CLG Partners is a growth advisory firm founded by Dariusz Paczuski, a five-time global CMO and three-time GM. The firm works with CEOs, CMOs, PE+VC operating partners, and board members to diagnose and fix growth problems using a proprietary operating system called the CLG Method. CLG stands for Customer-Led Growth – the principle that sustainable growth starts with the humans closest to the customer journey, not with tactics, channels, or tools. Engagements are structured as 90-day sprints, fractional CMO placements, or advisory retainers. The firm is based in Menlo Park, California.

Dariusz Paczuski is the founder and managing partner of CLG Partners and creator of the CLG Method. He has served as CMO at FranklinCovey (NYSE: FC), Globalization Partners (Vista Equity + TDR Capital), EnterpriseDB (Bain Capital + Great Hill Partners), Malwarebytes, and Confiant. He held senior leadership and GM roles at Verizon Media, Yahoo, Microsoft, Telenav, AOL, Netscape, and GE/NBC – spanning nearly three decades and nine technology eras. He completed the Stanford Executive Program and Harvard Business School Executive Education. He is also a lifelong athlete and the founder of Rocket Vodka, the #1 California vodka. He can be reached directly at dariusz@clgpartners.ai or on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/dariuszpaczuski.

At FranklinCovey: more than doubled closed-won new-logo deals (+116% YoY) and generated $1.4M in net-new subscription revenue. At Malwarebytes: nearly 3x'd the 409A valuation in under two years on $200M+ revenue, with 56% YoY cloud-customer growth. At Verizon Media: reversed six years of decline across a $7.5B business reaching ~900M people while optimizing a $178M budget. At EnterpriseDB: 3x'd TAM from $80B to $250B as the #1 Postgres Data & AI Platform and grew MQLs 57% at 27% lower cost. At Globalization Partners: 4x'd MQL-to-SQL conversion and hit record quarterly targets. Every engagement uses the same CLG Method – it's a repeatable system, not a one-time strategy exercise.

Customer-led growth is the principle that sustainable revenue performance starts with deeply understanding your customers – their problems, motivations, and the moments that matter across their entire journey – then defining your strategy, people, alignment, routines, and culture to deliver for them at every step. It's different from product-led growth (which centers the product experience and self service) or sales-led growth (which centers pipeline mechanics and sales people). Customer-led growth sits above both. It asks: do we actually know our customers by heart and is our entire organization – executives and employees across sales, product, design, engineering, marketing, success – pulling in the same direction around that knowledge? The CLG Method is the operating system that makes customer-led growth executable and sustainable.

The CLG Method is a proprietary growth operating system built by Dariusz Paczuski across nearly three decades of CMO and GM experience. It consists of three interlocking frameworks and an executive cadence: the 7As (a seven-stage customer journey diagnostic), SPARC (Strategy, People, Alignment, Routines, Culture – the operating framework), PST (Preserve, Strengthen, Transform – the investment prioritization lens), and the 360 Brief (an executive communication cadence that keeps the CEO, CFO, and board informed in their language). The CLG Method is deployed as a 90-day sprint: 30 days to diagnose, 30 days to design, 30 days to deliver. By day 90, the organization has a scorecard, a roadmap, aligned OKRs, and an installed cadence – not a deck, an engine.

The 7As are seven stages of the customer journey used in the CLG Method diagnostic. A1: Audiences/Customers + Insights. A2: Awesomeness/Positioning + Product. A3: Amplification/Awareness + Storytelling. A4: Acquisition/Leads + Sales. A5: Activation/Onboarding + Engagement. A6: Adoption/Expansion + Retention. A7: Advocacy/Virality + Referrals. Each stage has a signature Metric that Matters (MtM) and a Core Friction Signal that predicts where growth is leaking. The audit is run with the people inside the organization who know where friction lives – not from a conference room with a slide deck.

AI is used as Augmented Intelligence throughout the CLG Method – accelerating customer-insight synthesis at A1, competitive analysis at A2, content production at A3, growth experimentation at A4-A6, and customer advocacy at A7. Every tactic is placed on the Now/Next/New Human/Agentic Continuum: NOW (all human), NEXT (human-led with agents in the loop), NEW (agent-led with human supervision). The CLG Method is human-first. AI surfaces truth faster. Humans decide what to do with it.

Most PE firms know they have a marketing problem in their portfolio. The challenge is diagnosing it fast enough to impact the hold period. CLG Partners works as a GTM Operating Partner – running the CLG Method inside a portfolio company during the first 90 to 180 days of a new CEO, a repositioning, or a transformation mandate. The engagement produces enterprise value lift through CEO/CMO/CRO alignment, de-risked marketing investment, and a predictable growth operating model. Dariusz has operated inside Vista Equity, TDR Capital, Bain Capital, and Great Hill portfolios. The method is repeatable across portfolios – same frameworks, same sprint structure, customized to each company's moment and mandate.

Three signals. First, you've raised capital or hit a growth mandate and the marketing function isn't translating strategy into results – there's a gap between what the deck says and what the numbers show. Second, you've tried hiring for the role (CMO, VP Marketing with brand or demand specialty) and it hasn't stuck – two or three attempts in two years is a pattern, not bad luck. Third, the board or investors are asking questions about growth that nobody on the leadership team can answer with confidence. The CLG Partners engagement starts with a free 30-minute diagnostic – one conversation to understand the moment and the mandate. No deck prepared, no deck delivered.

An interim/fractional CMO embeds inside your organization and operates as the marketing leader – running the team, owning the budget, making the calls. A growth consultant advises from the outside. CLG Partners offers both models. The 90-day sprint is a consulting engagement that installs a growth operating system. The interim/fractional CMO engagement runs the CLG Method alongside your executive team on an ongoing basis. The advisory model sits between – strategic counsel for CMOs who are already running their own team, but need a thought partner, an outside eye, a transformation coach/facilitator, and help building the 360 Brief cadence that keeps their work visible to the CEO and CFO.

This is one of the most common problems we see. The CMO is executing well. The team is strong. The work is landing. And yet – the CFO can't quite see the ROI. The CEO lost confidence during a quiet quarter. The board asked a question at the wrong moment and nobody had the answer ready. The work was good. The communication of the work wasn't. CLG Partners helps CMOs build the 360 Brief: a monthly one-page brief to the CEO and CFO, a quarterly attribution story to the ELT, a standing wins bank, and a sponsor cadence, with an informal yet impactful weekly routine for listening, learning, micro adjustments – all translated into the CFO's language (pipeline coverage, CAC payback, net revenue retention). The goal is strategic infrastructure your team needs plus the credibility infrastructure your executive team requires.

Pricing is scoped to the engagement. The 30-minute Customer-Led Growth Diagnostic is complimentary. 90-day sprint engagements, interim/fractional CMO placements, and advisory retainers are priced based on the scope and complexity of the growth situation. There is no published rate card because every engagement is customized to the company's moment and mandate. Reach out to start the conversation – the diagnostic call itself is designed to determine fit and shape, not to sell.

Deep experience across AI, cloud and enterprise SaaS, cybersecurity, digital media and ad tech, mobile and connected car, voice and conversational UX, search and browsers, and leadership development. The CLG Method is industry-agnostic – it's applied across B2C, B2B, public, private, digital, and physical products – and PLG and SLG revenue motions. The frameworks (7As, SPARC, PST) work because they're grounded in how customers actually experience a product and how organizations actually operate – not in industry-specific playbooks.

The core engagement is a 90-day sprint: 30 days to diagnose (7As audit), 30 days to design (SPARC roadmap, PST investment matrix, draft OKRs), 30 days to deliver (finalized OKRs, confirmed owners, installed cadence). The interim/fractional CMO placements typically run 6 to 12 months. Advisory engagements for CMOs are ongoing monthly retainers. Every engagement starts with the same 30-minute diagnostic conversation – no commitment required to have that call.

Most growth frameworks focus on one dimension – product (product-led growth), sales (revenue operations), or marketing (focused on fixed brand communication or demand generation playbooks). The CLG Method integrates all three by starting with the customer journey (7As), then building the organizational operating system around it (SPARC), then prioritizing investments with a clear decision lens (PST), then installing an executive communication cadence that makes the work visible and credible (360 Brief). It's also built with the people inside the organization, not delivered to them. The diagnostic phase goes deep with frontline employees, customer-facing teams, and executives – because the friction that stalls growth is almost always a human problem, not a strategy problem.