Methods & Definitions
The Method: How Structural Diagnosis Actually Works
A Protocol for Knowing What’s True About Earning
There’s a moment, right before someone clicks “buy now,” where they can feel the difference between wanting the transformation and wanting the timer to stop. Most business models bet on the timer winning.
There’s another moment, usually around 3 AM, when the person who built that timer stares at their revenue dashboard and wonders when they became this. When making money started requiring them to become someone they don’t recognize.
Both people are responding to the same structural problem—they just can’t name it yet.
This document is how we tell what’s actually true about earning. Not what feels inspiring, not what converted, but what holds when the performance stops and the pressure arrives.
Section 1: The Foundational Claim
Pressure reveals structure. Performance can lie.
This is the core assertion everything else builds from.
Performance-based evidence—revenue numbers, client testimonials, visible success—can mask structural weakness for extended periods. A business can appear successful while being structurally unsound, held together by the operator’s constant effort, market conditions, or manipulation-based conversion.
Pressure is what happens when performance, charisma, urgency, or favorable circumstances can no longer compensate. Pressure reveals what’s actually load-bearing.
What this means operationally:
If your business only works when you’re performing at peak capacity, the business doesn’t work—you do.
If your income depends on creating urgency or scarcity, you’re not building a business—you’re running a performance that collapses when the audience stops believing.
If your clients need perpetual access to maintain results, you haven’t created transformation—you’ve created dependency.
The epistemic implication:
Claims about business success must survive pressure-testing to count as structurally true. If it collapses when conditions change, it was never architecturally sound—it was performance theater held together by favorable circumstances.
Section 2: What Actually Exists (Operational Definitions)
To diagnose income systems, we need precise definitions of the objects we’re observing.
Structure
The load-bearing relationships that determine what survives when performance drops.
Structure is what remains when you remove your daily effort, your personal charisma, market urgency, and favorable timing. If the value delivery, client outcomes, or revenue continuity collapse without these elements, those elements weren’t tactics—they were the structure. And that structure is unsustainable.
The test: Can this business function at 70% of your current energy output for 90 days without collapse?
Pressure
Conditions where compensatory mechanisms can no longer mask structural weakness.
Pressure includes energy depletion (illness, burnout, life disruption), market saturation (your tactics stop working as everyone adopts them), economic contraction (urgency-based sales collapse when buyers become cautious), scaling attempts (what works for 10 clients breaks at 50), and delivery at volume (backend can’t support frontend promises).
The test: What happens to your business when you can’t show up at 100% for 30 days?
Integrity
Structural congruence between frontend promise and backend capacity.
This is not moral integrity—though they often correlate. This is architectural integrity: the alignment between what you say the offer does and what the delivery system can actually hold.
A high-integrity offer promises outcomes the backend is designed to produce, charges prices the delivery model can sustain, and creates client results that don’t require perpetual participation. A low-integrity offer promises transformation the delivery can’t create, requires constant operator performance to maintain value, and depends on client belief rather than structural design.
The test: If you delivered exactly what you promised with zero additional personal intervention, would clients get the outcome?
Autonomy
System capacity to create and maintain value without constant operator intervention.
Autonomy is not the same as passive income or automation. Autonomy means the value delivery doesn’t collapse when you’re not performing. An autonomous business allows clients to implement and maintain results independently, generates revenue without constant personal presence, and creates value that compounds rather than depletes.
The test: Can your clients maintain their results 90 days after working with you ends?
Dependency
System requirement for perpetual participation to maintain value.
Dependency isn’t the same as ongoing service, which can be ethical and valuable. Dependency is a structural design where value cannot be maintained without continued access. Indicators include clients who don’t graduate but renew indefinitely, results that collapse when participation ends, business models that optimize for retention over transformation, and revenue that depends on clients not solving their problem permanently.
The test: Does your business model improve when clients solve their problem and leave?
Extraction vs. Generation
Extraction redistributes existing value without creating new value. Examples include referral networks where members only refer to each other (closed loop, no new market value), coaching that keeps clients circulating through programs without capacity building, and sales tactics that transfer money through manipulation rather than value creation.
Generation creates new value that didn’t exist before. Examples include training that builds client capacity they didn’t have, products that solve problems previously unsolved, and services that create outcomes clients couldn’t access independently.
Extraction can be legal and profitable. The question here is whether it compounds without hidden costs—or whether it depletes the system over time.
The test: If everyone in your ecosystem did what you teach, would total value increase or just redistribute?
Section 3: Evidence Rules
(What Counts, What Doesn’t)
What Counts as Evidence
Pressure test outcomes - What actually happens when favorable conditions change
Pattern consistency - Repeated collapse at the same structural point across independent cases
Predictive accuracy - Classification correctly predicts failure mode before it occurs
Client autonomy - Clients maintain results without ongoing participation
Revenue without performance - Income continues when operator energy drops
Short-term performance is not proof—it’s a hypothesis until it survives pressure across time. We’re looking for 90-day minimum windows, not launch-week spikes.
What Doesn’t Count as Evidence
Revenue numbers alone - Can reflect extraction, manipulation, or unsustainable performance
Testimonials without follow-up - Initial excitement doesn’t prove structural soundness
Belief-based claims - “I manifested this” / “You’re not ready yet” / “Raise your vibration” (unfalsifiable)
Celebrity validation - Industry authority doesn’t prove structural integrity
Personal confidence - How you feel about your business doesn’t determine its architecture
What Would Falsify a Claim
A structural claim is valid only if it could be proven wrong.
Examples:
“This model requires constant performance” → Falsified if business maintains function at 70% operator energy
“This offer creates dependency” → Falsified if clients maintain results 90 days post-program
“This is extraction-based” → Falsified if total market value increases rather than redistributes
If a claim can’t be tested or disproven, it’s not structural knowledge—it’s belief.
Section 4: The Diagnostic Procedure
(Worked Example)
The Seven-Step Classification Protocol
Let’s apply this to a common pattern: the Perpetual Access Model with Undefined Graduation.
Step 1: Identify the stated promise “This program will transform your business/life/income.”
Step 2: Map the backend delivery structure
6-month program, renewable
Access to community + coaching calls
No clear graduation criteria
Revenue model optimizes for retention, not transformation
Step 3: Apply pressure test What happens when clients “complete” the program?
Results collapse without continued access
Clients are told they need “another level”
Graduation is discouraged or undefined
Step 4: Classify the structural type This is a dependency program, not a developmental program.
Step 5: Predict the failure mode
Client churn as sophistication increases
Refund requests when results don’t hold
Reputation damage as pattern becomes visible
Revenue collapse when market recognizes the dependency structure
Step 6: Identify the correct intervention Not “better sales tactics” or “stronger containers.” Structural redesign: backend must create client autonomy, not perpetual participation.
Step 7: Test the reclassification If intervention changes from “client mindset work” to “delivery model redesign,” classification is correct.
Common Category Errors
Three misreadings happen often enough to name in advance:
1. Confusing autonomy with automation Autonomy doesn’t mean “passive income” or “no human involvement.” It means the system creates value without requiring constant operator performance. A high-touch service can be autonomous if clients don’t need perpetual access to maintain results.
2. Confusing integrity with niceness Integrity is structural congruence between promise and capacity—not personality, tone, or moral superiority. You can be kind and low-integrity. You can be direct and high-integrity. The question is: does your backend match your frontend?
3. Confusing pressure-testing with pessimism Asking “what happens when conditions change” isn’t negativity—it’s engineering. Buildings get stress-tested. Bridges get load-tested. Business models should too. Optimism without structure is just hope. Structure allows for sustainable optimism.
Replicability Protocol: When Two Taxonomists Disagree
If two people trained in this method reach different diagnoses, the disagreement typically comes from one of three sources:
1. Definitional Precision
Are we using the same definition of “pressure”?
One taxonomist might define pressure as “low energy day”
Another might define it as “30-day inability to perform”
Resolution: Return to operational definitions in Section 2.
2. Level of Analysis
Are we analyzing the same layer?
Individual behavior (tactics, mindset)
Offer structure (frontend/backend alignment)
Organizational incentives (what the business model rewards)
Market dynamics (performance economy vs. architecture era)
Resolution: Specify which level you’re diagnosing. Different levels can have different structures.
3. Missing Data
Are we seeing the complete system?
Backend delivery mechanics unclear
True revenue model hidden
Client outcomes not tracked long-term
Operator compensation structure unknown
Resolution: Identify what data would resolve disagreement, then gather it.
If disagreement persists after resolving all three, you’ve likely found an edge case that requires category refinement—which is how the method improves over time.
What This Is Not
This is not:
A belief system (you don’t have to “believe in” structure—you test it)
A personality assessment (your type doesn’t determine your structure)
A moral framework (though integrity often produces better mechanics)
A sales methodology (though it explains why many sales methods collapse)
A replacement for execution (diagnosis doesn’t build the business)
This is:
A classification system for income architectures
A pressure-testing protocol for business models
A diagnostic method for identifying failure modes before they occur
A way to separate performance theater from structural soundness
How to Use This
Every essay I write applies this method to a specific pattern, industry, or failure mode.
When I say “bro marketing pretends to be science,” I’m applying the evidence rules from Section 3.
When I say “you’re not broken, you’re misclassified,” I’m applying the diagnostic procedure from Section 4.
When I say “most advice assumes you’re broken—taxonomy assumes you’ve been classified wrong,” I’m operating from the foundational claim in Section 1.
This document is the protocol. Future essays are applications of the protocol.
If something I write seems unfalsifiable, check it against Section 3. If a definition seems vague, check Section 2. If a diagnosis seems subjective, apply the seven-step procedure in Section 4.
The method exists independent of my specific insights. It can be learned, practiced, and replicated.
That’s what makes this a discipline, not just a perspective.
Brian C. Witkowski, DMA, Taxonomist & Behavioral Architect for Income Intelligence, January 2026