Frequently asked questions

BERMO is the talent and growth marketplace for founder-led companies. It finds what is actually stalling your revenue with a gap scan, then deploys the exact specialist or permanent hire who fixes it. One roof for the diagnosis, the growth work, and the recruiting, so you are not stitching together agencies, freelancers, and a recruiter on your own.

Founder-led companies from pre-revenue to about $5M, where the founder is still close to the work and growth has stalled, plateaued, or is not converting. If you are past the scrappy stage but not big enough for a full in-house growth team, BERMO is built for you.

Lexi Bermingham (Alexandra Bermingham), a growth and talent leader with 12+ years across growth, partnerships, and talent strategy in 16+ industries, formerly AVP Director of Recruiting at Robert Half. She built BERMO to give founders the senior-level standard without the agency overhead.

The BERMO Gap Scan is a free buyer-level growth diagnostic that identifies the highest-impact gap most likely to be stalling growth or costing revenue. It reads your public-facing business the way a buyer does, finds where the experience stops translating into action, and gives you a blueprint you own. It is designed to help you understand what to fix before you spend money on another agency, hire, redesign, campaign, or piece of software.

No. A typical website audit may focus on design, SEO, technical performance, or a long list of individual issues. The BERMO Gap Scan looks at the broader buyer experience. It evaluates whether your positioning, messaging, offer, trust signals, website, and path to action give buyers what they need to move forward. The purpose is not to produce the longest list of problems. It is to identify the gap that matters most.

The Gap Scan reviews the public-facing parts of your business that influence buyer understanding and action, including:

• Positioning and differentiation
• Messaging and offer clarity
• Website experience
• Buyer trust
• Conversion paths
• Competitive context
• How clearly the business communicates its value

The scan prioritizes the highest-impact gap rather than treating every observation as equally urgent.

Usually, it is not because you are not doing enough. It is because the business is solving the wrong problem first. Common examples include hiring a salesperson before fixing the offer, redesigning a website before fixing the message, producing more content without a clear position, or using AI to increase output without addressing the underlying buyer disconnect. The Gap Scan identifies the most likely cause before more time and money go toward the symptom.

Often it is a translation gap: your product is good, but your site, messaging, or pipeline does not tell the story a buyer needs to hear to act. The gap scan reads your site as a buyer and points to the specific break, whether that is positioning, the website, the offer, or how leads are handled.

Most founders hire a salesperson to fix a problem a salesperson cannot fix. If your messaging, site, or offer is not converting the traffic you already have, a new rep inherits the same leak. The gap scan tells you whether you need a person, a system, or a message fixed first, so you do not pay for the wrong hire.

An agency sells you retained hours and a deck. BERMO sells you an outcome and the exact specialist matched to a named gap, with no long retainer and no margin skimmed off a junior doing the work. You own the result, and you only deploy what the diagnosis says you need.

Those are talent directories: you still have to diagnose your own problem, scope the work, and pick the right person, and reliability is left to whoever you happen to pick. BERMO does the diagnosis first, then deploys a specialist partner for that specific gap and delivers it as an outcome. Every partner is vetted against BERMO standards and deployed under BERMO as an employed partner, not a freelancer you manage, and BERMO owns quality end to end so it never lapses. You are buying a solved problem under one accountable roof, not a search result.

They are established companies, startups, and senior experts with backed reputations and decades of experience, not junior freelancers. Every one goes through BERMO's vetting: work history verified, references checked, live work reviewed, and a paid trial engagement before they ever touch client work. They are then deployed under BERMO as employed partners and held to BERMO's standards and works under BERMO as an employed partner, held to the same standard on every engagement so quality never lapses. Many bring enterprise track records, from top-5 global technology companies and top-5 CRM platforms to global hospitality, global ecommerce, and Fortune 500 companies, alongside founding and running their own startups. BERMO stays the single point of accountability from diagnosis to delivery.

Yes. The partner deployed on your work stays on it through the engagement, with BERMO managing the relationship and continuity. If anything ever changes, BERMO transitions the work seamlessly, because delivery is owned by BERMO, not by any one individual.

Maybe, but not always, and not first. A fractional executive is the right answer when you have a clear strategy and need senior execution capacity. If you are still unsure what is breaking, start with the gap scan: it tells you whether you need a strategist, a specialist, a system, or a permanent hire before you commit to a retainer.

No. You buy exactly what the gap calls for, one specialist or a small pod, and scale up only if the work warrants it. Many founders start with a single solution tied to the one gap the scan surfaces.

The initial gap scan is free, and we run it before any project begins. The deeper scan can be done as a standalone engagement or comes included in our initial package rates. From there you pay per outcome, tied to the specific work, never for capacity you do not use. Email lexi@bermoco.com or book a call for specifics.

Yes. BERMO deploys its specialist partners to build the foundation, then trains your in-house team, or places a permanent hire, to take over and own the work long term. Permanent placement is a service, led by a talent leader with 12+ years in executive and high-growth recruiting, with 30% faster time-to-fill and 98% long-term retention. It is a capability, not the headline. See the recruiting page.

BERMO recruiting is for the seat you want filled for good. It is senior-led, full-cycle, and reference-checked, with role clarity set before you meet anyone, so the person stays and performs. For project work or capacity, the growth store and specialist network cover that side.

BERMO Collective is a curated network where vetted freelancers and small teams get matched to real, ready clients, without cold pitching or a percentage skimmed off your rate. Apply on the for specialists page.

AI is leverage, not the operator. BERMO uses AI to read your public site at a buyer's level, surface signals fast, and cut the noise, then a human makes the call and owns the work. The goal is AI pointed at the right problem, not AI run loose on the surface.

Delivery is always met within the confirmed timeframe of the agreement. Work runs as one project or phased, with deadlines set before the project starts, so you know exactly when each piece lands. The free gap scan itself is immediate.