Know what an institutional reviewer will see — based on your own honest answers.
Graded against the same 10-axis framework that powers every Capital Refinery assessment. Not a free quiz. The Self-Assessment costs $750 because you paid to know.
The "buyer diligence will find this anyway" version. Send to a partner, a CFO, or take it offline.
Institutional-grade assessment normally enters through an advisor relationship. Wealth managers, CEPAs, fractional CFOs, and bankers serve their business-owning clients with measurement work the operator wouldn't otherwise procure for themselves. The Self-Assessment is built into that distribution.
If you're working with an advisor, they can run your Self-Assessment at channel pricing as part of their engagement. If you're not, we'll connect you with a partner whose practice fits your business. Either path leads to the same artifact — the engine and the integrity discipline are identical regardless of who introduced you.
If you already work with an advisor, they can run your Self-Assessment at channel pricing as part of their engagement. Either path produces the same artifact — the engine and the integrity discipline are identical regardless of who introduces you.
This is not a free quiz. Free quizzes default to optimistic verdicts because they're lead magnets — they need you to keep scrolling. The Self-Assessment costs $750 because you paid to know. The memo can be honest, the verdict can land where it lands, and the named blockers can read like findings rather than marketing.
Self-attestation has limits, and we name them. The Self-Assessment grades your claims, not your documents. If you say your top customer is 14% of revenue, we grade as if 14% is true. If you say your books close monthly, we grade as if they do. The Gap Review at $4,500 — crediting forward the full $750 you pay today — tests whether documents support what you told us. Most operators see their verdict shift when documents enter the review. That's not a failure of this assessment; that's why the verification layer exists.
What gets graded
The same 10 axes that grade institutional readiness in every Capital Refinery assessment, applied to your operator-attested intake.
Two of the ten are gating axes — Data Integrity and Financial Consistency. If your own answers indicate gaps on either of those, the composite is capped at Developing regardless of how the other axes score. The engine refuses to grade past a broken foundation, even if you tell us the foundation is fine.
- Financial Consistency (gating)
- Data Integrity (gating)
- Reporting Maturity
- KPI Completeness
- Operational Risk
- Stress Tolerance
- Governance
- Management Responsiveness
- Key-Person Dependency
- Customer Concentration
Management Responsiveness is the exception. We refuse to grade it from attestation — the axis requires observed throughput over time, which a single-session intake cannot provide. It will appear in your memo as “not observable.” That's not a hole; it's the engine being honest about what it can and cannot measure.
Six sections. 30 to 45 minutes. Not a quiz.
The intake is structured the way an institutional reviewer would question your business in their first conversation — and the questions you'll be asked when a buyer, lender, or investor does engage. Treating the intake as a serious exercise is how you get a serious memo back.
Business context
5 minutes
Industry, structure, ownership, why you're doing this. Calibrates the sub-lane benchmark.
Financial visibility
12–15 minutes
What your numbers look like as best you know them. Revenue, EBITDA, debt, trends, close cadence, customer composition. Numeric inputs accept ranges or "I don't know" — both are honest answers.
People and operations
8–10 minutes
Key relationships, succession, process documentation, governance, pending matters. Where the operating reality of the business actually lives.
Modernization context
5 minutes, conditional
Only if you've spent on consultants, AI tools, or operating-improvement work in the last 24 months. Captures whether the spend produced measurable change.
Aspirations and timeline
3 minutes
When you're considering a transaction, what valuation you'd expect, what's worrying you most about the business right now.
Three acknowledgments
2 minutes
Required before the engine grades. Each one shows up in the memo's preamble — read them carefully.
The “I don't know” button is a first-class answer. When you press it, we mark the axis that depends on that input as “not observable” and flag the gap as a named blocker. We never impute the missing value. That answer is harder to fake than a confident wrong one — which is why a sophisticated reviewer will believe it.
What the memo actually looks like
Four pages. Same structure for every operator who runs the Self-Assessment, on every sub-lane, on every honest answer.
- Page 1 — Headline. One of three variants the engine picks deterministically from your composite verdict and gating-axis state. The headline does three things in three paragraphs: states the verdict in plain English, names the constraint specifically, and preempts the most common defensive reaction. No pep talk.
- Page 2 — The 10-axis grid. Every band tagged "(claimed)". Management Responsiveness marked "not observable." A short note next to each axis pointing at what drove the grade.
- Page 3 — The five most important blockers a sophisticated reviewer would surface first. Each one names the institutional reviewer who'd raise it (QoE provider, lender credit committee, buyer IC), names the specific counterparty consequence in counterparty language, and names the operational fix. Followed by the upgrade path: the $4,500 Gap Review, with your $750 credited in full within 90 days.
- Page 4 — What this Self-Assessment refuses to do. The integrity stamp. The most quoted part of the memo. Rendered verbatim, the same on every operator's memo. It's the reason the verdict on page 1 is credible.
Self-Assessment is the entry to a ladder, not a terminus.
Each step credits forward toward the next within a defined window. Same engine, same axes, four levels of evidence cost. The $750 you pay today is the lowest-friction way to find out whether the next step is worth $4,500 in your case.
Bundles, tracks, and adjacent surfaces beyond the core four.
Pre-purchased remediation cycles, multi-snapshot engagement windows, and the sell-side transaction-prep path.
IRA + Re-IRA Bundle — $17,500
Pre-purchased remediation cycle
Initial IRA + one Re-IRA recompute after remediation work lands, with share-token verification on both snapshots. The Re-IRA delta is the artifact that proves what moved between two evidence-backed snapshots.
Engagement Track (6 months) — $25,000
Initial IRA + 2 Re-IRAs
Pre-purchased state-advancement work across a six-month engagement window. For operators preparing for a transaction over a defined runway with structured remediation cadence.
Engagement Track (12 months) — $35,000
Initial IRA + 4 Re-IRAs
Pre-purchased state-advancement work across a 12-month engagement window. The longest-runway path to documented progression toward Evidence-Confirmed.
Modernization Impact Review — $3,500 + $2,500 delta
Operating-impact measurement
For partners running modernization, automation, or AI implementation work on operator clients. Baselines today; the $2,500 delta re-measures within 90 days. Renewal artifact for the partner; proof-of-impact artifact for the client.
Sell-Side Readiness Package — $35,000+
Transaction-priced uplift
For sell-side processes preparing the operator for buyer-side diligence. Anchored against sell-side QoE pricing. Includes the IRA + Adjustment Schedule + sell-side language pack.
Questions worth asking before you pay
+How is this different from a free SMB readiness quiz?
Free quizzes default to optimistic verdicts because they're lead magnets. They need you to feel good enough to keep scrolling toward the upsell. The Self-Assessment costs $750 because you paid to know — so the memo can be honest, even when the verdict is hard. The free quizzes can't be honest. That's the difference.
+What if I disagree with the verdict?
The verdict reflects your own answers, graded against institutional thresholds. If you disagree, you have three options: re-check your intake and run it again (intake edits produce a new fingerprinted snapshot — both are preserved), upgrade to the $4,500 Gap Review and see whether documents support your reading, or simply set the memo aside. We don't argue with the operator; the engine grades what you told us. If you tell us something different, the engine grades that.
+Can my CPA, banker, or advisor see this?
Yes. The memo is forwardable. It has a deterministic fingerprint in the footer that lets them verify they're reading the same artifact you ran. No login required on their end. Most operators forward the page 4 integrity stamp first — it explains what the rest of the memo is doing and why it's worth their time to read.
+How long does it take to complete the intake?
30 to 45 minutes if you're paying attention. Faster if you know your numbers cold; longer if you need to check anything. You can save and return — the intake is sectioned, and we hold partial progress for 30 days.
+What if I run it and then realize I want documents reviewed?
That's what the credit-forward window is for. The $750 you pay today credits in full toward the $4,500 Gap Review if you upgrade within 90 days. Effectively the Self-Assessment is the lowest-cost way to find out whether the Gap Review is worth doing. If you upgrade, you pay $4,500 total for both — $750 now, $3,750 on upgrade.
+Is this confidential?
Yes. The intake answers, the memo, the fingerprint, and the share token (if you generate one for an advisor) are all tenant-isolated. We don't sell or aggregate operator data. We don't publish anonymized examples. The Self-Assessment is for your information; what you do with it is your call.
+Do you guarantee my verdict won't shift on document review?
No. Most operators see their verdict shift on at least one axis between attestation and document review. That's not a failure of this assessment — it's what the verification layer is built to surface. If we guaranteed the verdict, the verification layer wouldn't exist.
+Is there a refund if I don't like the answer?
No. The verdict you get is the verdict your answers produced. A refund would mean the engine bent the result for operators who paid and didn't like the news — which would collapse the integrity discipline that makes the memo worth $750 in the first place. The memo is the product; you paid for the engine's honest read of what you told it, not for a specific verdict.
Wealth managers, CEPAs, fractional CFOs, bankers, AI/ops consultants.
The Self-Assessment is available at channel pricing ($500 per credit in bulk) when you're offering it to business-owning clients as part of your advisory work.
You bring the operator. We deliver the memo. Same artifact, same fingerprint, same integrity discipline — co-branded on the cover page only. The body is engine-rendered and identical regardless of which channel partner referred the client. That's what makes the verdict portable across counterparties.
- $500 per Self-Assessment credit, purchased in bulk
- Co-branded cover page with your logo, contact, and follow-up CTA
- Pipeline visibility across your clients' assessments
- 10% referral on warm intros that close on the upgrade ladder
- 20% referral on qualified intros that close within 30 days
- The page 1 variant headline + verdict band
- The 10-axis grid + (claimed) tags
- The named-blocker list and upgrade-path language
- The page 4 integrity stamp
The artifact is portable across counterparties because it is identical regardless of who introduced it. Co-brand the wrapper, never the content.
Ready when you are.
The Self-Assessment is $750. Intake takes 30–45 minutes. Memo arrives within 24 hours. The $750 credits toward the $4,500 Gap Review within 90 days. Buy it directly, or let us connect you with an advisor whose practice fits your business.