THE COMPASS METHOD CRASH COURSE REVEALS THE STEP-BY-STEP MODEL FOR BECOMING A FRACTIONAL CMO OR GROWTH ADVISOR THAT EARNED ME $300,000 ON THE SIDE, WHILE WORKING A FULL-TIME MARKETING JOB

Do you have a full-time marketing job at an agency or consulting firm? Good. Then you’re exactly where I was 5 years ago. 

You’ve been developing your marketing skills for 5, 10, even 15+ years. You can analyze a competitor’s website, design a funnel, and define a customer avatar. You’ve acquired valuable skills.

You’ve thought about starting your own business before. You probably already dabble in side gigs. But nobody has explained how you can make the leap from “full-time employee with part-time gigs” to “full-time FCMO earning way more than before.”

You have questions like:

• How do I find clients?
• What do I offer these clients out of all the services I can do?
• How do I persuade them I’m credible?
• What size of retainer should I ask for? How can I justify it?
• How do I get clients to say Yes?
• How can I get paid what I’m worth? 
• Should I quit my job and go all in? Or should I start small and grow over time?
• Does anyone have a model to go from marketer to FCMO?

You’ll find the answers to all those questions inside the COMPASS Method Crash Course.

THE COMPASS METHOD CRASH COURSE IS A STEP-BY-STEP METHOD FOR FULL-TIME MARKETERS TO START MOONLIGHTING AS FCMOS RIGHT AWAY, BY PACKAGING THEIR EXPERTISE TO OFFER ONE-TIME “COMPASS AUDIT” PROJECTS THAT TURN INTO WILDLY PROFITABLE $5,000–$10,000+ MONTHLY RETAINERS, RELIABLY AND CONSISTENTLY

YOU ALREADY HAVE MARKETING SKILLS, BUT YOU’RE TRADING YOUR TIME FOR MONEY

Trading time for money is what you do at your day job. You clock in for 8 hours a day 5 days a week, and in return your employer gives you a paycheck.

You want to earn more. You want to be your own boss. The natural next step is … to trade even MORE of your time for money?

No. Stop right there. It’s tempting to email your contacts and say “I have some free time, pay me $X/hour and I’ll do marketing stuff for you.” But that’s a trap.

TRADING TIME FOR MONEY IS A TRAP BECAUSE YOU QUICKLY RUN OUT OF TIME

You only have so many hours in a week. And it’s not just the 40 hours a week for work that are spoken for. You also have to devote plenty of hours to your spouse, kids, church, and friends. (The exact amount varies based on your life situation.)

WHAT’S THE ALTERNATIVE? TRADING VALUE FOR MONEY

Trading VALUE for money unlocks so much possibility. You have valuable marketing skills that can create valuable results for business owners—results like more leads, more sales, and more revenue. Business owners are willing to pay for those results. And they really don’t care how long (or how short) it takes you, as long as you can deliver.

TRADING VALUE FOR MONEY IS HOW I EARNED AN EXTRA $5,000+ PER MONTH AS A FRACTIONAL CMO

Hi, I’m Trey Sheneman, and I cracked the code to becoming a fractional CMO in just 8 extra hours a week. I ran my FCMO side gig on nights & weekends, while holding down a full-time marketing job, and staying present for my wife and kids. Trading value for money (instead of time for money) was my secret. I never said to a business owner, “please pay me $5,000 to work 8 hours a week.” I said “I can get you these results for $5,000 a month. Want to make it happen?”

Business owners said YES. Money showed up in my bank account. I worked a few extra hours a week. My boss still loved me, my family still loved me, and I didn’t turn into a workaholic. You can do it too—I’ll teach you how.

THE COMPASS METHOD IS A ONE-TIME PROJECT THAT’S THE EASIEST WAY TO LAND A $5,000+ RETAINER

“Sure, Trey,” I hear you saying—“$5,000 a month sounds nice. But how am I going to convince business owners that my skills are worth that much?”

Easy. It's called a COMPASS Audit.

THE COMPASS AUDIT IS A ONE-TIME PROJECT THAT DELIVERS MASSIVE UPFRONT VALUE AND MAKES IT EASY FOR BUSINESS OWNERS TO SAY YES

When you’ve had only a few conversations with a business owner, asking for a $5,000–$10,000 monthly retainer is a big ask. You know what isn’t a big ask?

A one-time project to:

• dive deep into their business, 
• diagnose what’s wrong, 
• identify opportunities for improvement,
• and compose a Strategic Plan they can implement in the next 90–180 days.

And that’s exactly what a COMPASS Audit is.

BUSINESS OWNERS SEE THE COMPASS AUDIT AS A VALUABLE DIAGNOSTIC TOOL

Every business owner knows that something is broken inside their business. They just don’t know WHAT. (If they knew, they would have fixed it already.) They’re willing to pay you to point at their business and say, “Right there. That’s your problem. Fix that.”

THE COMPASS AUDIT IS A COLLECTION OF SPECIFIC DELIVERABLES THAT ESTABLISH YOUR CREDIBILITY AND PROVIDE INSIGHTS

The power of the COMPASS Audit is that you get to hand the client so many specific deliverables. They’ll be nearly overwhelmed by how much research you’ve done, how much understanding of their business you’ve acquired and are now transferring to them, how deep is your understanding of what’s wrong, and how clear your insights into the need for improvement are.

Best of all, you don’t promise to deliver vague “research” to the client. You get to say, “At the end of the COMPASS Audit, I’ll deliver all this to you:

• Competitive set analysis,
• Offer and funnel map,
• Messaging and positioning review
• Product experience review,
• Avatar refinement,
• SWOT analysis, broken down by channel, and
• Strategic plan.”

THE COMPASS AUDIT UNLOCKS YOUR ABILITY TO CHARGE FOR THE VALUE YOU DELIVER, NOT THE TIME YOU SPEND

Picture this: You’re pitching your services to a business owner. You say, “Around here, we don’t try to force you straight into a monthly retainer. The results you’re getting in your business are the direct result of the systems currently operating in your business. So we start with what we call a COMPASS Audit. That’s a 7-part deep dive into your business to diagnose what’s wrong and identify opportunities for improvement. 

“We’ll deliver to you a competitive set analysis, an offer and funnel map, a messaging and positioning review, a product experience review, an avatar refinement, a SWOT analysis by channel, and finally a Strategic Plan that pulls everything together and presents what you need to do to take your business to the next level.”

The owner replies, “Wow, that’s pretty impressive. I see the value in that. What does it cost?”

Just like that, you’ve used value-based pricing. The prospect isn’t worried about your hourly rate anymore. As long as he gets the value, he doesn’t care how long (or how short) it takes you. 

This opens up the door to earning a lot of money without backbreaking hours. Say you sell the COMPASS Audit for $10,000 (which is right in the middle of the range of where I sell it). And say it takes you 80 hours to conduct all of the audits and write the strategic plan—that’s the upper bound of how long it takes me. (After doing dozens of audits and delegating a few parts to my team, I’m down to 40 hours per audit.) 

$10,000 for 80 hours of work is still the equivalent of $125 an hour. But you aren’t charging $125 an hour—you’re simply charging a flat rate because of the value you’ll deliver.

Do you want to hold down a full-time marketing job while moonlighting as an FCMO on the side? If you’re stuck in the time-for-money trap, you’ll either work insane hours or end up not making much money at all. Break out of the trap. Use the COMPASS Audit to switch to value-based pricing and get paid for the results you deliver, not the hours you input.

And here’s the best part…

DOING A COMPASS AUDIT FIRST MAKES IT EASY TO JUSTIFY YOUR RETAINER

Once you’ve conducted the COMPASS Audit, presented your research, and culminated with a brilliant Strategic Plan, it’s the easiest thing in the world to say…

“Oh, and would you like me to stay on and help you implement this?”

THAT ^ is the easiest way to get $5,000–$10,000 retainers that I’ve ever experienced. You’re speaking from a position of authority because you just spent 40–80 hours diving deep into their business. You delivered insights that the business owner never would have figured out alone. You laid out a plan that will obviously transform the business. Who wouldn’t want you to stay on?!? 

That’s why I say the best way to get a $5,000–$10,000+ monthly retainer is NOT to ask for one. Propose a COMPASS Audit instead. Then use the results to justify a stronger retainer than you ever could have gotten if you’d gone straight for the multi-month agreement.

THE COMPASS METHOD CRASH COURSE WILL SHOW YOU HOW TO GUARANTEE EVERY MULTI-MONTH AGREEMENT IS PROFITABLE. DAY ONE.

MOST RETAINERS ARE UNPROFITABLE FOR 90 DAYS

Here’s a harsh truth you need to hear: Most marketing consulting projects are barely profitable for the first 3 months. Why? Because of the crazy amount of research that’s baked into a standard retainer.

You must research thoroughly and nearly exhaustively in order to deliver high-performance results. I’ve interviewed over 800 marketers and have never met one who could deliver results without research. Research isn’t optional, it’s mandatory.

The problem is…

IN THE STANDARD RETAINER MODEL, RESEARCH IS A “HIDDEN COST” THAT TANKS PROFITABILITY

Clients expect results fast, so you have to start spinning up new marketing efforts right away—but you also have to do 40–80 hours of research over those first 3 months to figure out what’s really going on in the business and what marketing efforts you should implement.

This means that your first few months with any new client are a crazy whirlwind of onboarding and research and implementation. The “sweet multi-month retainer” suddenly looks like a ball-and-chain.

At least you can look forward to months 4 and beyond. Your research will be complete! You’ll be an expert in the client’s business, your new marketing initiatives will be chugging along, and you’ll finally be able to relax.

Until you open your inbox on Day 90 and read:

“Thanks for all your work. It’s been helpful, but we just aren’t seeing results as fast as we expected. Our strategic priorities have changed and we need to use this budget elsewhere.”

The standard retainer model is an unprofitable failure. At one agency I worked for, the agency lost money on every single client for the first 90 days. And since 1 in 5 clients dropped off during that time, the agency was bleeding cash.

You don’t want that. You need something better than the standard retainer model.

GET PAID FOR YOUR RESEARCH WITH A COMPASS AUDIT

That’s why the COMPASS Audit model works so well. It separates out the research that you already have to do into a separate one-time project … that you actually get paid for! 

A COMPASS Audit is a valuable standalone service that you can offer as the first agreement with any new client. At a minimum, you’ll get paid for the 40–80 hours you have to spend analyzing and diagnosing the client’s business. More than likely, you’ll easily parlay your COMPASS Audit report and recommendations into a $5,000–$10,000 monthly retainer as you help the business implement your strategic plan.

I INVENTED THE COMPASS METHOD WHEN THE AGENCY I WORKED FOR WAS LOSING MONEY ON 1 OUT OF 5 CLIENTS

Story incoming… I was the marketing director at a 7-figure marketing agency. This agency had no trouble getting clients. We were selling consulting gigs like hotcakes and onboarding new clients every week.

But a few months in I noticed something strange. For a new client, every penny of revenue we took in for the first 3 months went straight out the door again, to pay our people and freelancers. Not until month 4 did the workload drop to a reasonable level such that we could pay our costs and have profit left over.

Unfortunately, month 4 was when a lot of clients stopped working with us. This agency had serious trouble keeping clients around for the long term:

“Thanks for the help, but we’re not seeing the results we expected.”

“Our strategic priorities have shifted.”

“We need to spend this money on other initiatives.”

The unfortunate reality is that this agency was losing money on 1 out of every 5 clients it sold. From the outside, it looked wildly successful, because it was onboarding new clients all the time. It was a “7-figure” agency—impressive, right?

But on the inside, it was hemorrhaging cash. An unprofitable business model was sabotaging skilled people who, given time, could deliver business results.

I walked into my boss’s office one day and said, “Boss, we need to change our model so we’re actually making a profit. We’re doing an insane amount of research in bits and pieces over the first three months of each retainer. Let me package that research up into a set of clear deliverables. Then let’s sell it as a standalone service, the initial step of any client retainer. That way we get paid upfront for the research we have to do anyway.”

My boss agreed. I went away and shaped all our research into a series of 7 deliverables. I invented an acrostic so they’d be easy to remember: the COMPASS Audit. That’s 7 sequential steps to identify why you’re not getting the results you want in business, culminating in a Strategic Plan to resolve those issues over a 3–6 month retainer.

We stopped offering prospects multi-month retainers. We started offering COMPASS Audits instead.

The results? We closed the next 27 clients at $10,000 apiece to do the research we were already doing anyway. The COMPASS Audit turned research from a cost center into a profit center.

We delivered the audit results and recommended they hire us for a multi-month engagement at $5,000–$15,000 retainers. All 27 said yes.

YOU CAN START IMPLEMENTING THE COMPASS MODEL RIGHT NOW, IN 8 HOURS A WEEK

NOW, EARN AN EXTRA FULL-TIME INCOME WITH VERY PART-TIME WORK

With The COMPASS Method Crash Course, you can get started as a fractional CMO in just 8 hours a week on the side, while working your full-time marketing job. That’s exactly what I did.

In 2018, I took a full-time job as head of marketing for a public-figure-led brand. But I remembered what I had learned about the COMPASS Audit. So I had it written into my contract that I was allowed to do FCMO work during lunch hours, evenings, and weekends. Over the next 5 years, I worked full-time marketing jobs and also made $300,000 on the side as an FCMO.

LATER, WHEN YOU’RE READY, GO FULL-TIME AS AN FCMO

Eventually, my side gigs started going so well that I left my marketing job and went full-time as a fractional CMO. That’s what I do now, and I’m earning more than I ever have before. Becoming a full-time FCMO can be part of your future too. But you don’t have to quit your job and risk everything.

Start with 8 hours a week following the playbook in The COMPASS Method Crash Course. Sell some COMPASS Audits and land some retainers. Once you’re consistently making an extra $5,000–$10,000 on the side, you can decide to go full-time if that’s your dream.

The COMPASS Audit is what I used to go from full-time marketer to full-time FCMO. It’s a step-by-step plan to package and profitably sell the marketing skills you’ve worked so hard to develop. It earned me an extra $300,000 over 5 years, with just 8 hours of work a week. It changed everything for me, and it can do the same for you.

So what exactly will you learn inside The COMPASS Method Crash Course when you get it?

HERE'S WHAT YOU'LL LEARN INSIDE THE COMPASS METHOD CRASH COURSE:

The COMPASS Method Crash Course reveals how to package and profitably sell your marketing skills, so you can earn full-time pay for part-time work as a fractional CMO or Growth Advisor. Add a one-to-one strategic all with me, and you'll learn exactly what has and hasn't worked as I went from side hustle to full-time Growth Advisor. 

WHAT IS THE COMPASS METHOD CRASH COURSE WORTH TO YOU?

This course reveals the exact framework I used over 5 years to make an extra $300,000 on the side, working just 8 extra hours a week, while working a full-time job and caring for my wife and kids.

Of course, learning this framework won’t make you $300,000 instantly. You have to offer it to some prospects (maybe prospects you find through the “LinkedIn Personal Brand Boost” bonus). Once they say yes, you have to do the work of performing a COMPASS Audit. That gives you the data you need to justify a strong multi-month retainer. All that to say… this is a long-term play, not a short-term hack.

So I won’t say “this course is worth $300,000 and so you should pay me $30,000 for it.” That wouldn’t be reasonable.

But I do know that without The COMPASS Method, I could never have earned $300,000 on the side while holding down a full-time marketing job. Sure, I could have snagged the odd consulting gig here and there. But The COMPASS Method unlocked a reliable way to get prospects to say “YES” to an initial project, and then to say “YES” again once I made my pitch.

So is The COMPASS Method Crash Course worth $300,000? $30,000? $3,000?

I don’t know. And it doesn’t really matter. Because even if you only sell a single COMPASS Audit project, you’ll earn at least $8,500 in high-margin profit. Not to mention the $5,000+ monthly consulting retainer it’s easy to justify once a client is already working with you.

Even a halfhearted effort at applying what you learn in The COMPASS Method Crash Course can earn you $8,500 for one COMPASS Audit project and another $30,000 in consulting fees over the next 6 months.

Which is why I don’t need to do any hand-waving to convince you that the “value” of this course is some ridiculous sum.

Because The COMPASS Method Crash Course doesn’t cost anything near $30,000. Or $8,500. Or even $5,000.

TODAY, YOU GET LIFETIME ACCESS TO THE COMPASS METHOD CRASH COURSE FOR:

THIS COURSE WILL PAY FOR ITSELF.
I GUARANTEE IT.

At that price, buying The  COMPASS Method Crash Course is practically risk-free already. You don’t have to work your tail off for 6 months to make your money back. You can make your money back several times over by selling a COMPASS Audit project to just one client.

But I’ll go one better. The COMPASS Method Crash Course has no “unconditional guarantee,” because results only happen when you do the work. But if you’re committed to applying what you learn, then you’ll love this conditional guarantee:

IF you watch the entire course, and IF you offer a COMPASS Audit to at least 3 prospects within 90 days,  THEN I guarantee you’ll land at least 1 client (who more than pays for this course), or else I’ll give you all your money back.

GET THE COMPASS METHOD CRASH COURSE NOW TO START MAKING FULL-TIME INCOME FROM PART-TIME WORK

To succeed as a fractional CMO, you don’t need to read dozens of books or earn complicated certifications. You need:

• the marketing skills you’ve been developing for years, 
• a framework for making a compelling offer, and 
• a reliable way to get customers to say “yes” to a limited-scope project, so you can have a foundation for selling them a strong monthly retainer.

The COMPASS Method is what you’re missing. It will teach you the COMPASS Audit model to sell high-profit narrow-scope audit projects, so you can start off every new client profitably. You can get paid for the research you have to do anyway. Plus, conducting a COMPASS Audit ensures your recommendations are solid, so you can justify a significant retainer because you know exactly what to fix.

If you’re eager to earn more income as a fractional CMO working just 8 hours a week…

The COMPASS Method Crash Course is for you.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

P.P.S. STOP SELLING YOURSELF SHORT. YOU ARE IN HIGH DEMAND.

At the very start of my “run my own business” journey, I used to be content to sell my time on the side for $30, $40, or $50 an hour. I thought to myself, “Hey, it’s more than I’d make flipping burgers.”

But then one day my coach sat me down and taught me a lesson I’ll never forget. I can still visualize the burger restaurant in Atlanta where he looked at me and said:

“Trey, you are in high demand.

“Your work needs you. Your wife needs you. Your kids need you. Your friends need you. Your church needs you. And on top of all those people, your side clients need you. 

“You are a scarce resource, Trey. But you are valuing yourself and your time way too low. From this day on, I want you to always remember: You are in high demand. Value yourself and your services accordingly.”

Today I want to pass that lesson along to you. You are in high demand. It’s not just that you’re “really busy these days.” It’s that other people need what you have to offer. 

How do you unlock that value?

You follow The COMPASS Method to:

Charge stronger initial fees. Package your research surveys, assessments, and plans into a COMPASS Audit that clients are willing to pay for.

Get a better customer acquisition process. Make it easier for prospects to say “yes” by offering a clearly defined short-term bounded offer, with specific deliverables with high perceived value.

Seamlessly transition into long-term consulting retainers, from a position of authority and credibility. As a potential consultant, you have low credibility and are making a big ask. As an already-hired consultant, you have high credibility. You’re pitching from a position of high value.

Eventually, build an FCMO business. I did FCMO on the side for 5 years. Eventually, I had so much demand that I decided to leave my marketing job and run my own FCMO business full-time. You can do the same. The COMPASS Method Crash Course will show you how.

Trey Sheneman
Growth Advisor, Teacher, Marketer, & Founder