Before you sign.
A mutual NDA is signed before any client communications, CRM access, or internal documentation is reviewed. Client and business information is never shared, referenced, or used as a case study without explicit written permission — including in anonymized form.
The Refinery Co. is brought in to strengthen the team, not replace it. Staff are trained, coached, and equipped with standards and language they can own going forward. The most common outcome is a team that feels more confident and capable — not sidelined.
Real change in how clients experience a business takes longer than a single month to design, train, and see reflected in client behavior. The minimum exists to protect the outcome — not to lock founders into something that isn't working. Progress is visible well before the minimum is up.
Every engagement tracks a small set of concrete indicators — response times, client satisfaction signals, referral activity, and retention — reviewed at each monthly strategy session. Founders see exactly what changed and when, not just a sense that things feel better. Targets include cutting median response time to under four business hours and reducing founder escalation volume by 50% or more within 90 days.
A full-time Chief Experience Officer costs $165,000–$200,000+ annually, plus benefits, recruiting costs, and ramp-up time — with no guarantee of finding someone with 18 years of luxury, HNW-specific experience. The Refinery Co. delivers that same C-suite caliber at a fraction of the cost, with hands-on implementation at the middle and highest tiers, direct client management when needed, and none of the overhead, severance risk, or management burden. You can scale up or down as your business changes.
Many founders start with The Advisor and move to The Embedded Partner or The Executive as trust builds and the scope of need becomes clearer. Movement between tiers is discussed at any monthly strategy session — not locked to contract renewal dates. At the end of each term, we review tracked metrics against the baseline set in Week 1 and make a deliberate decision together: renew at the same tier, move to a different tier, or conclude with full documentation and training already in place. Nothing defaults silently; every renewal is a choice made with data in hand.
Everything built — journey maps, playbooks, communication templates, training materials, and documentation — belongs to the business, not to The Refinery Co. The goal of every engagement is for the business to be fully capable of carrying the standard forward on its own.
The Refinery Co. doesn't replace your systems; it designs what happens around them. A CRM can send a status update or a reminder, but it cannot decide which moments deserve a personal touch, which anxieties a client is too polite to voice, or when the founder should show up in person rather than delegate to a template. Software executes. It does not orchestrate. Most businesses do not have a technology problem — they have an experience design problem, and no amount of automation fixes a journey that was never intentionally designed in the first place.