Or the other way around?
If you’ve already hired help and you’re still wearing every hat, still waiting on the growth that would catch you a break —
there is a version of this where your strategy, your vendors, your numbers, and the systems underneath them all pull in one direction. Where the business grows without drowning you in the process, and marketing stops being a hat you have to wear.
Executive marketing leadership.
Without the executive salary.
One conversation. You’ll leave with a clear picture of what’s working or missing from your marketing, and next steps to meet your goals.
Who’s connecting the dots?
Said out loud, in some version, by nearly every owner who ends up here.
Some of it is felt daily. Most of it rarely gets added up on a single page.
Every month it runs this way is a month of growth the business doesn’t get back.
Marketing isn’t working unless it’s creating freedom. Which raises two questions only you can answer — free from what, exactly? And free to do what?
My first marketing campaign was a sign on the side of the road. It said “Music Lessons” with my phone number underneath. That was 15 years ago.
I later built a children’s entertainment company and quickly discovered the gaps in my marketing knowledge. I hired coaches. I took courses. After I had heavily invested in a marketing agency, I still couldn’t tell whether the problem was my offer, my marketing, my ads, or my audience. By the time I figured it out, it was too late.
It was heartbreaking. As difficult as the debt was to swallow, the hardest part was letting go of my team.
Within the year, I ended up launching a vocal studio, filling its enrollment within 2 months.
Everything after that studio kept proving the same thing. I would refine my newfound method in a chamber of commerce, a downtown association, a pediatric dental practice in NYC, an internal marketing agency for a $7M organization – and I found the same method worked more effectively every time.
I know what it’s like to invest in marketing and not get the return I’m looking for. That’s the lens I bring to every engagement.
That’s the job I do now, for owners who deserve better than learning it the way I did.
I’ve made payroll with my own money and watched it not be enough. That changes what you recommend.
Let’s talk it through. It’s on me, and you’ll leave with a clear picture of what’s working or missing from your marketing, and next steps to meet your goals.
Book a Complimentary ConsultationVendors execute. That is their job, and most do it well. But someone has to decide what should be executed at all, whether it worked, and what happens next.
In most businesses, that person is the founder — at 9pm, between everything else.
An agency runs channels, and is paid to keep running them. They’re likely not going to say the channel isn’t the problem — not out of dishonesty, but because that was never the assignment. It isn’t their seat.
A coordinator executes what they’re assigned. Which leaves the founder deciding, prioritizing, and still the bottleneck. The job didn’t go away. A person to manage got added on top of it. Give that same person a strategy to work from and someone to develop the craft, and they become the asset you hoped you were hiring.
Early on, well before anything has had time to compound.
Not a slide deck and not a dashboard nobody opens. One page with the same measures on it every time, so the direction is obvious at a glance and a bad month is visible while there is still time to do something about it.
The numbers on it are the ones that decide whether the business grows: what it costs to win work, how much of it converts, what a customer is worth over time, and whether the money going to vendors is earning its place.
Before anything gets run, the foundation gets combed through — the offer, the positioning, the reason someone chooses this business over the one down the road. Most of it is built to transact. I rebuild it to build relationships. Then I lead the function itself week to week: strategy, vendors, budget, and numbers, owned by 1 person who answers for all of it.
I build the relationships around a business, not just the traffic to it. Customers who come back, refer, and stay. I grew a membership organization 150% in 6 months doing exactly this — with no new ad budget.
Everyone is using AI to make more marketing. That is why attention got cheap and trust got scarce. Here AI runs the repetitive work — so there is actually time for the part that earns loyalty.
AI can write a thousand posts. It can’t make anyone care.
Here’s what’s happening in your market right now. AI drove the cost of content to almost nothing, so everybody’s producing more of it, and attention got cheap fast. What got expensive is trust.
Ads reset to 0 every month. Relationships compound. The businesses that win the next 10 years will be the ones people actually feel something about — and that’s built deliberately, not accidentally.
That’s the whole strategy. AI runs the machinery. Humans build the relationships.
Start with a conversation. I’ll tell you what I see — and I’ll tell you honestly if I’m not the right person for it.
Book a Complimentary ConsultationOne method, three phases — the same for every business, at the pace your business sets.
Refine your brand and marketing strategy so the foundation is sound — what’s working, what’s missing, and what the numbers say, before more gets spent.
Market Audit · Brand Strategy · Marketing Strategy
Launch recurring revenue models inside that refined strategy, and build the pieces that keep working — reviews, retention and referrals.
Reviews & Reputation · Recurring Revenue Model · Client Journey & Referral Programs
Establish the talent and accountability engine — people, workflow and AI — built to carry growth and scale with less of you in it.
Talent Engine · Workflow & AI Oversight
Your business sets the pace. Every business moves through the same three phases. How fast depends on the size of your team, how many vendors are involved, and your level of investment. The more people carrying the work, the more of it can happen at the same time.
The method is where it starts. The Dig, The Floor and The Machine build the foundation. What follows is the work that compounds: making each client worth more instead of chasing more of them, then making the business worth more without you in the middle of it.
How the method applies to your business is what we work out together. Start with a complimentary consultation.
Most fractional executives sell hours. I am accountable for what changes.
Look at how the rest of this industry prices itself. Hours per month. Days per week. Rates that drop if you buy more hours. That’s a staffing model with a strategy label on it, and it puts the burden on you to guess how much of somebody you need.
It also creates the thing owners complain about most: somebody who’s on the clock or off it. Unreachable between sessions. Out of time by the third week of the month. A partner you can’t reach when something’s on fire.
I’m an embedded teammate who’s accountable for what actually changes. I don’t stop at engagement metrics and follower counts.
I don’t stop until it shows up as bread on your table and the freedom to sit down and enjoy it with the people you love.
If the results aren’t real, this isn’t worth doing. Not for you, and not for me.
Good ideas, no strategy tying them together, and money going out to vendors nobody was holding accountable. We stopped the bleeding first.
Revenue grew 177% within the year — and she was able to leave her day job and be in her business full time.
Full events calendar, active newsletter, flat membership for years. They had an audience, not a community, and no system for turning one into the other.
Membership grew 150% in 6 months. No new advertising budget.
5 divisions, marketing scattered across all of them, limited tracking and reporting in place. They needed the department designed before adding team members.
About $225,000 a year saved — without cutting a single capability.
I didn’t need another marketing company. I needed someone who could think strategically about the entire business. Everything now feels like it’s telling the same story.
Dr. Shiva · Blossom Pediatric Dentistry
“If you’re looking for someone who will simply post on social media, that’s not what Heidi does. If you’re looking for a strategic partner in growing your business, she’s exceptional.”
Dr. Shiva · Blossom Pediatric Dentistry
The full Blossom case study lives in the questions section below.
| What owners usually consider | Real cost to you | What you actually get |
|---|---|---|
| Full-time marketing director | $165K–$235K /yr all-in | Base pay in this market runs roughly $130K–$175K. Add payroll taxes, benefits, equipment and software and you land 25–35% above that. One person, one skill set, and a hire you now have to manage and develop. |
| Full-time marketing manager | $125K–$175K /yr all-in | Base pay around $95K–$130K before the same 25–35% loading. Someone to execute what you assign — which leaves you deciding, prioritizing, and still the one they come to for direction. |
| Full-time CMO | $260K–$350K /yr all-in | Full ownership of the marketing function at the seniority that can actually set direction. Reported Nashville base runs $180K–$264K at the low end and past $300K at the high, before benefits and taxes — carried as a fixed salaried seat, in a heavy month or a light one. |
| A marketing consultant | By the project | Often strong thinking, delivered as a recommendation. What comes after the document lands — briefing the vendors, sequencing the work, deciding what gets dropped, answering for the result — stays with you. The engagement ends and the ownership never actually moved. |
| Other fractional CMOs | Sold by the hour | Priced in blocks of hours, so the first thing you have to guess is how much of a person you need. Reachable during their block, out of time by the third week. Strategy, but rarely ownership — and seldom retention, referral, reputation, or recruiting. |
| The Free Founder Method | Flat Monthly Retaineroutcomes over hours | No salary, no payroll taxes, no benefits, no compliance. The marketing function led rather than staffed — strategy, vendors, reporting and your existing team, with someone senior answering for all of it. Materially less than the director you’d otherwise hire. |
| Doing nothing for another year | The priciest option | Another twelve months of paying for marketing nobody can measure. The customer list you already own stays untouched. Your slow season arrives exactly on schedule. Your team keeps waiting on you to decide what matters. You keep answering marketing questions at 9pm you never wanted to be responsible for. And the business is worth about what it was worth last year. |
Salary ranges reflect Nashville-market base pay reported by Glassdoor, Salary.com, Built In and Randstad, loaded with employer payroll taxes and typical benefits. Your own numbers will vary.
I won’t say I can help unless two things are true — that I can, and that we would work well together.
Nothing to prepare.
Nothing required. If you want to bring something, bring whatever already exists — a plan, a vendor report, a rough sense of what you’re spending. If none of that is handy, we’ll still have a good conversation.
I ask questions, you talk, I listen. Where your customers come from, what you’re spending, what’s working, what you’re trying to reach, and what’s actually holding the business back.
A clear picture of what’s working or missing from your marketing, and next steps to meet your goals. If it makes sense to work together, we’ll talk about that. If it doesn’t, I’ll point you toward who could help.
One conversation. You’ll leave with a clear picture of what’s working or missing from your marketing, and next steps to meet your goals.
Book a Complimentary ConsultationComplimentary · No cost and nothing owed
Building something great shouldn’t cost the life it was meant to create.
You’ll walk away with a clear picture of what’s working or missing from your marketing, and next steps to meet your goals — whether or not we ever work together.
And if I don’t think I’m the right person to help you, I’ll say so on the call and tell you who is.
Book a Complimentary Consultation
