Plenty of activity.
No one steering, and nothing compounding.
Most growth-stage companies don't have a marketing problem — they have a marketing leadership problem. Channels run in silos, agencies optimize for their own scorecards, and the CEO becomes the de-facto CMO because nobody else can read the funnel.
A Fractional CMO fills that seat — at the level of seniority you need, and the fraction of cost you can defend.
A complete marketing department head.
Strategy, demand, team, and the number.
Strategy & roadmap
The annual plan tied to revenue — not a tactics calendar.
- Annual + quarterly plan
- Monthly KPI scorecard
- Budget approved by CFO
- OKRs your team can run
Demand & pipeline
Full-funnel accountability from click through closed-won.
- Channel mix + budget
- Full-funnel attribution
- Sales–marketing SLAs
- Weekly pipeline review
Brand & positioning
The story your sales team wishes you'd already written.
- Positioning + ICP
- Messaging framework
- Competitive narrative
- Voice + visual system
Team leadership
1:1s, weekly stand-ups, hires, and the hard vendor calls.
- Manage your marketers
- Write JDs + interview
- Agency + vendor oversight
- Mentor the team you have
Budget & vendor mix
Right-size spend, consolidate vendors, and negotiate the contracts.
- Zero-based budget review
- Vendor consolidation / re-bid
- Contract + SOW negotiation
- Media buying oversight
Performance & reporting
One scorecard, monthly — built for the board, not vanity.
- Board-ready dashboard
- Pipeline + CAC + LTV
- Leading + lagging indicators
- Monthly executive readout
Executive leadership, right-sized.
The senior brain without the senior salary.
Illustrative annual cost. Full-time CMO figure includes base, bonus, equity, and benefits load; fractional figure reflects our Growth-tier retainer over 12 months. Actuals vary by market and scope.
What it looks like
when we own the marketing.
AcuSpray
Two founders, neither from marketing, in an industry that barely existed yet. Chris took the whole function: website, ads, SEO, strategy, trade shows, speaking. The call that mattered was refusing to launch as a challenger, positioning AcuSpray as the category leader from day one while the category was still forming. Revenue went from $50K in year one to $4.8M in year three, with year four tracking higher. Week to week the seat now drives the next turn of that strategy: positioning the parent company as the industry's leading enablement partner as American manufacturing ramps back up. Disclosure: Chris is also a partner in the business.
Formula Wellness
Fifteen locations, ten separate domains and websites, seven agencies, and no owner of any of it. Chris came in over the top of the vendors: consolidate every domain into one place, move the sites onto a single host, put DNS and access under one set of controls, then hold the agencies to one brief. The win here is governance, not a traffic chart. They now control their own assets. Their in-house and dev partners still build the site.
Tactical Fleet
An exotic dealer with one showroom and thirty cars, growing to three locations and over three hundred. No SEO, no paid search, and a website that could not carry the inventory. Chris started both channels from zero and led the build of a fully custom automotive site that went on to win multiple awards. Organic peaked at 30,993 users a month with 1,565 pages indexed. The engagement ended when the management team he worked with moved on.
Embedded and leading in two weeks.
Here's the ramp.
- Step 01Week 1
Onboard & diagnose
Access, interviews with your team, review of last-90-day performance, and a written diagnostic of where the funnel is leaking.
Deliverables- Stakeholder interviews
- Access to platforms + reports
- 90-day performance diagnostic
- Findings memo
- Step 02Weeks 2–3
Draft the plan
A defensible 90-day plan tied to a real number. We name the bets, name the KPIs, and name what we're going to stop doing.
Deliverables- ICP + positioning refresh
- Channel mix + budget
- 90-day priorities + owners
- KPI scorecard v1
- Step 03Week 4
Take the seat
Formal handoff of the marketing operating cadence. Weekly stand-ups start. Vendor calls come to us. The board deck is now our document.
Deliverables- Weekly team stand-up
- Vendor + agency review
- Sales–marketing SLA
- Board deck template
- Step 04Month 2+
Lead + report
We run the cadence, mentor the team, and show up to the board meeting with a scorecard tied to pipeline — every month, without fail.
Deliverables- Monthly board readout
- Quarterly working session
- Hiring + vendor changes
- Rolling roadmap
The unsexy stuff we get right so your board doesn't ask twice.
Senior leadership, by the month.
Sized to your stage.
Starter · weekly 1:1
The strategy seat. Right-sized for early-stage teams that need direction more than execution oversight.
- Annual + quarterly plan
- Monthly KPI scorecard
- Weekly 1:1 with founder/CEO
- Agency & vendor oversight
- Quarterly board readout
Growth · weekly stand-up
Strategy plus active team leadership — the right fit when you already have marketers and agencies but no one running them.
- Everything in Starter
- Weekly team stand-up + 1:1s
- Hiring support (JDs + interviews)
- Full-funnel attribution build
- Monthly board readout
Full · embedded cadence
For companies in a real growth or repositioning moment. We're in the operating cadence as much as a full-time CMO.
- Everything in Growth
- Co-own pipeline with sales leadership
- Brand & positioning refresh
- Vendor consolidation / re-bid
- Active CMO succession plan
Strategy Sprint
Three weeks, no ongoing commitment. The diagnostic and the plan, delivered and defended. Most engagements start here.
- 90-day performance diagnostic
- ICP + positioning refresh
- Channel mix + budget model
- Written 90-day plan you own
Advisory
For owners who have a capable team and want a senior second opinion, not a leader. No ongoing term.
- Monthly strategy call with Chris
- Async review of plans + creative
- Vendor and contract sanity checks
- Upgrade to a seat any time
Custom scopes available for multi-brand or complex programs. Initial 90-day term, then month-to-month with 30 days' notice. Media, tools, and vendor spend billed separately and paid directly to the platform — no markup.
The 15-Minute Loss Report.
Fifteen minutes of your time. Mine to write.
Not an audit of your website. A read on where your marketing money is going and what it is buying, written by the person who would hold the CMO seat. Free, and yours to keep whether or not we ever work together.
- 01Where the spend leaksEvery active channel, what it costs you monthly, and what it returned. Including the line items nobody has questioned in a year.
- 02What your vendors producedAgency and tool spend set against actual output. Overlapping scopes, auto-renewals, and work you are paying for twice.
- 03Whether the funnel math worksLead volume, close rate, and cost per acquisition against your average deal. If the unit economics do not clear, you will see it on one line.
- 04The three things I would fix firstRanked by dollars, not by effort. Specific enough that you can hand them to your current team and act without me.
Looking for a technical review of your site and search presence instead? That is our free website and SEO audit. Different report, different reader.
The questions every founder
asks on the first call.
Real answers. Anything we miss, get on the phone with us.
Related Services
Apply to work with Chris.
A limited number of CMO seats, by application.
The seat is intentionally rare — we cap concurrent engagements so Chris can be present for every board meeting. If we're a fit, we'll respond within two business days with a first call and a draft 90-day plan.
- Every engagement is led by Chris personally.
- Limited concurrent engagements — we don't overbook the seat.
- Honest fit assessment on the first call.
- Draft 90-day plan if we're matched.