I’ve been running 8THIRTYFOUR for 19 years, and in the last few years, more companies have come to us needing fractional CMO support than ever before. They need senior marketing leadership but can’t justify a $200K executive salary, so they hire us on a contracted basis to fill the gap between “we need someone to own this” and “we can’t afford a full-time person.”
The problem is most of them want us to fix in 30 days what they took years to break…like really break.
I get it, you finally addressed the marketing dysfunction, you’re paying good money for help, and you want results yesterday. BUT whatever mess exists didn’t happen overnight; it’s going to take more than a few weeks to unravel the sh*tshow that accumulated while you were focused on other fires.
Our approach at 8THIRTYFOUR is simple: Assess, Improve, Implement. We spend months evaluating your team, vendors, systems, processes, and strategies. We talk to everyone, cause if you’re frustrated, imagine how they feel…we have to give everyone a chance to be heard or you’ll just be spinning your wheels. If you want to fix it, you have to identify the problems, create the solve and then roll it out in a way that gets everyone’s buy-in.
One of our core values is: We Fix It. We are set up to get shit done; we’re not the kind of consultants who hand you a pretty PowerPoint and wish you luck. When we see fires, we put them out. Your social media person is out sick during a product launch? We’re covering. A reporter calls, and the CEO needs to be prepped? We’re handling it. The email campaign needs to go out, but the design sucks? We’re in there.
This is one of our greatest strengths, but it comes with a trade-off. Every time we jump into day-to-day execution, the timeline extends. We’re doing work needing to be done, which means the strategic roadmap takes longer to complete. I’d rather be honest about this upfront than pretend we can run full speed on both tracks simultaneously.
If you’re running EOS, you already understand how this works. Things happen in a 90-day world. Rocks get set, priorities get defined, and progress gets measured in quarterly increments. We plug directly into this rhythm—we develop or fix marketing scorecards, we own Rocks, lead L10s, and thrive on accountability.
EOS is about process, accountability, and communication. We have the uncomfortable conversations, push back when a vendor relationship isn’t delivering, and tell you when your team is stretched too thin to execute the strategy you’re asking for. Healthy conflict is part of the deal. If you want someone nodding along and telling you everything is fine, it sure as hell isn’t us. If you’re wrong, we’re gonna tell you.
We ask for six months to a year; we’re honest about what it takes to actually fix things. Nineteen years of agency work taught me what marketing dysfunction looks like when it’s been overlooked, underfunded, or run by well-meaning people who never got the tools to succeed. Fixing it requires time, and there’s no shortcut around it.
You broke it. Give us time to fix it.
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