Frameworks · RVF™ · Method note
RVF™ does not grade a business. It places a founder in the trade they are making right now, money, effort or time, and shows what the next trade costs. This note publishes how that placement is produced, so a result can be checked.
Studio JNSQ · Version 1.0 · 18 September 2026
1 · The four aspects
The order is the argument. Where you want to go, where you actually are, what is in the way, and how far ahead you are looking. Readiness carries the most questions because it is where the trade usually stalls.
Where do you want to go. What you would do with time the business did not need, what still excites you, what you are building toward.
Where are you actually. What runs without you today, whose effort the revenue depends on, where the hours go.
What is in the way. Delegation, authority, systems, trust, the founder’s own identity in the work. The nine stall patterns live here.
The horizon. How far ahead the founder is planning, and whether the plan is a trade or a hope.
The formula, its questions and its answer keys are owned by Jerico Lugo and used by Studio JNSQ under licence. The questions are held in the diagnostic; this note carries the scale, the arithmetic and the placement bands, which are what a reader needs to check a result.
2 · Scoring an answer
Each question offers a small set of answers written in a founder’s own words. Each answer carries a signal from 1 to 3: a 1 is the language of trade one, where the founder’s own effort and time buy the money; a 2 is the language of trade two, where time and money are buying other people’s effort; a 3 is the language of trade three, where money and a team’s effort are buying the founder’s time back. The signal is not a mark. A 1 is not a failure and a 3 is not a prize; a founder in trade one who answers as trade one is reading the formula correctly.
Answer as you are, not as you plan to be. The formula reads the trade you are in. It cannot read the one you intend, and a founder who answers from ambition places themselves in a trade they have not yet paid for. The equals sign is a mirror.
Every question must be answered. The diagnostic does not finish with a question open, so there is no default value to skew an aspect. Nothing is inferred from what a founder chose not to say.
3 · The arithmetic
Each aspect scores between 1 and 3. It is reported as a share of 3, so 2.4 reads as 80%. A ten-question aspect and a four-question aspect count the same; the average, not the total, is what carries forward.
Aspiration, Reality, Readiness and Horizon weigh the same. A founder cannot be placed in trade three by ambition alone, because Reality and Readiness pull the mean back to where the business actually is.
Under 1.7 is trade one. From 1.7 to under 2.4 is trade two. From 2.4 up is trade three. The placement names the equation you are in; the aspect scores say which side of it is short.
Worked example. Aspiration 2.5, Reality 1.5, Readiness 1.8, Horizon 2.0. The mean is 1.95, which places the founder in trade two, at 65% of the scale. Aspiration is well ahead of Reality: the founder wants their time back and is still the effort the revenue runs on. The gap between those two aspects is the finding, and it is what the strategist consultation works through.
4 · The placement bands
The starting founder. Growth is linear and the ceiling is one person’s capacity. The stalls here are the Identity Trap, the Quality Myth and Revenue Fear.
The scaling entrepreneur, spending before the return shows. The stalls are the Delegation Illusion, Premature Optimisation and the Trust Deficit.
The established entrepreneur buying their time back. The stalls are Relevance Anxiety, the Vision Vacuum and the Complacency Plateau.
On the percentage scale the cut-offs sit at 57% and 80%. The stall patterns are read from the answers inside Readiness and named in the full report. They are patterns, not scores: a founder can sit cleanly in trade two and still show one trade-one stall.
5 · What it reads, and where it stops
RVF™ is answered by the founder about themselves. It does not examine the P&L, the payroll or the delivery quality. It reads how the person at the centre is trading their three resources, which the books do not say.
The three financial outcomes on the explainer page, founder dependency, margin resilience and transferable value, are what the placement points at. The formula does not price them; a strategist and, where it is warranted, a financial model do.
A placement is a snapshot on a date. When the trade changes, the diagnostic is taken again and the two placements are read side by side. Earlier results are never restated.
6 · Versions
Versions
When the method changes, a new version is issued with a dated line here, and reports name the version they were read under. The companion instrument for how the market sees you is the Market Authority Diamond™, with its own method note. Questions go to strategy@studiojnsq.com.
Resource Value Formula™, its questions and answer keys: © Jerico Lugo. Used by Studio JNSQ under licence.
See the method applied
Twenty four questions, a few minutes, no email needed for the snapshot.
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