Art Saxby and the value of an empty chair

Art Saxby began on the financial side of the table. At Frito-Lay, he evaluated new-product plans while the marketers proposed what the company should try next. He could see the attraction of their seats. They were bringing product development, sales, operations and finance together around an opportunity outside the building. He moved into marketing. Years later, he would build a business around a seat that many companies had left empty.

The question was straightforward: what should a midsize company do when it needs an experienced marketing executive, but cannot justify employing one all week? Saxby had spent enough time inside large organizations to understand the expertise involved. He had also seen how much that expertise could change a smaller business. Chief Outsiders, founded in 2009, was his attempt to make the arithmetic work.

The numbers came first

His education offered few clues that he would end up selling marketing leadership. He earned a bachelor’s degree in finance at the University of Southern California and an MBA in finance at Southern Methodist University. Early work included aerospace and defense, followed by financial analysis and planning. The spreadsheet was familiar territory.

That background helps explain his approach to marketing. A new offering has consequences for production, distribution, pricing and profit. Someone has to connect the customer’s reasons for buying with the company’s reasons for existing. Saxby’s career suggests that he found the connecting work more interesting than remaining within a single department’s boundaries.

Frito-Lay led to Kellogg’s, then Coca-Cola, then Compaq. These were different classrooms: packaged food, beverages and technology. The recurring assignment was to understand an opportunity and organize people around it. A finance education proved portable. His later turnaround roles would draw on that experience across industries.

Snacks, sugar and the customer outside

At Coca-Cola, Saxby worked on the repositioning of Hi-C. At Kellogg’s, his work included the introduction of Rice Krispies Treats. Consumer brands supplied an education in what people actually choose, a useful corrective to what companies wish they would choose. A recognizable name on a package still has to earn its place in a shopping basket.

He later became vice president of marketing at Imperial Sugar, joining its turnaround effort in the early 2000s. Hines Horticulture followed, where his responsibilities included corporate development, sales and marketing. At Hines, he helped shift attention toward customer-focused supply-chain management and introduced a product profitability system using activity-based costing.

Those assignments made the relationship between marketing and operations concrete. A company can describe itself by what it produces. Its customers may judge it by reliability, convenience or the economics of doing business together. Changing that description inside an organization can require changes well beyond the advertising budget. Saxby had found work that gave his financial and marketing experience something to say to each other.

Nine executives and a recession

When Chief Outsiders started in 2009, businesses were hardly short of problems demanding immediate attention. Selling an investment in growth required a conversation about what a CEO could realistically do next. The firm placed experienced marketing leaders with midsize businesses on a short-term basis, giving those companies access to judgment they could not afford to hire full time.

By October 2010, it had nine consultants working from Houston, Austin and Atlanta. Saxby recruited people who already had vice president titles on their résumés. The experience came first; the arrangement changed how a client could buy it. Most projects ran for six to twelve months, with fees that included a reward for results.

“We’re here to take a CEO’s vision and turn it into reality.”

Art Saxby

The proposition had a useful specificity. A CEO might know the destination while lacking someone who could organize the route. A seasoned executive could join the leadership team for the stretch that required that experience. The company did not have to turn every difficult transition into a permanent position.

Three gears, in working order

Saxby and his longtime business partner Pete Hayes gave their approach a book-length treatment in 2016. The Growth Gears: Using a Market-Based Framework to Drive Business Success connects insight, strategy and execution. Its central concern is familiar to anyone who has watched a well-run company struggle to find its next customer: competence inside the business does not automatically reveal the opportunity outside it.

The framework asks leaders to examine the market before deciding where to compete and how to deliver. It also supplies a way to discuss the work across departments. A strategy has to reach the people responsible for carrying it out. Otherwise, the elegant plan and the actual company can go about their separate afternoons.

In a 2015 essay, Saxby compared copying a successful company’s marketing tools to buying a shiny bumper because the winning race car had one. The joke makes the diagnosis easy to remember. You can buy a visible accessory without buying the reasoning that made it useful. Marketing has plenty of accessories, and a generous supply of people selling the latest one.

His prescription starts earlier: examine what customers need, decide which opportunity fits the business, then direct the work accordingly. Sometimes that might mean a different tool. Sometimes it means changing the offering or the sales team’s priorities. The framework gives a leader permission to investigate before commissioning another campaign.

A firm full of people with opinions

An executive services business has its own organizational puzzle. The people clients want are experienced enough to have strong views. Bringing them together requires room for disagreement without turning every conversation into a contest of résumés. Saxby has described learning from colleagues as a relief from having to supply every answer himself.

“It is incredibly liberating when you no longer have to be the smartest person in the room.”

Art Saxby

There is a personal history of movement behind the preference for fresh perspectives. His father moved the family from Chicago to Switzerland when Saxby was six months old. Later came more crossings of the Atlantic. He credits his father with persistence and humor. He also enjoys travel and cycling. On one New York trip with Hayes and their wives, an evening at Rock of Ages had him laughing and singing along. Executive decorum apparently survived the interval.

The discipline of choosing a boundary

In 2019, Chief Outsiders appeared among Forbes’ Small Giants. At that point, its network included 65 chief marketing officers for hire. They could choose how many projects to take on and kept between 50% and 85% of what clients paid. A long-term incentive plan also offered a route to equity.

Saxby resisted extending the model into chief financial, information or technology officer services. The reason was focus: stay close to the expertise the firm understood and the work where it believed it could offer value. For a business organized around growth, choosing a boundary was a consequential decision. Every adjacent service could look like an opportunity; each also asked the organization to become good at something else.

By August 2022, Chief Outsiders had more than 100 fractional marketing officers and had served over 1,400 businesses. By a November 2024 interview, the team exceeded 130 marketing and sales executives. Those dated snapshots show the model finding a wider audience. They also raise the practical question of how to support more executives without making every engagement depend on starting over.

Putting the method inside the machinery

In March 2025, Chief Outsiders announced the acquisition of Jauntboards, a technology company working on sales and marketing intelligence and collaboration. Jeff Loeb became general manager of its GrowthGears OS division. A firm built around executive experience was investing in software to organize more of the work around that experience.

The distinction matters for understanding Saxby’s next chapter. An executive brings knowledge particular to a situation. Information still has to be collected, decisions recorded and work coordinated. Software gives those recurring tasks a shared place. The intended benefit of the AI-enabled platform is faster progress and greater visibility into engagements; that remains a proposition to deliver on with each client.

Team Outsiders adds implementation resources alongside the fractional executives. The combination addresses what happens after the leadership team agrees on a direction. Websites, customer systems, content and other execution work need people and continuity. A plan becomes more useful when the company can keep operating it after the original executive’s involvement decreases.

Another chair at his own table

Effective July 1, 2026, Dawn Werry became president of Chief Outsiders. Saxby remained CEO, concentrating on strategic vision and long-term direction. Werry, who had joined the firm eleven years earlier and most recently served as chief revenue officer, took responsibility for making its integrated approach work across the organization.

Saxby’s stated ambition now centers on giving clients a measurable, repeatable growth capability they can sustain. His own company faces the corresponding management task: bring its executives, implementation resources, method and software together consistently. The appointment puts another experienced leader beside the founder to do that work.

The financial planner who once watched marketers set things in motion has spent years rearranging who gets access to that experience. He began with companies that needed a person in the room. His current work asks what that person can help them leave behind: better decisions, an organization able to act on them, and a way to keep going.