I'm Taylor Sicard. I was an early Shopify employee who built the partner program, co-founded WIN Brands Group (a nine-figure DTC operator), and built and sold a software company to Tiny. Now I work as a fractional growth advisor to consumer brands and Shopify-ecosystem apps, the senior judgment to get the big calls right, without a full-time executive salary.
The brands and founders I help are almost always at a real inflection point, the moment the playbook that got them here stops working and the next decision genuinely matters. If that's where you are, you don't need more theory. You need someone who has stood exactly where you're standing.
Founder-led brands pushing through the walls that come at $5M, $10M, and $25M: CAC discipline, channel mix, retention, retail and wholesale expansion, and the operating systems that survive scale without wrecking margin. Brand strategy and growth from someone who has run the P&L, not just advised on it.
App and SaaS founders from six-figure ARR up who need ecosystem-native go-to-market: App Store distribution, partnerships, pricing and packaging, and the founder-led to team-led GTM shift. Advice from someone who built Shopify's partner program from the inside.
Most founders reach for a full-time executive when they feel a gap. It's the most expensive way to solve a part-time problem. The same caliber of leader runs close to $25,000 a month fully loaded full-time, versus roughly $10,000 a month fractional, and that's before a three-to-six-month ramp and the real chance you have to hire twice. The question is rarely "can I afford a VP." It's "do I have forty hours a week of that work, or ten hours of the judgment trapped behind it?"
| Your gap | The right tool | Why |
|---|---|---|
| You don't know what to do | Fractional advisor | Senior judgment on the few calls that move the business |
| You know what to do, need hands | Agency or junior hire | Execution capacity once the strategy is set |
| A whole function, all day, ongoing | Full-time hire | True forty-hour ownership the business can't run without |
I wrote the full breakdown on this, with the cost math and the failure modes of each option, in fractional advisor vs agency vs a full-time hire. The honest version: an advisor is the wrong tool plenty of the time, and I'll tell you when it is.
No two engagements look the same, but the work clusters in a few places. The deliverable changes by client; the thinking doesn't.
Finding the one binding constraint, fixing the channel mix, and getting CAC and contribution margin to a place that compounds instead of bleeds. The work in scaling from $5M to $25M.
Brand architecture, positioning, and the move into retail, wholesale, and marketplaces without losing the margin or the brand that got you here.
For apps and SaaS: App Store distribution, partnership motions, pricing, and the go-to-market shifts most founders get wrong. See ecosystem advisory.
When to scale, when to take profit, when to sell, and how to get ready. I've sourced and closed acquisitions and sold my own company. Decisions made with someone who has been on both sides.
A direct conversation, no deck. Where you are, where you're going, and whether there's a real fit. Free.
We walk through what I'm seeing, where the leverage is, and whether my read lines up with the team. A working scope review, not a formal audit.
A monthly retainer with a weekly cadence, often with a quarterly week on the ground. Typically twelve months, then month to month.
Engagements end when the ROI stops compounding or the team has internalized the patterns. The goal is finished work, not standing meetings.
I joined Shopify early to help build and scale the partner ecosystem, which gave me a vantage point most people in this space don't have: the infrastructure from the inside, the builders selling into it, and the merchants growing on top of it. From there I co-founded WIN Brands Group, the acquirer behind Homesick, Qalo, and a portfolio of scaled consumer brands, and built Uptime from scratch and sold it to Tiny, a publicly traded acquirer.
The thread through all of it is pattern recognition. Consumer commerce has a relatively small set of real problems, and most of them repeat. I've seen them at $5M and at $500M, inside Shopify's offices and inside the brands built on top of it. I don't advise from theory. I've been the founder, the operator, the merchant, and the builder, which is the whole argument for buying judgment that has actually lived your problem. More in what DTC operators know and the full background.
Every engagement starts with a free 30-minute scoping call. No pitch, no deck, a direct conversation about where you are, where you're going, and whether there's a fit. I'll tell you honestly when the answer isn't me. Want a faster read first? Run the DTC Growth Scorecard.
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