Services · Standalone product
Cross-Border Perception Memo
How key overseas audiences read the company’s public-facing materials, friction by friction. Five working days, entirely in writing, for a fixed fee of $3,000.
The reading that happens before the first meeting
A company approaching an overseas audience has usually been read before anyone meets it. The website, the deck on a portal, the filings, an interview the founder gave two years ago: these are the materials doing the introducing, and they are read without the company in the room. Most companies have never checked what that reading looks like from the other side.
The Cross-Border Perception Memo is that check. It reads the company’s public-facing materials the way its key overseas audiences read them, identifies the main perception frictions one by one, and gives a surface-level resolution direction for each.
What the memo covers
The work draws on public information only. No internal materials are required, and none are accepted. If there are particular materials the company wants attention on, it can send one list of public-facing items; the list guides where the memo concentrates, and it is the only client input to the work. The memo itself addresses the main frictions across the company’s public-facing materials rather than auditing every published item.
The reading position comes from the company’s own situation: the overseas investors, partners, regulators or counterparties it is approaching, as described in the request. Each friction is treated at the level where it lives: what the material says, what the audience is likely to make of it, and the direction a fix would take. Where a friction points to something deeper than the materials, in how the company accounts for itself, the memo still gives the surface-level direction, and names the deeper point in one line without developing it.
What the client receives
Two written documents. The first is the analysis: the main perception frictions in the company’s public-facing materials, identified item by item as the company’s key overseas audiences would meet the materials. The second is the resolution directions: for each friction, a written direction for fixing it in the materials where it appears.
Delivery is within five working days of payment confirmation. The client may send one round of written questions within 48 hours of delivery; the written reply closes the work. The memo runs entirely in writing.
The fee
$3,000, fixed, payable in full before work begins; the five working days run from payment confirmation. If the company signs a formal engagement within one month of delivery, the full memo fee is credited against it.
Where the memo sits
The memo is a standalone product, not a formal advisory engagement, and the difference is one of category, not size. The two engagements, the Diagnostic Sprint and Transaction Narrative Architecture, work from internal materials as well as public ones and reach the company’s underlying account of itself; the larger of the two brings the practice to the table at decision points. The memo works from public materials alone and stays at their surface: what those materials are doing to the company’s reading, and the direction a fix takes. When its findings point deeper, the Diagnostic Sprint is the natural next conversation.
When the memo fits
The memo fits the moments when a bounded outside reading is worth more than a longer commitment: before conversations with overseas investors or partners begin, ahead of a refresh of the materials those audiences will see, or after reactions from overseas counterparts that the materials were never meant to produce.
How to request it
Request the memo through the contact form. The practice runs a limited number of memos each month and confirms first whether it can take the work on. Confirmation comes with a short written agreement by email; payment follows, and the five working days begin.
Scope and terms of the memo are set in the agreement both parties confirm.