation needs to happen and what organizational structure makes it permanent.

$9.99

See This Volume → 

 

VOLUME 6 — The Chaos Trap

The Chaos Trap

Why Hard-Working Business Owners Stay Stuck — and How to Break Free
Bridge: The SMB client who is working hard and going sideways is almost always operating inside an Operational constraint that the coaching sessions have been addressing as a time management or discipline problem. Volume 6 names the structural cause of the chaos that no productivity framework alone can resolve.

$9.99

See This Volume → 

 

VOLUME 17 — Focus First

Focus First

Cut Through the Noise and Tackle the One Thing That Actually Grows Your Business
Bridge: The SMB business owner who brings a priority problem to coaching every session is almost always dealing with a Strategic constraint — not a focus or discipline problem. Volume 17 identifies the structural priority sequence that the coaching sessions have been trying to produce through accountability alone.

$9.99

See This Volume → 

 


If You Are Still Deciding

"I am not sure the $89 analysis will identify anything my intake process has not already revealed."

Your intake identifies what your client believes is limiting their results — which is almost always the most visible symptom rather than the governing structural constraint producing it. The $89 analysis identifies the specific structural category governing their business results — which frequently differs from what the client described in the intake. When they differ, the diagnostic finding is the more accurate and more valuable starting point. When they align, the written finding gives both of you a documented shared basis for the engagement design that no intake conversation alone produces. Either way the coaching is sharper for having it.

"I am not sure the CAS will change anything meaningful about how my clients experience the coaching."

It changes one specific and consequential thing — your client arrives at the first session already knowing the structural constraint governing their business results. The coaching is no longer working toward a diagnosis through conversation and reflection. It is working from a written finding toward a specific intervention. The engagement produces a result in six sessions that would have taken twelve to approach without the diagnostic foundation. That change in timeline and specificity is what your client describes to their peer when the referral conversation happens.

"I am worried that adding a diagnostic step will change the nature of the coaching relationship I have built my practice on."

The diagnostic does not replace the relationship. It deepens it. A client who trusts a coach who named something specific and structural trusts them more deeply than one who explored something general and developmental — because the specificity signals capability that the exploration alone cannot demonstrate. The relationship is still the foundation. The diagnostic gives it a more precise target. And the outcome it produces gives the relationship something concrete to point to when the renewal conversation comes around.

"I want to understand the methodology before introducing it to a client."

That is exactly the right instinct and the one we always recommend. Complete the $89 analysis on your own coaching practice before deploying it with a single client. If within 72 hours of report delivery the report does not identify a clear, actionable constraint — email info@schneideraxiom.org for a full refund. If it delivers what it describes — you will understand from the inside exactly what your client will experience when you recommend it to them at the start of their next engagement.

Pricing and Guarantee

The recommended starting point for every coach is the same — complete the $89 Business Constraint Diagnostic on your own practice before deploying it with a client. Understand what the diagnostic produces from the inside. Then introduce it from personal experience rather than professional recommendation.

Individual Diagnostic — $89

Groups of 10 to 49 — $79 per person

Groups of 50 or more — $69 per person

If within 72 hours of report delivery the report does not identify a clear, actionable constraint — email info@schneideraxiom.org for a full refund. After 72 hours refunds are no longer available. Group deployment pricing is non-refundable once the engagement leader has approved and the deployment has been initiated.

All credential enrollments — FDC, CAS, and CAE — are non-refundable. Review the program details carefully and schedule a free Coffee with Larry call before enrolling if you have questions about whether a program is the right fit for your practice.

For complete pricing details — see our Pricing and Guarantee page →

How to Get Started

No prerequisite required. Complete the $89 analysis on your own practice first. Review the written report. Then make the credential decision from conviction rather than curiosity.

Complete the $89 Diagnostic →Enroll in CAS — $1,997. No Prerequisite. Referral Network Eligible.Apply for CAE — $4,997. Application Required.Schedule Coffee with Larry →

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I introduce the $89 Diagnostic to a new client without it feeling like an upsell?

Frame it as the foundation the coaching is built on — not as an add-on. Tell them directly: before I design your coaching plan, I want a written structural diagnostic that tells us whether the constraint limiting your results is in your own patterns and behaviors or in the structure of the business around you. Those are different problems and they require different interventions. That framing positions the diagnostic as professional thoroughness — not as an additional product. Most clients who hear it ask why every coach they have worked with has not done this.

What if the diagnostic identifies a constraint that is outside the scope of coaching to address?

That is one of the most valuable findings the diagnostic produces — and it changes the coaching engagement fundamentally rather than ending it. A client who discovers that the primary constraint limiting their results is a structural business problem rather than a personal development problem needs a different coaching plan than one whose constraint is developmental. The coaching shifts from building personal capability to building the client's ability to design and execute the structural intervention the constraint requires. That is a more specific, more valuable, and more documentable engagement than the one that would have been designed without the diagnostic finding.

Can I deploy the $89 Diagnostic with an entire mastermind group or coaching cohort?

Yes — and for coaches running group programs or cohort formats, the group deployment is often the highest-leverage application of the diagnostic. When every participant in a group program completes the analysis simultaneously, the coach receives an aggregated group summary showing the distribution of constraints across the cohort — which becomes the curriculum map for the program. Group pricing applies at $79 per person for groups of 10 to 49 and $69 per person for groups of 50 or more.

How is the CAS different from business coaching certifications I may already hold?

Most coaching certifications train the coach in coaching methodology — how to ask powerful questions, how to hold space, how to facilitate insight and accountability. The CAS certifies a specific diagnostic methodology for identifying the one governing structural constraint limiting a client's business results — and for naming it with enough precision that the coaching engagement can be designed around its removal rather than its symptoms. The coaching skill and the constraint diagnosis are complementary. The diagnosis gives the coaching a more specific target. The coaching skill determines how well the engagement addresses what the diagnosis found.

What is the guarantee on the $89 Diagnostic?

Full refund if within 72 hours of report delivery the analysis does not identify a clear, actionable governing constraint. Email info@schneideraxiom.org. No questions asked. After 72 hours refunds are no longer available. Credential enrollments are non-refundable — complete the $89 analysis before enrolling in any credential program so the decision is made from direct experience rather than description.

Your client is doing the work. They are showing up prepared, completing the actions they committed to, engaging genuinely with every framework and every session. The coaching relationship is everything it is supposed to be. And the business is still governed by a structural constraint that was present before the first session and has never been named. The $89 Diagnostic names it in 72 hours — before the coaching plan is written, before another session is designed around a symptom rather than a structural cause, and before another committed, capable, action-oriented client returns to the same business problem wearing a different name. Name the constraint first. Design the coaching around what you find. That is the difference between a practice built on relationships and one built on results — and the results are what generate the relationships that build the practice.

 

 

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