An online course by Octopus & Son
An eight-module course that ends with your own Strategic Direction Document: who buys from you, why, what you say to them, and how to keep it true. Built for leaders of B2B companies with 10 to 200 people whose message has not kept up with the business.
No card. Seventeen minutes. You keep the worksheets. Founding price $495 CAD for the first 25 seats, then $795.
Sound familiar?
None of that is a channel problem or a team problem. It is the absence of one written answer to who you sell to and why they buy. Everything downstream is built on it, and until it exists, every dollar after it is a guess.
What changes
What's inside
Each lesson is a video of six to ten minutes, the same ground in text, and a worksheet. Your answers save as you type and assemble into your document. Module 0 is free with an account.
Why most marketing fails before the first post goes out, what the one document is, and how to work through this course in the time you actually have.
You leave with: See why activity fails and what the one document is.
3 lessons · 17 min · freeGather what the business already knows and go get the five conversations that settle the rest.
You leave with: Turn what you already know and five customer calls into evidence.
3 lessons · 24 minFrom the evidence to one profile: who buys, what they value, what they need, what they fear, and what stops them.
You leave with: A named profile: values, needs, fears, barriers, trigger and words.
3 lessons · 25 minWhat the alternatives claim, where the gaps are, and the one position you can defend.
You leave with: The one position the alternatives would find hard to copy.
3 lessons · 21 minOne sentence everyone repeats, the problem and solution in the customer's words, what to say at each stage, and the words you never use.
You leave with: A sentence everyone repeats, and the message for each stage.
4 lessons · 30 minFrame what you sell around the outcome the profile wants, decide what you say about price, and build the door and the ladder.
You leave with: An offer framed on the outcome, with a price sentence you can say.
3 lessons · 20 minAssemble, cut, sign off, and write the rules for how sales, writers and AI use it.
You leave with: Your document, cut, signed and versioned, with rules for use.
3 lessons · 20 minHow the document survives the next six months: a keyword for every page, a standard every page and post is checked against, numbers a board can act on, and AI that delivers without deciding.
You leave with: A phrase for every page, a standard, numbers a board can act on, AI in its place.
5 lessons · 43 minHow it works
Taught by
Founder of Octopus & Son and a fractional CMO to growing companies across Canada. Dario taught marketing strategy at Mount Royal University for nine years and has run this method with companies from a two-person studio to a national technology firm. The course is the same thinking that holds up in the classroom, on stage and in the engagements, with nothing held back except the daily operations we run for clients.
Founding members
You get the course at $495 instead of $795, a 20-minute call with Dario once you have your draft document, and your words here if you want them here. We would rather show you what the first twenty-five said than write it ourselves.
Price
Founding price · first 25 seats
$495 CADthen $795. One person, once.
14-day full refund, no questions. Credited in full against a Marketing Foundation engagement started within 90 days.
Team · up to 5 people
$1950 CADOnce. The founder plus whoever hears customers most.
Invoiced, with seats opened the same day.
Not sure? Module 0 is free and takes seventeen minutes.
Would rather have it done?
If you want the interviews run, the research done and the document written in four to eight weeks, and then kept true every day, that is the Marketing Foundation and Octopus OS. What you paid for the course comes off the engagement when you start within 90 days.
Questions
Founders, executives and senior leaders at growing B2B companies, usually 10 to 200 people, where the business has outgrown its message: the website no longer matches the product, sales and marketing describe the customer differently, and AI output sounds like everyone. You do not need to be a marketer. You need to own the decision about who the company sells to.
Your own Strategic Direction Document: who your customer is and why they buy, your position, your message architecture, your offer framing, the rules for sales, writers and AI, and the numbers you will read. The worksheets assemble it as you go; you edit and sign off in module six.
About six hours of work across eight modules, usually two to four weeks. Each lesson is a video of six to ten minutes, the same ground in text, and a worksheet. Module one asks you to speak with five customers; book those early.
It is the same method. The Marketing Foundation engagement is us doing it with you, with our interviews, research and writing, in four to eight weeks. The course is you doing it, with the method, the questions and the structure. Many companies do the course first and come to us for the engagement when they want the work done faster or carried further.
Yes, and it works better that way. One licence is for one person; for a team, write to us and we will set up seats so the founder and whoever hears customers most work from the same document.
$795 CAD once, per person; the first 25 seats are $495 as the founding price. A team of up to 5 is $1950. Module 0 is free with an account so you can see how it is taught before you decide, and the full price is credited against a Marketing Foundation engagement started within 90 days.
Module 0 is free, so you will know how it is taught before paying. After that, 14 days and a full refund, no questions: write to info@octopusandson.com. Your worksheet answers stay yours either way.
The method, the lessons and the videos are Dario's. AI helped assemble the course site and checks it against the same standard we teach in module seven. Nothing in it was published without a person deciding.
Seventeen minutes, free, no card. Then decide.
Start module 0, free