The retainer.
Three tiers, one cadence.
Four, eight, or sixteen essays per quarter — billed monthly, locked one quarter ahead, no annual contract. Eight to twelve B2B companies sit on retainer with us at any time. New slots open quarterly.
The retainer is the actual product. The other services we offer — the audit, the one-off essay, the executive ghostwrite — are entry ramps into a retainer relationship, or they are stand-alone engagements for companies that do not need an ongoing publication. The compounding asset, the one that produces eleven-times inbound mentions and two-and-a-half-times pipeline contribution, is the calendared archive that only the retainer produces.
Three tiers, listed in order. We take new clients into the smallest tier by default and scale up to the larger tiers in the second year of the engagement.
Quarterly Four.
Four essays per quarter. Sixteen per year. The minimum cadence at which a long-form practice begins to compound — fewer than four pieces a quarter and the archive does not gain critical mass.
- One assigned editor + writer pool of two to three
- Quarterly editorial calendar locked one quarter ahead
- One to three practitioner interviews per essay
- Independent fact-check pass on every piece
- Custom title-card art or photo brief per essay
- Quarterly editorial review with leadership
- Annual archive audit and strategy reset
An archive does not begin to compound until the eighteenth piece. Below sixteen pieces a year, you are renting attention. Above sixteen, you are building an asset.
— Editorial board, Q4 2024Quarterly Eight.
Eight essays per quarter, thirty-two per year. The cadence at which the publication becomes a defensible asset — a buyer cannot leave the company's universe of content without finding something worth reading.
- Two assigned editors + writer pool of four to five
- Bi-weekly publication cadence, locked one quarter ahead
- Three to five practitioner interviews per essay
- Independent fact-check pass on every piece
- Custom title-card art commissioned per essay
- Monthly editorial review + quarterly strategy session
- Quarterly archive audit and stance recalibration
- Two annual longreads (15k+ words, magazine-grade)
Quarterly Sixteen.
Sixteen essays per quarter, sixty-four per year. A fully owned-media operation — your company runs as a publication. We are the publication. Best for companies with a defensible thesis and a CEO who actually wants to be the editor-in-chief of the space.
- Embedded editorial team — three editors + dedicated writers
- Weekly publication cadence
- Five-plus practitioner interviews per essay
- Two-pass fact-check + senior editor review
- Quarterly print issue (Issuu / paper, optional)
- Monthly leadership editorial board meeting
- Annual practitioner summit (live event, paid attendance)
- Owned-media stance documents reset twice a year
The three tiers, side by side.
| Quarterly Four | Quarterly Eight | Quarterly Sixteen | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Essays / quarter | 4 | 8 | 16 |
| Annual cadence | 16 essays | 32 essays | 64 essays |
| Editor headcount | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| Practitioner interviews / essay | 1–3 | 3–5 | 5+ |
| Fact-check pass | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| Annual longreads (15k+ words) | — | 2 | 4 |
| Editorial review cadence | Quarterly | Monthly | Weekly |
| Custom title-card art | Brief | Commissioned | Commissioned |
| Print issue | — | — | Quarterly |
| Practitioner live summit | — | — | Annual |
| Monthly fee | $14k | $26k | $48k |
| Annual | $168k | $312k | $576k |
| Effective per essay | $10.5k | $9.75k | $9k |
Two retainer slots are open for Q3 2026.
We take retainers on a one-in-one-out basis to keep editorial bandwidth honest. Send us a brief — we'll respond within two working days with a fit assessment and an interview slot.
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