The Path

This is the operating document. Everything else in this repo — the Strategy Brief, the course designs, the research — exists to support the sequence on this page. When something here is done, check it off; when reality disagrees with it, change it.

Update 2026-06-12: Jer answered all fifteen questions (see Questions for Jer — Asked & Answered). The decisions table below reflects what's now settled, and the sequence is re-anchored to the real deadline the answers revealed: Jer retires from the missionary position in March 2027, and the client base must be built by then.

1. The goal — answered

"Every client of Wild Dogs adding value to themselves and their communities in mind, body, and soul." — Jer, 2026-06-12

Concretely: clients across sectors and countries, a handful of highly reputable ones, at 30 hours/week, on a barbell: premium rates for those who can pay, pro bono where the work matters more than the fee. The anti-vision is equally clear: nothing that fuels ego, nothing that costs family energy — "a 529 Steakhouse, not a McDonald's."

One tension held deliberately open: Jer's note says "in an ideal world, I think I would end up focussing most on the one-on-one coaching (I think…)" — and the honest answer is that the mix depends on the adoption he gets. So everything in this plan is mix-agnostic by design: the funnel ends in two doors (cohort / coaching conversation), the platform serves both, and the fall results decide where the dial points. Nothing built this year is wasted in either future — see the Strategy Brief, "The 1:1 coaching signal."

2. Decisions — mostly settled

Open items now live in Round 2 at the end of Questions for Jer (July cohort checkpoint, 2026 confirm-by date, Lesson 15, Off Leash Bytes gating, the four names, Radix constraints).

3. The sequence — anchored to March 2027

The one copy of the roadmap. Each move names the document that executes it.

Phase 1 — Foundation (now → Sept 2026)

Capacity note: Jer is still mission-employed at 30 hrs/week plus current clients. Several items below are technical and delegable (site build, Scorecard/survey setup, transcription, platform migration) — get those off the plate so Jer's hours go to the work only he can do.

• ITEM 0 — compute the income-replacement floor (precondition; gates every number below). Two figures Jer can supply in a week: all-in mission comp ending March 2027 (salary + housing + insurance + schooling) and cliff-vs-glide (savings/pension/sending-church tail/spousal income). Until this exists, the plan is provisional. Then the plumbing questions (Round 2, item 11) (one accountant hour)
• Reprice coaching to retainers ($400–600 individual / $750–1,200 org-paid) and set the flagship at $950–1,500 for those who can pay — with the barbell explicit: scholarship/pro bono seats are part of the model, not exceptions to it → Strategy Brief: "Deliver the expected value efficiently"
• Write the transition story — from $200 beta to priced program: "the beta is over, the program is proven, founding alumni get founding terms" (it's Jer's story to tell; a draft to react to is available on request)
• July checkpoint — a go/no-go, not a survey: ask the Fall cohort for testimonials, nominations, hosting. Bar: 2+ real nominations and 1+ host volunteer. Below the bar, trigger the fallback by Aug 15 instead of waiting (template in Finding the Pack)
• Confirm the 2026 cohort by end of August — else the fallback: reconvene top leaders Jer knows (Round 2 asks for a ranking of the fallback options)
• Build the Scorecard — Move 2, behind the nomination front door. The July asks + the four named alumni above are the primary path; the Scorecard only catches and screens people who arrive un-nominated. Build it small, second, text-first, sober voice — no badges/scores. Jer-voice reveals for Q9–Q12 written and Q13 adapted, then recorded; ScoreApp setup is technical/delegable → The Leadership Soul Scorecard
• Rebuild the website as the screen-and-capture flow behind the nomination door: promo video → Scorecard → values → deselection line → honest pricing — with the results page ending in two doors: join a cohort / book a coaching conversation; the build is technical/delegable; every word stays Jer's → Strategy Brief: "Make the site attract users"
• Instrument the India cohort from session one (zero-cost kit: psych-safety pre/post, Project-1 baseline, formation goals, completion, exit questions — ready in Course Design; survey links/forms are technical/delegable) → Course Design: "Assessment stack — zero-cost variant"
• Line up traffic the founder-fit way — podcast guest spots + referrals, not a LinkedIn content grind (LinkedIn optional/light, a post when you have something to say). First, get the baseline: current email list size + any LinkedIn presence (Round 2)
• Finish Off Leash Bytes batch 1 (~10 of the planned 30); release ~5 free as the email mini-course spine, gate the rest for clients/Pack (graphics already in motion)

Phase 2 — Engine (Sept 2026 → March 2027)

• Run the 2026 cohort with the assessment stack (pre/post — the future B2B collateral), with one of the four named hosts co-hosting as a Guide trial run → Course Design (now mapped 1:1 to the real curriculum) + Gathering Design + Immunity Map Exercise + Finding the Pack
• Launch The Pack as continuity: seed with all past grads at once, free 3 months post-cohort then ~$25–40/mo annual-default; one Jer-led monthly ritual; Off Leash Bytes as the member bonus → Strategy Brief: "The Pack"
• Migrate off Radix to an owned platform between cohorts — before the March 2027 mission handover. Build-light vs. buy is worked out in Course Delivery
• Pack Companion — DEFER until a paying client explicitly asks; then a voice-less private prep/journaling workbook only (no voice clone, no public "AI Jer" — that contradicts Risk #5)
• 5-day email mini-course in Jer's voice (seeded from the free Bytes) + quarterly free workshop rhythm
• Extract the 6-week "Foundations" course from the 21 Laws track (cut points are mapped in Course Design) as the entry product

Phase 3 — Multiply (2027+, full-time)

• First B2B org-paid cohort at $2,500–5,000/seat — via the HR lifecycle wedge: HR audit → "your leaders need this" → cohort → 1:1 coaching for the executives (warm pipeline: the orgs in Canada and Asia he already consults for)
• Grow the 1:1 coaching book — Jer's stated preference and the highest-margin work (it's how every client to date arrived; whether cohorts also feed it is the unproven feeder, see gate below)
• Pilot 2–3 Wild Dogs Guides from the four named candidates (Joe Crain, Becky Hess, Marvin Lorenzano, Joseph Naimodu) — own-IP flagship; the Maasailand program proved Jer can hand a program to a community and have it run. Gate (red team B3): build no Guides/Pack scaffolding until a cohort has produced ≥2 paying coaching clients — the "cohorts feed coaching" feeder is N=0 today.
• Public AI companion as lead-gen — dropped (voice-clone/public "AI Jer" contradicts Risk #5's soul thesis; keep the Companion private and voice-less)
• Publish outcome data from the assessment stack
• Five more ideas as capacity allows — conservation partnership first, then retreat, book, podcast guesting, HR credits → Strategy Brief: "Five more ideas"

4. Still to be built (known gaps)

1. WOOP live-facilitation guide — still referenced everywhere, written nowhere.
2. Facilitation-layer integration — the real Team Leadership curriculum is in hand and maps 1:1 to the designed sessions; the remaining work is merging the design's exercises (Immunity Map, Dinner of Truth, WOOP, bookends) into Jer's actual session scripts. Per-session outlines — no longer missing, now an integration task.
3. Protocol one-pagers: Before/After-Action Review, Dinner of Truth, Loving Critics.
4. Body course detail — closed: all 19 lessons captured (Lesson 15 missing — Round 2 question). Remaining: author the 6-week Foundations extraction materials.
5. Pack operations playbook — rituals, cadence, host roles, onboarding.
6. Jer's story corpus — he asked for help; protocol below.

Story capture — the protocol (Jer asked: "help me out")

No studio, no schedule, no editing. The rule: when you tell a story to a client or cohort, record it.

1. Phone voice-memo app, one tap, before you start talking. That's the whole setup.
2. After any session where a story landed, record it again solo in 2–3 minutes while it's hot. Title it with two words ("salmon incident", "crock-pot origin").
3. Target: one memo a week. Thirty weeks = the corpus for the book, the reveals, and the Companion.
4. Drop them in a shared folder for transcription (Whisper is already set up — the intro video is done) and cataloguing.
5. Never re-record. First tellings beat polished ones — that's the whole brand.

How the documents fit together

• The Path (this doc) — what to do, in order.
• Questions for Jer — asked & answered; Round 2 follow-ups.
• Strategy Brief — why the plan is shaped this way; the full ladder, economics, risks.
• Finding the Pack — how to fill cohorts: nominations, admission flow, the flywheel.
• The Leadership Soul Scorecard — build spec for the front door.
• Course Design + Gathering Design + Immunity Map Exercise — how to run what they signed up for.
• The Platform — the concrete tools to build (with build-vs-buy verdicts), one page each; and Red Team 1 — the recommended changes from the adversarial review.
• Jer's Answers, Jer's Bio, Source Material Reference + the research reports — the record and the citations.

(Links resolve on the site; in the repo, the same names live in strategy/, course/, analysis/, and research/.)