The Engine Install
You need a marketing engine.
You don't need a marketing department.
In 90 days I build the systems that turn attention into pipeline — positioning, sequencing, scoring, CRM, routing, attribution — train someone on your side to run them, and step out. Fixed scope. Fixed end date. No retainer that quietly becomes a job.
The situation
Everyone tells you to hire a CMO. Almost half of those hires don't survive eighteen months.
A full-time marketing leader costs roughly $800,000 in year one once you count salary, equity, benefits, and the search. Forty-two percent of those hires are judged unsuccessful inside eighteen months — and then you do it again.
The alternative most founders are offered is a fractional CMO who shows up two days a week and stays for years. That's not cheaper leadership. That's the same dependency with a different invoice.
What you actually need is the machinery: something that knows who to talk to, what to say, when to route a lead to sales, and how to tell what worked. Machinery can be built once and operated by people you already employ.
$800k
Year-one cost of a full-time CMO
42%
Of CMO hires judged unsuccessful in 18 months
90
Days to install the engine instead
0
Ongoing retainer required afterward
What I install
The engine, specifically.
Most fractional CMO pages are vague about this on purpose. Here is the actual list.
Brand & positioning
- ICP definition and buyer research
- Positioning, category narrative, and value proposition
- Messaging architecture and voice guidelines
- Brand system specification and creative direction
- Naming for products, tiers, and categories
Pipeline systems
- Lifecycle and nurture sequencing — logic, triggers, branching, timing
- Lead scoring model and qualification thresholds
- CRM and marketing automation integration, data hygiene, field architecture
- Routing rules and the marketing–sales SLA
Measurement & cadence
- Attribution wiring and a five-metric scoreboard
- Channel strategy with explicit kill and scale criteria
- Budget allocation model
- The weekly operating cadence your team runs after I leave
What I don't do
I build the machine. I don't feed it.
If it produces an asset, it's yours. If it moves, routes, scores, or measures an asset, it's mine. I'll write the creative brief and direct the work — I won't be the one making it. I keep a short list of people I trust for that, and I'll introduce you directly.
- Writing your blog posts, emails, or social content
- Graphic design, brand identity files, illustration, video
- Running or optimizing paid campaigns — LinkedIn, Google, anything
- Holding or managing your ad accounts
- Social media management, community, event execution
- Acting as agency of record, or managing your agency
- Managing your people
The 90 days
Four phases, each one gated on the last.
01
Diagnose
Weeks 1–2
Marketing audit, ICP, positioning brief, pipeline math, and the five metrics we'll judge everything by. Your operator gets named here.
02
Architect
Weeks 3–5
Brand system and messaging architecture. Channel bets written as hypotheses with kill and scale criteria. Scoring model, routing rules, the marketing–sales SLA, and the data architecture underneath it.
03
Build
Weeks 6–10
The systems get built and go live — sequencing, scoring, CRM integration, routing, attribution, campaign templates. Each one passes through the handoff cycle as it's built.
04
Hand off
Weeks 11–13
Your operator runs the engine unaided. Runbooks recorded, cadence under their hand. Then I sit on your Monday call for four more weeks, silent unless asked.
How the handoff actually works
I build the first one. Your team builds the second. They run the third.
An engine with no operator stops the day the consultant leaves. That's why every system passes through the same three reps before I sign off on it.
Rep one
I build it, you watch
Live, screen-recorded. You see the judgment calls as I make them, not a summary of them afterward.
Rep two
You build it, I review
Before it ships. This is the rep that matters — it's where we find out what's still missing while I'm still under contract.
Rep three
You build it, I stay quiet
You ship without me. I review after. If it holds, that system is handed off for good.
That's what install means here. Not that I set it up — that someone on your team has now done it three times.
What you keep
The deliverable is an asset, not my availability.
The Engine Doc
One living source of truth — ICP, positioning, every channel bet with its kill criteria, the pipeline model, and every decision with the reasoning attached. Not a slide deck.
Recorded walkthroughs
Every workflow, screen-recorded, about five minutes each. Nobody reads documentation. They watch it once and copy what you did.
The weekly loop
Priorities, what shipped, what the numbers say, what to kill or scale. A ritual, not a folder — it's what keeps the engine from becoming a screenshot.
The 30/60/90 runbook
Exactly what your operator does in each of their first three months without me in the room.
Fit
This works when
- ✓You sell B2B software, often into regulated or institutional buyers — fintech, edtech and workforce, healthtech, govtech
- ✓You have real revenue and no marketing leader, or one who needs the systems built underneath them
- ✓Compliance, procurement, or long sales cycles have been treated as reasons not to build
- ✓Someone on your team can own this after me — and can give it four to six hours a week while I'm there
This doesn't work when
- ✕You want someone to run campaigns week to week — that's a coordinator hire or an agency, and I'll tell you so
- ✕There's nobody to hand the engine to. I'll say this in week one rather than month three
- ✕You want a marketing department rented by the month
- ✕The goal is more content rather than more pipeline
Why me
I've built this under regulators, and I've sat in the sales chair.
Twenty years in B2B SaaS and fintech. Most recently VP & Head of Marketing at Dwolla, a payments platform, where I ran an AI-forward marketing org under NACHA and CFPB constraints and got it through legal. “Compliance won't let us” is a sentence I've heard and worked around for years.
I also served as interim sales leader there. That matters more than it sounds: the most common way a handed-off marketing engine dies is that sales stops trusting it. Leads pile up, nobody works them, and by month five someone unplugs the whole thing. I build the marketing–sales handshake because I've been on both sides of it.
I also build Kindling, an AI marketing teammate for small teams. Every Engine Install includes it free for a year — it's how your team keeps producing after I'm gone.
20+
Years in B2B marketing
60%
Manual campaign work removed
5:1
LTV:CAC delivered
15%
MQL-to-Opp conversion lift
Where to start
Start with a Diagnostic. Two weeks, and you owe me nothing after it.
Nobody should quote a 90-day build before looking at the business. The Diagnostic is a marketing audit, an ICP and positioning read, a stack and data review, the pipeline math, and a prioritized 90-day plan. It stands on its own. If we go forward, the full fee comes off the Install.
The Diagnostic · 2 weeks
$7,500
Credited in full toward an Engine Install.
The Engine Install · 90 days
From $45,000
Fixed scope, billed across the three months. Includes Kindling free for twelve.
Taking two Engine Installs this quarter. Prefer LinkedIn? Message me there.