You need a creative team.
You have the budget for one hire.
Sound Familiar?
Growing companies rarely need just another designer or marketer. They need several kinds of creative expertise — at different moments, on different work.
Neon Alchemy is a fractional creative team — you get the team without building the department. You tap the expertise the work calls for, without hiring, managing, or onboarding five different people.
One retainer. Multiple specialists. Built around what your business actually needs.
*One retainer, from $3,000 / €2,700 a month — less than half the cost of a single mid-level hire.
One retainer covers the set.
To do this properly in-house, you'd be hiring:
Brand & Story — a brand strategist to keep everything sounding like you
Creative Direction — someone to hold the visual and narrative standard
Video & Post — a producer and editor for content that ships on time
Learning & Training — instructional design when you need to teach, not just tell
AI & Systems — the workflows that let a small team move like a big one
Publishing & Media — turning one idea into a campaign, a podcast, a content system
You don't hire all six. You don't manage six freelancers. You use the right expertise when the work needs it — and it all runs on one system, with one team that already knows your brand.
Six roles. One of them, hired full-time, costs more than all of us. Here's the math.
The real math
One hire, or your whole team?
One in-house hire
$6,800–$8,200€5,800–€7,000
per month, fully loaded
≈ $82,000–$98,000 in year one≈ €70,000–€85,000 in year one
Salary + employer taxes + benefits + recruitment + equipment.
You get one skill set.
Retained creative team
From $3,000From €2,700
per month
Less than half the cost of one hire
- Brand & Story
- Creative Direction
- Video & Post
- Learning & Training
- AI & Systems
- Publishing & Media
You get the whole team.
Estimates from public salary data (BLS / market surveys) plus statutory employer costs. Figures vary by role and location. Updated Aug 2026.
Hiring one person gives you one person's capacity.
A Neon Alchemy retainer gives your company access to a multidisciplinary team, a shared creative system, and continuity from one project to the next.
No repeated onboarding. We learn your brand once and keep it.
No disconnected freelancers. One team, one standard, one point of contact.
No asking one employee to become an entire department.
We're built to work alongside your existing team — extending its capacity, not replacing the people you already trust.
Grow the work.
Not the workload.
Your people shouldn't have to become five different specialists just because the company is growing.
Scale your creative capability before you scale your headcount — and protect the team you already have from burning out on the way up.
Companies We’ve Worked With
IN
PRACTICE
“We are proud to partner with the organization best positioned to elevate our global market presence. Neon Alchemy’s creative expansion concepts have opened our eyes to the possibilities and limitless nature of the Marketing God Universe.”
Miquel Studios Inc., for SMJ LLC. - The Marketing God World
A small studio with a universe bigger than its capacity. Four formats, three timelines, one creator expected to hold all of it while also marketing it, branding it, and finishing it.
What we did: The world was already real. Miquel Studios had published the first book, produced the animated teaser, and written the animated series script. The problem was that every next step ran through one person.
So we built the architecture underneath it. Canon and world management. Script management. Editing and color grading. Branding and campaign planning. Then we stopped waiting for the ask and started bringing work to them: a completed live action teaser with a pilot script attached, a graphic novel prototype built from the original manuscript, and The Marketing God characters written into another client’s world as one shared universe.
They said yes to each of those. Every expansion is theirs, approved by them, owned by them. We built the pieces and carried the production weight.
Where it stands: Graphic novel in layout and assembly. Live action series and feature in development, written and produced by Neon Alchemy. Two worlds now operating as one.
The outcome: Miquel Studios kept full creative and IP control and stopped being the bottleneck in its own universe.
The Marketing God World is in the funding stage. Investor and partnership inquiries go to Simon@miquelinc.com
Entertainment Media Path Podcast
Studio partnership
A weekly show is not one job. It’s producing, editing, booking, publishing, and promoting, every seven days, forever. Most shows die in month three, not because the idea failed but because nobody built anything to hold it.
What we did: Designed the show as a system before recording anything. Format, segment structure, show clock, and a production rhythm the hosts could keep without rearranging their lives around it. Distribution planned up front rather than bolted on after launch.
The outcome: Season 1 produced and delivered on schedule, every week. Distribution expanded across platforms. Listenership growing, and growing in more places than it started. Season 1 recently ended and we are already receiving pitches for Season 2 guest spots.
FLUX-ID™ — our operating system for creative work.
Six phases that make output repeatable instead of lucky:
Frame — get clear on the real problem, not the one in the brief
Lab — explore and test directions before committing
Unitize — break the work into shippable pieces
Execute — produce to standard, on schedule
Integrate — fit each piece into the wider brand and pipeline
Deepen — every project compounds into the next
Every campaign builds on the last.
You're not buying disposable output — you're building a creative asset that grows.
Not sure if a retainer fits your stage?
That's exactly what the fit call is for.
You tell us where the work is piling up. We tell you the truth about whether we can help — and roughly what it would cost. No slide deck.
Great Work Doesn’t Happen By Accident.
It Happens By Design.