My packages are consistent nationwide: $5,000 to $7,500 for a one-time Growth Audit, $7,000 to $10,000 per month for the Core Marketing CMO retainer, and $12,000-plus per month for Scale-Up marketing leadership. A full-time CMO in the Orange County market typically costs $300,000 or more in salary, bonus, and equity before benefits.

I own the marketing strategy and the number attached to it. That means setting the budget and forecast, directing your in-house team and outside agencies, rebuilding attribution so you can see what genuinely works, and sitting in leadership meetings as the person accountable for pipeline — rather than delivering a strategy deck and leaving.

That is the most common Costa Mesa engagement. Strong brand equity is a genuine asset most performance-focused competitors lack. The work is building the measurement layer and funnel architecture underneath it so the brand investment converts, without sanding down the distinctiveness that made it valuable.

Yes, and the channel conflict is usually the real strategic issue. Retail partners and your own DTC store compete for the same customer, and the marketing plan has to account for margin differences, MAP policy, and who owns the customer relationship long term.

My packages are consistent nationwide: $5,000 to $7,500 for a one-time Growth Audit, $7,000 to $10,000 per month for the Core Marketing CMO retainer, and $12,000-plus per month for Scale-Up marketing leadership. A full-time CMO in the Chicagoland market typically costs $300,000 or more in salary, bonus, and equity before benefits.

I own the marketing strategy and the number attached to it. That means setting the budget and forecast, directing your in-house team and outside agencies, rebuilding attribution so you can see what genuinely works, and sitting in leadership meetings as the person accountable for pipeline — rather than delivering a strategy deck and leaving.

Yes — the engagement is fully remote by design, which is what makes senior marketing leadership affordable at mid-market budgets. Weekly video leadership meetings, asynchronous strategy reviews, and shared dashboards. On-site quarterly planning in Chicago can be arranged when a major reset justifies it.

Pacific to Central is a two-hour gap, which in practice works well. Your afternoon is my late morning, which leaves a wide overlap for leadership meetings and gives me focused morning hours for strategy work before your team’s day is fully underway.

My packages are consistent nationwide: $5,000 to $7,500 for a one-time Growth Audit, $7,000 to $10,000 per month for the Core Marketing CMO retainer, and $12,000-plus per month for Scale-Up marketing leadership. A full-time CMO in the New York Metro market typically costs $300,000 or more in salary, bonus, and equity before benefits.

I own the marketing strategy and the number attached to it. That means setting the budget and forecast, directing your in-house team and outside agencies, rebuilding attribution so you can see what genuinely works, and sitting in leadership meetings as the person accountable for pipeline — rather than delivering a strategy deck and leaving.

First, examine whether the unit economics can support paid acquisition at all — many brands that grew organically have contribution margins too thin to buy customers profitably. That analysis comes before any ad spend, because the answer often points to pricing, packaging, or retention work rather than a media budget.

Yes. The strategic tension is nearly always channel economics: retail distribution builds volume and brand presence at compressed margin, while DTC carries better margin and higher acquisition cost. The plan has to be explicit about what each channel is for rather than treating them as interchangeable.

My packages are consistent nationwide: $5,000 to $7,500 for a one-time Growth Audit, $7,000 to $10,000 per month for the Core Marketing CMO retainer, and $12,000-plus per month for Scale-Up marketing leadership. A full-time CMO in the Austin Metro market typically costs $300,000 or more in salary, bonus, and equity before benefits.

I own the marketing strategy and the number attached to it. That means setting the budget and forecast, directing your in-house team and outside agencies, rebuilding attribution so you can see what genuinely works, and sitting in leadership meetings as the person accountable for pipeline — rather than delivering a strategy deck and leaving.

That is one of the most common Austin engagements. It requires rebuilding attribution and cohort reporting from the ground up, which usually reveals that historical CAC was understated. That is a difficult first board meeting and the necessary starting point for any real improvement.

In the current funding environment, most Austin companies at $3M to $30M cannot justify $300,000-plus in cash and equity for a full-time CMO. Fractional gives you the strategic layer at roughly a quarter of the cost, and often clarifies exactly what the eventual full-time hire should own.

My packages are consistent nationwide: $5,000 to $7,500 for a one-time Growth Audit, $7,000 to $10,000 per month for the Core Marketing CMO retainer, and $12,000-plus per month for Scale-Up marketing leadership. A full-time CMO in the Orange County market typically costs $300,000 or more in salary, bonus, and equity before benefits.

I own the marketing strategy and the number attached to it. That means setting the budget and forecast, directing your in-house team and outside agencies, rebuilding attribution so you can see what genuinely works, and sitting in leadership meetings as the person accountable for pipeline — rather than delivering a strategy deck and leaving.

Seasonality makes senior marketing leadership more valuable, not less. The decisions that matter most in a seasonal business — when to spend, how hard, and what to run in the off-season to hold demand — are exactly the judgment calls a specialist executing daily tactics is not positioned to make.

Yes. The critical strategic issue in hospitality is usually channel mix: reducing dependency on OTAs and third-party platforms by building direct booking demand, which carries dramatically better margin. That is a marketing architecture problem more than an advertising problem.