Transcript:

00:00

In this episode, I’m gonna share with you the secret to making it long-term as a fractional CMO.  And let me tell you, the answer is fun. All right, let’s go.  Marketers of the world, why do we work hard to solve small problems?  Why do we reinvent ourselves and our clients over and over?  And why are we giving away marketing strategy for free?  With advancements in AI, we’re all seeing the marketing department shrink from the bottom up.

00:27

and companies need you to serve them as their fractional chief marketing officer.  It’s time to solve bigger problems and bring home a bigger paycheck.  It’s time to create the lifestyle we deserve and to make a greater impact.  This is the Fractional CMO Show and I’m Casey Stanton.  Join me as we explore this growing industry and learn to solve bigger problems as marketing leaders.  The Fractional CMO Show is sponsored by  CMOX.

00:57

the number one company to teach you how to attract, convert and serve high paying fractional CMO clients  on your terms.  Hey, it’s Casey. So I was just on Facebook, just doing the thing, know, wasting time.  And  I saw an image  of Jason Flatlin with Jeff Walker. If you don’t know these guys, Jason Flatlin is ah

01:21

Kind of the webinar guy. I mean, he’s the killer of webinars these days. He’s making the best webinars. He’s very successful  in scripting webinars. If you know Alex Hermosius work with his launches of the em $100 million book series, at least the second launch,  I guess I don’t know this is a fact, but it was very heavily influenced by flatlin if not his approach directly. flatlin is just a real killer in that.  And he posted an image with Jeff Walker.

01:47

And who’s Jeff Walker? Jeff Walker is the founder of product launch formula.  He’s out of Colorado. And he’s just a he’s just a guy who’s been in the game a long time. In the game. What’s the game the game of business the game of marketing? He’s just been playing the game for a long time.  And  I sat down with Jeff Walker. Recently.  It wasn’t that recent is like a year and a half ago, maybe two years ago.  And uh he and I got some time just to spend together.  We’re at an event together and and uh

02:17

Everyone was inside the event and he was not and I just went sat with him and we just chatted and uh the big question I had for Jeff was just like, dude, how’d you do it for so long without really doing something different, right? He’s been the product launch formula guy for forever since his first product launch. And then he kind of packaged up how to do launches. And now he teaches launches. He’s just been doing it forever. Like that’s his life. That’s what he does. When you think of Jeff Walker, if you know him, you think of product launch formula.

02:47

You might think of his uh platinum uh mastermind, which,  okay, that makes sense. But like the people in that mastermind,  the core of what they do is product launches based on Jeff’s work. Jeff is the launch guy. He just shows up and he’s the launch guy.

03:04

There’s value in that. Jeff hasn’t been reinventing himself. We can look at all these other marketers. You know who they are.  Every three months, six months, they change what they’re selling and they’re doing something new. uh We see this with people in our lives.  People who are like, hey, I’m gonna be a doctor. And then they study for med school and then they write everything at the acceptance letter. They’re like, ah, I’m not gonna do it. I’m gonna be a lawyer. Then they study for law school and then,  or they’re gonna start a job. They buy the domain, they build a website and they don’t do the sale. And then they like, let it fall.  There’s just these people that keep inventing.

03:33

and then letting it go, trying and then letting it go.  And  it’s exhausting, I’m sure for them. It’s probably really exhausting for their spouses.  And it’s kind of like a whiplash for the customers.  I mean, I can think of a marketer who constantly comes out with new stuff all the time. Like how much time is he spending creating new? And how much is he telling himself, this is the thing that finally will give me the money and freedom I want. And if he just was like steady and just did one thing consistently for years, for decades,

04:03

and was far better than everyone else. Like that’s all the money he would need. But instead, he’s just like jumping around. So how do you stay in one place, but get better? That’s the game here. So the secret to making it as a fractional CMO is step one, commit. Like you have to commit if you’re listening to this, I want you to commit to yourself, I’m going to be a fractional CMO,  or I’m a fractional CMO, and nothing’s going to change my mind. Like I’m just here. Like that’s so important to commit  one.  And then after you commit,

04:32

The game is to outwork everybody else.

04:37

I could,  when I was in my twenties, man, I could outwork everybody. I could work 12 hours a day, 13 hours a day.  I could do whatever I needed to do. I could just grind it out.  Then I got married.  Then I had kids. Then I got an old house that has problems that we have to fix. You know, I’ve got someone coming in two weeks to replace our boiler.  Now I don’t have the time.

05:03

but I still have the commitment and my commitment for exceeds the commitment of other people in this space, I think, right? Maybe other people are as committed as me, I don’t know, but you can’t be more committed, right? It’s binary. I’m committed and I’m not changing  or  I don’t know, I’m kind of poor as like maybe I’m in, maybe I’m out. Some days I feel it, some days I don’t. If you’re just gonna work every day, you’re going to get better. But the missing piece, the third step of it is you have to have fun. And I said this at the beginning of the episode, the secret is fun. It is, it’s to have fun.

05:32

Let me tell you what it looks like to have fun.

05:36

what it looks like to have fun is to like enjoy marketing, like to just actually enjoy just to kind of be a nerd about it.  And there’s something that you enjoy. And it doesn’t matter to me what part of marketing it is. Maybe you like the data analytic person, you’re like, Whoa, I really love these types of uh how we collect data and how we can like put it in these uh repositories data lakes,  how we can pull data out of it, maybe you’re really into that the technical side of stuff. And  you like to talk about things like rudder stack or  Amazon s3 buckets or uh

06:06

Tableau like you live in that world and you want to understand that Other people you nerd out about messaging and you see a good ad and you’re like man. That just makes me feel away I love the messaging here. That’s it for me. Right? Like maybe that’s the way that you feel Others of you are really into ads like you just love the ad game You love kind of what’s changing and how met is changing stuff. Others really love the AI thing Others really love just helping their clients out

06:33

There’s like something that you love about what you do.  And if you can find a way to just play, I think you’re going to be successful. Just play. Where can you play? And to me, playtime is as important as build work to clients like client service time. I treat my play very seriously.  My desk will probably always be incredibly messy. I don’t love it, right? But it’s like where I am in life right now. I have like

07:02

toys and stuff to play with and things to learn from. You know, I’ve got this direct mail piece from Alex Formosy that he sent out. Five reasons you should come to the $100 million Money Models live launch event. This is a single page that he mailed QR code on it URL. It’s great. It’s great. It’s like a handwritten font on it. He like signed it with a sharpie. looks like there’s just so much good about this. I read something like this and I’m just like, Oh, I like that. That’s fun for me.

07:32

And then I take this idea and I say like, how do I play with it? um Let me tell you an example of playing, you like kind of surround yourself with the stuff that you like. And then you just like create derivatives of it for fun, not for profit for fun. And you know, this like you tell yourself, I’m not charging money for this. So um in the in the ham radio space, there’s this thing,  if you want to do remote Morse code to your radio, a flex radio, like I have,  I’ve got this little device, it’s called a

08:01

uh CTR to flex if you want to look it up.  And this guy Lin makes him his company’s linovations. And I didn’t really get it. Like I read the website, they didn’t get it because Lynn’s a technical guy. So one day I’m just like, hanging out and I’m like, I’m gonna write the dude  a sales page. I just wrote it. And I wrote a fun sales page that was kind of like fun and off the cuff. And it was just fun for me. And I was just playing and I sent it to him.  I didn’t hear back from him. I don’t know if he read it. I don’t know if he thought it was good or bad or whatever. I don’t care.

08:30

I’m having fun. I’m playing. Right? I’m just like, I’m just like  going outside and I’m painting  in uh like  I’m carving something out of snow. Right? I’m carving something out of ice. I’m painting on the sidewalk with chalk.  I’m just playing. I don’t know if that’s anything. Whatever. It doesn’t matter. I’m not even gonna look at it again. It was fun. It was playful. I’m enjoying it.

08:54

For some of you, you’re like into vibe coding. talked to one of our members yesterday and he was sharing some really cool stuff that he’s doing to vibe code.  And he built some apps and he’s like, these apps work. Now don’t know if the apps can get bigger than  he owns a couple of franchise locations of a larger franchise. He’s like,  they’re helping our franchise. I don’t know if they could help the other ones. I’m sure they could, but I have to hire a developer, yada, yada. But like, I don’t care about the utility of the app because I’m not in the game of building apps. I’m not in the game of writing winning ads.

09:23

but I’m in the game of playing and having fun and just like enjoying the work that I do because that’s going to keep me engaged. People who lose are the ones who have to grind and it’s not fun. Sure, you can be like unhinged and work for three weeks or something on a project just to get it out. When I think of like this book that I wrote, the second one,  Find Your CMO,  I just had to focus on it and it was like, it was hard to find the joy in the writing, to be honest with you. The concept is coming up the concepts.

09:53

those that was fun. But the actual like writing of the stuff and the transitions and  the formatting and all that stuff, like I lost the fun in it. Okay. If I’m going to lose the fun, but I have to do something, I want to make sure that I can play alongside of it. And this isn’t play outside of  work. This is play in work. This is play in the work that you do. So when it comes to like creating content, you know, if you ask me, Casey, like, how do I like

10:20

win clients and I say, well, you got to go talk to strangers, but then also you have to stay in touch with strangers. Here’s the secret. You might be a stranger to me and I’m staying in touch with you through a podcast. It’s a modality that I enjoy  and I have fun with it. I have fun making podcast episodes.

10:37

This becomes a fun creative outlet for me. Would longer form emails be better? I don’t know, maybe. Would social media content be better? I mean, it certainly would help if I did that, but that’s not fun for me. I don’t live in a world right now where I wanna like record stuff and make videos, like social media videos. I’m just not doing it right now. If that’s you and you’re like, I wanna do that, I’m the kind of person who can do that, I have an interesting lifestyle where that might be fun or I’m traveling or whatever, then by all means do it, play, have fun.

11:05

You don’t have to commit forever to make social media content. You can say, hey, for the next month, I’m going to play and just see what this is like.  And you give yourself the permission to play and to kind of announce it publicly that you’re playing and you’re having fun.  There’s a great, uh there’s a guy that I worked with in the past, Paul Culligan,  and he helps people with podcasts. And Paul’s approach is if you’re starting a podcast, just state that you’re starting a season, season one, then it has some number of episodes. It’s a 10 episode series.

11:35

You got 10 EPS to make. At the end of those 10 episodes,  you just  sit back and relax and say, did I like it? Did I not like it? Am I going to do 10 more EPS? Should I just keep going? Should I stop? Should I rethink how I do this? Whatever. But it’s like commit for the time, kind of play. It doesn’t have to be all that serious and then see what happens. I want to work with people that find a sense of play and fun in their work. And you’re going to do that if there are little watering holes in your day where you get to play.

12:06

So where is it for you?  I’ve been playing a lot with like vibe coding.  I think that’s cool. um I really love copywriting.  I kind of have uh this virus where I really like marketing. I just like a lot of stuff about marketing. um And I just want to play. I just want to get into it and play and find new things to do.  One way that you can play is with pricing. We had a member who um wanted to sell something at 8K.

12:34

and thought that she was going to get pushed down like negotiated by the client. They felt like they were the kind of client that was going to negotiate. So I said, well, you should probably pitch him at 10 and they can walk you to eight. So she does it. And then she messages back like the next day and says, I closed him at 10. Right? It’s kind of a game. That’s fun. That’s playing, right? That’s like, ah, 8000. I’m going to charge 10. Boom, she gets 10. And then what does she do the next week? She messages and says, I just closed one for 15. It’s playful.

13:02

fun. It’s exciting. It’s a cool place to be. It’s good energy. You know, it’s just like you’re not looking for just boring justification that I sold this one at eight. So therefore the next one needs to be at eight, five, or 9000 a month or 10,000 or whatever. It’s just like, let’s have a game. Let’s play. I just recently shared with our CMOs like how you can price and there’s like different ways to price but the way that I like to price is I like to have fun. Just like choose something I want in life. Oh, I want this thing.  I have uh

13:32

uh an ancient Roman carving of a figure’s head. And I have it uh just  outside of camera view. It’s like this old kind of artifact. It’s cool. I don’t know. I think it’s a southern note could be the museum. And one day I wanted that. I was like, oh, something like that would be cool. Let me find something. Oh, cool. All right, the next client I sell, I’m going to charge my normal fee plus whatever this thing would cost me. But that I’ll just make that an ongoing monthly fee. Just having fun. So now I have this as like an amulet like as a

14:01

as a reminder of what I’ve done. You need to do stuff like that. You need to have fun. You need to make this kind of a uh joyful experience for you.  And you got to find where your fun is. And I’m not here to tell you that you have to have fun in a certain way. I was in Newport Beach uh a year ago, like a year ago this week.  And uh I remember there’s this placard on a building that was all about that the address was 2600.

14:31

And uh just like the hacker quarterly, if anyone knows that,  and that said above it, something along the lines of,  like, don’t interrogate your pleasures. Like, if you enjoy it, just enjoy it, go and play have fun. Don’t be like, why do I enjoy this stuff? What is it about the, the tension of it that creates the dopamine? Like, don’t play that game. Just, just find the joyful thing that it is for you. For some of you, it’s probably like design. Like you’re a nerd for design. oh

14:59

you’re a nerd for video stuff, audio quality, I don’t care. It doesn’t matter where you nerd out. It matters that you do nerd out that you get to play and have fun. And if you don’t have a joy in the work that you do find it, find that corner of marketing that’s interesting or fun for you. Because I think of myself as someone who’s in this game committed for the long haul, I’m to be a fractional CMO forever. But I’m going to have more and more fun and

15:27

the problems I’m going to solve are going to get bigger and bigger, my rewards are going to get bigger and bigger.  And the fun I’m going to have is going to get bigger and bigger. That’s all. And like it’s a, I think it’s a real way to play this game.  I think of entrepreneurs who create rules that let them lose. I want you to remember that you decided to be a fractional CMO is you inventing a game. It’s like you inventing a literal board game that you’re going to play every day for the maybe the rest of your life, right?

15:55

And you write rules in rule number one, I have to work so hard. It hurts me. I have to charge money in a way that feels kind of weird and icky.  I have to do certain things and sometimes implement for clients and I have to feel bad about it. Like, why would you write those rules?  Just change the rules of the game. Just like  reinvent them.  You  I like this, this, this idea of like,  have the right to reinvent who I am.

16:25

at any moment in my life. In the middle of an argument with my wife, I can say, wait one second, I’m just changing who I am. I’m not that person anymore. I’m this person. I’m sorry, I was wrong. I see that now. Right? Like I can move past the shell of who I was. Benjamin Hardy in his book, Personality Isn’t Permanent, goes on to say that the personality that you think you had in like high school, you just aren’t that person anymore. It really isn’t a permanent thing.

16:51

You might believe that it’s similar, but it really isn’t like you’ve changed dramatically. So how have you changed? And also like, why don’t you just choose who you’re going to be and just kind of go be that person?  It’s a cool book to read. I love all of Ben’s books. I can’t think of any I don’t like. So  certainly like scaling.com or scaling, the science of scaling is doing  it’s great. That said, you got to play, you got to find a place to play. uh In our boardroom,  WhatsApp.

17:19

which has been blowing up today. We’ve had like 60 messages. It’s been a crazy day. uh Our one of our members was going to an event and she was at an uh she was somewhere and there was an event happening and she kind of caught wind of it and was like, I go or not? Like I was gonna go hang out in town, but there’s an event happening at the hotel. I go? I was like, Yeah, you should go.  Any words of encouragement or words of advice? sick? Yeah, here’s here’s the game I play. I’ve never said anyone else. I never told anyone else this game.  I’m just curious. I’d like to meet people have fun.

17:50

But if you like can’t find it, you’re bored, you’re tired, whatever, just see if the person has a gold tooth. Just, just talk to them and get them to open their mouth enough to see if they have a gold tooth.  It’s a stupid game, right? But like, go play it. It’s kind of a fun one. You can just like go around and talk to people and just kind of see where the conversation goes and who has a gold tooth enough. I don’t know. It’s a stupid game. It’s fun. It makes me have fun. It’s kind of like a little joke I have for myself. Like, Ooh, this is a fun one. It’s that kind of uh thing.

18:20

No one wants to talk to someone who’s not having fun. No one wants to talk to someone who’s like not a nerd on this stuff.  I reached out to someone today to hire them on Upwork. And he was just like, yeah, send this over. And then like very formally, like, I’ll need two hours to review it and blah, blah, blah, blah. That’s like, dude, it doesn’t seem like this is fun for you. So I just like withdrew my offer to him and I found someone else that’s like way more fun, upbeat, excited to work together. I want to work with that person.  People want to work with you when you’re having fun.

18:49

Let me go beyond that though. Having fun isn’t just about having fun. Having fun is about playing to find the innovation. Okay, so hear me out.  I picked up some, um they’re from a company called Lilligo and they are the 2.13 inch E Ink screens. And they’re these like little screens like a Kindle, like that E Ink. You know how like you can turn it off but you can still read everything on a Kindle.  It’s that technology on a little board that you can program.

19:18

And I picked him up and I was like, I got some ideas for this. So I vibe coded some stuff. I didn’t know what I was doing. It’s just like a couple hours of just like punching the keyboard and getting code and trying to install it and watching YouTube videos and whatever. Never have done it before. I’d never pushed a sketch through the Arduino app onto the hardware before. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, it doesn’t matter. But it was the first time for me. So I’m like playing and playing and playing and I get something that works. I was like, cool. And then I was like, oh, I wanted to do something else with it. And I get that to work. And I’m like, oh, what if I could get this data like

19:46

the Philadelphia bus schedule because I have a bus stop near me and I could figure out when the bus comes and like that’s an API. So it’s like, I’m just curious and I’m playing. Is there actual utility for that in my life? No, not really. But it’s play. What did that lead to? That led to me then playing with this thing. This this is the seed studio show ESP 32 s3 sense board, and it has an onboard microphone. And I was like, well,

20:16

I wonder if I could write some code. And again, I didn’t write it, but can I write some code that just like records my voice? And then wait, what’s the model that does voice transcription? Oh, open AI has one, it’s called whisper. Interesting. So I have a computer. I keep it, you know, in my basement. It’s like my server computer that I just run some software on. It’s like, cool. I’ll put whisper on that. And I’m like asking chat GPT, like how do I code it so that the audio gets downloaded and sent?

20:46

over the wifi to that and then gets transcribed and then the transcription I want saved to a file.

20:52

That was a fun project. Did I make any money from that?  No. But what did I learn from it? So many things. I learned like, just like the big idea of like capture data, like, oh, what are the vectors in my life where there’s data? Voice is a major vector in my life. A lot of my  voice conversations are happening through zoom calls. But also I’m having some with my wife. Having some with my kids. Oh, interesting. Is it is it useful? Is there utility in being able to capture that data? I don’t know. Maybe maybe not, right?

21:22

Maybe for you, there’s utility. And I saved it all locally to a markdown file. And then I sync that as a backup with sync things to GitHub. Fun stuff, just playing, just learning.  And like, am I trying to be a hardware engineer? Absolutely not. Am I trying to be a software engineer? Absolutely not. Like, there’s no way I’m never going to be that person, but I’m playing. So then comes up some innovative ideas that I had.

21:51

about uh a marketing thing. And I was like, Whoa, wait, what about this idea? And then I go to chat GPT and I do the the talking thing, like where I can just chat with my little agent.  And I just ask her some questions. And she starts guiding me and I find some YouTube videos and I watch it while I’m making coffee in the morning. And by the end of the day, I have an MVP for something that’s actually revolutionary for me. Like it’s actually useful. And is this something that I’m gonna like share with other people like

22:19

Probably not. Is it something personal to me but useful and maybe can make me a lot of money? Yeah, probably.  That’s so cool for me. I never could have got there because I had to be at a level of understanding of how hardware and software works and AI tools and  vibe coding before I could even come up with this marketing innovation that could be useful to me. I played along the way. And if I started and said, hey, I’m gonna program this uh E Ink display.

22:48

If I started there and said, and I want to find a way to make money from it, I’m just, I just wasn’t going to do it. So I just like dropped this, this need to like make money. And instead I played, I just like, let it all go. I’m just like, I’m just going to have some fun. I’m just going to screw around and see what happens. That’s all. Uh, and it’s, it’s exciting for me that play can inevitably lead to.

23:16

a breakthrough innovation, a success, but also it can just lead to like more infectious energy. So I don’t want to sell you the idea that play so that you can innovate and find something that’s new and different and valuable. I want to sell you the idea that when you play, you become the playful person that people feel good around that brings good energy, where you’re actually engaged, or it’s not feeling like you’re handcuffed to this business and you’re forced to do stuff.  But instead, you get to actually enjoy

23:46

the work that you do. So  maybe this for you is like, you got like some arts degree or you wish you had an arts degree, but you couldn’t afford it. Or you got a poly side degree like me and you wish you didn’t.  And you’re just like, you know, I want to do I just want to make make some logos. How fun would that be? Man, I love I’ve seen and maybe you’ve seen these two like on tik tok or YouTube or whatever the social media drug is. There’s a guy who finds like um signs that people put up like house cleaning.

24:15

from Linda and it’s just like a boring almost clip art style thing. And he just takes it and he makes a video of him just  reinventing the whole thing  and just replaces the ugly one with the beautiful one. of  Linda’s information, but it’s like beautiful branding and beautiful layout. Like how fun is that? He’s just playing. Think about how good he’s getting at his craft because he’s continuing to do the work  instead of just living in the world of like, all I can do is prospect. I think when you get interested, things happen.

24:45

Let me give you another example from me.  A  couple years ago, must have been four years ago, five years ago, on a big crypto boom. uh I found a project that I thought was interesting. And it was inside of a decentralized autonomous organization, a DAO.  And it was a big one at the time.  It was called Olympus.  They’re still around, but it didn’t work out. But  that doesn’t matter. uh

25:14

And a DAO is interesting because I think of it as an interesting structure, a decentralized autonomous organization. I think there’s a future to it. If you want to get nerdy and talk about future stuff.  I think there’s a time in the future.  I don’t know when, but I think it could happen where you wake up and you look at a device and it says, these are the jobs that are available to you. Do you want to do any of them? And you say yes or no. And you say yes at this rate. And if they say, okay, cool. Like your rate wins based on your

25:41

ability to perform well, yada yada, like you get awarded the job and then you can do the work, whatever that job is. For simplicity, we can say it’s your delivery driver. These are the packages that need to get picked up and dropped off. Which ones do you want? What’s your cost for it? And then does the algorithm accept your bid or not? Okay. A decentralized autonomous organization could run that way inside of a smart contract. It’s interesting. ah I think it’s cool.  So I was like interested in Olympus, I was interested in the whole DAO structure.

26:08

So I was just playing and I put some money into Olympus and I was just having some fun just learning. You  know, got my uh cold storage wallets, uh just like was playing the whole game on crypto, trying to get nerdy, like how do contracts work? What’s this whole solidity thing?  And as I’m like diving into it, I get onto the uh Discord for Olympus. And I don’t remember how, but ultimately I got into the uh like the Teams Discord.

26:37

for the workers and I proposed that I would help them with marketing. And I got to help and coach a company uh with their marketing release. I did like kind of like a initial coin offering an ICO kind of it wasn’t a full ICO but  got a pseudo I got to do that. And they paid me  in  DAO tokens. So I made the token of the uh of the DAO that I was inside of and I only made

27:02

I only made like $3,000 worth right it was just like a first gig with it and it was just for a month and then it kind of petered out for some reasons.  But it so  interesting. Like I just was learning so much about crypto about  what would happen if you had to launch a business and you couldn’t use someone’s face  and you actually hid who they were and you had to like prove the um validity of a concept or of a product without ever

27:32

being able to back it up with like people or if no one could sue you, right? Like, there’s no suing that really happens in crypto. And maybe there is but it’s it’s just like it’s based on a system of trust and like a smart contract manages that trust ecosystem. I just found it to be  fascinating and it forever changed the way I see how organizations can get built. I would say that that is fundamental to my understanding of like how I want to run a marketing department, which is like

27:59

I want it centralized because I want to be the guy who’s in charge of all of the output. Right. But I want the team below me to feel kind of decentralized. I don’t need them all in an office in  Chicago.  I want them wherever they are at whatever the fee that is appropriate for the client is. And I want specific work to get done. So in that way,  I went  I played and I made some money which was cool. The token went to zero and

28:25

I effectively made nothing from it. But at the time, you know, the spot value was like three grand. um But I got to play, I got to play and learn something new. And let’s say like that bull run continued. And maybe I got into more projects that could have been a very lucrative place to be. Do I look at do I look back at that and say that’s a failure? Absolutely not. I think it is such a strength that I have that I get to go in and play and meet these people whose names you know, I’ll never remember but like

28:53

You know, I used a pseudonym on Discord, and I set up my own  ProtonMail email. And I later worked with a company that was a direct competitor to ProtonMail. And I had a deep understanding of how ProtonMail worked. So did I win that  gig because of my relationship to using competitor software? Maybe they’re like, oh, he’s technical. He gets this stuff that makes sense. Right? Like, there’s something interesting there.  Talked to a member recently who is uh Southeast Asian  and

29:24

was invited to a like a Y combinator of sorts to help judge who should be uh accepted into  a um incubator, or like a like a startup incubator, who should be allowed in? And then how do you support them in that kind of stuff? And how to advise? Like, that’s a fun place to be. Do you make money by being there on the front end? No, but you’re playing, you’re meeting with folks, you’re reviewing stuff, you’re in the middle of deal flow, you get to see what’s happening in the innovations in the market. That’s

29:53

fun. If you’re the kind of person that finds that to be fun. I would love to be like 15 minute call with someone Hey, tell me about your business. Call the other guy. Hey, I talked to them. I don’t think that they’re not the one. I’m going to vote no confidence, right? Or this is the guy that this is the team. This is the girl. These are the people that we want to invest in. I you know, I vote yes to these folks. That might be really fun. And those things can move forward and other things can happen. So fun is such a precursor for success. If you’re not having fun.

30:21

I’m not gonna say you won’t be successful, but your success won’t be fun. You say like, oh, but if I have the money, then I can have the fun. It’s like, sure.  But then you like, kind of hate going to work on Monday. Man, Monday morning, I’m just like,  stoked to go to work. I don’t want to be late. Like I am excited to show up and work because when I work, I get to have fun. And also that fun is rewarded with money. And the more fun I have, it seems the more money I make. Right. And it just kind of keeps going. It doesn’t say I don’t work hard.

30:51

This week has been incredibly hard for me. um I’ve worked  more this week than I have any other week in the last, I don’t know, six months. It’s been a long one for me.  But I won’t work tomorrow because tomorrow’s Friday and I take Fridays off.  Or maybe I’ll jump on a call.  And the accelerator we do a call every Friday and we’ve got a coach that leads that call. And last Friday, I was like, I’m gonna go jump in. I’m gonna jump in, I’m gonna have some fun. I’ll be there 1520 minutes and I’ll dip. And I did and it was fun.

31:20

That’s the kind of stuff you can do, you can create these opportunities to jump in, have fun, leave, right? And it doesn’t have to feel high stakes. So

31:29

The secret of longevity, the secret to making it as a fractional CMO is to have fun and you got to find how you have fun.  And there is no wrong way to have fun. You can have fun by like reviewing the PNL. Maybe that’s fun for you. It’s got to be fun for someone right? Some CPAs love that stuff.  Maybe you got that maybe you find that fun. Maybe what you find fun is  playing the game of business.  Man, that’s fun.  We’re talking about that right now and in the boardroom, we’ve got a member who

31:58

wants work with a company that doesn’t have the money today, but likely will soon because they’re doing a big raise. It’s like, how do I play the game here? What a fun question to have. Here’s all the ways that you could play it. Which one feels real? Which one feels right? Which one do you want to try on? How much risk do you want to shoulder? It’s fun to play that game.  And when they come in really gripped and like, like kind of holding their breath, like, I got to make this one work.  That’s not as fun. But if they like relax and have fun, and they’re like, Oh,  what’s in best interest for the client?

32:26

If it was a crazy outcome and I got everything I wanted, what would that look like? What’s the  least I’m willing to take? And you’re playing it and you’re just like, then going in front of the client and they don’t know all the work you’ve done and you pitch something and you see what they say. You know, it’s a dance. When you’re having fun in this stuff, it’s going to feel better for everybody. That doesn’t mean that you don’t prepare really well. That doesn’t mean that you wing it. That’s not what this is about. It’s about enjoying the work and  finding these little rabbit holes that you can dig into.

32:56

You know, I still think like a buddy of mine, Bill  came to visit me a couple years ago when I lived in Fishtown and we were up on my roof deck hanging out, like kind of like in a row home. And he pulled out this huge antenna and the stupid radio and he starts doing all this dumb stuff. And I was like, this is the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen. I remember saying that like, dude, I think that’s kind of dumb. Right.  And then like, for whatever reason, I got into it. And now I’m into this ham radio thing, whatever. And it’s like all of this stuff that I can play with.

33:25

but they’re all interesting adventures to play with. And it’s just like, it’s just playing. It’s like, oh, how does that work? Well, what’s that idea? Oh, how does that work? How does frequency shift modulation work? Well, that sounds interesting in the ham radio space, but did you know that’s also Gibber Link? And Gibber Link is how two AIs can communicate.  And they can communicate faster  using Gibber Link, which sounds like a dial-up modem, talking to one another. They can talk faster, literally exchange more information about one and a half times more information.

33:55

in the same amount of time than the human voice can. That’s just interesting. I never would have understood how Gibralink worked if I didn’t really understand frequency shift modulation. So I think those things are like connected. And do I do anything with that? Have I actually  used Gibralink before? No, I never have. I never have. But I’ll tell you today, I was on a call with a new client, and I was talking to their CRM,  person at their CRM.  And there was a technical thing that I identified. So here’s what it is.

34:25

The company,  the client, they run Facebook ads. Those ads  have the instant form and Facebook instant form. So when fills out the instant form and hits submit, the instant form refreshes and says, thank you. Your submission has been accepted. We’ll be in contact, you know, whatever it says. Then that lead form pushes into the CRM. The CRM looks, is it a first name, last name, email, phone? Phone number is malformed.

34:54

If phone number is malformed, reject the lead. The CRM was rejecting,  from what I can tell right now, between 10 and 20 % of all meta leads because of malformed phone numbers. And I don’t have the full answer on why. It’s either because uh it’s a text field for phone number and it doesn’t pass over correctly, something like that.  Or the other one is that people just don’t want to put their phone number, they just put a bunch of zeros in or something. But inside of the CRM,

35:22

I get an error, lead not created. I get an email notification, lead not created. And I get no paper trail. I can’t look into a log file. The log just says, at this time, a lead was not created. And it just says failed. But I don’t know, like, give me the information on the lead. Like, can I have their first name, last name, and email? So if you can imagine, 10 to 20 % of all leads are getting rejected. I don’t think I’m special. think most, like, decent CMOs would have, like, found that problem out pretty quickly. But…

35:51

I instantly had the solution. Like the solution’s clear to me. I need to get the Facebook lead form to push the data somewhere that it can have a validation check for phone number. And then that validation check then pushes that into the CRM. Like that’s the solution. Do I know how to solve it myself? um Maybe.  Maybe if I like spend some time with chat GPT or cloud code or whatever, like maybe I could come up with a solution. Maybe. I’d like to think I could, but I won’t.

36:20

but I’m not going to,  I’m gonna go find a developer to do it because this is too important to get wrong. It’s too important for me to like fuss around with it. But I could identify the problem and the solution because I’ve played with other things, because I kind of understand how data flows and web hooks versus APIs and things like that. So I asked the guy, I talked to a guy today at that CRM company  and I was just like, hey, this is the thing that’s happening. He’s like, oh,  I don’t know what to say. I was like, cool, do you have a web hook or is it just the API? He’s like, well, I don’t know.

36:50

It’s like, okay,  I have the API documentation. How do I get my um token for it? He’s like, I don’t know. I have to talk to the dev team. But like, I get to push all of that stuff forward because I’ve played and have an understanding of technical stuff. And I would say that directly related is that first E Ink screen when I did the SEPTA bus uh tracker, I go to the next three buses that are coming to the bus stop, that pulls off of the public API at SEPTA. It was my playfulness with that.

37:20

that allowed me to understand how APIs work and how I can query them, which then allows me to understand deeper, more accurately what the problem is for the client and propose a solution. And again, my solutions are big picture. My solution is the idea of like, we need a red house here, right? It’s not like, well, first we need to find land that looks like blah, blah, blah. And then we need to come up with the plans and do all this stuff. It’s like, no, what it looks like when it’s done is the lead, 100 % of all leads go through.

37:49

And if the phone number is malformed, then the phone number stripped and, you know,  maybe we have a checkbox that says, do not SMS on it or something like that. But like, I could come up with the solution, which is the solve bigger problem. And then what’s the small problem? The small problem is me going to Upwork and finding a developer and being like, Hey, this happens. I need you to pull these leads out  from the lead center and meta, uh clean them up and then push them into the CRM. You got it? And they’re like, cool, got it. They can do all the hard work, but I had to first kind of

38:18

identify the problem and create the actual solution, is to hire a developer to create the solution. So remember we solve bigger problems and then we delegate everything except leadership. This one problem that identified for the client, I started on Tuesday, I recorded this here on Thursday. This problem that I identified is like going to cover my whole feet. Like just the thing that they’re going to get 10 to 20 % more leads just because of a solution that I made is a massive improvement. And again,

38:48

who I was six months ago, I don’t know if I would have understood this as clearly.  I didn’t understand how things work the same way. I’ve been saying. And again, we live in this incredible world where you can just vibe code and play. And if you’re stuck, you talk to chat GPT and you can just hang out and have fun and play. Just play. If you want to be successful as a fractal TMO, play, just play.  And that’s it. Like that’s the whole thing. Find an avenue to play.

39:17

I don’t think you need to become technical like me. Right? I don’t think you need to go play in these, in this world. Although some of you want to. We’ve got some members that are vibe coding, making some cool apps. Others that are honestly probably just chasing their tail, creating a new feature. And then once they test that feature, another feature breaks. And then they go fix that other feature. Then the third feature breaks. Right? They’re just like chasing their tail. Maybe that’s not useful for them, but who am I to say that that game that they’re playing of trying to develop some app.

39:44

isn’t actually useful in helping them grow their brain and understand how the world works. That’s ultimately what we’re after, is a better understanding of how the world works.  I am willing to pay in time and in money to shortcut my way to learn how the world actually works. And one way that I do that is just play,  play with stuff and see how it works. Do you know how it works? uh You know, for uh Halloween, I uh single addressable LEDs on a strip, they’re called

40:13

WS2818B LEDs.  this strip, uh one little block has three LEDs in it.  And with code, you can make it any color you want. So I have this reel of them. I have a bunch of stuff on top of it, so I can’t show it on the camera right now. But I got that and I have this breakout box and the breakout box has on it. uh I don’t even remember what this thing is, but it’s like a little microchip, I don’t know, microcontroller thing. uh Here it is.

40:40

And  then I put one of these Xiao ESP32 boards on it and I got a bench power supply and I tried to like get things working for my kids Halloween costume. had this big idea for it.  And uh I burned out my first set of LEDs. I just like fried them all.  I couldn’t figure out why they wouldn’t turn on. And so I just turned up the amperes and  they burned out. You know, one was on and then it turned off and then it started clicking. And it’s not good when electronics start to make click sounds when there’s no reason for them to click.

41:10

So the magic smoke had disappeared and I had to throw those away. Was that a failure? No, no, it wasn’t a failure. Like I learned a lot. Was it expensive? Sure. It cost me 25 bucks for that roll of LEDs, but I learned something. So that lesson’s worth something. So then I got the next set and I realized that I needed to do some stuff to  mitigate the  voltage for the  LEDs versus the voltage for the microcontroller. One could handle five volts. The other one can move up to like 20 volts, something like that. I forget.

41:39

So I tried it. Ultimately, I failed. It’s a failed project still on my workbench on my desk. And I didn’t do it. I didn’t do it. But I’m a little bit smarter. I’m a little more frustrated, but I’m a little bit smarter. I understand how this stuff works a little bit better. And that’s useful to me. How am I going to use it? And when am I going to use it? I don’t know. I don’t know when I’m going to use it. But it’s useful. It’s fun. It’s playful.  Like this Alex Ramosi letter. I grabbed it from the mail,  and it’s going in my swipe file.

42:06

I just keep a collection of good mail in my swipe file because it’s fun. Because it just feels cool to have this stuff and look at it be like, that’s a good idea. That’s a great idea.  Just like find the thing in marketing that  lights you up and just nerd out on it.  I am going to be more successful and higher paid and I’m going to have more fun because I’m staying in the game longer. I’m focusing on playing the game of business, having fun  and working with great clients.  It is inevitable that these things will come true.

42:36

And the same is true for you. Also, it is true for you and for me. If you change your mind often, change industries, change niches, change your title, fractional CMO to, I just want to do AI development to, I just want to do copywriting to, I want to be a Story Brand Certified Guide to whatever. If you keep jumping back and forth to all these different things, that might feel like fun, but it’s fun outside the realm of commitment. So it’s commit, commit for the long haul, like forever, like for the rest of your life, commit.

43:06

to one thing like commit to your spouse, commit to your kids, commit to your health, commit to a role. That’s what I’m talking about. Commit and then find a way to have fun. Imagine having kids and not having fun. Like you’re saying, hey, this is just going to be work for the next 18 years or 20 years or whatever. Like that would suck. So why would you commit to a title or role and not bake in fun? Like you bake in time with your kids and your spouse to have fun. Date nights, go to the movies, go to the…

43:35

circus, go wherever.  My kids right now are at IKEA with my wife and I know that they are having a great time.  My wife bakes in fun stuff. Why wouldn’t you bake in fun stuff to your commitment to work?  It would be silly not to. So do it. Find something that you want to nerd out on. Buy the thing. Get it and opens you up into it. Take the class. Go to Udemy. Go to YouTube. I follow some YouTubers now. And it’s like that’s all I watch on YouTube is just like their new video content.

44:05

And sometimes I skip it because it’s not for me. But like sometimes I watch it. There’s one that I watched the other day. I find interesting. This sounds crazy. Like homemade rockets, like homemade super fast drones, like super fast. I’m talking like hundreds of miles an hour drones. And I saw a guy who built one last night. They hit like 500 kilometers an hour. It’s the fastest drone and it’s like homemade.

44:34

Guy and his dad made it. Now they’re probably like very experienced uh rocket engineers, scientists, whatever. But it’s like, I still want to learn how it worked. Like, what was the props or the learning lessons? Like that kind of stuff. I find that fascinating. So you can find those holes on the internet that you can dive into that are deep, that you learn stuff from, and it doesn’t have to be directly applicable. You can nerd out about  anything you want, but it’s going to make you smarter.

45:02

I remember when I got hired at the dental service organization that I worked at, I said to me like, you know, why are you interested in dentistry? And I thought to myself, I was like, well, like the real answer is because like  all health in our body starts with oral health. Like I knew that to be true. That was something like I had read someone say, and I was like, I internalized it and I was like, that’s the answer. Like that’s the answer to me. I have a duty to keep my teeth clean, my gums clean, floss, brush, you know, all the stuff.  it’s just like a belief that I had.

45:31

And it was just like me kind of playing and learning about dentistry and like teeth cleaning. And, know, I fell down a rabbit hole for an hour or two on some YouTube videos. And I heard someone say that. And that became a line that probably very directly won me that client, like separated me from the pack. It was like, I was a nerd. And they were like, no one else has said that. No one else really believes in dentistry. And the business owner was just like a nerd for dentistry. He’s in private equity, but he was like a nerd for dentistry.

46:00

So you never know where you’re gonna find those nerds.  yeah,  like nerds respect nerds. I love anyone who’s committed to anything. I don’t care what it is. I don’t care if you’re into like underwater basket weaving. I don’t care if you love to collect cats. I don’t care what it is, but like nerd out, have fun, be interested in it. If you’re really into copywriting, you collect all the great copy from all the greats. There’s a great marketer, uh Sean Vosler, and he posts these,  like his recent grabs that he’s gotten.

46:28

So he’ll like go to  a bookstore, like a used bookstore, and he’ll get the first edition of Jim Rohn’s book on whatever. He’ll get the first edition of Think and Grow Rich. Like that kind of stuff. He’s a nerd for that.  I love that. That’s playful. That’s interesting. That’s like a game. Like, oh, can I go get the first edition of whatever? It’s not for me. I don’t really want that, right? But I definitely have like some cool cameras that I’ve amassed over the years that I like to play with and have fun with. And they tend to spark conversations when I use them.

46:59

So it’s just like, have fun in life, have fun in work, make work fun part of your commitment to work. If you do it, you’re outlast everybody else because everyone else is gonna quit because they’re not having fun. When times are tough, you’re like, yeah, times are tough, but I’m still having fun. And they’re like, times are tough and everything sucks. You’re like, yeah, I mean, it would be nice to maybe have a client, but I’m gonna stay in the game longer because I’m having fun and I’m innovating and I’m learning. And maybe that’s gonna turn into a relationship and introduction or whatever. All right?

47:27

All right. Thanks for sticking with me. And if you want my help, having fun, seeing what I’m doing, seeing what other people are doing,  seeing the tools that we’re using, seeing how AI works for a fractional CMO and how we can leverage it, how you can build a fractional CMO practice, get this where you get paid and you take that money and you put it in your pocket and that’s it. And you don’t have to take that money out and go pay vendors or marketing technicians or contractors or whatever. You just get paid and keep it. And then you build and lead the marketing department with the client’s money.

47:57

If you want that lifestyle where you start playing games of saying, want eight, so I’m going to pitch it at 10. Whoops, I closed it at 10. Maybe the next one I’ll close at 15. And then you do it. If you want to do that kind of stuff and be in a community of other people doing it, like what we got going on here at CMOX. So go ahead and book a call in, CMOX.co slash call, book and a call. See if you’re a good fit. And if you’re the kind of person that we want to be around and you want to be around us, see if you’ve got the vibe that we’re looking for. All right. I’ll see you later. Take care.

48:25

Thank you for sticking around for the full episode.  As you know, learners are earners, but you’ve got to take action on what you heard today.  For more information and show notes,  visit FractionalCMOShow.com.  If you’d like me to answer your questions on an upcoming episode,  you can share your question at FractionalCMOShow.com.  And last, please hit the like and subscribe button  so that I know that this content is helpful to you.  All right, go get them.