Consulting · Team Building
Hire curiosity. Build capability you own.
The reasonable move is always to hire an agency. Sometimes it’s right. Usually it’s a way to avoid deciding what you want to be good at.
Deciding what capability you should own versus rent, then building it — structure, roles, hiring rubric, and the standard you intend to hold. Including the honest version of what in-house costs before it pays.
You’re making a first senior marketing hire and can’t define the role. Your retainer costs more than a team would. You have people but no capability. Or you’re about to hire for a category nobody in the market has experience in.
Capability audit first — own, rent or partner. Then structure around outcomes rather than channels, an interview process that tests appetite instead of credentials, and a plan for defending the bar once the team grows past the point where you can review everything.
I built a 35-person function from a blank page in a category most of the team had never worked in. The metric I watch isn’t on any shelf: people who chose to follow me from one company to the next.
The thinking: how I lead · the proof: building the function.