What it is
An online self-assessment with an emailed read on your likely position.
Your acquisition engine is doing one of two things right now: creating capital, or quietly destroying it. Most leaders do not know which. 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, no conversation required first. Each has a defined output and a price stated upfront, no scoping call to find out what it costs. They run in sequence. Enter at whichever one matches where you already are.
Ten minutes tells you whether your marketing is running up acquisition cost or leaving value on the table. Most people are surprised which way it points.
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 straight read before spending a pound.
Self-serve, ten minutes. Your result by email, no call required.
The diagnostic itself, and the front door to the practice. Fully-loaded CLV:CAC, payback and Capital Burn Velocity, measured by acquisition and retention to finance standards, in a report the board will not argue with.
The measured answer to what a customer costs and what they return, to a standard the board will accept.
The decision-maker who needs the number, not a hunch: 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.
A finding you cannot act on is just an expensive opinion. The Marketing & Capital Plan turns the verdict into a costed, sequenced course of action: what to fix, in what order, to what return, broken down to the customer cohort, 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 move on the diagnostic, without signing 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, and why so many burn money without knowing it. I establish the unit economics first, 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.
Some problems need a hand on them, not a document. Three ways to work on an ongoing or scoped basis, each serving a different person, all entered through a conversation rather than a checkout, all governed by the same unit-economics discipline.
Counsel to the executive or board that treats marketing as capital allocation, not creative taste. 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 to the number.
How this differs →One-to-one development for the marketing leader who is tired of justifying spend and wants to reframe the budget discussion in the board's language: to defend, and reallocate, on the terms finance respects.
Discuss mentoring →A strategy handed over and left to execute is a strategy that quietly stalls. The Marketing & Capital Plan produces it; fractional leadership runs it, holding the marketing function to a capital-return standard until the result lands.
It is situational by design: a quarter, two quarters, a leadership gap to cover, a reallocation to see through. The brief never changes. 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 turns 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.
Mentoring at scale: 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. What changed was the decision, and the risk it avoided, not a revenue figure to wave about.
A business spending heavily on paid search was acquiring one segment at a CLV:CAC near 0.012:1. The blended numbers hid it in plain sight. 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". The budget held.
Unit economics established and made defensible before diligence opened, so the growth story held up to the questions a diligence team actually asks, instead of unravelling under them.
Then skip the ladder. If you know which door you want, start a conversation and we will scope it directly.
Put the diagnostic to work under your own brand: license it, or white-label it.
Find out which way your engine points. Take the free self-assessment, or start a conversation about the diagnostic and the practice behind it.