What it is
An online self-assessment with an emailed read on your likely position.
The diagnostic is the front door. Behind it is an advisory practice built on a single question: is your acquisition engine creating capital, or destroying it? You can answer it for free, measure it to finance standards, or have it run as the standard your marketing is held to. Start where you are.
Three doors you can walk through without a conversation first. Each produces a defined output, at a price stated upfront. They run in sequence, but you can enter at whichever one matches where you already are.
A ten-minute self-assessment that signals whether your marketing is likely running up acquisition cost or leaving value on the table.
An indication, not a measurement. It does not produce your CAC, CLV, ratio or Burn Velocity; it tells you whether the closer look is worth taking.
An online self-assessment with an emailed read on your likely position.
Anyone who wants a no-commitment indication before going further.
Self-serve, ten minutes. Your result by email, no call required.
The diagnostic itself, and the front door to the practice. A finance-grade measurement of fully-loaded CLV:CAC, payback and Capital Burn Velocity, by segment, in a board-ready report.
The measured answer to what a customer costs and what they return, to a standard the board will accept.
A decision-maker who needs the number, not an indication: before a raise, a budget sign-off, or a hire.
A guided intake to finance standards, a designed report, and your reviewed read with Alan.
The diagnostic finds the problem; the Marketing & Capital Plan turns the finding into a costed, sequenced course of action. What to fix, in what order, to what return, scoped to your own numbers.
A fixed-scope plan that acts on the verdict: built to reduce CAC, lift net CLV, and slow the burn.
A business ready to act on the diagnostic, without committing to a retainer to do it.
Tiered fixed price and timeline, scoped from your findings and reserved at the read-out. Your diagnostic fee is credited in full.
Most advisers start fixing on day one. I start by asking what a customer costs, and what they are worth.
More campaigns, more pipeline, more activity: that is where most engagements begin. I begin by establishing the unit economics, then work on whatever that answer makes the priority. Every door below leads to the same discipline. The only thing that changes is how closely involved you need me to be.
Three ways to work on an ongoing or scoped basis, each serving a different person. All entered through a conversation rather than a checkout, and all governed by the same unit-economics discipline.
Ongoing counsel to the executive or board, treating marketing as a question of capital allocation. The standing answer to "is this spend creating value, and where should the next pound go?"
Discuss advisory →Capital-efficiency leadership embedded in the business: marketing run to a capital-return standard, not just advised on. Often opens with the Marketing & Capital Plan, then runs it.
How this differs →One-to-one development for the marketing leader who wants to reframe the budget discussion in the board's language: to defend, and reallocate, spend on the terms finance respects.
Discuss mentoring →The Marketing & Capital Plan produces the strategy. Fractional leadership runs it. When a business needs the marketing function led to a capital-return standard, not handed a document and left to execute, this is the door.
It is situational by design: a quarter, two quarters, a leadership gap to cover, a reallocation to see through. The brief is always the same, hold marketing to what it returns, and report it in the language the board allocates against.
Discuss a fractional brief →A fixed-scope engagement that converts the diagnostic into a costed plan. It ends with a document and a decision.
Embedded leadership that executes against the plan to a capital-return standard, for as long as the situation needs.
The scalable version of mentoring: productised modules on unit economics, CLV:CAC and Capital Burn Velocity for marketers, a companion module that puts the same language in finance's hands, and the book. In build, not yet live.
Anonymised from engagements across a career in B2B marketing leadership. The through-line is decision quality and risk avoided, not a revenue figure claimed.
A business spending heavily on paid search was acquiring one segment at a CLV:CAC near 0.012:1. The blended numbers hid it. The reallocation followed the finding.
A marketing leader walked into the planning round with the ratio and the payback, not a campaign deck. The conversation moved from "justify the spend" to "where should it go".
Unit economics established and made defensible before diligence opened, so the growth story held up to the questions a diligence team actually asks.
You do not have to start at the bottom of the ladder. If you know which door you want, start a conversation and we will scope it directly.
The diagnostic can be licensed, or white-labelled under your own brand.
Take the free self-assessment, or start a conversation about the diagnostic and the practice behind it.