Operator Retainer / Flagship / Done-for-you retainer
One operator. Whole stack. $8K a month.
Brand, code, server-side tracking, Klaviyo, and AWS in one head for businesses that need senior coverage without hiring senior headcount.
“One person owns the whole picture so brand, tracking, and copy decisions agree with each other.”
// the problem
You already tried hiring a $180K Head of Growth. The role failed because the person could not actually do any of the work themselves. You have an agency for paid media and another for development and another for email, and the handoff between them is where the actual product gets lost. The decisions about brand, tracking, conversion, and infrastructure all need to agree with each other, which means they need to live in one head. That head is not currently on your payroll.
// the promise
Forty hours a month of senior-operator time at a three-month minimum, covering everything from brand to Lambda. You hand me the priorities for the week; I run the work; you get one Loom that shows what shipped and one Slack channel that gets answered same-day.
// this is for you if
- You run a DTC brand at $5 to $25M ARR and need senior coverage without a senior hire
- You already have agencies and they keep shipping things that look fine but do not convert
- Your stack has tracking, theme, lifecycle, and infrastructure layers that nobody on the team can own end to end
- You want a 90-day trial of fractional coverage before deciding whether to build out a team
// what’s inside
01 / Brand and creative
Voice, identity work, landing pages, hero copy, campaign direction. Two decades of graphic design experience plus the engineering layer to ship what gets designed.
- $Brand voice and identity refinement
- $Landing page copy and design
- $Hero copy and CTA architecture
- $Campaign creative direction
- $Product naming and architecture work
02 / Storefront and ecommerce
Shopify custom themes, headless commerce, checkout extensibility, conversion-rate tuning. Whatever the storefront layer needs, from theme tweaks to full Liquid section authoring.
- $Shopify custom theme development
- $Headless storefront iteration
- $Checkout extensibility and web pixel
- $Cross-browser and cross-device media debugging
- $Core Web Vitals tuning
03 / Server-side measurement
Meta CAPI, GA4 server-side, Stape, GTM Server Container, deduplication, Consent Mode v2. The whole stack from event source to attribution.
- $Meta CAPI implementation or rebuild
- $GA4 server-side configuration
- $Stape and GTM Server Container setup
- $Event ID deduplication and PII hashing
- $Consent Mode v2 and ATT coverage
04 / Lifecycle and email
Klaviyo flows, lifecycle copy, segmentation, transactional and triggered email. Email is leverage; the retainer covers ownership of the full lifecycle program.
- $Klaviyo flow architecture and copy
- $Segmentation and audience strategy
- $Lifecycle calendar and campaign cadence
- $Transactional email design
05 / Cloud and infrastructure
AWS Lambda, Vercel, Supabase, deployment pipelines, incident response. The retainer keeps the production layer running and the infrastructure layer aligned with the brand and martech work.
- $Cloud function ownership
- $Vercel and Supabase configuration
- $Deploy pipelines and credential hygiene
- $Production incident response
- $Infrastructure-as-code maintenance
// outcomes (from real implementations)
40h
Direct operator hours per month
3mo
Minimum engagement term
30-40%
Typical Meta CAPI conversion lift
1
Person owns the whole picture
// common questions
Why not hire a full-time senior?
If you can find a senior who can ship brand, code, server-side tracking, Klaviyo, and AWS in one head, hire them. The $180K market rate for any one of those skills makes a single FTE who covers all of them unrealistic in 2026. The retainer gives you the multi-discipline coverage at $96K a year with no recruiter fees, no equity dilution, and no ramp time.
How is this different from an agency?
You work directly with the person doing the work. One Slack channel, one Loom per week, and the deliverable comes from the same hands that scoped it.
What is excluded from the retainer?
Paid media management (account ownership stays with you or an ad agency), 24/7 on-call operations, full storefront rebuilds (priced separately as fixed $20-30K sprints), and headcount or vendor management.
Will you take equity instead?
Cash retainer only. Three-month minimum, month-to-month after with 30-day notice. Annual prepay available at a 10% discount.
How do we start?
Buy the $1,500 Stack Audit first. Two weeks. I diagnose your brand, storefront, tracking, lifecycle, and infrastructure layers and hand you a written report plus a Loom walkthrough. If we both want to continue, the audit fee credits toward month one of the retainer.
How many retainers do you take at once?
Four. Sometimes five. The number is capped because the value of the retainer comes from same-day responsiveness and weekly cadence; that does not scale past five concurrent engagements without losing the thing that makes it work.
// proof: this is what it looks like in production
Q1 2026
Brand, Course, Assessment, and a Personal AI. Solo Build.
Live at rootcausewell.com. The 321-question assessment scores server-side, 60+ training documents sit indexed locally, and the first client cohort is actively using the portal.
2019 - 2022
Three Years as CEO Before the Shutdown.
First-mover in Oregon cannabis POS. Built, launched, operated, and made the decision to shut down when the math stopped working.
Q1 2026
AI Meal Planning With a Witchy Twist.
Full-stack production SaaS shipped solo. 90 Prisma models, 294 API routes, three Stripe-billed subscription tiers, and three specialized AI agents running in production.
Not sure which tier? Start at the bottom. Work up.
