Positioning clarity
Can a stranger repeat what you do after one sentence? Can your third-best AE? A low score here is why sales rebuilds the pitch on every call.
Services
Three Pillars. One Strategist. The Same Person From the Diagnostic to the Board Pack.
Most founders are carrying narrative debt. They have shipped product faster than they have built the story for it, and the gap is showing up in the raise, the pipeline, or the exit multiple. Closing that gap is the work. Three pillars, two engagement shapes, one person who stays through all of it.
The problem
Narrative debt is what happens when a company outruns its own story.
Product velocity beats narrative velocity. The pitch wins on traction and stalls on positioning. The board meeting opens with charts and stalls on the slide that explains the company. The new hire takes ninety days to articulate what you do. That is the cost, and it compounds.
Every engagement starts by scoring the debt across four dimensions. Positioning clarity. Category position. Go-to-market infrastructure. Proof structure. You get a ranked list of what it is costing you and what repays fastest, before you commit to any of the work below.
Think of it as the concrete slab before the kitchen. The kitchen gets the compliments. The slab is why the kitchen stands.
Every engagement starts by scoring the debt. Then I pay it down with you.
Where it starts
Four dimensions, scored, before anything gets built.
You cannot pay down a debt you have not measured. Every engagement opens with the same diagnostic, and it is the same one behind the free assessment on this site.
Category position
Are you competing inside a category someone else named, or did you name one? Feature competition is a price competition wearing a costume.
Go-to-market infrastructure
Is there a system underneath the campaigns? Routes for inbound, a repeatable lead engine, sales tooling that survives the next AE who quits.
Proof structure
Do you have a three-tier proof stack, or a logo wall? Investors and acquirers underwrite evidence in a specific order, and most companies only have the top tier.
The output is a ranked list. What is costing you the most, and what repays fastest.
How I work
Three pillars. One foundation.
Category Design and Narrative Strategy
Decide what game you are playing. Then make the rules.
Category design is the work of choosing where you want to win and what language gets you there. Most founders treat category as descriptive. The strongest founders treat it as designed. I write the category brief, build the narrative arc, and pressure-test it against your funding stage, your competitors, and the board questions you keep dodging.
Typical sequence. Category brief in weeks one to three. Narrative architecture by week five. Investor deck by week eight.
Flock Freight had built a category and could not name it. No founder, investor, or shipper could repeat what the company did in one sentence, so outbound was the only oxygen. We named pooled freight and built the language to claim it. MQLs up 619%, driving over 30% of revenue from under 5%. $375 million raised. Valued at over $1 billion.
Deliverables
- Narrative architecture document. One-page core narrative plus three-tier proof structure.
- Investor narrative deck. 10 to 15 slides, narrative-first.
- Sales narrative one-pager.
- Quarterly board narrative template.
OutcomeFounders typically walk into the next round with a story their lead investor repeats back to them. That is how you know the debt is paid.
Marketing as Infrastructure
Marketing that runs like plumbing.
Most early-stage marketing is a series of campaigns held together by hope. I replace that with infrastructure. Systems that run whether you are funding or hiring or shipping. Routes for inbound. Repeatable lead engines. Sales tooling that survives the next AE who quits.
Typical sequence. Systems audit in weeks one to two. ICP and messaging library by week four. Lead engine live by week eight. Reporting cadence from month three.
On one engagement this work took inbound pipeline up 88% in 90 days through a web, SEO, and content rebuild, and improved marketing ROI by 57% through attribution modeling and channel remix. At WARP, inbound went from 2% of all sales leads to 17%, customer acquisition cost fell 49%, and revenue rose 83%, all inside six months.
Deliverables
- Marketing systems audit. Current stack, gap map, dependency tree.
- ICP and messaging library. Who, what, why, in their language.
- Lead engine design. Channel mix, content cadence, conversion model.
- Sales tooling kit. Decks, one-pagers, demo narrative, objection library.
- Reporting cadence. Monthly KPI review, quarterly strategy review.
OutcomeA founder can take a two-week vacation and the marketing engine still ships.
The Fractional CMO Seat
I take the chair. You keep the company.
This is the pillar that pulls the others together. I sit in the CMO seat for the duration of the engagement. Strategy. The hiring brief for the eventual full-time CMO. Vendor management. Board readiness. You get one strategist. Not a junior account manager. Not a rotating team. The same person in the discovery call, the strategy session, and the board prep.
Typical sequence. Kickoff and diagnostic in week one. First deliverable inside thirty days. Board-ready pack by the end of the first quarter.
I have held the seat both ways. At Flock Freight I was VP of Marketing for two years, reported to the CEO, owned marketing, PR, and the SDR team, and grew it from two people to fifteen. At AiFleet I did the same work fractionally: four personas mapped, the sales funnel rebuilt, close rate from under 10% to 22%. The seat is the seat.
Deliverables
- Weekly founder stand-up.
- Monthly strategy session and KPI review.
- Quarterly board-readiness pack.
- Hiring brief and interview loop for the full-time CMO.
- Vendor and agency management.
OutcomeThe CMO seat is filled from day one, and it is filled by the person who did the diagnostic.
Built, not advised
Every engagement ships a tool that runs without me.
The fastest way to tell whether marketing is infrastructure or theater is to ask what still runs after the marketer leaves. Every engagement ships something that does.
Lead qualification assessment
Replaces the contact form with a conversation. A visitor describes their situation in their own words, the model scores the fit, a qualified lead lands in your CRM with the full context attached, and a warm follow-up fires before they close the tab.
Brand clarity assessment
Scores positioning clarity and competitive differentiation, and returns a report showing where the messaging works and where it breaks down.
Lead visibility assessment
A white-label tool for agency clients. Scores a business across online presence, reviews, and competitive position.
GTM readiness scorecard
Scores a go-to-market operation across positioning, demand, and revenue infrastructure. Output is a prioritized action plan ordered by revenue impact.
You own the code, the data, and every lead the tool generates. No proprietary lock-in and no license to renew.
Two engagement shapes
Retainer or sprint.
Ongoing
Fractional CMO retainer
The CMO seat, held. Monthly strategy, weekly founder stand-ups, quarterly board readiness. Four tiers from 6 hours a week to full-time equivalent.
From $6,000
per month, by tier
Fixed scope
Project sprint
One problem, named and closed. Positioning, go-to-market plan, investor narrative, website messaging, or a demand generation pilot.
From $10,000
per project, by scope
Most engagements start as a sprint and become a retainer. That is the order I recommend. You find out how I work on a fixed scope before you commit to a monthly one.
Want to see what your narrative debt is costing you?
A five-minute assessment, scored against the same framework I run on every engagement. You get the result without a call.