Transcript:

00:00:00 Casey: In this episode, we’re going to talk to about a dozen women that are inside of the CMOx accelerator boardroom sharing their experiences. Women who are in the boardroom, like winning clients, serving clients, kind of like what it’s like to be a woman. This is a continuation of an episode that I recorded a couple of weeks ago, which was like what I see women doing inside of the accelerator. And I wanted to provide some insight because I’ve heard people say like women can’t be successful as fractional CMOs or something crazy like that.

00:00:36 Casey: And I just wanted to share the examples that I was seeing of women being successful. And one of my members, Courtney, reached out and said, “Casey did a whole other story here. I think we should bring women together to talk about it.” I said, “Absolutely.” So that’s what this episode is going to be about. This is a two-part. So it’ll be this week and next week. There’s a two hour long webinar that I hosted. We had some really great questions in it as well. So this first episode kind of sets the foundation, you’re gonna meet these women, you’re gonna learn the different industries or niches that they’re in, their different experience level, and what it’s been like for them to be a fractional CMO. So let’s dive in.

00:01:13 Casey: Marketers of the world, why do we work hard to solve small problems? Why do we reinvent ourselves and our clients over and over? And why are we giving away marketing strategy for free? With advancements in AI, we’re all seeing the marketing department shrink from the bottom up. And companies need you to serve them as their fractional chief marketing officer. It’s time to solve bigger problems and bring home a bigger paycheck. It’s time to create the lifestyle we deserve and to make a greater impact. This is the Fractional CMO Show and I’m Casey Stanton. Join me as we explore this growing industry and learn to solve bigger problems as marketing leaders. The Fractional CMO Show is sponsored by CMOx, the number one company to teach you how to attract, convert and serve high paying fractional CMO clients on your terms.

00:02:09 Casey: All right, so welcome. I’m Casey. You probably know me and I’ve got the CMOx where I help folks become fractional CEOs and go and win business and serve great clients and have a great lifestyle. A couple of weeks ago, I released an episode in the podcast, the Fractional CMO Show. And I wanted to write something because one of our members in the accelerator said, “The biggest thing Casey that you taught me was that you taught me that I could charge the price that I was worth.” And she won a client and it was a great client for her. I think I paid her like $12,000 a month and she was working about 10 hours a week.

00:02:41 Casey: Just like a really cool thing for me to hear. And then I thought to myself, well, what did I hear from women generally inside the accelerator? And I just wanted to share not a woman’s perspective because I obviously don’t have that, but instead what do I see women do? What do I see men do? How are they different? How do they kind of show up differently? That kind of thing. And that’s what the episode is on. We’ve got a great member, Courtney. Courtney reached out to me afterwards and said, “Thanks Casey for that, but you miss some stuff. There’s kind of like a whole world that you don’t really understand.”

00:03:09 Casey: And obviously I can’t understand it. And she wanted to continue the conversation and she thought maybe we could have another episode or something. So I reached out inside of the CMOx boardroom, this is to our most successful members that are doing at least $10,000 a month in recurring businesses of Fractional CMO. And I said, “Hey, who’s interested?” And every single woman, I think in the group raised their hand and said, “Yes, I’m interested. I’d love to tell my story and talk with other women and tell them the good news about being a Fractional CMO.”

00:03:34 Casey: So we scheduled this time to share that information. And I’ve got some questions to ask, but Courtney, I’m going to add you to the spotlight. Tell me, what did I miss? What else do you think is important that you think I missed in the podcast and that you want to talk about today?

00:03:47 Courtney: Yeah, thank you. So first and foremost, I just want to thank Casey for actually being receptive to this comment. I know to others, it might’ve come across as me telling Casey how to perform on his own podcast. And that was not my intention. It was you’ve created such a platform with such an engaging audience that there are some messages that just can’t be construed directly through you that need to be in this conversation. So you are warmly welcoming and I’m so grateful for it. I think some of the things we missed in the first podcast can only be described from a personal experience, right?

00:04:22 Courtney: Like the double bind, double standards, the experience in a corporate workplace, whether you’re B2B, B2C, B2G, it doesn’t matter. We’ve all had personal experiences where we are conditioned to perform in the way we perform as females. The original concept for me came from being in one of your classes and two females said, “I don’t feel comfortable asking for more money in a current contract.” And another said, “I am going far above and beyond my contract in terms of work commitment and time commitment.” And I said, “Of course you are.” We all do. We’ve been conditioned to do that.

00:05:05 Courtney:  We have had to fight our way into rooms to even have a voice or a seat at the table. Once we get there, we are constantly overthinking what we are doing wrong. “Am I wearing the wrong outfit? Am I saying the right thing? Should I say that? Is someone going to steal my point and take the credit for this?” There are so many nuances to what we experience and there’s a constant voice in our heads that is so difficult to overcome, that my main objective in having this conversation was to say to everybody here that could listen and after this, you’re not alone. I experienced it.

00:05:42 Courtney: I’m positive everyone here experiences it and you will see firsthand that they do. And if you are struggling in your current job and saying, “Gosh, there are some female executives above me who are only perpetuating the cycle or making it even worse in some circumstances,” or like, “Am I really setting the tone for women behind me and how they’re going to be treated?” It’s all completely normal and factually based. And we will applaud everybody here who is experiencing it and only come out more positive on the other side because we can’t commit to change without having this exact conversation. So thank you, Casey.

00:06:17: Casey: Yeah, absolutely. And thank you for pushing the idea, asking for it and like being willing to kind of co-host this with me.

00:06:23 Courtney: Thank you.

00:06:24 Casey: What I’d love to do is, Michael, with your help, let’s take all the women inside the accelerator and spotlight them as well. I just want like a one minute, if I can get it, or like just kind of rapid fire. Stacie, would you tell us like, just background city that you’re based in clients that you serve? Just so people can kind of get, get an understanding of who y’all are. I’ll just put a quick cue in here for us.

00:06:45 Stacie: Yeah, of course. Stacie Dauffenbach, I’m out of Denver, been in corporate marketing for about 20, 20 years transitioned to fractional work this year serving more service companies, solar, security, some B2B software development companies as well. So I’m really excited to be here with all these lovely ladies.

00:07:03 Casey: Yeah, thank you. Awesome. Lisa O?

00:07:06 Lisa O: Hi, I am Lisa Ortscheid. I’m from Green Bay, Wisconsin. I have about 30 years of experience in variety of roles. A lot of my positions in the later part of my career were in male-dominated industries, in automotive, and roofing.

00:07:22 Casey: Is there anything more male-dominated than automotive and roofing?

00:07:25 Lisa O: Right. I don’t think so. I’d hard-press anybody. And I started down this path of fractional. I was downsized. Several people encouraged me to do fractional. It’s not super popular here in the Green Bay area, though it’s becoming more so. So, I had to educate myself and found Casey’s Podcasts and just dove in headfirst and figured why not invest in myself, stop chasing other positions and other companies. So, my niche has fallen back on my background of automotive, independent auto repair shops, dealerships, and then home improvement services is also where I’m going to be landing as well. So I have experience in B2B and B2C.

00:08:08 Casey: Love it. Thank you. Mandy?

00:08:10 Mandy: Hi, I’m Mandy MacPhee. I’ve been a fractional since the beginning of the year after being restructured out of the investment company that I was in for over five years. I’ve been in financial services for 25 years. So, my niche naturally sits within the FinTech world and really focusing in on the FinTech world. I think, Lisa, from a boardroom perspective, there are boardrooms of financial services are filled with men with one or two women sitting at the table.

00:08:46 Casey: Thanks, Mandy. Laura Bassett?

00:08:48 Laura: Hi, thank you. Laura Bassett here. I’m in Tampa, Florida, and my niche is B2B SaaS, specifically focused around customer experience, CCAS, and AI. I spent… here’s where you give away the age, right? 20, 25 years in corporate America, working my way up, leading various leadership roles in marketing, and then ultimately leading marketing. And just due to extenuating life circumstances, I took a step back and realized that I could do more for the companies in a different role, in a capacity that really enabled focus, allowed them to put the spend in the right places for their business, and allowed me to get some work-life balance. So, there were a lot of different things that came into play there. I had seen a company I went to have a marketing contractor that had words spelled wrong and I knew that I could do better than that. So I’ve been doing this for about a year now. It’s great and I’m enjoying time with my family in the evenings.

00:09:56 Casey: Yeah, I love it. Awesome, Laura. Thank you. Christy?

00:09:59 Christy: I have a long-time career in corporate. My focus has largely been on B2B SaaS and tech. I’ve done sales, marketing, and customer success across all of those roles. like several other people, I found myself restructured. At the end of last year, the product I was working on was deprioritized by the company and said, why not take this time to kind of invest in myself and look at where there’s an opportunity to take all of these things that I’ve learned over the years and hopefully bring them into other companies um and just really share that knowledge. So I am focused on B2B SaaS uh tech products and services companies. I do a number of different things for professional services as well as software development and programs.

00:10:45 Christy: And two things that have really come out of this for me, first of all, is truly learning how to market myself, because I can market anything but me. I’ve been really good at learning to market myself. But secondarily, having the opportunity to take the time to learn more about marketing and learning the latest technologies. I’ve been doing so much with AI that I wouldn’t have had time to do in my executive roles previously, but now I’m able to actually build out all of the AI tools and workflows and things that are truly allowing me as a fractional to scale myself in a way that I could not have done without a large team in the past.

00:11:23 Casey: Yeah, I love that, Christy. And you’re from a more formal kind of Fortune 500 background.

00:11:27 Christy: I am. Most of my career has been in a Fortune 500 and Fortune 50 companies.

00:11:33 Casey: Yeah, these are companies that people would know the names of, right? Awesome. Yeah. Love that. Just to think like Lisa O is an automotive. She’s working with folks that are selling cars, doing car repair. Is that right? Sales and car repair too? Yeah. So like totally different industry than like someone doing SaaS. We’ve got folks in the US, folks in Canada on the call here. Like Mandy and Brandi are both in Canada. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Great. Lisa Perry from the West Coast.

00:11:59 Lisa P: Yes, hi! I’m outside of Los Angeles, California and just like everybody else I have a career in twenty-five plus years. It’s very eclectic, it’s bands, corporate, fortune one hundred companies, mid-size to small companies. I too found myself in a couple of back-to-back layoffs and found that I was making myself much smaller to go after jobs that I was overqualified for and overpriced for. I decided that I can’t do this anymore. I can’t make myself small or these opportunities that just I wasn’t showing up authentically anymore. And so that was my breaking point and came across Casey.

00:12:48 Lisa P: And I just needed a structure and clarity to move forward into this new trajectory, and it has been transformational, not only for me in how to, as Christy said, “Sell yourself,” and have a business development plan, but also showing up for companies and transforming them. Being that person that you are, you know you are and having them trust you and guide them in their business that you can. And you know you always have been able to and just have been held back. And so that is the aha for me. Like this has just been so exciting.

00:13:32 Casey: So, let’s say there’s a couple of things I think of when I think of you as someone who, like the rate that you wanted to charge, I think was lower than obviously what you’re charged now. You sold that first client and I remember you sent me a message and you were like, “Oh my God, I can’t believe what I’m charging. I’m going to charge way more next time.” Just like get that first win. I think is a big deal. And another thing that I remember from you is, you having a conversation with your husband, which is I’m going to do this fractional CMO thing and him supporting you. And didn’t you say, like you guys had an agreement, you’re going to give it the year to do.

00:14:04 Lisa P: Yeah, that was a really big deal because it’s hard. It’s a grind. You have to be committed and do the work. And, you know, I was very scared. I was scared to let go of applying for jobs. That was my security blanket and my pacifier. And I had to just let go and give space to go and make room for this. And then I needed the support of my husband because I was worried this had financial implications and he was all in and he said, “You need the roadway of a year to make this work and we’re all in, we’re gonna make this happen and then we’ll reevaluate.” And that just gave me the breathing room to be able to do it and start to build the confidence with the group in this community when you show up and you go, “Oh my gosh, can I do this?” And the community is like, “Yeah, you got this. You got this. Let’s do this.”

00:14:57 Casey: I love it, Lisa. One of the things I think about with you is just like a tenacity, right. And I mean this respectfully, you’re not the most experienced CMO, but you’re not going to give up. And that’s what the client needs, right? Like you don’t need to be the person who’s done everything before you’re the person who’s willing to do it and figure out the right answer. That’s what they’re looking for. So, I think like just you’re a perfect example of someone who like fights like hell to win the client and serve them.

00:15:19 Lisa P: And get the results. So, I come in and like, you know what? We got this, we’ll figure this out. And that’s what they want. They want somebody who’s going to know what to do and guide them and figure out the solutions. Cause they don’t have the time or the space to do that. They’ve been doing it wrong. So, I think we need…

00:15:59 Casey: Yeah, I love it. I love watching you grow Lisa. Yeah. Brandi?

00:15:43 Brandi: Hi, everybody. So I’m a token Canadian, like Casey said. I’m in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada, which is a small area. So, I think in a small area, especially in Canada, to be able to have clients globally is pretty cool. So I have a business background in that I started and scaled two businesses. One was a service based and the other was e-commerce. So, I was a founder, co-founder, I had a business partner and two years ago, we sold our e-commerce beauty brand and that sale did not go well. You might hear that from a lot of founders of companies, and I think being a woman and how that sale ultimately ended up, you know, was a lesson in that.

00:16:32 Brandi: Anywho, I spent the last, you know, the first year after the sale because we’re still on with the company in a marketing capacity, beating my head against the wall, feeling undervalued, and the depression and anxiety was huge for myself. I knew that I had skills, but just, you know, and it was just like festering and bubbling up. I finally got in a healthier mindset and in a healthier space, probably about seven months ago, started to really focus in on me and my strengths. I have a very similar story to Lisa. I know we’ve connected a little bit, different backgrounds, but similar kind of story in that, you know, the confidence was down and, and then we were starting to build ourselves up. I finally had hit a breaking point and I was like, you know what? Gosh darn it. I’m just going to become a fractional CMO.

00:17:22 Brandi: I knew about fractional with my own business cause I would hire them. I just Googled it, searched, found CMOx joined. And so, it’s been six months of being a fractional CMO. I love it. I just absolutely adore. There’s something about like being a business owner and like Lisa said, where they don’t know what they’re doing. When you’re in the daily grind and it’s like your money on the line, all that you do need an outside perspective. You do need somebody to like that can lead you, that you can bounce ideas off of that has some experience in areas and also complement your weaknesses with those strengths, right? So that’s what I’m really enjoying. And I’m just like, now I get to instead of being a jack of all trades as a business owner, I get to really hone in on some of the areas that I’m excelling in and then just focus in on what I’m actually good at and then translate that over onto my clients. So yeah, that’s me in a nutshell.

00:18:21 Casey: I love it. And I love that your angle too is like you’re helping businesses that also want to exit. Which like the value of the lesson that you learned of selling your beauty brand and maybe not getting what you wanted out of it, you’re going to make sure that your client doesn’t have that same problem.

00:18:34 Brandi: That’s exactly it. Yeah. And there’s lots of things you can put in place to protect yourself. So yeah.

00:18:40 Casey: That you learned about. Yeah. It’s so valuable to have you on board then. Yeah. Awesome. Thanks. Jessie?

00:18:46 Jessie: Hey everyone, Jessie Peters here. So, I live in Alexandria, Virginia, right outside of Washington, DC. And therefore, everyone thinks that I am a regulatory expert, a policy nuts, on the hill.

00:19:00 Casey: That’s your husband, isn’t it?

00:19:01 Jessie: That is my husband. I’m the one who sits at home and runs marketing programs for companies who sell into electric utilities. So, I love that we’re already talking about security. I love that we’re talking about automotive. I’ve done some stuff on the automotive side as well. Actually, I’m here as a fractional CMO kind of in transition. So have work full time, candidly, right? And managing that and then also have an agency. And I’m really excited about the women here and the stories that everyone is already hearing, because I think that I always thought kind of to Brandi’s point, you have to be a jack of all trades, right? I love the strategy. I’ve worked in the utility industry for over 10 years. It’s all I’ve ever done, and it’s really technical, right? It’s highly complex stuff.

00:19:48 Jessie: The grid is like the oldest, largest system in this country. And that’s the case for it around the world. And so how do you tell stories that actually resonate with that, right? And that’s where my passion sits. And so working with everybody here, it’s really nice to say, “Okay, that’s my goal. I think that’s the thing I’m good at. Let’s find the position. Let’s find the message that resonates with a given audience.” And the rest of the stuff, we can find people who are really good at that. And they can do it. So the digital ads, the implementation, the designer, that’s not who I am. And so it’s been a privilege to work with all of you to hear everything that you’re all doing because you’re really teaching me like when we hone in, that’s actually where we create value. And so if the strategy and the positioning is where I’m gonna create value, then that’s where I wanna sit and that’s where I’m happy to be.

00:20:37 Casey: Love it. Love it. Thank you, Jessie. And you’re relatively new to the accelerator and you are a bit of a firecracker. Like came in and made a couple of great sales pretty quickly. One sale or is it two?

00:20:51 Jessie: I made two, and then I came in right after a big one. So I’m at three for the past three months. So very quickly, this is becoming a really big deal and where I spend a lot of my time and that’s exciting.

00:21:02 Casey: Yeah, I love it. Thank you, Jessie. All right, Erin.

00:21:05 Erin: Hello, I’m Erin. I’m currently located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. I started my career about 20 years ago at Google, with working on the Google ad side with high growth tech companies. And I fell in love with learning about complex technology and figuring out easy ways to distill and tell that story to different audiences, did that for about 10 years. And then after I moved from California, New York to North Carolina, started working with tech companies in the startup space, I kind of fell into the fractional consulting work after one of my friends said, “Can you help me launch this project on the side in the blockchain space?” And then when I tried to leave one of my other companies that I worked for in the AI space, they said, “Can you stay on as a consultant?”

00:22:01 Erin: So I said, okay, this is great. And I love working with different companies. I think that’s really fun. Decided to join the CMOx team when I said, “I wanna scale this, learn how to develop my value proposition, really collaborate with other marketers.” I think Jessie said this very well, there’s each special skills that we can bring to different companies. And it’s important that we define that, convey that to the people that can work best with us, but then also have people to collaborate with and, you know, build on our own skill sets and knowledge bases. And I think that’s a key value of CMOx. So really appreciate being here. I’ve been in the program for about three months, and I just landed my first client. So that’s exciting.

00:22:28 Casey: Love it. Great job, Erin. Excited for you. Thank you. All right, Lauren?

00:22:54 Lauren: Hi, everybody. I’m Lauren. I’m in Boston and I am a CMOx for the climate tech and renewable energy industry. So I started my career with environmental data, and I transitioned into renewables about five years ago. And I was the first marketer in, built up a team and got the company sold, and after that happened, I sort of had a little bit of identity crisis about what am going to do next? I took a job in B2B SaaS that I absolutely hated that I said, you know what? I want to go back to renewables and I’m going to do it on my own terms. So, that’s what I’m doing now. And I see a few people in the chat are talking about being a single parent. I am also a single parent. And one of the reasons why I decided to do this was that I am sort of like allergic to being in meetings that I don’t need to be in when my kids need me.

00:23:50 Lauren: And so I have a 10-year-old and a 12-year-old. And I think being your own boss is super stressful but also gives you a lot of flexibility to say, “I’m not going to prioritize that meeting because it’s not a good use of my time.” So I’ll just put that out there too. But also adds to the stress of this grind of getting started. So not for the faint of heart.

00:24:17 Casey: Sure. Yeah. That’s a good point. I think that there’s this idea that like become a fractional CMO, get rich overnight. It’s like, some people, absolutely. Yeah. Some people are, they have a great network. They are strong at all these different skills, like having conversations with people, showcasing value, being able to close the deal, charge appropriate rates. Like they can, but also like it can be a grind to get started. You’re absolutely right, Lauren. I don’t want to misconstrue that it’s all just like easy peasy all the time. That’s a real startup. Thank you. Courtney, do you want to introduce yourself?

00:24:48 Courtney: Yes. Hi. So I’m Courtney. I live in New Hampshire, not too far from Boston. So this background is not virtual. It’s really in the background. I work with startups and growing companies in the life sciences, med tech, biotech, pharma, you name it. My specialty is talking with the PhDs, who are scientists who found companies and really pull out from their Harry Potter language, what they’re doing on a daily basis that construes to the main consumer. So like you’re saying you invented this product. That’s so cool. Like who’s going to use it though. And then they talk for an hour. I streamlined it down to one sentence and I was in-house for 15 years at various companies and I just came to the realization that I want to work with people who want to work with me, who don’t feel forced to work with me.

00:25:47 Courtney: And I want to do your pitch decks with you and have you raise millions of dollars. I want to design logos on a napkin with you on the floor. And then I want to go [inaudible] on a beer with you in the bar. And I want us to have that like really close relationship where we are finishing each other’s sentences and often in my career, just bringing it back to the subject of this podcast, I was told I was too something, too much, too loud, too vibrant, too pink, you name it. I was it. And I even got spoken to by human resources in the hallway one day because I looked too sad and I normally was a happy person. And I set that expectation for myself that I was going to be the sunshine. And the day I wasn’t, I was spoken to about it. And that’s why I named my company Too Much, but flipped it like I am to some people, to the wrong people. But I will only give you too much of my time, of my energy, of my expertise on the flip side.

00:26:49 Casey: But they’ll pay a premium for that.

00:26:50 Courtney: And you will pay.

00:26:52 Casey: For sure. I love it. Thank you, Courtney. I want to share just a couple of big things that I wrote down here. Pedigree, you ladies, you’re all across the board. Former full-time employees, some of you current full-time employees, business owners, former business owners, subject matter experts, kind of like across the board. I’ve also got some folks, some women too, in the accelerator that are agency owners or former agency owners. So that space, I won’t share, but at least two of the women that introduced themselves hit $50,000 months in the month of November. And I think that number probably got a little bit higher because November just closed. So some pretty crazy numbers.

00:27:29 Casey: Without taking risk, I think 50,000 is kind of reaching towards the top of what you’re going to get. Taking risk is like getting rewarded for an outcome, not just straight cash pay. Like every month you expect the client to pay you a certain amount. It’s like you take a risk with them and you can make more. So, 50,000 is a really big deal. Also, think, Christy, to your point, like I think of marketing, I think of like Dan Kennedy, that’s where I learned marketing from classic direct response, you know, like the Ohio syndicate of marketers. And they taught a classic direct response approach. And I can’t live that life anymore. I can’t live the life of a marketer from the eighties because technology is moving so fast and AI is moving so fast.

00:28:08 Casey: And I mean, to your point, like if you’re full time in your role, you don’t have the capacity to go understand what’s happening in AI. You can’t be all that useful. It’s like the value of having you full time is lower than the value of having you fractionally, which seems so weird because clients say, “Oh, I want you full-time. I don’t want someone fractional. I want a full-time person.” But I think what we’re seeing is if I can take an idea from a client and apply it to another client, it’s now novel and that becomes more valuable. And I’m playing and I’m having fun all along the way instead of feeling boxed in. Christy, do you agree with that? Did I miss something?

00:28:42 Christy: No, I think you’re absolutely correct. As a marketing leader, I was aware of things that my team did and we were using AI for years, using predictive intelligence and using early versions of LLMs and et cetera to help build our marketing, but I understood the concept and where it was coming from, but I actually hadn’t had my hands in the tools to the point that I can now. I’ve just wouldn’t have had time. Honestly, I had people who did that, right? So now-

00:29:06 Casey: You like flying to boardroom meetings, you were-

00:29:09 Christy: I traveled 50% of the time and it was crazy busy. And now I really understand how to make this stuff work. So again, it’s not only does it scale me, I can transfer that knowledge to clients and their teams as well, so that they’re able to scale within their teams and get them inspired. And there will always be someone who’s better at it than me, right? But I now understand what it takes to do that so that it really can be effective and then their teams can be effective.

00:29:36 Casey: Big deal. So I want anyone who’s thinking like, oh, a client who wants me full-time, that’s what I should really do. Fractional is just the launch pad for me to go get my next full-time job. Are we all in agreement that like, no, actually? Like maybe there’s a dream job that comes up but generally speaking, it’s having a couple clients that pay you a lot of money each that you get to serve and make a big change for. That’s where you want to be. Lisa Perry. I just remember a conversation we had about that. You’re like, I’m never going back.

00:30:03 Lisa P: I’m never, I’m never going back. And I said this when I spoke a minute ago, I just made myself too small and didn’t show up in the transformative way that I wanted to-

00:30:17 Casey: Tell me what so small means. Like specifically, is it like I charged a rate, I was fighting for a $2,000 project instead of a 10,000 project.

00:30:22 Lisa P: I mean, when I was looking for jobs. When I was either employed in corporate America, dealing with the politics or fighting to have a voice at the table or lead or whatever, I don’t have to play politics. Everything that pushed me down in employment is my superpower now. I can show up and I can push and I can challenge and I can guide and drive change. Cause that’s my role, and I’m good at it, where it sometimes was a scarlet letter in corporate America at times. Sometimes it wasn’t, but sometimes it was. And this is now me showing up and just saying, “God, I get to be who I wanted to be for years and just was being held back.” And I can see the results. I can see my client happy, and going to me now and saying, let’s, what does Lisa think? What is, let’s talk to her first and the executive team saying, “Well, let’s get Lisa’s opinion.” I’m the one helping drive that change. So that’s amazing.

00:31:36 Courtney: Casey, I would love to hear from other people too, exactly what you hit the nail on the head Lisa, removing the politics of these relationships. What have we gained and what do we miss if anything?

00:31:47 Lisa O: For some reason, it’s acceptable to be challenged by somebody from the outside of an organization and then on the inside. I agree 100% with what Lisa said also is that it’s like they want you to challenge them and we are good at it. And I think to some extent being female, you’re just more observant. You pick up on things. You can read rooms usually a lot better than… sometimes, I found in sitting with all males, like they weren’t like… Some things were just so obvious of the nonverbal cues and all of that. But I think it’s a huge plus to this is… you don’t have to play the politics. They want you to challenge and they want you to push.

00:32:27 Stacie: And what I really Lisa to build on that, what I really saw was when I was in corporate and I was working with the consultants that we would bring in and hire, the things that they would say or pitch were very similar, if not exactly things that you have said or pitched before. But when they said it, like, “Holy moly,” like the whole… everything changes. So that was a big like aha moment for me was just like, well, if they can do that, I can do that a hundred times better. So let’s go.

00:32:53 Mandy: I think the politics is a big one, right? I think that the reason why a lot of us have gone fractional is because we don’t have to deal with those politics and we actually can choose who we work with. I was telling some of the group earlier today that I fired a client today because I didn’t appreciate the relationship. We get to choose, and we get to choose what makes us happy and what we thrive on.

00:33:22 Laura: Well, I find too that there’s actually a different level of… I feel like I make more impact outside the building than I did inside the building, so to speak, right? People tend to listen more because I’m truly focused on that one thing. I don’t know if anybody else had the experience in corporate America, but nobody knows what marketing does, but nobody can live without them and they come to them for everything, right? Now I’m able to say, look, this is our trajectory, this is our priority, that will derail the priority, which is of more importance, right? And I think the ability to do that commands that respect in the room that I think sometimes would get watered down, without that level of focus and prioritization that you bring to it because this is what you are doing for that company. And you get to choose who that company is, right? In my case, people I want to work with and people that I think have something that’s going to provide to the industry. And maybe it’s kind of cool and interesting, right?

00:34:26 Casey: Yeah, love it. Kim, I saw you came on. You didn’t get a chance to introduce yourself. Do you want to give us a quick like, Hey, who you are and who you serve?

00:34:33 Kim: Sure. I’m Kim Snell. I’m from Florida as well. So I’m actually in Gainesville, Florida. So, middle of the state. I am a fractional CMO, agency owner. Been an agency owner for about 13 years, tired of the agency grind. So decided, well, funny enough, I was actually, I brought a client on as their agency, was working with them and for about five years was working in a fractional CMO capacity, a fully engaged capacity and realized that that was what I was just more passionate about was the leading, solving those problems for the brands versus all of the tactics. And I didn’t initially recognize that I was their fractional CMO, even though I was charging the fully engaged rate doing the, you know, the fractional CMO work was working with an EOS implementer and with the brand that brought in.

00:35:35 Kim: And he said… I actually brought up CMOx to him. And I said, “Hey, what do you think?” And he goes, “This is what you’re doing.” And he’s like, “You are their fractional CMO.” So I just didn’t have the title. So then I decided that I was all in and have been set. So serving consumer brands. So D2C worked with the Shark Tank brand and that was the brand that the implementer was working with me with. So yeah.

00:36:08 Casey: Awesome. Courtney, I just have just a couple of quick things I want to cover real quick and then I’ll pass it back to you. So one of the things I heard at the top when everyone was just kind of sharing is just like all these different niches. And the niche that like someone comes into the accelerator with if there was just like a, I don’t know, a trope it’s, want to be in SaaS, the biggest, widest possible industry to be in. Someone asked in the comments here, “Should you choose a niche or not?” And the answer is yeah. You want to be the expert in the number one of the thing. And you can’t be the number one at all SaaS. You can’t be the number one at all technology software. You can be the best at all public utilities that use water that buy from these types of vendors or whatever. Like you can niche down like that.

00:36:47 Casey: So just on the call, we’ve got folks in direct to consumer, we’ve got automotive, we’ve got public utilities, we’ve got payroll processing, we’ve got like all sorts of different stuff. And I think that sounds pejorative, but like boring industries are fine industries too. Like they don’t have to be sexy and cutting edge. They don’t have to be the latest blockchain meets AI, whatever. The stuff that’s going to persist forever is going to persist forever. There’s always going to be plumbers. There’s always going to be people that pave driveways, like those are fine industries for you to be a fractional CMO in. You don’t have to choose anything that’s like sexy, but you got to choose something.

00:37:21 Casey: Lynn also had a question around AI and does anyone like not use AI or AI teams? And I would say like generally Lynn leading AI teams isn’t a thing that we talk about. I think that getting additional capacity from the marketing technicians, that people like doing the actual labor in the marketing department, those people might use AI to find an answer or to vibe code a quick little JavaScript thing to fix whatever. But I would say that AI isn’t as adopted globally in the fractional CMO space. I don’t see the utility. I see it in solving blank page syndrome of like writing an email but like to take that email and then just to like send that out without human review, it doesn’t make sense. So I think AI is best in ideation and like initial concept development, but not right now for full development of a product or service or anything like that. But Courtney, I know you’ve got another question you want to ask. You want to take it from here?

00:38:10 Courtney: Yeah. Another part of this podcast objective was to continue to validate the feelings that we all feel in the workplace. And personally, I know when I listened to Casey’s first podcast on the subject and he said, “The numbers speak for themselves. All you have to do is drop the data.” And I was like, “Well, don’t I wish it was that simple my whole life.”

00:38:30 Casey: So just the context here is I said, “If someone sees you as being bitchy or pushy or whatever, but you have data to back you up, does their opinion really matter?” And you’re saying there’s something more that I missed.

00:38:41 Courtney: I’m saying I wish the data was enough in my experience all the time. So, my question to the fellow viewers here and participants would be, have you, like me, had to validate your numbers, your experience, your data, more so than you think you should have had to because you are a female?

00:39:03 Jessie: I can jump in on this one. So, the answer right point blank is yes. I think if I were to send someone a one-pager cold about what I can do for them, right? We would do a resume walk, and they’d want to know everywhere I’ve done it. And so one of the things as a woman, right, and again, I’m electric utilities, so highly technical. I am not an engineer, but I’ve studied the space. I started actually as an analyst in the space. So, I understand a lot of how the grid works. One of the things I do right off the bat, right, is get folks on the phone, and start talking to them about their problems and the language that they use. So I get technical with a quickness. I share what I’ve done. I share that I was an analyst.

00:39:45 Jessie: And I’ve been marketing way more than I was doing analysis work. But you know what? At the end of the day, there’s some street cred, I think, that comes with it. And the sooner I think you can start speaking the same language as the men at that C-suite table, the less of that resume walk you’re going to have to do. And so it’s still there. It still exists. But I think I speak for all of the women on this call. We’re not quiet. We have opinions, right? That’s why we’re doing CMO work. We like to share them. And so doing that as quickly as possible, right? In a respectful way is you want to get them going, “Oh, she gets it and she knows what she’s doing.” We want to work with her rather than, so what did you do last year and what companies have you worked for?

00:40:26 Courtney: So similarly, I know I have personal experiences of perhaps a counterpart 

saying a sentence and it’s laughable. And then when I say it, I’m a bitch to Casey’s point, right? So can we talk about some of those like double standards that we’ve seen in the workplace and even things that you’ve done to overcome them, or have you ever consulted somebody directly and said, “Hey, this was okay over here. Why is it not okay over here?” Just some of the experiences again, just to validate to everybody listening. This is not rare. Every single one of us have endured these experiences.

00:41:02 Christy: I had an experience kind of early in my career where my boss, was this lovely, chatty guy, sat me down and said, “Christy, you need to be nicer to people. You need to ask them questions about what they’re interested in and get to know them a little bit better before you start going in and start talking about business.” And I thought it was so interesting because I was modeling what I had seen previously, right? In my career that… it was like you get in and you’re like, “Okay, here’s the five things we’re going to talk about today.” And he just was like, “You have to stop doing that.” It was like, it was different because it was me as a woman. I was supposed to be soft, right? And I have become a more empathetic person and more leader that way as I’ve gone forward, but I was supposed to be soft in that they were so offended by my directness, which was an interesting thing that I doubt that feedback was ever given to one of the men on the team.

00:41:51 Mandy: I was just about to say that I have the exact same story, Christy. You know, I sit around the boardroom table and my male counterpart would say, “These are the five things we need to do and we need to do them right now,” right? And I would follow that up with, “These are the other three things that we need to do.” And then I get labeled as being way too direct, whereas my male counterpart was if they were okay with that. So we automatically assume and sometimes we do it to ourselves that we need to be softer, that we need to be a little bit more gentle in the way we communicate. And sometimes we do it to ourselves and sometimes it’s pinned on us.

00:42:36 Laura: I’ve seen it in the reverse too, where you might bring three ideas to the table and they go almost unheard. And then those same three ideas are presented by a co-worker, we’ll call it, down the table, and all of a sudden, they’re brilliant. I’ve yet to figure out why that is, if anybody could solve the puzzle, but my point being that it comes in all forms, right? I think it’s a reality. I don’t think there’s anybody here that probably hasn’t had one of those situations occur.

00:43:08 Mandy: Yeah, and as a result of doing that, Laura, I’ve had to learn the art of making my boss or my counterpart think that it was their idea instead of my idea. So, it becomes an art to turn it into somebody else’s idea.

00:43:25 Laura: Yeah. Managing your manager, I call it.

00:43:28 Lisa P: And I will just say, think that all of us is, like you said, have experienced that. But what that does is it allows us to figure out when to be empathetic, when to push, when to let them think it’s their ideas or when to navigate those situations. And as a fractional, I have seen to our advantage now, because we can come in and be more assertive and push and guide because we are the outside consultant. But we have all of these skill sets because we’ve navigated different environments than our counterparts. And we can use all of that to our advantage to know when to push, when not to push, how to frame things. And I just have found it very useful now in this role as I have learned everything in my career with all of those challenges.

00:44:23 Stacie: And it helps us to teach and frame the next generation too, because we see the patterns, we see them happen. We can course correct things as well moving into the future. So, I think that’s something I’ve taken away a lot from kind of this instances, you’re so perceptive and receptive to what’s happening and you’re knowing that this is happening. So then in the future, when you’re in that leadership role and can be the guiding force, you’re able to like, “Oh, Lisa, that was an amazing idea. Like talk about that a little bit more,” versus going down the table, someone else has it, and it’s, again, that’s what got me into consulting and fractional is because I saw all these people being brought in listening, everybody’s hearing what they’re saying, I’m saying the same thing, no one’s listening to me. So just having that leadership push and knowing that you can help shape it in the future is also something that is good to come from all of our experiences.

00:45:20 Casey: Love it.

00:45:22 Kim: And I think there’s a balance too in making sure that we’re not losing authority when we are saying that… allowing it to be someone else’s idea because I ended up in that situation once.

00:45:35 Courtney: All the time. All the time. On Stacie’s point too, I want to talk about mechanisms we can use to continue to pave the way for the next generation. But just to piggyback on all of these notes, for [inaudible], who was my favorite [inaudible] I’ve ever had, I had to tell her very early on that she cannot use exclamation points. You will not be taken seriously as a woman in this industry. Every sentence has an exclamation point in it. And that just goes back to what I was originally saying. Every single thing we do is… a double thought, right? That I don’t know that others have to do. And like Casey, I would love your perspective on that too. Like are there things that you have thought twice about? Like what you wore? What you said to people?

00:46:24 Casey: Yeah, 0% 0%.

00:46:27 Courtney: Thank you so much. If the ladies want to talk about things they’ve done that they can actively remember, like being in a room and saying, if I don’t do this, I’m going to perpetuate this cycle that I’ve had to live through. What are some of those situations that we all can learn from to continue to do for others?

00:46:44 Lauren: The easiest one is when a man starts talking over a woman to say, “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t catch what Courtney was saying.” I mean, number one rule of conference people etiquette. Yeah. Another thing that I ran into and one of the big reasons why I left my last job was that when I was brought in, it was sort of, they immediately started to pit me against the only other female director at the company. And I just wouldn’t tolerate it. And every time it started, I just said, I’m not gonna have this conversation without this other person in the room. I just wouldn’t let them play that game with me. And I think these challenges will exist in any company that you go into. It doesn’t matter if you’re coming in as a fractional or as a full-time employee, but what being a fractional allows you to do is just have more authority about how much you’re willing to tolerate because you can leave with less with less implication, really hold up those boundaries about what you’re willing to accept.

00:47:42 Jessie: I think one that I have, I cannot tell you how many emails I’ve received, right? That say per my previous email or something, to that effect. I sent one that said as shared because a week prior I had shared something and then I was getting asked about it. And for this audience, right, I will sit here and say email is a risky place because you can’t always tell intonation. Things can come off differently. We all know that. But in that moment, surrounded by men, when I get the phone call saying, “How dare you say as shared because that did happen,” instead of backing down and saying, “I’m sorry right away,” right? Which is kind of my gut and what I wanted to do instead. It’s like to break that cycle. It’s “Hey, I just really want to know how to get information to you in a way that you all can understand.” And that’s not an apology, but I don’t think as women we should be saying, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” when we’re doing the same things that some of our colleagues also do and they don’t get phone calls on the backend.

00:48:35 Courtney: What are some other situations where you’ve apologized unnecessarily?  I could go all day on this.

00:48:39 Stacie: Anything. I think your default answer is I’m sorry for mostly anything. I think that’s just a part of our nature and it’s about… to your point, Jessie, it’s like, why did you do that? It’s not that you’re sorry, just explain the reason behind the action or whatever happened. Like you don’t need to be sorry for it unless you did something bad. It’s not about being apologetic, it’s just about explaining the deep root of what you were doing and the why. And I think that’s what the audience needs to hear too. Jessie, your explanation was perfect. Like how I can deliver content to you that you’re going to listen and read and actually-

00:49:24 Jessie: Exactly! It’ll be more productive for all of us.

00:49:29 Erin: I would agree with that and just say like, my immediate reaction is to have everybody collaborate and be happy. So you do want to say, I’m sorry or repair, but a key thing is to take the emotions out of it as much as you can and say, “This is the fact, this is the business progress and we’re losing out on the business outcome if what I said last week wasn’t paid attention to and this other person said it not as well as I did. And look, we just lost a week.” Not saying it like that but just stick to the facts and try to take the emotion out of it, which is hard. Especially if we’re women in collaborative in nature, we want to help other people. So that’s my perspective.

00:50:14 Christy: I think with marketing too, we are held accountable for so many things that are outside of our control, rIght? So it is so easy to go say-

00:50:23 Casey: Can you give me an example? What are you held accountable to?

00:50:26 Christy: So I used to sit into a leadership meeting where I had to report on sales conversion of leads. And frankly, once it’s out of my hands and it’s in the hands of the SDRs or in the hands of the AEs, I can’t necessarily control that, but I was getting a lot of pressure about why wasn’t sales converting these leads faster? Why were they sitting there in an open status in Salesforce? I actually apologize. I was like, “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry. We’ll work on that.” And I actually had another woman that I worked with pull me aside after the meeting and she’s like, “Christy, could you control that?” And I was like, “Well, no, but I could probably talk to them.” She’s like, “No, you don’t apologize for something that’s not your fault.” Instead, it becomes very facts based. 

00:51:10 Christy: You know, like Erin was just saying a minute ago, it’s a… you have to keep it very… this is what’s happening. This is the situation. This is how it’s… things. But again, with marketing, if the color is weird on the slide or something doesn’t load when somebody’s presenting any PowerPoint, a keynote, it’s not your fault. You can’t control it, but we do want… end up wanting to apologize. So just keeping in mind what you can own and what you shouldn’t own.

00:51:32 Laura: So just a quick tip to compliment that, Christy, I had a… I was fortunate enough to have an executive coach at one point and it was the smallest little thing that she advised me to do, but put a sticky, pick your color on your monitor that says, is it yours? Right? They come to you, they need somebody for a customer. Your job is to say yes or no. Can you help? Not to find them someone if you can’t help. Right? And so that’s an example of why I used the sticky initially, but it just – I still have a sticky there years and years later, because I’m the yes person, right? But it’s not mine to own. I find that I still have to regularly remind myself of that. So-

00:52:18 Brandi: Well, I think that’s- Courtney – sorry. Sorry. [crosstalk]

00:52:24 Casey: That’s the Canadian thing though.

00:52:26 Brandi: That might be just a Canadian thing. Here I am going, I don’t apologize for anything. And then I say, sorry. No, just to piggyback on that, Laura. I think that that is, and maybe Courtney, you were gonna kind of share in the sentiment too, it’s just, that’s a big piece of… I know for myself being a fractional and a leader is just saying yes. Like, and that is a bit of, it’s a catch 22 with it. I often share in my fractional journey is that now I’m like saying yes and figuring it out later, but there’s these, these boundaries and the fluidity. And that’s the thing that we have to really learn is, you know, is it mine? Can I own it? Because I know for me, that’s something that I just, I’m the, everybody calls me Google Brandi because I just, I know the answer.

00:53:14 Brandi: So everybody comes to me, but I become that. I have that reputation and now I’m solving problems that aren’t even mine. And so it has become… that’s been my biggest thing that I’ve learned in the last six months is I need to create that structure for myself. What it is, and taking a page out of Christy’s book. And I will say that’s the power of this group is to learn from all of you in some of these strengths, like Christy, I see that as your big strength. You really, you’re like, I am here for this job and this job only. And so that really inspires somebody like myself who can really, what do you need? And how quick and how high do I need to jump? So anyway, I really appreciate this conversation. I really relate to it.

00:53:56 Mandy: Courtney started the conversation with women take on too much. We’ve seen the research that says we take on too much as women. We tend to take on the culture. We tend to take on all the employees. We take on all the work and the problem solving, even though it’s not ours. How do you take a step back out of that and realize that you do have to put boundaries around yourself? And I think as a fractional person, I’ve been learning more and more how to put those boundaries around myself, how to allow myself to do what I do best while keeping the walls up as to, I will not do this or I will not do that.

00:54:43 Courtney: Thank you so much, Mandy, and everybody who just commented. The 2025 Conference for Women report read, 90% of women surveyed feel depleted at work at least some of the time. One third usually feel depleted all of the time. So when we talk about taking on more of our responsibility, going over our contracts in terms of time and commitment and underpaying ourselves, why do we do that? I want to dive deeper into that. And personally, and with some listeners, I’m positive, we’ve had the conversations of needing to feel validated. We want the person we’re working with to say, how did I live without you? I can’t believe you just went so above and beyond. You are a unicorn, and it typically doesn’t come, but we continue to act this way seeking the validation. So do you all have experiences like that? Please, I am not the only one. And what are some ways in which you are every day trying to change that mentality and your behaviors to get to a healthier and happier place?

00:55:47 Jessie: I can answer the first part and I need help on the second, because I’m right there with you Courtney working through this. One of the things that comes up in most of my early calls with prospective clients is like, “Can I pay you project based? Would you take hourly or are you firm on your retainer and my come.”

00:56:05 Casey: Will you work for one sandwich?

00:56:08 Jessie: But every time, you know what I say? I say, I only take retainer because that way you can ask me to do anything and I’m never going to say no. And I probably should stop saying that. So I will take all the tips that come out of this, but it’s true. I won’t.

00:56:23 Stacie: This is interesting because sometimes I do a little more, but it’s to prove, but it’s not going to be something that’s going to be way out of scope. But I don’t have any issues saying, hey, this, you know, isn’t part of our scope. Let’s discuss how we can get there. And then what’s that going to cost? I actually just, you know, upgraded a engaged client for a project-based work for an extra 20 grand in a month because of that. So, I think it all goes back to confidence and knowing what you’re worth, knowing what you can do and accomplish for the client. And making sure that you’re stuck on being confident in that confidence, if that makes sense. Like you can’t just give yourself away. That’s not what we’re here to do. Like we’re here to do what we love, do it for the people that we wanna work with and make money. So you gotta really just focus on those core things, I think.

00:57:13 Brandi: But I think Stacie, like that’s the whole point is that we… I know for me, we do like I did for years, just give it away, just give it away.

00:57:22 Stacie: I did too, in corporate and I’m never going back to that.

00:57:25 Brandi: And so it finally comes to like a breaking point. And that’s where like conversations like this are so important, because everybody watching and listening here are seeing, you know, what is possible. And I think that is the power of this group and the path that we’re taking. But yeah, that just in itself is constant, like work in progress. Like, yeah, that’s what we all need to work on.

00:57:47 Mandy: You know, Stacie, you mentioned something about confidence and making sure that you’ve got confidence in yourself. I think as women, our confidence bar tends to be higher than men, where men could be at 30% of education and skill set. And they’ll say, “Oh, yeah, I can do that other job. No problem.” Whereas women, we need to be at 90 or 100% before we’re willing to put ourselves forward for that same role. So I think confidence and building up your confidence, especially as a fractional is so critical and kudos to Casey because, I think as women, as in part of Casey’s group is we’ve been learning from each other and learning from Casey and the rest of the team as to how to build that confidence and be confident in what you’re saying all the time.

00:58:43 Stacie: That’s so true because I think they’re proud to operate at like 150% because you kind of have to, to your point. Like there’s no-

00:58:50 Laura: I think it’s more than just the yes to the job tasks, right? As women and I don’t think many people here would disagree with this, we tend to take on the emotional aspects, the culture, right? Political smoothing, right? I’ve had people that were on my team and that were not on my team come to me for advice, right? And this is taking out of your day, actually got the opportunity for a dotted line marketing team that was in another region with two companies that had one had been acquired. And I got the dotted line team because I was good at working the cross culture and I could help. Well, it earned me that privilege of work, right? Without the money and the title and the whatever. So I think as women, it’s actually, we tend to take on work that’s out of our scope because of naturally where our brains work well in addition, right? And it then takes away in some cases from that focus and work that we need to be doing. So, I think it’s beyond just what we’re gonna commit to and take on from a tasks perspective.

01:00:03 Casey: Thank you so much for joining me for this episode. Next week, we’re going to come out with part two. But until then, here’s what I want you to do. I want you to book in a call right now with my team to see if we can help you get to this level. As you saw on the webinar on the podcast here, at least two of the women collected $50,000 in the month of November in collections as part of their fee for being a fractional CMO. It’s incredible. Now, obviously, not everyone is at that level yet. But if you want to be in that kind of group, if you want to really be around a bunch of people that are like fighting every day to win clients. I encourage you right now just to go to cmox.co/call and just book in a call right now. That’s it. cmox.co/call. All right. See you later.

01:00:50 Casey: Thank you for sticking around for the full episode. As you know, learners are earners, but you’ve got to take action on what you heard today. For more information and show notes, visit fractionalcmoshow.com. If you’d like me to answer your questions on an upcoming episode, you can share your question at fractionalcmoshow.com. And last, please hit the like and subscribe button so that I know that this content is helpful to you. Alright, go get’em!