Ep #148: Lunch with Casey Q&A

Transcript

[00:00:00] Speaker: In this episode, we have Q&A from real marketers who have questions about becoming fractional CMOs, and hear me coach them on exactly what they should do. I’d love to hear what you think. So after you’re done listening to this episode, I want you to go to cmox.co/podcast, and I want you to go to the Q&A part, and I want you to send me questions.

[00:00:19] I’d love to hear from you so I can make an episode just for you next. 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, and companies need you to serve them as their fractional chief marketing officer.

[00:00:47] 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 Stanley. 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.

[00:01:21] All right, I just wanna say welcome everyone here. Uh, thanks for hopping in. This is the first time we’re doing it. It’s just a lunch hangout. I brought a Core Power Elite. I didn’t bring enough to share, but I thought we would just hang out and chat. You probably have questions about being a fractional CMO.

[00:01:34] Maybe you’re like, “What’s up with AI?” Or, “I think I wanna be a fractional CMO, but my spouse thinks it’d be crazy for me to leave my full-time job.” Maybe you’re worried about the market at large, what it can bear, how to price yourself. Whatever you wanna talk about, we can talk about. I wanna say hey, Bobby.

[00:01:47] What’s up, man? Excited to have you here, man. Yeah, just wanna hear from you. What do you got for me? Hit me with questions. We’ll just kinda jump around, have some fun. Don’t be shy. Uh, typically when I do calls like this with our members, they just write the word “me” in the chat, and I just go through a queue there.

[00:02:00] We go through each person’s question. I just ask you to be reasonably concise with your question. If it’s helpful for you to type out the question to be concise, do that. But yeah, who’s got something they wanna talk about? Or what do you wanna hear about? What do y’all think? 

[00:02:11] Speaker 2: Okay, I have something, Casey.

[00:02:13] Speaker: Let’s go, Anne. 

[00:02:13] Speaker 2: Hey, sorry I was off camera ’cause I’m eating lunch. 

[00:02:16] Speaker: Good. That’s what we’re here for. 

[00:02:17] Speaker 2: Yeah, right? Okay. I’ve done some part-time fractional consulting, whatever you wanna call it, but- What do you wanna call it? … the biggest challenge I see in, in trying to find the right match is that a lot of these smaller companies or startups, which I love working with startups or high growth, or like you said, one getting ready to exit, all of that, it’s kind of my jam.

[00:02:35] They need you because they’re small, but then they can’t really do what you advise because they’re small. 

[00:02:43] Speaker: Okay, just to 

[00:02:43] be- 

[00:02:43] Speaker 2: You end up doing a lot of the work, right? And you’re supposed to be CMO, you’re supposed to be doing strategy, you’re supposed to be helping them paint the vision and get their team motivated, whatever you’ve assigned to do.

[00:02:53] But there’s just, because they’re hiring a fractional, they think you’re gonna do more hands-on. How do you- 

[00:03:00] Speaker: Yeah, 

[00:03:00] Speaker 2: you just don’t … how do you talk about that in the beginning? How do you suss it out? Just don’t work with them. How do you suss out- Don’t work with them, Anne … how much, you know- You can’t work with them

[00:03:06] am I gonna literally do versus bringing somebody in to assist- Yeah … or do you have the team to even implement these great ideas that we’re talking about? 

[00:03:14] Speaker: You’re not allowed to work with them. You have to work with people that can afford you, and afford your strategy. Or who do you wanna be? Do you wanna be the fractional CMO who works with a handful of clients and does really great work, and then freely donates her time or takes on one big risk opportunity with a company that you’re really passionate about?

[00:03:30] Or do you wanna be the person who has a handful of clients that can barely afford to pay her, and every month it feels like you’re scraping the bottom of their budget to free up capital to deploy your projects, and they can’t do it, so now you’re learning AI tools, the next thing you know you got a window full of Claude code and you’re trying to deploy all the stuff on your own.

[00:03:45] I think you’re playing a game that you can’t win. Mm-hmm. The problem that you’ve identified is a real problem, and I think you have to punch up. You have to go to the next meta level for where these clients need to be, and you can’t be in startup space. 

[00:03:55] Speaker 2: Yeah. I just think there’s a lot of noise that these founders and, and/or CEOs are listening to, or CFOs for that matter.

[00:04:02] “Ooh, we can hire somebody really talented at a higher level but not pay them as much because they’re not gonna be working full time.” But it’s… That’s not really the gig here, right? 

[00:04:11] Speaker: Yeah. But it’s also, it’s okay that they feel that way. They, they just can’t hire you. My take is Anne White is very expensive- Mm-hmm

[00:04:18] and she’s very good. I don’t know anything about you, but why wouldn’t that be true? Why do you wanna be the person who is working for companies that can’t afford you? Do you wanna be- 

[00:04:24] Speaker 2: Yeah. I guess my point is they think they can afford me, but they can’t afford to implement. 

[00:04:28] Speaker: They can afford you. That’s the conversation.

[00:04:29] So you’ll have the initial call with them, 15 minutes. You’ll figure out where they wanna go. You’ll ask them- Yeah … their budget, their full in marketing budget per month or for the year. Right. And they’re gonna say, “Our full in marketing budget’s 5 grand a month.” You’re like, “What?” 

[00:04:40] Speaker 2: Yeah. That’s too 

[00:04:40] Speaker: bad. “I can’t.”

[00:04:41] Speaker 2: Yeah. 

[00:04:41] Speaker: What you can offer them is a 30-day strategy. You work with them for 30 days to develop a strategy. 

[00:04:47] Speaker 2: I like that. Yeah. 

[00:04:48] Speaker: And what I would do, Anne, is I would say, “We’re talking today. You’re the business owner. You have 5 grand a month. I’m like, cool. How about this? We do a strategy review. So I’m gonna look at your whole marketing strategy.

[00:04:56] I’m gonna interview your team, your vendors, your whatever, and I’m gonna come up with the right strategy for you guys, and then you can run with that, and we’ll do it as just a single kind of transactional thing. It’ll take me 30 days to do this whole thing. That’s 10 grand.” And then they say, “But I have 5 grand a month.”

[00:05:07] You’re like, “Cool. Take May’s money, take June’s money, and we’ll host this on June 15th, we’ll start it, and then we’ll do 30 days into July. How’s that sound?” Mm-hmm. Now you get your 10K, you get paid well for it, you get your at bat, you get to have some fun, and you get to go work with them. But you give them the strategy, and then the strategy is not predicated on you sticking around with them because they just don’t have the budget for it, and therefore it’s the wrong move for them.

[00:05:27] Speaker 2: Yeah. And do you see that as a pretty common path for a lot of fractionals, is that they end up doing kind of a little consulting and a little… And hopefully getting some fractional clients that they 

[00:05:36] Speaker: can do long term with? If I could be really direct here, Anne- If I can be direct, the fractional CMOs that come into the accelerator that play with small companies that can’t afford them struggle until they figure it out, that they have- Mm-hmm

[00:05:46] to charge more, and they have to work with real companies. 

[00:05:49] Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:05:49] Speaker: That’s it. You have a reason that you like startups, ’cause they’re fun, they’re fast-moving. But if you had a startup and you were putting in nights and weekends, and you’re up at 3:00 AM sending emails, and I was like, “Hey, I’m just here for 10 hours a week, and I’m your most expens- expensive employee, or your most expensive team member.”

[00:06:02] Yeah. Yeah, I get it. You’re gonna be like, “What? Sleep under your desk and give me all of your working hours.” I get it. That’s the mode that you’re in, right? Yeah, I know. And that’s where they have to be. I shy away from startups as much as possible, and I go to truly established businesses- 

[00:06:14] Speaker 2: Yeah … 

[00:06:14] Speaker: that have a control, preferably.

[00:06:16] Yeah. A marketing control that works. You’re not starting marketing from the ground up, preferably. 

[00:06:20] Speaker 2: Yeah. 

[00:06:20] Speaker: Something already exists. I would, just as a quick example, I don’t have it here. I have a hat from one of the companies I worked with. They’re called First National, in New Jersey, and we bought grocery-anchored commercial real estate.

[00:06:30] And when I joined the marketing team, there was like 12, I don’t remember, eight people in the marketing department. Eight full-time US employees, half of them with MBAs. Think of that company. Wow. Okay? Think about that headcount and that cost, and then what we’re spending a day on ads, 10 grand a day on ads.

[00:06:46] We’re spending real money. 15 grand, 20 grand at some points. That’s a real company that really needs a leader, an effective leader that makes sure everyone does the right thing. Yeah. Think of that versus a startup who’s bootstrapped, where the money is literally coming out of the 529s for the owner’s kids.

[00:07:02] It’s just- Yeah … it’s a different place. Yeah. They wanna save money. First National wanted to move as quickly as possible because they had an opportunity to tackle purchasing property while interest rates were incredibly low. They were post-COVID, interest rates will never be this low for years. We’ve got, what, 18 months to go as hard as possible?

[00:07:18] We did, and we went hard. We went from 500 million to 1.6 billion in assets in 26 months or something. That’s hard. That’s where you wanna go, is this, a company that’s spending real money acquiring customers. They’re not afraid of your cost. But also, it doesn’t make sense for you full-time. That’s the difference.

[00:07:35] Mm-hmm. All right, so what do you think about that? Do you still wanna stay in the startup space? 

[00:07:38] Speaker 2: I didn’t say I wanted to stay in startup space. I just said I like that high growth point in a company’s journey. But yeah, I don’t know. I’m exploring right now, and I appreciate what you’re saying. I totally get it.

[00:07:48] Totally. What’s your 

[00:07:48] Speaker: industry? 

[00:07:49] Speaker 2: I’ve changed industries a few different times. My, I’d say my sweet spot is really marketing technology, for lack of a better way of saying it. I’ve pioneered digital signage at retail and outdoor spaces, and a lot of- Experiential marketing, gesture and touch-based AI, VR, those sorts of technology intersections with cus- customer experience.

[00:08:11] I’ve only recently taken on a CMO role for a CEO that I knew well and helping her out. So I’m not, I’m still not sure it’s exactly what I wanna do, so I appreciate you hosting something this people can ask- Yeah … questions and share ideas. 

[00:08:23] Speaker: So I wanna say, who’s your target then? If you’re doing digital signage and the AR, VR stuff, isn’t that for trade show booths, that kind of stuff?

[00:08:29] Yeah. Like you augment the marketing for these companies that- 

[00:08:31] Speaker 2: Well, ironically it started out that way, but where the real progress is being made in that space is more on training, forklift training, and HR training, and things that, interestingly enough. Okay. Yeah. Great. Different. 

[00:08:43] Speaker: We’re doing a couple different things.

[00:08:43] So if I’m doing forklift training and HR training in the same company, let’s say, that’s a decent sized company. Mm-hmm. There’s probably a lot of employees there. Marketing department doesn’t have to be big- Mm … but it could still be big in other ways. I don’t think you want a startup for that. Where do you wanna be?

[00:08:55] Do you wanna be in the company that creates the training materials for HR in these AR, VR ways, or do you wanna be at the company that consumes that content? 

[00:09:05] Speaker 2: Yeah, that’s a good question. I hadn’t thought of it that way. I, I don’t know exactly. I’m still exploring. That’s the whole point. Yeah. So I- But I just wanna help guide you in the right direction

[00:09:12] like doing project-based work, and I’m only recently full-time somewhere, and I’m, full-time is not really my jam. I get bored. I feel like fractional could be cool. I really enjoy leadership and strategy, and now that I have more omni-channel experience under my belt, I feel I could legit do it for a, probably not a huge company, but a mid-size company, or a smaller division within a larger company, which is where I’ve had success in the past.

[00:09:35] But I haven’t nailed down what that looks like exactly yet. 

[00:09:38] Speaker: As I think through the market, I think, I love a boring, slow industry. I love a manufacturing industry. Mm-hmm. I love, I, I love just American manufacturing because it’s slow to change, and that’s really nice. In a world of AI where everything’s moving incredibly fast and the moment you have an idea, the AI completes the build of it, it’s exhausting.

[00:09:56] I would love to be in a slower moving space than that. So in that world, what you shared was working with companies that are maybe more product-based that are selling to other companies, and that’s a- 

[00:10:07] Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely … really- I started in actually in branding and entertainment, experiential marketing, and then moved over into retail, which makes sense ’cause retail was struggling and looking, becoming more immersive and entertainment-based.

[00:10:18] That, that is definitely my familiarity, but I have recently been more familiar with industrial space, and I hear what you’re saying. It’s an, it’s a big shift, but- Mm-hmm … I’m right there with you. That’s where I’m at. This, it’s also just that point in my life where I’m like, “Yeah, I don’t know if I really wanna be in this crazy world of retail and entertainment and CPG and all that.”

[00:10:38] It’s in, in industrial- And there is a lot of that. I live in the Twin Cities. There’s plenty of opportunities- 

[00:10:45] Speaker: Huge opportunities 

[00:10:45] Speaker 2: in the Twin Cities … in this, yeah, in this area. Um, I think you’re right. They m- appreciate more what we can bring because people overlook them all the time. 

[00:10:54] Speaker: And your ability to help them close one new- 

[00:10:56] Speaker 2: Yeah

[00:10:57] Speaker: purchaser could be- It’s 

[00:10:58] Speaker 2: what’s not sexy, right? Yes. Yeah. I had a recruiter call me for a snowplow company, and I was like- 

[00:11:03] Speaker: Buffett, 

[00:11:04] Speaker 2: yes … “Oh, that’s kinda interesting.” And I looked at their website- And somehow that’s like a 

[00:11:06] Speaker: 12-month-a-year 

[00:11:07] Speaker 2: company and- And it was amazing. They totally got their brand. They had amazing content.

[00:11:12] They were on it. I was like, “This is crazy. It’s snowplows.” 

[00:11:15] Speaker: Yeah, love it. Cool. I would encourage you to kinda open your mind up here. Mm-hmm. The way that you know that you’re in a good market is because you can get a list of the total addressable market So an example of a list of a total addressable market is credit unions under a billion dollars in assets west of the Mississippi.

[00:11:32] That’s an audience that’s, that we have someone at CMOX that’s targeting that does very well with them. Another one is Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, maybe Pennsylvania, maybe West Virginia, HVAC companies doing more than $5 million a year. Not startups. Yeah. You can measure those companies based on how many trucks they have.

[00:11:49] They might- trucks or crews, they might have, like, 10 crews, 10 trucks, that kind of thing, three locations. That is a total addressable market, and it’s this kind of ephemeral thing that sometimes we can have a feeling of what our audience is, but if you can’t get that audience on a list and be able to go through that list, and work the list, and build, uh, relationships and authority and all that stuff, then it’s not a, it’s not a niche.

[00:12:10] I think that it’s an idea, and you’ll find that you’ll never be the woman for them. I want you to be the person when they’re like, “I have this problem,” and someone’s like, “Anne White is the number one person in this space. You have to talk to her.” You have to define that audience first. I think that’s your homework is to work on that.

[00:12:24] Speaker 2: Yeah. Love it. Thank you. 

[00:12:26] Speaker: Yeah. 

[00:12:26] Speaker 2: Totally appreciate it. 

[00:12:27] Speaker: Yeah, cool. Yeah, you’re welcome. All right, I’m gonna jump over to, uh, Casey. What’s up, man? 

[00:12:31] Speaker 3: Okay. It looks I’m unmuted now. 

[00:12:32] Speaker: You’re good, yep. 

[00:12:33] Speaker 3: Fantastic. I gotta tell you, it’s weird to hear people call you Casey, and I look up real quick because it’s just weird on a call to have another one- It’s weird

[00:12:39] come across too often. I’ll give you my quick high level overview, and I’ll tell you I’m having a little trouble finding a home at the moment. I do not have a corporate background. I started as a serial entrepreneur many years ago, came out of college and built and sold businesses in my 20s and early 30s.

[00:12:53] I, at one point before I became a consultant, I had sold a real estate franchise with three locations by the time I was 35 down the Jersey Shore. I sold it and exited, sold it to RE/MAX in 2008. Became a consultant by accident because people- Okay … kept asking me, “Hey, can you help me build a business the way you built the other businesses implementing te- by the, implementing technology in those businesses?”

[00:13:13] 2009, I was aligned with a software platform out of Boston called HubSpot. I’m sure you came across in your career. 

[00:13:18] Speaker: Yep. 

[00:13:18] Speaker 3: Uh, I joined the partner program immediately and became an asset to the partner program by helping other agency partners implement different models within their business. I spent 12 years helping HubSpot agency partners implement retainer-based work, sales and marketing infrastructure, and being able to sell their services because a lot of them are good marketers, a lot of them are good web designers or whatever it may be.

[00:13:38] They just didn’t know how to actually sell services that were retainer-based for maybe 12, 15, $20 million sometimes. I spent a long time doing that. COVID happened. The whole world fell apart. The partners didn’t need me as much because they were trying to figure out how to go remote back then. And one of the things that happened is that they decided, uh, my group started to scale down.

[00:13:56] I decided to take my technology experience, my experience with agencies, build my own marketing agency. Did extremely well. Sold it last year. And I sold it because I knew that the work that we were doing with inbound and that approach was changing dramatically. I moved away from it with the idea that I was gonna move into technology a little bit heavier with AI and automation.

[00:14:14] In the last year plus, I’ve been really focused on- Implementing, I’ve been implementing automation since 2008, but it’s been marketing automation, not AI-driven automation- Sure … so a little bit different. And where I am now is I don’t have a corporate background, never have, never probably will, and don’t plan to.

[00:14:30] Market is usually somewhere between three to five million, that’s up to 50. As far as companies go, I usually work directly with a founder or a CMO. I don’t necessarily- Yeah … work directly with not necessarily a CMO. Somebody in the marketing space that is not a CMO, but somebody that, uh, has that leadership role at the company.

[00:14:45] Where I’m s- where I’m probably looking right now is I was attract- uh, intrigued by the CMLX program because I want to transition to only do that type of work, where it’s more strategic and more planning, and I don’t wanna get my hands dirty anymore, to be honest with you. 

[00:14:57] Speaker: Yep, love it. I also think that we’re seeing a lot of tools adopt AI builders in and of themselves, and the role of the AI builder is, I don’t know.

[00:15:05] It’s always gonna be relevant. It’s gonna be relevant for a long time, as long as people are adopting big tools. You adopt HubSpot, you’re gonna get AI stuff associated with it. But I think you’re right to get out of the role of implementation. I think all of us should get out of implementation. Uh, yeah, I think you have to, otherwise it, it’s the, the floor is coming up and it’s gonna crush us.

[00:15:24] We’re losing all of that low-level labor that maybe some of us used to do to justify our fees, and now the only thing that’s gonna be left is strategy and leadership. And of those two, it’s just going to be leadership. Because I can get strategy from an AI, or Casey, one of the worst things that happens is a client gives me a strategy that an AI gave them, and now I have to be the guy who has the taste and discernment and experience to state why it’s wrong and make sure that we do the right thing.

[00:15:48] As the problem becomes more critical and the risk gets bigger just by, by the fact that the company’s growing and they’re putting money behind it and they are hiring people, and to get marketing wrong hurts, they need an experienced person. You say you don’t have a corporate background. That doesn’t matter.

[00:16:02] There’s nothing about that matters. I don’t, I never went to business school. I’ve led a team of MBAs. Yeah. Investment bankers, you know what I mean? It’s, it doesn’t matter, dude. I- none of that stuff matters. What matters is that you’re in the right place. You said three to five to 50 million. I think five million is a good floor for you to be at, and I think that you know what a CMO wants, you know what a founder wants.

[00:16:22] Just go be the CMO for these companies. What niche would you get in where you think that they have a problem that you think you would be the expert at? They would be, “Oh, , there’s this guy that I just talked to, and he is the man.” What industry is that for you? 

[00:16:34] Speaker 3: Where I’m finding my most success because of my background are marketing agencies that are at the five million mark that can’t get beyond that to- 

[00:16:41] Speaker: Yep

[00:16:42] Speaker 3: to double and go up to 10 or 15 mil. And being able to scale with people that have something attached to the marketing area. That’s where I’ve had most of my conversations recently. What 

[00:16:52] Speaker: industry? Can you give me, I want a list of all of these companies that, you know what I mean? I want to be able to find that list for you.

[00:16:57] Speaker 3: So I, as far as the marketing work goes, it’s literally people that are in the marketing space. Marketing agencies is what I’ve been working with for about 15 years. Yeah. Got it. So they’re literally people in the marketing space. They don’t necessarily have a specific vertical within the marketing industry that they’re attached to.

[00:17:11] They’re just marketing agencies that offer any type of service from web design, SEO, all that different things, but larger ones. 

[00:17:18] Speaker: Yeah, I don’t thi- You can go there. 

[00:17:19] Speaker 3: That’s my experience. I’m not saying I want to stay there. My- Yeah, I wouldn’t- … plan is trying to transition. I do have a tech background though, so I do track a lot of SaaS companies.

[00:17:26] The problem with SaaS companies is most of them are in the smaller startup to seed rounds. That I’ve 

[00:17:32] Speaker: experienced. Yeah. Okay. Here’s… It doesn’t sound you have a strong opinion in a certain direction necessarily. You have great experience. Sorry, I have a cat that really needs to be pet right now. You might see her.

[00:17:40] This is Olga. 

[00:17:41] Speaker 3: We can see her. 

[00:17:42] Speaker: I think she might be a spy. That’s– We named her after Oleg from The Americans, who was a double spy. Okay. I think that lacking a conviction of a specific industry, I think of just a woman in the accelerator, her name’s Ashley, and she came in, no experience in the IVF space, but a desire for it.

[00:17:56] And then no personal story in it. She didn’t go through IVF or anything. She just wants to help families have babies. Pretty cool. And I’m getting her in position to be the one, and she’s now talking to people on the phone. I just talked to her earlier this week. She’s like, “I’m– I talked to a prospect,” and she was like, “They felt as though I was in the industry for years.”

[00:18:13] You can do that with an industry that you’ve never been in before. You can choose an industry, and I can help you guide you in a direction right now. But you choose an industry and then go be the man in the industry and don’t waver. And I would say as much as you can, stay out of the marketing agency.

[00:18:26] They are the marketing industry. You don’t wanna be in MarTech, you don’t wanna be in agencies. Just stay out of it because here’s the worst thing that’ll happen to you. You’ll show up, the CEO will be a marketer, and they’re gonna tell you what to do, and you’re an order taker. There’s no creativity that you offer.

[00:18:43] By and large, that’s what I see in those, that industry. Go to any other industry, and you can ask me. We can help find an industry for you right now in, in a couple minutes, but you just need to be in a clear industry, and I want you to go own it. That’s the thing. Where would you wanna be? Is it something in Florida?

[00:18:55] Is it something worldwide? 

[00:18:56] Speaker 3: No, I… It could be worldwide. I talk to people all over the world, and I don’t have a problem talking to people in other areas. I t- I have clients in Dubai, I have clients in the Philippines. I’m versed all over the world. 

[00:19:04] Speaker: Great. Love it. Think of one guy, name’s Nuno. This dude, he’s in Amsterdam.

[00:19:10] He’s in the Netherlands, and, uh, I think. Maybe he’s in Portugal and his client is in the Netherlands. I guess I forget that. But they have a company that does shipping boat hull cleaning with robots. 

[00:19:21] Speaker 4: Wow. 

[00:19:21] Speaker: You pull in a boat to a major port, and their robots come and latch on and crawl and clean the sides of the boats, and you’ve got these guys in Netherlands with goggles on, driving the boats remotely, doing all this work, and they need marketing support.

[00:19:34] That’s a boring business. Very profitable. Great place to be. I want you to choose a niche that excites you, and you enough about the future with AI of what’s happening and what’s gonna be steady. These things are true. People will want to eat food. They’ll want to live places. They’ll want to buy things that make them feel a way.

[00:19:53] They’ll want experiences. Those industries will continue to do very well. Private equity will buy stuff up. People want to be business owners. There’s some pressures that are gonna happen. Just kind of skate to where any one of those is going that you feel drawn, and then just settle in and lock in and just own that space.

[00:20:07] Speaker 3: The one thing I’ve learned in my career, I’m looking for people that have money. That one aspect I don’t have a problem with. But 

[00:20:12] Speaker: you’re in Boca. Everyone has money in Boca, right? 

[00:20:13] Speaker 3: Not necessarily. They, more of them have money as you go a little bit further north, Palm Beach County. A little bit further north, they’re almost there.

[00:20:19] Oh, yeah. Sure. There’s definitely more money in, in Miami for certain industries. 

[00:20:21] Speaker: For sure. 

[00:20:22] Speaker 3: Which is just below me, so I can go either way. I can even go west to Naples and whatnot, because there’s plenty of money out there as well. Really what I’m looking for is I don’t have to be regional. That’s what I’m saying.

[00:20:30] I don’t really- Yeah. I’ve been working with certain people in certain industries. I- my longest client ever was nine years, and I never met him in person. Great. Love it. So there was no reason for it. 

[00:20:39] Speaker: Tell me this. If you were to work with someone 10 hours a week as a fractional CMO, what would you charge per month?

[00:20:43] Speaker 3: It’s an interesting- question because I usually do rev share. So as far as a flat number or a rev share? I want a 

[00:20:49] Speaker: flat number. 

[00:20:50] Speaker 3: Flat number. 

[00:20:51] Speaker: Um- ‘Cause rev share is only if I trust the person and they’ve actually paid me in cash, at least for the first month. I have a lot of rules around rev share, I don’t get burned.

[00:20:57] Speaker 3: I generally look at it this way. I sh- I would be 10, uh, 10, you said 10 hours a week? I’d probably be 7,500 a month to 10 grand. 

[00:21:03] Speaker: Okay, cool. Great. You just have to find a market that’ll bear that, and that’s a good price. 7,500, that’s my first fractional CMO gig, I sold at 7,500 a month. Yeah. We have members that are selling at 10K, 15K.

[00:21:12] Some folks, some ladies are just pretty strong and they’re pushing that over 15K, 16K, 17K- That’s awesome … that kind of thing. Yeah, that’s pretty cool. 

[00:21:19] Speaker 3: The largest retainer I ever sold was 25K a month. 

[00:21:21] Speaker: Great. For 

[00:21:21] Speaker 3: myself 

[00:21:22] Speaker: personally. Killer. Yeah. Awesome. If you’ve sold that stuff before, it seems solid. You just need to choose a niche that you wanna be in and then go win it.

[00:21:28] And this is a big distinction here. No one has ever said, “Casey,” they’ve come to us and they say, “Hey, we hear you have fractional CMOs. Can we hire one?” I’m like, “Yeah. What industry?” And they tell us, and we’re like, “Cool, yeah, we’ve got a couple. I’ve got, I’ve got Morgan. She’s pretty expensive, but she’s really good, and I’ve got Casey.

[00:21:40] He’s not as experienced and he’s cheaper. Which one do you want?” And they’re like, “We’ll take the expensive one.” And that’s what they say. They’re not gonna risk it on someone who isn’t the best. You have to become the best in the industry. 

[00:21:49] Speaker 3: Let me ask you this. What do you think about leaning towards something that’s in the IT space for selling services in that space?

[00:21:55] Speaker: If it’s service work, I love it. If it’s technology, I just am a little scared. 

[00:21:59] Speaker 3: People that legitimately deliver IT services. 

[00:22:01] Speaker: Yeah, dude. In other words, plug- Rolling in, plugging in, uh, RJ45s, setting up servers. Yeah, absolutely. All day, every day. That is a long-standing business. 

[00:22:09] Speaker 3: Yeah. 

[00:22:09] Speaker: That’s in the same kind of realm.

[00:22:11] MSP stuff? 

[00:22:12] Speaker 3: Yeah, MSPs have managed service across the board. Killer. They don’t have a specific industry that they service, but they, they just in general they’re delivering endpoints of 3,000, 4,000, 5,000 endpoints. They’re endpoints to end user. They don’t service a s- a client that has 50 o- 50 computers.

[00:22:25] They’re servicing large corporate ones. 

[00:22:27] Speaker: Great, and one sale for them is a million dollars a year or something. 

[00:22:31] Speaker 3: Yeah. Usually they start at 300K to go to a million. If they close two a month they’re overjoyed. 

[00:22:36] Speaker: Yeah. Yeah, perfect. I love it. I love that kind of industry, for sure. And I just wouldn’t, just for everyone here listening, do not take on risk with clients upfront.

[00:22:44] No way. If you want me, I’m good enough that you should pay me for the first month. That does two things. One, it pays me. The second one is it pegs my value at what I told you, and then I can play with that number later. So you hire me and let’s say I’m 10,000 a month. I’m like, “Pay me 10,000 a month for the first month, and then after that we’ll figure out what we wanna do.”

[00:23:02] And then whatever you wanna do. You say, “All right, let’s drop my fee,” and then I get a percentage of revenue share, or I get a percentage of, uh, all sales attributed to marketing, or I get a percentage of, uh, your exit value or something. But you have to always start your first month paid in full, no matter what.

[00:23:16] Speaker 3: I had a mentor in John Jantsch with Duct Tape Marketing. I worked directly with John back in 2010. Yeah. And I joined the Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Network, and one of the first things he said is when we got in a group, we got a cohort of 12 people at a time. We would go to Kansas City and sit with him face to face, which was old school, ’cause we actually used to get on planes back then.

[00:23:31] And we went there and met with him. The first thing he said, he told all of us, “Go home and fire 10% of our clients.” He goes, “Take the lowest 10% hanging fruit to your left, the people that just annoy you, fire them and you’ll grow.” And that’s really the approach he had. 

[00:23:42] Speaker: Yeah, for sure. ‘

[00:23:42] Speaker 3: Cause they don’t value your time, they don’t value your e- they don’t value anything you do, ’cause they’re obviously not paying you enough money.

[00:23:47] Speaker: That’s right. Yeah. Yeah, good point. Okay, so you feel clear on next steps here? 

[00:23:51] Speaker 3: Perfect. 

[00:23:51] Speaker: All right. Great. Thanks, man. Appreciate it. Thank 

[00:23:53] Speaker 3: you. 

[00:23:53] Speaker: All right. Trying to catch who’s next in here. Michael, you wanna ask this question? 

[00:23:57] Speaker 5: Yeah. To be honest, I’m having a little bit of an imposter syndrome right now, uh, ’cause I’m essentially a marketing agency, and I…

[00:24:04] Most people come to me for website design, but I do run the gamut in terms of services. I help with everything from website design and SEO to ongoing email and socials, to bigger level strategy. But I work with a lot of small businesses that just serve a local community. I have a background in nonprofit.

[00:24:20] I have a background at a community-based or- organization. I worked at an agency for a while. And I’m feeling the impacts of the grind of having the 15 recurring clients, the 10 one-off projects, and it’s just me. I would love to get to that higher- Oh, okay. Yeah. I would love to get to that higher level strategy, which I know I can do.

[00:24:38] Yeah. But I feel it’s a, it’s almost a mindset thing for me of h- 

[00:24:41] Speaker: people- Can I just ask you one question that’ll clear this for you? 

[00:24:43] Speaker 5: Yes. 

[00:24:44] Speaker: Okay. Let’s say you go and close a client, and you close them at a number that gets you excited. What gets you excited? 10 hours a week, what number would it be per month?

[00:24:51] Speaker 5: Honestly, 2,500 would be a good step-up for me. 

[00:24:53] Speaker: Okay. I won’t let you do that. You’d have to, at your minimum is 5K. We call this level engaged. If they get your best hours, and they’re a good fit client that has a marketing budget, and they wanna move forward, they trust marketing, they, they want you to be the guy that’s leading the stuff, okay?

[00:25:06] Let’s say it’s at least 5K, but really 7,500, 10K, is really, to me, table stakes. That’s where you wanna be. That’s, that’s the game you wanna play. 15,000, 22,000, whatever your number is. But you wanna find a company who has a problem. Let’s say you close that, okay? Just imagine for a moment, oh, my God, perfect lead came in.

[00:25:22] They loved you, whatever. You closed it. You identify the problems. You realize you don’t know how to solve them, okay? You don’t get it, ’cause you’ve never had this experience before. Right. What kind of person are you? Are you the guy who writes a letter, just nervous and anxious in the middle of the night, and you’re like, “Oh, my God, I’m the wrong guy.

[00:25:38] You guys hired the wrong guy.” Not at all. Or are you the guy who just figures it out? 

[00:25:41] Speaker 5: Yeah, no, of course. 

[00:25:42] Speaker: Yeah. Okay, cool. Then you just have to get comfortable not knowing what you’re going to do before you sit down to do it. Okay. It’s not an imposter. Don’t think of it as an imposter. To be an imposter, you have to believe that you should have done it before.

[00:25:55] You’ve never had the opportunity. You’re exactly where you are at the right time for all the right reasons. Everything happened exactly as it unfolded. It’s cosmically correct. Mm-hmm. And now you have a problem in front of you that you don’t know how to solve, and you’re gonna figure it out. And listen, dude, you might screw up, and that’s why you’re charging five grand and not 15.

[00:26:12] Yeah. But then you get it right, and then the next client it’s at 10 grand, and the next client it’s at 15. I think that that mentality hopefully shifts in your mind a bit that- I don’t have anything you don’t have, except maybe a willingness to stare down problems I don’t know how to solve, and do whatever it takes to solve them.

[00:26:29] But I don’t think I have that uniquely. I think you have it too. 

[00:26:32] Speaker 5: I totally do, and that’s ultimately why people wanna work with me, and because I will own my mistakes. I just, as I’m looking through my clients, I’m like, many of these are one-person shows or just serving their local town and whatnot, and they don’t have the…

[00:26:45] They don’t have a marketing team, so I end up being their marketing team. Yeah. I don’t mind the implementation, but I’m just realizing that if I do this for another 10 years, I’m gonna be burnt out. 

[00:26:54] Speaker: That’s right, and I just don’t know if it’s gonna be around for the next 10 years because much of this stuff is…

[00:26:58] You- you’ve played with Claude Design. You’ve played with Claude Code- Mm-hmm … right? Cowork. A 

[00:27:01] Speaker 5: little bit. 

[00:27:02] Speaker: Whatever- Mm-hmm … whatever flavor. We can kick out a website in no time. We can kick out- Yeah … a very functional, incredible thing incredibly fast. It’s only a matter of time before… You remember when Squarespace hit the scene?

[00:27:12] Mm-hmm. And how easy Squarespace sites are for people? They’re still hard, but they’re, like, they’re pretty easy, and it’s only gonna get easier. Yeah. I think that your days are numbered as an implementer, unless you’re comfortable with doing more work for less pay. You’re probably not. But it’s the expectation.

[00:27:25] Well, and that’s why I’m here 

[00:27:25] Speaker 5: ultimately. 

[00:27:25] Speaker: Yeah. And every… Think of every copywriter. If you talk to copywriters that are doing okay, say, “How’s your workload changed?” They’re like, “I’m writing two or three times as many emails as I used to write for the same package price.” 

[00:27:34] Speaker 5: Yeah. 

[00:27:35] Speaker: It’s the expectation. I think you’re right to get out of that space, and then what niche would you wanna be in?

[00:27:40] And I gotta tell you, you’re not allowed to choose non-profits. 

[00:27:42] Speaker 5: Fair. That’s- that’s ultimately the work I need to do. It’s, like, the mindset and then figuring out what my niche is because now it is more of a mindset than an industry. 

[00:27:49] Speaker: Yeah, and, um, we get a little personal in the accelerator. Uh, I hope you don’t mind.

[00:27:53] But, like, there’s something that maybe happened in your life around value around your work. Oh, for sure. Like, there’s something that you have to address, right? 

[00:27:58] Speaker 5: You- Do you want me 

[00:27:59] Speaker: to call my mom 

[00:27:59] Speaker 5: into this meeting? 

[00:28:00] Speaker: Yeah, right. I have her on speed dial. Uh, that stuff in our life comes up again and again, and it comes up in a way of there’s a language of self-sabotage or whatever, but I don’t think it’s self-sabotage.

[00:28:11] I think it’s just going on the route that you’ve gone on before. Yeah. It’s not like you’re actively sabotaging pricing or pitching yourself at a higher rate or whatever. It’s you don’t know how to do it. You don’t know the words to say. I talked to someone yesterday, Michael, and he’s got this big negotiation with a client, and this is what I said to him.

[00:28:28] I was like, “Listen, these are the most important 150 to 200 words you’re going to utter all year. Treat this with a level of respect. You’re studying for your AP final, and if you fail it, you don’t go to college.” Right. It is that level of importance, and so many people just treat it as just another conversation.

[00:28:43] But when you have- Right … the language and you rehearse it and you act as if you’re the person who can do the thing, what you find out is people are, they’re begging you to be the guy. No one wants to talk to you, Michael, and you not be the solution. No one wants to waste their time- Right … and be like, “I talked to Michael.

[00:28:59] He sucks.” They wanna be like, “I talked to Michael. He’s the guy. We’re moving forward. He’s a little more expensive than I thought. That’s okay, though. I really trust him.” They want you- Right … already. The only reason that they’re not hiring you is probably the way you’re showing up. I would say with enough at bats, that’s true.

[00:29:12] Maybe with one at bat, maybe the person’s a loser and they just don’t wanna spend money. But generally speaking, with enough reps, I think that’s true. That inner game side of things is critical to being able to charge more. I think one client paying you five grand a month would be life-changing, yeah? 

[00:29:26] Speaker 5: I totally agree.

[00:29:27] Speaker: Yeah. Great. The game to play right now is, how do I get one client to pay me $5,000 a month? And the answer is not find a startup. Ann’s question. No, no startup. Is it find a nonprofit? Probably not. I would say that there are some nonprofits that are very cashflow positive, and then here’s the game that you play with them.

[00:29:43] You say, “My rate’s 7,500 a month, but for nonprofits I’m at five.” You can do that, right? Which is a pseudo raise for you. You said it out loud. You invoked this higher rate for yourself, that the next time you sell yourself you’re at 7,500. You can do that stuff. That’s a game to play. Uh, but then you just have to have some at bats with the right people who have problems That’s the only difference between where you are and where you want to be.

[00:30:02] Speaker 5: I totally agree. 

[00:30:03] Speaker: All right. So what’s the next step for you, you think? 

[00:30:04] Speaker 5: Figuring out the problems that I’m uniquely qualified to solve and who is having them. 

[00:30:08] Speaker: Okay. But I think you’re uniquely able to solve a lot of marketing related problems. I think of you, just based on our conversation that’s been brief, you’re a jack of many trades.

[00:30:16] Speaker 5: Very much. 

[00:30:16] Speaker: Great. I happen to think of myself the same. Then it’s not a question of who do I serve. Sorry, it’s not a question of where are my services best. It’s what market do I want to be in, what has the constraints that I enjoy? Let me tell you a constraint I don’t like. I don’t want to work in direct to consumer packaged goods, because when do those have the biggest sales times?

[00:30:36] Speaker 5: The holidays. Do you want to 

[00:30:37] Speaker: work on holidays? When I want to spend time 

[00:30:38] Speaker 5: with my family? Hell 

[00:30:39] Speaker: no. Yeah, that’s a no for me. Yeah. And then other people will say, “It’s my only experience. I’m gonna do it.” Okay, you can, but I- to me, that’s a deal breaker. I really like the franchise space. Can I tell you why?

[00:30:48] Mm-hmm. ‘Cause it’s like franchise is fun. Franchise is a bunch of small businesses that you’re used to serving, but you’re serving them in mass. Mm-hmm. And instead of serving one small landscape company, you’re serving 100 locations across the US. Instead of serving one dentist, you’re serving a dental service organization that has 30 offices and two dentists per office.

[00:31:06] Same marketing campaign, same vendors, same everything, but it’s all of the stuff you can do, a meta level up. 

[00:31:11] Speaker 5: Yeah. 

[00:31:12] Speaker: You gotta find that thing for you where it is, and then find, I said, where the puck’s going. AI’s gonna just cannibalize many industries, but they’re not gonna cannibalize the, the high school, college kids that paint window or paint houses and clean win- That’s gonna be there forever, dude.

[00:31:27] Yeah. That’s always going to be a business. And some people are gonna come in… Have you seen Pink, the company Pink Window Washing? 

[00:31:33] Speaker 5: Oh, no. 

[00:31:33] Speaker: Oh, dude, it’s like they, all these guys, they feel, I don’t know, 1950s vibe. It’s pinstripe pink and white. It’s super sexy. Mm-hmm. And it’s just window cleaning. It’s like that’s a good business to be in right now.

[00:31:44] Be the CMO of Pink Windows. Awesome. That’s all of your skills- Yeah … all the stuff you know how to do, and you can get out of the implementation seat. Yeah. I think you gotta find that and stay out of the nonprofit. Yeah. And if your heart calls you to work with a nonprofit, donate freely your time to one.

[00:31:58] Speaker 5: Okay. I appreciate that. 

[00:31:59] Speaker: I just met a, a friend of mine, she runs the education at a nonprofit that I volunteer with, and she’s in town, and we did a meditation group last night. And it’s just fun. I’m the special guest. I show up. Everyone loves me, ’cause I show up with all these great ideas. I’m a ton of fun.

[00:32:12] I never get homework. I don’t attend most meetings. They might not hear from me for months, but when I show up, I get to give freely and help and push the mission forward. At the end of the year, I get written up in their annual brief as a single line, “Thanks, Casey Stanton.” You know what I mean? That’s cool.

[00:32:25] It’s lovely for me, and they don’t pay me ’cause they can’t, and I wouldn’t accept it, but I still get that benefit in my life. 

[00:32:31] Speaker 5: Yeah. 

[00:32:31] Speaker: So you can do that, too. As I say all that- Sure … give me one direction that you’re leaning for a niche. 

[00:32:36] Speaker 5: I actually really like the idea of franchise, ’cause it does lean into my skills and what I have a lot of experience with, just on a wider scale while still serving that, niching it down into the local markets.

[00:32:46] My immediate is I need to find a franchise that makes sandwiches, ’cause I love to eat sandwiches, and I would love to figure out how to portray that in a way that gets them to sell more of them. 

[00:32:56] Speaker: Okay. So think of that, and then go to the next level of Black Rock just bought Jersey Mike’s. We know that sandwich franchises have an opportunity to exit to private equity.

[00:33:05] And now, if you’re in… If you’re, if you’re down with PE or not, it still feels it’s coming. Yeah. I think there’s a whole conversation of late stage capitalism as it relates to PE. But it’s a good place to be for yourself and your family. Yeah. So that’s you working with a sandwich company and helping them grow because they already have three locations in three college towns, and now they want to go to all the college towns or whatever.

[00:33:23] Yeah, that’s a cool place to be. I like it a lot. And the last thing I’ll say on that is I service work in the franchise space the most. Yeah. Mosquito shield. Two brothers that do gutters. That kind of stuff is a strong market because the average homeowner is gonna spend 300, $500. It’s a lot more than a $25 lunch for me and my wife or- Right

[00:33:43] there’s more profit there, more to acquire the customer, and more fun that you can have. 

[00:33:46] Speaker 5: Yeah, and I’ve done a lot with home services industries. That I can see a bit easier to say yes to. 

[00:33:50] Speaker: Yeah. Already right here, I’m sensing a sense of confidence that you could do it. If I put you in front of a HVAC company that’s got 10 trucks and I said, “Can you just take care of all their marketing strategy and make sure they hire the right ads vendor?”

[00:34:02] You’re gonna audit the ads and you’re gonna be, “Those meta ads have, those creatives haven’t been refreshed in three months.” Yeah. You’ll be, “That landing page is garbage. There’s no form to even submit. It’s all phone call based. There’s no after-hours call answering service. You guys don’t use text messaging.

[00:34:14] There’s no CRM.” Then you’re gonna do the thing that you can do, ’cause you’re the experienced nerd in the space of, “The CRM has to be this, and this is what the follow-up needs to look like,” and whatever. But once it’s built, it’s your machine, and it’s doing something at a level 100 times more effective, ’cause it has 100 locations.

[00:34:28] Speaker 5: Yeah. 

[00:34:29] Speaker: And then you’re worth it. Yeah. One sandwich shop can’t afford you at five grand a month. A sandwich franchise that has 20 locations can afford you at five grand a month. 

[00:34:37] Speaker 5: Yeah, totally. 

[00:34:38] Speaker: And the work is the same. Cool. Okay, you feel a little bit more clear? 

[00:34:41] Speaker 5: Cool. Yeah. Thank you, I really appreciate it.

[00:34:43] Speaker: Yeah, absolutely. All right, who’s next? Michael, if you can help too. Michael P. 

[00:34:47] Speaker 6: I think it was me. Morgan? Yes. Yeah. That’s it. And honestly, a lot of what you’ve been talking about, uh, in the last two conversations are really relevant for what I wanted to bring up, and it is that, as I said before, I’m working in that fast scale CPG base, which now I’m like, “Oh, maybe I should try to pivot,” just based off what you’ve been saying.

[00:35:05] But these founders are looking for people with the jack of all trades, and want someone to come in and both manage and implement. Where do you advise on positioning yourself for these roles without, one, falling into that imposter syndrome space, or getting dragged down into the tactical im- implementation?

[00:35:25] At what point do you flag that? Do you think it’s on- But there’s a- … that first conversation, you have that first consulting call and they, and you’re, “Oh, just to clear it up, here is where my services start and end,” and- 

[00:35:38] Speaker: Yeah. Just if I was talking to you, first of all, if I’m the CMO and you’re the business owner, I’m interviewing you.

[00:35:44] Speaker 6: Yeah. 

[00:35:44] Speaker: Okay? That’s really important that I’m not being cocky here, but I’m really trying to find a good fit, that’s a good fit for me- Totally … and what I want. I’m gonna ask you questions, literally the conversation that I’m gonna have. We’ll do 15 minutes and I’ll just kind of hear from you about, around your stuff, and I’ll say, “All right, Morgan, I, it seems like you guys have the budget.

[00:35:57] It seems like this might be something. Can we schedule an hour for tomorrow just to dive in a little bit deeper? You wanna bring your s- co-founder in? Cool. Okay, great.” Then we talk. I say, “Okay, Morgan, here’s the conversation I wanna have today. I wanna ask you a bunch of questions to better understand the business, and then I’ll just turn the call over to you, and then you can ask me whatever you want.

[00:36:12] Sound good?” You’re like, “Sure.” And now I’m gonna ask you a bunch of questions. “All right, tell me more about your marketing budget. Tell me about your marketing team. What vendors do you use?” Yada, yada, yada. Okay, cool. And when I come in, I’m the marketing strategist and leader. I’m the one person who’s responsible for marketing.

[00:36:25] However, I’m not the implementer for it. There needs to be budget for us to get… It seems to me just in our conversation we’d need a media buyer, we’d need a full-time graphic design person, and then we’d need a role that I call a marketing technician, which kind of just does everything else. And we can hire them offshore or we could hire them in the US.

[00:36:40] But just that idea, Morgan, how does that sound to you? And you want the person to say, “That makes sense. I think that’s likely what we need.” “Okay, cool. And what’s the timeline for you guys to have the capital for that? Is that a you guys have the funds on the desk right now and you’re ready to go, or is this something that you’re gonna do in the next 12 months?”

[00:36:54] And then they’re just gonna tell you. It’s just you’re just listening. And then you literally say after that, “Awesome. Okay, cool. I think I got all of my questions answered. Morgan, what do you have for me?” 

[00:37:03] Speaker 6: And you’ll start talking about rates, expertise, past work, things that? 

[00:37:07] Speaker: Yeah, whatever. Though I don’t think any- anyone really gets the question of CV stuff.

[00:37:11] The question that they get is, what does it look to work with you? 

[00:37:13] Speaker 6: Yeah. 

[00:37:13] Speaker: What does it cost? If we were to hire you, how soon could you start? Those are the conversations that naturally happen when you create the space, and you literally offer that. You say, “I think I answered all my questions. I think you answered all my questions.

[00:37:23] Thank you. What questions do you have for me?” Shut up, and then just answer their questions, and then you’re just guiding them into- Doing that out, yeah … a sales commitment at some point. That’s what you’re looking for. 

[00:37:31] Speaker 6: Yeah. No, 

[00:37:31] Speaker: that’s fair. Um, you stated up front, also in your agreement is incredibly clear that you do marketing strategy and leadership, and you don’t do implementation.

[00:37:39] But I think of Michael, I think of even myself, I’ll do a little implementation. 

[00:37:43] Speaker 6: Yeah. It’s, that’s reasonable. 

[00:37:44] Speaker: But I do it for speed. I don’t do it because then I’m gonna hold it over your head and be like, “Morgan, you owe me because I did this stuff.” Yeah. Some people have, they don’t tell that they’re overworking their contract, and then they have an expectation that you’re gonna notice and pay them more or something.

[00:37:59] It’s garbage. Yeah. It’s like we’re doing it as a gift. I am finding it more and more edgy around implementation when I can do it with AI faster than I could- Totally … hire someone. 

[00:38:09] Speaker 6: Yeah, that’s the other side of it, too, is what we know today is not what we’re gonna know in three months, six months. That’s another area of positioning that I guess I’m curious of and how you might be phrasing that to clients.

[00:38:21] Speaker 5: The- 

[00:38:21] Speaker 6: As w- as their agencies are bringing on new AI agents internally or where their business as a whole is wanting to leverage AI to find efficiencies, is that something that you as a fractional CMO are doing for them? Already. That’s just a part of what you’re offering as well, is finding those efficiencies where you can.

[00:38:39] Speaker: Yes. But I’m finding them in a… I’m more like pointing at something instead of doing it. Yeah. There’s als- a line that I personally use a lot is like, “Hey guys, I’m really overstepping my role here, but what I think we need to do is get a data warehouse for all this data to be dumped into, and we need to be able to pull reports out of it and send that back into Meta, and I know how they need to be structured.”

[00:38:59] But I’m not the guy for this stuff, but I can talk to the person who’s the right person. 

[00:39:02] Speaker 6: Yeah. 

[00:39:03] Speaker: Can… I’m gonna write a job post. Let’s get it out. And sometimes, like I’ll post the job on Upwork for the client, ’cause that’s fine. But other times, like they have a full HR process, so they’re gonna go through that.

[00:39:12] But I get final say in who we’re hiring. Mm-hmm. But I don’t actually sign them and hire them. I say, “All right, Morgan, we’re gonna go hire a Robert.” And you’re like, “Okay, cool. I’ll draft all the documents and do it.” I’m solving the problem… There’s a guy named Dan Sullivan, he calls it the 80% approach. 80% of solving the problem is identifying the problem and identifying what the solution could be.

[00:39:29] Yeah. That’s 80% of it. And then I go pass it over to Robert, and Robert’s gonna go do the other 80% of what’s left, and now we’re like 6% done. Had I not identified the problem and identified the person to do the solution, the problem never would’ve been solved. Yeah. Your job is just big picture. Okay. Like, know that there’s a gap.

[00:39:45] Know that, like you don’t have good attribution, and it’s like high roast or triple whale or wicked reports or something else you don’t know, but you wanna pull in someone who’s smart that knows, can we go spend 1,000 bucks and go hire a consultant for an hour? 

[00:39:56] Speaker 4: Cool. 

[00:39:56] Speaker: That’s the way I do it. Yeah. And with AI, I’m, I’m a technical guy.

[00:40:01] I have, uh, on my screen five Claude Code windows. I really like this stuff, but I’m not pushing AI with clients because they don’t n- it’s not… They don’t have an AI problem. They have a lead gen, lead cost- Mm-hmm … lead quality, lead follow-up, gestation to sale amount, upsell rate. Those problems they have, and those are often like running tests- Mm-hmm

[00:40:20] changing ad copy, then yeah. Let’s spin up a Claude Design project and knock out a couple ad creatives, sure. But it’s not your one AI platform away from the next level. And I think that every- Person who sells AI platforms says you’re one AI platform away, and we have to be the voice of reason to the business owner that really the next level for them is, uh, incremental improvements on the marketing control.

[00:40:43] Speaker 6: Yeah. It’s fundamentals, honestly. 

[00:40:45] Speaker: It’s the basics. 

[00:40:47] Speaker 6: Yeah. 

[00:40:47] Speaker: It’s your offer sucks. 

[00:40:48] Speaker 6: Yeah. 

[00:40:48] Speaker: Your offer is stale. You’re selling a $5 foot long and no one wants it anymore, ’cause you’ve sold it for eight years. It’s those things happen. And then having also some memory of great performing marketing campaigns, I think of Got Milk.

[00:41:00] Before that it was Milk Does a Body Good. Milk Does a Body Good didn’t do any sales. It was just a terrible campaign. No one wants to do a body good. But Got Milk says, “Honey, we don’t have milk in the fridge. We don’t have milk. Can you go get milk? Can you put it on the list?” That sold milk. It’s those little things that we do in marketing can create such a big upside, and when we get caught up in the implementation, we lose sight of the- 

[00:41:20] Speaker 4: Yeah

[00:41:20] Speaker: the taste that we have for marketing. 

[00:41:22] Speaker 4: Yep. 

[00:41:23] Speaker: And that’s where you wanna stay elevated. 

[00:41:24] Speaker 4: Cool. 

[00:41:24] Speaker: But I would say one last thing here is if you can, it’s a hack, I haven’t really talked about this, but if you can get a technical person on the team who is orchestrating the agents and doing the AI stuff and the development, it’s pretty cool.

[00:41:36] Don’t be that person. 

[00:41:37] Speaker 6: Yeah. 

[00:41:37] Speaker: And that person’s not expensive. They can be, but for most of our clients that have regular businesses that aren’t leading edge, AI generated businesses, AI voice businesses or something, you don’t need someone super top tier to build this stuff out. You can hire someone overseas for 30 bucks an hour to do it all.

[00:41:52] Speaker 6: Yeah. Wow. 

[00:41:52] Speaker: Yeah. Okay, any other questions? You had another one around imposter syndrome, but anything else in there? 

[00:41:56] Speaker 6: Yeah, we’ve already addressed it. We addressed it through your conversation with Michael. Thank you. 

[00:42:00] Speaker: Cool. You good? 

[00:42:00] Speaker 6: Yeah. 

[00:42:01] Speaker: Okay, great. 

[00:42:01] Speaker 7: Hey, Casey, did you connect with Robert? I know 

[00:42:04] Speaker: early on- Yeah, Bobby?

[00:42:05] Yeah. Are you still there? Yeah. 

[00:42:07] Speaker 7: I do see him still here. 

[00:42:08] Speaker: Yeah. Hey. 

[00:42:09] Speaker 8: Yep. There’s 

[00:42:09] Speaker 7: the man. 

[00:42:10] Speaker: Hey, what you got for me, man? Where are you based? 

[00:42:12] Speaker 8: I’m based out of LA. W- West Coast. LA, Vegas, San Francisco. I kind of hop around a little bit. You 

[00:42:17] Speaker: just hop around. I love 

[00:42:18] Speaker 8: it. 

[00:42:18] Speaker: Yeah. Cool. 

[00:42:19] Speaker 8: Awesome. My, my question was, my background, I’ve been doing B2B product marketing for 12 years, go to market launches- Mm-hmm

[00:42:25] sales enablement, right when businesses are ready to scale, maybe ARR in the 200K range or single digit millions and are ready to scale. And you said your preference is not to work with startups, but I have found some success with startups after they’ve raised about 10 million or so. Sure. 

[00:42:42] Speaker: Yeah, if they’ve got some cash flow, yeah.

[00:42:44] Speaker 8: Okay. Okay. So I was just wondering what are your thoughts on that? Because- 

[00:42:47] Speaker: Yeah … 

[00:42:47] Speaker 8: a lot of what you’re saying with franchises is very interesting, ’cause I have done some local marketing in the past, but it’s been a while since I’ve been in that field. I was just seeing what you thought about startups who maybe not cashflow positive, but have had a significant raise.

[00:43:01] Speaker: All right. Here’s the experience I see in it. There’s the marketers who start talking to folks at incubators, startup weeks, that kind of stuff, and they feel they’re making progress by having conversations with business owners that kind of just have an idea and a hope and a prayer, and then they overwork those folks to help them.

[00:43:16] They help them maybe with even grant writing, I’ve seen, all because then hopefully they’re going to get some of that cash as it comes in to be able to be the CMO. And it’s not that it doesn’t work, it’s just it’s winning the lotto a little bit. Yeah. And the better thing to do is to go somewhere where there is a problem that you can solve, and they need someone to solve it.

[00:43:36] When I was at First National, just imagine eight full-time people, half with MBAs. If marketing was wrong, think about how bad that was for them. 

[00:43:44] Speaker 8: Yeah. 

[00:43:44] Speaker: They needed someone in the seat. It wasn’t nice to have, it was a requirement. Yeah. They also needed someone at the executive leadership level to meet with them every quarter in person in New Jersey to talk through and defend marketing.

[00:43:57] And – I would fight with the sales guy because they weren’t calling my leads,, and we had that battle. I wanna be in a place where I’m wanted and needed, and that there’s capital for me. Mm-hmm. You could say that does happen when there’s an influx of capital from an investor.

[00:44:10] Yes. I do feel that those roles tend to be shorter lived, and it’s- Mm … a lot of work to do that stuff. And if you take that same energy that you have, dude, you’re the guy who can go zero to one, funded company to first great marketing campaign. What if you just took that same energy to a profitable company?

[00:44:25] Some people wanna work with startups because of the equity game. I think we all know people who have lost out on equity. The equity never materialized, the company went under. A company sold private, and only preferred stockholders were able to convert, and everyone else with common stock didn’t, and that CMO who worked for, had a million or $2 million in common stock didn’t get paid out.

[00:44:45] Those things happen. I’d rather go somewhere where someone can pay me. And also I guess as a litmus, I wanna go somewhere where if I screw up, it’s not the end of the world for the business. And I say that not because I wanna screw up or I want that out, but think of the pressure that’s off. If the pressure that’s on you, Bobby, is, “All right, dude, this has to work.”

[00:45:02] Speaker 3: Yeah. “

[00:45:02] Speaker: This, dude, this has to work.” And then it doesn’t work as well because, I don’t know, we have an excursion in Cuba, and the market focuses all the media for a week on a Castro indictment. And now your marketing campaign that was supposed to get all these eyeballs, now the eyeballs cost twice as much, and the campaign flops.

[00:45:19] That’s a lot of pressure, dude. I’d much rather you be in a place where- We need you. This has to work, but it has to work over the next 12 to 18 months. Mm-hmm. It’s not a week by week, month by month has to work. Startups can work. I do think that the overall allostatic load, stress of the CMO in a startup is likely much higher than a more mature business.

[00:45:40] Those more mature businesses, those CMOs tend to feel a little bit more relaxed. It’s who you are too, as a person. Some people like to work weekends, they like to work nights, they like to feel needed. Some people are empty nesters. Kids are out of the house, they’re willing to work their butt off, it’s fine.

[00:45:53] I’ve got young kids. Yesterday I took my daughter on a bike ride. It was gonna be 30 minutes. We went for two and a half hours. I wanna be able to do that in my life right now. I’m not at the time where I just wanna work endless hours for a startup because I’m gonna get a slice of something that may or may not m- may not materialize.

[00:46:06] Yeah. How does that land with you? Where do you feel that is, uh, for you? 

[00:46:09] Speaker 8: Uh, I think it makes sense, and I do get some traction from some more mature businesses too. I have had some clients r- recently in those spaces. I just think, ’cause coming from a 9 to 5, a lot of my work, I’m the first hands-on go-to-market or product marketer who’s doing the strategic positioning, messaging, and that translates really well because there is a big need for it.

[00:46:31] But a lot of the issues that you say you do run into it. Like, I do have a client right now that raised 15 million, and it’s looking like they’re gonna raise another, but budget is starting to get constrained. And who would’ve thought 15 million isn’t that much for a AI startup? Yeah, it doesn’t make sense.

[00:46:46] Yeah. 

[00:46:47] Speaker: Yeah. And I don’t wanna knock the excitement of it, ’cause it’s fun to work in a startup. Early in my career, I worked at an agency and we would do book launches. Mm. And if you wanna do a New York Times bestseller, dude, you have to align. If anyone gets a New York Times bestseller, I got a Wall Street Journal bestseller.

[00:47:00] That’s about selling a certain number of books online or in person. Hard, but not impossible. To- A New York Times bestseller is like you have to sell a butt ton of books online and in person, which means that the books have to hit the store shelves the same time that you’re doing your promotion, plus you have to be on local news, plus you have to be on national news, plus you have to have social media conversations.

[00:47:18] It’s huge. Anyone that just gets a New York Times that didn’t really work, uh, they didn’t have a marketing department behind them, they are amazing. I have so much respect for them. And working on those campaigns, I did two New York Times bestseller launches for clients, and it was fun. 

[00:47:31] Speaker 3: Yeah. 

[00:47:31] Speaker: But it was, I would take a nap at 5:00 in the evening, and then I’d work a couple more hours after I had dinner, and I just worked my butt off.

[00:47:38] Yeah. And it was fun, but it was a younger man’s game. Yeah. I don’t wanna do that anymore. If it’s you and that’s the game that you wanna play and that works for your lifestyle, then startups are fun. But otherwise, man, I think there’s boring approach to business where- The business grows incrementally by 10 or 15 or 20% a year, and you’re the CMO of it, and you get a lot of money to do the work and to keep things safe and growing, and you have a team of people that do stuff.

[00:48:00] And people get married and get sick and have babies, and it’s just, that’s a different game, and I’d much rather be there than in a higher stress environment. That’s where I would lean if I were you. Then, and take on one startup if, if you want that kind of… I don’t- It feels like party life. Yeah. If you want that lifestyle, do it, but I wouldn’t make that the basis of your income.

[00:48:20] Speaker 8: Got it. That makes a lot of sense. 

[00:48:21] Speaker: Yeah. Outside of startups, what industry would you wanna be in? 

[00:48:24] Speaker 8: Probably healthcare. I have a lot of experience in that, and some healthcare stuff recently. 

[00:48:29] Speaker: Healthcare has a moat around it. HIPAA compliant stuff, you can’t run the Meta Pixel, you can’t run Google Analytics because it’s not HIPAA compliant.

[00:48:36] Speaker 8: I actually just worked with a, briefly with a client. It was a pretty bad client, but it was briefly. But they have a HIPAA compliant CDP- Yeah … so they, they can get around some of that stuff. Great. 

[00:48:46] Speaker: You know that. No one else in this room probably knows that. Boom, you’re already the better CMO for that company- Mm-hmm

[00:48:51] if you wanna be in that space. I’d do that for you, and I would think, I don’t wanna get political, but I don’t think there’s probably gonna be a whole lot of HIPAA complaint from the federal government happening under Trump. But if we switch over to a more liberal president, we could see things shift, policy shift- That’s true

[00:49:06] and we could see following HIPAA compliance to a T is gonna be even more critical, and the fines are gonna get big. Someone who sees the writing on the wall, they’re gonna need someone like you who’s gonna play that game safely. That’s a big deal. Okay. So I’m gonna get you results, and I’m gonna do it HIPAA compliantly, and I’m gonna do it compliantly in a way that we would be proud of the work that we do with a different president That’s a level of protection you can provide that someone else might not be thinking of.

[00:49:27] Speaker 8: Make, makes sense. Makes sense. 

[00:49:28] Speaker: Yeah. And healthcare is cool with a caveat, again, that they can be slow to make decisions- Yeah … but they tend to stick to their decisions. 

[00:49:36] Speaker 8: Yeah. 

[00:49:36] Speaker: If you’re doing medical products, medical instruments, medical devices, someone goes and spends how much money for clinical trials and tests and all this stuff to what?

[00:49:45] Flop a launch because they’re too cheap to spend good money on you? No way, dude. They’re gonna spend good money on you because they see it in some ways of, if Bobby launches this for us, we’ll have done everything we could to have a strong marketing launch on top of our clinically proven, FDA approved product.

[00:50:02] Got it. So I like that space for that reason. 

[00:50:04] Speaker 8: Sounds good. Sounds good. 

[00:50:05] Speaker: Yeah. And it’s high- tends to be high, uh, high transaction size. Is anything in healthcare less than 100 bucks? No. It’s anything less than 1,000 bucks? Not much. Yeah. So that’s a good place for you as well. 

[00:50:15] Speaker 8: Okay. 

[00:50:16] Speaker: Yeah. So like, yeah, I would stay, yeah, stay big.

[00:50:18] Try to get embedded a bit if you can in like the weird spaces in healthcare. Mm-hmm. And I think you’ll find that you can find… You can be rare. In a startup you’re not rare. Mm. Deep in healthcare as it relates to HIPAA compliance and selling into GDPR countries and all that kind of stuff, you can become a rarer breed there, and therefore your fees can increase, ’cause you’re the guy that knows that stuff.

[00:50:40] Speaker 8: Got it. Yeah. 

[00:50:41] Speaker: Yeah. So startup, it’s weak. It’s if someone said to me, “I wanna be in B2B SaaS,” what’s B2B Saas? B2B SaaS is literally everything. 

[00:50:47] Speaker 8: Yeah. 

[00:50:47] Speaker: But if you tell me you wanna be in, uh, FINRA controlled fintech, boom. Now we’re really tight into something where you can charge more because you have a specialization.

[00:50:56] Speaker 8: Okay. Sounds good. 

[00:50:57] Speaker: Cool. Awesome, man. Looking forward to chatting more. 

[00:50:59] Speaker 8: Yeah. Thanks. Thanks. 

[00:51:00] Speaker: Yeah. All right, who’s next? Anyone else wanna jam? Come off mute. What do we got? Damian, are you chatting? I can’t hear you. I see your mouth moving, but I don’t hear you, and you’re not muted. 

[00:51:10] Speaker 7: How’s that? Better? 

[00:51:11] Speaker: Yes. 

[00:51:11] Speaker 7: What’s up?

[00:51:11] All right. Thanks, Casey. I sold my agency last year, and- 

[00:51:15] Speaker: Congrats … 

[00:51:16] Speaker 7: I’ve moved into fractional CMO, enjoying the no employee life. I see rates is active in the chatter with me and others. Different clients need different amounts of your time. If you’re not gonna talk rates at all and you’re just gonna speak in retainer language, how do you manage scope?

[00:51:31] Speaker: It’s a good question. First of all, I’m targeting, I think a base target for CMOs should be 250 an hour. 

[00:51:37] Speaker 7: Yeah. 

[00:51:37] Speaker: Okay? So that’s like 10 hours a week, 10 grand. Mm-hmm. That’s where I want folks to be. I see some folks, they’ll not follow the holy book and they’ll do 20 hours, and they’ll do it for 175 an hour.

[00:51:48] And if that makes sense for them, then I’m not gonna preclude them from making money, but I think 250 is where you wanna be. I think it’s better. If you’re ever gonna take on extra hours for a client to do some kind of launch-y stuff or push over a project or there’s something, an M&A that’s happening- Got it

[00:52:02] spin up extra hours for a month or two. 

[00:52:04] Speaker 7: Right now, I feel, right now, it’s early days. I have one client, 20 hours a month, 250. Another client, 30 hours a month, 250. And another one, 10 hours a month, 350 an hour. And if they’re not retainer, the rate goes to 500 an hour if they just want ad hoc. I think- My next step is what you’re saying, to split my mind share less ways and either hold the rate or increase the rate, but try to upgrade my clients.

[00:52:28] But even in that conversation, I still wanna be opportunistic. If someone wants 10 hours a month at a higher rate, I don’t know if I should say no to that right now, especially early days. It’s just ha- a lot of the chatter is never talk about your rate in the chat. I don’t know how I can… I don’t wanna lead with my rate, but I feel like rate has to come up in a conversation- It has to come up

[00:52:46] or there’s no scope to defend. 

[00:52:47] Speaker: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So your job is, your first 30 days with a client is to really understand what’s up. ‘Cause you can tell me anything on our first calls, and I could fall in love with you, and by the time I get into the company, I figure out that you change your mind all the time and you actually don’t have the marketing budget that you said.

[00:53:01] I need 30 days paid, full price, for me to come in and really understand things. Then I’m gonna lay out a strategy, and I’m gonna tell you what I can commit to for a rate. I’m gonna say, “Okay, over the next three months, these are the outcomes that I want us to achieve. I think these are the most important.

[00:53:15] Do you agree or disagree?” Yeah, cool. For that, my rate is X a month, and that’s it. And if you did a bad job of quoting, you’re gonna work a little extra and you’re gonna eat it. And then hopefully the next quarter you’re gonna do a much better job and kinda settle things back down. But that’s the route that you go.

[00:53:29] You have to have clear deliverables and outcomes, and those outcomes are photograph-able deliverables from me, not results. I wanna be clear. I’m not telling you you’re gonna get an extra million dollars in accounts receivable. I’m gonna tell you that we’re gonna build these campaigns out and launch them, and we’re going to get 100 opt-ins.

[00:53:44] I’m happy to tell you that. But do those turn into sales? I don’t know, and I can’t know until I get data. 

[00:53:49] Speaker 7: Yep. Makes sense, man. Okay. Thank you. Appreciate it. 

[00:53:51] Speaker: Yeah. What industry are you in? 

[00:53:53] Speaker 7: I, I’m a little all over the place. I have a ketamine clinic- Mm-hmm … that I service. How big? Which is HIPAA hell, as we were talking about earlier.

[00:54:00] I’m learning a lot about HIPAA. I have another company that does, they have 100 developers in the Ukraine, and they’re essentially sto- staff augmentation for developers. 

[00:54:09] Speaker: Great. 

[00:54:09] Speaker 7: And my third does super high infused olive oils for commercial kitchens- Cool … and a little bit of D2C. I’m not doing the niche down right now.

[00:54:21] I’m full opportunistic mode, and I know eventually I should probably pick a lane and stick to it. 

[00:54:26] Speaker: The problem is that you’re not special- 

[00:54:28] Speaker 7: Yeah … 

[00:54:28] Speaker: in your current route. You’re willing to take on the work and you’re smart, but you’re not special. Yeah. And if I was alongside of you and I’d worked with a bunch of Eastern European developer shops, they’re gonna hire me before they hire you, and I can charge 50% more than you.

[00:54:43] Speaker 9: Yeah. 

[00:54:43] Speaker: Yes, be opportunistic to a point, but you gotta just commit. In committing, you’re gonna simplify your life. You’re gonna work less hours and deliver a better product, and everyone’s gonna be happier, and you’re gonna get back that context switching time that- At some level crushes you, doesn’t it? 

[00:54:58] Speaker 7: Yeah.

[00:54:58] My billable hours versus my actual hours is off the chart right now. 

[00:55:03] Speaker: Yeah. 

[00:55:04] Speaker 7: Yeah. 

[00:55:04] Speaker: And I think that for intellectual people, they’re polymaths. They want this difference. They want the fun of it. It’s a, it’s a struggle, but it feels exciting. I get it. That’s fun. But it… I want you to have a simple life. 

[00:55:16] Speaker 7: Yeah.

[00:55:16] Speaker: And a simple life, w- you’re doing it right, Damien, when you work with a client and it’s a new problem, and you come up with a really cool solution, and then a week later your other client has the same problem, and you’re like, “I’ve got an idea.” Yeah. You duplicate the documents, you apply to them. They’re non-competitive.

[00:55:29] It doesn’t hurt anybody. And then you have a third client that three months later has the same problem. Boom. Now your workload is dropping tremendously. Your work product increases. The efficiencies that you gained on client two, you apply to client one. Everyone wins there. I want you to become the guy at some point.

[00:55:43] Speaker 7: Makes sense. Appreciate it, man. 

[00:55:45] Speaker: Yeah. Yeah, you’re welcome. Congrats. All right. Who’s next? All right, cool. Casey, have fun chatting with Melissa. She’s my sister-in-law. Did you know that? She’s my wife’s sister. Yeah. Enjoy chatting with her. All right. Any other questions? Hey, Carla, welcome in. 

[00:55:57] Speaker 10: Hey, I just wanted to say

[00:55:59] Hold on, let me close out the chat. Thank you for some of the background. I was on your Facebook group, and I’m working with, I’m talking to a very early stage startup. It’s pre-funded, it’s bootstrapped, and the f- the founders … Me a lot, I have an inside person there whom I met at a Women XAI event on the, in the peninsula.

[00:56:18] I’m in San Francisco. But after three conversations, I find out that they don’t have funds to pay me, that they would want to start me as an advisor, and that being an advisor on an AI company is actually a goal of mine. I’m willing to do that, but I’ve really, listening to this conversation and tapped some of my network who are in a director’s group that I’m in.

[00:56:40] I’m really gonna really reduce my scope, because I, until they have funding- You’re not getting paid as an advisor? … I’m, uh, there’s no chance of being a CMO, fractional CMO, any of that. 

[00:56:49] Speaker: I get at one level it’s flattering that they have asked you this, but they’re not paying you? 

[00:56:52] Speaker 10: They would pay in equity, and they asked me, they would pay in equity, and then they said, “But we start people as advisors.”

[00:57:00] Advisors don’t do executional work, advisors advise. And they, there’s no one on their team out of 20 people that does marketing, so you would be the person executing. And if I’m going to do that, then I going to, I would narrow it down. I’m looking at maybe three to five hours a week in exchange for being on their board of advisors and equity, and then I’d l- I still don’t know what equity that would be, ’cause the ball is in my court now to deliver that description of what my ideal role is.

[00:57:29] But at minimum, I would get something out of it by being, having an AI company on my roster. 

[00:57:35] Speaker: What would you get out of that? 

[00:57:36] Speaker 10: One of my goals is to be a board advisor on an AI company, which I think could possibly lead to other paid board advisor work and other paid contract work for AI companies. In the- I-

[00:57:50] Bay Area, it’s very competitive. 

[00:57:52] Speaker: I hear you- In the- … but there’s this, I don’t have a name for it. There’s this thing I see that happens in the accelerator where it is this meritocracy that people think that they have to have, where they have to get the small client, and then the next thing, and then the next thing, and then finally they’ll be ready.

[00:58:04] Mm-hmm. The market will finally perceive them as the right person. And they tend, these people tend to be making more comfortable decisions that feel strategic, but at the end of the day, don’t pay them. Conversely, I see other people who come in who don’t have the experience, who don’t have the right to charge a high dollar, who charge 10 grand out the gate, and they win it.

[00:58:22] They serve the client- Mm-hmm … they become the person, and then the world starts coming to them. 

[00:58:26] Speaker 10: I see. 

[00:58:26] Speaker: And there’s, y- you’re saying- You have a goal to be on a startup. Okay, that’s fine. I’m not gonna question that goal. Um- 

[00:58:32] Speaker 10: No, to be on a startup board. 

[00:58:34] Speaker: Yeah. ‘

[00:58:34] Speaker 10: Cause I’ve already worked with startups. 

[00:58:36] Speaker: To be on the board, if that is in of itself a goal.

[00:58:38] I wanna write a book. Cool. Write a book. Fine with me. That’s great. But then to believe that is the precursor to the next step, to me, feels a be busy task. It doesn’t feel real to me. I’ve never heard… Melissa, are you still here, Melissa? Is she… Yeah. Can you come off mute? I, I wonder if I caught her at a bad time.

[00:58:54] Speaker 4: Yes, I am. 

[00:58:55] Speaker: Okay. Hey. Okay, so Melissa runs placement. Sometimes business owners come into CMOX and they say, “Hey, I hear you have pretty cool CMOs. Do you have anyone in my industry?” Or whatever. Melissa, has anyone ever said, “Do you have someone who has board experience?” 

[00:59:06] Speaker 4: No, actually. 

[00:59:07] Speaker: Do they even care about that?

[00:59:08] Speaker 4: No. 

[00:59:09] Speaker: Do they care more about the person committing to an industry than their actual experience in the industry? 

[00:59:14] Speaker 4: 100%. They wanna know that you know the playbook for their business. Yeah. They don’t want a learning curve. Yeah. They’re not seeking a leader that’s gonna take time to figure out how to convert leads and how to maximize their spend.

[00:59:27] They want you to come in knowing how to do that. They are tired of trying to figure it out. 

[00:59:31] Speaker: Carla, I think what you’re going after is noble, but it’s… It feels, dare I say, a 1980s strategy where those things really mattered. Pedigree, that mattered. Today it doesn’t matter like that. Today what matters is go talk to decision-makers and show them that you’re committed to this industry, you know it, and you can help them.

[00:59:48] They’re gonna want you. And if anything takes your time and doesn’t give you a multiple back in cash or in true relationships that get you opportunities and at bats, it’s not worth it. I’d rather you not work and watch Netflix, advise someone for something for some kind of fake… For something that doesn’t actually mean something to anybody else.

[01:00:08] All that with a caveat of, if you wanna do it for you, do it. 

[01:00:11] Speaker 10: It would be for equity. I just don’t know what that equity is yet, ’cause they are waiting on my description. 

[01:00:18] Speaker: Let’s talk to… Let’s talk equity real quick. Okay. Here’s the equity conversation. Melissa, I’ll drop you. Thanks. Okay, equity conversation is, first of all, if you wanna come work for me for four hours a week, I’ll give you equity in my business.

[01:00:27] I don’t ever plan to sell my business, but I will give you equity in my business and it won’t turn into anything. You’ll just hold a big old bag of IOUs, and I just won’t pay it out. They have a- That’s 

[01:00:35] Speaker 10: a 

[01:00:35] Speaker: possibility. 

[01:00:35] Speaker 10: Yeah, they do. It is a possibility. They have an exit strategy. They’ve got customers. They have cash flow.

[01:00:41] They just don’t have enough to pay employees. They’re boot- They’re bootstrapped until the funding comes in, which they will supposedly go after in fall. 

[01:00:50] Speaker: Yeah. And it’ll take six months longer at least than what they predict it’s gonna take, and then you’re gonna be working your butt off for it. And I don’t wanna tell you that it’s a terrible move, but the equity that you’re gonna get is gonna be on high risk.

[01:01:00] If you wanna do equity, here’s what I would say you do. Mm-hmm. I would say that you set a rate. What would it cost… What would you charge for this weekly work that you would do for them? Give me a- 

[01:01:09] Speaker 10: I was thinking what my internal hourly would be. My internal hourly would be 400 and- 

[01:01:16] Speaker: Cool. And 

[01:01:16] Speaker 10: you do about four 

[01:01:16] Speaker: hours a week?

[01:01:17] Speaker 10: I was gonna offer them three to five inclusive time boxed maximum. That includes if they want me to join a meeting or what have you. 

[01:01:24] Speaker: Okay. Just for simplicity, just for easy numbers, ’cause I’m bad at math, let’s just say it’s five grand a month would be your fee. Yep. Okay. 

[01:01:30] Speaker 10: Yep. 

[01:01:31] Speaker: You and I are in a relationship, and I say, “Carla, I wanna hire you.”

[01:01:33] You’re like, “My rate’s five grand a month.” Okay, cool. I don’t wanna pay you in… I can pay you in cash, but if I don’t pay you in cash and I exit this business, I’ll give you a multiple of that five. What would you ask from me? How much, what multiple would you ask for? Would you want 2X? It depends on the time.

[01:01:46] First, let’s define how long is it gonna take them to exit in your eyes? 

[01:01:49] Speaker 10: I think it could take, this is a big variable, uh, the AI market is very hot here, and they do have, I think, 100 customers. I think it could be two to three years, and I think their potential acquirers could be anyone from a Salesforce to a busi- business management- Sure

[01:02:05] consulting firm, or it could even be like Anthropic. 

[01:02:08] Speaker: Okay, great. So let’s say it’s three years. You’re gonna work for me. I can pay you five grand a month now- 

[01:02:13] Speaker 10: Mm-hmm … for 

[01:02:14] Speaker: the next three years. If I don’t, I’m gonna fire you, okay? Okay. Five grand a month for the next three years, or I don’t pay you, but I pay you a multiple at exit.

[01:02:22] What’s that multiple that you wanna have? 

[01:02:24] Speaker 10: It would have to be probably a few hundred thousand. 

[01:02:26] Speaker: Okay. If you want five grand a month, that’s 60 grand a year. Yes. Over the course of three years, that’s $180,000. Either I can pay you 180 grand over the next three years or pay you nothing or a multiple of 180.

[01:02:36] What does that multiple have to be for you? This is a number that you have to feel good with. You double or nothing? You triple 

[01:02:41] Speaker 10: or nothing? Yeah. I think it would have to be, y- to your point, if you were to be paid cash 180, you’d want a multiple of that, right? What’s your multiple? ‘Cause the cash, that’s cash in hand.

[01:02:50] You’d want a two to 3X multiple. 

[01:02:52] Speaker: Great. That’s where I would go with equity. 

[01:02:54] Speaker 10: Okay. 

[01:02:54] Speaker: You pay me in cash, ’cause this is my fee- Yeah … or you don’t, but at exit, I am a preferred shareholder- 

[01:03:01] Speaker 10: Okay … 

[01:03:01] Speaker: that gets 3X, and then maybe it’s worth it. And also inclusive of this, Carla- Mm-hmm … is you’re going to introduce me to other AI founders.

[01:03:10] I get to be in on those conversations. Costs you nothing, I get benefit. All right, now that’s interesting. Now maybe you get a $500,000 exit in three years, but also, if that money comes, that’s lottery money. That’s how nice, but not expected. 3X face value, your 5K a month for X number of hours a week.

[01:03:28] Mm-hmm. And you track your own time, and you don’t disclose that to them. Some weeks you’ll work more, some weeks you’ll work less, but it’s not you’re gonna submit time logs to them. 

[01:03:35] Speaker 10: Right. 

[01:03:35] Speaker: And they have to honor that, and you can push back and say, “Actually, I don’t have capacity this week for that call. We can do it next week.”

[01:03:41] We do on top of that quarterly planning for them, too. Mm-hmm. You don’t wanna be in a week-to-week job. You wanna be in a quarter-to-quarter role. Annual plan, quarterly plan. In about 15 days you should be doing your Q3 plan. 180 times three- Maybe, yeah, $540… half a million dollars would be cool. That’d be a cool win, but you have to get something else that’s ancillary along the way, introductions.

[01:04:01] Mm-hmm. And you have to write that in the contract. I see. And you also get passes to events, and you get your travel paid- Yep. Got it … and you get your per diem. 

[01:04:09] Speaker 10: Yep. I have that all hard expenses would be covered. Any AI pro subscriptions would be covered, any LinkedIn Premium, any hard expenses, or if I’m required to show up at something on the peninsula or would have all these sort of hard expenses would be covered.

[01:04:25] Mm-hmm. And that would obviously come out of those… That time would come out of those hours. But that three to five hours a week is not very much, especially if… You know, I basically cut out anything business development, investor relations related, fundraising related, because I said that would be handled separately because those are that, their own ball of wax.

[01:04:44] Speaker: True. 

[01:04:45] Speaker 10: Yeah. And, you know, we’re early in the conversation. I may just move forward with some of these details with them just to see where it goes, and then use this as a learning experience. I do believe that their having me attend at, on their dime, AI events expands my network, expands my knowledge, and could lead to other consulting that is actually paid- 

[01:05:06] Speaker: Sure

[01:05:06] Speaker 10: from actual people- If you use it as a lead source for that … who are actually funded. 

[01:05:09] Speaker: Yeah. 

[01:05:09] Speaker 10: If you use it as a lead source of business. So I, I do have a… Should I put… And if I do this sort of advisory role, do, should I be putting a, an end date on the advisory role? A six month or a 12 month or? 

[01:05:20] Speaker: I’d be advising them until they exit.

[01:05:22] Well, you can’t… I have a buddy who was the CMO of a health company that was in the Bay Area. Mm-hmm. You probably know the name. And he got a bunch of equity, and then- He left the company and he held that equity, and he had no say over what they did in that business. Mm-hmm. He lost his voting rights. The company went and sold private, and his equity never got paid out because they only- Oh

[01:05:42] paid out preferred shareholders. So you want to remain a person who’s there. Yeah, you could back down. You could back down to quarterly planning only, but I’m not letting go of a company if they owe me money. I want my hands in that business. I want people to say hi to me when I show up. I want a place for my coat to be hung up when I stop in the office.

[01:05:59] You know what I mean? 

[01:06:00] Speaker 10: Yeah. 

[01:06:00] Speaker: I’m part of this. I put in a couple years of work or six months of work or whatever. I’m here for the long haul. I’m just here less. Yeah. Mm-hmm. But you must… I think the biggest thing here is you have to contractually obligate them to introduce you to other founders. 

[01:06:12] Speaker 10: That makes sense.

[01:06:13] And then do you a- ask for that in your ask for equity? Do you actually state in the requirement preferred equity, or do you wait to see what they send you and then say, “No, this needs to be preferred,” and- 

[01:06:25] Speaker: Yeah, you do the latter, and you do it with a lawyer and not to a- 

[01:06:28] Speaker 10: Yep, yep. 

[01:06:29] Speaker: Yeah. Get a lawyer on it. And assume that they’re going to do the thing that’s easiest for them.

[01:06:32] Yep. Not that they’re trying to screw you, but if they’ve created a series of Class B shares, that might be easier to grant you than creating a whole new structure or whatever. It’s, it’s fine. It’s just that’s not what actually you’re gonna accept. You don’t wanna be too squeaky, but you also wanna take care of yourself.

[01:06:44] Spending 1,000 bucks today on a lawyer is probably good business. 

[01:06:47] Speaker 10: Yeah, I do have a, a friend from my group that is an employment attorney. 

[01:06:50] Speaker: Cool. 

[01:06:51] Speaker 10: Thank you so much. Yeah, 

[01:06:51] Speaker: I think the startup, the cliff kind of stuff, that’s very common out there. 

[01:06:55] Speaker 10: Okay. 

[01:06:56] Speaker: But I would just say, “Every month I work, you owe me three times my deferred cash.”

[01:07:00] Speaker 10: Okay. “

[01:07:01] Speaker: And if we stop working after 30 days, you owe me $15,000 at exit. I’m coming the moment you guys get acquired, and you must make good on it.” 

[01:07:09] Speaker 10: Awesome. Great. Thank you for the counsel. 

[01:07:11] Speaker: Yeah. Yeah, you’re welcome. And I’m not a lawyer, so talk to your lawyer. 

[01:07:13] Speaker 10: I will, for sure. 

[01:07:14] Speaker: Okay. Thanks, Carla. 

[01:07:15] Speaker 10: You bet. 

[01:07:16] Speaker: All right.

[01:07:16] Any other questions? Akshay, you said- Um- Yeah, you wanna hop on? Yeah. What’s up, man? 

[01:07:20] Speaker 9: Yeah, sure. 

[01:07:20] Speaker: I remember seeing you before. 

[01:07:22] Speaker 9: Yeah, I j- h- hopped in once a while ago. Yeah. It’s based on your value-based… Sorry, my dog is going crazy. 

[01:07:28] Speaker: I don’t even hear 

[01:07:28] Speaker 9: it. You pri- you price based on a value-based model. My question is, do you anchor your retainer on a specific outcome that is in the contract, or do you make it more concret- concrete around some KPIs?

[01:07:40] How do you- 

[01:07:40] Speaker: I’m actually top dog, man. Listen, I’m gonna show up. I’m gonna do the best I can. I’m gonna give you the time. I’m gonna give you the time, and I’m gonna focus on these things. But if you’re the business owner and you come to me and say, “KC, I want us to work on this app,” I’m like, “Dude, but we gotta do all this other lead generation stuff.”

[01:07:52] You’re like, “We’re gonna work on the app together, man. And it’s… I really need your creativity on it.” Okay, cool. I work with you on the app, and then we miss our lead targets. I did what I said I was going to do. I defended the work that I was gonna defend. You pushed me to do something else. I complied ’cause I’m here to support you, but I’m not gonna be held to an outcome, dude.

[01:08:07] You can’t hold me to an outcome. Markets shift. I’m not a performance marketer, I’m a CMO. Do you see the difference? If I’m a performance agency, for sure. For sure I’m holding those people to an outcome for something measured in ad campaign success. You generate me leads for $5 a piece that are MQLs because of these criteria.

[01:08:24] If you do that and get me 1,000 of those in the next 90 days, I’m gonna give you a $10,000 bonus. For sure, that can exist. But as the CMO, you’re responsible for the department. The department means you gotta go push on the sales team to call the leads faster. You gotta go work with the tech team to make sure that the leads are getting inserted and lead sources aren’t getting stripped.

[01:08:41] You’re doing stuff that isn’t just performance. It is, in a lot of ways, the precursor to performance or the thing that aids in performance. It can’t be held to performance exclusively. 

[01:08:52] Speaker 9: Understood. No, it’s not that granular, ad cost or something. I’m more talking outcome on a business level. Hey, grew more revenue from one to three million this year.

[01:09:02] Something broader and bigger that’s strategic, that’s also tied to a business need- That’s my 

[01:09:06] Speaker: target That’s my target. That’s- You’re gonna give that target. Something on 

[01:09:10] Speaker 9: this level. 

[01:09:10] Speaker: Let’s say it’s gen one, just freeze. You say, “Okay, we’re at 1.5, we gotta go to 3 million.” Cool. All right, my first question is how– what is the average transaction value?

[01:09:18] You give me a number, right? The average sale is $1,000, 10,000, whatever. 

[01:09:21] Speaker 9: 100, 100K. 

[01:09:22] Speaker: Yeah, great. Okay, cool, so you need 15 sales. Now, my next question is what’s the gestation from lead origination to sale and cash collected? 

[01:09:28] Speaker 9: Six months. 

[01:09:29] Speaker: Cool. So I have six months to generate enough leads to convert. And how do those leads convert from midsummer through December?

[01:09:36] Is it still six months or is it a little bit slower because it’s summertime and the holidays? 

[01:09:40] Speaker 9: They don’t have enough data because, again, they’re AI startup. Yeah. Only two years old. 

[01:09:44] Speaker: Cool. 

[01:09:45] Speaker 9: When they started and where they’re at right now and who they’re targeting has shifted. Now they’re targeting enterpr- enterprise platforms in the tech space, they’re enterprise coding platform themselves.

[01:09:54] Things have changed from earlier. They were cha– targeting mid-sized agencies to digital consultancies and so on, and now they’re going after the bigger brands. There is a shift, and you can’t rely on the past data to make any meaningful, coherent decisions at this point. I can’t base it off of that as the- 

[01:10:10] Speaker: Okay.

[01:10:10] But you can have some ideas here that what I would say to them is, “All right. We’re gonna take January, and we’re gonna go hard on building infrastructure. And in February, we’re launching campaigns. March, April, May, June, we’re pushing our budget. I gotta see– If you guys really wanna add an extra 1.5 million or 15 sales, we gotta push our, a majority of our budget in those four months.

[01:10:30] And then we gotta keep going after that. Let’s say we make those sales and we hit the target, we don’t wanna start January 1st next year with no leads. We gotta continue to build and optimize and do all this other stuff in the latter, the second… Sorry, the third and fourth quarter. But maybe in the fourth quarter, we buy ourselves a little opportunity to build more infrastructure.

[01:10:47] Maybe we’re doing more outreach in the third quarter, things that are lower cost.” That’s what I’m telling them, but I’m aligned to it, and I want it, too. But you’re not gonna say to me, “Casey, you failed.” You know what I mean? I didn’t fail. It’s a marketing campaign didn’t deliver the leads at the quality that we expected, or you guys didn’t have the budget to pay what the market actually demanded we pay for these sales.

[01:11:06] The client says, “All right. We wanna get a $100,000 sale, and we can afford five grand to acquire that customer.” You say, “Cool. I will take that as our initial assumption and our hypothesis.” We test the market. We made our first sale. You know what our first sale cost? 10 grand. It’s like, “Okay, guys. Initial sales say that our cost per sale is twice what we expected.

[01:11:24] We have two options right now. Option one is to put more into marketing spend so we can acquire more customers and still hit our target. The other one is to reduce our target.” My job is just to bring the client to reality. 

[01:11:35] Speaker 9: Understood. 

[01:11:36] Speaker: Do you see how that’s different? Okay. Yeah. Them understanding reality is a very different thing than me hitting a target for a control that doesn’t exist.

[01:11:44] Speaker 9: Okay. I’ll tell you why I’m saying this, because I’m trying to bring in a metric that I own. It’s a platform I built. 

[01:11:49] Speaker: Yeah. 

[01:11:49] Speaker 9: Okay. I’m trying to get that into the contract as a meaningful metric. Hey, everybody tracks these. You go, there are SEO, AEO, you track ad metrics. You got your CRM for your leads, but below that you’ve got so many metrics.

[01:12:01] You’re looking at your website and this. How about you just track one score, like perception intelligence score, which is your… It’s a compacted score across how AI, across search, how human perception, combined into one, and then I own the action items under that. And as the perception improves relevant, relative to your competitive landscape, your revenue grows too.

[01:12:20] Speaker: No. 

[01:12:20] Speaker 9: No? 

[01:12:20] Speaker: No. It’s net performer- net performance score, NPS. 

[01:12:23] Speaker 9: It’s a credit score for your business. It’s a FICO score of your business. 

[01:12:26] Speaker: I can’t pay my debts and pay my employees with that, though. So you’re not wrong that it’s cool and it could be useful, and maybe you have something really hot here. I’m not trying to call your baby ugly, but businesses work on EBITDA.

[01:12:37] They’ll always work on EBITDA. Mm-hmm. Your score can be a precursor to it, and you can say, “Hey guys, look at the score. It’s dropping or it’s increasing, and that means that I’m projecting that these things are happening.” But the only thing the business owner’s gonna care about is EBITDA. The- that’s the only measurement that matters.

[01:12:50] Is our cash flow in greater than our cash flow out? Are we increasing our assets? 

[01:12:54] Speaker 9: Yeah. I’d still love to get everybody’s perspective. With your permission, if you don’t mind, I can drop it in the chat, but- Yeah … just 

[01:13:01] Speaker: curious- Yeah, like I think it’s an interesting idea, but it… What does the business owner want?

[01:13:04] If you disassociate yourself from the fun of what you’re building and, and the possible utility, does the business owner require this for success? No, they haven’t, therefore they don’t, but it could be a nice-to-have. 

[01:13:15] Speaker 9: Okay. Maybe you’re right. The business owner does not realize the value in it, but I think some of those who I’ve spoken to do find value in it, so I was just trying to see if this is something I can bring in into my…

[01:13:26] I’m kind of… Honestly, I’m, I’m trying to move away from SalesPoint and make this my own product. But for now I’m using this as a lever to boost my credibility in the growth space using my own platform. Yeah. Okay. This is what I do. I’m just seeing how I can bring, because right now it’s all outcome-based, like I said, on revenue.

[01:13:43] I’m trying to massage it a bit and anchor it to my metric, and it’s bringing it into, I can say most companies don’t have something like this. See, testing the market really on this metric and seeing what the reaction is with the people I pitch to. So that’s why I wanted to get a contrarian opinion. 

[01:14:02] Speaker: Yeah.

[01:14:03] I think that business owners… Just I’m not saying that your metric isn’t useful. I’m saying that no CFO is gonna reference your metric. A CFO is going to look at, what do we spend on marketing? What is our pipeline? What is our revenue? What is our profit? Is this channel profitable? If not, what do we do?

[01:14:18] And then you could say, “It’s not profitable, but my Evident metric shows that these behaviors are increasing or, uh-” People like us more, or there’s more chatter in the market or whatever, and you can point to that stuff and say, “This is a precursor to scaled revenue,” and maybe that can buy you some time.

[01:14:36] That could be a useful thing for folks. Oftentimes, we build so much as CMOs, like we have to get in- we have to invent the universe before we can have a successful marketing campaign. It’s not like we just need to run one ad. It’s like we have to build the website, the sales funnel, the whole call booking, follow-up, CRM, emails, SMS, send DLC, Twilio.

[01:14:53] The whole thing you gotta build. If this can help give people confidence along the way, then there could be value in that. A confidence score. But I think the CFO is still gonna revert to the same numbers that the CFO’s dad reverted to when he was a CFO, and his dad is a CFO. 

[01:15:08] Speaker 9: Got it. Got it. 

[01:15:09] Speaker: It’s gonna be the basics of…

[01:15:10] That’s the basic of business health. I think one of the cool things about net promoter score is that, who is net promoter score for? I feel it’s for the CEO to go to EO and bump into the other business owners and say, “Here’s my NPS. What’s yours?” It’s just a, it’s just a show-off score. 

[01:15:26] Speaker 9: It’s a vanity metric at the end of the day.

[01:15:28] It’s- It’s one question, right? It’s one- 

[01:15:30] Speaker: Yeah, exactly. And like, “Oh, Southwest Airlines, aren’t they the best? We’re close to Southwest Airlines. We just had an event and we had a good NPS.” It’s like, okay, and maybe it means something, but I think the bigger thing here is, I don’t know, what it lands for me is maybe if you’re able to buy yourself some time to get a better result for the client because things take a while, and this gives you, gives them the confidence that you’re on track, then that could be useful.

[01:15:50] Okay, I wanna move over to Jason’s question if you don’t mind. Sure. 

[01:15:52] Speaker 9: Thank you so much. 

[01:15:53] Speaker: Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Jason, you still with us? No, we’re cutting out here. No, I think Jason’s out. All right. Jason said, “Instead of an equity agreement or in conjunction with, how would you structure a rev share?” I wouldn’t.

[01:16:03] Generally speaking, I wouldn’t. And if I would just do a base fee and then any revenue share on top of that base fee, I would say to the client, let’s say the number for me is 10 grand. I would say, “Cool, my number is 10 grand plus 3% of revenue, uh, growth.” That’s what I would do. And if I don’t get that 3% of revenue growth, then I got my base fee and I’m happy.

[01:16:22] And if I do get it, then it set a new set point for me for what my fee is. So that’s how I look at that. All right. Any other questions before we dip? 

[01:16:30] Speaker 3: Anything else? 

[01:16:31] Speaker: All right. Thank you all for being here. Uh, yeah, if you wanna book in a call with the team, do it, cmox.co/brainstorm. And, uh, I’ll catch you guys later.

[01:16:37] See ya. Thank you for sticking around for the full episode. As you know, learners are earners, but you’ve gotta 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.

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