Today we’d like to introduce you to Charlie Warden.
Hi Charlie, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
I’ve always been (or at least felt) a bit different, never fitting perfectly into any one box. At the time I viewed that as a weakness. It took years to realize it was actually a gift: I could connect people, and I could speak the many “languages” of business and relationships. I’ve always loved design work and have been the lead designer on several go-to-market brand launches, though I’m certainly not classically trained. At the same time, I’ve had to learn how to manage a P&L, scale operations, and even wear the HR hat across my entrepreneurial roles. Not fitting in one box meant I could move between all of them.
I’ve wanted to build something of my own for as long as I can remember. I launched my first business at 19 and learned the basics. For example, how to send an invoice, how not to be scared of pricing myself fairly, how to sit in a room with seasoned execs and command attention (even though I certainly hadn’t earned any real authority yet). I co-founded a startup at 22, raised money, built a small team, made hundreds of mistakes, and found myself deeply depressed and insecure after we failed to reach traction.
After some time reflecting I realized A) how lucky I was to have experienced such challenges at such an early age, and B) that I could help other founders and business owners in a much more meaningful way now that I had these scars. I also knew I needed to spend time learning from other owners for a while before jumping back in the deep end. So going on to work underneath owners and founders was the perfect progression for me.
I spent the years that followed helping other startup founders and business owners figure out their brand, marketing, sales, and go-to-market strategy. In 2020, I was part of the team that launched House of Revenue, a Denver-based fractional CRO firm helping businesses scale beyond $1–5M in revenue by building a holistic revenue engine. After House of Revenue sold and I moved on in late 2022, I helped build several more ventures including an AI-native SaaS platform and a privately backed telecom business I incubated and launched as the resident entrepreneur.
But the whole time, I carried a vision for what I called “House of Revenue 2.0” — a strategic management consultancy blended with a startup studio, combining our love for the startup world with proven experience solving real business challenges. I wanted to build something that was my vision, alongside great people, focused on long-term value creation. We officially launched Warden Strategy last year, and we’ve loved shaping it into Denver’s premier growth consultancy. I’m building it alongside my Managing Director, long-time associate, and friend, Colin Barnard.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Definitely not (although I want to caution that we are extremely blessed and thankful for our lives here in the US, as it could be much worse and many people struggle much more than we could understand). My wife and I have had our share of “hope we can make rent next month” moments, and she’s been a tremendously patient partner given the unconventional path my career has taken. In the startup world, I’ve found myself in the wrong culture (typically philosophically misaligned) more than once. What I’ve learned is that surrounding yourself with the right human beings matters more than any perceived upside or monetary gain an opportunity presents.
The most challenging part of building Warden Strategy has been maintaining strict focus on taking on the right partners, investments, and clients. Everyone tells businesses they need to say no more often. Building a consultancy for the second time, we’re doing our best to actually take that to heart. If there’s a perfect business fit on paper, but we don’t think there’s a good human connection, we’ll say no. Alternatively, if something isn’t the best fit on paper, but we really enjoy the human connection, we will find a way to partner.
The other challenge is the stage of life we’re in. My wife and I welcomed our first daughter into the world in August 2024, and we’re now expecting our second. The easy path would have been a W2 role with a steady paycheck and benefits. But I wanted to set an example for my daughter — of being fearless, different, ambitious, and maybe even a little reckless.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Warden Strategy?
Warden Strategy provides growth strategy built for businesses that are ready to evolve but don’t have the infrastructure or alignment to get there. We bring the strategic horsepower of a seasoned Chief Growth Officer and the tactical urgency of a founding team without the overhead of a full-time executive hire. In practice, that means we don’t hand over a deck and disappear. We embed with your team, build alongside your people, and stay accountable to the results.
What makes us truly unique is that we also incubate new concepts through Warden Studio, our venture-building arm. That means we bring startup hustle and resources into our consulting engagements, and battle-tested operating discipline back into the ventures we build.
Everything runs on our CGO Methodology, which treats growth as one connected system across five pillars: Brand, the strategic layer aligning your positioning, messaging, and identity; Marketing, the engine that builds visibility and earns trust before your sales team ever picks up the phone; Sales, the process and playbooks that turn good conversations into consistent closed revenue; Customer Success, the post-sale work that protects revenue and turns clients into your best source of new business; and Revenue Operations, the infrastructure connecting it all into one system that drives predictable revenue.
How can people work with you, collaborate with you or support you?
The easiest way to start is a conversation. If you’re a business owner thinking about what’s next — whether that’s reducing key-man risk, building a company that could sell someday, or finally getting a real growth engine in place — we’d love to talk. The same goes for operators looking to improve efficiency and anyone with an idea for how AI can solve a real business problem. You can find us at wardenstrategy.com or connect with me directly on LinkedIn.
For collaborators: we work closely with the advisors who surround business owners: exit planners, M&A advisors, wealth managers, attorneys, and CPAs. If your clients need a growth partner to build enterprise value before a transition, we’re built for exactly that. And through Warden Studio, we’re always open to conversations with founders, investors, and operators who want to build something new together.
As for support, it’s simple. Refer us to a business owner who’s ready to evolve, follow along with what we’re building, or just say hello at a local event! We’re proud to be part of Denver’s business community, and every introduction, review, and conversation helps us build something that gives back to this city.
Pricing:
- Every engagement is tailored to the business, so we don’t publish standard rates, but our model is simple: an embedded monthly retainer, scoped to the level of strategic and executional support your business needs.
- As a benchmark, working with Warden costs a fraction of hiring a full-time senior growth executive, while giving you a full methodology and a team behind it.
- We work with businesses at a range of sizes and stages, from established companies preparing for their next chapter to new ventures we build through Warden Studio, where partnerships are structured case by case.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.wardenstrategy.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/warden-strategy/
