Why publish prices when most agencies don't?
Because making you sit through a discovery call to find out whether you can afford it wastes both of our time. I am at the point where I would rather be plain about it: here is the price, and if it is not for you then you have saved yourself a meeting. The figures on this page are the actual figures.
How do the three options differ?
By who you are, not by how much you spend. Local service suits local small businesses that need the phone to ring — a flat fee plus 15% of ad spend above $1,000, because service businesses cannot cleanly attribute revenue so paying on spend is the honest measure. E-commerce is for online stores and pays on contribution margin instead, because they can attribute revenue properly. Growth partner is for established operators who want systems built, not channels run.
Why does e-commerce get revenue share but service businesses don't?
Because revenue share only works when revenue is cleanly attributable, and for a service business it usually is not. Half the jobs come from referrals, repeat customers and the phone ringing for reasons nobody logged. Arguing over which job came from an ad is a bad way to run a relationship. E-commerce has the tracking to make it fair, so that is where it lives.
What is contribution margin and why measure that?
Gross profit after cost of goods, minus ad spend — what the business actually keeps. It matters because revenue minus ad spend is not profit; it ignores COGS, shipping and processing. Taking a share of that number would mean taking a share of money you never had. Contribution margin is the figure any serious operator already tracks, and it adjusts automatically for how healthy your margins are.
Is the ad budget included?
No, and it should not be. Ad spend goes on your own card, in your own account, so you can see exactly what is being spent and you keep the account and its history. As a practical floor, below about $1,000 a month in ad budget paid media is not worth running — so realistically you need around $2,000 a month all in before this makes sense.
Am I locked into a contract?
Three-month initial term, then fourteen days' notice. Three months exists because paid media genuinely needs that long to produce a fair read, and I am not interested in being fired in week two for not performing a miracle. You are not buying a guess — there is a clear playbook, and we agree what we are doing before anything starts.
What does the growth partner tier actually include?
Building your second brain, custom dashboards and internal tools, workflow automation, and AI wired into the business properly rather than bolted on. Two two-hour working sessions a week with async work between, and one shipped system inside the first 30 days agreed before you sign. It is for established businesses — roughly $500k a year and up — because below that it is not the right thing to spend money on, and I would rather say that than take it.
Why such a small client roster?
Because I want a good life more than I want a big company. A few businesses I can genuinely help, done properly, then I close the laptop and go live. Scaling to thirty clients means managing people instead of doing the work, and the work is the part I actually enjoy. If it grows, it grows because the systems got better — not because I hired a floor of juniors.
Is a website included?
No — website builds are quoted separately, starting at $1,500. In practice that often means the first month is the build and management starts after it, which keeps both invoices honest rather than burying a site inside a retainer.