Marketing visibility and business operations, run by the person you actually talk to.

Most businesses either can't get found, don't trust their own numbers, or can't prove marketing is working. I fix whichever one is costing you the most, as a business partner, not a rotating account team. I answer the phone. It's always me.

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Most marketing consultants have never run a business. Most operators have never driven revenue through marketing.

And most agencies hand you off to a team. Thomas (T.J.) Stave has done both, at different points in the same career: running the P&L and operations of a marketing technology company as COO, and separately doing the client-facing marketing work that got businesses found and made them money. When you work with Stave Collective, you work directly with him. I answer the phone, and I want to be the person you call to think through a hard decision, not just the person who sends the monthly report.

Whatever the engagement is called, the goal underneath it is the same: real value creation for your business, backed by numbers both marketers and finance can trust.

What we help with

Visibility, Operations, and Impact, built to work together, always in service of real business outcomes.

01

Earned & Owned Visibility

AI Search, SEO, content, PR, and backlinks. Getting found by search engines and AI answer engines, turned into sales and revenue.

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02

AI-Native Operations & Systems

The strategy and systems that show you real margin and delivery performance, with AI infused where it actually removes manual work.

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03

Marketing Measurement Infrastructure & Impact

Data availability, accuracy, and accessibility, connected to real sales and revenue, so you know what's actually working.

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Built by an operator, not a generalist.

Twenty years across operations, marketing, and finance.

At Dentsu, T.J. built a support operations organization from nothing into a 450-person team. At an AI-native marketing technology company, he ran the P&L as COO while personally doing the client-facing marketing work himself.

Stave Collective is what happens when both of those skill sets, and a genuine passion for what's changing in AI and search, work for one client at a time.

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How this works

Discovery and Audit happen once. Strategy, Execution, and Measurement run as a loop, driven by real data.

01

Discovery

What are we actually trying to solve, before anything gets built.

02

Audit

Where things stand today, the good and the bad, backed by real data.

03

Strategy

Using discovery and audit findings to build the recommendation engine.

04

Execution

Doing the work, directly or alongside your internal team.

05

Measurement

What's working, what's not, and how that reshapes the strategy next.

STRATEGY → EXECUTION → MEASUREMENT → BACK TO STRATEGY

Frequently asked questions

How do engagements typically start?

Most clients come through referral. Engagements start with a short discovery conversation to understand what you're actually trying to solve before any proposal or scope gets built.

Do you work as a retainer or a project?

Both, depending on the work. Strategy and ongoing measurement tend to work best as a retainer, since the strategy keeps evolving monthly as real data comes in. Some operations and systems work starts as a project, then moves to a lighter maintenance retainer.

Do you do the work yourself, or manage a team?

Both. Some engagements involve building the system or executing the strategy directly. Others involve setting the strategy and directing an internal team through execution, depending on what the work needs.

What industries do you work with?

Local services, B2B and manufacturing, ecommerce, tech and SaaS, and agencies, spanning everything from marketing visibility to operations to measurement.

What does an engagement cost?

Retainers generally run from $2,000 to $20,000 per month. Where a specific engagement lands depends on how much offsite work is involved, how frequently we meet, and how much is actively changing in your business. An acquisition that needs the website and offsite presence rethought looks different from steady-state maintenance. Every engagement gets scoped and priced around what you actually need and what fits your budget.

What makes Stave Collective different from a typical agency or advisor?

Most consultants have either run marketing or run a business, not both. Stave Collective has done both, at the same company, at the same time, and stays through execution rather than handing off a strategy deck.