The 90-Day Fix
Ninety days on the one gear that is holding you back.
Most people spend a year working hard on the wrong part of their business. This is the opposite: one gear, in the order it has to be fixed, with a measurement at each end so you find out whether it moved. It runs in your dashboard, with a day counter, three blocks that hand off on their own, the work served one gear at a time, and the numbers you wrote down before you started waiting for you at the end.
What ninety days looks like
Three blocks of thirty days, paced for a working business.
The shape matters more than the content list, because the shape is what stops you doing a little of everything and calling it progress.
Your bottleneck gear
Whichever gear your Check-Up flagged. Its exercise block, its full playbook, and a thirty-day sprint that ends with something you have built. One gear, because the diagnostic found that the others are not your problem yet.
The gear it was starving
The gear immediately downstream, which now has its input for the first time. This is the block where the compounding stops being a claim you were asked to believe and becomes something you watch happen, because the thing that would not work before suddenly does.
Consolidate and re-measure
No new gear. You finish what was started, then re-take the Full Check-Up and read both numbers against where you began. A third gear here is how people arrive at day ninety with three half-built things and nothing repaired.
What is in it
The instrument, the work, the materials, and a number at both ends.
A Full Check-Up at each end
One at day zero to set the baseline and one at day ninety to see what moved. The guarantee is measured on these two readings.
Two Gear Playbooks
Yours and the one downstream. Each is a working guide of three to five thousand words: what the gear is, four moves that turn it, a thirty-day sprint, and a seven-exercise workbook you fill in as you go.
The exercise blocks
Eighteen exercises across the five gears, each with a time estimate, instructions, an example and a clear finish line. They are served in your dashboard one gear at a time, with the next one highlighted and your progress saved.
HQ, your ninety days on one board
The day count, the three blocks, your bottleneck gear as the main station, lighter tasks that keep the other four gears warm, and the re-measure prompt when the last block opens.
Your measures, written before the work
In the first thirty days you write down one or two things you can count and where each one stands. They are saved as written and read again from day sixty, so the number you compare against was chosen before the work began.
A monthly live session
One group session a month, so you will be in about three during your ninety days. You send questions in advance from your dashboard, and every session is recorded for anyone who can’t attend.
Your whole history
Every reading is plotted on your engine’s curve and can be reopened in full, and every exercise and score is dated and kept. Emails arrive on the days that matter, starting the day you join.
The measured guarantee
If your bottleneck gear hasn’t moved in ninety days, the next ninety are free. The only condition is having both Check-Ups on your account; completion and attendance are never counted.
Your thirty-day plan, built from your own result
Not a content calendar somebody wrote for a stranger. The month is assembled from the gear your Check-Up named: what to make, where it goes, and the order to do it in, with the reasoning attached so you can build the next month without me.
A positioning read on what you have already published
A written read on your own material: how your story comes across, what it is claiming, and where the words are working against the thing you are selling. This is what most people come to me for, and it is included in the price.
The referral templates
Word of mouth can be designed. The asks, the timing and the wording that make somebody bring you a person, written and ready to send.
The community kit
Guidelines, a code of conduct and an activity plan you can run. The unglamorous documents that decide whether a gathering holds together, which almost nobody writes for themselves and everybody needs.
Your ninety days stay on one gear. The templates and the kit are there because fixing that gear sometimes means touching the systems around it. The work stays narrow.
Inside the ninety days
This is what you log into on day one.
Real screens from the member area, shown with a sample member’s data.
Proof
Ninety days is a long time to trust someone you have not met.
Otavio has clear steps for what needs to be done to help me start my own online business, and has given me great feedback on the ideas I already had. His advice is really helping me have clearer direction on where to focus my efforts and not be so all over the place with my ideas or next steps. I look forward to continuing to work with him.
Otavio understood what I was trying to achieve right away and gave me specific guidance to help me out of my analysis paralysis. With a clear path broken down into short, actionable steps, we could express our brand in the best way possible on our event tour, creating a much larger relationship with our fanbase.
I was stuck working on a pitch for my podcast series, and Otavio helped me unlock it almost immediately. I gave him a bunch of disconnected lists of wishes, dreams, data, goals, and other napkin notes, and he was able to read through all that noise and create a cohesive document that was business-savvy and 100% me.
Otavio M. Lessa · Founder · The Emotion Engine
Over a decade inside Blizzard and Amazon building the systems behind World of Warcraft, Overwatch, and the Prime Gaming rebrand. The Emotion Engine is that pattern, distilled so you can run it without a billion-dollar franchise behind you.
More about Otavio →Two ways to run it
Run it yourself, or have me in it with you.
The 90-Day Fix
One time. Nothing renews.
Everything above, materials included. The engine assigns your gear, serves the work and measures the result.
- ✓Full Check-Up at day 0 and day 90, with your Check-Up price credited if you took one in the last thirty days
- ✓Two Gear Playbooks and eighteen exercises, served one gear at a time in your dashboard
- ✓Your measures written down before the work, and a monthly live session, recorded
- ✓A thirty-day plan built from your own result, and a written positioning read on what you have published
- ✓The referral templates, the community kit and the measured guarantee
The 90-Day Fix, supervised
One time. Limited number each cycle.
The same ninety days with me in it, at the three points where an outside read changes what you do.
- ✓Everything in the self-serve Fix
- ✓I read your engine at day 0 and write your ninety days myself
- ✓A written check at day 45, while there is still time to change the second block
- ✓Your day-90 re-measure walked through on a recording
- ✓Reachable in writing the whole way, from your dashboard
There are no one-to-one calls. The reachable line is written, which is what keeps it possible at all.
Already took the Full Check-Up? $39 comes off either column if you start within thirty days of taking it.
Sign in with the email you took it under and it is applied at checkout.
The Emotion Engine measures and prescribes. It doesn’t run your business. What you get out of a Check-Up, a Fix or a Read depends on the work you do with it. No income, audience or revenue outcome is promised anywhere on this site. Refunds and guarantees.
If your bottleneck gear hasn’t moved in ninety days, the next ninety are free.
All it needs is both Check-Ups on your account. No completion score, no attendance, nobody deciding whether you tried hard enough.
Read the full policy →Who this is for
People who already know which gear is stuck.
- ●You have taken a Full Check-Up and you believe the result.
- ●You have been working hard and it has not been accumulating.
- ●You would rather fix one thing properly than touch five things badly.
- ●You want a number that says whether it worked.
If you have not measured yet, do that first. Ninety days aimed at the wrong gear is exactly the failure this exists to stop, and the Check-Up costs a fraction of this.
Take the Full Check-Up first →Questions
Why one gear and not all five?
Because one gear is usually the binding constraint, and the others are downstream of it. Working all five means nothing gets ninety days of attention, and a flat result at the end tells you nothing about whether the method works or whether you spread yourself too thin. That is why the Fix works one gear at a time.
What if my gear is already strong?
Then this is not your next purchase, and I would rather say so. The Fix is built for a business with a clear constraint. If your Check-Up came back even across the board, the useful next move is usually a Read.
Is this a subscription?
No. It is one payment for ninety days with a defined start and end. There is a membership afterwards if you want to keep the instrument and the sessions, but it is optional and it is cheaper, because it is less.
What happens at day 91?
You either run the Fix again on the next gear, or you keep the engine warm with the membership at a much lower price, or you stop. All three are fine. Nothing auto-renews.
What if the score does not move?
Then the next ninety days are free and we work the same gear again. That is the guarantee, it is bounded at one extra cycle, and all it asks is that both Check-Ups are on your account.
How much time does it take each week?
About two to three hours a week, spread however suits you. Each exercise shows its time estimate in the dashboard, most between thirty minutes and two hours, and the work is built around a few focused moves each week. It is designed for somebody already running a business.
When are the live sessions?
One group session a month, so you will be in about three during your ninety days. The date is in your dashboard as soon as it is set, and the join link appears there the day before. You send questions in advance from your dashboard, and every session is recorded, so missing one costs you nothing.
What do I need before I start?
A business with an audience you want to turn into customers who stay, and about twenty minutes for the Full Check-Up if you have not taken it yet. There is nothing else to buy or set up.
What happens on day one?
You sign in to your dashboard with the email you paid with. If your Check-Up is already on file, it becomes your baseline and your first block opens on the gear it named. If it is not, the dashboard asks you to take it first, and it is included. Your positioning read arrives within the first week.
Ninety days from now you will either know it moved, or know it did not.
Both of those are worth more than another quarter of working hard on something that was never the constraint.