Rational Magic
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Terms of Service.

The contract between you and Rational Magic. Plain English. Twelve sections. By buying a sprint or submitting an intake form, you agree to these terms.

Last updated: 28 April 2026

01.What we sell

A 3-business-day brand strategy sprint, delivered async. Six output formats:

Plus the underlying review-evidence database we build for your sprint, hosted alongside the strategy site.

02.What we don’t sell

Calls. Ongoing consulting. Design execution. Code. Logo work. Figma files. Ad campaigns. Launch management. Brand audit reports outside the sprint format. Coaching. Workshops.

The sprint is a single fixed-scope engagement. After delivery, we’re done. Anything ongoing requires a new engagement.

03.Pricing & payment

04.Delivery timeline

Three business days, counted Monday–Friday, Australian Eastern Time. The clock starts when you submit the intake form, not when you pay. Public holidays in Victoria, Australia, don’t count as business days.

If we run late by more than one business day, we’ll email you, explain why, and offer either a partial credit toward a future engagement or a full refund.

05.What “complete” means

All six output formats delivered. Methodology and brand voice review by Fred personally. One round of clarifying questions included if anything in the deliverable needs expansion. After that round, the engagement is complete.

06.Refund policy

Full refund if:

  • You haven’t submitted the intake form yet AND it’s within 24 hours of payment, OR
  • We decline the engagement (for example: insufficient public evidence about you and your competitors to meet the methodology’s 20-data-point research floor)

Once you submit the intake form, the sprint is started — at that point you’ve had access to the methodology and Fred’s time has begun. From that point, no refunds.

If you’re unsure whether your business has enough public footprint for the sprint to work, email fred@rational-magic.com first. Better to find out before you pay.

07.Who owns what

You own everything we deliver. The strategy, brand voice rules, messaging, all six output formats — all yours, no royalty, no expiry. Use them however you want, in any tool, for any purpose, forever.

We retain ownership of the methodology. The 12-step sprint methodology, the underlying frameworks (Hidden Enemy, Shadow Side, ERRC Grid, Value Curve, the rest), and the way we structure the deliverables are Rational Magic’s. You’re paying for the work output, not licensing the framework.

We retain the right to use anonymised insights from your engagement in our own marketing. Without naming you, your business, your specific competitors, or your specific revenue. We might write a LinkedIn post that says “working recently with a SaaS founder at $50k MRR…” — that’s allowed. We’re not allowed to write “Rational Magic worked with [your business name]” without your explicit consent (see below).

Public case study consent is opt-in. By default, your strategy is private — your strategy site lives at a private URL, with noindex, nofollow, and isn’t linked from our homepage. If you check the case-study consent box on the intake form, after delivery we’ll publish your strategy at rational-magic.com/s/[your-business-slug] as a public case study. You’ll review the final version before it goes live. You can request specific redactions (revenue figures, sensitive findings, named competitors) and you can revoke consent at any time — we’ll take it down and migrate it to a private URL.

08.Acceptable use

You agree not to use the Brand OS File, sprint output, or any of our methodology to build or train AI tools that compete with Rational Magic. (You can absolutely use AI tools to operate your own brand using the Brand OS File — that’s the whole point.)

We don’t take engagements where we’d be working with two direct competitors in the same quarter without disclosing it to both. If we’re already working with a direct competitor when you reach out, we’ll tell you and decline.

09.Liability cap

Our total liability to you, for any reason, is capped at the amount you paid for the sprint ($1,497 USD or $497 USD if you used the founding rate). This applies whether the claim is contractual, in negligence, or any other legal basis.

The strategy we deliver is strategic advice based on evidence-mining and 26 years of design judgment. It is not legal advice, financial advice, medical advice, or any other regulated professional advice. Outcomes for your business depend on a hundred variables we can’t control.

Some consumer protection rights under Australian law cannot be excluded. Nothing in these terms tries to override those — to the extent any term conflicts, the relevant statute wins.

10.Termination

Either of us can end the engagement before the sprint starts (i.e., before you submit the intake form). If you do, you get a refund. If we do, we explain why and refund.

After the sprint starts, the engagement runs to completion under the refund policy in section 06. Neither of us can simply walk away — although if circumstances make completion impossible (you go out of business mid-sprint, we get hit by a bus), we’ll find a fair way to handle it.

11.Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of Victoria, Australia. Disputes will be resolved in Victorian courts or, if we both agree, by mediation through a Victorian-based mediator.

If you’re in another country and there’s a non-excludable consumer right that conflicts with this section, that statutory right applies.

12.Changes to these terms

If we change these terms, we’ll change the date at the top. Changes apply only to engagements that start after the change. Existing engagements continue under the terms in effect when you bought.

If you have questions about anything here, email fred@rational-magic.com. We’d rather answer the question now than have a misunderstanding later.