Nick Ellery
Independent advisory · Sydney · AU + APAC

The ugly, uncomfortable truth about your marketing.

You're on your third CMO in two years. The board wants answers. Sales says marketing is broken. Marketing says sales doesn't work the leads. You can't tell which one is right.

You're not alone. This is the most common growth-stage marketing pattern in B2B SaaS and online marketplaces. The problem usually isn't the CMO, or the sales team, or the marketing team — it's everything around them. The Marketing Teardown™ is two to three weeks inside your business finding what's actually broken, and writing it down in plain language. You'll get the answer, not a deck.

EST. 2026 [ HEADSHOT ]

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The difference

McKinsey will sell you a beautiful deck. I'll tell you what's actually wrong with your business.

— Most consulting is theatre. The Teardown is the opposite.

What I do

Five ways to work together.

Each one is built around the same principle: go where consultants don't dare, and where AI can't think to look.

Selected work

Two case studies. Real numbers.

Anonymised for v1. Named versions land as permissions come in.

Also

Workshops, offsites, leadership alignment days.

One- and two-day sessions for leadership teams. ICP work, GTM alignment, marketing-sales reset, brand positioning offsites. Senior team only.

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Insights

What I'm thinking about right now.

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About

Twenty years inside marketing functions on fire.

Two-sided marketplaces. B2B SaaS. AU and APAC. From −25% YoY to record-breaking growth. From a A$25M paid-search habit to a brand that displaced Meta and Google. From an AI-skeptic CEO to a +50% qualified-lead lift in a single quarter.

I've taken my lumps and learned to find what's actually broken faster than most people learn to write a brief. Now I do that for other companies. I'll give you the truth — kindly, but I'll give it to you. Marketing is genuinely hard. You're not stupid for being stuck. You just need someone who's been in the room before — and is willing to say what most consultants won't.

0Years in-house
0Senior leadership roles
$0M+Marketing budgets owned
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Ready

If your marketing isn't compounding, something's blocking it.

30-minute intro call. No agenda, no slides, no qualifying gauntlet. Tell me what's broken and I'll tell you whether a Teardown, a fractional engagement, or just a frank conversation is the right next move.