Agency owner · Director of marketing · Fractional CMO
In eight years as majority owner, I grew the business from $3M to $5M in revenue and the team to fifteen people. I sold my stake to my partners in 2012. Since then I’ve built marketing functions from the ground up, client-side and as a fractional chief marketing officer. Marketing quality isn’t about taste. It’s a system, and I build the one that holds after I’m gone.
I’m looking for a full-time marketing leadership role at a company that’s outgrown running without one. I also take on a small number of fractional engagements.
The range is the argument. A quality bar that only holds in one category isn’t a quality bar. It’s a familiarity with one category.
What I do
Full-time, interim, or fractional. I set direction, own the quality bar, mentor the people already doing the work, and give a founder or CEO a peer to think with. For organizations that have outgrown running without a marketing leader, and for those too small for a full-time chief marketing officer and too complex to go without one.
Positioning, messaging architecture, campaign direction, and the customer journey underneath them. Most marketing problems that look like execution problems are clarity problems. I find out which one you have before anyone opens a design file.
Bringing AI into marketing workflows without losing the judgment that makes the work good. Practical adoption, honest limits, and a human accountable for what ships. No tech worship.
Selected work
About
I joined HMC Advertising in Vermont as an account executive, became director of client services two years later, and bought the agency in 2005. I ran it as majority owner for eight years, scaling it from $3M to $5M in revenue, building a fifteen-person team of strategy, creative, and account people, and carrying the P&L myself.
That’s the part of my history that matters most, and it’s the part a resume tends to bury. Owning an agency teaches you something you cannot learn as a client: that quality is not a taste, it is a system. When the founders touch every piece of work, the work is good. When the founders can no longer touch every piece of work, the standard has to become explicit, portable, and someone’s job. Or it quietly erodes while everyone is busy.
Since then I’ve been the client too. I’ve built a marketing function from nothing at a direct-to-consumer brand, run firmwide marketing at a commercial law firm, and since 2022 worked as a fractional CMO across a portfolio of organizations at once: behavioral health, enterprise software, retail, professional services.
I work remotely, on Eastern time, and I’ve done it that way for four years.
Contact
I’m looking for a full-time marketing leadership role, particularly as the first dedicated marketing leader somewhere that’s been growing without one. I also take on fractional CMO engagements and project work. Either conversation is welcome.