Free Course
Know what marketing should cost. Own what you pay for.
Marketing is one of the biggest checks a small firm writes — into an industry with no license, no board, and contracts written by the other side. This course hands you the other half of the information. You’ll know what things should cost, recognize lock-in before you sign it, own the assets your growth depends on, vet a vendor in a single call, and leave cleanly if you ever need to. Most vendors are good. This is how you find them — and how you get their best work. No marketing background needed.
Start free
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Sign up and your access link lands in your inbox straight away. Open it whenever you’re ready — your progress saves as you go, and the whole thing is yours, free, forever.
What you’ll walk away with
Not a pile of cynicism — a buyer’s toolkit you actually keep.
Each module leaves something real in your Marketing Buyer’s Kit: the Fair-Price Card, the seven detection questions, a completed ownership audit of your own business, the ten vendor questions, the contract red-flag checklist, and the clean-exit playbook. By the end, every dollar you put into marketing is a decision you understand — and the good vendors, the ones you actually want, will be glad you took this course.
Know what it should cost
The fair, observed 2026 price ranges for every common marketing service — websites, brand, the four monthly retainers, Google and Meta ads — plus the two overcharges almost everyone pays without noticing. Place any quote the moment it lands.
Spot the seven lock-in patterns
Lock-in never arrives labeled lock-in. Learn the seven patterns that make leaving cost you something you already paid for, and the single question that surfaces each one before you sign — so every agreement you're in is one you could walk away from.
Own every asset that matters
Domain, website, ad accounts, Google Business Profile, analytics, email list — verified with your own eyes in the real platform screens, not taken on a vendor's word. This is the part that compounds: own your assets and you can change vendors without losing a thing you built.
Vet any vendor in one call
Ten questions that tell you who you're dealing with in a single conversation (with what good and bad answers sound like), the three reference calls worth more than any testimonial, and how to read a proposal like a buyer instead of a fan — so you hire with conviction instead of hope.
Read the contract like a buyer
Standard terms versus red flags on term, exit, renewal, and fees; the ownership language to demand in writing; and an AI-assisted first read that turns a dense contract into a flagged list — before your attorney's final pass, never instead of it.
The Marketing Buyer's Kit
Every tool from the course, assembled as you go: the Fair-Price Reference Card, the seven detection questions, your asset-ownership audit, the ten vendor questions, the contract red-flag checklist, and the firing & transition playbook — yours to keep.
How it works
Three sessions — know the game and the prices, spot the trap and own the assets, then vet, sign, and decide.
This isn’t a watch-and-take-notes course. About three evenings of reading and one working afternoon — the ownership audit in module 4, the most valuable hour in the course — and after that it earns its keep at the moments money moves: pull out the Kit when a proposal or contract lands. Every price is an observed, dated 2026 range, and we name patterns, never companies.
Know the game and the prices
How the unregulated industry actually works and why its pricing models bend the way they do, the four ways agencies charge decoded, and the real 2026 numbers — what every common service should cost, on one dated Fair-Price Card.
Spot the trap, own the assets
The seven lock-in patterns with the detection question for each, then the ownership audit run on your own business today — eight assets, one working afternoon, verified with your own eyes. The most valuable hour in the course.
Vet, sign, decide, exit
The ten questions and reference calls that vet any vendor, the contract read (AI first, lawyer second, signature third), the honest DIY-vs-hire call, and the graceful exit playbook you'll hopefully never need.
From the founder
I bought the marketing so you don’t have to.
Before I ever sold marketing, I bought it — a decade of it, building a $3.7M firm. Some of those checks bought great work. Some bought lessons: a website I found out I didn’t own, reports I couldn’t check against the real numbers, a contract that renewed itself while I wasn’t looking, a management fee that quietly worked out to a far bigger slice of my ad budget than anyone said out loud. Nobody was a villain — the industry’s defaults are just built for the seller, and I didn’t know to ask.
So this course is everything I’d tell a friend before they signed anything: the real prices, the seven lock-in patterns, the ten questions, the ownership audit, the clean way out. It’s taught the way the whole course is honest — patterns, never companies, because most vendors are good, and the good ones will genuinely love that you took this. The ones who don’t? Well — now you’ll notice. Take it one lesson at a time. I’ve got you.
Pete StevensonFounder, Evolvv Strategies
Who it’s for
If you buy marketing — or are about to — this is for you.
Owner-led professional-services and local service businesses — law firms, accountants, clinics, trades, consultants — who buy (or are about to buy) marketing help and don’t want to learn the expensive way. No marketing background needed: if you can read an invoice, you can do everything here. It’s also the natural first course if you’re not ready to do any of this yourself — you’re going to buy marketing either way, so you may as well buy it well.
Ready to buy marketing with confidence?
Sign up and we’ll email your access link right away. Start whenever you’re ready — it’s yours, free, forever.