NNick Farnborough
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About Nick

I've never stayed in one lane. That's been the whole point.

Nearly two decades, a dozen industries, three seven-figure businesses. I've won at poker tables, on soccer pitches, and in boardrooms, and learned that the game keeps changing, but reading it fast never goes out of style.

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Fractional CMOMulti-venture builderToronto, Canada
Nick Farnborough
Operating since 2008Marketing · ventures · AI
18years
The edge

Specialists go deep in one world. I've gone wide across many, and the patterns that win in one almost always unlock the next.

Agile by default

I don't arrive with a fixed playbook to force onto your business. I read the situation first, then build the angle that actually fits, the way you do when the stakes are real and the table keeps changing.

Range is the asset

Car care, pro sports, medtech, healthcare, fashion, construction, software. Working across that many worlds means I've seen what transfers, and I bring the move from one industry that nobody in yours has tried yet.

Built, not just advised

Three seven-figure businesses and $12M+ generated. I've made the bets with my own money on the line, so the strategy I hand you has been tested somewhere real, not just in a slide.

The story

Five chapters, one through-line.

Every chapter looked like a hard left turn. Looking back, each one was teaching the same lesson, adapt fast, find the sharpest version, and own the result.

01
Where it started

The poker years

Before any of the businesses, there were the tables. Poker taught me to make decisions under pressure with incomplete information, to read people, size up risk, and stay calm when the money's moving. It's still the most useful business education I ever paid for.

Risk & disciplineReading the room
02
Leadership, the long game

On the touchline

Years coaching soccer taught me the other half: you don't win alone, and you don't win overnight. Developing players, building teams, and earning trust over a full season is the same craft as leading a marketing function, just with worse weather.

Sport & coachingTeam-building
03
Marketing across industries

Building Clavis Social

With Sonja Missio, I co-founded a marketing agency and put the cross-industry theory to the test, winning for a car-care brand, a pro soccer league, a medical-AI company, a hospital foundation, and a footwear designer, often in the same week. Different worlds, same job: find the angle, make them impossible to ignore.

AutoglymCanadian Premier LeagueNuraLogixSinai Health
04
The operator

Craft & Key and a portfolio of ventures

Strategy means more when you've had to run the business behind it. From a contracting company to software tools to a speaking practice, I've built and operated across categories, learning where plans meet payroll, and how to scale something back to its best part instead of walking away.

Craft & KeyEmailormeetingKeynotes
05
The chapter I'm writing now

Building with AI

The newest world is the one moving fastest. I'm using AI to give small teams the leverage of much bigger ones, wiring up the automation and tooling that lets a handful of people ship like a department. Same instinct as always: get there early, learn it deeply, put it to work.

AI & automationOperator-led
The range

Worlds I've worked in.

A partial map. The common thread isn't the industry, it's that each one needed someone who could learn it fast and find the opening.

Construction

Craft & Key · Construction Specifications Canada · GTA Outdoors · Mead Carpentry · Toronto Decks and Fences

Sports & entertainment

Canadian Premier League · THPFC · Toronto Wolfpack · Game Plan · Run It Once · Allstate Soccer Show

Health & medtech

NuraLogix · Sinai Health · Lung Health · Axonics · Audacity Health

Nonprofit

Community Solutions · GREEN Program · Doing Good Digital · Wildlife Preservation Canada · Conservation Florida

Automotive

Autoglym · Silverwax

Ecommerce

Wearwell · Tanya Heath · Bonjibon · Eric Sana · Plank and Pin
What stays constant

The worlds change. These don't.

Stay agile

The angle matters more than the playbook. I'd rather read the situation and build the right move than run the same one I ran last time.

Find the sharpest version

When something isn't working, I scale it back to its best part rather than shutting it down. There's almost always a stronger, smaller idea hiding inside the bloated one.

Build the next chapter early

I start the next thing while the current one is still running. It's why the turns never felt like gambles, there was always a foundation already in place.

Own the outcome

Advice is cheap and everywhere. I'd rather be measured on what actually happened, the number, the result, the thing that shipped.

Nick Farnborough with Sonja Missio
Not a solo act

The best chapters were written with other people.

I co-founded Clavis Social with Sonja Missio, and most of what I'm proud of came from building alongside sharp people rather than going it alone. Agility isn't the same as doing everything yourself; it's knowing what to own, who to trust, and when to bring in someone better than you.

That's how I work with clients, too. I lead, I build, and I surround the work with the right people, so the function keeps running whether I'm in the room or not.

How I work
0
years operating, since 2008
$12M+
in revenue generated
3
seven-figure businesses built
0
industries and counting

Let's write the next chapter.

If you've got an ambitious company and a marketing problem that needs an operator, not another opinion, let's talk. One or two fractional seats at a time.

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