Transcript:

00:00:00 Casey: Cool, hey, welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome. All right, so this is just kind of like an open chat. There were some conversations that I saw in the Facebook group that we had over the last couple days where I shared a win from a member inside the CMO’s accelerator. And she said that she had just won a $17,000 a month client. And I remember years ago, like where I was and what I thought I could charge as a CMO or a fractional CMO. And 17,000 was just kind of bonkers.

00:00:31 Casey: And when I posted that, some folks said, bullshit and other people said, that’s a red flag, I don’t believe it, which is fine. And I’m not here to defend anything. And if you don’t want her to believe it, that’s totally cool. But what I wanna share with you is that those rates do exist. People are making those rates. It’s possible to be a fractional CMO and charge 3000. I say generally 3000 to 15,000. Listen, 17,000 is pretty nutso, right? That’s towards the highest end of what a member’s charged.

00:01:01 Casey: We had a member, she came in and she charged 18,550 bucks a month, which is a crazy sum. I asked her why she chose that number. And she says, because I need that to be on track to hit my revenue targets. And she was just bold and she worked with companies that could afford that. She came from a sales and marketing background for a big name company and had a really big paycheck when she was working there.

00:01:28 Casey: So she had some assumptions of what she was worth and she sold herself as that and they bought. So it’s possible to charge those kinds of rates, 17,000 a month. Absolutely that’s possible. Is it likely? Not for everybody. Can you charge $17,000 a month as a fractional CMO and work with a mom and pop hair salon in your hometown? Like probably not, right? The market probably can’t bear that, but they certainly can bear a fractional CMO at an appropriate rate. So I’d love to talk about that today and any other questions that you have around being a fractional CMO, kind of getting your head in the game.

00:02:04 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.

00:02:37 Casey: 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.

00:03:01 S: Hi Casey. This is the first time I am here. First time joining the live call. And I was really intrigued about the $17,500. Right now, where I am at is that I have a marketing agency that charges about $2,000, $3,000 per month. And that’s doing a lot of work for the clients being very selective with the clients that I work with because that one is really volume driven rather than value driven. And I do want to understand what are those niches or what is that criteria that I need to look for so that I’m very much targeted in terms of the kind of client that I work with that could potentially pay me at least 8K and above.

00:04:00 Casey: Okay. I’m getting most of that. There you go. So you want to do 8K and above?

00:04:04 F: Yeah.

00:04:05 Casey: And what’s a typical client that you’re working with? You said like 2,000, 3,000 a month?

00:04:08 F: Yeah. These are real estate clients. Some are in investing, real estate, wholesaling, also brokerages. They are doing about like 3 mil per year. And I am not so sure how… what would be the revenue that the company should be having in order for me to target better?

00:04:36 Casey: Okay, good question. Well, I think brokerages and wholesaling is very different. Wholesaling is my experience of wholesaling is just like people boots on the ground, knocking doors, trying to buy houses, getting them under contract and selling the contract. So it’s a high profit game. Where marketing is important to get people to raise their hands and say they’re interested in selling their house.

00:04:58 Casey: Brokerages, I don’t really have any experience in brokerages. So I don’t really know that model. But let me just ask you, if you did a great job for them and you really helped them grow, like what would be a good basic marketing budget that you would need for like, let’s just say ad spend, what would you want to spend a month in ads? What would you want to spend a month on ads?

00:05:17 F: For myself?

00:05:20 Casey: For a bank or client? You wouldn’t be spending, you would be overseeing spend.

00:05:25 F: About 3K maybe?

00:05:27 Casey: 3K a month?

00:05:28 F: Yeah.

00:05:28 Casey: Okay. I think that’s like, that’s okay. I think it’s kind of small though. I think you want to be trying to find someone who’s more than like the 30K a month.

00:05:37 F: Okay.

00:05:38 Casey: Right. So, so listen to it this way. If you’re spending $3,000 a month, but you’re charging me $8,000, it just, it just doesn’t feel right, does it?

00:05:47 F: That’s true.

00:05:48 Casey: You know what I mean? It’s like, yeah. It just feels wrong. It feels like putting in a really nice steering wheel on a really crappy old car. Like you want to be working with a company who’s spending money where the risk of them doing it wrong is significant. So your costs make sense. Eight grand to oversee a $3,000 spend and then all the team and all the other marketing stuff that happens, it’s just not really there. But if someone’s spending five grand a day in ads, then think about what happens if they have a bad day. And can you working with them just alone ensure that they don’t have, that they have one less bad day a month.

00:06:24 F: That makes sense. No, this is a good insight because I never thought of it on the ad spend point of view. I always look at it on the revenue point of view. And most of the most of the people that are the companies that I’ve worked with, they’re not running ads as much. And so there’s really not much risk on their end. They’re still just about to scale. And so I think it does give me a good framing now on like how to look for those. And then one thing I also wanna ask-

00:07:01 Casey: Can I see a caveat on that just before we go on?

00:07:03 F: Oh, go ahead.

00:07:04 Casey: Yeah, the caveat here is they don’t have to have ad spend, but they have to have investments in marketing. And like generally like I want ad spend because ad spend accelerates marketing. You all can do all the best marketing for a client, but if nobody sees it, it’s worthless. So you wanna get eyeballs and how are you gonna get eyeballs? My favorite way is just ads cause it’s like the easiest and it’s programmatic, it would just turn up the volume.

00:07:27 Casey: But that all said, your client doesn’t have to have that spend. They might want to move into spending. They might want to grow over the next quarter or two quarters to do that. They might say, hey man, we finally have, maybe they’re working in private equity and they have a project that went all the way through a life cycle. They have a bunch of cash. They’re like, we want to spend now. Or in six months, we’re going to spend, but we want to build the marketing team first. Those are all significant risks for them that your fee helps them reduce the risk on. So that’s how you got to see it, I think.

00:07:57 F: Okay. One last question for me would be on the niche. Because right now I’m doing real estate and I’m very new in that space, but I do want to learn more about it because I do want to be a real estate investor at some point. But also my background has always been in CPG. And so for me, I’m also thinking about how do I increase my chances of getting that higher number? Right. So that I could have more cash flow that I could invest back in, you know, other–

00:08:34 Casey: Because the biggest thing is just no CPT is consumer packaged goods. So like Doritos or canned drinks or–

00:08:40 F: Yeah, I used to work at Nestle. So I don’t know how to leverage that. And I know CPG is very different when it comes to the fractional CMO thing. And it’s also like, I don’t know.

00:08:56 Casey: Let’s see CPG. So you have something from, what’d you say, Nestle?

00:09:01 F: Nestle, yeah.

00:09:02 Casey: You have insights from Nestle that are interesting. Those insights can feel oversized for smaller companies, but if a company is doing 10 million a year, you knowing what you know about CPG for Nestle, could you help a company well? What’s the idea of company? You tell me, I don’t know what it is. So what do you think, if I put it in your lap, the perfect company for you men, what does it look like?

00:09:26 F: I would love to work with like Liquid Death or.

00:09:29 Casey: Yeah, so like they launched it at like a multi-billion dollar valuation. So they’re not looking for help right now, but what would be another company like them? Give me another name.

00:09:40 F: There’s also Simply, they’re expanding their headquarters either their reach in Philadelphia. I don’t know if you Simplii?

00:09:51 Casey: Simply, no, how do you spell it? S-I-M-P-L -Y?

00:09:55 F: S-I-M-P-L-I-I or IME. I don’t know if you know IME.

00:10:01 Casey: No. Okay. So these are some brands and what do you think their approximate revenue is?

00:10:05 F: About 10 mil.

00:10:06 Casey: Okay, cool. So I think that’s a cool spot to kind of start looking at CPG. CPG is expensive. Shelving, shipping, um, package goods is an expensive business. It’s very different than a digital product, a digital business that’s doing two, $3 million a year might have 40, 50% margins. CPG company doing 10 million a year might have what? 20% margins, maybe less.

00:10:31 F: Yeah. And I’m also thinking that that will be more competitive on the marketing side because they do want to have an established, you know, marketing foundation because it’s so strong brand. Brand needs to be so strong on branding. So the kind of caliber also and the competitors in that lens might be difficult for me. So I guess B2B is more or less like a white space.

00:10:58 Casey: Okay, I mean, if I had to choose, I would choose B2B. I like B2B. That’s my favorite place to be higher ticket. And typically like Min, when you buy something for your business, you’re going to invest in a different way than if you buy it for yourself as a consumer.

00:11:09 Casey: You know, you kind of check the price as a consumer and as a business, you see, can I get an ROI on this? So I like B2B. I like B2B high ticket. That’s where I like to, to work. So I think your best bet is just a, I mean, CPG and real estate are very different. And I think you should choose one and either is fine. If you want my opinion, I think real estate bubbles, like it goes up and down. And if you can ride those waves, go real estate. If you know it.

00:11:37 Casey: And if you don’t go to the place that you know, that’s more evergreen, which is probably CPG and work there, establish yourself as a strong fractional CMO and CPG. And then like make money and invest in a course or get a mentor into real estate investing. But don’t think that just because you’re, uh, Jason to real estate investing that you’re going to get smarter. That real estate investing, right? So you can go win a client, I think in CPG, I think that’d be a better place for you then than real estate. That’s my personal take, but you could choose real estate if that’s what you want.

00:12:11 F: That makes sense. Okay, thank you.

00:12:13 Casey: You feel like you’re walking away with this with like clarity on size of company?

00:12:17 F: Yes, yes. So I would need to look into like who are those that are expanding, maybe getting more funding, right? Also doing more ads at the moment. So, yeah, it’s like where I am right now. And I think I do need to leverage more of my experience so that I could get a higher ticket client.

00:12:42 Casey: Great. Yeah. And remember like we’re not bending the arm of the client to get a higher fee. We’re solving a problem big enough that our fee makes sense. You want to be in the way of deal flow and solve bigger problems. Cool. Thanks, Ben. Appreciate it.

00:12:56 Casey: Yep. Hey, Joshua, you mind if I pull you in?

00:12:58 Joshua: Yeah, of course. No problem.

00:13:00 Casey: What’s up, man?

00:13:01 Joshua: What’s up?

00:13:02 Casey: So you got some questions?

00:13:04 Joshua: Yes.

00:13:04 Casey: Let them rip then. What’s going on? Where are you based?

00:13:06 Joshua: I’m based out in Houston. So I currently work as a part of a marketing team for a law firm and kind of just kind of have a little marketing agency on the side. And you know, I’m just discovering before I worked at the law firm, I was working at a real estate company as a marketing assistant. And I worked with a fractional CMO overseeing me. And I leveraged that to kind of somehow find my way into this law firm. And just being in this niche, I’m like, dang, they’re spending like 100 grand on just like marketing a month.

00:13:37 Joshua: And I’m like, man, I want to grow in that aspect in this niche. And so I’m just, I don’t know, here kind of, I just hopped on, saw the email and just on questions, you know?

00:13:48 Casey: Yeah, yeah. Any specific question around that?

00:13:51 Joshua: Yeah, I mean, what would kind of be, my thing is like, you know, I found myself in the marketing space. I feel like I have kind of doubt in a sense of like, do I need like training degrees? Like-

00:14:02 Casey: Do you need a degree? No.

00:14:04 Joshua: Yeah. To kind of be in that headspace of like, I want to be a fractional CMO and really own that space. And I don’t know, kind of just like, start getting more clients in that way and start presenting myself to other law firms and be like, hey, like I can be a fractional CMO for you and present that solution for them. And I want to learn how I can deliver the best results for this law firm. That way I can be able to do that for other law firms and be like, just own this niche, you know?

00:14:32 Casey: Yep, yeah, totally. Law is a great niche. And there’s really like no bad niche as far as I’m concerned. I like law because it’s only gonna stick around. Yeah, I mean, it’s gonna be around for a long time. I don’t know how anything would ever change where we would stop having lawyers, like them or not. And lawyers make a lot of money if they have a case that they win and then they dump a bunch of that money back into marketing. So it’s a nice cycle. There’s a nice renewal cycle and someone could go from no marketing to huge marketing budget kind of overnight because they just want a case and they got their whatever they got paid on it and they’re after the races.

00:15:10 Casey: So it’s a good niche to be in. I think it’s a fine one for you to commit to and commit to forever. That’s just it. Don’t have wandering eyes. Just be there. So part of it is like knowing the problems that lawyers have and you just need to understand the landscape. So they want to get deal flow and then they want to qualify the deals. And what are they willing to pay for a deal? So the numbers you want to start knowing about is what is a lawyer willing to pay for a qualified person that has a problem for them to get on the phone with?

00:15:42 Casey: And it’s like uncontested divorce, a bad lead. Uncontested divorces are like cheap, right? They’re not contested. So you don’t really need a lawyer for much. So an uncontested divorce is maybe like the low end and like the high end is like medical malpractice. You want to understand that landscape and like, where do you want to play? And there’s players in each of those levels. There’s the law firms that go directly after medical malpractice, or they go after workplace injury or, you know, whatever the thing is.

00:16:09 Casey: Other people going after, yeah, I looked at it before the meeting started and I was like, Oh no, she’s going to jump on me. You want to just have an understanding of the landscape and know where you want to go. And a problem that you’re going to have is if you work with national companies, national law firms they won’t want you helping them with medical malpractice. And then a competitor, even three states away, if they advertise in that other state or they intend to advertise.

00:16:34 Casey: So you have to have a strata of the lawyers that you wanna work with or service types that you wanna work with so that you’re not pigeonholing yourself in a service exclusively, and then you’re territory doubt. That would be bad. So then you just gotta know the numbers and like back into the numbers. Lawyers are simple, dude. You drive them qualified leads, somebody at the law firm talks to them and qualifies them. And then they pitch them into like further services.

00:17:00 Casey: Understand that full process, understand what they’re willing to pay along the way. You’re working in a law firm now, say, hey guys, what do we pay right now for a qualified lead? Not any lead, but a qualified lead. And as they’re getting curious, what percentage of those leads that get generated are called within five minutes of lead origination? And so if a lead comes in, they said, we’ll spend $500 a lead. And they’re like, okay, are you guys calling the lead?

00:17:23 Casey: They’re like, yeah, when we get around to it, we call them within a day. You’re like, oh shit, if we called them within five minutes, if we called them within one minute of lead origination, we would probably get the deal before the other law firm called them. So it’s like, you start closing those gaps and understanding that whole process. Become a student of that and see every step along the way how a lead comes through a law firm and just know what they’re willing to pay.

00:17:49 Casey: And then you can take that and productize that into you helping other law firms build a marketing team out to do it. So here’s the kind of nail in the coffin for a marketing agency. You say as a fractional CMO, listen, any agency worth its salt is getting a 30, hopefully 40% profit margin. So you guys are paying 30 to 40% more than you need to because the marketing agency is building all this stuff out for you. Let me build it in-house for you. I’m gonna hire the marketing team. I’m gonna get someone to call the leads. I’m gonna oversee all of that thing.

00:18:23 Casey: What’s that worth to you? Now it’s not, I’m giving you a lead. It’s I’m creating a system in your business that proactively generates quality leads and qualifies them on your behalf. And if you do that for them, what’s that worth, dude? One good sale in a year, in a year is worth a million dollars. So what’s your cost? Your cost kind of doesn’t matter. So you’re gonna butt up against their beliefs around what it should cost.

00:18:51 Casey: Right? So your value is like phenomenal. I want everyone here to listen and hear that. Selling a solution, like, Joshua’s selling law firm leads at a discount and charging a lot of money for that. Everyone wins, except for the marketing agency that you pushed out.

00:19:09 Joshua: Right. Yeah. So basically what we did in this law firm was we built out a team, ran creatives, did their websites, SEO, and their billboards. And it’s generating results or generating leads and we’re tracking everything we’re doing speed to lead and everything. And I’m part of a team right now. But part of me just wants to step on and be like, hey, I want to like own the fractional CMO space, be like, they have built to deliver that product to other law firms. If I were to go that route, how do I go about that?

00:19:38 Casey: So first of all, don’t be the agency that builds it out. Be the guy who’s going to come in and teach them how to build it in house and actually do it. Like you. I said teach I don’t I shouldn’t have said teach.

You want to be the guy who comes in and overhauls their marketing department to generate these leads. So that’s your offer. Hey, I see you guys using an agency. You guys know that they’re charging like a 30 to 40% markup minimum.

00:20:01 Casey: Would you guys be open to like hearing how I could come in and help you overhaul your in-house marketing department so you own the labor and like, listen, we’re gonna pay the least amount as possible for the labor so we can outspend everyone else on advertising so you guys can buy up all the leads.

00:20:15 Joshua: Wow, good.

00:20:17 Casey: So I could get someone in Philippines to dial leads to qualify them, or I could get someone in the States to do it. The person in Philippines is going to be cheaper. I take that difference in cost and I can throw it back into ads. Now I’m more competitive because I have more money to spend on advertising. So you want to just drop, like, as you drop the cost of the marketing department, you can spend more on advertising so then you can outspend everyone else.

00:20:45 Casey: No, it’s that you can get AI to do it. Yeah, totally. AI is coming. I mean, there are places that, you know, voice that AI and some other tools like that you could look into Joshua. But certainly this year, AI doing outbound phone calls, like follow-up call calls, totally likely to do. So you’re gonna see a lot of that. But again, those are gonna be AI agencies that are gonna sell an AI service and they’re gonna take a markup on it. Or you’re like, hey, let me just hire an AI expert for five grand to build it for us. And then we’ll own the technology.

00:21:16 Casey: Last thing on this is that you’re building up the intellectual property in the business, Joshua. And I want everyone to hear this. When you go work with an agency… and listen, I don’t think agencies are all bad. I like agencies. I think it’s a good business model. But when you work with an agency, they build up the intellectual property. They build up the systems and most agencies keep the systems internal to them, execute them and then charge you and then take their arbitrage on the fees, right? They pay a guy 20 bucks an hour and charge you 100 bucks an hour. And that’s just the process. You leave the agency, you lose the process. They never give you the processes. Or they’re like, you know, it’ll take us six weeks to off board and give you all these processes and it’ll cost 20 grand, whatever.

00:21:53 Casey: That doesn’t help the law firm. The law firm wants in-house marketing strategy process so that they don’t have an outside vendor who’s like controlling them. Cause what if that agency was like, Joshua, we’re out, we just got acquired. We’re shutting down the business. The business owner died. Then the law firm is screwed. They have no way to drive more business, right? They have to like reinvent everything. You want to in-house all the marketing strategy. It’s like, it’s the best news for people to hear this. We’re gonna put all that stuff in-house.

00:22:22 Casey: And then I’m going to manage it and make sure everything happens. Right. But we’re going to get a bunch of people in-house to do the work for you. We’ll get them off shore if we need to locally, whatever makes sense. But I want you to be able to outspend everyone else on advertising. No one’s offering that.

00:22:36 Joshua: So good.

00:22:36 Casey: Cool. Feel good on it.

00:22:38 Joshua: Yeah. That feels great. If I were to try and find another client, should I just start running ads and like focus on the messaging–

00:22:45 Casey: And make some phone calls?

00:22:46 Joshua: Yeah.

00:22:47 Casey: Yeah, dude. Yeah. Like you’re one sale away from an extra $10,000 a month. You can run ads, but like ads to lawyers for marketing stuff that it’s not cheap. You might get to that point, but go slog it out. Go ask your buddies, go ask the law firm that you’re working with and say like, hey, I’m thinking about doing this thing. If this is appropriate, know your relationships and say like, do you know anyone that is outside of what you guys work on? Do you know anyone that’s in corporate law? Do you know anyone that’s in whatever you can just introduce me to?

00:23:19 Joshua: Good.

00:23:21 Casey: Cool, man. All right.

00:23:21 Joshua: Casey, I want to just add because Joshua, I love you had a bunch of questions and I want to be really clear in how he’s asking it because a couple others are as well. He said, should I build out a website, social media, work on my messaging, all that, and then launch ads and should I get CRM? So like–

00:23:39 Casey: Dude, quit standing in your own way. Go get a sale. Listen, dude. I’m holding your family. I’m holding your what is that? Rocket apartment behind you. I’m holding that hostage. The only way you can have your beloved espresso machine back is if you get a sale. All right. And for every day that you delay, I’m gonna hit it with a hammer. Are you building out a social media profile? Come on, go get the sale. Go get the deal, dude. We’re talking about one. We’re not talking about a pipeline that feeds you forever. Talking about one sale. Go get it.

00:24:16 Joshua: Should I go on like LinkedIn or just find warm contacts?

00:24:19 Casey: I’m always out with warm contacts. And then with LinkedIn, you can just do outreach and say like, hey, I’m just trying to learn more about the industry. Here’s what I’m thinking about doing. You know, who do you know that you could interest me to you can run that route if you want. But I’m going to my buddies first hands down, dude. Someone’s working with someone where you can have a conversation and just try the conversation on you’ll probably blow it the first time. But every time you say it makes more sense to you, and then your confidence grows. And then people pick up on that company.

00:24:48 Casey: Don’t build a damn thing. If you want to buy a.com redirect it to your LinkedIn profile. Don’t build a website. Don’t do that. Don’t waste your time. Go have conversations with check writers only. Don’t ask your friends what they think of the offer. Ask a check writer, exclusively ask a check writer. My wife, I don’t bring up business ideas to her. Right? I don’t, cause like her experience, she’s not the check writer for it. Right? Like that’s the wrong person. My buddies who won’t buy my product, I’m not asking them for their opinion.

00:25:18 Casey: I’m going to go to the check writer and ask them for their opinion. That’s the only opinion that matters. All right. So go like book a call. I dare you by the end of this live stream, what do you got? 22 minutes or 32 minutes. Get a call. Do an outreach right now to ask someone for a call.

00:25:32 Joshua: Got it. Cool.

00:25:32 Casey: And last thing for you, look up Robert Green’s 48 Laws of Power. Law 13, law 13… law 13 states. Don’t ask for someone’s gratitude or mercy. Only a piece of their self interest. Don’t ask, hey, can you help me? Can you do me a favor? A piece appeal to their self interest. Hey, I’ve got this interesting idea that can make you a lot of money. I’m not going to pitch you on anything. I just want to run an idea by you. I’m not going to try to sell you anything. I’m going to run an idea by you. Try that angle, dude. See what people say. Okay.

00:26:08 Joshua: Awesome. Thank you.

00:26:09 Casey: Yeah. Don’t stop until you get a sale.

00:26:12 Joshua: Appreciate it.

00:26:13 Casey: Yeah. All right.

00:26:14 Joshua: Jack Peters is asking how many clients are workable in order to provide each with the level of service they expect, what’s the maximum?

00:26:24 Casey: Good question. It depends on the level that you sell them at. I’d love to see you guys in video if you can. Jack, are you? Joe, trying to get you added. Is Jack still here? There he is. Hey Jack, what’s up? All right. So I think the numbers are pretty straightforward. I’m not spot. Let me get, I’ll get me Michael. You and I do it at the same time.

00:26:49 Joshua: Thank you.

00:26:49 Casey: Okay. All right. So, three to five, that’s the short answer. It’s just three to five, Jack, three to five clients. It depends on what you’re selling them at. You can have more than five if you’re doing advisor clients. So an advisor, Jack, think about you and all your experience. What if you got paid for a month to go work with a company to come up with their marketing strategy, get to know them, build some systems and processes out. Okay. And then every month thereafter, you only met with them twice a month. Could you be deadly in two meetings every month with them to ensure they’re focused?

00:27:17 Jack: Absolutely.

00:27:18 Casey: Right. And how many of those can you take on or really hold in your head and do a great job? What do you think? Five?

00:27:26 Jack: Maybe six.

00:27:27 Casey: Yeah, right. Something like that. Like there’s a number like that, right? So that’s one, that’s the advisor level, which I think is a great one. And you’re charging 3000 to five, six, 7,000, something like that for that. And then the other side, you’ve got engaged. And engaged is different, Jack. You’re in 10 hours a week. So this company, it’s going through a turnaround or they’re growing really fast and they need someone who’s really in there who’s pushing the team around and making stuff happen.

00:27:52 Casey: So Monday, you do two, three hours of meetings. Tuesday, you do two, three hours of meetings. And then Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, you do standup and maybe an ad hoc call. You’ve got some emails, some Slacks, that kind of stuff. You can do a lot of damage in 10 hours a week. That’s gonna pay you the most monthly, but it’s also the most of your time. So how many of those could you take on? How many 10 hour a week clients could you take on?

00:28:14 Jack: Maybe like five?

00:28:15 Casey: Five? Yeah, that’s a lot, dude. Right? Most I ever had at once was three engaged. It’s just it’s a full brain. And I don’t have like a lot of space in my life for other stuff like hobbies kind of go, you know, health, you know, I just kind of kind of lose my edge and other things in life. I’m not making good food in the kitchen, you know, but I’m making really good money. So you’ve got the engaged and you’ve got the advisor and then you mix the two. So someone’s engaged for a while.

00:28:41 Casey: They might be engaged Jack for six months. And then instead of you being done, you drop down to engage the two advisor. So you go from 10,000 a month to 4,000 a month. And then you just cruise on that for two years. So as you start mixing that together, you’ve got like three to five clients, three to five clients, and you can make a half million dollars a year. If you want to make more, I don’t think you add more clients. I think you raise your rates and then you reach a natural limit to your rates. And then you do upside. So you find ways to make money outside of just time. You say, if I grow you past this current run rate, then I get X percentage of growth. That’s the way they do it.

00:29:15 Jack: You seem to speak of three to 5,000. Is that like a sweet spot per month?

00:29:22 Casey: For advisor? I think it is. Yeah. For advisor. I think it’s, it’s a good number. Cause like in some ways Jack, it’s forgettable, right? If you’re three, $4,000 a month to the client, they’re like, yeah, it’s not that much. It’s not a full time person and it’s Jack. He’s leading the whole team. It’s like optically it’s a good looking number. What that turns out to be for you, if you’re working four hours a month for the client and you’re building $3,000 a month, do your hourly rate, it’s like 750. So three to 5,000, I think is a good place for advisor. And for engaged, it’s five to 15,000.

00:26:56 Jack: Appreciate that.

00:29:56 Casey: Yeah. And I worked with a client once and I was at 10,000 a month. And I said to him, if I doubled my hours, could I double my pay? Like, are you open to that conversation? He’s like, it’s not worth it to me. He’s like, I’m getting your best insights in 10 hours. I don’t get more better insights for another 10 hours. It’s like, yeah, you’re right. You’re right. So like, I was like trying to like make some more money. I was like thinking about how to do it. And the answer was not to add a second, like to double my hours with the one client. It’s just to get another client. And then maybe with that other client, I charge 11,000. Make sense?

00:30:29 Jack: Yes, it does.

00:30:29 Casey: Cool. Thanks, Jack. Good questions. Yep, see ya. Michael, what’s up?

00:30:34 Michael: Yeah, so I apologize if I get this wrong, MaFuzz, when you were first starting out, do you think you should niche out right away or start broad to get a good feel of where demand is and figure out what you enjoy the most?

00:30:48 Casey: Good question. Would love you on video if you can hop on. Oh, there you are. What’s up, man?

00:30:53 Michael: How’s it going?

00:30:54 Casey: Cool, I got it, Michael. So yeah, what’s your experience? Like what industry?

00:30:59 Michael: Yeah, so…
First of all, Michael, I don’t hold it against you. Muffus is unfortunately the more commonly selected pronunciation. It’s actually Mufus. Mufus. I’m sure that’s such an Anglo way I did it. Apology. Michael, I literally changed my email address to my initials for this exact reason. If you think pronouncing is hard, try to spell it off memory. It’s not easy. So it’s completely fine. Casey, I’m a big fan, man. I came across your book, CMOX.

00:31:31 Casey: Freshers CMO Method.

00:31:31 Michael: Yeah, Method, yeah. You know what I really resonated with in your book is when you started talking about the Moonlight story as you have a daytime job, and you really gave me a light bulb moment as someone in Toronto, Canada, that I said, hey, you know what, I could go after some of the clients in the West, and their time zones will work well with my after-hour time zone. And I gotta tell you, that was a big eye-opener for me, and I greatly appreciate that.

00:31:56 Michael: So my background is I’m currently a director of strategy at a digital marketing agency. And when I joined the agency, I’ve been with them for 14 years. And when I joined the agency, we started as a two-person operation. We’ve grown into a 45 full-time operation. And yeah, it’s been one heck of a journey. And in my role today, Casey, like I would say, majority of my time is spent handling the inbound leads coming in. And I would say that it’s given me a lot of confidence in closing sales for the agency.

00:32:25 Michael: So I’ve kind of looked at shifting into the fractional CMO side, because a lot of what I do as a director strategy, I would say overlaps as you probably said. So at some point I’m like, why, if I can get the clients and if I could close them and if I can do what I’m doing, why can’t they be my clients? And in December, I had a very lonely Christmas season where I just built my own marketing plan and everything ended up in running, hit the ground running in January.

00:32:53 Michael: And my question about broad and maybe narrowing in is, is one that was, has been on top of my mind, because as an agency, I would say majority of our clients were B2B, but they were in every single type of industry that you can think of is B2B not broad enough. I mean–

00:33:09 Casey: Is it super broad? It’s like, here’s the problem. What are all the B2B businesses in Toronto? The list is nuts. It’s like, it’s, it’s an unmindable, unapproachable list. So it’s not that you can’t help them.

It’s that you can’t market to them effectively. So I want you just to think who can you market to? What’s the subsection of that where you’ve got to win at least? If you could choose anything in B2B, where do you want to be? Here’s where I want to be. High revenue, high transaction value, recurring revenue with product sales. I like consultative sales. I love consultative sales. I don’t like e-commerce personally. That’s not-

00:33:48 Michael: Yeah, you and me both.

00:33:49 Casey: Right, I want sales guys. I want sales guys that I’m sticking leads on and then they’re not calling them and we got that tension. That’s fun for me. So I want to live in that world. And I want to say, hey guys, YOLO that lead. Let’s try to sell that person a 12 month, a 24 month service plan, you know? Having some fun with it, right? So I would back into that niche that way. And then maybe I’d look at some stuff too. That’s like, what’s growing? Where do you have interest? You know, an easy one for anyone here on the call is like, just go into health and fitness because you’re around a bunch of people who are fit. That’s probably a good place to go.

00:34:20 Casey: Or go around rich people. That’s another cool place to go. Like get into family offices, get into a private equity. That’s a cool place to go too. So what do you want, man? You want to go family focused stuff? You want to go FinTech? Probably shouldn’t go into the chicken business right now with the avian flu. You know, like there’s places to go and not go. So based on that, like where do you feel called? Like what are your-

00:34:43 Michael: You know, I was looking back historically as I was collecting a bunch of case studies on success stories that I built. And a lot of them happen to be in a space where some level of family business was involved. It would typically be the new gen coming in, taking it over from their parents and leading the charge on the digital transformation that their parents never took a look at. And I’ve seen a lot of them. I used to think family businesses would be a small business, but they’re usually like the major HVAC businesses, the big manufacturing companies. And it’s really opened my eyes to what’s out there. So if I’m looking at B2B family business, does that still feel a little bit loose? Does it still feel like I could go into-

00:35:22 Casey: No, like a little, like I would say like, family home service businesses. That’s a tighter, better niche. Because like family owned, dude, there’s no real delimiter for that, that I can like search. I can say like, oh, it’s a family owned business, but let me ask, are you first gen or second gen immigrant to Canada?

00:35:46 Michael: I’m second gen.

00:35:47 Casey: Yeah. Okay. Interesting. And where’d your family come from?

00:35:52 Michael: I’m from Bangladesh, but we moved from Saudi Arabia.

00:35:54 Casey: Dude, where’s the Bangladeshi, Saudi Arabia, family business elective?

00:36:01 Michael: Yeah, that’s interesting. I shouldn’t have an excuse in Toronto for that, right? It’s as diverse as it gets. That’s a really good point.

00:36:06 Casey: Yeah, well, but it’s not Toronto, it’s the world. We’re talking anywhere in the world who’s got a family business. Now we’re talking about something that’s approachable that I can’t compete with you. Like you win side by side, me versus you, you went in, like you’re in the family already. Especially if you’ve got like a great story about like what your parents did to sacrifice to come to Canada. So I would play that and those people and get deep.

00:36:29 Casey: We’ve got a member inside the accelerator and she’s Jewish and she works with Jewish companies. And dude, like she wins deals. She has she has she has the propensity to win a deal because of who she is. So why not play to that strength?

00:36:42 Michael: That’s so interesting.

00:36:43 Casey: So like, could we just look real quick for a Bangladeshi family business collective? I’d asked Chat GPT, find me any groups of Bangladeshis that have family businesses, second generation. I would start trying to figure out where there’s pockets of those folks, you know, where do Bangladeshis congregate in the US and Canada in Toronto? Where else?

00:37:05 Michael: Yeah. Yeah. That’s excellent.

00:37:07 Casey: The biggest diaspora of Ethiopians is in Washington DC area. It’s like 98% of Ethiopians that live outside of Ethiopia live there. So it’s like, if you’re Ethiopian, go target that market. You know?

00:37:19 Michael: So. Yeah, that’s great, Casey. I have one more quick one that piggybacks off what you were speaking to Joshua about. So one of the skillsets I’ve picked up in the digital agency is actually doing good inbound advertising. And I’ve attempted it. And I gotta say, it was a bit of an eye opener because I found there’s a lot of people searching for fractional CMOs on the search engine. And fractional CMO agencies and fractional CMO firms.

00:37:44 Casey: A lot of fractional CMOs doing it, just to be honest. And fractional CMOs are looking for competitors.

00:37:49 Michael: Yeah, I was thinking that, or they’re trying to learn how to do it. So you gotta, you know, we kind of polish around the corners, eliminate the how-to, the career type of keywords. Now, have you seen any success, whether it’s yourself or those in the accelerator with doing the inbound initiatives, or do you come back to, hey, let’s not focus on that at all and just go in for the talk?

00:38:06 Casey: I think LinkedIn is a better approach to that.

00:38:08 Michael: Is it?

00:38:08 Casey: Yeah, yeah, because I think that the word is too nascent still today. And people are looking just had some wins that came in recently for some of our members in boardroom. So our like most successful members were just chatting the other day, we have a WhatsApp group where we just chat. And LinkedIn has produced good stuff. People posting on LinkedIn, no one commenting, right? Nothing and then dude, a deal comes in. The person’s like, I found you on LinkedIn. So LinkedIn is definitely a strong platform. If I’m only posting content in one platform, it’s LinkedIn for sure.

00:38:38 Michael: I love that Casey and you know, being someone that with a, with a version of a story that is moonlighting a little bit. And that kind of means throwing on a, a costume at night that doesn’t, you know, I put a little bit of red tape around what I post online and, um, and how I use my social accounts today being, I’m already, what is some advice around, my LinkedIn profile still about the agency work and who I am, how do I use that to the extent that I–

00:39:01 Casey: So I just want to counter this position of like, cause you’re in a position I think probably mentally of like, I’m at a disadvantage because I’m fully employed.

00:39:07 Michael: Or more so because it’s overlapping in how I can promote myself. That makes sense.

00:39:13 Casey: Then I would treat this as if you are the most attractive person because someone else wants you already. You’re not on the street begging for work. You’re fully employed. And you’re saying, I’ve got this great thing. I know this is useful. It’s brand new. It’s kind of never been done before in your type of business. I want to do it. Let’s go. Can I partner with you and make this thing happen? It’s a cool offer to people. You just might have to be a little bit more direct. Like a direct outreach.

00:39:38 Michael: You got it.

00:39:39 Casey: But don’t think of it as a negative. I think of it as a positive, you know? Because some people are just hiding behind LinkedIn posts begging for work and they never get it. Whereas like other people who can’t do that have to just be a little bit more direct. And if I had one thing that I’m gonna do, I’m just gonna be direct. Like what I told Joshua, I’m gonna go get the sale, whatever it takes, I’m gonna get the sale. And maybe I’ll post on LinkedIn too. But to me LinkedIn is more of a pipeline builder. If I want one sale, I’m gonna go get it. And like, how do I get it? Like, how do you get it, dude?

00:40:05 Casey: Like you’re out of food and your family needs to eat. How are you gonna get food? Like you’re gonna figure it out. So I like to take that kind of energy and go get it.

00:40:15 Michael: And I never heard it put that way, Casey. That’s a complete 180 on my outlook on what I do today versus what I’m trying to do. So I really appreciate that. Thank you for answering my questions. This was super.

00:40:25 Casey: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. Great questions. All right.

00:40:28 Michael: All right, we got Chelsea up next. I want to talk about the process, like from warmly to sale, how many proposals, how many calls.

00:40:38 Casey: Cool. Hi, Jessica. Where are you based?

00:40:38 Jessica: Hi. I’m in San Diego.

00:40:41 Casey: Okay, cool. Awesome.

00:40:43 Jessica: I’m curious. I had a bunch of warm leads coming out of I was in a business as a full-time employee for five years and the founder introduced me to a bunch of people in her network. I had a bunch of calls. They were warm leads. Most of their businesses were doing 1.2, 1.4, 1.6 in the online education like authors, course creators, you know, like lifestyle influencers, if you will. And it has been pushing a boulder up a mountain to get people to commit. It’s like they what I found is that they think they want to–

00:41:19 Casey: Let me tell you why. Okay, very simple. 1.4 million. What are their margins?

00:41:24 Jessica: Yeah, it’s like 15%. For a lot of them. It’s horrible.

00:41:28 Casey: That sucks. Okay, they want to be aiming 30 40%. So 15% margins is $300,000. Do you think that these people believe that their lifestyle ought to be a $300,000 lifestyle? Like is that kind of like, they think it’s higher.

00:41:42 Jessica: Yeah, they feel like their revenue is just vanity and people are celebrating them and congratulating like, oh, you had a million dollars a year. And they’re like, yeah, I’m not crushing it. You know, so they have like lack of confidence, truly.

00:41:55 Casey: Yep, that makes sense. So any rate that you charge, like what do you think they wanna be making? What do you think they feel like they’re worth to make?

00:42:04 Jessica: Yeah, I think that they want to be more like three to six.

00:42:08 Casey: Like take home, they want to make half a million dollars a year more.

00:42:10 Jessica: Yeah, absolutely.

00:42:12 Casey: So we mean three to three 600,000 or do you mean?

00:42:14 Jessica: Yeah, that’s where they want to be for now, like as they scale.

00:42:18 Casey: So they’re at the bottom of that with their revenues, and they’re like, moving money all around the living in maybe San Diego or wherever where it’s like very expensive and like their monthly net is $25,000 and they’re like getting by but at the end of every month, it sounds crazy. But at the end of every month, they don’t have much money left over. And they’re still kind of pinching pennies when it comes to January, because it just blew out on Christmas. That’s very realistic.

00:42:44 Casey: So I think with those people, you’re just selling them a half day consult. And then you sell them advisor services thereafter. And a half day consult is gonna I don’t know what you’re gonna price it at, but I would price it between five and 10,000. And give them a strategy.

00:42:56 Jessica: I’ve been putting together these custom proposals. And even those are like not hitting the mark. They all want to pay like 2,500 and I’m like, I’m just not interested in that at all. I would rather have two AK clients, but I haven’t been able to hook. I’ve been able to get one 5,500 audit where I’m just doing a comprehensive, like deep dive audit for her. You know, and now she wants, she’s like, can I hire you more full time? But I don’t know. I’ve gone out on my own doing this and I’ve just haven’t. I’m like not having fun with it yet because I feel like I haven’t found my sweet spot. It’s just been hard even though I have these warm leads.

00:43:31 Casey: So if they have 2500 bucks a month, here’s what I’d say. This is great. Here’s what I want to do. Let’s do a half day console. We’re going to book it for end of March or mid March or early March. Don’t you take the 2500 bucks that you have ear marked each month. That half day console it’s five grand. We’re going to do it on March 10. It’s my birthday. And then after that, I’m going to share with you all the stuff I found. And I might share with you that I think it would be useful for me to stay with you as your advisor in the marketing role.

00:43:59 Casey: And for that, I’ll, I, I’ll share the price at that point, but my aim is to keep that in the budget. Now you’re going to get your 5k and then you’re going to set yourself up for $2,500 a month client. It’s not bad. But this idea of like, you guys save the money, like earmarked that money and save it so that we can spend it. I’m going to sell you right now in the service, put it in your calendar. Sign the contract, we’re gonna do it. I’m gonna collect 50% next month and 50% the following month and then we’re off to the races. But then you have a paying client.

00:44:29 Jessica: Yeah, absolutely. I think you nailed it with the profit margin because I was, as I’ve had all these calls and my question was about process, because I was like, what am I doing wrong? I think maybe it’s my process of delivering them the proposal and then not having a sales call. I’m like, is it a process? Is it these business people, like this niche? Is it this revenue bracket?

00:44:50 Casey: It’s an embarrassment that they want to grow their business and they can’t afford to bring someone in. It’s not a you thing. Okay. If you ever just a funny thing to do, Jessica, go test out a fancy car, like the fanciest one that you can find. Okay, like, go book a date, go out there, you know, get all dressed up to look the part and then go like try to test drive a Ferrari or a super high end BMW or something. And I dare you to ask them about price breaks. What are they going to say to you on price breaks? They’re like–

00:45:21 Jessica: You’re in the wrong place.

00:45:22 Casey: Like, yeah, Toyota’s across the street. You know, it’s okay. You want to drive a Toyota, that’s fine. But like, that’s not here. So, but seriously, that is a fun thing to do to go and test drive a fancy car. Your prices don’t move because you know what you’re worth. You can just help people for them to like understand the risk of them not moving forward with you. And then just say like, like, I get it. It sounds like now is not the right time. I’m available if you guys want to talk later. And then you move on. Maybe you keep in touch checking every quarter, but if they can’t afford it, like you are not gonna squeeze money out of them.

00:45:55 Jessica: Okay, well that’s, I asked a question later in the thread, which was how do you say no to potential business? Because I just had a call with somebody yesterday.

00:46:04 Casey: What’s the amount?

00:46:06 Jessica: Well, their budget is 2,500, but they’re-

00:46:10 Casey: Like a one-time fee? For a one-time fee?

00:46:13 Jessica: No, they wanna do a 90-day engagement, but the business is so complex and they have no systems. It’s like, it’s just gonna require so much energy. I don’t even think it’s worth.

00:46:25 Casey: So get a video testimonial and have them introduce you to three other business owners that are doing at least the same revenue as them. I mean, take the business so that you can go practice and you get paid for it, but just say like, listen, I charge 5,000 a month for this. I’m willing to talk about dropping my fees down for you guys to 7,500 for three months, but here’s what I need from you.

00:46:46 Casey: I need a video testimonial of you guys and I’ll bring in the video team or whatever. And then on top of that, I want to do a case study. And on top of that, I want to get three introductions from people. If you guys are willing to do that, absolutely I’ll do it.

00:47:00 Jessica: Yeah, I love that. Amazing.

00:47:02 Casey: Yeah. Get paid. Like it’s tough. Like it’s a fine line between like get paid so that you can do the work as a compensated fractional CMO and also know that the people that you work with. If they can’t afford you, all of their friends are in the same income bracket. So their referrals aren’t all that useful.

00:47:20 Jessica: Yeah, absolutely. It’s a very interesting market. I don’t know if you work with a lot of these like digital.

00:47:26 Casey: I’ve heard masterminds have been around a lot of those people. Good, smart people, but they’re sold a lie. They’re sold a lie that a million dollar a year info product business is profitable. It’s just, it’s not. Usually what they do in their full-time life, like they’re a doctor, they make a half million a year and they build a million dollar a year info product business and they make 200,000 out of that. But it’s hard and it’s, you know, it’s like all the ego tied up in it.

00:47:50 Jessica: I know I kind of want to break into more of the health and wellness and work with a wellness brand, you know, so I kind of am ready to get away from this influencer lifestyle creator market, especially after this experience so far. I’m like, I think I’m ready for a bigger fish, you know?

00:48:07 Casey: Yeah, yeah. I’m still in touch with people that I had the same relationships with that were just kind of like barely making seven figures or low seven figures. And my sales conversations with them were always like how they could snag an idea and run with it and try to poorly implement it or something. Or they were just frustrated. They never got to implement. I mean, it sucks. It’s a tough place for them to be. It’s kind of like, they’re kind of stuck in the mud and they can’t do much about it.

00:48:34 Jessica: Totally. Yeah, they want to they want the person to execute as well. So I feel like when I’m having these conversations, I’m like, it sounds like you want a coordinator, actually. Not a CMO.

00:48:45 Casey: Right. And I would bring in a marketing technician. So part of your half day consult is you would write a job post for a marketing technician and we’ve got that in the toolkit, cmox.co/toolkit. You can just snag the job post and post that and hire someone at 20, 25 bucks an hour, 30 bucks an hour that does all the work for them. You can do that. Those people exist. I w they probably don’t exist in San Diego, but they probably exist 60 miles east. You know, like in the desert. There’s a lot of people that are looking for work like that.

00:49:15 Jessica: Totally. Oh, this is so helpful. Thank you.

00:49:17 Casey: Yeah, go get them. Sorry that that’s been kind of a sticky one for you.

00:49:20 Jessica: Yeah, I’ve just been confused. I’m like, all right, back to the drawing board. But this is good.

00:49:24 Casey: Yeah, for everyone here, punch up to a bigger client. If a client is spending just to go back to the first conversation we had here, which like if a client’s paying $2,000 a day, $5,000 a day, $10,000 a day on ads, like their risk of not having you oversee not ads, but funnels and pipeline and sales, calling the leads and like MQL rate and offers and rotating creatives. If someone isn’t overseeing that big picture, they’re losing lots of money. I blew $20,000 one day. I was working on an ad campaign and we had an issue and we lost $20,000 in wasted ad spend.

00:49:59 Casey: And the CEO is like, that sucks, keep going. Cause like if I, his mentality I think was, if I make you feel bad about this stuff, you’re going to drag ass for the next day or two and I’m going to lose another 20 or $40,000. So it’s like, forget it guys sucks. Keep going. It was like, it’s the best. So that’s where you want to be fast moving, hard driving companies that are scaling. Those are way more fun to be at.

00:50:22 Jessica: I love that. Thank you so much. Appreciate you.

00:50:25 Casey: You’re welcome. See ya. All right.

00:50:29 Michael: Yeah. Keita who is here is asking. In one of your videos, you mentioned not to target startups. I understand why, however, the company has 50 to 200 employees, five to 20 in revenue. VP of marketing may not need CMO. I’ll let you take it over. And ask.

00:50:52 Keita: Yeah. So, you know, at a higher bracket, sometimes they already have maybe not a CMO, but they have a VP of marketing.

00:51:00 Casey: To me, it’s the same thing, though. There’s no difference between VP marketing and CMO. Right. It’s the same title.

00:51:04 Keita: So what types of companies would you target in that bracket at the higher ticket value? My experience is fintech and SaaS companies. So technology.

00:51:16 Casey: But what’s your trick? Like what’s your thing in marketing for those companies? Go-to-market, launching new products.

00:51:23 Keita: I mean, I’ve done both. I’ve been in marketing for 20 years and corporates working for Fortune 500 companies. So now I’m trying to branch out on my own. So I’ve done product marketing, I’ve been head of marketing, I’ve done all the things, digital marketing. So my focus now is really what I find in most companies is that they have a challenge converting pipeline to clients. And so that is typically, the marketing team does a pretty good job of generating leads, because they do the digital advertising, but then they either kind of stall in the pipeline or their messaging isn’t targeting the exact right person in order to, you know, get them over the line, so to speak. So I know it’s a combination of a sales and marketing aspect and I don’t want to go the sales route. I want to kind of just…

00:52:17 Casey: There’s a CRO. And to me, CRO is a marketing role that oversees sales. It’s not a sales role that oversees marketing. I think when people say that, like, I just think it’s wrong. Like at the end, like CRO, it’s like, it’s a marketing discipline. And then salespeople could do sales stuff and then it’s a sales manager and all that. But I hate when salespeople try to tell marketers what to do.

00:52:40 Keita: Right. Right. Right. Exactly.

00:52:43 Casey: So you could step into that CRO seat or you could offer to work on an individual product project inside of the company. Are you guys bringing anything new to market?

00:52:53 Keita: Okay. So product launch focus, go to market.

00:52:56 Casey: Maybe that’s interesting. If you have all the experience that you have, like how can you talk about that? Like, Hey, I brought like these great products to market. And I’m looking for other companies around this size that are also looking to bring products to market. You guys working on anything? You guys want to chat?

00:53:10 Keita: Okay, got it.

00:53:11 Casey: It’s like, I’m a badass. I do this cool thing. Like, do you want to chat or not? And there’s no hard sale here because to the right one, they’re like, oh my God, our VP marketing, she has no capacity for this. You can do this? I mean, let’s chat. And then those conversations precipitate quickly.

00:53:28 Keita: Now, let me ask you one other little angle. So one other thing that I’ve kind of transitioned to recently, just more so is obviously the focus on AI. Everybody knows AI, but being able to implement that into organizations.

00:53:43 Casey: It’s not, that’s not an angle. The angle is I bring AI with me, right? It’s like, I’m like, you’re not a CTO or CIO, right? Just be a little careful. I cut you off though. Was there more to your question?

00:53:54 Keita: No, no, no, no, no, I’m not a CTO CIO. No. I mean, but using it, leveraging it for marketing, performance enhancement or optimization.

00:54:03 Casey: Right, so I mean, the lines I use is I’d say like, listen, you guys are seeing it, the marketing department is shrinking from the bottom up. We’re seeing less people in the marketing department have to do more and they’re being augmented by AI. I’ve got some really cool approaches on how to use AI. And I’m not like an AI maximalist, but I know that like our team with AI is gonna get a better outcome than without it. So just know that I bring that stuff to the table. That’s how I play it. And yeah, and then, as you know, like one small edition of AI can just do some serious stuff, right?

00:54:34 Keita: Exactly. Yes.

00:54:35 Casey: Yeah. Some businesses, the bigger the business, the more likely they already have an AI initiative. But the smaller the business, they’re like, the CEO is like, I don’t even know what to think about AI. And you’re like, Oh, well, like the first thing we should do is every time we’re having a call, Chat GPT should be open. And if we’re stuck on something, we just ask Chat GPT. It’s so much better and faster. So like just that kind of stuff. Or like I do that live on calls. I’ll say, hold on one second. Oh yeah, sorry, I was just asking AI that. It just like bring that up in the conversation that you’re the kind of person that uses it and they see you as a fast mover. It’s less that you’re using AI and more that you solve problems quickly.

00:55:12 Casey: That’s what I think people want at the end of the day. AI is the tool. It doesn’t matter if you have like an army of people that are listening to you, you know, and you just ask them questions, AI or whatever. Yeah, okay.

00:55:22 Keita: Thank you.

00:55:23 Casey: Yeah, you’re welcome. I’m kind of hitting the end of time, but I don’t know. This is fun. Anyone else want to chat? I want to chat with you guys.

00:55:28 Michael: Whoops. I have one more if you want to take it. Mary? If you’re here and can come online.

00:55:35 Casey: What’s up, Mary?

00:55:37 Mary: Hi. Hey.

00:55:39 Michael: I’ll let you ask it now that you’re here.

00:55:42 Casey: Where are we driving to, Mary?

00:55:43 Mary: Hi, Casey. I’m driving home. Don’t worry. It’s free.

00:55:48 Casey: Where are you based?

00:55:48 Mary: I’m in Venice, California. Yeah. I found you yesterday. And then I got this email like, Oh, might as well. Yeah. So I have a question for you about niche because–

00:56:05 Casey: About what?

00:56:06 Mary: About niching down? My colleagues are like, you gotta niche down, you niche be down. But my experience with marketing has been working with multi location businesses that are in retail, hospitality and wellness. My question to you is–

00:56:27 Casey: Retail hospitality and wellness. Well, okay, got it.

00:56:30 Mary: Yeah, yeah. So my last largest role was heading up marketing and creative for a national restaurant brand. So I have a lot of experience in the physical, you know, like store retail hospitality business. So my question to you is, is it too broad if I target all three of those or should I focus on one?

00:56:57 Casey: So, yeah, it’s way too broad. The total number of clients that you need to make a great living as a fractional CMO is three to five. And you could get three to five from retail. You can get three to five from retail within driving distance of your home. Like you live in a mecca of opportunity there. And then you’re going to add hospitality and then wellness. So you’re going to run in three directions at the same time, trying to distinctly say three different messages to attract or connect to three different types of people. It’s way too much work. There’s no reason to do it.

00:57:32 Mary: Yeah. My only hesitation with retail is that brick and mortar retail is very tough right now. It has been for a long time.

00:57:41 Casey: Yeah, I wouldn’t do it.

00:57:42 Mary: And then hospitality, um, there’s just been a lot of restaurant closures also that’s happening at least here in LA. With wellness, I think it’s like a business that’s actually increasing and that’s like my only client right now is a wellness business. So I’m in that place where I feel like, Oh my God, I definitely need to onboard more clients that are consistent. So I’m leaning more towards wellness, even though that is the niche that I have the least amount of experience in versus retail and hospitality.

00:58:21 Casey: I kind of want to dig into what do you mean less experience? Like less experience of like, you don’t know the movers and shakers in wellness because you know how to drive leads because driving a lead to go sit down and have dinner somewhere is no different than driving a lead to show up and get Botox.

00:58:35 Mary: True, that’s true. What I meant was like years of working in that industry.

00:58:43 Casey: Doesn’t matter. It’s about the story that you tell. Can you tell a story that makes sense? Like, was there an experience for you where wellness made sense?

00:58:54 Mary: Yes. Yes.

00:58:56 Casey: Great. So like, just tell that story. We’ve got a woman in the accelerator. She is awesome. She worked for a tobacco company. And she had a moment where she realized she’s done. She’s done working in tobacco and she got healthy herself. And now she’s working with better for you brands.

00:59:14 Mary: Okay, that makes sense. Because the restaurant group that I worked for was actually all about healthier eating and sustainability and farm to table. So I think that goes hand in hand with wellness.

00:59:28 Casey: Sure. And you also don’t have to like tell yourself these things. Like if you see like in some way you’re trying to convince yourself, let me just tell you. It doesn’t matter. It just doesn’t matter. Here’s what matters. You have a solution to a problem someone has, you’re in front of them. They’re gonna hear your solution. Like it becomes interesting then. You don’t have to have this tenure of all this stuff. It certainly doesn’t hurt to have it. Right, but like. I mean, I can give you more examples.

00:59:55 Casey: Like just, there’s like these permission gates that you might think that you have to walk through. And let me just tell you, you don’t have to have them. At the beginning of the call, someone asked, do you have to have a college degree? Like a marketing degree. I got a 2.54 Michigan State in environmental policy. I got a 1.0 my first semester. You know, like I don’t have the degree. Am I really good at what I do? Yeah. Why? Just more time in the game. I play, I care. I’m just like, I didn’t get it because someone taught it to me. I did it because I’ve just won the clients and served them.

01:00:25 Casey: So if you’ve won clients and served them, take those lessons, apply it to the next client in front of you and just be dogged on supporting them. Doesn’t matter if you have deep experience in wellness. What does that even mean? Like, you know who the manufacturers are of Theragun? Like it doesn’t matter.

01:00:39 Mary: No, I do not.

01:00:41 Casey: Yeah, who cares? Like if I put in your lap, a like, I don’t even know what you’re considering wellness. Like what’s a dream wellness client for you?

01:00:49 Mary: Like a Pause studio or…

01:00:53 Casey: So let’s go fitness franchise. There’s a cool fitness franchise boutique concept in your area that you love. Was it Pause?

01:01:01 Mary: Yeah, they have locations all over the country. So now massage is a dream client.

01:01:07 Casey: Yeah, cool. Okay, great. Pause studio. Let me look at it. And this is like, what do they do services? Okay. Ivy drips float infrared. Great. Okay. Cool. You could attack this, like this type of business. What I love about it is you said multi-location. So you do have some multi-location experience. I love multi-location. That’s my favorite place to be. Because it’s one marketing strategy stamped out for a bunch of locations. And as long as 90% of the marketing strategy works for every location, it’s done. So you could go after franchises or multi-location wellness studios, and just say, I have a lot of experience in this.

01:01:46 Casey: They’re like, do you have a lot of experience in IV drips? You’re like, no, I have a lot of experience of getting people to show up to places in person and spend money.

01:01:53 Mary: I love it. Okay, great. This helps so much.

01:01:57 Casey: Yeah. Okay, cool. So no permissions needed. If you need it, here it is. You are allowed to go sell your services and just know that like these people are in pain. And if you provide a solution for them, it’s worth it.

01:02:10 Mary: Yes. Right. Okay. Thank you, Casey.

01:02:13 Casey: You’re welcome. Thanks for being here. See you.

01:02:15 Michael: Casey, are we doing a post called check in with Joshua?

01:02:22 Casey: I need a status update. Thank you, Michael. Very important. None of this stuff is like Netflix. I hope you guys know. We show up here we work on the calls we do outreach. We never delay that stuff. We don’t take it as homework. I don’t do homework. I also don’t work on Fridays. This is my last day of the week. Joshua, what’s up?

01:02:40 Joshua: Yeah, I found a contact that is her husband is like the owner of a law firm out in Cali. So I’m going to reach out and have a conversation and see like what they’re doing for the marketing.

01:02:52 Casey: Do not sell him anything. Say, hey man, listen, I am not trying to sell you anything. I’m trying to understand the market better. Here’s what I want to do. I want to help you. I want to help law firms build an in-house marketing department because these agencies are just robbing you guys blind. How can I talk about that? What do you think I should look at? Like, are there any like lawyer get togethers? Is there a network of any of these folks? You know, I’m looking to like pick up a firm to get started with, and I’m happy to cut my rate dramatically to get my first one in.

01:03:23 Casey: But I’m really believing in this, this idea. What do you think? You know, what would you object to if I tried to pitch you on this? You know, what do you think an objection should be that another law firm would have? Just ask them those questions, dude. And never, never sell them anything. Not even at the end. Don’t even try to pretend to sell. Right? Maybe at the end you say, is there anyone that you think would be helpful for me to be introduced to? Maybe he’s open to it or not. But he might be the kind of guy who’s like, Yeah, I got this buddy from law school who’s just like, has long as marketing sucks. Let me chat with him. I’ll see if I can help him. You got it? You’re gonna do it?

01:04:00 Joshua: Man, this is Yeah, I’m gonna even try to find other like law firm get togethers like what you’re talking about and just get in the room and just have conversations, you know. Man, thank you for all this. This is just tons of value.

01:04:12 Casey: Yeah, happy to help. I want you to get that first client. So maybe the, like getting in the room, like that’s cool. Here’s the problem with it, dude. You gotta get dressed up. It’s like during business hours, it’s a whole pain in the ass. You gotta pay for valet parking, you know? I’m trying to get meetings set up digitally. That’s ultimately what I want. I wanna be in my underwear, making like six figure deals, okay? So try to solve for that and don’t like try to get too face to face.

I don’t know if you’ll benefit from face to face.

01:04:39 Joshua: Hmm. I see.

01:04:41 Casey: Cool. All right, man. Good job.

01:04:43 Joshua: Thank you, Casey. Yeah. All right.

01:04:46 Michael: And you know, Casey, I just want to highlight again, he came into this with, what do I do? Who do I talk to? How do I start? And look how quick he’s already got someone to talk to. And this is a big part of, you know, what you preach. It’s about taking the action.

01:05:05 Casey: Yeah. That’s it at the end of the day. I just see one thing here from, is it Ruchi? Do you want to come off mute and chat? I’m happy to answer your question.

01:05:14 Ruchi: Yeah, hi.

01:05:15 Casey: What’s up? Can you say your name for me?

01:05:17 Ruchi:You’re good.

01:05:18 Casey: Oh, okay, cool. So would someone be from the Westby one, hire a fractional CMO from Asian Pacific? Where are you based?

01:05:26 Ruchi: So working off of Toronto. But I’m based largely out of India. I mean, technically I’m supposed to be there, but I worked for my organization, previous organization in Toronto, and now based here for a longer period of time.

01:05:41 Casey: Why do you think why do you think that someone wouldn’t hire you?

01:05:44 Ruchi: Yeah, I mean, I think I’m loving the momentum that you’re creating. I mean, I do have confidence.

01:05:49 Casey: No, no, no, I have a real question for you. What Why wouldn’t someone from the West hire you? What comes up to you? You have an answer. Just say it.

01:05:56 Ruchi: I think they will hire me. I come with the expertise. I come from the place where I understand business, I understand customers. I’ve been on the front side of it. I worked in-

01:06:07 Casey: Why did you ask the question? There’s something behind it. What is it?

01:06:09 Ruchi: I’m just not able to get to that point of doing that first connect and sales. I don’t know. It’s-

01:06:15 Casey: Okay. How many people have you talked to about Fractional CMO stuff?

01:06:17 Ruchi: Just two.

01:06:18 Casey: Okay. All right. In high school, I asked two girls out. They both said no, but I’m married. You know, it worked. I kept going. Two is nothing. Two is like warming up. Two is you not even being able to say it correctly. Like you tripping over your own words. Like you’re not very, very, not that you have to be persuasive. You’re not very clear in your first two calls. You’re trying it on, right? You’re trying it on, on stage. You got to get more reps. So do I think that someone from the West would hire an Indian that lives in Toronto? Yeah. Do I think that it doesn’t matter where you live? Yeah, I don’t care. Like no one cares. No one cares.

01:07:00 Casey: The only thing that they would care about is if you lived in their backyard or not. If it’s you versus another CMO side by side, and they live a 30 minute drive away, and you live somewhere else, maybe they go with the person a 30 minute drive away. Everything else beside that, don’t believe that for a second, it’s a virus. Like don’t let it in your head. So if you are the person who’s right for the job, then you’re the person who’s right for the job. Fight like hell to get it. Yeah. If someone’s like, I’m not gonna hire you because of where you live.

01:07:30 Casey: What world do you live in? You know, where I live matters. I’ll get the job done and my prices are my prices, you know? Is it worth having me there to fix it or not? So yeah, I’d be mad at someone if they ever said that. I’ve never heard anyone say that before. I would say though, we’ve got a member, she’s in Portugal. She has an address in Oregon. She tells people her business is based in Oregon. It is. Is it any of their business that she’s in Portugal? No.

01:07:59 Casey: She never has to tell them that. It’s like one of those secrets I just wouldn’t share. Doesn’t help you. Yeah, so if your business is based in Toronto, whatever, you’re in Toronto. Just keep your virtual background up and whatever. I think it’s fine. But in the second that you changing your background and you’re at coffee shops or at someone else’s house or whatever, that like starts to erode confidence. But beyond that, it doesn’t matter. I just want someone who’s doing the work. I mean, look at Michael. I’ve never met Michael before face to face. I’ve been working with you for how long, Michael? What do you think now?

01:08:29 Michael: Since April.

01:08:30 Casey: April? Like eight months. I’ve never met him face to face. I don’t even know what room he’s in in his house. I’ve never seen that background flicker. I don’t care. Michael could be in Portugal right now or in India. But I think he’s in, yeah, Nevada. It doesn’t matter. Yeah, that’s like, let go of all that disbelief. The real problem here is you haven’t talked to enough prospects. You haven’t made enough offers.

01:08:53 Ruchi: Yeah, and I think one more problem that I kind of discovered right now in this call was that I was investing too much time in creating my own portfolio and sort of a page and all of that.

01:09:05 Casey: We do that stuff sometimes to convince ourselves. And there’s value in that, you know, I got to say my confidence before a haircut and after a haircut. I don’t know about you, but I feel a little bit better about myself after a haircut. You know, like if I’m going to go have a big sales call. I might get a haircut the day before, you know, that helps me.

01:09:23 Casey: So maybe you wanna polish up that case study. No one’s ever gonna look at it, generally. In the lifetime, maybe 20 people will read your case study. It’s not the case study. It’s your belief that the case study is true and therefore your confidence of how you approach the world. That’s what people care about. So you don’t need the case study, although it doesn’t hurt, but it certainly isn’t the reason. For so many people, I’ll just say in the accelerator, when they post on LinkedIn, I’m a fractional CMO for this industry, that moment something changes for them. It’s an identity shift. And then if they build a case study, it’s just more of an identity shift, right?

01:09:59 Casey: After they have 10 outbound calls or 50 outbound calls, there’s like an identity shift of them internalizing it more. And that just grows their confidence and everyone picks up on that. There’s an energy to that. So-

01:10:10 Ruchi: Thank you so much.

01:10:11 Casey: You’re equal to everyone else here. Regardless of where you’re from or where you live, it doesn’t matter. It’s like, can you solve the problem and do it exceedingly well? If you can, then you’re the right hire. Cool?

01:10:22 Ruchi: Thank you. Thank you so much. Loving your calls. Thank you.

01:10:25 Casey: Okay, cool. It’s still funny how much, how much of the stuff with growing your own business is just like head trash. And that’s one of the things that we do in the accelerators. We work through that. We’ve got Raph, Rafael on the team who’s been with me, he was my assistant. And now he’s like, I don’t even know what his title is. He’s just like the sage, Michael, right? People get on calls, we have like, unmetered calls with Raph and he just like helps people overcome these internal blocks.

01:10:50 Casey: When it’s like you, your partner, like your, your spouse doesn’t believe in you or doesn’t think that you’re going down the right direction or whatever, but like, then you’re surrounded by all these other people that do. Or like your friends or your family don’t really believe in what you’re doing or think it’s the safest move for you or whatever. But then you’re surrounded by other fractional CMOs who are on the mission, who are investing in themselves, winning clients, you’re celebrating, you’re hearing like what they did right and wrong. How someone sent a proposal but didn’t book a follow-up call and then you pledged to never do that yourself.

01:11:18 Casey: It’s like those little things really matter and they accelerate your way to win clients. So that’s what we got. I’m gonna wrap here. If you guys wanna book a call with my team, just go to cmox.co/call. I’ll write it down in here. HTTPS. There you go. Faster than you? Oh, you wrote it wrong. Thank you, Michael.

01:11:36 Michael: Oh, you got me. I wrote it wrong though. Okay, I got you.

01:11:41 Casey: Yeah, thank you. You guys can book a call with the team. You talked to Justin on my team first. He’s like, it’s a 15 minute call. No pressure. He’ll be on video. He’ll just ask you a couple of questions about you and see if we can help. But if we can, we’ll be getting a call with John or Melissa. John’s been with me for years. Melissa’s my wife’s sister. And we’ll see if we can help you. And if we can, we’ll tell you more about the accelerator. So if you’re thinking about getting help and support to being a fractional CMO, just book a call in and just have the conversation. I swear to you, there’s like no pressure around it. And we just want to see if we can help.

01:12:13 Michael: Yeah, Brandon, looking forward to seeing you on your kickoff call tomorrow.

01:12:16 Casey: Oh, dude, it’s sweet. I’ve been in meetings brand tonight. Oh, that’s great, man. There you are. Sweet. Congrats. I’m excited to have you in. Well, awesome. Yeah, just read that note from job. Cool. Awesome, man. Excited to have you here. Thank you all for being here. Don’t forget, I got the podcast Fractional CMO show doing about an episode a week kind of figuring out some stuff as you can see with the video and everything. So thanks for sticking with me through it. And again, at the end of the day, the only place I want to be in marketing is as a fractional CMO.

01:12:45 Casey: Right now, that’s the best place to be. Everyone else is losing work or they’re getting squeezed on rates, but man, the fractional CMOs somehow keep growing. The market needs us more than ever before. Marketing complexity is higher than ever before. To me, this is my commitment. This is the place to be. I’ll be here for a long time because I got to support my family. I’m a fractional CMO. I have clients. I serve them too. So I think this is the right place to be. And if you want my help and my team’s help and getting there faster, winning clients, serving clients, book a call. I’ll see you guys later. Thank you for being here. See ya.

01:13:16 Casey: 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. 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.