The Strategic Thinking You Need—From People Who've Actually Built Businesses
CMO and COO-level expertise without the six-figure salary. Three experienced business owners helping you avoid costly mistakes, find growth opportunities, and accelerate your progress by 6-12 months.
You Know You Need Strategic Help. But the Options Are Terrible.
Here's the situation you're probably in:
Your business is growing, but you're not sure you're making the right moves. You're worried about missing opportunities—or worse, making expensive mistakes that set you back months.
You need someone with experience. Someone who's seen what works and what doesn't. Someone who can help you think through the big decisions before you commit.
But your options?
Option 1: Hire a CMO or COO.
Great idea—if you have $150,000-250,000 for salary, benefits, and the time to find the right person. Most small businesses can't justify that.
Option 2: Hire a consultant.
They'll give you a 50-page strategy document, charge you $20,000, and disappear. You're left holding the binder, wondering how to actually implement any of it.
Option 3: Figure it out yourself.
Keep grinding, making decisions in isolation, hoping you don't burn six months and $50,000 on the wrong direction.
None of these options work for growing businesses that need real strategic help right now. That's why we built something different.
Strategic Guidance from Business Owners Who've Been Where You Are
PathOpt gives you access to three experienced business owners—not consultants reading from playbooks, not advisors who've never signed the front of a check. We've built and scaled businesses ourselves. We've made the expensive mistakes so you don't have to. And we're not just here to advise—we're here to help you execute.
What You Get
Growth Strategy & Planning
Clear roadmaps for where you're going and how to get there. Not theory—specific, actionable plans based on your actual business.
Business Model Optimization
Identify what's working, what's not, and where the leverage is. Small tweaks in the right places can unlock major growth.
Market Positioning
Stand out in your market without relying on being the cheapest. Find the positioning that attracts the customers you actually want.
Goal-Setting & Accountability
Quarterly objectives that actually get done. We help you prioritize what matters and stay focused when everything feels urgent.
Decision Support
A thinking partner for the big decisions. Someone to pressure-test your ideas, challenge your assumptions, and catch blind spots before they become expensive problems.
The Real Cost of Figuring It Out Alone
Typical acceleration when you skip the expensive mistakes and run a proven playbook
Annual cost of hiring a real CMO or COO — before benefits, equity, and recruiting fees
Combined experience running businesses, not reading about them in consulting decks
This Is For You If...
This is for you if...
- You're a business owner making $500K-$5M in revenue
- You know you need strategic help but can't justify a six-figure executive hire
- You're tired of consultants who advise but don't stick around to implement
- You want someone who's been in your shoes, not just studied business in a classroom
- You're ready to invest in getting to the next level faster
This is NOT for you if...
- You're looking for someone to just run ads or post on social media
- You want a quick fix without putting in the strategic work
- You're not willing to be honest about what's really going on in your business
Frequently Asked Questions
Consultants sell you a deliverable — a strategy deck, a 50-page report, a transformation plan. Then they leave. We operate more like a fractional executive team: we help build the plan with you, stay involved while you execute it, and adjust when reality punches the plan in the face. You're not paying for a binder. You're paying for an ongoing thinking partner who's actually built businesses and knows what it feels like when the payroll is due Friday.
Most clients spend 2-4 hours per month with us directly — a mix of strategy sessions, decision reviews, and accountability check-ins. Between sessions, we're available for quick questions via Slack or email. The goal isn't to add more meetings to your calendar. It's to make the time you're already spending on strategy more productive and less lonely.
We've worked with trades, home services, professional services, SaaS, ecommerce, promotional products, and a handful of industries we can't talk about publicly. The specific industry matters less than you'd think. The core strategic challenges — positioning, hiring, pricing, team accountability, capital allocation — look remarkably similar whether you're selling plumbing or software. When we hit an industry-specific question, we bring in an operator who's lived it.
Strategic guidance is structured as a monthly retainer, typically $2,500-$7,500/month depending on scope and how deeply we're involved. That's a fraction of the $150K-$250K/year fully-loaded cost of a real CMO or COO — and you get three owner-operators instead of one hire. No long-term contracts. We prove value month over month or we don't deserve to keep working with you.
Our sweet spot is businesses between $500K and $10M in revenue. Below $500K, strategic guidance is usually less valuable than hands-on execution help — you need leads and sales more than you need a thinking partner. Above $10M, you're at a scale where you should have full-time executive hires, not fractional ones. In the middle, this is where we move the needle.
Strategy without execution is just expensive conversation. If you need help actually implementing — building marketing engines, systematizing operations, deploying AI and automation — we have the execution teams to do it. Most clients engage us for strategy first, then pull in execution services as specific initiatives get prioritized. You don't have to buy everything upfront. Start where the pain is highest.
Skip the Expensive Mistakes. Accelerate Your Growth.
Let's talk about where you're trying to go and how to get there faster.
Schedule Your Strategy Session