We’re Brandy Old and Craig Elias.
For almost 10 years, we’ve worked together to help founders and their startups reach their first $1,000,000 in revenue and attract investors by de-risking their businesses, perfecting their pitch, and capturing new customers faster. Since teaming up, we’ve helped hundreds of early-stage companies around the world.
WHAT WE’VE LEARNED
There’s a repeatable pattern to $1,000,000.
Mentoring hundreds of founders around the world taught us the same lesson as our own sales success: there’s a repeatable pattern to getting a startup to $1,000,000 in revenue. Every founder still under $1M is stuck on one of ten predictable boxes, and most don’t know which one.
For over 3 years, we’ve been perfecting the Traction Canvas™, a simple yet robust customer traction framework that helps founders and their startups build, test and act on high-performing customer acquisition strategies. It shows you where you’re stuck and what to do next, so you avoid the Traction Trap of scaling before you’re ready.
THE DIAGNOSTIC
Find your box in minutes, not months or years.
In the spring of 2026, we built the free Traction Readiness Diagnostic so founders don’t have to guess where they’re stuck. In a few minutes, it scores your business on all 10 boxes of the Traction Canvas, across Learn, Earn and Scale, and gives you a Traction Readiness Level out of 100. It also flags the Traction Trap: when a company is scaling faster than it has learned or earned. You’ll know exactly which box to work on next.
WHERE IT STARTED
Two of North America’s most active ecosystem builders.
We’ve guided hundreds of aspiring and early-stage entrepreneurs through the messy early stages of building a business, helping them avoid the costly mistakes that sink most startups before they ever find traction.
Much of that work started with a program called 150 Startups, which grew into Help A Startup Out, our free public education initiative. Help A Startup Out has its own website, HelpAStartupOut.com, home to all our free resources (including a financial projections spreadsheet downloaded nearly 6,000 times by entrepreneurs worldwide) and to Founder Fridays.
We’ve run online startup camps and hosted training sessions like “Will That Idea Fly,” which regularly attract hundreds of registrants. You’ll often find us pitch coaching and sharing actionable tactics at accelerators, colleges, incubators, pitch competitions, polytechnics, universities and startup events across Canada, the US, Australia, Europe and Asia.
WHERE WE PERFECTED THE TRACTION CANVAS
Across Canada, the US, Australia, Europe and Asia.
Workshops and online startup camps · Pitch coaching · Accelerator and incubator cohorts (including Alchemist Accelerator) · Pitch competitions · Colleges, polytechnics and universities · Startup events (including SXSW)
Ready for your next step?