Terms and Conditions

These terms govern every engagement between Kristine Knaub, trading as True North Strategy, c/o IP-Management #12583, Ludwig-Erhard-Straße 18, 20459 Hamburg, Germany (“I”, “me”) and the client (“you”).

I contract with businesses only. By applying you confirm that you are acting in the exercise of a trade, business, craft or profession, and not as a consumer. If you apply on behalf of an organisation, you confirm you are authorised to bind it.

I may decline any application without giving reasons. Nothing on my website is an offer capable of acceptance.

You are responsible for the accuracy of the information you give me in your application and afterwards.

The engagement is for a defined work product, not for my time and not for a period of availability. The work product is: the Audit, one written document that gives your Digital Prestige Index across its 40 checks, shows every place where your prestige is lost in your digital client journey, estimates what each gap is likely to cost, and sets out a fix for each gap and three to five innovations; the Check Record, one spreadsheet of the evidence behind each check; and the Recorded Walk-through, one private recorded video.

Execution Architecture is a separate work product, commissioned separately, consisting of one written sequencing document as described on my website at the time of commission.

The work product is complete when all three items have been delivered to the email address you provide. Delivery is the point of performance.

I build nothing. No code, no pages, no design files, no implementation, and no supervision of anyone else’s implementation. That is outside scope and cannot be added to this engagement.

There are no calls, no discovery sessions and no meetings. This is a feature of the method, not an omission.

You submit a written application. When you submit it, you confirm that you act for a business and that you accept these terms. They are available to read, print and save at truenorthstrategy.co/terms before you apply. I reply in writing within two working days, either declining or confirming that I am willing to be commissioned.

If I confirm, I send you a written brief setting out the scope, the fee and the delivery window, together with an invoice.

The contract is formed when payment is received in full in my account. Not on application, not on my confirmation, and not on your instruction to your bank.

The written brief sets out, separately and prominently, that the fee is payable in full before work begins and that it is not refundable once the work product has been delivered, apart from the cases in clause 7. It names the version of these terms that applies. By paying the invoice you confirm the brief.

The fee is stated in the written brief and quoted in euro.

Payment is due in full before work begins. There is no instalment option and no deposit option.

The delivery period begins on the first working day after cleared funds are received.

Bank charges, currency conversion costs and payment provider fees on your side are yours. The full invoiced amount must arrive in my account.

If you are a business established in the EU outside Germany, you must provide a valid VAT identification number before the invoice is issued. Where the reverse charge applies, you account for VAT in your own country.

Any tax, duty or withholding imposed in your country is yours to bear. If your local law requires you to withhold, you must gross up so that the full invoiced amount is received.

If less than the invoiced amount arrives, the contract is formed only when the shortfall is paid. Until then I hold the amount received for you and return it on request.

My invoices do not include German VAT: for clients in Germany because of the small-business exemption (§ 19 UStG), for businesses elsewhere in the EU because the reverse charge applies, and for clients outside the EU because the service is taxed in your country.

Delivery is ten working days from the start of the delivery period, unless the written brief states otherwise. Working days are Monday to Friday excluding public holidays at my place of business.

The form you complete when you request the audit is the only one: it takes about five minutes, and I will not send you another. Everything else I use is already published. Figures you choose to share, such as enquiries and their value, let me base the cost estimates on your own numbers; they are optional, and without them I use published rates and say so.

If you consent in the request form, I send up to three realistic test enquiries to your business during the first week, to measure how it replies. Nothing is booked, no false medical, legal or financial details are given, and I tell your team afterwards. If you do not consent, the checks that need these tests are marked as not tested.

If I am prevented from delivering by illness, bereavement or an event outside my reasonable control, I will tell you promptly and the delivery date extends by the length of the interruption. If the interruption exceeds thirty days, either of us may terminate and I will refund the fee in proportion to work not yet performed.

The document, the check record and the recorded walk-through are yours to keep and yours to forward to whoever builds for you, subject to clauses 7.6 and 8.

For 7 days after delivery I answer your written questions about the work product, with no cap on their number. Answers normally follow within two working days. They clarify what I have written; they are not further consultancy, not a review of work you commission from others, and not an extension of scope. This does not affect your rights under clause 7.

There is no meeting to defend the findings. If you disagree with a conclusion, you have a document that traces that conclusion to specific, dated evidence, and you are free to reject it. Disagreement is not a defect; how defects are handled is set out in clause 7.

You may terminate at any time before delivery (§ 648 BGB). I then keep the agreed fee less the expenses I save and less what I earn, or maliciously fail to earn, by using my time elsewhere, and refund any surplus.

You have 14 days from delivery to accept the work product. It is deemed accepted unless within that period you refuse acceptance in writing, stating at least one defect (§ 640(2) BGB).

A defect is a missing agreed component or a material factual error. Disagreement with my analysis or conclusions is not a defect. I will first correct any defect. Only if correction fails may you reduce the fee or withdraw from the contract. Damages are governed by clause 11.

Claims for defects become time-barred twelve months after acceptance. This does not apply to claims under clause 11.1.

Apart from clauses 7.3 and 7.6, the fee is not refundable once the work product has been delivered.

Refund guarantee. If the work product does not give you at least one change you judge to be worth more than the fee, you may ask for a full refund by writing to me within 14 days of delivery. You do not need to give reasons, though I will ask which part fell short. I refund the full fee within five working days of your request. The guarantee applies once per business. When I refund, the licence in clause 8.1 ends, and you delete the work product and any copies and stop using it. This is a voluntary promise in addition to your statutory rights. It is not a guarantee of quality, condition or outcome, and it does not extend my liability under clause 11.

On receipt of the full fee you receive a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive licence to use, copy and internally distribute the work product within your organisation, and to share it with suppliers engaged to act on it.

You may not publish the work product, sell it, license it onward, or make it publicly available.

I retain all rights in my methods, frameworks, research approach and underlying materials, including the Digital Prestige Index, its checks and scoring rules, and in the name True North Strategy.

I may use anonymised, non-identifying observations from our engagement. I will not name you, quote you, or describe you identifiably without your written consent.

Each of us will keep the other’s non-public information confidential and use it only for this engagement.

This does not apply to information that is public, was already lawfully held, or must be disclosed by law.

These obligations survive the end of the engagement.

I use established business software to do this work, including hosting, email, forms, payment and research tools. Each is bound by a data processing agreement where one is required. A current list is published in my Privacy Policy.

AI tools form part of my research, analysis and drafting, in the same way as search engines and databases. I use paid plans on which my inputs are not used to train the provider’s models. I may use them with the business information you give me for this engagement, such as your form answers and figures, under the provider’s business terms. I remove personal data of identifiable individuals before entering any material, except names your business has already published. Every finding is verified against a primary source, and the work product is reviewed, edited and signed off by me. If you would prefer that no AI tool is used at any stage, tell me in writing before you commission and I will work without them.

The work product is analysis and recommendation. It is not a guarantee of any commercial outcome, revenue figure, conversion rate or ranking. Cost estimates are estimates, built from the figures and assumptions stated in the work product.

It is not legal, tax, financial, regulatory or medical advice and must not be relied on as any of those.

The work product sets out findings, options and recommendations. Decisions about whether and how to act on them are yours alone. You remain responsible for evaluating and choosing among them, and for checking any measure you implement against your own legal, regulatory, technical and commercial circumstances, including with your own advisers where appropriate.

I am liable without limit for damage arising from intent or gross negligence, for injury to life, body or health, under any guarantee of quality I have expressly given, for fraudulently concealed defects, and wherever liability is mandatory by law. The refund guarantee in clause 7.6 is not such a guarantee.

For slight negligence (leichte Fahrlässigkeit) I am liable only for breach of an obligation whose fulfilment is essential to the proper performance of this contract and on which you may reasonably rely (Kardinalpflicht). In that case liability is limited to the foreseeable damage typical for this type of contract.

Any other liability is excluded.

Clauses 11.2 and 11.3 also apply in favour of anyone I engage to help perform this contract.

German law applies, excluding the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods.

If you have no general place of jurisdiction in Germany, the courts at Stuttgart, Germany, have exclusive jurisdiction for all disputes arising out of or in connection with this contract.

I am neither willing nor obliged to participate in dispute resolution proceedings before a consumer arbitration board.

Changes to these terms or to an agreed brief must be in writing. Email is sufficient.

If any provision is or becomes invalid, the rest remains in force.

These terms apply to the exclusion of your own purchase terms or supplier conditions, whether or not I have objected to them.

The version you accepted with your application governs the engagement, unless we agree a newer version in writing before you pay.

These terms, the written brief and all communication are in English. If a translation is provided, the English version prevails.