Terse In, Thorough Out: How I Actually Work

People ask me how I work. Usually what they mean is: "Are you going to be a pain in the ass to manage?"

Fair question. Here's the honest answer.

---

I'm terse. My messages are short. Sometimes one line. Sometimes one word. This isn't rudeness — it's how my brain works. I have Asperger's and ADHD running simultaneously, which means ten threads at once, and compression is the only way to keep up. Long emails feel like wading through mud. Short ones feel like breathing.

If you need three-paragraph status updates and meetings about meetings, I'm not your guy. If you need someone who reads the situation fast and tells you what's actually going on in the fewest words, that's me.

But terse in doesn't mean thin out. The thinking behind the one-liner is deep — scenarios run, assumptions checked, failure points found. You get the compressed version because the full one would take an hour you don't have.

Zip file. Small on the outside. Everything's in there.

---

I work in bursts. I'll go quiet for a day, then deliver a week's worth of output in four hours. This isn't procrastination — it's how the work actually happens. The thinking is continuous. The producing is compressed.

Here's what a burst week actually looks like. Monday and Tuesday: I'm reading — your analytics, your board decks, the Slack channel where your team actually talks. No deliverables. Looks like nothing. Wednesday: you get a document that reframes the problem and a plan with dates. Thursday and Friday: execution. The thing ships.

Clients expect: daily standups, a checkmark moving across the board every day. They get: silence, then the whole thing, done, usually early. Some love it. Some can't handle the silence. Fit question, not a quality question.

Need someone visibly busy from 9 to 5? I'll disappoint you. Need the thing done and done right? The bursts work.

---

I tell the truth fast. If your positioning is wrong, I'll say so in the first meeting. If the plan won't work, I won't wait three months to mention it. If I don't know something, I'll say that too.

Week one, a CEO walked me through his go-to-market plan. Twenty minutes in, I told him the pricing was structurally wrong — charging like a tool, selling like a platform. That's why deals stalled. He went quiet. "Nobody's told me that in a year." We rebuilt pricing in three weeks. Close rates rose 18 points. That engagement lasted two years.

Counter-example: same era, different company. Week two, I saw the VP of Sales building a team for a motion the market didn't want. I softened it — build trust first, raise it later. Six months later the board killed the motion and the VP was gone. Softening bought six months of wasted payroll. I don't soften anymore.

I'd rather have the uncomfortable conversation in week one than the "why didn't anyone tell us" conversation in month six.

---

I don't do politics. No meetings to be seen in them. No softened feedback. No consensus-building when a decision needs making. Need a diplomat? Hire someone else. Need someone to cut through it? I'm here.

I'm direct about money. I'll tell you what it costs, what it's worth, and when it's not worth doing. No upsells. No dependency. A month's problem gets a month's quote, not a year's.

---

Here's what I need from you.

Access. If I'm your fractional CMO, I'm in the rooms — board meetings, product reviews, where money gets allocated. Not the hallway.

Honesty. Tell me what's actually happening, not the board-deck version. I'll find out anyway — I'd rather hear it from you.

Decisiveness. I'll bring clear recommendations. You make the call. The worst engagements weren't the hard problems — they were the ones where nobody would decide.

Patience with the process. The first month looks like nothing's happening. I'm learning, mapping, diagnosing. Output comes after. If you need visible motion in week one, we're not a fit.

---

Here's where it breaks. Not theory — real engagements that failed, and why.

One: a CEO hired me for "strategic clarity" but kept me out of the boardroom. I worked from someone else's summaries. Two months. You can't diagnose a patient you can't examine.

Two: a company where every decision needed four stakeholders and a committee. Three months, zero decisions. The organization was allergic to choosing.

Three: a founder who wanted a yes-man with a CMO title. He'd ask my opinion, do what he'd already decided, then blame the outcome on the advice he didn't take. I don't do that dance.

The pattern: never the work, always the fit. No access, no decisions, no honesty — any one kills the engagement. I'd rather find out in the first conversation than the sixth month.

---

Things that aren't work but affect the work.

I'm a musician. I play guitar in bands. I've been doing it longer than I've been doing marketing.

A gig lesson: I was playing a room that wasn't listening. Crowd talking over the set, nobody facing the stage. The instinct is to play louder. The right move is to play quieter — drop the volume, strip it down, make them lean in. Half the room turned around by the second song. Marketing's the same. When the market isn't listening, the answer is almost never more noise. It's the thing that makes them lean in.

I'm a dad. Two daughters. They've taught me more about clarity than any business book.

A dad lesson: my daughter asked me what I do for work. I gave her the jargon version. She stared at me. So I tried again: "I help companies figure out what's working and do more of it." She nodded and went back to her drawing. If you can't explain it to a kid, you don't understand it well enough to charge for it. I use that test on everything now. The kid test doesn't lie.

I communicate in writing, not on the phone. Permanent, not a preference. Text, email, Slack, docs — all good. A message instead of a call isn't avoidance. It's how I think best.

---

How to get the best out of me:

• **Brief me in writing.** Docs, data, context. I'll come back with questions that prove I read it.
• **Don't ask for status updates.** It arrives when I said it would. Checking in slows it down.
• **Give me the ugly truth.** Polished briefs hide the problem.
• **Make the call.** I think. You choose.
• **Push back on the work, not the style.** Wrong call? Tell me why — I'll adjust fast. Short messages aren't changing.
• **Response times:** urgent = within the hour. Non-urgent gets batched. A quiet day means I'm working.

---

Who this filters for.

If you read this and thought "finally" — we'll probably work well together.

If you read this and thought "that sounds difficult" — trust that instinct. Plenty of operators work the way you're comfortable with. I'm not trying to be everyone's fit.

The best working relationships I've had started with this kind of honesty. Not a pitch. Not a resume. Just: here's how I am, here's what I need, here's where it breaks.

If that works for you, let's talk.