Most CEO mentors either studied leadership or lived it. Ryan Erickson is the rare overlap: two companies built and exited, every seat sat in — and the eight proprietary instruments that turn what he learned into a scoreboard. Lived experience, measurement, and a thinking partner, in one engagement.
The market makes you pick one. Fulcrum mentoring is the only place all three sit in the same chair — the operator's record, the measurement layer, and the partner who works your actual numbers.
Mylett, Arete and the rest sell community and proximity — a room you pay to be near. No rigor. No measurement of your company. You leave inspired, not diagnosed.
Vistage, YPO, EO sell a room of other CEOs — real structure and accountability. But the chair isn't working your numbers, and there's no instrument benchmarking what's actually fragile in your business.
1:1 development with depth — the closest comparison. But most have never run a company at scale, and none hand you a scoreboard. Frameworks, not a payroll they weren't sure they could cover.
The diagnostic rigor and the scoreboard are present at every tier — that never gets watered down; it's the brand. What scales with revenue tier is how much of Ryan you get: frequency, in-person time, depth into the company, and speed of response. Bigger company, more of Ryan — automatically.
1:1 mentoring runs T1–T4, mirroring the diagnostic ladder. Pre-revenue and Founder/T0 don't route here — they belong in the Operator's Circle below.
| What you get | T1Growth$5M–$20M | T2Scale$20M–$50M | T3Enterprise$50M–$100M | T4Institutional$100M+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Working sessions | 2 × 1hr / month | 2 × 1hr / month | 2–3 / month | Up to weekly |
| Onsite intensives | None — virtual only | None — virtual only | 1–2 / year | 2–4 / year + as needed |
| Between-session access | Scheduled only | Email/text for key decisions | Priority — faster response | Direct line, fastest response |
| Board / C-suite work | — | — | Board-readiness prep | In your boardroom, C-suite alignment |
| Diagnostic + re-score | Encouraged; EQI re-score | Included; EQI re-score | Included; full-suite re-score | Included; continuous re-scoring |
| Month-to-month | $4–4.5K/mo | $5–6.5K/mo | $8–10K/mo | From $200K/year — by inquiry |
| 6-month rate | $3.5–4K/mo | $4.5–5.5K/mo | $7–9K/mo | |
| 12-month rate | $3–3.5K/mo | $4–5K/mo | $6.5–8K/mo |
Onsite begins at T3. T1 and T2 are virtual-only — Ryan's time stays in the chair, not on a plane. Onsite presence starts where the engagement value carries the travel days, and is core at T4. Travel is always a client pass-through, regardless of tier.
Why T4 is "by inquiry." At $100M+ the comparison isn't other coaches — it's the value of one good board-level decision. Engagements vary too much ($120M founder-led versus $400M sponsor-backed) for one number, so each is sized individually. Open · Ryan to set whether T3/T4 client counts are capped.
For CEOs and founders who want Ryan's system and a room of peers — and the home for Founder/T0 founders who don't route to 1:1. It competes with Vistage, with the measurement layer Vistage doesn't have: a curated cohort of non-competing CEOs at similar scale, each anchored by their own Fulcrum diagnostic and benchmarked against the cohort's instruments. Ryan leads the room; peers carry much of the work between sessions.
A Fulcrum diagnostic is the strong default and recommended first step — it's what makes this Fulcrum mentoring and not generic coaching, and it's what gets re-scored to prove progress. A 1:1 client may begin without one; it's encouraged at T1, standard from T2 up. At the group and upper tiers it's effectively standard, because the benchmarking depends on it.
Open · Ryan to set a diagnostic-plus-mentoring bundle discount (standalone-first, discretionary), consistent with the CAM and assessment bundling policy.
Mentoring is the treatment in the arc: the diagnostic is the MRI of what's about to break, mentoring closes the gaps, and the re-score is the proof it worked. Progress is tracked against a measurable EQI re-score — not vibes — which is the "demonstrated, not claimed" standard applied to mentoring itself.
It also keeps the whole system connected: a diagnostic client converts to mentoring to close the gaps; a mentoring client commissions the Capital Architecture Map or the AI Architecture Audit when those needs surface.
Mentoring is a relationship; the longer terms earn more of Ryan's calendar and the better per-month rate. All terms are paid in advance, before work begins — consistent with Fulcrum's no-deposit, pay-before-we-schedule policy. Ryan never delivers mentoring he hasn't been paid for.
Like engaging a law firm or a retained search firm, committing the engagement reserves Ryan's scarcest asset — his calendar — and turns away other clients. The prepayment buys that reservation; it is not a deposit against a future outcome. Outcomes depend on you doing the work.
Amounts already paid aren't refunded, but there's no further obligation. A mentor retaining the right to walk from a bad fit signals confidence, not rigidity.
If you don't schedule and begin within a set window after payment, the fee is forfeited. A prepaid client can't hold reserved calendar and later reclaim it.
No "decide now or never." Fulcrum's diagnostic-first, considered sales motion is the safeguard — disputes succeed mainly where there was coercion, and there won't be any here.
At T4, terms are by inquiry and papered per engagement — the full-year-upfront prepay logic applies, but each contract is sized individually.
This page sets the commercial posture, not drafted legal language. The enforceable refund, chargeback, and governing-law wording in the actual mentoring agreement is a legal-drafting question with real consumer-protection nuance, and the contract gets the same attorney review as Fulcrum's other contracts before it is used.
The natural first step is a diagnostic — but a discovery call comes first either way. You'll leave knowing whether the fit is right, with a clear read on where to begin.
