Thomas (T.J.) Stave

I spent most of my career solving other people's problems inside other people's companies. At Dentsu, I built a support operations organization from nothing, offshore delivery, certified processes, a team that grew to 450 people. At an AI-native marketing technology company, I ran the P&L as COO while personally doing the client-facing work myself, AI Search, SEO, product marketing, the kind of work most executives at my level stop doing years before they reach it.

Somewhere in there, I realized most people only ever see one half of what I do. Clients who hired me for marketing never saw the operator who could take a business from 25% gross margin to 55% in under two years. Colleagues who saw the operator never saw the person who could sit across from a client and actually build the campaign, write the content, fix the technical SEO. I'd spent 20 years being good at both, and never once got to bring them together for one client, on my own terms.

I was ready to start my own.

Stave Collective is that combination: marketing that actually turns into revenue, backed by operations that tell you the truth about your numbers, with the infrastructure to prove all of it is working. I've done every piece of that personally, and led teams through it too.

When you work with me, that's exactly who you get. Not a project manager relaying updates from someone else, not a rotating account team. 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. Staying useful to clients means staying current, so tracking what's changing across AI and search is part of how I spend my time, not an afterthought.

Outside of client work, you'll usually find me outdoors somewhere in Colorado, hiking, skiing, or on a bike, or at home with my family, which is where the rest of my time goes.

START A CONVERSATION →