The most selective service I offer, and the only one I'll actively suggest you don't take on if I don't think it's right. Fifteen years of marketing leadership — platform-side, in-house, and agency — applied to one company at a time, one or two days a week.
The Fractional CMO market is flooded. Most people selling the service were Head of Marketing at one company for eighteen months and now call themselves a fractional CMO.
I'm careful about who I take on because the title matters less than the work. When I do take a fractional CMO engagement, it's because the company genuinely needs senior marketing leadership, I'm the right person for that specific situation, and both sides expect the same things from the relationship.
This is the honest filter. If you read the right-hand column and it describes your situation better than the left, we both save time — and there's probably a better service on this site for you.
Six responsibilities that sit inside the fractional CMO scope. Anything outside these ends up as an out-of-scope conversation — usually a good thing for both of us.
The marketing plan. What the team is working on this quarter, what it isn't, and why. Updated every 90 days against real results.
Job specs, interviewing, hiring decisions. Also when to bring in freelancers vs. employees vs. agencies. The org chart is part of the strategy.
Reviewing the work your agencies and freelancers are producing. Holding them accountable. Firing and replacing when they're not earning their fee.
Marketing's quarterly board update, investor memos, KPI dashboards. Translating marketing work into the language the board speaks.
What gets spent where, and why. Includes the uncomfortable conversations when something isn't working and the spend needs to move.
The marketers on your team have someone senior to talk to. Weekly 1:1s, coaching on their work, advocacy when the team needs cover.
Three realistic commitment levels. Below one day a week and there isn't enough time to do the role properly. Above three days and we should be talking about whether you actually need a full-time hire.
Weekly 1:1 with you, monthly team day, quarterly strategy offsite. Good when a capable team exists and just needs senior cover.
The most common fit. Enough time to be meaningfully in the work without becoming the bottleneck. Good for most companies between $2M–$20M ARR.
For active transitions — between CMOs, post-acquisition, major repositioning. We should have a conversation about whether a full-time hire is coming, and this is the bridge.
Every engagement starts with the same four phases in the first quarter. After that it becomes a rhythm of weekly, monthly, and quarterly work — but the setup needs to be deliberate, not rushed.
Interviews with the team, leadership, key agencies. Read the quarterly reports. No recommendations yet — just diagnosis.
Written assessment: what's working, what's not, what the real constraints are. Presented to leadership before anything changes.
90-day plan agreed with leadership. Priorities ranked, team structure decided, vendor decisions made.
Plan goes live. Team knows the priorities. Board gets first updated report. Fractional CMO rhythm begins.
The things prospects ask on the first call, answered in advance so you don't have to.
For companies that can afford it and are ready for it, hire full-time. I'd recommend that over me. Fractional works when the company isn't ready for a full-time CMO — either the role isn't 40 hours of work yet, or you can't afford the $180k–$250k fully-loaded cost, or you're between hires.
If you're hiring full-time and want help scoping the role and finding the right person, I can do that separately as a short engagement.
Agencies execute. They don't make strategic decisions about your business, and they can't — they'd lose every other client if they started picking favourites. A fractional CMO is accountable to one company's outcomes at a time, even if they work with a small number of them.
Maybe, maybe not. Founder-led marketing works until it doesn't, and the tell is usually that the CEO is becoming the bottleneck, or that strategic marketing decisions are being made reactively because the CEO has 14 other things on.
If the CEO still has the time and interest, keep them doing it. If not, a fractional CMO can take it without losing the founder's voice — but only if the CEO genuinely wants to hand it over.
No. I operate as a consultant on a rolling 90-day agreement. The structure matters for both sides: I'm not an employee, I carry my own tax and pension, and you're not taking on employment liability. If your lawyers need specific contract language, that's solvable in the first week.
Maximum three concurrent fractional CMO engagements. Usually two. A fractional CMO doing six simultaneous engagements is lying about the time they can realistically give each one — and the work suffers proportionally.
The 90-day rolling structure is for exactly this. At the end of each quarter we both decide whether to continue. If the fit isn't right or the company's needs have shifted, the engagement ends cleanly and I help you figure out what should come next.
One conversation. No pitch deck. By the end of it, we'll both know whether this is worth building on — or whether a different service on this site is the better starting point.