Growth Partner
What this costs every month.
Three tiers, published. They differ by how much gets built and how fast — not by how quickly you get answered.
The three tiers.
Growth Partner is the ongoing engagement that follows the audit. The audit decides whether there is anything here worth operating; this is what operating it costs.
| Included | Response | Systems · recommended | Operations |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rate | $2,500/mo | $4,000/mo | $6,500/mo |
| Setup | One acquisition funnel: lead routing, response automation, tracking. Live inside the first four weeks. | Everything in Response, plus the two highest-impact leaks from your audit, rebuilt. | Everything in Systems, across multiple funnels, locations or channels, plus CRM and ops automation. |
| Handover | Written documentation, a recorded walkthrough, every account in your name. | The same, re-recorded whenever a system changes. | The same, plus a written runbook your own team can operate without me. |
| Dashboard | Response-time dashboard, updated daily. | Adds the full funnel view — inquiry to booked, by source. | Adds per-location and per-channel breakdown. |
| Support window | Thirty days of hypercare after each build. | Continuous — every build carries its own hypercare. | Continuous, plus monitored alerting with an overnight path. |
| Build cadence | One system at a time. | Two workstreams in parallel. | Weekly build cadence. |
| Response SLA | Four hours inside the overlap window; next business day outside it. | Four hours inside the overlap window; next business day outside it. | Four hours inside the overlap window; next business day outside it. |
| Reporting | Weekly written update. Monthly live call. Monthly report against your audit baseline. | Weekly written update. Monthly live call. Monthly report against your audit baseline. | Weekly written update. Monthly live call. Monthly report against your audit baseline. |
| Term and notice | Three months, then month to month. Thirty days notice. | Three months, then month to month. Thirty days notice. | Three months, then month to month. Thirty days notice. |
Response SLA, Reporting, Term and notice are identical across all three tiers. That is deliberate: a commitment that improves when you pay more is an admission that the cheaper client is answered slower. What scales with the price is build scope and cadence, which is the only thing that genuinely scales in a one-person practice.
What this sits next to.
A retainer priced in a vacuum gets compared to software. These are the things it is actually an alternative to, with sources.
| Alternative | Cost | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| What an agency charges for focused work | $1,500–$4,000 | One to two services, per month |
| What an agency charges full service | $3,500–$8,000 | Per month |
| What lead-gen software alone costs an agent | $1,500–$5,000 | plus $1,000–$8,000 variable |
| What an SMB already spends on marketing | 3–5% | a $1M business ≈ $2,500–$4,200/mo |
2026 agency pricing survey · Market bands, not Context Theory's prices · verified
2026 real estate operating cost survey · plus $1,000–$8,000 variable · verified
Those are market bands. This is yours — and it asserts no prices of its own, so every figure in it is one you enter.
Retainer vs DIY stack
| Step | Working | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Software you already pay for | $0 | $0 |
| Your hours a month | 0.0 × 52 ÷ 12 | 0.0 |
| What those hours cost | 0.0 × $0 | $0 |
| Total, monthly | $0 + $0 | $0 |
| Against the focused-retainer market floor | $0 − $1,500 | −$1,500 |
This assumes
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will not publish a price for any piece of software, because those figures are not in the sourced appendix this site is built on and a plausible default would be an invented number
will use only figures that are either yours or sourced — the boxes open empty here, and an industry page may open the software box at a published figure for that trade, with its source printed on that page
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will not decide what an hour of your time is worth, or assume you would pay somebody else to take it off you
will cost your hours at exactly the rate you entered, and leave the time column at zero if you would rather not price it at all
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will not compare the total against my own rate card, which would make the tool an advertisement with arithmetic attached
will compare it against the published market floor for a focused agency engagement, so the anchor holds whoever you end up buying from, including nobody
2026 agency pricing survey · per month · verified
The reasoning behind every assumption in it is on the calculator's own page, along with the other two.
§4.5
The substitute for a lead-response system is a part-time hire, a stack of software, or your own evenings. Priced against those, this is a line item that already exists.
What the retainer will not do.
Limits
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will not guarantee a revenue number. Anyone offering one is describing a market they do not control.
will report every month against the baseline your audit established, in your own numbers, so the movement is checkable rather than asserted.
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will not replace your judgement about your own market. It does not decide your pricing, your offer or who you serve.
will make the consequences of those decisions visible faster, which is usually what was actually missing.
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will not run three tiers of work at once from one person. Capacity is real and pretending otherwise is how a month slips.
will scope what fits the month before the month starts, and say so plainly when something does not.
Nobody starts here.
Every engagement starts with the audit. It costs $497, it takes 5 business days, and if you go on to a retainer inside 30 days the fee comes off month one in full.
The reason is not sales sequencing. Without a measured baseline there is nothing to report against in month two, and a retainer with no baseline is an invoice with a story attached.
$497 · delivered in 5 business days · credited against month one
Terms, hours and payment are on how I work.