Frequently Asked Questions

It's a group of creative specialists — strategy, brand, design, video, content, and more — that you retain part-time through one ongoing partnership, instead of hiring each role in-house. You get access to the whole bench and use the slice of each discipline your business actually needs that month. One contract, one system, one point of contact, several skill sets.

Six: Brand & Story, Creative Direction, Video & Post, Learning & Training, AI & Systems, and Publishing & Media. You don't use all six every month — you draw on whichever the work calls for, and the mix shifts as your priorities do.

A freelancer gives you one person's hands and leaves you to manage the brief, the quality, and the calendar — and to hold the brand together across everyone you've hired. A retained team is coordinated for you, spans several disciplines, and runs on one system, so nobody re-learns your brand every time and the pieces actually fit together.

Subscription design services are fast and cheap for pure design output, and honest about being exactly that — design. They execute requests; they don't set strategy, own your narrative, or manage a production pipeline. A retained team is the step up when you need thinking and direction, not just assets.

One hire gives you one deep skill set and full dedication — the right move when you have steady, full-time work in a single discipline. But it can't span disciplines, the recruitment risk is real, and the fully-loaded cost is high. A retained team covers several disciplines for less than the cost of one mid-level hire, and there's no recruitment gamble.

No. You get one point of contact, and the team coordinates itself behind that. The whole point is to take work off your plate — not to hand you five freelancers to wrangle.

No — we're built to work alongside the people you already have. The idea is to scale your creative capability before you scale headcount: give your existing person specialists to hand work to, so they aren't quietly turned into five people. We complement your team. We don't compete with it.

Retainers start at $3,000 per month (€2,700 in the EU). That's less than half the fully-loaded monthly cost of a single mid/senior hire — who'd give you one discipline, where the retainer gives you several.

The exact figure depends on how many disciplines are in play, your monthly volume, and how much is strategy versus pure execution. We don't run bundled tiers. Every Stay Lit retainer is scoped to what your work actually needs, not a package on a pricing page.

The first month isn't about volume. It's about foundation.

We dig into the real problem underneath your brief, immerse ourselves in your brand, audit what already exists, and agree together where the retainer's attention goes first. That upfront work is why every month after it moves faster — and why we never feel like a freelancer who's still trying to figure out who you are three months in.

Yes, after the initial three month trial.

Stay Lit retainers open with a three-month minimum, paid upfront because real systems take longer than a month to prove out, and we'd rather commit to doing the work properly than sell you a trial you'll cancel before it starts working.

After that minimum, you're free to leave anytime. Send written notice before your next payment period starts, and the retainer ends there — nothing further owed. Notice after a new period has already begun means that period is payable in full. Once we've confirmed your cancellation in writing, it's done.

No hostage situations. Just terms you can read before you sign, not after.

Whatever the agreement says — nothing hidden, nothing assumed.

Ownership of what we build together — frameworks, IP architecture, creative materials, the words themselves — is defined in your specific service agreement, in plain terms, before work begins. If you want to own the work outright, say so and we'll write it in.

If ownership isn't specified anywhere, Dutch law has a default position, and it may not be the one you'd assume. We'd rather tell you that now than have you find out later.

Yes. Every Stay Lit retainer opens with a three-month minimum, paid in full upfront.

Why upfront? Because a system that actually holds up takes longer than thirty days to build, and neither of us learns anything from a one-month fling. After the three months, it's month-to-month by default — or we lock in a longer term if that works better for you — cancel with notice before your next payment cycle, as above, and you're free to go.

That three-month fee isn't refundable for time you don't use, and payment for each agreed upon period is due upfront.

Because a retainer isn't a light switch. It doesn't come on for the pitch and go dark the second the invoice clears.

Stay Lit is our name for the version where the work stays warm between projects — where the people who already understand your brand are still in the room next month, and the month after that. You're not re-explaining yourself to a new freelancer every quarter. You're not letting the story cool off and rebuilding it from scratch every time you need something.

Plus, it adds a bit of fun.