The company is the product.
Design it accordingly.

Five distinct engagements rooted in 35 years of operating experience. Each one starts from the same conviction: the company and the product are the same design problem. Most companies solve one and neglect the other. The results are predictable.

01
Diagnostic
Company Design Audit
Timeline
30 – 45 days
Engagement model
Fixed fee, defined scope, written deliverable
Best for
Founders who have built something real and cannot figure out why it is not scaling. CEOs who have a CS problem they suspect is actually a company problem. Boards evaluating portfolio companies.
Inquire about this engagement

Most founders design their product with extraordinary precision — architecture diagrams, user flows, edge cases, failure modes. Then they build the company on whatever assembles itself. The audit is a structured diagnosis of that gap: what was designed deliberately, and what was left to chance.

This is not a consulting framework applied to your situation. It is pattern recognition built from 35 years of being in the room when companies got this right and wrong. The Cisco story, the 450 open cases, the 10,000 pens bought at bulk pricing because there was a price break — these are not anecdotes. They are the diagnostic library.

"The company that does not know why it wins deals cannot reliably win more of them. The company that does not know why it loses them will keep losing the same way. The audit finds the answer to both questions."

The audit covers go-to-market architecture, revenue model and pricing, customer success infrastructure, operational systems, and organizational design. It produces a written diagnosis — specific, prioritized, and actionable — of what is working, what is not, and what needs to change, in the order it needs to change.

What you receive
  • Written diagnosis: current state assessment across all six dimensions
  • Prioritized gap analysis with specific recommendations
  • Implementation roadmap: what to change, in what order, with what resources
  • Executive presentation for leadership team or board
  • 30-day follow-up call to review progress
02
Build
Customer Success Architecture
Timeline
60 – 90 days
Engagement model
Retainer, stays through implementation. Can transition to ongoing advisory.
Best for
SaaS companies that have hired CSMs and are not seeing revenue impact. Companies transitioning from technology to solutions. CEOs who have realized CS is a philosophy, not a department.
Inquire about this engagement

There are dozens of CS playbook implementations available. This is not one of them. This is the design and build of a Customer Success program from first principles — built around your specific product, your specific customer type, and your specific growth model — by the person who built the original.

The program Marie designs is not derived from Gainsight's playbook or a CS certification curriculum. It is the thing the industry was attempting to copy for 30 years, built from the source. The Vantive program — expectation-setting framework, kickoff process, corrective action model, six-month review cycle — produced a 300% revenue differential between CSM-assigned accounts and unassigned ones. The architecture that produced that result is reproducible. It has been reproduced.

"Customer Success is not a department. It is a culture, an attitude, and a corporate goal. The CSM is the person tasked with keeping that goal at the forefront of the company. The program we build together reflects that intent — not the account management function the industry settled for."

Marie stays through implementation — typically 60 to 90 days — until the program is operational and the team understands the standard they are being held to. A document is not a deliverable. A running program is.

What gets built
  • CSM role definition and hiring criteria (not generic — specific to your customer and product)
  • Customer kickoff process and expectations framework
  • Success metrics tied to customer-defined outcomes, not activity
  • Six-month review cycle and corrective action model
  • CS reporting structure and executive communication cadence
  • First 90-day onboarding design for new customers
03
Embedded leadership
Fractional COO / CCO
Timeline
6 – 12 months minimum
Engagement model
Monthly retainer, 2–3 days per week. Defined outcomes built into the agreement.
Best for
Companies that have outgrown the founding team's operational capacity. Companies at a specific inflection point — technology to solutions, founder-led to professionally managed.
Inquire about this engagement

This is not advisory. Marie joins the company as a fractional executive — present, accountable, and responsible for specific outcomes. She is not the person you call when you need a recommendation. She is the person who is in the room when the decision gets made.

The proof of concept is Drishti: prototype deployment time reduced from 12 months to one week. That is not a consulting result. That is what happens when an experienced operator is accountable for the outcome, not the advice.

"The fractional model works because the person doing it has been a full-time COO and CCO and knows the difference between advising and being accountable. Those are not the same thing."

Engagements are structured around a defined operational challenge: building a services organization, redesigning a go-to-market, taking a company through the transition from technology product to solutions business. Marie stays until the challenge is addressed — not until the calendar says the engagement is over.

What this engagement covers
  • Defined operational scope and outcomes agreed at the start
  • Weekly presence — meetings, decisions, and execution, not summaries
  • Direct management of specific functions as needed
  • Executive team development integrated into the engagement
  • Monthly progress review against defined outcomes
  • Transition plan and knowledge transfer at engagement close
04
Development
Executive Development
Timeline
Ongoing monthly retainer
Engagement model
Monthly retainer. Can be combined with the Fractional COO/CCO engagement.
Best for
First-time CEOs. Executives in transition. Founders who are ready to ask the questions they cannot ask their board.
Inquire about this engagement

This is not coaching in the motivational sense. It is the kind of development that comes from being challenged by someone who has sat in the chair — who has made the hire that did not work, navigated the board meeting that went sideways, delivered the news that a third of the company would not have a job on Monday — and can tell the difference between a leader who is performing confidence and one who has earned it.

The music therapy background is relevant here. Customer success is ultimately about behavior modification, and behavior modification requires understanding people before it requires understanding systems. The same is true of leadership development. Marie's approach addresses the behavioral patterns that produce leadership results — not just the strategic frameworks.

"The questions a founder cannot ask their board, their investors, or their team — those are the questions worth asking. This engagement exists to make sure someone is asking them."

Sessions are direct. The feedback is honest. The goal is not to make a leader feel better about the situation they are in — it is to make them more capable of changing it.

What this engagement includes
  • Bi-weekly 90-minute sessions — structured around current challenges, not a curriculum
  • Direct, written feedback on decisions, communications, and leadership behavior
  • Availability for time-sensitive decisions between sessions
  • 360-degree leadership assessment at the start and at six months
  • No predefined methodology — the engagement adapts to what the leader actually needs
05
Strategy
Go-to-Market Design
Timeline
45 – 60 days
Engagement model
Project-based, fixed fee, defined deliverable.
Best for
Companies with strong technology that are not finding the market. Companies whose sales cycle is too long. Companies considering a pivot in channel, pricing, or target market.
Inquire about this engagement

Most go-to-market work treats channel, pricing, messaging, and customer success as separate departmental plans. They are not. They are the same decision, made at the same time, by people who understand that how a company goes to market determines whether its customers succeed — and whether it survives.

The Vision Intelligence go-to-market is the live proof of concept. The channel was designed around industrial engineering consultants who benefit economically from the platform's success — which means they sell it without being asked. The pricing was designed without implementation fees because the fee was an adoption barrier. The CS model was designed so that a customer sees a return within 48 hours before committing to the next step. None of these were separate decisions. They were the same decision.

"A go-to-market that works is not a marketing plan with a sales strategy attached. It is an architectural decision about who you serve, how they succeed, and how that success generates revenue. Design it that way."

This engagement produces a complete go-to-market design — channel, pricing, messaging, and CS model as one integrated system — that can be executed by the company's own team immediately.

What you receive
  • Customer definition and target market architecture
  • Channel design and partner incentive model
  • Pricing architecture aligned with customer success model
  • Messaging framework and positioning
  • First 90-day execution plan with milestones and owners
  • Sales cycle diagnostic and improvement recommendations

Not sure which engagement fits?

Most engagements begin with a conversation. Tell Marie what you are trying to solve and she will be direct about whether and how she can help.

Start the conversation