Transcript:

00:00:00 Casey: In this episode, I’m gonna walk you through the three distinct stages that you will go through as a fractional CMO from just getting started to being very successful. And I’m gonna show you some of the major roadblocks along the way so you can get a sense for where you are and what you need to do to get to the next level. This is what I teach inside of the CMOx Accelerator. So, I encourage you to follow along. And if you can, watch this video on YouTube because I’m gonna be drawing on my iPad and you’ll get to see some visuals that I think will be helpful. Yet, if you can’t watch it on YouTube, I’m going to do my best to describe the stuff so that if you’re walking and listening to the podcast, you can still understand it. Alright, let’s get going. 

00:00:39 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.

00:01:36 Casey: Hey, it’s Casey. Let’s dive right in. So, let’s first talk about kind of where you start as a fractional CMO. I will be sharing my iPad screen. So again, if you can watch this on YouTube, that would be awesome.  Here’s what it looks like. We have a chart that I’m drawing and that chart has an X and a Y axis and the X axis, the one that goes up and down, we’re gonna call that one money. And we’re gonna have another axis, the one that goes left and right, and we’re gonna call that one time. Time and money. So, there’s three distinct stages you’re going to go through as a fractional CMO.

00:02:13 Casey: Let’s talk about them. So, the first stage starts off where it takes time and you make no money. What is a stage where it takes time, and you make no money? I call that stage getting sales ready. That is a very important stage. It’s a critical stage, obviously. You have to be able to get sales ready so that you can take money. So, what does sales ready mean? Well, it means a couple of things. The first thing it means to be sales ready is you can take payment. Pretty simple. But I learned a long time ago that the only way to really make money is to have an offer and then have a way to take payment, right? Take payment, huge. So, to get sales ready, you have to be able to take payment.

00:03:00 Casey: The second thing you have to do is actually know what you’re selling and have a sense of confidence in it. Getting sales ready is about knowing what a fractional CMO does and doesn’t do. I’ll tell you, I have seen too many fractional CMOs come into the accelerator who have sold a fractional CMO service package to a client only to come in and say, “Oof, I wish I was here six months ago because I sold the wrong thing.”

00:03:25 Casey: “I sold this fractional CMO thing that has a bunch of implementation and now I’m stuck trying to implement stuff for my client and I don’t want to be doing the implementation.” That happens so, so often. So, getting sales ready is not just about like getting a tool in place to be able to put together a proposal. It’s not about just like figuring out how to take payment. ‘Cause those things are relatively easy, right? But it’s like, what are you selling and what are the benefits to the client? What are the pains that they’re potentially in?  What is your experience? Why you and why not someone else?

00:04:02 Casey: One of the cool things about being a fractional CMO today, and this is absolutely gonna change in a few years, but today what’s super special is that there aren’t many fractional CMOs and companies oftentimes haven’t talked to any other fractional CMO ever. So, most of the time you’re not competing against someone else. You’re competing against maybe an agency,  or maybe you’re competing against doing nothing else.  So, getting sales ready is about being able to articulate the value that you provide as a fractional CMO. And this is, this takes work, this takes effort, this takes time.

00:04:36 Casey: Getting sales ready also includes some other things, like putting together something on the internet that says that you are a fractional CMO. I don’t care what that is. I don’t care if you build a website or you update your LinkedIn or whatever.  All those things are good. But really, you just have to have something out there that says that you’re fractional CMO. I’m going to tell you that if you spend a bunch of money on a beautiful website and go get a whole new photo shoot, you’re going to make no more money than somebody who put up a website faster than you and started prospecting and having conversations with potential customers.

00:05:07 Casey: Okay, so, the difference between the person who spends a lot of money on a website and the person who doesn’t spend a lot of money, the difference is oftentimes the person who doesn’t spend a lot of money and just gets it done quickly, they just… they get to sell faster, like they get to market faster. Speed to market matters. Absolutely speed to market matters.

00:05:27 Casey: Alright, so getting sales ready. What are the other components of sales ready? It’s about knowing who you are, your past experience and being able to articulate that well. If I was talking to somebody, to a perspective company, I wanna have stories of things that I’ve done before that I can articulate quickly and clearly that make them say, “Oh my God, like this guy, he’s done it before.” He’s done it maybe in a similar industry or maybe a totally different industry, but he’s done something similar to what we’re looking to do. He’s the real one. Like he’s, he’s legitimate. That’s the kind of person I wanna hire.

00:06:05 Casey: Part of getting sales ready too is having a proposal that includes important things. So, here’s just some important things. What are your hours that you’re working? What are your boundaries? How can people communicate with you? Do you get time off? If the client asks you to go to an event… Is there an expectation that you’re covering all the costs or do they cover it? Is there a per diem? Those are the things that need to be thought through in your proposal, plus a bunch of other stuff.

00:06:32 Casey: It’s really important that you’re like solid and sales ready. Because when you’re not sales ready and you go have a sales conversation with a potential check writer, a potential customer, you’re not gonna be standing on solid ground. It’s going to cause you to be fearful, right? You’re gonna have some frustration, some worry. And what I want you to do is not live in that space. I want you to know like everything’s good. For example, think of the confidence you have when you have a clean house, right? Everything’s clean and you’re out in the neighborhood on a walk and someone is like, “Hey, let’s get together.”  And you’re like, “Yeah, come on over.” Right?

00:07:08 Casey: My house is clean. I feel good. I have a base level of confidence. It’s very different than if your house is messy and someone’s like, “Hey, let’s get together and hang out.”  And you’re like, “I can’t, I don’t know what I’m doing. My house is a mess.” Right? I don’t have proposal software. I don’t know what I’m selling. How much money will you pay me? I don’t even know. So, you wanna have the confidence of being sales ready. And it is absolutely a binary thing.

00:07:33 Casey: In the CMO accelerator, I think people can get sales ready in like two days if they put their head down and grind three days. Yeah, some people it might take a week or two. Some other people, if they’re just taking their time, which I really don’t want them to, they could take them a month. But really, if you’re putting your nose down and you’re working because you’re launching this fractional CMO thing because it’s important to you, three business days, or three days of work and you’re done. Like you’re good, you’re ready to go, you’re ready to offer this, you’re ready to launch your new business, okay? That’s what you can do to get sales ready.

00:08:06 Casey: So, then what comes after sales ready? Because again, you’ve made no money to get sales ready. Well, stage two after sales ready is when you start making some money. And that money you’re gonna make in this next phase, and I’m gonna call this next phase the road to 10K. Road to 10K. And the road to 10K is such a valuable, crucible path, journey, adventure. It’s everything all wrapped up in one. It’s hard because it’s new.  You’re selling something you’ve never sold before.

00:08:47 Casey: I was just on a call today with one of my boardroom members and he just landed a new client and they’re doing big money, and I would say it’s his first, maybe it’s his second client that he sold in the CMOx method. He had his own method before where he was charging much lower prices and just doing a ton of implementation. So, for him to scale back that implementation, he recently lost someone on his team, like they moved on to another company or something.

00:09:17 Casey: Instead of him hiring that person, you know, someone else in that role again, so that he could staff more implementation, he’s backing off the implementation. He’s charging higher rates. And he sold a new package where he’s the marketing strategist and leader and not the strategist leader doer, right? He’s not the marketing department of just his company. He’s not an agency doing the work. He’s just doing the marketing strategy and leadership. And it’s a much better place for him. So, he’s charging at least twice as much. 

00:09:49 Casey: And he’ll take, I mean, almost all of it home because the management costs of being a fractional CMO is so low. Like you might have an assistant. We’ll talk about assistants when you get into the next level. But at this first level of that road to 10K, how do you get to $10,000 a month in business? You want to be taking home all that money. If you get a $10,000 a month check from a client, boom, like you ought to be taking home $9,800 of it or something like that. Maybe you pay a processing fee every month.

00:10:19 Casey: So the basic idea on the road to 10K is like, you have to go sell something that you’ve never sold before. In a way that maybe you’ve never sold before. Maybe you’ve never sold anything to anyone before, because you’re an experienced CMO who’s always had a nine to five job. We have a lot of CMOs like that. Great people, very talented, but they have to come over, overcome this  hurdle of sales. How do they sell?

00:10:46 Casey: So you have to make that first sale. You have to figure out how to service the client. You got to keep them. You can’t just  sell them, take the money like a pirate and then have them refund 30 days later because he didn’t do any work. Obviously, you have to deliver good work so that they keep you on board. The goal for all your clients, generally speaking, is for you to work with them for years.

00:11:07 Casey: I recently signed a client just a couple of months ago, and we started with a month and then after that we locked into a two year commitment. Two years, it’s so good.  I’m building the team out, I’m having a ton of fun. I get two years, right? To hit a big, big outcome and I am on track for it. That’s where I want you to be. I don’t want you to be stressed and worried every week or every month about renewals. Will the client pay me? Uh-oh, I have a 30 day cancellation notice. Are they gonna tell me that  they’re canceling now and that I’m gonna go find more clients? No, no, no.

00:11:40 Casey: As a fractional CMO, you wanna be selling things that last a long time. Six month renewal terms, twelve month renewal terms, lock in contractually for two years, that kind of thing, okay? So the road to 10K also has some other things in it that are difficult. And let me tell you a story about what I’m seeing happen sometimes. People come and they’ll talk to my team to see if they want to join the CMOS accelerator. And they’ll like poke for like, what’s the one thing you’re doing to get leads or business?

00:12:11 Casey: And I want to just tell you that the answer is that you’re not one trick away from a wildly successful fractional CMO practice. It’s not the game we’re playing here. We’re not an affiliate marketer who’s just gonna pump a bunch of cash into something, make a bunch of money in the short term, and then leave before that trick runs dry. A lot of people doing that stuff. You saw a bunch of people saying like, how to make millions on chat GPT? Before that it was you know, whatever.

00:12:44 Casey: All these different marketing tools and kind of fly by night schemes that might last for a short while. How to rank number one on Google Maps? One of these copywriters who are like, how to get your emails opened? Sorry, like how to hack Google’s spam filter or get out of the promotions tab? It’s like these tricks,  right? As a fractional CMO, you’re building a business and you’re not like executing a trick. I want you to have a durable, robust, long lasting business. It’s very different than hoping and praying that you get leads, things like that.

00:13:19 Casey: So as you build the business, there are two major things to consider. The external thing to get business, but also the internal reason why you’re not getting business. And so often entrepreneurs or marketers who are being entrepreneurs for the first time kind of forget this part that there’s an internal block that they have on why they’re not successful.  And it’s crazy to say it out loud to someone like, “Hey, it seems like you’re blocked on this. What is it?”

00:13:49 Casey: So many people that I talked to are just really kind, well-meaning people. They would make for incredible neighbors. I’d ask them for something, they’d bend over backwards to help me. They’d be great neighbors. But when it comes to focusing on their business and having a sense of selfishness for a short amount of time to build something real, they struggle. They have a lot of excuses. People tend to say things like, “Oh, my kids, I can’t do it because I have young kids. I can’t do it because we’re moving. I can’t do it because, because, because.”

00:14:22 Casey: It’s tough, right? However, the most successful fractional CMOs push through that. Otherwise, they’re going to win business, and then they’re just going to kind of lock up and they’re not going to be able to serve those clients. There’s an internal component of being successful, and there’s an external component of being successful. Absolutely, people can do the external thing without being aligned internally. They can just execute an outreach campaign doing a specific type of outreach like cold messaging people or something like that. And they can have a level of success, but it will not last because they haven’t internalized this growth. They’re not ready for it inside of themselves.

00:15:04 Casey: And I don’t know if that sounds woo or not, but like it is just the truth that I’ve experienced. Some people are ready for it and they really are, maybe one small shift away, and other people can be executing the same exact campaigns and they’re stuck because they’re not really putting their heart into it. They’re not really trying. They’re claiming they’re trying, but they’re really just looking for an excuse for another reason to not be successful. It’s a weird dynamic. The difference is, ultimately, I think, in being in community of other people doing it.

00:15:35 Casey: So on the road to 10K, you have to have your blinders on. You cannot let noise in. So what is noise? Noise is well-meaning friends and family members and maybe even your spouse. These people who love you and want what’s best for you, but they don’t really get it, right? They’ve never seen this fractional CMO thing, or maybe they saw one of my ads and they’re like, maybe this guy’s a scammer or something, right? They just don’t maybe believe this stuff yet. They’re not at a level of  understanding of what’s actually happening in the market. So they’re gonna pull you back.

00:16:09 Casey: I’ve seen fractional CMOs go and network with other fractional, fractional CTOs, fractional CIOs, fractional CFOs, COOs, whatever. But they often network with those who don’t have any business. And then they get into this echo chamber of just complaining to one another of this doesn’t work, this doesn’t work. And if you spend enough time in those circles, what you’ll realize is nothing works and there’s no way to grow the business. And anyone who was successful, it was luck or something else. And I think that’s kind of a natural byproduct of being around people like that.

00:16:44 Casey: So I want you to have your blinders on. To the point where like, don’t tell people what you’re doing. You’re gonna need a prospect. We’ll talk about that in a minute. But like, I’m not telling the people in my life really, like this new venture that I’m doing or this new idea that I have that I’m executing on, this business that I’m building.  I tend to keep some of that stuff kind of quiet because I just don’t want the opinions of others because their opinions are not qualified. I’ve said this on a previous episode. I love my family. I love my wife. For so many things, I turn to them for their input. But when it comes to being a business owner and specifically a fractional CMO and winning business, they’re not the people I should be turning to.

00:17:23 Casey: I should be in a community of people who are actually successful. Critical, that is critical. The next thing is success leaves clues. The people that are the most successful as fractional CMOs, like there’s just clues. I think about the accelerator. And you think about the people, like we’ve got a bunch of calls, we’ve a bunch of trainings and events that we host and stuff. And there’s a lot of familiar faces.

00:17:48 Casey: And it just so happens that a lot of those folks tend to do pretty well. That stick around that are like staying in conversation that are working hard, that are like not getting the short win and then disappearing. They’re like staying in conversation because I want them to build the next win and then the next win. And I want to challenge them to make the next biggest paycheck. And I want them to sell a bigger client, and I want them to struggle with difficult clients because it makes them learn so they’re better at getting new clients. So that the clients that they get, respect them and give them big budgets so they can have a lot of fun. 

00:18:22 Casey: So the road to 10K  is a road of effort. And for some folks, they have a great network and they can reach out to that network. I’ll tell you, like one of the loveliest things to see is someone who’s got a great network who joins the accelerator. And I say, “Hey, book a couple of calls with some folks.” And then they do it and boom, next thing you know, they just closed 10 or 20 or $30,000 in business, you know, monthly recurring business. It absolutely happens.

00:18:47 Casey: But then there’s other folks who either can’t advertise that they’re doing this fractional CMO thing because they’re in a business right now. They’re a full-time employee and they’re planning their escape or, you know, they have an agency partner like, you know, they own an agency, they have a partner and they don’t want their partner to know or, you know, whatever other reason they just don’t want the world to know that they’re a fractional CMO yet they want to still be valuable and go in business.

00:19:15 Casey: How do they do that? Well, they have to do it, you know, a little bit more secretively, but it is absolutely possible to have those conversations. And there’s a tipping point that I see happen with these fractional CMOs. There is the time before they understand how the world works and the time after. It reminds me of the image of, from the moon of the earth, know, what do you call it? Little Blue Dot, Great Blue Dot, something like that. That image, just like how iconic it is, how you see it, you see the world and you see it without borders and you see kind of the totality of life on earth.

00:19:55 Casey: When someone gets to 10K, when they close that first big client and they get that distance and they can see how the world really works, here are the things that I hear them say, “I can think of one woman who closed the deal for a 10,000 a month with a really nice upside.” That means that she’s getting a percentage of revenue  growth. That’s a great deal. And she said, “I can’t believe I’m charging so little. If I sold a company exactly like this one, I would charge at least 50% more.” That’s what she says now that she’s on the other side. Before she was in a place of need and now she’s in a place of like having, right? She kind of has the gig, she gets it, she sees it and she sees what the market would bear, what the impact is that she’s willing to make, able to make, right? It’s huge.

00:20:48 Casey: So that’s one person. I can think of someone else who struggled for a bit to get clients and recently had an enormous windfall of a couple big clients coming in for them. And the conversations that we used to have where they would say, “Oh, I’m going to go try this little thing. What if I tried this little side project” And I just say, “Blinders on, focus, focus, focus, focus. Like just talk to decision makers, just talk to check writers and get there.” Once you get that first client that pays you $10,000 a month, I guarantee you, your life will change if you sell it as a fractional CMO  package like I talk about, right? Where you’re working 10-ish hours a week. 

00:21:28 Casey: The moment that happens, everything in your life, I swear, will shift. You’ll see the world differently. Because you got the one and you realize that they’re not special. And there are a lot of other ones like that. Now you might not know how to reach out to those and you might not be able to sell them yet. And you might not have capacity because  you’re so flooded at the beginning of your first client and yada, yada, okay.

00:21:48 Casey: But three months after, you land your first big client, it’s like you moved from the kids table to the adults table at Thanksgiving. You just see the world differently. You’re in different conversations. Before you were in conversations of like, “Oh, I don’t know if we have a thousand dollars to spend on XYZ.” And you move to this big table where they say,  “All right guys, we wanna be the most dominant brand in our industry, and we’re gonna do whatever it takes to get there. And we just pulled an investment of a million dollars. Hey, CMO, if I gave you extra million dollars this year for marketing, what could you do with it?” You get invited to those tables when you work with these bigger clients. Why? Because you have to charge the price at which the business owner thinks the problem ought to cost to get solved.

00:22:29 Casey: Let me tell you what I mean.  There’s a guy that I know  who sells  a social media outreach program. And I don’t want to give too many details because I’ll probably give away who it is and I don’t feel like that’s fair. Everyone says he’s great. And the implication of his program working would equal, I don’t know, at least a million more dollars in my business a year. And the guy charges like $97 for this program. I don’t believe it. I haven’t bought it  because  when I went to the sales page, I was like, “This is not a $97 problem. This is like a $2,000 problem.”  And he’s charging me 97 bucks for it.  I don’t believe it. So I haven’t bought it.

00:23:28 Casey: The reason he’s top of mind is because I looked at this like two years ago and he just kind of cold messaged me recently about some promotion. And it reminded me of that. And just like, he undercharged. He also had to sell 20 units to make what I think I should be paying for the service that he would provide for that offer. Instead of paying $100,  I think I should pay $2000, which is 20 people paying $100. 

00:23:56 Casey: So his life would be easier just selling someone bigger. So I just feel like there’s a total misalignment. I don’t feel like he is of the caliber to help me simply because of his prices. That’s an important  nuance  and I’m not alone in thinking that. Why does someone buy a Rolex? Why does someone get a nice  watch nicer than a Rolex, a Patek, right? Like a JLC, why do they buy these nicer watches  when we can get a Timex that takes a lick and keeps on ticking, right? Like there is something about the higher price that attracts the more successful entrepreneur. And also as you get better, naturally your prices need to raise.

00:24:40 Casey: So the road to 10K is critical.  if you  focus,  my hope is that you’re at 10K a month recurring business as quickly as possible. So what happens after the road to 10K? This is where things get really fun, in my opinion. This is where you go crazy potentially. And we call this room boardroom. And what’s boardroom? Boardroom is where you’re surrounded by other successful fractional CMOs that are pushing you to the next level. And what is that next level? Well, it’s different for everyone, but I would say for a lot of people, it’s winning their next biggest client.

00:25:27 Casey: So going from 10 grand a month for a client to 12 grand or 12.5 or 15 grand, getting upside with a client, which means doing something cool like maybe deferring some of your cash payment and instead getting some upside so you make more money  and take some risk. Like you’re taking financial risk and you get a financial upside. That’s a ton of fun. It really gets you focused.  You could also get in a position of just working with a couple of businesses that you really like and driving down your work hours to as few as possible where you’re making incredible impact, but working as few hours as possible.

00:26:07 Casey: And let me get your head on straight with this one. So let’s just think for a second. I live in Philadelphia. If I wanted to build a skyscraper. I would need a bunch of people, right? I need an architectural design done. I would need, you know, the surveying done, all that stuff. I find a plot of land, whatever. I could probably find the land, but I couldn’t do any of the other stuff. 

00:26:29 Case: But if there was someone who has built five skyscrapers in Philadelphia before in the last 15 years, and he said, “Yeah, Casey, for $15,000 a month, you can get me for a couple hours a week to ask me any questions you want.” Is that not the greatest value that I could find? Like he’s going to say, “Oh yeah, go talk to my friend Carolyn over at the, you know, landed survey side of the  government or whatever.” And he’s going to give me that introduction and that introduction is going to be so worthwhile because I found the person I needed and I maybe even got to jump the line. Or even if I didn’t get to jump the line, at least I knew exactly where I had to go next and with all the steps for. I want you to be that person where your ability to save people’s time is the value.

00:27:16 Casey: In business, we can solve for typically one of two things. We solve for time or we solve for money. In your personal life, most likely you solve for money. You’re standing at CVS, your kid’s got a cold and you go look at the different medicine and you’ve got the brand name ibuprofen that’s $10 a bottle. Then you’ve got the CVS ibuprofen that’s $6 a bottle. What are you buying? I buy the cheap stuff, right? Check the label, check the ingredients, the density or whatever,  the grams per milliliter. And you’re like, yeah, it’s the same thing. I’m getting the cheap stuff. Right? You’re solving for cost.

00:27:58 Casey: But when you’re running a business and there’s opportunity, you got to solve for time. So what does solving for time look like? It looks like, “hey, go get me this result and I want it by tomorrow.” And you say, “All right, I’m going have to like pay some rush fees on some stuff.” It’s like, “Yeah. I get it, but the result tomorrow is worth a lot more to us than saving money and delaying the result.”

00:28:21 Casey: So as a CMO, you get to solve for time and not money. And we always keep an eye on money and cost and stuff, but I’d rather get the result faster than get the result slower and have it cost more or cost less, excuse me. So in a boardroom, we have those conversations. I’m recording this video on a Thursday, and I’m looking at my phone right now. I have five notifications from the boardroom crew, and they’re so fun. Someone just closed the client at 10,000, and someone else is asking about some software that the client’s using and passing around ideas of like who would be a good fit for implementation for something. What is this one about? Yeah, some different software ideas. Yeah, and another one is a client question, and great conversations around all this stuff.

00:29:12 Casey: That quality of people, these are all strangers. These are all strangers. They didn’t know one another before they joined the accelerator. Most of these folks had never had any kind of like agency-level success where they were making this kind of money before, and they earned into it.  Certainly, some of them have. But this is for them, like on their own, instead of having a business with a bunch of employees or working at a full-time job, they’re now a fractional CMO with a handful of clients that pay them handsomely.

00:29:41 Casey: They enjoy the work, and they’re doing a great job. So boardroom then offers the upside of solving for money for you, helping you get more money, or solving for time. Like, let’s keep the income that I have the same, but let’s drop my work hours down because I want to spend summer with the family, and I only want to work two days a week, or one day a week, or something. You could do that. Or you could be on the other side and say, kids are out of the house, I’m going crazy, I’m gonna work my butt off, I’m gonna make as much money as possible, let’s go nuts. You can do that too.  And you wanna be surrounded by people who are doing it because again, success leaves clues.

00:30:19 Casey: That’s what’s so important in all of this stuff. So there really are three distinct stages when it comes to being a fractional CMO. Getting sales ready, which is what are you selling? Why you? Who are you selling it to? How are you differentiated? What are the prices? What’s the process? What’s the first thing you’re gonna do when you start working with them? You gotta figure all that stuff out. That takes a lot of work.

00:30:40 Casey: Unless you’re in a program like the accelerator, right? Where I’ve laid out every single step along the way and have checklists and full trainings on what to do in the first 30 days and all that. We also have a cohort every Friday, we’re meeting to get you sales-ready so that you can graduate out of the sales-ready stage as quickly as possible. Then after that, we’ve got the road to 10 K. And that’s just where you’re gonna be. And again, blinders.

00:31:03 Casey: I want you to feel a sense of urgency to get out of that place as quickly as possible. You could go sell a couple of advisor-level clients at three, 4,000 a month, and get out of the road to 10K and three clients, two clients, two clients if you’re pretty experienced.  But really, the best way to do it is just to sell an engaged client at 10K and boom, you’re out.

00:31:25 Casey: Three months later, you’re kind of through the. This kind of dizzying spell of getting launched with your first engaged client. And where you’re going to find yourself is a sense of understanding how the world really works, what clients actually want, and how to speak intelligently to your type of ideal client. And then you can go get your next client and figure out what you want. Again, some people want to get clients and just charge a high rate. And then every time they get a new client, they charge more and more. That’s fine. Others keep their rate the same, but they want bigger and bigger upside. So they might say, yeah, I’ll just do 10 K that’s fine, but I want 2% of gross, or I want, you know, this deferred comp that gives me this kicker after X amount of time, or I want to be tied into the exit multiple that you have, or whatever.

00:32:11 Casey: We talk about that kind of stuff. We even talk about maybe taking over businesses. It’s funny when you’re the CMO driving growth in a business, you could take over the CEO seat if you want to do that. I’ve got some folks in the accelerator that are experienced in that, and they do that. They do kind of fractional CEO stuff because they’ve stepped into that role from the CMO seat.

00:32:32 Casey: So let me just like zoom out real quick and say that  I think the number one secret to success is having all the runway that you can afford to have, which is like all the time to make mistakes. And if you don’t have a ton of time to make mistakes and you got to figure it out quickly, then surround yourself with people who figured it out already,  follow a proven framework that works for you. All right. Get people in your corner that are rooting for you because the whole world kind of conspires to keep you where you are.

00:33:01 Casey: But when you’re in a place like, you know, the accelerator, we’re pushing you forward. And I personally want to see you successful. You know, I’m like going to hold you to a higher standard than maybe you hold yourself to because I can see your greatness when you join. If you get through the gauntlet of going through my team to see if they think you’re qualified, and we agree that you’re the type of person that we want to help.

00:33:21 Casey: That I want to see you successful, and I want to see you put some big numbers on the board so that you can help yourself and then do whatever you want. Donate to the causes that you care about. Get a couple of solid clients and then go give away your time and be a fractional CMO for free to a nonprofit that you love. That kind of stuff is so meaningful. There is no role that I can really think of that has more direct effect on people’s lives than being a fractional CMO. Think of it for a second.

00:33:49 Casey: You go work with one company, you transform the team that you’re working with, right? They went from scattered to focused, confident, they’re supported, they’re loving it, right? Their life is instantly better because you’re there. They do a better work product. As that better work product supports the customers of the company, the executive makes more money, they have a better company, they’re happy. Then you think of all the customers whose life is better, right? You go work with someone who sells whatever, they sell socks.

00:34:18 Casey: They sell chocolate, they sell Saas to healthcare companies, whatever it is. You’re making people’s lives better. And then you go get a handful of those clients. And then you surround yourself with all the other people doing the same thing.  And you’re just creating a lot of value in the world. So this isn’t like, you know, stock trading where we’re buying low and selling high and taking money from the market. This is where we’re creating true value.

00:34:48 Casey: King Midas, right? Like we’re touching stuff and it’s turning to gold. We’re building ad campaigns by ideating them and finding the right people to run them, and then having them run them and report to you on a weekly basis. When you do that, you’re creating so much goodwill in the world. It is awesome, awesome, awesome.

00:35:04 Casey: All right, so that’s what we’re doing at the Accelerator. If this is something you want to do, come book a call with my team. And I’ve got a great team that will kind of assess you where you are. First call is like a 15-minute call just to see if we think we can help you. And if we can, then you hop on another call where my team’s gonna ask you even more questions and then turn the call over to you and then you can ask any questions you want and see if the accelerator is the right place to help you build your practice to get your sales ready, get you on the road to 10K and graduate it as quickly as possible so you can join boardroom and party with us as you put big numbers on the board, help a lot of people make a big like difference in your community.

00:35:42 Casey: That’s what I’m looking for. All right. So if you want to do that, a call, CMOx.com/call. Just book that call in and talk to my team, and see if you got what it takes. All right. I’ll see you soon. Take care.

00:35:54 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!