Meet the Brain Squad.
The thinking behind everything else. Before we run a single ad, build a website, or print a single business card, we figure out who you are, who you're trying to reach, and what success actually looks like.
The Brain Squad does the work most agencies skip. Strategy, branding, and analytics. The foundation everything else is built on.
What this squad handlesStrategy & Planning · Branding & Visual Identity · Analytics & Optimization · AI Coaching
Every project starts with a clear plan.
Most marketing fails because it never had a real plan to begin with. Random posts. One-off ads. A website that doesn't connect to anything. A logo that doesn't match the brand. Sound familiar?
We start every relationship by digging into your business. Who you are. What you sell. Who you sell to. What's working. What isn't. What your competitors are doing. Where the opportunities are.
Then Marco maps out the plan.
What's included
- Business and brand discovery
- Customer research and audience profiles
- Competitive analysis
- Marketing strategy and goal setting
- Channel recommendations (which platforms make sense for your business)
- 90-day, 6-month, and 12-month roadmaps
- Quarterly review and planning sessions
Who it's for
Strategy & Planning is for businesses that have been doing marketing without a plan, or for new businesses that want to start things off right. If you've ever said "we just need more leads" without knowing where they should come from, this is where we start.
A real-world example
A local restaurant came to us spending heavily on Facebook ads with nothing to show for it. After two weeks of strategy work, we discovered their real opportunity wasn't ads at all. It was a customer loyalty program and direct mail to households within five miles. Three months later, they cut their ad budget significantly and doubled repeat visits.
Do I really need a marketing strategy if I'm just trying to get more customers?
Yes, especially if 'more customers' is the most specific thing you can say about what you want. A real strategy figures out which customers, where they are, what they care about, and which channels are worth your money. Without it, every dollar you spend is a guess.
Strong brands don't happen by accident.
Your brand is more than your logo. It's how your business looks, sounds, and feels everywhere a customer runs into it. The website. The signs. The shirts. The way the front desk answers the phone.
When all those pieces match, your brand feels real. Trustworthy. Worth paying for. When they don't, your business looks unsure of itself, and customers can sense it.
Polly handles all of it.
What's included
- Logo design (primary, secondary, and variations for every use case)
- Color systems and typography
- Brand guidelines document
- Voice and messaging frameworks
- Brand applications (business cards, signage mockups, social templates)
- Brand refreshes for established businesses
- Full identity systems for new businesses
Who it's for
Branding & Visual Identity is for businesses launching a brand for the first time, or for established businesses that have outgrown the logo they made on Canva five years ago. If your business has changed but your brand hasn't kept up, Polly's your call.
A real-world example
A second-generation construction company had been using their dad's hand-drawn logo for 25 years. It was nostalgic but it wasn't winning bids against bigger competitors. Polly redesigned the entire identity, kept the dad's signature as a small detail in the new mark, and applied it across trucks, jobsite signs, and proposal templates. Bid win rate went up significantly in the first year.
Do I need a full brand identity or just a logo?
Depends on how often your customers see you. If you have a website, signage, vehicle wraps, business cards, or apparel, the pieces start fighting each other when they don't share a system. A logo is a start. A brand is everything that ladders up to it.
What's working? What isn't? Let's find out.
Most small businesses are flying blind. Money goes out the door, leads come in (or don't), and nobody really knows why one campaign worked and another flopped.
We change that. Dash watches the numbers, reports back in plain English, and tells you what to keep doing, what to stop, and what to try next.
No vanity metrics. Just what moved the needle.
What's included
- Google Analytics 4 setup and configuration
- Conversion tracking (forms, calls, purchases, anything that matters)
- Monthly performance reports in plain English
- A/B testing on websites, ads, and emails
- Quarterly strategy reviews based on real data
- Custom dashboards so you can see your numbers anytime
- Recommendations and adjustments based on what the data shows
Who it's for
Analytics & Optimization is for businesses that are already running marketing but can't tell what's working. If you've ever asked "is the website doing anything?" or "are the ads worth it?" and got a non-answer, Dash is who fixes that.
A real-world example
A regional service business had been running Google Ads for two years. They thought it was working because they got plenty of clicks. Dash dug in and found most of the clicks were on a keyword that had never converted into a paying customer. We killed that keyword, redirected the budget, and the next quarter their cost-per-lead dropped substantially.
How do I know if my marketing is actually working?
You need conversion tracking on the things that matter to your business (forms filled, calls placed, sales made), not just visits and clicks. We set that up, then report in plain English what's earning its keep and what's not. If you're guessing, you're losing money.
Want to learn AI yourself? We'll coach you through it.
Everything else on this page is us doing the work for you. This one is different. Some owners don't want it handed off. They want to learn how to use AI in their own business, with a real person showing them the way instead of one more YouTube rabbit hole.
That's what coaching is. One on one, built around what you actually do. We start with a short questionnaire and a free call to find where you're stuck, then we sit down together and work through the tools and the habits, step by step, until they stick.
Lumi puts a coach on your bench.
What's included
- Free discovery questionnaire and a 30-minute call before the first session
- Four 60-minute one-on-one sessions over about a month
- Personalized action items between sessions so the habits actually stick
- A short written roadmap: which tools, which workflows, in what order
- Direct email access for quick questions between sessions
- Continuation coaching by the hour once the starter wraps, if you want to keep going
Who it's for
AI Coaching is for the owner wearing every hat who knows AI matters, has fiddled with it, and still isn't getting real results. Not the marketing pro who'll figure it out alone. The operator who wants a clear, personal, step-by-step path instead of drowning in tutorials and Discord servers.
A real-world example
A contractor kept hearing he should be using AI, but every video he found was made for tech people, not guys running crews. Four sessions later he had ChatGPT writing his proposals from a template, drafting his customer follow-ups, and turning job photos into social posts in minutes. He stopped dreading the office side of the business and put those hours back on the tools.
Do you do the AI work for me, or teach me to do it myself?
Coaching teaches you to do it yourself. We sit down one on one and work through the tools and workflows that fit your business until you can run them without us. If you'd rather we just handle it, that's a done-for-you retainer instead, and we'll tell you honestly which one fits.
Common questions about strategy, branding, and analytics
What does a Brain Squad engagement look like at the start?
We start with a discovery conversation, usually about an hour, where we ask about your business, your customers, what's working, and what isn't. From there we map out a plan, agree on scope and budget, and get moving. Most engagements start producing usable work within the first two weeks.
Do I need a strategy before you build me a website?
Not always, but it helps. If you already know who you serve, what you sell, and what you want the website to do, we can go straight to design. If any of those are fuzzy, a couple weeks of strategy work upfront saves months of website revisions later.
What's the difference between branding and a logo?
A logo is one mark. Branding is the whole system around it. Color palette, typography, voice, photography style, how the business shows up on a sign, a shirt, a quote letter, the website. The logo is the front door; the brand is what's inside.
How long until we see results from analytics work?
You see meaningful data within 30 days of having tracking installed and traffic running. Real optimization decisions, the kind that move revenue, usually take 60 to 90 days because you need enough data points to know what's signal versus noise.
Do you work with businesses that don't have any data yet?
Yes. New businesses are easier in some ways because we set things up right from day one. We install analytics, define what counts as a conversion, and start building a baseline. Within a few months you'll have data nobody had to dig out of a mess.
Can you help me figure out what my brand should stand for?
That's the work Polly and Marco do together. We dig into what makes your business different, what your customers actually say about you, and what story your brand should be telling. You leave with a brand you can defend and a plan to apply it everywhere.
The strategy. The brand. The numbers.All in one place.
Most agencies pick one. They do strategy and hand the brand work to a designer. Or they do branding and don't touch the strategy. Or they have an analytics team that doesn't talk to the people running the campaigns.
We do all three. Marco maps out the plan. Polly builds the brand around it. Dash measures whether it's working and adjusts. Same team. Same room. Same conversation.
That means the strategy actually informs the brand. The brand actually informs the campaigns. And the numbers actually inform what we do next. Nothing falls through the cracks because nothing has to be handed off.
If you've been piecing this together with three different vendors, you already know the cracks are where the value gets lost. The Brain Squad puts it all under one roof.
Looking for something this squad doesn't cover?
Every project we do touches all three squads at some point. Here's where the others live, plus the full cast.
Let's start with a real plan.
Tell us about your business and what you're trying to figure out. We'll be in touch within 24 hours.