Go-to-Market Accelerator
Fractional CMO for 7-figure service firms. Strategic direction, execution velocity, and accountability for outcomes, all without the cost or commitment of hiring a full-time CMO.
You have positioning. You have a plan. You have copy. You might even have a marketing person on staff or an agency on retainer. But the work isn't moving.
Your marketing coordinator is great at executing instructions but is asking you to make every strategic call. Your agency is producing volume but it's not adding up to anything. Decisions stack up because nobody on the team has the judgment to make them. And the calls that should take 15 minutes end up sitting on your plate for weeks because you're the senior marketer and you're also the founder, the CEO, and the rainmaker.
The fix isn't more activity. It's more leadership.
That's what the Go-to-Market Accelerator provides.
Decisions get made faster because someone with the experience to make them is in the room. Work that has been stuck for months starts moving in weeks. Your team gets unblocked because you stop being the only person who can answer their questions.
A senior marketer is making the strategic calls, not your marketing coordinator and not your agency. The work points at the same outcomes consistently because one person with the right judgment is steering it.
28 years across positioning, messaging, content, paid media, sales enablement, brand, and team leadership. You get judgment that comes from doing the work hundreds of times across hundreds of firms, not someone learning on your dime.
Someone other than you is responsible for whether the marketing is working. We agree on the metrics. I report against them. The outcomes are mine to own, not yet another thing on your plate.
I plug into your team the way an internal CMO would. I sit in your marketing and leadership meetings, set priorities and direction, review what's going out before it goes out, give your team and agencies direct feedback, and own the outcomes alongside you.
The work flexes by month, but typical activities include leading marketing strategy and planning, owning brand and positioning decisions, directing content and campaigns, hiring and managing marketing staff, selecting and managing vendors and agencies, aligning marketing with sales, reporting to the leadership team or board, and being your sounding board on every decision that touches how the firm shows up in the market.
What I don't do is execution. I'm not the person posting on LinkedIn, designing the deck, or running the ads. That work goes to your team, your agency, or freelancers. My job is to make sure it all adds up.
A marketing function that's actually working. Marketing that produces pipeline and reputation instead of consuming budget. A team that's been led, mentored, and challenged by a senior marketer. Decisions made on time. A founder freed from being the de facto Chief Marketing Officer.
And by the time the engagement winds down, your firm has the strategy, the team, the systems, and the standards to keep marketing working without me in the room.
“You’re a freaking genius. You’ve been a humongous help and a huge influence on my success.”
“James is a presence that inevitably brings out higher standards. He’s a solid man that I hold in the highest respects.”
The Go-to-Market Accelerator is for owners of 7-figure service firms who have done the strategic work (Northstar, Marketing Roadmap, Content Jumpstart, or their equivalents) and need a senior marketer to make the execution actually happen. It fits especially well for founders who don't want to hire a full-time CMO yet but know they're the bottleneck holding marketing back.
28 years leading the marketing function from every angle. Founded my own marketing agency and ran it for 12 years. Multiple CMO roles after that, including taking one company from zero revenue to millions. Past clients include Disney, Microsoft, Walmart, and Motorola. I've seen marketing from the inside at every scale, from two-person startups to billion-dollar enterprises.
Fractional CMO work for service firms is where I want to be now because the expertise matters most here. What you're paying for on retainer is the experience I've spent 28 years building.
The Accelerator is a six-month minimum engagement. Senior marketing leadership doesn't produce results in 30 days, and I'm not interested in pretending otherwise.
The first 60 to 90 days establish the rhythm: I get up to speed on your team, vendors, current marketing, sales process, and pipeline. We confirm the priorities and metrics, and the work starts producing visible motion.
The remainder of the initial term is where compounding shows up. Marketing systems get built. The team gets sharper. Sales cycles tighten. By the end of the six months, most clients are in a fundamentally stronger position than when we started.
After the initial term, the engagement continues month-to-month with notice on either side. Most clients stay for a year or more. Some hand off to a full-time CMO when the firm is ready for one. Some take what's been built and run it themselves. The right outcome depends on where the firm is going.
A full-time CMO at this caliber is typically a $250K-$400K commitment when you factor in salary, equity, and benefits. The Accelerator gives you the same level of seniority and judgment for a fraction of that, on a six-month rolling commitment. You get the strategic leadership without the long-term overhead, and you get someone who has already done this work across dozens of service firms instead of someone learning your business for the first 18 months on your dime.
Agencies execute. The Accelerator leads. The work that an agency takes direction on (posting, ads, design, content production) gets done by your team, your existing vendors, or freelancers. The work that requires senior judgment (strategy, positioning, messaging, sales-marketing alignment, hiring, vendor selection, brand decisions) is what I do. If you already have an agency, I make their work better by giving them clear direction. If you don't, I help you decide whether you actually need one.
Most consultants tell you what to do and then leave. The Accelerator means I'm in the work with you. I attend your team meetings, review your campaigns before they go out, give your team direct feedback, and own the outcomes. The job isn't to write a recommendation deck. The job is to make the marketing actually work.
Strongly recommended. The Accelerator is execution. It works dramatically better when there's clarity to execute against. If your firm doesn't have a clear positioning, plan, and core copy, we'll spend the first months of the engagement building those, which is exactly what the Northstar, Roadmap, and Jumpstart are designed to produce more efficiently. Most clients complete all three before the Accelerator starts. A few situations call for jumping straight in. We'll talk through which fits.
I cap the number of Accelerator clients I take on at any one time so you get real attention, not someone juggling 15 logos. The exact mix flexes by month. Some weeks I'm in your team meetings and reviewing campaigns. Others I'm heads-down on a specific deliverable. The cap is what matters. You're not getting a diluted version of me.
We agree on the right metrics for your business at the start (pipeline, qualified leads, win rate, content performance, brand visibility, whatever fits). I report against those monthly. The honest part is that some marketing work compounds slowly, especially brand and positioning. We'll talk early and often about what to expect when, so the read on “is this working” is grounded in how the work actually shows up in the numbers, not in a fantasy of overnight transformation.
After the initial six months, the engagement renews monthly. Either side can end it with notice. The Accelerator is built for the long term, but never built to trap you.
Most clients enter the Accelerator after completing the strategic foundation: Northstar Strategy for positioning, Marketing Roadmap for the sequenced plan, and Content Jumpstart for the core copy. With those in place, the Accelerator is execution, leadership, and accountability against a clear plan.
A few situations call for starting the Accelerator earlier (urgent leadership gap, complex existing marketing function, fast-moving market window). In those cases, we build the strategic foundation inside the Accelerator instead of in front of it. We'll talk through which path fits your situation.
Thirty minutes to talk through your firm, your current marketing function, and whether the Accelerator is the right fit. I'll give you my honest read on what's getting in the way and what it would take to fix, whether you hire me or not.
