Your practice, with a firm behind it
You bring the judgment and the relationships. We bring the contracts, the tools, the training and the back office — so your practice looks and runs like a firm from day one.
Mahdlo is a principal-led firm of fractional CMOs and CROs. You work as an independent contractor, you own your relationships, and you keep the majority of what you deliver. What we will not do is promise you a pipeline — read on for what we do instead.
Start the ConversationWhat we don’t do
Most firms in this category lead with what they will hand you. We would rather you hear the constraints first, because they are the part people find out later and resent.
We don’t guarantee leads
Nobody hands you a pipeline. You are expected to prospect, and to bring judgment about who is worth pursuing. What we give you is the platform, the tools and the playbook to do it well — not a queue of inbound you had no part in creating.
You are 1099, not W-2
Independent contractor, not employee. You pay and report your own taxes. No benefits, no insurance, no pension. That is the trade for owning your practice and your relationships rather than being an allocated resource on someone’s bench.
It isn’t free to join
There is a one-time onboarding fee and a monthly platform fee. Both are disclosed on the first call, in writing, before you are asked to decide anything. If a firm won’t tell you its economics up front, that is worth noticing.
We earn on a disclosed fee, not on your margin
This is the difference that matters most and the one candidates ask about last. Most firms earn on the spread — between what the client is billed and what you are paid. You rarely see the real number, and their incentive is to widen the gap.
Mahdlo earns on a platform fee we tell you. Every split is calculated on top-line revenue, before Mahdlo takes anything, so the number your split is applied to is the number the client actually pays.
Delivery is the majority
The advisor doing the work takes the largest share of every engagement dollar, by a wide margin. Sourcing a lead and assisting a close are paid separately and on top — so helping a colleague win business is rewarded rather than absorbed.
You are paid fast
Services are billed to the client in advance, and you are paid within ten business days of the client paying. No sixty-day terms, no chasing collections, and no invoicing anyone yourself.
The client contracts with us
Mahdlo, LLC signs the client. You do not chase paper, negotiate MSAs, argue payment terms or carry the contractual risk of the engagement. You do the work you were hired for.
Five ways to do this. They are not the same job.
The fractional market splits into five business models, and each one makes money differently — which determines what your life looks like inside it. Judge them on their economics, not their marketing.
| Model | How they earn | What that means for you |
|---|---|---|
| Executive bench | Utilization across a large bench | You are a resource to be allocated. Income depends on their pipeline and how they assign it. Consistency varies across a hundred-plus operators. |
| Full C-suite firm | Breadth — a retainer per role | Marketing and revenue are separate practices with separate contracts. You own one function; somebody else owns the other half of the number. |
| Talent marketplace | Match volume, on the spread | You are a listing. No ownership of the outcome, no training, no back office, and no visibility into what the client was actually charged. |
| Growth agency | Junior-hour leverage and media spend | Usually employment, not practice ownership. Strategy exists to lead into execution hours, and the senior name is often not the delivering hand. |
| Principal-led boutique Where Mahdlo sits |
A disclosed platform fee | You own the relationship and the outcome. One principal owns both marketing and revenue. The ceiling is your own capacity — which is the honest constraint of this model. |
Engagement sizes across the category typically run $5–30K per month depending on the model. Every firm describes itself differently — the way it makes money is the reliable tell.
Nobody starts cold
Every advisor works through the same onboarding course before taking a client. Four modules, twenty lessons, and a forty-one question exam with a 90% pass mark. It is not a welcome video — it is how we make sure the person in front of a client can answer for the firm.
01 · How you get paid
The comp model in plain language, worked through real scenarios, plus the terms of your agreement.
02 · Who we compete with
The five competitor models, their economics, and the objections you will actually hear in a room.
03 · The sales playbook
Discovery, qualification, proposal and close — the way this firm runs it, not a generic method.
04 · Firm policies
Confidentiality, data handling, AI use, brand and IP — what you are agreeing to operate inside.
Passing certifies you. Certification is what qualifies an advisor to be given a client, and it is recorded by the firm — not self-declared.
Show up looking like a firm, not a freelancer
The hardest part of going independent is not the thinking — it is everything around the thinking. The proposal that has to look like it came from a firm. The monthly update a board will actually read. Our toolkit produces finished, brand-correct work in an afternoon, so what lands in front of your client is indistinguishable from a much larger organization.
Prospecting
Everything between a first conversation and a signed engagement: proposals and decks generated from one intake, positioning and buyer work you can run in the room, and company paper — NDAs and MSAs — drawn correctly without a lawyer or a weekend. You pitch; the paperwork keeps up.
Delivery
Everything after the signature: the engagement plan clients start with, the revenue model you build and defend, structured meeting records, health checks that catch a wobbling account before renewal, and the executive update that keeps a board confident in you. Consistent, filed, and easy to hand over.
Five practices and a back office
You are not inventing methodology alone in a spare room. The firm maintains practice areas you can sell into and lean on, and it runs the administration that otherwise eats a third of an independent’s week.
The practices
Strategy Practices · Revenue Accelerators · Customer Tech · People Practices · Firm Operations — each with its own frameworks, diagnostics and deliverables, maintained by the firm and improved by the advisors using them.
The back office
Company contracts and MSAs, CRM and prospecting email, invoicing, collections and distributions, proposal writing support, and the document filing that keeps client work where the client team can find it. Handled.
The bar
This works for operators who have carried a number and want to keep doing the work — not for people looking to be placed.
- 15–25 years of executive operational leadership, with 5+ years as a VP of Marketing or Sales or equivalent
- CMO, VP of Sales or Head of Sales experience at companies of real scale
- Financial and business acumen, and an entrepreneurial instinct — you are building something, not filling a seat
- Willing to prospect. This is the one that decides it.
- Comfortable being measured on client outcomes rather than hours
- You share the firm’s values and want the work to outlast your involvement
Start with the numbers you carried
Six fields. It goes to Craig, not a sales queue, and the reply is a conversation, not a pitch.
Thanks — this went to Craig, not a queue. Now pick a time.
He reads every one of these himself before the call. Thirty minutes on what you have done, what you want to build, and exactly what this costs and pays.
One conversation, no pitch
Whether you are bringing a book with you or starting from scratch, the first call covers the same ground: what you have done, what you want to build, and exactly what this costs and pays. You will have the numbers before you are asked to decide anything.
Start the Conversation