Clarity hour
Bring the situation as it is. No presentations and no attempt to make it sound polished first. Together we work out where the problem is and what to do about it.
- Price
- $200
- The fee is counts towards any next service within 30 days.
- Duration
- One hour
I reply personally within 24 hours
An hour that costs less than a mistake
In 2026 marketing budgets have almost stopped growing. According to The CMO Survey, run by Duke University and Deloitte, they rose by just 1.7% over the year, the weakest growth in several years. Gartner sees the same picture: 56% of CMOs say they lack the budget to deliver their strategy.
When money is tight, the most expensive thing is not advertising but the wrong direction. Three months heading the wrong way cost more than any consultant. So the place to start is not which channel to launch, but where the problem actually is.
That is exactly what a clarity hour is for: working out what to spend the budget on before you spend it.
What is included
Working through the situation
You describe what is going on: numbers, channels, team, what you have already tried. I ask questions. Most of the answer usually lives inside those questions.
A hypothesis on the spot
By the end of the hour you hear where I believe the problem actually is and what I would check first.
A letter the next day
One page: three priorities in order of importance. You can hand it to your team or a vendor and work from it without me.
How the hour works
Before we meet
You write briefly about what is going on and what you have already tried, and send any numbers you have. I read everything in advance, so your hour is not spent retelling it.
The meeting
Sixty minutes of conversation. I ask questions, you answer, and by the end of the hour I have a hypothesis about where the problem is. You hear it on the spot, with no “let me think about it” pause.
The next day
A one-page letter with three priorities in order of importance. You can hand it to your team or a vendor and work from it without me.
What you leave with
- An understanding of where the problem is: product, channel, price or team.
- A letter with three priorities, the day after we meet.
- An honest answer on whether you need to order anything else at all. Sometimes the honest answer is: you are fine, go and do it.
Who it is not for
- Anyone looking for an executor: build a site, run ads, manage social media. A good vendor closes that task, and I can tell you what to look for when you pick one.
- Anyone looking for confirmation of a decision already made. If you dislike the conclusion, I will say it anyway.
- Anyone with no data at all: without numbers an hour can be a conversation, but it cannot be an analysis.
Questions people usually ask
How is this different from the free 30 minutes on the homepage?
The thirty minutes are for finding out whether there is a task and whether we are a good fit. A clarity hour is actual work: a review with numbers, a hypothesis and a letter of priorities that stays with you even if we go no further.
What should I prepare?
Very little. Tell me what you sell and to whom, where customers come from, what numbers you have for recent months and what you have tried. A perfect spreadsheet is not needed; an honest account beats a polished presentation.
What if an hour is not enough?
It happens when the situation is more complex than it looked. Then the letter holds not three priorities but an honest list of what needs to be found out and how. That is an answer too: you will know where to look.
Is the fee really credited?
Yes. If you order an AI audit or Marketing the board can read within 30 days, the $200 is deducted from its price.
Does this work for a large company?
It does. The larger the company, the more a wrong direction costs and the more valuable an hour of outside view becomes, from someone tied to no department and owing nobody anything.
Sources: The CMO Survey, Duke and Deloitte, March 2026; Gartner, CMO Spend Survey 2026, May 2026.