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Strategy that ships. Execution that scales.

Fractional CMO for founder-led companies. Powered by a human bench and a deployed agentic team.

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Portrait of Todd Henderson Todd Henderson · Santa Barbara, CA
01 / The problem

The gap between strategy and execution is where growth dies.

You can hire a full-time CMO. That’s a $300K commitment before benefits, recruiting, and ramp time, with no guarantee they’re right for your stage.

You can hire a fractional CMO. Most are strategists who deliver decks and disappear when it’s time to ship.

You can hire an agency. Most charge agency margins for execution your team could do in-house if it had the bandwidth.

What you actually need is one operator who runs the function, ships the work, and brings the AI infrastructure with them. That’s the model I’ve built.

02 / What I do

One operator.A human bench.A deployed agent team.

I run brand and marketing for founder-led companies as an embedded operator. Strategy from a senior leader. Execution from a hybrid team of humans and AI agents, deployed task by task to whichever delivers higher quality at lower cost. One point of accountability. One invoice.

I’ve spent the past few years building and deploying AI agent systems alongside my team. They run outbound campaigns, produce content at scale, optimize paid media, monitor competitors, and generate the kind of analysis that used to take a senior analyst a week. I deploy those same systems for my clients. The result is the output of a marketing department at the cost of a senior hire.

01
Strategic thinking

Senior judgment, embedded in your business.

An accountable operator at the table for every brand, marketing, and growth decision. Function leadership, vendor oversight, executive reporting.

02
Human bench

Delivery specialists
I’ve worked with
for decades.

Deployed for the work that demands a human touch. Senior designers, writers, strategists, and marketers I trust to ship at quality.

03
Agent infrastructure

Deployed systems that scale better with machines.

Outbound, content, paid media optimization, competitive intel, analysis. Built, tuned, and run by an operator who uses them daily.

03 / What I solve

Built for what founders actually need.

Brand

Make your brand work as hard as you do.

Positioning, messaging, and identity work that turns under-recognized companies into category leaders. The same human-led, AI-accelerated approach I’ve used across 350+ brands at Defining.com.

Pipeline

Build a pipeline that runs without you.

Outbound and demand systems where AI agents handle the volume, my team handles the strategy, and you handle the closing conversations. Replaces what used to require a full SDR team.

Content

Produce content at the speed of your ambition.

A human-directed, AI-accelerated content engine producing blogs, social, and campaign assets at agency quality. Built for the founder-led pace, not the agency timeline.

Operations

Free your team to do what only humans can.

We audit your marketing operations, identify what AI can accelerate, deploy the systems alongside your team, and train them to operate the new stack. Your people get back to the strategic work that actually moves the business.

04 / Selected work

Brands I’ve partnered with.

Full portfolio at Defining.com

05 / The model

How the engagement is structured.

A base retainer plus modules you stack only as you need them. No bundles you don’t use. No agency markups on work you didn’t ask for. One contract. One point of accountability.

Base engagement

Fractional CMO

Senior marketing leadership embedded in your business. Strategy, function leadership, vendor oversight, executive reporting, and a dedicated communication channel. The first 60 days include a competitive assessment, brand audit, and go-to-market diagnostic delivered as part of the base.

Module 01
Outbound Engine
Cold outreach via deployed agent stack with human oversight. List building, copy iteration, sequence deployment, deliverability, reply triage.
Module 02
Content Engine
Long-form blog, daily organic social, monthly editorial calendar, performance reporting. Agent-stack production with a human editorial layer.
Module 03
Paid Social Management
Tracking and pixel setup, audience research, account structure, creative testing, budget pacing. Includes creative direction and concept production.
Module 04
Project Work
Brand and positioning, identity systems, website strategy and build. Scoped per engagement as fixed-fee projects.

Pricing is shared on the first call, scoped to what you actually need.

06 / Bio

Thirty years building brands. Two years of agent engineering.

Todd Henderson portrait

I live in sunny Santa Barbara with my fianceé Kate and our two Cavalier King Charles Spaniels—Murphy and Lila. I’ve spent thirty years building brands. I founded my own agency 19 years ago. I’ve led brand and growth work for over 350 companies, from startups through public companies like Cantor Fitzgerald, Dell, Yokohama, Cisco, Edwards Lifesciences, and many more.

Two years ago I started building AI agents to handle the work my team didn’t have time for. These agents got good, really good. Then they got better than most humans at certain tasks. So I built more of them.

Today I run my own business on a deployed agent team alongside a human bench with whom I’ve worked for decades. I bring that same model to my clients. It lets me deliver work that used to require a large department, at a price founder-led companies can actually justify.

07 / What clients say

In their words.

Hands down the best agency at building billion-dollar brands.
H. Michael SchwartzFounder, Chairman & CEO · SmartStop Asset Management
You took a beloved brand and positioned us for our next phase of growth. The best team I’ve worked with in the past 20 years.
Ed EvansPresident · Golden Spoon
Todd helped strengthen existing relationships and facilitated hundreds of interactions with brand new potential clients. Very impressive!
Jay FrankChief Operating Officer · Cantor Fitzgerald Investment Management
Having worked with Todd for five brand launches, I can honestly say he’s an invaluable extension of our executive team and one of my most valuable growth partners.
Landon TaylorCo-Founder · Legacy First Partners LLC
Like having another trusted employee in the conversation, that also happens to be an expert.
Jim BarkdollCEO · Titus
08 / Insights

Observations and insights.

Wealth

The real AI story for wealth managers isn’t automation. It’s differentiation.

Four observations on where AI is actually reshaping the industry, and what separates the firms winning the next cycle.

Read
Brand

Brand positioning is not a marketing exercise. It’s a leadership decision.

Why positioning belongs in the C-suite, not the marketing department.

Read
Model

Better, faster, cheaper: how the fractional agency model breaks all the rules.

The structural shift behind how senior marketing gets delivered now.

Read
Leadership

A CMO’s guide to navigating the choppy waters ahead.

What marketing leaders are getting wrong about the current moment.

Read
Brand

The power of brand: strengthening your identity before fundraising.

Why brand work moves the needle on valuation, not just visibility.

Read
Model

Better, faster, cheaper: how the fractional agency model breaks all the rules.

The structural shift behind how senior marketing gets delivered now.

Read
Strategy

Category creation in a crowded market: strategic advantage or expensive distraction?

When defining a new category pays off — and when it’s a way to avoid the harder positioning work.

Read

How to start.

I take on a small number of clients at a time. Engagements begin with a 30-minute call. No deck, no pitch. We can discuss where your marketing actually stands, and whether there’s a fit. If there is, we’ll talk next steps. If not, you’ll leave with two or three things worth acting on.

Todd@ToddHenderson.com 949.751.8628 linkedin.com/in/ToddHenderson1

Best fit: founder-led companies between $5M and $30M.