You don’t always need more hands.
Sometimes you need a second brain.
Because “just do more marketing” is not a strategy.
Not every problem needs a campaign.
The smartest thing you can do is diagnose before you prescribe. Between you and me, it’s usually cheaper than spending six months solving the wrong problem. Someone has to be willing to say, “Wait, why are we doing this?”
It's me. I'm that someone.
I’m at my best when I can step into a complex situation, understand it quickly, ask good questions, challenge assumptions, connect ideas across functions, and help you think through decisions with more depth and perspective. Advisory creates space for that kind of work.
I can get close to your business and the realities your team is working within. I’m not there simply to hand over recommendations and disappear (unless you've politely asked me to), because I've sourced those types of outside partners, and there's nothing helpful about a deck full of data and opinions with zero direction. I stay engaged in the thinking with you, help translate strategy into action, and work with the folks who will ultimately carry it forward.
btw: I can also do the work, too.
Depending on what the situation calls for, I research, analyze, diagnose, build strategy, develop messaging and positioning, map audiences and experiences, evaluate markets and competitors, facilitate decisions, create plans and frameworks, build presentations and tools, write copy, work alongside your internal teams, and help carry the work into execution.
Sometimes my role is to help your leadership team think through a difficult decision. Sometimes I’m deep in the data.
Sometimes I’m building the thing.
Sometimes I’m helping someone else build that thing better.
The point of advisory, for me, is not to ignore execution. It’s to avoid assuming what kind of execution you need before we fully understand the problem.
Core Advisory Services
Brand & Marketing Strategy Review
Instead of jumping straight to more research or more meetings, I start by looking at what you already have. I bring together your business, brand, market, customer, competitor, and marketing insights to find patterns and pressure points that get missed when information is scattered. Often, the answers are already in front of you. I synthesize and connect the dots to surface patterns, gaps, contradictions, and opportunities that deserve attention.
Strategic Alignment
Teams can be full of smart people and still pull in different directions. Priorities compete. Ownership gets fuzzy. Decisions get revisited because nobody is quite sure what was decided the first time. You don’t need everyone to agree on everything, but you do need a shared direction. I figure out where the friction comes from and build the bridge so your work moves forward more smoothly.
AI & Automation Strategy
AI and automation can make things run smoother, speed up repetitive tasks, and help teams do more. They can also create a lot of very efficient nonsense. I look at how your team uses AI and automation now, where it could genuinely help, and where you still need human judgment. This covers workflows, decision points, content creation, research, reporting, customer interactions, and handoffs between people and systems.
Strategic Prioritization
Most organizations have more they could do than they have capacity to do well. I help you figure out what is worth your time, money, and people. Together, we look at your current commitments, new ideas, business goals, and what your team can realistically support. Then we make clearer choices about what to fund, staff, delay, scale back, or drop.
Brand, Messaging & Experience Alignment
Your brand doesn’t live in a brand guide. It shows up everywhere people interact with your business. I look at the whole experience—what you say, what you sell, how you sell it, what customers are told, and what your internal teams think the brand means. Then I find where those things don’t line up and fix what needs attention so the brand makes sense from one end to the other.
Measurement & Decision Strategy
Many teams track a lot of numbers, but those numbers don’t always help anyone decide what to do next. I review what you’re tracking, how you report it, what decisions those numbers should support, and where the gaps are between data and action. Sometimes the answer is better measurement, fewer metrics, or a better story than “here’s what happened.” I make sure your reporting guides you to your next decision—and the one after that.
Some marketing needs show up on a predictable schedule. Others pop up when your business changes direction, your resources shift, or you’re somehow expected to do more with the same amount of time. These services are built for all of those moments—with as much or as little help from me as you need.
Specialty Services: Seasonal & Planning
01
Mid-Year Marketing Review
Half the year is gone. Before your marketing keeps marching against a plan you made months ago, it’s worth checking whether the business around it still looks the same.
I’ll review your marketing performance in the context of what’s happening across your organization: how the business is performing, whether priorities or strategy have shifted, what’s changed in the market, and whether your team still has the same resources, expectations, and constraints it started with. From there, we’ll decide what should stay the course and what needs to change for the second half of the year.
02
Annual Marketing Review
This is where we find out what the year actually taught you.
I’ll look at how your marketing performed, how the business performed, and what changed along the way. That includes goals, spend, results, strategic shifts, market changes, resource constraints, and the work that took more effort than anyone wants to admit. From there, we’ll decide what’s worth carrying into the next planning cycle, what needs to change, and what can be retired with no ceremony whatsoever.
03
Annual Marketing Planning
A marketing plan should be able to answer a pretty basic question: why are we doing this?
I translate your business goals into marketing objectives, strategies, activities, tactics, ownership, and measurement. The point is to build a plan where the work clearly connects back to what your business is trying to accomplish—instead of becoming a list of random campaigns everyone agreed to in a planning meeting because November was long and people were tired.
04
Budget & Resource Planning
A marketing plan is only useful if you have the money, people, time, and tools to carry it out.
I compare what you need marketing to do with what your team can realistically support. That means looking at budget, team capacity, agency and contractor support, technology, timelines, and the tradeoffs required when the plan gets bigger than the resources. From there, we’ll decide what needs to be funded, staffed, outsourced, automated, scaled back, or stopped before everyone pretends the math works.
Before you add another role, hire another agency, or hand the same team six more responsibilities, it’s worth looking at the reality of what marketing is being asked to do vs. what your team can actually do.
I review the work marketing owns, the skills and capacity you already have, and where the gaps are showing up. That includes what should stay in-house, what may need to be developed, what should be hired or outsourced, and where the work itself may need to change because the current setup doesn’t match the expectations.
Marketing Team & Capability Review
05
May - Jun
Oct - Nov
Oct - Dec
Typically tied to annual planning, but useful anytime priorities change
Typically tied to annual planning, budgeting, or team changes