OK fine, just email me then. marc@sentient.media
But while you’re here, lets get some ground rules out of the way. There’s a contingent of people, let’s call them Upwork clients, a website that used to occasionally provide a solid lead, but has now been thoroughly enshittified to bring me mostly tire-kickers, people who ask 25 ChatGPT questions because the last person “bailed” and “were not who they said they were”, whose compensation model is a crumpled $20 bill and “trust me bro, it will be huge.”
I’m not charging $250K to be your full time CMO. But some clients still get sticker shock at the fractional cost of that too.
First calls are about fit, not strategy. I’m not going to audit your funnel, diagnose your brand, or sketch a media plan on a get-to-know-you call. That’s the work. The work comes after you hire me. If you want to know how I think, this entire website is how I think. You’ve been reading it. You already know.
I’ve been doing this for 30 years. The portfolio is right there. If you need me to answer 10 screening questions, complete a test project, or pitch against other candidates, I’m not your person. Not ego. Fit. The clients I work best with looked at the work, saw themselves in it, and picked up the phone. The ones who need a three-round evaluation process are looking for reassurance I can’t provide in a pitch. They can find it in the results.
Thirty days. Either of us can walk. You’re not locked in. I’m not locked in. If the work is good, you’ll stay because the work is good. If it’s not, you’ll leave and we’ll both survive. Most fractional CMO engagements never end because there’s always more growing to do. When clients leave, it’s usually because I made it look so easy they thought they could do it themselves. They came back.
15-20 minutes. You tell me what’s going on. I tell you whether I can help and roughly what it would look like. If there’s a fit, I send a simple proposal. If there isn’t, I’ll tell you that too and point you somewhere useful. No decks. No “let me loop in my team.” No “we’ll circle back with next steps.” A conversation between two adults who respect each other’s time.
