Fractional CGO
A written reply within two working days — including when the answer is no.
The symptoms
They do not describe the same business or the same sector. They describe the same moment: when growth stops being an execution problem and becomes a decision problem.
Media budget is growing faster than the revenue it brings in.
Each additional pound buys a slightly more expensive customer than the last, and nobody can say at which point you should stop adding them.
Acquisition cost takes too long to pay back.
Cash is funding growth instead of growth funding cash. The model holds for exactly as long as the funding does.
Most of your acquisition runs through a single channel.
This month’s performance depends on an algorithm, a policy decision, and an account manager who does not exist.
The growth team ships a great deal and decides very little.
Tests running in parallel, workstreams all half finished, and a weekly report nobody uses to make a decision.
Nobody knows what the tooling stack actually costs any more.
Subscriptions, infrastructure, licences renewed by default, long-standing suppliers. The line item grew by accumulation, never by decision.
Where I work
These are not services and they are not stages. They are the four places where the economics of your growth are actually decided. A mandate handles all four at once, because they trade: winning on one almost always costs you something on another.
Three contexts
These three models do not share a unit of economics, nor the same lag between spend and revenue. That is why they are not steered from the same dashboard. What does not change is how the constraint is found: start from the P&L, never from the channel.
ConstantDiagnose on margin. Decide on the constraint. Steer on cohorts.
Physical products, direct sales, margin exposed to cost to serve.
The constraint is rarely CPM. It sits in contribution margin after discount, returns and fulfilment — or in a creative cadence that cannot keep up with audience fatigue.
What I look at
— Most often: growth bought on a saturated channel while a high-margin range sits under-distributed.
Recurring revenue, sales cycle, account expansion.
Paid acquisition is not profitable or unprofitable in the abstract. It is profitable at a given payback period, for a given segment. The whole question is which one.
What I look at
— Most often: a channel written off on its average, clearly profitable on one segment, cut before anyone segmented it.
Sign-up without a salesperson, conversion inside the product.
Nothing spent upstream is recoverable if activation does not hold. The first lever is almost always inside the product, not in front of it.
What I look at
— Most often: a sign-up flow optimised to the point of attracting accounts that will never activate.
The method
This is the only place on this site where order matters. Each phase produces something the next one depends on: without a costed diagnostic there is no defensible plan, and without a plan there is nothing to steer.
Data access, interviews with the team and the incumbent suppliers, and a rebuild of the real unit economics. By the end of this phase the constraint is named and costed — not assumed.
Deliverable
Diagnostic note: unit economics rebuilt, primary constraint costed, and the workstreams ruled out with the reason for ruling them out.
Every workstream is written as a measurable hypothesis with a cost and a payback period. Anything that cannot be costed does not enter the plan.
Deliverable
Sequenced plan: budget per lever, exit measures, and a written stop condition for every workstream.
Execution stays with your teams and your suppliers. I decide, I set weekly priorities, I have people hired or replaced when that is the constraint, and I answer for the exit measures.
Deliverable
Weekly steering ritual, one shared dashboard, decisions logged and dated.
A mandate that works comes to an end. The in-house team takes the decisions back, with the documentation, the measures and the rituals that hold them.
Deliverable
Operating documentation, named handover, and a phased withdrawal on an announced timetable.
What we get called for
These are the real mandates, by type. The figures will follow once the companies concerned approve publication — never before. The typology already says the important part: in almost every case, the problem stated on the first call is not the one we deal with first.
"We are spending far too much for what it returns, and we no longer know where to cut."
What we do
A full cost rebuild, line by line: media, tooling, suppliers, cost to serve. We cut what produces nothing and protect what produces without being visible.
What we are after
A cost base that becomes a choice again rather than an inheritance.
"The brand used to be strong, it is not any more, and we do not know where to pick it up."
What we do
Diagnosis of what actually slipped — offer, positioning, creative, channel — then a short test sequence on the most likely lever before reinvesting.
What we are after
A low point identified and passed, with a written reason for the recovery.
"We have nobody in-house to hold this, and we do not want to hire right now."
What we do
Direction and execution taken on end to end by the agency: strategy, media buying, creative production, measurement. One point of contact, one dashboard.
What we are after
A growth function that runs, and an in-house team that can be built later on documented foundations.
"The team is there, it works hard, and nothing really moves."
What we do
A map of decision remits, roles redefined, a call on which hires to make and which not to, and a weekly steering ritual put in place.
What we are after
A team that decides within its remit instead of escalating.
"We have twelve workstreams open and none finished."
What we do
Every workstream is costed, sequenced or stopped. What survives carries an owner, a date and a written stop condition.
What we are after
Three workstreams moving, instead of twelve stalling.
"It works at small scale, and it degrades the moment we raise the budget."
What we do
Identify the constraint that appears at volume — creative, audience, capacity to serve, cash — and relieve it in order, before increasing spend.
What we are after
A step change cleared without unit economics degrading.
Three detailed cases are planned, one per client type: an e-commerce brand, a SaaS company, a self-serve web app. Each with the starting position, the decision taken, the result and the duration. Nothing is published without written approval.
[TO FILL IN: figures, sectors, written permission to publish]
Fit, and lack of it
This section is here to filter, not to persuade. If you recognise yourself in the right-hand column, a conversation would waste both our time.
You are past €500k in annual revenue
Roughly €50k a month. Below that, the problem is almost always product or market. A growth director cannot fix either, and would charge you a great deal to find that out.
Execution capacity exists — yours or ours
In-house team, agency, freelancers: the shape matters little. And where a pair of hands is missing, our team supplies it, within a written remit. What we do not do is confuse deciding with executing.
The data is reachable, however messy
A back office, an ad platform and a billing tool are enough to start. Mess can be dealt with; absence cannot.
You want someone who will disagree with you
An arbiter who never says no is not arbitrating. He is invoicing.
The company has not found its market
Before the first floor of recurring revenue, growth is not steered — it is searched for. Different job, and not mine.
You are looking for someone to execute
If what you need is campaigns run well, a good media agency will cost less and do it better. I will name one.
You want to delegate no decisions at all
An arbiter with no authority to decide is a consultant writing notes. If every call has to go up the chain and wait, the arrangement is pointless.
The expected outcome is a number promised in advance
No ROAS commitment will be given. What is committed to is the method of deciding and a written trail behind every decision.
Unsure which column you are in? Write to me — three questions settle it.
Anthony
I did not come out of consulting. I operated: ran media budgets, hired and led growth teams, and watched from the inside as a curve flattened with no dashboard able to say why.
That is where this role came from. A company that has stalled rarely needs one more person executing. It needs someone willing to say what gets stopped, and to stay in the room while it happens.
Behind me sits an agency: more than ten years in the field and a team of eight to ten — creative strategists, media buyers, static and video editors, consultants. It does not replace yours. It steps in where capacity is missing, within a written remit, and steps out when it is no longer needed.
Anthony T.
Founder — fractional CGO
Background
Questions
Six questions, roughly in the order they come up. The last one matters most.
There is no public rate card, and I am wary of the ones that exist: the figure depends on scope, on how many channels are being steered, and on the execution capacity already in place. Write to us and we will price it once we understand the situation — before the diagnostic starts, never after.
What is fixed: the price does not scale with the media budget under management, and carries no commission on spend. An agency paid a percentage of what it spends is in no position to recommend spending less.
No twelve or twenty-four month lock-in. Notice is fourteen days, on either side. Nothing holds you but what the mandate produces.
The diagnostic stands on its own, with no obligation to continue. What follows is decided on the diagnostic note — a document you keep either way.
I neither replace them nor duplicate them. I define their remit, what is expected of them and the measures they are judged on — then I direct them like any other resource in the plan.
In most mandates the agency relationship improves: it finally receives clear priorities and someone who can read what it delivers. If it turns out they are not delivering, I say so and I document it; whether to keep them remains your call.
Your teams and suppliers execute. I decide, prioritise, settle disputes and document. I chair the weekly steering meeting, answer for the plan’s exit measures, and escalate what is blocked when it is blocked on your side.
I do not take the keys to your ad accounts on your behalf, other than a short, explicitly agreed and time-boxed period of direct control.
Every workstream in the plan carries a stop condition written in advance: a measure, a threshold, a date. When the threshold is missed, the workstream stops. That is a rule, not an end-of-quarter negotiation.
No numeric outcome will be guaranteed — nobody honest can, too many variables sit outside both our control. What is guaranteed is that you will know, at any moment, why the budget sits where it sits and what would have to change to move it.
One thing is handled in the plan itself rather than after the fact: revenue concentrated on a single channel. A plan that only holds while a platform stays friendly is not a plan, it is a bet — and it settles the same way every time, on a Monday morning, without notice.
Because the work is not knowing a channel, it is rebuilding unit economics and finding the constraint. That skill travels between models. Deep knowledge of an ad platform does not — and it expires within eighteen months.
What these three models share is more structural than what separates them: growth is steered by data, the lag between spend and revenue is measurable, and the constraint is almost never the one the team names first. Where they differ — the measures — the dashboard changes. The way decisions get made does not.
There is a benefit to the crossover as well: an e-commerce mandate gains from the cohort discipline of SaaS, and a SaaS mandate gains from the creative discipline of brands. Those transfers do not happen inside a single-sector specialist.
Contact
Describe the situation in a few lines: the model, the order of magnitude of revenue, and what you think is blocking. I reply in writing within two working days, saying whether the mandate makes sense — including when it does not.
Or directlycontact@ecombrandagency.comNo automated sales sequence. A written reply, from me.
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