I'm Robert Matuk, a fractional CMO for local businesses. Most agencies open the medicine cabinet on your desk: chatbots, voice AI, automations, review software, and a price list. You didn't come in for pills. Something hurts, and it's usually money you already earned walking out the door. I take the marketing seat on your team, find the one leak closest to your revenue, stop that first, and get paid on results you can count in your own books.
You call an agency because something hurts. They show up with six services and ask you to choose. Chatbot or voice AI? Automation or reputation package? You're the patient, and you're being asked to write your own prescription, then guaranteed nothing when the pill doesn't match the pain.
Here's what the menu hides: you don't need to know what you need. You just know the phone rings less than it should, or it rings and nobody's free, or the customers you served last year never came back. That's not a software decision. That's a leak, and leaks get found, not chosen off a menu.
Fifteen minutes, free. I check your business the way a customer would: the evening search, the phone call, what happens to an enquiry after hours. I name one leak before we hang up, and if everything's tight, I say so and leave you alone.
A flat $999 checkup. I map every place money leaks out of how you get and keep customers, in dollars, on your numbers. The findings are yours whether or not we go further.
One fix. The leak closest to your revenue, almost always the customers you already paid for: the past ones nobody invited back, the new ones dying on hold. I install it, I run it, and the results log in a system you can audit any time.
Stopping the first leak exposes the second. Revived customers check your reviews. A busier phone exposes who answers it. Each fix earns the next, in the order your numbers pick, not the order a menu does.
Every local business I've checked leaks in the same two places first.
Your past customers. They came once, paid, got good work, and vanished. Not because anything went wrong. Because nobody followed up and nobody invited them back. You already paid to win those people. Waking them up is the cheapest revenue you will ever book, and it shows up in real dollars, fast.
Your incoming calls. 85% of homeowners who hit voicemail call the next company on the list. Whatever you spend to make the phone ring, the minutes after it rings decide who gets paid.
That's where I start, because that's where the dollars are closest. Not a rebrand. Not a new website for its own sake. Not ads into a bucket nobody checked for holes.
A full-time marketing chief costs more than most local businesses clear in a month. The freelance version bills $80 to $150 an hour whether anything works or not. I do it differently. I take the marketing seat on your team part time: I own the whole map, decide what gets fixed in what order, run the systems, and answer for the numbers.
And I get paid on results. The diagnosis is a flat $999, once. After that: hard costs passed through at cost, and a share of the new business my systems catch and log. Floors instead of fat retainers, no cap, and every billed result sits in a dashboard you can audit in two clicks.
When revenue shows up that wasn't there before, keeping me on costs a fraction of what I found. When it doesn't, you're not locked in: 30 days notice, and you keep everything, the systems, the numbers, the accounts.
I want to be the person you call when something breaks, not a line item you review every quarter.
Customers you already paid for, coming back and getting caught. Counted in your books, not in a click report.
The chasing, reminding, and following up runs on systems, so the hours go back into the work you actually sell.
No borrowed logos, no stock testimonials. What I'll show you instead: the leak check itself, live systems working (mine included, this page runs on them), and the documented numbers on this page. Judge the work.
First businesses get founding terms in exchange for a written case study with real numbers.
Tell me where to reach you. Fifteen minutes on the phone, I name the leak closest to your revenue, and you can patch it yourself the same afternoon if you want. If everything's tight, I'll say that too.
We name one leak before you hang up.