Judgment on a cadence. Not a retainer.
Some engagements do not need capacity. They need one person in the room, prepared, when the decision actually gets made, and reachable on the Tuesday something breaks.
Different problems. Different commitments.
Board advisory
- Quarterly, with availability between sessions
- Marketing and growth judgment at board resolution: where money is going, whether the CAC story holds, what the market believes about the brand
- Pre reading of the board pack before it circulates, so the questions land before the meeting rather than during it
- Independent read on agency and vendor performance
Fractional CMO
- Six to twelve months, ending on a date agreed at the start
- Running the function while you hire, or building it for the first time
- Hiring the permanent CMO is part of the mandate, not a threat to it
- Handover documentation written throughout rather than assembled at the end
Diligence on yourself
- The same marketing due diligence a fund would run, commissioned by you
- Usually before a raise, after a bad quarter, or when the board has started asking a question nobody can answer cleanly
- Findings written for a board audience, not a marketing one
- Fixed scope, fixed fee, no relationship required afterward
Fewer deliverables than you expect.
I do not produce a strategy document. Most of them are read once and referenced never, and writing one is largely the work of looking busy between meetings. If a document genuinely helps, I write one. It is not the product.
What the engagement produces is a better decision at the moment the decision gets made. That is difficult to invoice against and it is the honest description. The measure is whether the choices your company made this quarter were better than the ones it would have made without the conversation.
Before the quarter
Read the numbers properly. Not the deck, the underlying accounts. Arrive with the two or three questions that actually matter rather than a general view.
In the room
Argue the position properly, including against the founder. An advisor who agrees with everything is a reference, not an advisor.
Between sessions
Reachable when something breaks. Most of the value in a fractional arrangement is delivered in twenty minute conversations that were never scheduled.
At the end
A defined handover. For fractional mandates that means the permanent hire is briefed and the operating documentation exists before the last day, not after it.
Who this is not for.
Not a fit
- You want execution. That is the studio work and it is a different engagement
- You want a name on the website more than a voice in the room
- The decisions are made and you are looking for validation
- You need daily availability. That is a hire
Usually a fit
- A founder led company where marketing has outgrown the founder's own judgment
- A board that cannot get a straight answer on marketing efficiency
- A company between CMOs where the function is drifting
- A team that is competent and under briefed
Conflict rules
- No advisory role with a direct competitor of an existing client
- Advisory relationships are disclosed to studio clients where sectors overlap
- An advisory engagement does not become a route into selling studio work. If both make sense, they are separate conversations with separate terms