These guides cover the three moments where growth teams most often go wrong: deciding whether to outsource at all, handing over access at the start, and keeping the work on track week after week. Each one is long because the details matter, and each is written so you can use it without us.
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In-house or outsourced growth team? Do the full maths first
Comparing a salary with a retainer understates what a hire really costs and ignores how many roles one person can cover. This guide gives you a worksheet for the full annual cost, a way to count roles, and the signals that say it's time to build in-house.
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The first 30 days with an outsourced growth team
A good first month leaves you owning every account, with tracking that works, a baseline you trust and a written plan. This guide walks through it week by week, with checklists you can use with any agency.
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The weekly growth scorecard: seven numbers on one page
A growth team is only as good as its weekly scorecard. This guide gives you a one-page layout with seven numbers, explains where each comes from, shows how to run a 20-minute check-in around it, and lists the traps that make scorecards lie.
In-house versus outsourced: the cost decision
Read the guide: In-house or outsourced growth team?
Most owners compare a salary with a retainer and stop there. That misses most of the cost of hiring and most of the risk. This guide walks through a full annual cost for an in-house marketing hire, line by line, then shows how to compare it with an outsourced team that covers several roles part-time.
You'll learn:
- the hidden costs most owners leave out (recruiting time, ramp-up, software, supervision, vacancy)
- how to count roles rather than people
- the point at which an in-house team usually becomes the better choice
- a hybrid model where one internal coordinator works with an outside team
Onboarding an outsourced team safely
Read the guide: The first 30 days with an outsourced team
The first month sets the tone for the whole engagement. Done well, it leaves you owning every account, with clean tracking and a written plan. Done badly, it leaves a vendor with admin rights to your domain and nothing measurable.
You'll learn:
- the exact accounts to list and how to check who controls them
- how to give access without sharing passwords
- what a good kickoff covers, and the questions to ask
- the baseline numbers to capture before anything changes
- red flags that suggest you've hired the wrong team
Running a one-page weekly scorecard
Read the guide: The weekly growth scorecard
The scorecard is what turns a group of tasks into a team. This guide lays out a one-page format you can build in a spreadsheet: enquiries by source, cost per enquiry, response times, what shipped, what slipped and the one decision needed from the owner.
You'll learn:
- which seven numbers to track and how to collect each one
- how to read the scorecard in five minutes
- how to run a 20-minute weekly check-in around it
- the most common ways scorecards mislead, and how to avoid them
How these guides connect to our services
The guides describe the same methods we use in client work. The cost guide underpins our pricing. The onboarding guide describes the first weeks of the growth audit and the embedded growth team. The scorecard guide shows the actual report our clients receive each Friday.
If something in a guide doesn't fit your business, that's useful information too. Tell us about it when you get in touch, and we'll explain how we'd adapt it.
Who these guides are for
They're written for owners and general managers of established Ontario businesses who are responsible for growth but don't have a marketing department: a renovation company in Burlington, a clinic group in Ottawa, a distributor in Vaughan, a professional firm in Kitchener. If you already run a large in-house team, the scorecard guide will still be useful; the other two matter most to owners deciding how to cover growth work for the first time.
How to use them
Read the relevant guide, then do the exercise it ends with: the cost worksheet, the onboarding checklist or the scorecard set-up. Each one takes an hour or two. Owners who do the exercise arrive at a first call with far better questions, whether they call us or anyone else.
A note on numbers
Worked examples in these guides use round, illustrative figures to keep the arithmetic easy to follow. They aren't industry benchmarks or promises. Every guide tells you which numbers to replace with your own, and we'd encourage you to do exactly that before making any decision, with us or anyone else.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to hire you to use these guides?
No. They are written so an owner can apply them alone or use them to brief any agency or employee.
Which guide should I read first?
If you're deciding whether to outsource at all, read the in-house versus outsourced guide. If you've already decided, start with onboarding.
Are the numbers in the guides real benchmarks?
No. The worked examples use illustrative figures so the arithmetic is easy to follow. Replace them with your own numbers.