What actually happens

Your first two weeks, specifically

Nobody publishes this, which makes it hard to judge what you are buying. Nothing in your accounts changes without your sign-off.

1. Days 1–2

   Read-only access, nothing changes

   Ad accounts, analytics, CRM. We do not touch campaigns, budgets or settings in the first week. Anything we would change gets proposed to you first — you keep the ability to say no without unwinding anything.

2. Days 3–5

   Reconcile the platforms against booked revenue

   Sum what the ad platforms claim, compare against what finance recorded. The gap is usually the first genuine surprise, and it determines whether the problem is performance or measurement.

3. Days 6–8

   Rebuild CAC and payback on contribution

   Fully loaded: media, fees, tooling. Computed on contribution margin rather than revenue. This is normally higher than the number currently circulating internally, and it is the one your CFO will recognise.

4. Days 9–10

   One page, ranked constraints

   What is actually limiting growth, in order, with the working shown. Written so you can forward it without translating it first.

Your scoreboard

The six numbers we work against

If your current reporting cannot produce these, that is the first thing to fix — before any campaign changes, because everything downstream is judged against them.

Blended CAC

Fully loaded — media, agency fees, tooling. The platform's cost-per-acquisition excludes all of it and is typically 20–40% lower.

CAC payback (months)

The cash-flow constraint on how fast you are allowed to scale, regardless of how good LTV:CAC looks.

Cost per qualified lead

Not cost per lead. The two diverge exactly when optimisation starts finding cheaper, worse leads.

Contribution margin

What reaches the business after COGS. ROAS ignores it, which is why a 4x ROAS can still lose money.

Pipeline coverage

Whether the pipeline you have can plausibly produce the number you committed to.

Platform-to-booked ratio

Sum of platform-reported revenue over actual booked revenue. Above 1.0 means double-counting, and it rises with channel count.

Take these regardless

Two things you can use without talking to us

Published work

Engagements that started as a lead-quality problem

Figures come from the linked case study. We do not publish outcome claims that cannot be attributed to a specific engagement.

Answers for the meeting

What you will be asked, and what is true

Why not just hire someone?

Often you should, and we will say so. A permanent hire is better value if the work is ongoing execution. Outside help makes sense when the need is a diagnosis, a rebuild with a defined end, or capacity you do not want to carry permanently.

How do we know it worked?

Agree the metric and the measurement method before starting. If the target is CAC payback, define it — fully loaded, on contribution — and baseline it in week one. Success criteria set afterwards are not success criteria.

What if it does not work?

The audit is deliberately the cheapest step so the decision to continue is made with evidence rather than optimism. If the diagnosis says your constraint is retention or product, we will tell you, and that is a valid outcome of the engagement.

Why not a percentage of spend?

Because it pays us more when your budget grows, whether or not the growth was profitable. Scope-based pricing keeps the incentive on the system working rather than on the budget expanding.

Bring your numbers

Forty-five minutes against your actual accounts. You leave with a ranked view of the constraint, in a form you can forward — whether or not you work with us.

Compounding Growth Insights

Growth & Retrieval Intelligence

We document strict performance blueprints, privacy-centric analytics, and pricing structures directly linked to conversions.Highly recommended read for this page: Signal & Inertia