CounselA peer advisory board for senior marketers
You built a marketing engine that runs without you.
Now build a life that doesn’t.
Next cohort
April 2026 · Austin, TX
The ordinary world
The loneliest seat in the building is the one with the best view.
You make decisions worth millions on a Sunday night, alone at the kitchen table, with nothing but a cold cup of coffee and your own judgment. There is no one in the building who operates at your altitude. Your CEO wants outcomes. Your team wants direction. Your board wants a deck.
Nobody asks what you’re carrying.
The consultants you can hire know frameworks. The mentors you admire are two time zones away. The peers you respect are technically your competition. And the people at home — the ones who matter most — are watching you disappear into a job that was supposed to be worth it by now.
“I had a $40M pipeline decision to make and no one I could actually talk to.”
— Counsel member, VP Demand Gen, Series C SaaS
The call
What changes when twelve people commit to radical honesty.
Counsel is a round table. Twelve senior marketers — VP Demand Gen, CMO, VP Brand, VP Growth — who meet monthly in a private room. You share your real numbers. You bring your actual decisions. You leave with a perspective you couldn’t have found alone.
The rule that makes it work: what happens at the table stays at the table. And the other rule: your family is a first-order variable in every conversation about your career.
members per cohort
VP-level and above. No founders, no consultants, no one trying to sell you anything.
per month
A full morning. In person. The kind of conversation that doesn't happen on a Zoom call.
off the record
Revenue numbers, headcount decisions, family trade-offs — shared in confidence, never outside the room.
Applications reviewed within 48 hours.
The ordeal
She was three days from accepting a CMO role that would have cost her everything else.
A member we’ll call Rachel had been recruited for a CMO role at a high-growth Series D. The comp was the best offer of her career. The title was the one she’d been building toward for eleven years. She’d already told her husband it was happening.
She brought it to the table expecting celebration. What she got instead was a question from a peer: “What does the travel look like, and have you actually counted the weeks?”
She hadn’t. When she did, it was 34 weeks on the road in year one. Her daughter was eight.
“The table helped me negotiate fully remote terms. I took the job. I didn’t miss a single school play.”
— Rachel, CMO, $280M ARR SaaS company
She still sends the group a photo every time she’s in the front row.
April 2026 cohort. Austin, TX. 12 seats total.
The mentor
Elena Vasquez has been in the room for every version of this conversation.
She spent sixteen years leading marketing at companies from Series A to post-IPO — VP at two, CMO at one, and the person other CMOs called when they needed to think out loud. In 2019, she turned down a CPTO role because her son was twelve and she’d already missed enough. She built Counsel the year after, because the room she needed hadn’t existed.
She facilitates every session. She doesn’t consult, advise, or sell. She just makes sure the conversation goes where it needs to go.
cohorts run
members placed
retention rate
The return
What members say about both sides of the table.
Every quote is real. Every member mentioned a professional outcome and a personal one. That’s the point.
I restructured my entire agency model after one conversation at the table. I also finally took a real vacation — ten days, no laptop.
Marcus T.
VP Marketing, Series C Fintech
The peers here challenged a rebrand strategy I'd been defending for six months. They were right. We're up 34% on pipeline. I'm home for dinner most nights.
Priya N.
CMO, Consumer Health Brand
I walked in ready to quit marketing entirely. I walked out with a different title at the same company — and a standing date on my calendar every Friday at 3pm.
Jordan W.
VP Brand, Legacy CPG
Someone at the table asked me what my kids would say about my job in ten years. I didn't have an answer. Now I do — and I have the comp to prove it.
Danielle O.
VP Demand Gen, B2B SaaS
We've referred each other for roles, introduced each other to investors, and talked each other off ledges. It's the best professional relationship I've ever had. My husband noticed the difference immediately.
Rafael M.
VP Growth, Series D Marketplace
I brought a comp negotiation to the group. They helped me ask for $60K more than I was going to. I got it. My daughter starts college in the fall — that money is her first semester.
Keiko S.
CMO, Healthcare Technology
The empty chair
The chairs are already pulled out. One of them is yours.
The April 2026 cohort in Austin has one seat remaining. We don’t advertise. We don’t run campaigns. The people who find this page are usually the ones who were meant to. If you’re reading this at midnight before a big decision, that’s probably a sign.
The application takes five minutes. We ask about your role, your team, and what you’d bring to the table. There’s no pitch call, no sales process. If there’s a fit, you’ll hear from Elena directly.
No pricing. No pitch call. Just an honest conversation.