Transcript:

Casey (00:00.118)

In today’s episode, I’m going to talk to you about the focus that you have to have to be a successful Fractional Chief Marketing Officer. 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. It’s time to solve bigger problems and bring home a bigger paycheck. It’s time to create the lifestyle we deserve and to make a greater impact. This is the Fractional CMO Show and I’m Casey Stanton. Join me as we explore this growing industry and learn to solve bigger problems as marketing leaders. The Fractional CMO Show is sponsored by CMOX.

the number one company to teach you how to attract, convert, and serve high paying fractional CMO clients on your terms. All right, focus. This is the thing that matters the most. I would say it’s two things that matters most on your journey to becoming a successful fractional CMO. One is focus and the other one is not stopping. That’s it. Like focus on the stuff that matters and then don’t stop.

Alex Hermosy had a quote and I really liked it and I’ll paraphrase it. He said like his secret, if you could boil everything down to one thing, it’s do so much volume that it would be like highly unlikely that you wouldn’t be successful. Something along those lines. And that idea I think rings true here. How do you be a successful fractional CMO? You gotta focus, you gotta do enough reps that it is unreasonable to think that you won’t be successful. So.

Let me tell you the things that are creeping into your life that are taking your focus. The first one, pleasing everyone. I know there’s a lot of people pleasers listening to this podcast. I get it. Like I’m a people pleaser, I think at some level. Certainly a helper, right? I want to help people. Maybe it’s less a motivation of like pleasing them and more about helping them. But maybe ultimately when I help them, I please them and that satisfies it. So I’m right there with you and

Casey (02:18.59)

when it comes to being a people pleaser, you’re going to take things from people and you’re going to try to be helpful and you’re going to try to do whatever you can to be helpful. And your success as a Fractional CMO is not based on your ability to take on work. It’s your ability to focus on the most important work and do that exceedingly well. Exceedingly well. So let me give you an example. I’m working with a great client. We’ve got a long-term agreement of us working together and we have

a marketing technician that we hired and they didn’t work out. And I wish him well, but they didn’t work out. So we let them go. And we’ve been hiring a new marketing technician and we found someone who is awesome. And I want to tell you that the person is so good that it kind of makes me kind of be like, Ooh, interesting. Like this person, this person’s like a really solid marketer. They’ve been in the game for a long time. They have a lot of insight. They know stuff that I don’t know. And I’m again in this position where my job is going to be to lead someone

Who is smarter than me in a lot of capabilities? Like they’re better than me at stuff. So like, why do they need me to lead them? Well, the answer ultimately is at least because the business owner believes in me as the leader. So I don’t have to kind of get lost in this feeling of like inadequacy. I’m not as good as this person. Like I don’t have to be good at every marketing tactic ever all the time in order to build and lead marketing departments. Frankly,

I’m not great at a lot of marketing stuff, you know? And that’s okay because I know how to find the good people and bring them in. That’s my value. So when you’re a people pleaser, you say, I have to do it all myself. You you say, my gosh, I’m worried that we’re gonna pull in talent that’s gonna be better than me. I’m not gonna be able to do my job successfully, whatever it is. I want you to zoom out and remember that your value is in strategy and leadership and not in tactical work. Your job is not to develop

the, like to do the tactics, like they said there to write the ad copy, to build the ad accounts, none of that stuff. That’s not your primary role. You might do it in the short term, but not in the long term. You want to have other people that come in and do that. So being a people pleaser, what people tend to do is they take on projects that get brought to them because it feels good. It’s like, I really want to help this person. This person’s in my church. I want to help them. Right.

Casey (04:42.35)

Oh, this business owner wants to meet with me and they want to meet in person. So I’m going to clear my afternoon and get dressed up and head downtown and find parking and pay for parking and go meet them for coffee to hear what? Something that probably won’t help me. I’ve got a quick rule. I’ll meet with pretty much everybody, but I won’t put on my pants for it, for most people, right? Like I’ll meet with someone, but I’ll meet them on zoom and I’ll meet them for a short call, 10 minute call, 15 minute call. That’s fine. I can do that kind of any day.

But I’m not going to like drive across town, go to a coffee shop, be all dressed up and meet with somebody. That’s just, it’s a lot of work for me. So being a people pleaser, if that’s your natural tendency, my encouragement here is to focus your abilities on the biggest problems and specifically the problems that can create the most value for the client and therefore pay you the most. That’s the best place to go. You can spend your time doing whatever you want. I just think you should spend your time focusing on solving big problems. So where do people kind of get pulled?

I think a fun thing right now is vibe coding. I just bought, I was just on the website, seedstudio.com and I just purchased a couple boards. I’ve got a project that I’m working on and you know, I’m going to like play with it and I’m going to like get into one of these LLMs that helps me code and I’m going to code some stuff up and it’s fun. And it is a hundred percent a deviation from anything that will ever make me money. And I have to treat it as if it’s my interest in sports or my interest in some other kind of hobby.

Like it’s a hobby for me and it’s not a profession. And that difference is critical. And I have to remind myself, Hey, I got to do the work work stuff. And then I can go do the play stuff. I can go do the vibe coding project. I can go build a little CRM that I want to build or whatever the thing is. And if you’re the kind of person that likes to noodle on the computer and play with AI stuff, awesome. I love it. think it’s, I think it’s important for us to like play, but don’t confuse yourself with work and that like hobby and work like.

doing it for the sake of the dopamine and then the enjoyment and like solving the problem kind of locally, maybe like what, make a product that you can sell on Etsy and make $5 a piece on it. And like, are you going to ever sell more than a thousand? You know, it’s like, just be realistic about what you’re doing. The fastest and easiest way to make money as a marketer is to sell fractional CMO services. I swear, if you’re like an experienced marketing, like kind of expert, right? If you’re like a strategist, if you can do that work, it is a great way to do it.

Casey (07:07.892)

You don’t have to spend any money to do it. Like you don’t have to spend money to like build a team or whatever, because the client affords everything and everything that you get paid, you keep. So I like the fractional CMO thing and like, just have to focus on fractional CMO work when you focus on it. And then if you want to go do family stuff, go do family stuff. If you want to go for a hike with the kids, go for a hike. If you want to pick up a new hobby, go pick up a new hobby. But you have to understand the difference between work that generates new high paying clients and the work that services and retains them.

versus everything else. And for so many people that conflate the everything else, here’s also what it looks like. Building a fancy website. We’ve got one of our CMOs who spent a lot of money. I think he spent over 10 grand on like a custom video for his website. And I asked him how it worked for him. He’s like, I’ve made no sales as a result of the video. Right? And like, it looked like good effort. Maybe in like Buddhism, Buddhist terms, you might say like skillful effort, right? And it wasn’t.

It was the thing that actually took them away. was a deviation. It wasn’t necessary. So that’s a consideration for you. Like, are you focusing on the few things that actually matter? And what actually matters? Talking to strangers matters. Like, that’s huge. Talking to strangers matters. If you talk to strangers, you’re going to open yourself up to opportunities, networking, whatever, and get yourself into places where you can talk to strangers. I’m considering right now joining a country club. It’s a goofy thing to say. I don’t think of myself as the country club type.

And I’m still considering going and joining because if I join, like I get the social interaction with a bunch of people. And the question is like, is it the country club? Is it a private school? Is it a swim club? Like what kind of group do I want to be around that introduces me to other folks who, you know, are the kind of people I want to network with. That’s the consideration. All right. Here’s another thing that people do, CMOs tend to do, which is like they

They try to chase small ticket referrals. They say something like, hey, yeah, just want to like, what if I just had some people paying me a thousand bucks a month each because I placed this type of talent with them or I introduced them to an agency and the agency pays me every month for the work that was provided. And like I get, I totally get it. And it sounds like the dream. I just want to tell you that it sucks because you’re chasing pennies. You’re chasing noise. You’re chasing small amounts of money.

Casey (09:33.8)

where you could either be not working, which is cool, or working on solving big problems where you get paid really well. Someone paying me two, three, four hundred bucks a month, it’s just kind of a drag, honestly. It’s a drag for a lot of reasons. It’s an energetic drag. What if they’re late? Are they not paying me? Do they not respect me? What happened with the client? Did your relationship get tarnished because you helped get someone a job and then that person’s underperforming and now you look bad? Ugh, scary, right? Just get rid of all that stuff.

If you want to send traffic to someone, if you want to send an agency to someone or something like that, and they ask for it, like just send it to them, just be like, hey, here’s an introduction. There’s an agency that I love that we work with at CMOX and I recommend them to folks. And I don’t make any money on the recommendation. I make $0 every time I send business their way. And I’ve sent a lot of business over the last few years to them, but I trust them and I like them. In exchange, we kind of have like a gentleman’s agreement, you could call it.

where if someone is qualified to hire a fractional CMO, they send them our way. And that’s like a nice traffic source. And we don’t do it because we have to, we do it because it’s the right thing to do. Because they’re in front of someone who has a problem and we have the solution. In the same way, we have people with problems and they’re the solution. So we just make the introductions. I would rather do that and not chase pennies, even if pennies are a thousand or 2000 bucks. So.

Like that’s another way. It’s like this referral game garbage, selling low ticket stuff. Like unless you’re really committed for the long term on building your social profile and being someone on like YouTube and you’re trying to amass a ton of followers and you’re investing and you’re really considering how to do it right and you’re really playing the game all out, if you’re not gonna do that, don’t do it. Just don’t do it. Don’t even dabble in it. I remember years ago,

When I was starting CMOX, a guy that’s in my life, he said, you know, what are you doing for social media? Hey dude, I noticed that you’re not posting on social media. You gotta really post on social media. And I was like, I don’t think that’s the thing. I don’t think my posts to the people on Facebook that I’m friends with is really the thing for me. I think the thing for me is to talk to strangers. And he was like, I don’t know, man. I think like, if you look at everyone else, they’re doing social media. Everyone that does social media, often that are successful, right?

Casey (11:54.062)

They’re doing social media because they now have this big budget and they wanna build influence beyond what they currently have, but they didn’t become successful through social media. They became successful and then they leveraged social media. mean, look at Dan Martel. Look what he’s doing with Buy Back Your Time and everything that he’s created thereafter. He started with SaaS Academy and he went direct after SaaS founders and helped them scale their SaaS businesses. And now he’s teaching kids on how to be entrepreneurs. That’s like…

leverage for him and social media is leverage for him. But at the start, it was about focusing on the little thing that actually generated the outcome. I saw a meme today that’s kind of what kicked off this episode idea. And it was a meme that was like a kid saying, mom, why are we so poor? And then the mom replies, because your dad listened to entrepreneur podcasts, but didn’t take any action. I think it’s kind of funny. And I think it’s true.

people listen to this podcast and they don’t do a thing. They don’t do the thing. They’re like, I’m planning it. I’m trying to get the dopamine from Casey. Maybe his fast pace, energetic voice is the thing that will finally get me started. No, the only thing that’s gonna get you started is your commitment to do it. That’s it. And it’s not about being perfect. I oftentimes do dumb stuff, but I do dumb stuff and smart stuff in rapid succession. And therefore the good stuff

kind of sticks and the dumb stuff I kind of try to forget about, right? Running an offer that, ooh, that didn’t work. Running a campaign that didn’t work. Saying something dumb on a call, whoops, that didn’t work. But if I have so many opportunities to keep trying, I’m going to be successful. I don’t know sports, right? But I imagine if you’re at the bat, right? And you’re holding the baseball bat and you’re swinging and you just blow your first swing, if that’s the only swing that you have, then you’re screwed, right? If you had like one shot to hit the home run and you missed it, you’re screwed.

But if you’re the kind of person who just keeps going and like beginner’s mind every time and you’re just trying again and trying again and trying again and working and improving and building and you have this long time horizon to be very successful, you’re going to do it. I was talking to an entrepreneur yesterday and he’s got a business, 20 years old, 20 years old. He aims to sell it. And his sale price is going to be huge. It’s going to be huge. He knows what he’s doing.

Casey (14:17.506)

I mean, life changing money, it’s big. And it took him 20 years. And he said for a while, so like 15 years ago, he was like, I was living large, life was good. And then I decided I’m just going to take all of that profit. I’m going to dump it back in the business. And I’m really going to build this thing to something of significance, build, build, build. So he’s taken a meager paycheck. mean, very meager paycheck.

but is now positioned for an inevitable, incredibly large buyout. That’s someone who knows what they’re doing and is focused. He was like, I’ll lifestyle for a bit. Time in life, you where I think that was appropriate maybe for him. Kids of a certain age, that kind of thing. But then beyond that, it’s just like lock in, focus, do the required work, get to the next level.

And it’s okay to have vices. Man, I’m not great with my phone. I spend too much time on it. I swear I do. This morning, I woke up at 8.45 in the morning. It’s pretty late. I missed garbage. I actually had to go get our garden cart, throw my garbage in it because around the block, garbage hadn’t been picked up.

So I toted my garbage about a block and a half away and put it in front of other people’s houses so that it could get picked up. All right, I am not perfect. However, I know what I’m doing today. I’m doing three things. One was a client call on a walk. I had to do it. I knew I had to do it. It was an important call. I made an espresso. I just got a new espresso cup from CB Creighton Barrel. It’s awesome. I love it. If you’re looking for a good espresso cup, probably last for, I don’t know.

three months for me before it gets broken, because it’s one of those nice glass ones see through, beautiful. All right, so I’m like walking around my neighborhood, just like sipping my espresso, talking to the client. Boom, that was like 20 minutes, locked in. Next one, we got a launch coming up on a project. I got to oversee it, make sure everything’s good. So today I’m to spend about, I don’t know, two hours double checking everything. And then three, I got to record this episode. And then once I’m done with these three things, I’m done because it’s the most important stuff. Yeah, there’s like nagging emails in my inbox that I can get to, but I’m not going to do it, not today.

Casey (16:30.818)

That’s not the most important thing. I’m doing the three most important things. No one is dictating what I do today, except for me. I choose what’s most important based on what I want. And I go and do it. That’s what you have to do. That is what focus looks like as a CMO. It is a commitment and unwavering commitment that you’re just going to do it. You know, people have asked like, Casey, how do you have like, how did you develop this ability to yada yada? It’s like, dude, I just show up and work. That’s the secret. And I’ve worked longer.

than kind of most other people in the Fractional CMO game. I’ve just been in the game longer and I’m not some guru on some mount telling you how it used to be. I’m telling you how it is today. How it is to do quarterly planning with clients for Q4. What it’s like to get ready for 2026 annual planning. I’m helping you kind of like figure out like what’s going on right now. Like that’s the important thing. It’s like what’s happening today and how do you apply that to your clients? I got a big crazy one. I think that it’s inevitable that

the US will go to war with China because of Taiwan, right, a war in Taiwan. I think it’s probably gonna happen in what, 2027? Maybe 2028? Like it’s coming. What’s that gonna mean for microprocessors? What’s that gonna mean for your clients? What’s that gonna mean for the kind of businesses that you work with? That’s the kind of insight you need to have right now so that you’re getting in a good position and you’re working ardently towards it. If you’re gonna go work with a semiconductor company,

that manufactures in Taiwan, I’m gonna tell you, that’s a pretty dangerous industry to work in. Or an industry that uses those semiconductors. It’s like, when you only focus on the fractional CMO thing, and you don’t focus on the vibe coding thing, and you don’t focus on the, like the vibe coding and pretending that that’s work and that’s helping you. You don’t like waste time building a fancy website that no one’s gonna look at. And you don’t post on your Instagram that only people from high school read, right? If you’re only focused on like,

building your book of business as a fractional CMO and serving great clients, you’re going to make a lot of money and you’re going have a lot of freedom. And then with that freedom, just be honest with yourself and go do the thing that you want to do. You know, for me, it’s hobbies or whatever. Yesterday, I worked for the day and then I ran out to a state park outside of Skip Back, Pennsylvania. And I brought my ham radio and I got to go to the park just by myself and just relax and made a couple Morse code contacts.

Casey (18:54.776)

fun thing to do just for me. It’s a hobby. I enjoy it. And then it’s done and I put it away and I move on, right? But like I spent the day doing the most important thing and then hobbies and then I’m out. And like when people work at a typical J.O.B. they’re forced to have this level of rigor. Like you’re working in the company and you’re not allowed to have cell phones and you know the I.T. departments block social media and whatever. But when you’re on your own you can do whatever you want.

It’s like the moment you moved out of your parents’ house, like you could just watch cartoons and eat cereal and ice cream all day. But should you, right? So there’s a level of maturation, there’s a level of focus, there’s a level of gaming yourself. Like what are you going to do to play the game so that you’re manipulated to do the most important thing? I think the best thing to do is just to get in the community of people who are on the same track as you. I have good buddies that I grew up with that I stay in touch with that are not on the same track as me. They are 100 % not on the same track.

for revenue, for impact, for family stuff. Like they’re just not on the same. I still love them as brothers. It’s just different though, right? There’s like the business side of stuff, which is like, I’m moving fast and hard in business and I want to do a lot of big stuff. But like, so I want to be surrounded by other people that are doing that. I want to like go bend the ear of successful entrepreneurs and ask them questions and be around other people who are hungry and fighting for.

their next biggest deal. And that’s what we do inside the CMOCs Accelerator. It’s like, help people get their first client and get their second client and increase their rates and focus on the stuff that actually matters. And yeah, we like play a little bit and we share like hobbies and vibe code stuff and whatever. Like that’s cool. But at the end of the day, we’re all measuring success in the same way, which is how many hours you’re working and how much money you’re making and are you enjoying the work? And do you feel like you’re delivering good value to your client?

If you’re doing those things, life’s good, man. Life’s good and you can go do other things with the rest of your life. But if you’re not doing those things, like you’re not making enough money, you’re working too many hours, or you’re not proud of your work product, like kind of nothing else professionally matters. You just have to go fix those problems first. So come into the accelerator, book a call with my team. It’s like no pressure. It’s like a 15 minute call with a guy on my team named Justin. Justin will ask you questions about who you are and your experience and see if you’re qualified to join the ranks of the CMOX members.

Casey (21:16.622)

You know, we’ve had over 470 some people in the accelerator. That’s awesome. You can go to the website, cmox.co. It’s there or it’s coming. I got to check with the team. I just reviewed and approved the design file, but we mapped out where all of our members are all across the world. We’ve got, you know, a lot, majority in the United States, but also Canada, Europe, some islands, Singapore, Japan, right? We’ve got folks all over the world. Australia, just on the East coast of Australia, known in North Dakota.

No one in Adelaide, Australia, looking for that person, because my wife’s name is Adelaide. Just feels fitting. All right. So we’ve got all these CMOs. They’re making global impact as CMOs in the world. And I’d love to help you do it if that’s something you want to do. So book it a call, cmox.co slash call. That’s it. Cmox.co slash call. Book it a time with my team, with Justin, and he’ll see if we might be able to help you and tell you what that would look like. All right. We’ve got a big year ahead.

2026 is going to be big. And if you don’t start in 2025 Q4, you’re going to be behind. And this is the most important time to be focusing right now, right now, October. It’s it. This is it. This is the time delay at your own peril. Honestly, I wouldn’t want to be winning business and excuse me, talking to people for the first time with a good clarified offer where I’m solving big problems and charging high rates. I don’t want to that for the first time in December. Cause at best case that deal will close in January and

It’s just like, it’s just hairy. I’d rather do it in October and close it in November or December and just feel confident about the year ahead. So I’m rooting for you. I want you to succeed. I want you to impact your clients. I want you to deliver a ton of value to your clients and their customers. And I want you to make a lot of money on the way. So if you want my help doing it, book on a call, cmox.co slash call, and I’ll see you on a call soon. Bye. Thank you for sticking around for the full episode.

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