I'm Dimitri Kushnaryov. I build the positioning systems that category leaders run on.

Chapter 01 — The practice

A brand strategy practice is not an agency. It is a point of view, applied consistently.

I started Kushnaryov in 2017 after a decade leading positioning work inside three independent agencies I respected and eventually outgrew. The thing I kept noticing, working on the inside, was that the work itself was good — but the apparatus around the work had started to eat it. Layered account management. Junior strategists rehearsing senior strategist thinking. Quarterly re-pitches to defend retainers that hadn't changed in eighteen months. The billable hour behaving exactly as badly as the cliché suggests.

So I left. What I built instead is a practice of one — me — that takes the part of an agency that actually matters (rigorous positioning, sharp narrative work, an identity system engineered to be lived with, not launched) and strips out the part that doesn't. I do the work. I answer the email. I sign the deliverable. If the result is wrong, there is no one to deflect that onto, which is exactly the point.

Since 2019, that operating model has been the strategic basis for 180-plus B2B brands across SaaS, industrials, fintech, professional services and consumer goods. I work with operators between roughly one and fifty million in revenue who have outgrown their first positioning and need a senior thinker to build the second one — not a team to manage a process around it.

Chapter 02 — How I work

Fourteen business days. One principal. The deliverable ships when it's done, never when the retainer runs out.

The core strategy engagement — positioning, narrative spine, messaging architecture, the bones of the identity system — lands in fourteen business days. That isn't a slogan; it is a documented operating standard I have hit on every engagement since 2020. The reason it is fast is that I don't run a discovery process designed to bill for eight weeks of meetings. I run two: one long intake with the founder, one with the operating team that has to live inside the strategy once it ships. Then I go away and write.

Most weeks look like this: Monday I read everything you've ever published. Tuesday I have a working session with you on the real buyer, not the one in your deck. Wednesday and Thursday I draft. Friday I argue with my own draft. The second week I deliver, defend it for ninety minutes against your sharpest objections, and hand over the system. A 38% lift in qualified inbound within ninety days of reposition is the average result we report across the practice — not the best case, the average — and that is because the work that ships in week two is the work that was supposed to ship in week twelve.

I cap the practice at thirty-six active engagements a year on purpose. Partner-level attention is a finite resource, and the second-best work is not good enough for a founder paying principal rates.

Chapter 03 — What I won't do

A short list of things this practice does not offer, because the operators who hire me don't want them.

I do not pitch in a deck. If you need a forty-slide positioning read-out for your board meeting, I will build you a four-page memo instead — denser, faster to read, harder to bullshit your way through. You are welcome to convert it to slides yourself.

I do not sell media buying, paid social, or performance marketing. If that is what you need, I will introduce you to two or three firms I genuinely respect and step out of the way. There is no margin in pretending to do it and a real cost to you if the work is bad.

I do not charge hourly. Engagements are flat-fee, starting at $9,500, with the scope written down before the first invoice. The number does not move because the calendar does. I am not interested in a model that rewards slow work.

I do not take a project unless I believe the work will compound for you. The 92% client renewal or referral rate we report is downstream of that constraint, not a sales metric I optimised toward.

If that list removes me from your consideration, that is a useful outcome for both of us.