Or the other way around?
If you’ve already hired help and you’re still wearing every hat, still waiting on the growth that would catch you a break —
there is a version of this where your strategy, your vendors, your numbers, and the systems underneath them all pull in one direction. Where the business grows without drowning you in the process, and marketing stops being a hat you have to wear.
Executive marketing leadership.
Without the executive salary.
One 60-minute conversation. You’ll leave with a clear picture of what’s working or missing from your marketing, and next steps to meet your goals.
Who’s connecting the dots?
Said out loud, in some version, by nearly every owner who ends up here.
Some of it is felt daily. Most of it rarely gets added up on a single page.
Every month it runs this way is a month of growth the business doesn’t get back.
Marketing isn’t working unless it’s creating freedom. Which raises two questions only you can answer — free from what, exactly? And free to do what?
My first marketing campaign was a sign on the side of the road. It said “Music Lessons” with my phone number underneath. That was 15 years ago.
I later built a children’s entertainment company and quickly discovered the gaps in my marketing knowledge. I hired coaches. I took courses. After I had heavily invested in a marketing agency, I still couldn’t tell whether the problem was my offer, my marketing, my ads, or my audience. By the time I figured it out, it was too late.
It was heartbreaking. As difficult as the debt was to swallow, the hardest part was letting go of my team.
Within the year, I ended up launching a vocal studio, filling its enrollment within 2 months.
Everything after that studio kept proving the same thing. I would refine my newfound method in a chamber of commerce, a downtown association, a pediatric dental practice in NYC, an internal marketing agency for a $7M organization – and I found the same method worked more effectively every time.
I know what it’s like to invest in marketing and not get the return I’m looking for. That’s the lens I bring to every engagement.
That’s the job I do now, for owners who deserve better than learning it the way I did.
I’ve made payroll with my own money and watched it not be enough. That changes what you recommend.
Let’s talk it through. An hour, on me, and you’ll leave with a clear picture of what’s working or missing from your marketing, and next steps to meet your goals.
Book a Complimentary ConsultationVendors execute. That is their job, and most do it well. But someone has to decide what should be executed at all, whether it worked, and what happens next.
In most businesses, that person is the founder — at 9pm, between everything else.
An agency runs channels, and is paid to keep running them. They’re likely not going to say the channel isn’t the problem — not out of dishonesty, but because that was never the assignment. It isn’t their seat.
A coordinator executes what they’re assigned. Which leaves the founder deciding, prioritizing, and still the bottleneck. The job didn’t go away. A person to manage got added on top of it. Give that same person a strategy to work from and someone to develop the craft, and they become the asset you hoped you were hiring.
Early on, well before anything has had time to compound.
Not a slide deck and not a dashboard nobody opens. One page with the same measures on it every time, so the direction is obvious at a glance and a bad month is visible while there is still time to do something about it.
The numbers on it are the ones that decide whether the business grows: what it costs to win work, how much of it converts, what a customer is worth over time, and whether the money going to vendors is earning its place.
Before anything gets run, the foundation gets combed through — the offer, the positioning, the reason someone chooses this business over the one down the road. Most of it is built to transact. I rebuild it to build relationships. Then I lead the function itself week to week: strategy, vendors, budget, and numbers, owned by 1 person who answers for all of it.
I build the relationships around a business, not just the traffic to it. Customers who come back, refer, and stay. I grew a membership organization 150% in 6 months doing exactly this — with no new ad budget.
Everyone is using AI to make more marketing. That is why attention got cheap and trust got scarce. Here AI runs the repetitive work — so there is actually time for the part that earns loyalty.
AI can write a thousand posts. It can’t make anyone care.
Here’s what’s happening in your market right now. AI drove the cost of content to almost nothing, so everybody’s producing more of it, and attention got cheap fast. What got expensive is trust.
Ads reset to 0 every month. Relationships compound. The businesses that win the next 10 years will be the ones people actually feel something about — and that’s built deliberately, not accidentally.
That’s the whole strategy. AI runs the machinery. Humans build the relationships.
Start with a conversation. I’ll tell you what I see — and I’ll tell you honestly if I’m not the right person for it.
Book a Complimentary ConsultationAn executive marketing partner in the seat every week — not a consultant who leaves after the deck. 15 years of what moves a founder-led business, refined into three phases.
First we stop the bleeding — finding where the operational systems are quietly leaking dollars, and where the openings are to win customers back and keep the ones you have. Every vendor goes on a scorecard and gets marked keep, fix, or fire, so nothing keeps getting paid for out of habit. Past customers get reactivated, because that list is already yours and already paid for. And the calls you are already buying start converting at a better rate before a dollar goes toward buying more of them. This phase is built to pay for itself.
On one engagement, this surfaced roughly $225,000 a year in savings.
Then the deeper work. We find out what this business is actually best at, and why the right customers should choose it without shopping around first. Real research — your customers, your market, the competitors you get quoted against — and the positioning, offer, and message that come out of it. The thing that makes you the obvious answer instead of one of four quotes.
Phase 01 found the money and the position. Here both get built. Savings get redeployed into what works, and the positioning goes live everywhere the business touches a customer — refined until the message pulls rather than pushes.
What it pulls is bigger than a campaign. People start forming something around the business: a following, a culture, customers who identify with it instead of comparing it. Underneath that we build recurring revenue — the service club, the membership plan, the recall program, whatever it is called in your world. That floor is what makes slow season stop being slow, and price stop being the conversation.
A retention system your team can actually run — so customers come back by design instead of by luck, and somebody owns it on purpose. Referral systems that compound on top of it. Marketing that recruits, drawing the right customers and the right people in on the same reputation. Everything documented and your team trained on it, so the work holds between our sessions and gets sharper with each one. This is where the business stops running through you, and starts being worth more than it was.
Year 1 builds the foundation. It doesn’t stop there. Year 2 is where we make each customer worth more instead of just chasing more of them. Year 3 is where the business becomes worth something without you standing in the middle. Most owners only think about Year 1. The ones who get somewhere are thinking about Year 3.
Where you stand, and what your market hears.
What brings the work and the people in.
Growth that builds on itself.
Protection for what you’ve built.
Most fractional executives sell hours. I am accountable for what changes.
Look at how the rest of this industry prices itself. Hours per month. Days per week. Rates that drop if you buy more hours. That’s a staffing model with a strategy label on it, and it puts the burden on you to guess how much of somebody you need.
It also creates the thing owners complain about most: somebody who’s on the clock or off it. Unreachable between sessions. Out of time by the third week of the month. A partner you can’t reach when something’s on fire.
I’m an embedded teammate who’s accountable for what actually changes. I don’t stop at engagement metrics and follower counts.
I don’t stop until it shows up as bread on your table and the freedom to sit down and enjoy it with the people you love.
If the results aren’t real, this isn’t worth doing. Not for you, and not for me.
Good ideas, no strategy tying them together, and money going out to vendors nobody was holding accountable. We stopped the bleeding first.
Revenue grew 177% within the year — and she was able to leave her day job and be in her business full time.
Full events calendar, active newsletter, flat membership for years. They had an audience, not a community, and no system for turning one into the other.
Membership grew 150% in 6 months. No new advertising budget.
5 divisions, marketing scattered across all of them, limited tracking and reporting in place. They needed the department designed before adding team members.
About $225,000 a year saved — without cutting a single capability.
I didn’t need another marketing company. I needed someone who could think strategically about the entire business. Everything now feels like it’s telling the same story.
Dr. Shiva · Blossom Pediatric Dentistry
“If you’re looking for someone who will simply post on social media, that’s not what Heidi does. If you’re looking for a strategic partner in growing your business, she’s exceptional.”
Dr. Shiva · Blossom Pediatric Dentistry
The full Blossom case study lives in the questions section below.
| What owners usually consider | Real cost to you | What you actually get |
|---|---|---|
| Full-time marketing director | $165K–$235K /yr all-in | Base pay in this market runs roughly $130K–$175K. Add payroll taxes, benefits, equipment and software and you land 25–35% above that. One person, one skill set, and a hire you now have to manage and develop. |
| Full-time marketing manager | $125K–$175K /yr all-in | Base pay around $95K–$130K before the same 25–35% loading. Someone to execute what you assign — which leaves you deciding, prioritizing, and still the one they come to for direction. |
| Full-time CMO | $260K–$350K /yr all-in | Full ownership of the marketing function at the seniority that can actually set direction. Reported Nashville base runs $180K–$264K at the low end and past $300K at the high, before benefits and taxes — carried as a fixed salaried seat, in a heavy month or a light one. |
| A marketing consultant | By the project | Often strong thinking, delivered as a recommendation. What comes after the document lands — briefing the vendors, sequencing the work, deciding what gets dropped, answering for the result — stays with you. The engagement ends and the ownership never actually moved. |
| Other fractional CMOs | Sold by the hour | Priced in blocks of hours, so the first thing you have to guess is how much of a person you need. Reachable during their block, out of time by the third week. Strategy, but rarely ownership — and seldom retention, referral, reputation, or recruiting. |
| The Free Founder Method | Flat Monthly Retaineroutcomes over hours | No salary, no payroll taxes, no benefits, no recruiter, no equipment, no setup fee and no exit fee. The marketing function led rather than staffed — 89 scheduled deliverables a year, 12 systems built into the business and permanently yours, every vendor on a scorecard, and your existing team trained. Materially less than the director you’d otherwise hire, and nothing to guess at. |
| Doing nothing for another year | The priciest option | Another twelve months of paying for marketing nobody can measure. The customer list you already own stays untouched. Your slow season arrives exactly on schedule. Your team keeps waiting on you to decide what matters. You keep answering marketing questions at 9pm you never wanted to be responsible for. And the business is worth about what it was worth last year. |
Salary ranges reflect Nashville-market base pay reported by Glassdoor, Salary.com, Built In and Randstad, loaded with employer payroll taxes and typical benefits. Your own numbers will vary.
I won’t say I can help unless two things are true — that I can, and that we would work well together.
One hour. Nothing to prepare.
Nothing required. If you want to bring something, bring whatever already exists — a plan, a vendor report, a rough sense of what you’re spending. If none of that is handy, we’ll still have a good conversation.
I ask questions, you talk, I listen. Where your customers come from, what you’re spending, what’s working, what you’re trying to reach, and what’s actually holding the business back.
A clear picture of what’s working or missing from your marketing, and next steps to meet your goals. If it makes sense to work together, we’ll talk about that. If it doesn’t, I’ll point you toward who could help.
One conversation. You’ll leave with a clear picture of what’s working or missing from your marketing, and next steps to meet your goals.
Book a Complimentary ConsultationComplimentary · No cost and nothing owed
I work with 3 businesses at a time, and only 1 per category in a given market. If I’m working with an HVAC company in your market, I’m not taking its competitor. It’s how many businesses I can genuinely be embedded in — and it means a competitor can take the seat instead.
Recurring revenue has to be built before the season it’s meant to protect. A retention program started in October is enrolling by winter. Started in January, it misses the year entirely — and February arrives the same way it always has.
Building something great shouldn’t cost you the life it was meant to create.
That belief is why this company exists. A business is meant to be the vehicle to freedom. My job is to make it one.
You’ll walk away with a clear picture of what’s working or missing from your marketing, and next steps to meet your goals — whether or not we ever work together.
And if I don’t think I’m the right person to help you, I’ll say so on the call and tell you who is.
Book a Complimentary Consultation
