Fractional Head of Growth With a Written Budget Mandate

A fractional head of growth from this practice starts with two written rights: to move up to a fifth of the quarter's paid budget between channels without reopening an approval, and to stop any channel that misses its contribution threshold two months running. Where a client will not grant those, we say so before contracting and decline. A growth lead without them attends meetings. The first fortnight: We rebuild the growth model in the client's own spreadsheet rather than ours, so the finance lead can argue with each assumption instead of accepting a black box. It settles on contribution after returns, discounts, shipping and payment fees. In apparel that one change usually reorders the top five campaigns, because a 38 percent return rate in DACH does not fall evenly across them, and the campaign with the best reported return on ad spend is often the one selling the size run that comes back. Where the real constraint tends to sit: Almost never in bidding. In medtech and prescription-adjacent work the binding constraint is the review queue. If medical, legal and regulatory review takes nineteen working days to clear a claim, creative iteration is theatre and the growth plan is really a plan for the review calendar: fewer claims, pre-cleared modular blocks, a standing slot with medical affairs. That is a negotiation with your own colleagues, not with a platform representative. In fashion the constraint is the drop calendar and who holds markdown authority. In agencies it is utilisation and a founder who is still the best salesperson in the room. The operating cadence: One weekly meeting of forty-five minutes with a fixed agenda: forecast against actual, one decision taken, one thing stopped. One written page a month to the board or the founder, sent before the meeting rather than presented at it. Channel owners keep their channels. The seat sets allocation and thresholds, not keyword lists. Hiring your successor: From month three we run the search for the permanent head of growth: scorecard, a take-home exercise built from your own data with names removed, and two panel rounds we sit on but do not vote in. The engagement carries an end date from the first day and that date moves once, by agreement, or not at all. Not included: We do not run accounts, traffic tags or produce creative. Those are separate seats, staffed by your team, your agency, or two of the other engagements on this profile. We do not write brand positioning, manage communications, or sign platform and agency contracts for you. We do not carry a sales quota. Who this is wrong for: Companies before product-market fit, where the honest answer is fewer channels and more customer conversations, and where hiring a growth lead of any kind postpones that conversation by a quarter. Founders who intend to keep making channel calls themselves, which is a defensible way to run a company and incompatible with this seat. Anyone who wants a senior name on a website or in a fundraising deck. Regulated manufacturers looking for someone to sign off claims, because that authority stays with your medical and regulatory function and we will not accept it. What you hold at the end: A model your finance team maintains, a cadence that survives our departure because your people run it, a written record of every channel decision and the reasoning at the time it was taken, and either a permanent lead accepted or a shortlist with our notes attached. Where the number was missed, the closing note says so and says why, and it goes to the board with our name on it.