Senior marketing leadership for businesses whose work takes explaining.
I work directly with CEOs of $2–15m businesses. I build the marketing function. Then I lead it.
Not an agency. Not a freelancer. A marketing leader, on terms that fit your size.
Marketing activity isn’t a marketing function.
A website. Some posts. An agency on the ads. A good junior carrying too much.
Plenty of activity. What’s missing is the structure underneath: an answer to why you win, alignment with sales, the leadership that turns activity into revenue. The standard fixes don’t quite fit.
The full-time hire
A big hire for a business your size: expensive, hard to find, hard to justify, and hard to keep fully used.
The agency
Brings execution. But execution was never the gap.
A marketing leader, on your terms
Senior leadership, fitted to your size. Strategy, systems, alignment with sales. Built, then led.
Considered purchases. Careful buyers. Trust before transaction.
If your industry gets called boring by people who’ve never worked in it, we’ll get along fine.
- You sell considered purchases to careful buyers
- Long sales cycles, buying groups, engineers with budgets
- Typically $2–15m: big enough that marketing matters
- No senior marketing leadership in the seat, or a junior carrying too much
Senior enough to set the direction. Close enough to make sure it happens.
You don’t need more marketing activity. You need somebody accountable for making the whole thing work.
One method, built over twenty years.
Abovo. From the Latin ab ovo: from the egg. First principles.
It starts with one question: why do you win? Then four foundations get built on the answer. Most businesses have the question unanswered and a foundation or two missing, with good effort sitting on top. The work starts by finding out which.
Where to start
Pick my brain, properly.
A paid strategy session: one problem, ninety minutes, twenty years of pattern recognition, and a summary you keep.
Find out what’s missing.
The Abovo Assessment: the question answered and four foundations scored, ending in a prioritised build plan.
Get a marketing leader.
Marketing leadership in phases: built, run, then handed over, with the end date in the contract.
A small number of clients, taken on deliberately.
Leadership tables, day-to-day functions, governance-level counsel, across New Zealand and Australia. New clients deliberately, not constantly.
If this sounds like the conversation you’ve been meaning to have, let’s have it.