Ep #135: The State of the Fractional CMO Union - Part 2

Transcript:

00:00:01 Casey: 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. 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, the number one company to teach you how to attract, convert and serve high paying fractional CMO clients on your terms. 

00:00:58 Casey: All right, cool. I’d love to answer any questions that y’all have. I’m here to hang out too. I got some time on my calendar or dinner with the kids. 

00:01:06 Michael: All right, so let me start. I see, David, you have your hand raised. Let me get a few that we have for you. Alicia asks, the team for implementation, internal or is it a client’s team? 

00:01:20 Casey: Yeah, so it’s the client’s team. That’s one of the things, like you start working with a client and, I’ll give you an example. So I started working with a client in November, like October, October, November, and I pulled in some Upworkers. So I went on upwork.com and I found some people to do some immediate work and they did a fine job, but they’re not my long-term talent. We’re gonna hire a marketing technician. The marketing technician is preferably a full-time role. So that person’s gonna work 40 hours a week. I don’t care where they live. 

00:01:50 Casey: If the client needs, sometimes you want them in office. So here’s an example. I worked with a dental service organization. We bought dental practices in the Northeast from like Vermont, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey. So we wanted someone that could actually drive around and kind of do… to yell at the ladies at the front desk. It’s like really what they… I would need someone to show up and be like, hey, Alicia, I need you to answer the phone. I’m gonna spend all day here with you to make sure you answer the phone right. So we needed a marketing tech for that. That was a little different.

00:02:18 Casey: I work in the franchise space and our franchises are across the country. I can’t have a marketing technician that can get to every franchise. So my marketing techs are location independent. I’ve worked with one woman for a year and she lives an hour away from me. I don’t know if I’ll ever meet her because we’ll sell the company before I’d ever meet her face-to-face. But we talk every other week. So it doesn’t matter to me where they live but the client pays for them exclusively. 

00:02:41 Casey: My preference is not to hire people through headhunters, especially if they’re offshore. So there’s great places that you can like onlinejobs.ph. If you want to find a Filipino. There’s great Filipinos for hire there. But if you start going through headhunters, they might charge you two grand a month and pay the headhunter $300 a month. Sorry, pay the laborer $300 a month. And when a laborer is making 300 bucks a month to work full-time, life’s tough for them. So I like to go direct to the source. A lot of people are available. Upwork remains my favorite place. I can find talent on Upwork in a minute. Good talent. I just hired a guy for a project. He’s in Pakistan. 

00:03:23 Casey: And also there’s something, maybe a little political too. If you’re the kind of person who wants to support certain countries because the US is in a conflict with them or whatever, you can hire those people. Like what a cool thing to be able to do. I hired a guy in Ukraine who was just great. And when I went to go hire, I said I’d hire anywhere. But if you’re a Ukrainian, I’ll look at you first. And he’s awesome. And it just feels different, right? To be able to help those kinds of people. Does that answer the question? Great, okay, awesome.

00:03:49 Michael: Casey, let me ask another because I think it’s a common one and then you can do the raised hands and then come back to me. These are from two, Heather Dawson and Kristin Howland about niche. So any tips for finding like large, growing, underserved niches? And what do you mean by niche? Are you talking industry or like marketing role, like product marketers, market researchers, et cetera?

00:04:14 Casey: Okay, great. Kristin, do you wanna just come off mute? What’s your experience? Like where do you wanna be? 

00:04:19 Kristin: Yeah, sure. So I have been a product marketer for a really long time. I have a little bit of imposter syndrome that I’m not certain that I am CMO material. I have a director title. I have three people that work for me. So I’m getting there in terms of P&L and revenue and managing the entire business unit. But I have a history of being a product marketer. So that could be my niche. I’ve been in ed tech for a long time, but I have a real, to your point about, one of your people already is like in the health and wellness for women. I would love to be there, but I’m not sure that I’m ready. So again, back to my question. Thank you, Michael, for verbalizing it. But is it the industry or is it the specialty of what we are good at? 

00:05:04 Casey: I don’t want you to change it once you choose it. And I want you to choose something that you wanna be in. I struggle, to be honest with you, to find an industry that I wanna be in. I like a lot of stuff. There’s not an industry that I don’t find interesting. I’m just one of those people that’s just curious and it’s fun and yeah, whatever. You wanna talk about data lakes or women’s health or whatever, sure, I find all of that stuff interesting. What I found is that I wanna be in a place… 

00:05:30 Casey: I found franchise, I think it’s interesting and I could tell you why, but there’s just some things about it that make it cool for me. The big one is they need me before they can pay for me and therefore I can defer some of my costs and I can make more money at the exit and PE wants to buy franchises. It’s a cool place for that reason. So for that, and I have some early successes with that, easy for me to get in. I know people in the space. I like a sales team. Franchise development has a human to human sales team. I like these components of it. So that’s why I like it. But I could like other stuff too.

00:06:03 Casey: The thing that you have to choose is something that you just wanna do. And if you don’t care, you still have to choose. So you could find these things that you slice and dice and say, well, you know what I really wanna do is I want women’s health, but I also want this other thing, but women’s health is growing because all medical experiments have been traditionally performed on men and now as we perform them on women, we can understand how the women’s body works. Maybe that’s interesting for you and you wanna be there and that’s a good enough reason for you. I would say by and large, every industry would work. The only industry that I would- 

00:06:35 Kristin: Industry not role per se.

00:06:37 Casey: Yeah, the only industry that I would say don’t get into, I would tell you right now, don’t get into cybersecurity. We’ve never had anyone successful in cybersecurity. I don’t know why. I think that cybersecurity folks, if I had to guess, think that their product matters and that’s it. If we have a good product that everyone wants it because CIOs are maybe a more informed buyer and they don’t get swayed by marketing. I don’t know. I don’t know, but that’s a hard one. That’s probably the only one that I would say consistently has been a poor performer. But everyone else is like one clients in their weird niches.

00:07:06 Casey: I had a woman in trucking. I used to say, don’t get into trucking because trucking is going away. She married a guy who runs a trucking logistics company and took over the marketing and then took over marketing for other kind of competitors out of state and does very well for herself. So three to five clients is all you need. Just choose something that you can get depth in.

00:07:27 Kristin: Thank you so much, Casey. I appreciate it.

00:07:29 Casey: Yeah, where would you go? 

00:07:32 Kristin: It’s women’s health or just health tech, actually. Let me be more specific.

00:07:36 Casey: Yeah, go to women’s health, it’s better. Health tech is like whoop bands. 

00:07:41 Kristin: Yeah, it is whoop band.

00:07:43 Casey: Yeah. I think… I mean, I think it’s interesting. There’s a cool repo on GitHub called wearipedia. Check it out. Super cool. Look at the companies that are using that because that’s like the open source platforms for aggregating all the data for scientific experiments from like whoop bands, Apple stuff, all that. It’s called wearipedia. I mean, I find that stuff super interesting, right? You like get into it, kind of absorb yourself in it. If it’s general health, that’s cool. If it’s women’s health, I think that’s cool too. I think a woman… like a female CEO who’s running a women’s health, let’s say like trying to conceive product, talks to you and me, who do you think has the upper hand?

00:08:26 Kristin: Ooh, ooh, pick me, pick me, [inaudible].

00:08:27 Casey: Right. So you could use that. We have a woman in Accelerator who’s Jewish and she is like Israeli and like, I mean, very culturally Israeli. She’s like, I want to work with Israeli founders. Cool, I can’t. Like, I’m just another guy, but she’s like one of them, you know? So it works for her. Yeah, I would try to choose things based on where you want to be. And then also if you’re stuck, choose the one that maybe you kind of naturally fit into it more easily.

00:08:56 Kristin: Excellent. Thank you very much, Casey. I appreciate you.

00:08:58 Casey: Yeah, I hope you get into women’s health and help them with something. Thank you. That’d be great. It’s just like, think like how many more people you could help. That’s so cool. All right. So I think of niches, like what do I think of as a niche? I think of a niche as, can I find a total addressable market? Can I pull a list of business owners? Can I find a database of businesses in that market that are spending on marketing? If I can, then that’s a niche. If you told me your niche is that like, I help busy parents. It’s like, I don’t know about that one. Like, that’s kind of too wide. But like, I help HVAC companies that have at least three trucks. That’s clear. That’s a good one. All right, David, you got anything you want to talk about? Let’s see, Michael.

00:09:41 D: Thank you very much. And actually, I read your book, Casey. It’s exciting. I loved it. The question I have is probably about agencies. How you find… do you see agencies working in your community and how you find that working within your infrastructure?

00:10:01 Casey: Yeah, I want to tell you about that one.

00:10:02 D: Do you think financial sector is a good sector for that?

00:10:05 Casey: Financial, okay, yeah, great. Financial how? Like what?

00:10:09 D: Like fintechs or community banks.

00:10:12 Casey: Yep, great. Yeah, okay, so start at the bottom, work my way to the top. Community banks, yeah, great. I think that’s great. I’ve got members that have definitely had success there. I was surprised, to be honest with you. I thought they would be more cash-strapped, but they’re not. They definitely are capitalized, but they don’t want a full-time CMO on staff. So for them, project like a three-month start and then seeing like how well you can work and then locking them in for the next two years. I think that’s a very realistic thing to do. 

00:10:41 Casey: It’s not project-based work. It’s more like it’s just a three-month term to get started with a renewal in it. And it gives them a sense of like an out if they need it. So yeah, I think those are great markets. I think financial advisors is an okay market too. I think it’s a different market than it used to be. Financial advisors used to be a lot bigger. I think there’s more like self-management of money today. So if I chose between the two, I’d say fintech is cool and community banks are cool. 

00:11:08 Casey: Your other question is around agencies. So we’ve got a member, Dawn. She’s got a… she had a client in her agency and she did agency work like PPC. And then she joined the Accelerator and I was like, can you sell them for actual CMO work? She’s like, yeah. So she did. So she got paid two ways. One was just for her brain and the other one was for her team’s labor where she makes her arbitrage. Great. And then I was just having fun with her one day and we were just like proposing some ideas. I was like, why don’t you offer to take over more responsibility for the guy? Don’t charge anything and then get him to sell the business in like two years. 

00:11:45 Casey: So it took her a while, six months. She was on my podcast and shared this. So I don’t feel like I’m sharing out a turn. She locked in with the client to make a major percentage of the revenue on exit. And it’s gonna be a big exit. She was able to do that because she was a trusted agency owner and now the fractional CMO. And now she opens herself up to take on more risk. The difference here, David, is that she took on this additional risk without compensation. She’s like, I will do this work for free for two years. Contractually, we must sell the company at this point. And then I get this percentage of all proceeds.

00:12:22 Casey: So do I think it works for an agency owner? Yes. And I really think, David, that the smart agency owner is looking for ways to bring an additional revenue right now. And one of the ways he did that is depth. An agency owner right now, or an agency isn’t incentivized to get the company to comply. So let’s say, what kind of agency do you have? Do you have like a PPC agency or what?

00:12:43 D: I don’t have any.

00:12:45 Casey: Oh, you don’t have one. Okay. So like a PPC agency is like, their job is to get the leads. And if those leads aren’t called, the PPC agency gets blamed. But really, it’s the sales team. But the PPC agency doesn’t have someone inside the company to actually generate change. They just bitch to the CEO. And then the CEO, like, what do they do? So the flip of that is, become the fractional CMO, be embedded in the company, and then say, I’m gonna join the sales meetings. They’re gonna know, like, and trust me. And then I’m gonna spot check them on calling the leads. You’re getting paid for that work. It’s very important work. But then finally, the agency can get what they’re kind of owed, which is generating sales.

00:13:24 D: Thank you, that’s great.

00:13:26 Casey: Yeah. Yeah, I think it’s, I think being an agency is great. I’ll tell you, I… there’s a type of person that wants to have an agency. The agencies of old, like back when I worked at the agency, that agency owner, he would go on like month-long motorcycle trips through the country of Georgia, just like lived a great lifestyle. We all worked diligently. It was great for him. It’s just gone now. I don’t think that the lifestyle is quite the same, unless… I mean, even media buyers, they’re losing their, I don’t know, their edge, you know, what is media buying today? It’s good creative. So I think the agency model is hurting. I think there’s still good ways to be profitable, but it’s not the same. All right. I’ve got Brooks up next. Brooks, you available? 

00:14:05 Brooks: Hey. Hey, Casey. How are you? First of all, I really love the presentation. They added a lot of healthy perspective because there’s a lot of things that I’ve seen change in the past year because of AI. And so it’s good to see where the fractional piece fits in nowadays. My background, I’ve been self-employed for eight years running a business. It’s basically been a freelance business. So I come in, I do the strategy, I do the implementation, but I’ve always been involved in the execution. It’s strategy plus execution. And I would love to go more towards just the strategy side. That being said, I’ve worked almost exclusively with smaller businesses.

00:14:48 Brooks: So anywhere from like 50 to 200,000 a month, sometimes even starting from scratch. So they typically don’t have a marketing department. If I were to exclusively focus on being a fractional CMO and just do strategy, even though I have some fantastic case studies, how would that be relevant to a, I guess… going up market where they would already have the marketing team?

00:15:18 Casey: I don’t understand the last part of the question. 

00:15:20 Brooks: Yeah. So those clients that I’ve worked with in the past don’t have a marketing team. So I wouldn’t be able to come in and not do the execution. So I’d have to go up market to a bigger business that already has a marketing team. 

00:15:32 Casey: Or kind of, not true. So yes, but also a company that is ready to build out a marketing function. So example, I’m talking to a guy. This guy’s kind of a juggernaut in my space… in the franchise space. And I want to work with him. I want to understand how they work, right? So I want this gig for the insights more than anything. And he said to me, we’ve never done marketing before. We don’t know if we’re going to do it yet. So in December we were talking, he’s like, I’ll let you know in January if we’re going to go on marketing or if we’re going to delay and maybe do that in Q3.

00:16:07 Casey: So I heard from him, he’s like, we’re going to focus on some of this other stuff. And like, maybe it’s right. He’s got to work on his product and stuff like that. Like that’s where he’s focusing. But then come Q3, he’s saying, all right, if we go hard on marketing, we’re going to go hard on marketing. I want Casey and I want you to staff the team out and I want you to build something real. So they started nothing with a commitment. That is a big difference that you have to look out for. 

00:16:30 Casey: I talked to a company that was in ambulatory helicopter transportation. Your mom’s in Costa Rica, she breaks her leg and you’re like, you’re not going to a Costa Rican doctor. I’m getting you to Miami. You fly in a helicopter, picks her up, takes her to the hospital. That’s what these guys do. They’ve always been kind of like B2B, like direct sales, the hospital groups, and they never had marketing. So they want to open up a whole marketing front and it’s like, are they going to go hard and put a million dollars out for me to go spend on marketing in the next year or not? So that is a difference. 

00:17:03 Casey: And sometimes they do have a marketing department. I worked at a company that had 12… when I started, maybe six people in the marketing department and there’s a marketing director and they hired me over him despite him being super smart. But they hired me because they wanted a CMO level. So you can kind of join at different angles and different levels. They either have to be serious about building a marketing team or have a marketing team. It’s one or the other, or they’re spending money on agencies and they’re like, agencies are taking a 30 to 40% profit. What if we just kept that to us and hired Brooks and then we’d get better outcomes from Brooks instead of giving it to the agencies?

00:17:39 Brooks: Yeah, I guess that’s where my conflict is because I really resonate with what you’re saying about you being the go-to person in a niche, right? If I’m going to go to a market that has a marketing team, which isn’t really business that I’ve worked with before, how do I be that go-to person? I mean, obviously I’ve been in the trenches and done the work, so that helps. But to position myself as the CMO level… 

00:18:07 Casey: So you’re going to work, let’s just be honest, you’re not the right guy yet. So that means that you’re likely going to get signed by someone who is less perceptive. It’s going to be an entrepreneur that doesn’t really understand marketing. They’re going to trust you on a vibe that you’re going to figure it out. They like you, you hold yourself well, they think you’re confident, cool, they’re going to hire that guy, not the guy who has the pedigree. That’s fine though.

00:18:32 Casey: When you have more pedigree, it builds up your natural confidence, but you come across strong. So it’s rare… that I give someone a full breakdown of all of my wins in the past. It’s more that I review the wins that I have to bolster my self-confidence so I present myself well. Does that make sense? 

00:18:51 David: Yeah, totally. 

00:18:52 Casey: So you’re not precluded from winning a big client. So I’m thinking about this client that I won. I worked with them, they’re called First National Realty Partners, Red Bank, New Jersey. Great, great guys, real company, dude. We like bought grocery anchored commercial real estate. So we would identify Wegmans or a Publix or a Piggly Wiggly and all the outparcels and we’d buy the dirt and we’d go raise funds for it. I never knew any of this stuff, dude. They came to me as a guy who has never once before ever heard of a K2. I never heard of an accredited investor. I didn’t know any of this stuff and I didn’t have ChatGPT. This was, I like… when I left the company, I wrote my goodbye letter with this brand new tool called ChatGPT. Like, that’s how, you know, it was a couple years ago, this was like 2020.

00:19:39 Casey: And I was the wrong guy, but they trusted me and I kept showing up and kept working and they kept working with me. We were together for two years until the money dried up because it was COVID money. We were using that low interest rate money to buy a bunch of stuff. So deal flow slowed down and I moved on. But I was the wrong guy. It’s just that like I positioned myself and I was hungry and I showed up and I learned and you know, I got their books and I read it and all that stuff. So you can do it, dude. Like there’s nothing precluding you from being the guy. There’s no magic like finish line that you have to cross for you to be awarded the medal for you to be able to charge $10,000 a month to be a fractional CMO.

00:20:14 Casey: All you have to do is be the guy who’s going to be worth it. If you can’t lead because you’ve never led before and you’re not learning and you don’t have a community of people supporting you and figuring it out and you make missteps, you’ll lose the client. And over time you’ll lose enough clients to be good. Like that’s a way to do it too. You know, I was just at a training for our members yesterday on like, why you’re the best person. The training was called articulating why you’re the best. And one of the most, I think salient points is you’re in front of them right now. 

00:20:42 Casey: Like I’m in front of you right now. Like what’s your other option? You know, like are you in or not? Like it’s fine if it’s a no, but if it’s a yes, it’s easy for everyone and I can start tomorrow. So yeah, I just would close that gap, have the conversations with people, have a sense of like confidence, price yourself accordingly. Just for fun, dude, you should go to a luxury jewelry store and try something on that you like, like a nice watch and then ask them for a discount and just watch how they handle you. They’re like, we don’t give discounts, dude. You know, if you want a discount, go to the Timex store. It’s like… and then you take that and like you embody that kind of vibe. People appreciate that. This is my fee. Do you want to work with me? This is what I cost. That’s it. It’s cool if you don’t want to work with me. If you want to work with me and can’t afford it, that’s cool too. If you want to work with me and you can’t afford it, I can start on Monday.

00:21:29 Brooks: Yeah. Yeah. No, I think makes total sense. I’ve charged 30K a month with plenty of my engagements because it’s based on performance. But yeah, it’s just a new pivot going towards charging that out of the gate and them trusting me. Yeah, that’s a good point. I appreciate it.

00:21:44 Casey: Yeah. I mean, if you’re performance like that, I think you would want some kind of upside if you can deliver those kinds of results, if you work with those kinds of companies. A lot of companies can’t do that because they have long sales cycles or they’re doing product launches or whatever. It’s just different. But if you’re working with something more transactional where you can get a cut, I would do it. Do a base fee. It’s a fractional CMO. You build and lead the team. They do all the execution. To your level.

00:22:10 Brooks: Yeah. That’s really good. Appreciate it. 

00:22:13 Casey: Yeah, man. Absolutely. Yeah. I’m excited. It feels like you got it. It feels like you could do well. 

00:22:19 Brooks: Yep. Yeah.

00:22:20 Casey: Emily, what’s up? 

00:22:20 Emily: Hello. Hello. Hi. So I am kind of getting my feet wet with fractional CMO work. I have up until now owned a web design agency, thrown in some other marketing pieces into that for the last six years. And the thing that people say about me is that the genius happens when I’m sitting across from the person and kind of excavating from them their goals and creating a framework almost. So I’ve been, in a sense, operating in some levels of advisory for years. And I’ve just kind of thrown it into all the packages that I’ve done when myself or my team is building a website. To future proof… 

00:22:58 Casey: So you kind of gave away the marketing strategies. You did all the stuff. 

00:23:01 Emily: Yes, sir. Yeah.

00:23:03 Casey: Which makes sense. Because you had to prove yourself. You had to invent the universe first in order for there to be a website. 

00:23:09 Emily: Exactly. And I’ve always just like, I’ll just kind of get my feet wet with all these different things. I’ll just kind of test this out. Do I like it? All right, I’m going to go harder on that. Oh, I didn’t like that. I’m going to not go anywhere near paid ads. I don’t want to deal with that myself. I’ll hire people to do that. But with fractional CMO, now that I’m more… Like I formalized it a little bit, but I’m kind of… It’s a mess. The client that I have right now, it’s a mess. But I know even without this being a mess, I know this is the direction I want to go long term. 

00:23:45 Emily: The mess that I’m in right now is that I came in as a consultant at first. I fixed their Shopify site. Then they were like, oh, we like you a lot. Stick around. Can you help with all this? And I’m like, yeah, I can. And so I did. And then I kind of got closer to how they worked operationally. And I said, there’s a lot more that needs to be done here, kind of under the hood. We need to fix a lot of things. And there’s a lot of opportunity that is untapped that you’re not doing because they built their whole company. 

00:24:17 Emily: It’s a cafe franchisor. And they’re also doing retail nationally. And so they built it, kind of bootstrapped it, and just like with available people. Well, those available people are now people that I’m working with. And that’s the team that you’re talking about. So what do you do when you get into your fractional CMO role, and the team that they have under their wing is a whole cluster?

00:24:45 Casey: Just fire people.

00:24:49 Emily: Yeah. And then I think it’s potentially on the table, but I don’t even know… I might not be the right fit for this company. They might just not be ready to work with somebody like at this level yet. Right now, I quoted them like six grand a month. And then he pushed back. And he’s like, well, let’s start at four. So we started at four. And now I’m spending way too many hours on it. 

00:25:11 Emily: So the getting your feet wet and kind of messy start is kind of how I’ve done this. And so now I want to either pull out of it. But really, I want to just kind of create some structures so that I can move forward healthily. And I don’t know, like the team, it’s their team. So I don’t want to go in there as the odd one. I’m not even in their circle. And I’m going in there. I’m like, you need to fire the people that you’ve been working with for 10 years. It’s capacity for these folks. And it’s just kind of like… their value systems. And they’re just not good enough to do the job that needs to be done to get them where they need to go.

00:25:55 Casey: Here’s what I would do, I would build a skunk works. Do you know that term from Boeing?

00:25:59 Emily: I don’t. 

00:26:00 Casey: Okay. Have you ever heard of the SR-71 Blackbird? It’s like this wild looking stealth fighter that we have in the US. It’s like one of it’s like our first stealth. It’s goofy. It’s the kind of thing like, if you look at every airplane, David, you know this, right? If you look at like every airplane built before, they look like a normal airplane, and they look at the SR-71 Blackbird, and you’re like, what, like, this is like a hallucination of a bird, right? It’s just wild looking.

00:26:26 Casey: So Boeing set their engineers and they said, Hey, couple of you, you guys are going to this building. Not telling anyone what you’re doing. We’re gonna give you a limited budget, we’re gonna give you an unbelievably tight timeline. And you guys are going to create the first generation of stealthy aircraft. And these people were like, okay, and they did it. And it’s called the skunk works. And it’s this idea that like a ragtag group of people work together to make an unbelievable outcome happen. And it’s a mental model for you. 

00:26:57 Casey: It’s like, it’s a skunk works, you’re going to assemble a skunk works, and you’re gonna take a project, and you’re going to go assemble your little dream team from Upwork or wherever. And it’s going to be a project based thing. And you’re going to go show that you can bring a team that cooks better than the chefs that have been there. And you’re gonna do it for one project. And you say, Hey, we don’t have capacity for this. Give me the budget. Let me do this. Here’s my thought. Two things happen. One, it’s done faster. [crosstalk] Yeah, that’s what I would do. I would just skunk works it. And then when you bring that level of like, action, these business owners are like, hell yeah, Emily. Like you’re the one. If you’re noticing these people are slow, they probably notice these people are slow. 

00:27:45 Emily: Yeah. I mean, it’s ultimately when I came into them… came into the work with them. I said… I sat there. I didn’t even know they had invited the entire executive team to come meet with me. I didn’t know that. And so I get in there and I’m listening to them talk as well. I’m listening to them talk, I’m drawing an org chart on a napkin and I turn around and I’m like, this is where you are right now. Like totally flat organization. One guy in charge, direct line to every single person. I’m like, this is all flat. You’re never going to scale to the next level unless you make it vertical. 

00:28:19 Emily: And I flipped it to the other side. And I was like, here, you need mid level management. He needs to be out of interaction with all these people. And then he kind of won’t do it. So it’s also a… The target is always changing with the guy in charge. He’s like, we should work on this. I want you to work on retail right now. It’s all about the retail side. And it’s like, oh, wait, no. Now it’s all about just getting [crosstalk]. 

00:28:45 Casey: So you lock into quarters. This quarter, this is what we’re doing. And if I do this by the end of the quarter, are you satisfied? And they say yes. And you say, cool, let me cook. And then they say, hey, Emily, it’s Feb 1. Let’s change your whole process. You say, okay, we formally declared this as the quarter. I can do it, but it comes at these costs. You call the shots because you’re the CEO. What are we doing? And they’re like, all right, when can I bring this up? You’re like, mid-March, but I’ll note it and I’ll bring it up to you. They’re like, okay, cool. 

00:29:09 Casey: That’s the process you got to go through that helps these entrepreneurs that are ADHD, that are just kind of crazy. Just settle down. They need to know that they’re being handled well. And you can do that by creating some partners. So I think the opportunity is in front of you. I never take off the table firing everyone. I don’t want to fire everyone. But if there’s a level of like, can’t teach an old dog new tricks, the person is just so stuck in their ways. You got to let them go. There’s also, you know, does it hurt or scare people? Does it scare the team? You know, is that bad? But I just fired someone recently on a project. Just didn’t do well. And we had to walk her out. And it sucks.

00:29:49 Casey: And I wish her well, but she was the wrong person for what we needed. And we’re going to keep going. And we’re going to hire someone who has more capacity and they’re going to do it. And Emily, one thing that I think no one talks about is sometimes we have people that work for us that aren’t smart. And it sounds really mean, right? But if you think that- 

00:30:06 Emily: No, it’s very true.

00:30:07 Casey: Intelligence is a bell curve. Some people are below the 50% margin. And you know who they are. And it takes a minute sometimes to figure it out. I want to work with smart, capable, hungry people. And sometimes I work with hungry, dumb, incapable people, and I got to shuffle them out. 

00:30:32 Emily: This is music to my soul, everyone. 

00:30:27 Casey: Yeah. Good. 

00:30:28 Emily: Hungry, dumb, incapable people. I appreciate that very much. Thank you. 

00:30:31 Casey: Yeah. You’re welcome. Yeah. Good luck with it. 

00:30:33 Emily: Thank you.

00:30:34 Casey: Yeah. Lisa, before I get to you, if anyone wants to go after Lisa, let me know. And then just book a call in with Justin too. Just go to cmorks.co/call. What’s up, Lisa? You’re muted.

00:30:44 Lisa: Hi. So great call. I’ve always wanted to get into the fractional world, so I wanted to understand what exactly it was. Actually wrote an article about it, but I want to reverse engineer. I think I love what you said about strategy. I love strategy. That’s my jam for marketing strategy. I do that all the time when I meet with my clients. But I want to be that conduit for fractionals that need that implementation work that you talk about. 

00:31:19 Casey: Why?

00:31:20 Lisa: Why? Because that’s been my background, and I have a relevance of different things that I can do in my digital marketing.

00:31:28 Casey: But why are you sitting in the kid’s table? Why don’t you come to the adult’s table? You say you like doing the strategy work. Why are you doing the implementation?

00:31:33 Lisa: I can do both, like your friend did. So I could be at the adult and the kid’s table, to be honest. 

00:31:39 Casey: You got to choose your seat. You got to choose what you want. Implementation’s fine. Implementation is busy work, and it’s relevant. You’re not going to get economies of scale. You’re not going to be able to solve big problems with it unless you’re like a performance marketer like Brooks was talking about. That’s a good way to do implementation. But you lose out on getting a seat at the big table. You lose out on all the big outcomes that are available there. 

00:32:12 Casey: And I’ll tell you, life is just different. When I was working at that private equity real estate company, we acquired $1.1 billion of real estate in 26 months. I had a marketing budget. I was spending $20,000 a day, $30,000 some days. Anything I wanted, I could have. I had a $1,000 a month slush fund for my team where I could just do goofy shit, like send them DoorDash of pretzels if I wanted. Every time we ran a webinar, we did a guess of how many people were on there. And if you won, you either got like a $50 gift card to Amazon or a $200 gift card to Applebee’s. It was just like, it was funny. No one ever took the Applebee’s gift card. It was just like, it was just a fun thing to do.

00:32:54 Casey: And that’s where I’m passionate. I’m not passionate in like the nuanced implementation thing. And I think users are just getting eaten alive with AI. I mentioned this thing, Clawd Bot or MoltBot. It’s crazy what’s available right now that you can just piece together to do all of your bidding. I can’t say enough about that. If I was… I have a good buddy, Kevin, who ran copychief.com and taught copywriters how to write copy persuasively. And he fought like hell to keep it. And he sunsetted that product, that whole program. He left everything behind because AI is eating him alive. It’s just hard to make a living in that world. 

00:33:33 Casey: So if you want to constantly reinvent and learn new stuff, stay in implementation. If you want to be steady and calm and let AIs or people or offshore workers or whatever do all the labor for you, do the fractional CMO thing. I mean, I’ve got a buddy of mine who runs a SEO firm. He’s calm, he’s measured, he makes good money, he’s niched down, smart. He’s got a good life. So it does exist, but his staff is rapidly changing. He went from all American workforce to probably 50-50 offshore. And now he’s heavy into AI. He’s forced to deliver more outcomes for people in less time for less money. He’s getting a pinch. He’s doing well, I think. But man, I think you’ve got to be innovative and at the top of your game to do that. It’s just different. I mean, I remember you used to saying like, oh, I’ll set up a Google ads campaign for you for a thousand bucks, and it would take me an hour. Like those days are gone. 

00:34:26 Lisa: You don’t think that supporting other fractionals who are doing the strategy, but need that implementation, and they’re working with companies that don’t have a team, that wouldn’t be a good segue for them?

00:34:42 Casey: I don’t think that as an offer is all that compelling. Because if I need someone, I’m going to go find the person. I have a lot of people I’ve worked with in the past. I might send a text out to ask a question, like phone a friend. But if I’m hiring someone, I’m just going to the open market to find someone who’s available right now. I don’t have to have… I literally go to Upwork. And I just reach out to someone who matches my search query that has the available now flag. And I message them and I get a video call and make sure that they’re human. And I ask them questions. And if they’re good, I give them a small project and pay them in milestones. I don’t… 

00:35:15 Lisa: No, I appreciate your point of view. I just wanted to see, you know, I appreciate your point of view. I’ve been leaning towards the fractional side. Actually, someone I talked to took your course and they spoke very highly of you. 

00:35:30 Casey: Can you say who it was? 

00:35:32 Lisa: Aisha.

00:35:33 Casey: Yeah, I know Aisha.

00:35:34 Lisa: Yeah, we connected on LinkedIn. We connected on LinkedIn. And she spoke so highly of you. And she was like, why aren’t you being a fractional? And I was like, huh? You know, so I thought about it. But I just, you know, I’m implementing right now because I have the digital marketing agency.

00:35:53 Casey: I think you got to set your sights to get out of that at some point. And, you know, you go do your implementation work. It’s fine. It pays the bills, whatever. But you go lend one client that pays you five grand a month. I swear to you, you will say to yourself in the mirror, I’m never going back. It will be a switch for you, just like it is for me.

00:36:12 Lisa: No, I understand. No, and I appreciate that because I’ve been straddling the fence. And so to hear that, you know, maybe I do need to make a change and think about the fractional… put the implementation side. But I could offer those services because I have that digital Rolodex if they don’t have a team. So that would be an upside for me anyway. I wouldn’t have to go to Upwork because I already have the Upwork in my background. 

00:36:36 Casey: Yeah, sure. Right. Yeah, I think a fractional CMO role is, I mean, it’s just where I think it’s best. I want to answer David’s call or question. David, you said, what’s my hack and finding quality employees? Dude, I got it. You want to know what it is? I’ll post a job post anywhere. I’ll post my doc anywhere. But the call to action on it is reply to, you know, david@cmo.com. Like send an email to david@cmo.com with the subject line. Hey, it’s me. First name, the marketing technician that you’re looking for.

00:37:06 Casey: In that email, include a loom video, no more than five minutes long. Whatever, like whatever you want them to say in it. You could say describing your favorite recipe that you like to make for dinner. Right. Just simply that. The number of hoops someone has to jump through to like read it. AI is not going to do that. AI is not going to record a video for them. It’s a human that went through the whole process.

00:37:30 Casey: We find that it’s fleetingly few people make it through that process. But you’re not stuck in the garbage candidate review field, things inside of like Indeed or Upwork or whatever. There’s people email you. I’m the person that you’re looking for. You’re like, sweet. Upwork, you can’t do it. They have to message you because you can’t give an email address. But that’s it. And then you review the candidates as they come in. And then you just keep reposting the same job post, maybe change the title a bit to make it fresh. But that is the secret. And I will watch a video no matter what I’m doing. I’ll like stop and I’ll watch a video of a candidate. And if it’s a good vibe, I tell them it’s a good vibe.

00:38:08 David: Amazing. That’s a great advice.

00:38:10 Casey: We reach out to them. Yeah, and we have a chat.

00:38:12 Michael: Casey, I’ve actually got two more questions.

00:38:15 Casey: Oh, sure. Okay. Let’s do it.

00:38:16 Michael: So these are going to be from Christian. And then Andrew, you’ll be up last. Christian’s asking, after exhausting your referrals, how do you go about prospecting and cold calling? It’s not door to door. So a list, a script? 

00:38:30 Casey: Sure. Yeah. I mean, listen, like, I guess like I’m incentivized to tell you that there’s like a black box strategy here. What it is, is that you’re the expert. You got to be the expert. You got to know it. You got to like map it out. We do some really cool stuff in the accelerator. We call it the Industry Intelligence Playbook. And it’s a series of like research prompts and pulling together the big ideas of who these players are. And you go and you meet them. If there’s a conference happening, you go and meet people. You reach out to them. You go pay for the conferences and you attend them and you meet folks. 

00:39:00 Casey: Like, I’m not telling you a lie that you can be rich overnight. I’m saying, if you become the person people want, you will be full for the rest of your life. So this is about being the person that you want to be. Do you have to write a book? No, but you should… like, what is the person who’s number one in the space do? That was my thought. Like when I wrote my first book, I was like, if I was the number one guy teaching people how to be fractional CMOs, what would I do? I’d probably have the book on it. So I wrote the book. And then I was like, I’d probably have the podcast on it. I probably have the biggest Facebook group on it. It’s like, it’s the actions of doing the things that the number one would do gets you to the point where you become the number one. 

00:39:37 Casey: And it’s curiosity. It’s never turning down a conversation. There’s a hunger to it. And I mean, there’s technique to it. It’s how you talk to people. It’s how you follow up. It’s how you’re unique. But I want to be 100% me and authentic with my clients. I don’t want to hide. Like I want jokes. I want fun. I want it to be kind of silly. I want us to work really hard together and everyone make a lot of money. So I’m really authentic and I don’t hide any of that stuff.

00:40:04 Casey: So I think in a world where everyone’s saying to leverage AI for your outreach and to build relationships, I’m the guy who’s saying don’t and build true, real relationships with fewer people. I got a buddy of mine who is arguably my most important connector in my life. He’s driven me some really good business. He’s in Minneapolis. I am not talking to him about business. I’m talking to him about his daughters and how they’re feeling about what’s happening. That’s a real relationship. I’m not manipulating him. I really care. I want to know what his life is like. So that’s the conversations that I’m having with him. Because I care about his family. You know, send Christmas cards or holiday cards to these people. You want real relationships. That’s how you become the person. 

00:40:45 Casey: You have that level of authority. You can kind of like, I don’t know, kind of like trick your way into your first client or two. But if you want to be sustainable in the industry, you got to be the person. And that’s what it’s about, coming in and becoming the person. That’s why people join the CMOx Accelerator. They’ve had wins. You know, we’ve got the former CMO of Ancestry.com. ButcherBox, Salesforce.com. We’ve got heavy hitters in there. We’ve also got people that are agency owners. And everyone’s coming in wanting to take the prestige of where they’ve been and re-leverage that to be the next level. And that’s like who they are. So I think it’s really about who you are and kind of building out that persona publicly to a small group. 

00:41:28 Casey: You know, you’ll see, I don’t post on Facebook. I don’t post on LinkedIn. I don’t post on Instagram. Because I just text message a lot of people. Like I have tighter relationships than that. Maybe someday I’ll get on that train. But I don’t need to do that for business. Maybe as you get started, it works for you. We have members that do very well with it. And we train around it too. So I hope that’s helpful, Christian.

00:41:49 Michael: All right. And we’ll wrap it up with Andrew. You may have spoken to this. Are there particular industries, niches with higher propensity of success? Conversely, not as strong opportunities for fractionals? 

00:42:02 Casey: It’s a tough one. Because, Andrew, two companies can look the same side by side. Can you say what industry you’re looking at, Andrew? Like broad industries?

00:42:15 Andrew: Broad industries. So being in the Detroit area, automotive. 

00:42:20 Casey: We’ve got a woman in automotive, dude, that is cleaning up right now. She’s in boardroom. She’s crushing it. She’s in auto repair. Like helping auto repair shops. So that’s a cool niche. But she knows it. Like, she’s one of the people, you know? 

00:42:35 Andrew: Yeah. My background’s all OEM. 

00:42:38 Casey: It’s all OEM? Okay. Yeah. But there’s interest in that. Like, you can pivot that in a way. You can tell a story about your OEM experience and how you can help aftermarket folks too. I know how the big guys do it. So therefore, I can help you. Yeah. I wouldn’t think that there’s… Nothing tells me that that would be a bad industry. Yeah. I think that maybe there’s some cyclical stuff with government funding. You know, you get like a blue president and maybe there’s more stuff for electric cars. And that could be something to be considerate of if you want to be like an electric space. 

00:42:12 Andrew: I just did an EV startup.

00:43:16 Casey: Okay. Yeah. Right. We’ve got some members that are in the green tech space. And definitely when Trump came in, it was tough. But it’s kind of loosening up a bit. We’re seeing more private funding in that space. So they’re able to do well and close good business. But it was different than like the middle of Biden.

00:43:33 Andrew: Sure. Absolutely. Yeah. Much friendlier environment to that. 

00:43:38 Casey: Yeah. I would say that my big thoughts on niche are… It’s kind of a case-by-case basis. Like outside of cybersecurity, it’s a case-by-case. I could talk to someone and they’re like, Dude, I’m going hard. I just got a divorce. And all I’m going to do is work and grind. And we’re going to build this thing out. And I want just a stud that’s working alongside me. Who cares what their revenue is? That person could afford you maybe even if it’s tight for them. And they’re just going to go hard and they’re going to win. Like that’s on paper a bad client. But in reality, probably a great client.

00:44:12 Casey: And then you’ve got someone else who’s like super well capitalized. But they want incredibly fast turnaround. That’s just unbearable for you. To them, you’re cheap, but you’re not moving fast enough. And it’s just beyond what you want. So it’s case-by-case. And I’ll meet with anybody and have conversations. And then you just get pickier over time on who you want. 

00:44:32 Andrew: Got it. Thank you.

00:44:34 Casey: Yeah, you’re welcome. Great. Well, thank you all for being here. Just about two hours. If you have questions, ask them in the Facebook group. We’ve got cmox.co/community. It’s the Fractional CMO community. We’ve got like 7,000 folks in there. So hop in there. Be an active member of that. I’ll put that in cmox.co/community. There. Thank you, Michael. With the HTTPS. That’ll redirect you to the Facebook group. You can join that. Ask questions there. Sometimes I go live on Facebook. And I’d love you to book a call in with Justin. If you guys want to see if you’ve got what it takes. We’ve only got five spots available for February. So we’re pretty choosy about who we let in. But if you think it’s you and you want to get in and you want to like, you know, win in Q1 and start building a client base, I’d love to help you. Thank you for being here. Take care. See you later.

00:45:23 Casey: 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.