Frequently asked questions

The Growth Hour

The paid hour most partnerships start with.

What is The Growth Hour?

A one-hour, one-on-one working session. You bring the thing you are stuck on and three objectives; we work it live against your actual numbers and you leave with the blueprint, the recording, the notes, and clear action items. It is the thinking we would do in week one of a partnership, sold on its own so you can buy the plan without buying the execution.

Is this just a sales pitch for a retainer?

No, and the deliverable is the proof. You leave the hour with a blueprint, a recording, and written action items you keep whether or not we ever speak again. Plenty of people take the plan and run it in-house. A pitch you have to pay $1,500 for would be a bad pitch.

What exactly do I get for $1,500?

Four things. The blueprint, worked live on the call: the campaign to run, the funnel to fix, or the automation to build. The full recording of the session. The notes, written as we go, so the reasoning survives the call. And clear action items: what to do first, second, and third, starting this week.

What should I bring?

Your year's revenue, your monthly overhead, the problem you are stuck on, and the three objectives you want to leave with. If it is an ads problem, have the account open. If it is a funnel, have the links. If it is a workflow you want automated, be ready to share your screen. Real numbers make the hour worth more than a deck does.

What can we actually cover in an hour?

One problem, properly. Why the ads are not converting and what to run instead. The campaign you need to launch and the sequence to launch it in. The funnel that is leaking and the fix for the one stage that matters. Or the AI automation you want set up, walked through on screen so you can build it yourself. Three objectives is the right number; ten is a different engagement.

What happens after I book?

You pick a time, pay, and send us your three objectives. We look at what you sent before the call so the hour starts on the problem, not on introductions. Then we work it live. The recording and the notes follow the call.

What if my problem is bigger than an hour?

Then we say so on the call and use the hour to decide what to do first, which is usually the most valuable thing anyone can tell you. If what you need is a team to run it, that is the partner path, and the hour is not wasted, because the plan we built is the first phase of that work either way.

Do I have to work with you afterwards?

No. The action items are written for you or your team to execute, in order. If you want it executed for you, that door stays open. Most people who partner with us started with the hour; nobody is required to.

Who runs the session?

Senior operators, minimum ten years each, and the person on the call is the person who has run this for real. There is no analyst working from a template and no account manager reading notes back to you secondhand.

Is my business too small for this?

If you are pre-revenue and still validating the offer, yes, and we would rather tell you now. The hour works from your real numbers, so it needs real numbers to work from. Once you are doing revenue and are stuck on one specific thing, that is the moment this is worth $1,500.

How much does a marketing strategy session cost?

Ours is $1,500, flat, for one hour, with the deliverable listed on this page. Strategy calls elsewhere range from free, which means it is a sales call, to five figures as part of a consulting engagement. The number matters less than what you are left holding: if you do not own a written plan at the end, you bought a meeting.

Strategy & Optimization

The funnel mapped, the leak named, the fix sequenced.

What does a growth strategy agency actually do?

Three things, in order. It works out where your revenue is actually coming from, finds the places it is leaking, and sequences the fixes so the biggest one gets done first. Everything else an agency sells you sits downstream of those three. If a growth partner cannot show you the math behind the plan, they are running a content calendar and calling it strategy.

How is this different from the strategy deck we already paid for?

A deck describes. A model predicts. You leave with a sheet where changing one input moves the revenue number, a leak report that sizes each drop-off, and a 90-day sequence with owners attached. If your team cannot execute it on Monday, we did not do our job.

Do you need access to our accounts?

Yes. Read access to analytics, ad accounts, and your CRM on day one. We work off your numbers, not a questionnaire. If the data is a mess, cleaning it becomes the first line on the roadmap.

What if our tracking is broken?

Then that is the first fix, and we will say so plainly. Attribution that cannot survive one hard question turns every other decision into a guess. We rebuild it before we ask you to spend another dollar.

Can our team execute the plan without you?

That is the point. The roadmap is written for your team to run. Plenty of clients take it and go. When you want it executed for you, that door stays open.

How do we start?

Most partners start with The Growth Hour: one hour, one-on-one, and you leave with the blueprint, the recording, and the action items, whether or not you ever work with us again.

How much does it cost to hire a growth strategy agency?

We do not publish retainer pricing, because the honest number depends on how many channels you run and how much of the work you want done for you rather than with you. What is published is the entry point: The Growth Hour is $1,500, one hour, and it is the same thinking we would do in week one of a retainer. Most partners start there so the first invoice buys a plan instead of a discovery call.

What is the difference between this and hiring a fractional CMO?

A fractional CMO is one senior person splitting their week across several companies. You get judgment, and you get their calendar. We are a team, so you get the judgment plus the people who execute against it. If what you actually need is one experienced head to make decisions with, say so on the call. Sometimes that is the right answer and it is cheaper than us.

Is Baader a growth agency or a consultancy?

Both, which is usually a dodge, so here is the line. Consultancies hand you a recommendation and leave. Agencies execute but rarely question the plan they were handed. We diagnose first and will tell you when the answer is to stop spending, and then we execute the plan we wrote. You can also take the plan and run it in-house.

How quickly should we expect to see results?

The plan lands in thirty days. Results depend on what is broken. A tracking or offer problem can move numbers inside a quarter, because the demand was already there and you were losing it quietly. A positioning or lifecycle problem takes longer, and we will say which one you have before you commit to anything.

Brand & Content

Positioning, identity, and the content that carries it.

What does a brand and content agency actually do?

It decides what you stand for, builds the system that expresses it, and then produces against that system every week. The first part is strategy, the second is design, the third is a production line. Most agencies are good at one of the three, which is why brands end up with a beautiful identity nobody applies and a content calendar that contradicts it.

Is this just a new logo?

No. A logo without a position is decoration, and decoration does not move price. Positioning comes first and everything visual reports to it. If a logo is all you want, there are cheaper places to get one.

We already have a brand book nobody follows. Why is this different?

Because we ship with it before we hand it over. The system gets proven against real ads, real pages, and real posts, and the rules are written for people shipping at speed, not for a shelf.

Who actually makes the work?

Senior people with 10+ years in the room. Your account does not get handed to whoever happens to be free that week.

Can you work with our in-house team?

Most of the time we do. We set the position and the system, your team runs volume against it, and we hold the standard.

How long before we see it live?

Positioning inside the first two weeks, identity by week four, content shipping after that. You see work in market inside the quarter, not after it.

How much does branding cost?

It depends on whether you need a position or a paint job, and those are genuinely different jobs. We do not publish a rate card because quoting a brand project off a form is how agencies end up delivering a logo. The Growth Hour at $1,500 includes a read on your brand, and it will tell you which of the two you actually need before anyone quotes you.

What is the difference between a branding agency and a creative agency?

A branding agency decides what you stand for. A creative agency makes things that look good. You need the first before the second is worth paying for, which is the whole reason so much beautiful work fails to sell anything. We do both, in that order, and we will not start the second until the first is locked.

How do you measure whether brand work is working?

By whether the rest of the funnel gets cheaper. Better positioning shows up as higher conversion on the same traffic, lower cost per acquisition on the same spend, and shorter sales calls because fewer people arrive confused. Brand recall surveys are not the measurement. The P&L is.

Do we own the work when the engagement ends?

Yes. Files, source, the positioning document, the voice guide, all of it, and it is written into the agreement rather than assumed. The point of a system is that it outlives whoever built it. If leaving us means your brand stops functioning, we built it wrong.

Acquisition & Retention

Paid, AI search, and the inbox, run against pipeline.

What does a performance marketing agency actually do?

It buys attention and turns it into revenue you can account for. That means running the ad accounts, making the creative those accounts need, and owning what happens after the click instead of handing it back to you. An agency that only manages the account is managing a third of the job.

How much should we be spending?

Whatever the account can currently convert profitably, and not a dollar more until it can. We would rather grow a working account than defend a big one that isn't.

What if our account is a mess?

Common, and it is the first week's work. We audit the structure, cut what is quietly wasting money, and rebuild before we touch the budget.

Who owns the ad accounts?

You do, always. We work inside your accounts, and if we ever part ways everything stays with you, including the creative and the tracking.

Is AI search worth attention yet?

Buyers are already using it to build shortlists you never see. Being absent from that answer costs you deals you never knew were open. It is cheap to fix now and expensive to catch up on later.

We run paid but not email. Where should we start?

Almost always retention. Acquisition without retention is a leaky bucket with a paid faucet, and lifecycle revenue is the cheapest you will ever book.

How much does it cost to hire a paid media agency?

Most agencies price on a percentage of your ad spend, which quietly rewards them for talking you into spending more. We do not publish a rate because it depends on channel count and how much creative you need produced. What we will do on the first call is tell you whether your spend is high enough to justify an agency at all. Sometimes it is not.

What is the difference between a media buyer and a performance marketing agency?

A media buyer runs the account. A performance marketing agency owns the outcome, which means the creative going into the account and the follow-up after the click, not just the bidding. Buying is the easiest part of paid media to do competently and the least likely part to be why your numbers are flat.

What KPIs and reporting cadence should we expect?

Cost per acquisition and revenue per customer, reported against pipeline rather than platform-reported conversions, which flatter themselves. Monthly in writing, plus a standing call. If something moved, you hear why that week. Platform dashboards stay open to you the whole time.

Are we locked into a long contract?

No. There is a ramp, because rebuilding an account structure and then judging it after three weeks is how you throw away work that was about to pay. We are direct about that window up front, and after it you are month to month. An agency that needs a twelve-month contract to keep you is telling you something.

Web & AI Infrastructure

Sites, landing pages, and the AI behind them.

What does a web development agency actually do?

It builds the thing your marketing points at, and it keeps it working. Architecture, design, copy, build, and the support afterwards. The part buyers underrate is the last one. Most sites are not badly built, they are well built and then abandoned, which looks identical eighteen months later.

How long does a site take?

Blueprint in week one, build and verify through week four, AI wired by week six. Scope moves those dates, but we do not run six-month rebuild sagas.

What do you build on?

Whatever your team can live with after we hand it over. Usually Next.js for anything that has to be fast and custom. The code lives in a private repo you own, with deploys wired straight to it.

Can you work on a site you didn't build?

Yes. Support engagements pick up sites we did not build all the time. We audit first and tell you honestly whether fixing beats rebuilding.

What does AI installation actually mean?

Real work taken off your team: intake, follow-up, reporting, and handoffs handled by agents we build and maintain. Not a chatbot parked in the corner of the page.

Who maintains it after launch?

We can, or your team can. The build is documented either way. Nothing we ship depends on us being in the room.

How much does a custom website cost?

It scales with page count, how much of the copy and design is starting from scratch, and whether anything has to talk to your other systems. We scope it in the blueprint before any code, and the blueprint is where the number gets fixed, so the price is not a moving target once building starts. If the honest answer is that a template gets you ninety percent of the way there, we will say so.

Should we just use Webflow or a website builder?

Often, yes. If you need five pages, edit them yourself, and nothing has to integrate, a builder is the right call and hiring us would be a waste. Bring in a build team when the site has to load fast under real traffic, feed a CRM, rank, and get changed weekly without a developer. That is an engineering problem and builders start fighting you at exactly that point.

Do we own the code and the hosting?

Yes, from day one, not at handover. The repo is private and in your account, the hosting is yours, and deploys run from that repo. You are never in a position where leaving means losing the site or waiting on us for a password.

What is the difference between hiring an agency and hiring a freelance developer?

A freelancer builds what you specify. An agency is supposed to tell you the spec is wrong, which is the more valuable half and the half you cannot buy hourly. The other difference is what happens in month nine when something breaks and the freelancer has a full-time job now.

The Compound

The membership, currently a waitlist.

What is The Compound?

The operating system we run client work on, opened up as a membership: the growth playbooks, exclusive skills and repos for your AI agents, the templates and swipe files, the built-in LinkedIn and X post writer, and an AI you can ask what you would ask us, from setting up Meta ads to pricing an offer. Not a course. A machine you run.

Is this for me?

It is for operators, founders, and marketers running real growth and brand work, especially in regulated and high-trust businesses. If you would rather own a system than rent another agency, you are in the right place.

What does it cost?

Pricing is announced when the doors open. The waitlist hears first, with the price and the link in the same email. Joining the waitlist costs nothing and commits you to nothing.

Why not just hire an agency?

An agency runs $5k or more a month and you never own the work. The Compound gives you the same systems and the answers behind them, and the knowledge stays with you. When you do want it done for you, that path is still open.

Why not just buy a course?

Courses go stale the day you finish them, and the next tactic costs another two grand. The Compound is a living library. New skills and systems land continuously, so what you run is always current.

When does it open?

Soon. We are finishing the library and the AI. Join the waitlist and you get the email the day it opens. Until then, the free skills library is live with no gate.

Where to start

Pricing for every category is published on the pricing page. Most partnerships start with The Growth Hour ($1,500).

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