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 the problem is no longer doing more, but choosing what to do.
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.
A new customer takes too long to pay back what it cost to win them.
Cash is paying for growth instead of the other way round. It holds for exactly as long as money keeps coming in from elsewhere.
Most of your acquisition runs through a single channel.
This month’s result depends on an algorithm, a rule that can change, and an account manager who does not exist.
The 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, servers, licences renewed without a thought, suppliers who have always been there. It grew layer by layer, with nobody deciding.
Where I work
These are not services and they are not stages. They are the four places where the profitability of your growth is actually decided. We handle all four at once, because they answer each other: winning on one almost always costs you something on another.
Three contexts
These three models do not make money the same way, and the lag between what goes out and what comes in is not the same either. So they are not steered on the same numbers. What does not change is how you find what blocks: start from the accounts, never from the channel.
ConstantStart from margin. Decide on what blocks. Steer by groups of customers.
Physical products, direct sales, margin exposed to the cost of each order.
What blocks is rarely the price of advertising. It is the margin left once discounts, returns and delivery are paid — or a creative pace too slow for audiences that tire.
What I look at
— Most often: growth bought on an already saturated channel, while a highly profitable range barely sells.
Subscription revenue, sales cycle, accounts that grow.
Advertising is not profitable or unprofitable in itself. It is profitable for a given kind of customer, provided you accept a certain wait before being paid back. The whole question is which one.
What I look at
— Most often: a channel written off on its average, when it pays very well for one kind of customer — cut before anyone looked at the detail.
People sign up without talking to anyone; everything happens inside the product.
Everything you spend beforehand is lost if the people who sign up never use the product. The first lever is almost always inside the product, not in front of it.
What I look at
— Most often: a sign-up so well optimised that it attracts people who will never use the product.
The method
This is the only place on this site where order matters. Each phase produces a document the next one needs: without a costed diagnostic there is no solid plan, and without a plan there is nothing to steer.
Data access, interviews with the team and the suppliers in place, and a full recalculation of what each sale really earns and costs. By the end of this phase, what blocks is named and costed — not assumed.
Deliverable
Diagnostic note: the real profitability calculation, the main thing blocking, costed, and the workstreams ruled out with the reason.
Every workstream becomes a measurable hypothesis, with its cost and the time it needs to break even. Anything that cannot be costed does not enter the plan.
Deliverable
Plan in order: budget per lever, numbers to hit, and a written stop condition for every workstream.
Your teams and your suppliers do the work. I set the priorities each week, I have people hired or replaced when that is where it sticks, and I answer for the numbers we are aiming at.
Deliverable
A weekly steering meeting, one shared dashboard, decisions written down and dated.
An engagement that works comes to an end. The in-house team takes the decisions back, with the documents, the numbers and the meetings that hold them.
Deliverable
Operating documentation, named handover, and a phased withdrawal on an announced timetable.
Proof
Real figures, supplied by the companies concerned and published with their consent. The names are not. What matters here is not the brand, it is the decision — and in two cases out of three it meant taking something away.
Market — France, Belgium
Market — France, Belgium, Switzerland, Luxembourg
Market — United Kingdom
Beyond those three cases, here are the situations that come up most. They already say something useful: the problem stated on the first call is almost never 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
We redo the full cost calculation, line by line: advertising, tools, suppliers, the cost of serving each order. We cut what produces nothing and protect what produces without being seen.
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
We find what actually gave way — the offer, the positioning, the creative, the channel — then a short run of tests on the most likely lead 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
The agency takes on everything, from the decisions to the work itself: strategy, ad buying, creative production, measurement. One point of contact, one dashboard.
What we are after
Growth that runs, and an in-house team that can be built later on written foundations.
"The team is there, it works hard, and nothing really moves."
What we do
We set out who decides what, redefine the roles, settle which hires to make and which not to, and put a weekly meeting in place.
What we are after
A team that decides for itself instead of passing everything upwards.
"We have twelve workstreams open and none finished."
What we do
Every workstream is costed, put back in order or stopped. What survives has 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
We find what blocks as soon as volume rises — creative, audience, capacity to serve, cash — and clear it in order, before spending more.
What we are after
A step change cleared without each sale earning less.
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 €50k a month — or €5k MRR in SaaS
The threshold depends on the model: roughly €50k in monthly revenue for e-commerce, physical and digital products alike, and €5k in monthly recurring revenue for a SaaS. 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 hardly matters. And where a pair of hands is missing, our team supplies it, on a scope agreed in writing. What we do not do is confuse deciding with doing.
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
Someone who never says no is not deciding. He is invoicing.
The company has not found its market
Until revenue is established, 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
Someone with no authority to decide is a consultant writing notes. If every call has to go up the chain and wait, there is no point.
The expected outcome is a number promised in advance
I promise no advertising return figure. What I do guarantee is how decisions get made, and that every one of them is written down.
Unsure which column you are in? Write to me — three questions settle it.
Anthony
I did not come out of consulting. I did the job: ran ad budgets, hired and led 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 another pair of hands. 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, image and video editors, consultants. It does not replace yours. It steps in where hands are missing, on a scope agreed in writing, 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 what we cover, on how many channels are being steered, and on what your teams can already do. 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.
Three months minimum. That is what it takes to rebuild the costs, set the plan, install the production process and the decision ritual — and for what comes back afterwards to be a trend rather than a good month. Below that, you would be paying for the setup without ever seeing the return.
Nothing rolls over beyond it: no automatic renewal. The diagnostic can be commissioned 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 set out what is expected of them and the numbers they are judged on — then I direct them like the rest of the plan.
In most engagements 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 do the work. I prioritise, I settle things, and I write them down. I chair the weekly steering meeting, answer for the plan’s numbers, and tell you 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.
I promise no figure — nobody honest can, too much sits outside both our control. What I do guarantee: you will know at any moment why the budget sits where it sits, and what you would need to see 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 job is not knowing Meta or Google. It is knowing what each sale truly earns once everything is paid, and finding what blocks. That works the same way across all three models. Knowing a platform inside out does not: in eighteen months it will have changed.
What these three models share counts for more than what separates them: they are steered with numbers, the lag between what goes out and what comes in can be measured, and what blocks is almost never what the team names first. What changes from one model to the next is which numbers to follow. Not the way decisions get made.
There is a benefit to doing both: an e-commerce client gains from how rigorously SaaS companies follow their customers over time, and a SaaS client gains from the creative rigour of brands. A single-sector specialist never makes those transfers.
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 engagement makes sense — including when it does not.
Or directlycontact@ecombrandagency.comNo automated sales sequence. A written reply, from me.
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