Assessment
Digital Vitamins/Studio

A studio of two, for practices of one.

We are not an agency that also takes small clients. Digital Vitamins exists only for the independent practice: one person to fifteen, in a room, a van, a clinic or a set of chambers — because that is the business we both ran before we ran this one.

01 Philosophy

The future is self-employed.

The direction of travel is obvious. More people are choosing to work for themselves, and choosing it earlier, not as the thing you do between jobs, but as the shape a career takes. The institution is no longer the default container for expertise. The individual is.

What has not caught up is the infrastructure. Software for small business assumes either a lone freelancer or a company with a department. A four-person firm, a seven-person clinic and a one-van contractor all get the cut-down version of a system built for someone else, and pay monthly for the privilege of it not quite fitting.

So the practice never becomes a business. It stays a job with worse hours and no employer. The work is excellent and the operation is held together by memory, a calendar, and a Sunday evening. That is not a character flaw. It is a missing toolset.

We think a practice of one deserves to be run like a veritable business: priced deliberately, positioned distinctly, operated on systems that fit it exactly, and grown on purpose rather than by accident. Not scaled — grown. There is a difference, and it matters enormously when the product is your attention.

That is what we sell. Not a website. The means to run the thing properly, and two people who have done it, walking it with you one step at a time.

And we are honest about the pace. Sustainable means we would rather ship one right change a quarter than twelve you cannot absorb. A practice that breaks under its own new machinery has been sold something, not helped.

02 Who you get

Max and Catalin.

Both of us on every project, from the first sitting to the end of the first year. No account manager, no junior writing your pages, nobody you have not met.

Systems & build

Max

Six years as a one-man software practice before this one. Invoicing at midnight, losing enquiries in an inbox, quoting from a template that flattered nobody — he built his way out of it, piece by piece, and then discovered that every other solo practitioner was stuck in the same week.

Max builds the Actives: scheduling, records, payments, portals, and the joins between services that were never meant to talk to each other. He writes it by hand, in plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript, because a system that cannot be read cannot be handed over, and everything we build has to be handed over.

Strategy & the Diagnosis

Catalin

Consulted alone for years and learned the hard part late: the work is rarely the problem, the shape of the business is. Underpricing, saying yes to the wrong client, a pipeline made entirely of referrals and hope. He fixed his own before he fixed anyone else's.

Catalin runs the Diagnosis — the sittings, the week of observation, the pricing and the positioning — and stays through the Treatment so that what ships is what the Diagnosis argued for, not a better-looking version of what you already had.

Two people who have run the thing they are advising you about. It sounds like a small distinction until you have sat through the other kind of meeting.
Jonas Wehrli / Clinical supervision, Zurich
03 How the Diagnosis works

Two weeks. One document. No obligation.

The Diagnosis is a standalone piece of work with its own fee. You can take it and execute it yourself, take it to another studio, or put it in a drawer. If you go on to a Treatment with us, the fee comes off.

  1. Week 1

    Two sittings

    Ninety minutes each, recorded and transcribed. Who you serve, what you actually say to them, what you charge and why, what you have stopped doing and never admitted.

  2. Week 1

    Operations observed

    You carry on as normal and we follow the work: a week of sessions, a day riding along in the van, a morning behind the front desk. Nothing is asked of you beyond access.

  3. Week 2

    The numbers

    Enquiry-to-client conversion, no-show rate, average engagement value, days to get paid, hours lost to admin. Most practices have never seen these five together.

  4. Week 2

    The document

    Twenty-odd pages: how your practice runs today, where the money and the hours leak, and every opportunity ranked by effort against payback.

  5. Then

    The presentation

    We walk you through it in person, once, and argue with you about it. Disagreement here is the point — a Diagnosis you do not believe is worth nothing.

  6. After

    The step after

    One recommended next step, sized to what you can absorb this quarter. Sometimes that is a Treatment. Often it is one automation and a price rise.

Book the Diagnosis — €900→
04 Principles

Six rules we do not bend.

Always

Diagnosis first

We do not quote a Treatment before we have seen the week it has to fit into

1

One at a time

A single practice in Treatment at any moment, both of us on it

Our ceiling

Fifteen people

Past that you need change management, and we will tell you so

Outright

You own it

Code, data, accounts and domain in your name from day one

Portable

No lock-in

Documented for a stranger, exportable in open formats, cancel any month

Minimised

Least data

The system holds the minimum it can, encrypted, in the EU

Plainly

Say no

If we are not right for it, we say so on the first call and suggest who is

05 Read further

The things you would ask a lawyer about.

Written down and published, because the practices we work with have usually been burned once and should not have to take any of it on trust.

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