04 · Retainer
Strategy, sales system, and marketing under one team. Three variants depending on what your operation needs most: a full team, a fractional head, or an AI ops layer. Three-month minimum, then month-to-month.
From R75,000/month
variants from R50,000 to R120,000/month
How the retainer ships
Most engagements run as Full-Stack. Fractional CMO and AI Ops exist for operations that need only one slice of the model. Variant chosen on the discovery call, switchable at the quarterly cycle.
From R75,000/month
Strategy, sales system, marketing, and AI operations executed by senior operators against an agreed scorecard. The same engagement model that ran across Yassir for three years. Best for SMEs that want one team running the full growth motion, not three vendors stitched together.
Variant A · Fractional CMO Retainer
R50,000 - R100,000/month
Just the strategic head: scorecard ownership, weekly direction, decision review. Your team executes. Best for SMEs with execution capacity but no strategic operator running the growth motion.
Variant B · AI Operations Retainer
R60,000 - R120,000/month
AI workflow build, agent operations, weekly automation reviews, governance. Best for SMEs that want compounding AI without the internal capacity to run it. Outputs measured in operator hours freed.
The rhythm
The retainer has a written cadence. No standing calendars without an agenda. No "let's catch up." Every touchpoint has a purpose and a paper trail.
Weekly
Senior operators executing against the quarter's thesis. Written progress report every Friday. Async check-ins through the week. No vanity calendars.
Monthly
Live review against the agreed scorecard. KPIs vs baseline, what shipped, what didn't, what's on for next month. Decisions documented, not verbal.
Quarterly
Strategic re-evaluation. New 90-day thesis chosen, agreed, executed against. The retainer has a renewable shape, not an open-ended drift.
Fit
For
Not for
Track record
The retainer model was forged on Yassir's $1.4B engagement. Quarterly thesis cycles, monthly scorecard reviews, weekly written delivery. Productised here for SA SMEs, same operating system, same operators.
67%
Customer acquisition cost reduction
62%
Cost per install reduction
27x
GMV growth across three years
FAQ
Sprint is fixed scope, fixed price, defined endpoint at Day 90. Retainer is ongoing engagement, scope adjusts each quarter, no defined endpoint. Sprint suits a discrete bet. Retainer suits a system that needs ongoing operators. Many clients run a Sprint first to prove fit, then move to a Retainer.
Compounding work needs runway. Setting up tracking, building a content engine, training a sales team, none of that ships in 30 days. The three-month minimum protects both sides: we commit to a setup-build-measure cycle, you commit to giving the work time to land. After three months, the engagement runs month-to-month.
Full-Stack is an entire AI-augmented growth team: strategy plus sales plus marketing plus AI ops, executing the build. Fractional CMO is just the strategic head: scorecard ownership, weekly direction, decision review. Your team executes. Pick Full-Stack if you need the build and the leadership. Pick Fractional CMO if you have execution capacity but no strategic head.
Yes. Roughly 30% of retainer clients start with Fractional CMO, then move to Full-Stack once they realise execution is the bigger gap. Equally, some start Full-Stack and downgrade to Fractional CMO once internal capacity builds. Variant changes happen at the quarterly cycle, not mid-month.
Every retainer has an agreed scorecard at engagement start: four to seven KPIs that the work is committed to moving. Monthly review tracks performance against the baseline. Quarterly thesis cycle re-evaluates. If the scorecard is not moving and the cause is on our side, we say so. Retainers that are not working get terminated.
Thirty days written notice on either side after the three-month minimum. No exit clauses, no lock-ins, no last-minute pricing escalations. The retainer ends, the artefacts are yours, and the playbook documents the operating cadence so your team can take over without us.
Next step
The discovery call is 30 minutes. We confirm fit, scope, variant, and scorecard before either side commits. If the Retainer is the wrong shape, we will say so.
