What does an ORM firm need from us to actually start moving the needle?

The startup checklist is intentionally short. The client provides what only the client has: the priority keywords and topics that matter to the audiences they care about, current executive bios as the company sees them, any prior PR or comms materials worth reusing, a candid description of current reputation concerns including anything sensitive or off-limits, target audience definitions (which investors, which journalists, which candidate pools), and the technical access required to make changes on owned web properties. Everything else – the IMPACT and AIQ baselines, the Wikipedia and Knowledge Panel review, the entity audit, the peer landscape, the source-layer assessment – we produce independently from the diagnostic. Most clients are surprised by how little they need to assemble on their side before kickoff.