The value-creation plan assumes growth. Someone has to build the machine that delivers it — and answer for the number at the board meeting.
Boards and buyers underwrite efficiency — CAC payback, revenue per head, demand that doesn't collapse when the spend dial turns. A platform can rent growth from agencies for a while, but rented growth reads as risk in a data room. Owned systems read as value.
That's the engagement: build the demand engine the company owns — paid run with discipline, owned channels that compound, measurement a buyer can audit, and the in-house team that carries it through the hold and past the exit.
An operating role inside the value-creation plan — not another advisor, not another agency layer.
First 30 days: CAC by channel, LTV:CAC, payback, and where the last dollar of spend actually went. The value-creation plan gets built on numbers that survive diligence, not the deck from the deal.
Most platforms inherit a pile of agency relationships and no system. I build the engine — paid and owned channels as co-equal, compounding parts — and hold the P&L number myself.
Multi-location platforms live or die on per-market math. Averages hide the broken units; I run each market as its own P&L while the machine stays centralized.
First-party data, honest multi-touch attribution, dashboards that reconcile with the bank account. The same infrastructure that makes growth manageable makes it diligence-ready.
Hire, structure, and coach the in-house function so the capability persists through the hold and transfers with the company. The engagement is designed to end.
CAC payback, burn multiple, revenue per head — capital-efficiency terms, monthly, without translation. I've reported to boards through three exits.
Public-company scale, a pre-recap reset, and turnaround speed — the three shapes PE work actually takes.
Rebuilt paid acquisition at a public company from a cold restart: brought it in-house from an agency, built the first-party data infrastructure, replaced last-click with honest attribution — and scaled the channel to $100M+ a year in attributed revenue while cutting CAC 40%.
Cut CAC 93% and grew enterprise pipeline 8× — Unilever, Nestlé, Coca-Cola — ahead of the company's majority-stake recapitalization by Pacific Fin Capital.
The pace a hold period demands: found the real customer in the data, rebuilt the funnel economics, and turned the P&L in two months — the engine behind a $100M exit.
Four situations where a senior operator beats both the agency stack and the full-time search.
Marketing still fragmented across acquired brands, three agencies with three reports, no unified demand system, and the value-creation plan assuming growth that isn't wired up yet.
The company grew into the deal on spend that doesn't pencil. CAC needs to come down and payback needs to be provable before the next mark.
18–36 months from a process: documented, owner-independent demand systems and clean growth records are worth real multiple at the table.
One senior operator who can diagnose across the portfolio and embed where the plan needs hands — without adding permanent headcount to any single company.
An agency executes channels and reports on deliverables. I take the operating seat: own the growth number, make the budget and hiring calls, restructure the agency stack where it needs it, and build in-house capability that stays after the engagement. The comparison is a leadership hire, not a vendor swap — at a fraction of the cost and risk of a full-time CMO search.
As the marketing operator inside the value-creation plan. The deal team sets the thesis; I translate it into a growth system with milestones a board can track — reporting monthly in CAC payback, pipeline coverage, and revenue terms, not marketing vanity metrics.
The diagnostic lands in the first 30 days: which spend is working, which markets or segments carry the P&L, and where the quickest unit-economics wins are. Structural results follow the build — at Cubii the P&L turned in 60 days; at The RealReal the in-house transition ran about 90. The honest answer depends on what the diagnostic finds, and I'll give you that read before asking for a commitment.
The system is the asset. Documented demand channels, clean attribution, an in-house team that runs it, and growth records a buyer's diligence team can verify — that's what transfers, and it's worth multiple. I've been on the operating side of three exits; building for the eventual buyer is the default posture, not an add-on.
Twenty minutes on the platform's CAC, payback, and channel mix — a straight read on whether the growth assumptions hold, and what it takes if they don't.