ve BINAR: How to Make Community the Winning Formula for Filling Your Fractional Business

Great. Welcome. Welcome folks, to to our webinar today. I'm Andrew Miller, one of the partners at the Vendux Group. I am thrilled to be here today with our good friend Nancy Fox on the subject of community in the development of a fractional executive business model. We are both fellow travelers down the fractional highway. Nancy is the CEO of Fractional Connections, a business advisory company helping fractional executives launch, grow and scale their businesses. She's a former corporate executive and has trained and coached hundreds of senior executives in leadership, communications and business development. Nancy first experienced the fulfillment of fractional leadership when she became the fractional business development officer in professional services firms, guiding accounting and law professionals in networking, client relationship building and engagement. Nancy's the founder of Fractional Connections Community, an association supporting fractional executives in the building of their businesses. She's also a keynote speaker and the author of a highly recognized book on strategic networking called Network Like a Fox. Nancy lives in LA and when she's not networking like a fox, you'll find her playing tennis, west coast swing dancing, and being with her pups. So great to have you here, Nancy. Just a couple of housekeeping notes for everyone. We're going to keep everybody muted for the duration of the webinar and there'll be a Q and A at the end. So you can either use the chat function in zoom or submit your to submit your questions, or we'll open up the floor at the end and you can ask questions directly and make comments after the webinar. So with that in mind, Nancy, thanks again for being here. Great to have you. Let's jump in.

Well, thank you so much for having me, Andrew and Henning and everybody at Vendex.

Thank you. That's great, Nancy. Kind of high level. Let's talk community in the fractional world. You know as well as anyone there are so many communities out there. So what's the value and importance of community for fractional executives in particular? Why is community so timely and essential today for fractional executives and business owners?

So I think, you know, first of all, we have to define what community is because everybody's got this word in their head about what is a community. And we all have our own interpretation of that. And it's loosely used, right? So to me, community is truly, it is a cultural experience. That, to me, is the distinction that I see as community today. We have come off of several years of the most shocking personal and professional experience we possibly could ever have had. Where at the same time it was like a perfect storm, where at the same time that we experienced a global pandemic forcing us to be isolated, we also had the advent of new tools of technology where we could actually do exactly like this. I saw this amazing thing where Tony Robbins, who has giant events of 5,000 people at a time, literally hosted. He didn't let the pandemic stop him. He had the entire 5,000 people on a zoom call. Just crazy. Amazing how he brought his community together. But this isolation, that and the complete shift in the workplace where so many executives have shifted out of corporate roles, choosing for the very first time to go independent. At the same time that we were experiencing this isolation factor, and at the same time as we were experiencing this technological advance where we could actually be in the same room with each other easily and record and have groups of people and breakout rooms and all kinds of tools online, it allowed us to really come together in brand new ways and we needed it more than ever. Because even though I started my business over 20 years ago, it's a lonely thing after being in a company for so many years or companies where you are part of the corporate structure and you've got people coming in and out of your office every single day. And now for the first time, you are on your own. You've got all this independence, which you wanted, all this autonomy, which you wanted, and you're sitting there on your kitchen at your kitchen island, or in your own second bedroom or third bedroom with a computer in front of you, and you're alone. Now what the need for community means something different in 2023 than it ever meant in 2015 and 14 and 12. So the bonding that we need and the connection that we need, the information that we need, the structure we need is completely different. And that's why.

Yeah, for sure. I could have never imagined pre Covid taking so many walks around the block on calls right on my mobile, being. And being right there where I needed to be at that time. So, Nancy, what's unique about. So you're talking about community with great points. So community versus networking groups. What's your perspective on those two? The differences, the similarities.

It's so interesting. So to me, I mean, having networked everywhere across the country for a long, long time, networking, there are different flavors of networking. There are different types of networking. There are the big events where you just sort of mill around the room, and then there are the kinds where you meet in groups regularly. Most of them are designed for. And then there are peer groups also, which are a different kind of networking. But for the most part, these Particular experiences are designed for accomplishing specific results like referrals or, you know, or lead generation. Right. With community is a very, it's a bigger experience. It's actually, it's an experience, it's not just an activity. So community is really more of a comprehensive experience where you're bonding and you're building a connection point of an experience of relationship that doesn't happen in just a networking group. It's not that networking isn't important, it's crucial. But the kinds of experience and feeling that you get when you're in a community of like minded people. There's a mission that comes with community that is much deeper and much more. I'll use the word emotional, but it's more a. I like the word experiential. We have a feeling about community that's different than when we, when we have a feeling about a networking group. You know, I'm saying we bond differently and, and we open up differently. We share ideas, we share relationships, we share connections, but we also share bigger truths with each other. We get to know each other deeply and that's what community is. And by the way, you can have a community. Communities are like, I've talked to a lot of my clients who they participate in sports and they play basketball every Thursday night and then they go out for beer afterward. That's a community because they open up differently. There's an experience that they have together and that's what I think we really have an opportunity to do as fractional executives, to have an experience of having these large, very advanced roles in companies, leaving by choice, searching for new career experiences and coming together with new objectives and different needs today.

Yeah, for sure. So we, we are in, in the common business in the sense that we, we are helping solopreneurs, fractional executives in their businesses.

Correct.

To build their businesses, to get clients, to find engagements and assignments. So question for you. What are some ways you have three, four, five ways and ideas where community can be leveraged in building out a successful fractional business?

Yeah, and this is just like a partial list, right? Because so many things open up at. When you get a group of people together, you start brainstorming. Other things open up, but just from the, you know, just from the top line. The first thing that I noticed that was so important about fractional executives was that when you would have different fractional executive functions like, you know, there will be sales and operations and finance, marketing, revenue, hr. Now, you know, the different industries and verticals that different fractionals were working in, you could Cross pollinate and cross market with each other without feeling competitive. And so these were naturally starting to happen, these hubs, these pods of people were starting to work together and starting to share relationships, to share opportunities. It's sort of a natural thing. And I watched that, but it hasn't been in an organized way. So community, when there's a community that started, you can now organize that and help people facilitate that helps them to recognize different opportunities and work together in pretty structured, you know, systematic ways. And that's more. It's effective. Other ways of doing this are, you know, to actually create communities where there's a learning center. You know, in our community, we have a university where there are all different kinds of trainings and tools and templates where people can, you know, can, can shortcut their way to actually learning how to do business development and to get clients and to get in front of the right people. So there's a learning component. There's also different missions that we have. Especially we are really eager to elevate the awareness of entrepreneurs about what I call the fractional edge. There are a lot of people who know, they might have heard about fractional executives, but I don't know if they always really understand the difference between a fractional and a consultant. They don't know how to select should it be a fractional COO or cfo. Sometimes they really do not know or they make an assumption about what it should be. They make an assumption, but they're not really completely educated or aware. So together as a community, we can start to really elevate that awareness. And then there's some other. The bonding experience and the sharing of best practices and brainstorming ideas is another really important factor. We also have, we believe in opportunities of broadcasting opportunities that are showing up. For example, just this week, two opportunities opened up by members and we have a bulletin board about that and we could start to really share the information. So it's an information sharing, it's a learning experience and, and it's a binding experience.

Yep. Great. So now on the flip side of the equation, what, what are some of the challenges that you see in, in building and, and growing a community today?

You know, it's. This is like this with any community. You get people to, and to embark on the community. And then engagement is always the hardest part. People get busy, they don't pay attention, they miss this. You know, engagement is. Any community leader will tell you the same thing. Engagement, engagement, engagement. And it isn't just about throwing the next cookie out there because there are a lot of cookies and people still get busy. It needs to be the kind of engagement that is extremely relevant to what people are dealing with at that particular time. What are their challenges? What are they most concerned about? What will draw them into the conversation? What, what will make it worth their time to participate in the community? Because as good as the idea is, engagement is the hardest part. And that's what goes on in my mind every night. Like, well, how can I engage the community more? It's not that they don't think that there's benefit there, they know there's benefit, but how do they. You remember all of these members, everybody here that's on this call with us today. You're busy, you're working on your own stuff. You've got to have a structure to set your day up. This is new stuff. What do you work on at 8 o' clock in the morning, at 10 o', clock, at 12 o'? Clock? How do you know which meetings to take? How do you know how to get what you want to accomplish that week done? How do you set that up? Those structures, that system of really holding yourself to account? And that's partially why we need a community to help us have those structures.

It's so easy to download an app. How many apps do we actually go back to and use regular basis? Yeah, we sign up and we have an app.

You know, does everybody pay attention to the notifications? No.

Yeah. So to that point, what, what are some of the, the unique tools that, that are, that are good for community building?

It's a pretty simple. It's pretty simple. It's simple, but not easy. How's that? I'm thinking about one thing every single day. What are the biggest problems that our community is experiencing? What challenges? What's keeping them up at night? What are they worried about? And what is the most important thing that they want to accomplish or fix or eliminate? And when I think every, and by the way, this holds true for every fractional on this call, that is what every fractional needs to be thinking about too. What are your business owners not like how smart it is for them to hire you? What are they truly worried about and thinking about at that moment? When are they in so much pain about something that they will actually reach out to you for help? That's the key. And that's what I think about everyone. For me, what I've, you know, I, I speak to hundreds of fractionals. The number one thing is how do I get in front of business owners and how do I find People who are ready to engage me number. That's it. It's as simple as that. The solution is more complex. You have to really think about the. I call them migraine headaches. What are their migraine headaches? Not the ones that are baby headaches, not the ones that they would. They're nice to have fixed, but the ones they must fix and what do they want fixed yesterday and what are they willing to do about it? And that's it. So if we get clear about that, then engagement is easier. Engagement comes for if I don't really understand what the business. They're busy, they're in meetings. Are they in the right meetings? I don't know. Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

We see so many of the same characteristics. So we've got a number of people dialed in today and we're going to open up the floor shortly. So if you've got any questions and you want to send them by chat, please do so. But otherwise we'll be opening up the floor for questions, comments, participation. Nancy, what results, success stories on how you've used community to help clients grow their businesses? What are your thoughts on that?

Well, I really, I'm watching and observing all of the interactions between all of the community members. And by the way, a lot of times they don't tell me what's really happening, but later on I find out, oh, I met with this one and I met with that one and we got this client together or this one introduced me and I got my first, my first client out of that. So sometimes I know and sometimes I don't know, but I know that just by the messages that I'm getting from people that opportunities are opening up for them together. I'm also watching a lot of the feedback I'm getting on the trainings that we're giving. I'm also one of the things that we're doing is we're actually monitoring what tools people in our community are downloading. And I'm asking them to send their exercises to me so I can see what they're writing and what they're putting together so that I can actually give them feedback. And so I know that I hear, I see where they get, where they're stumbling and where there's a gap between what they want to accomplish and what they're actually accomplishing. And of course, you know, we have a report of, you know, what are the successes, what are the celebrations? So we have that monitored every month. You know, what are you celebrating? So we know that. So we are. It can always be Better. In our, in one of the other communities, we have a real tracking system, which it's harder to get people to play in that tracking system because people don't like tracking. It's like, you know, you want your customer, you, you want your clients to be tracking their sales and their operations and all that and all their financial issues. But when it comes to our own businesses, it's harder to get people to play in that. So that's, that's the, that's one of the obstacles that I face all the time is how to get fractionals to actually do the work that they want their clients to do on the tracking side.

Yeah. Great. Henning, are there questions in the chat bar? Do you want to.

Yeah, there is a comment from reet. He's sharing a best practice. Reet, do you want to unmute yourself and maybe share your thoughts there? Yeah, sure. Pleasure to meet everybody. Nancy, I wrote that because you were talking about, talking with your clients about how they, if they have problems. Right. And it's so important to understand and not to get too granular into measuring what the problem is, but really getting a bigger picture of I have a problem. Right. Well, what are your problems? What are the things that you want to achieve? And then get to how big the problem is and how they know it's a problem. Right. I heard this once before, in God We Trust, everybody else bring data. Right.

I like that.

Yeah. And then also what would you realize if we fix the problem, right. And realize could be time savings, it could be revenue, it could be cost savings, whatever. Whatever it is. And I found it, and this isn't my original. It comes from Mohan Nair, I think is his name, where getting to these questions really starts to help the client figure out if it's a problem or not. Right. Because, for example, if they have a million dollar problem, right. They'd realize that an extra million in net revenue, but the project is going to cost 10 million.

Right.

That ROI probably doesn't pan out, but if we get to a problem solution that's $100,000, right. Then it's an obvious project that they should throw resources at.

I think that, you know, that's a really interesting point that you're making, Reid. A few things have changed over the years that I just want to share with you folks. It used to be where if you would say to a potential client or a colleague, you know, what do you find is your biggest challenge right now in your business? It used to be you get a pretty good answer, but people are numb to that one now they've heard it a thousand times from everybody. I have found that you have to dig deeper. You have to go deeper into the well. You have to go deeper. You have to open the hood up and really dig in deeper. Because most people see the symptoms as the problem. There's a bigger migraine headache. I'll give you an example. Let's just say there's a momentum slow down in a company. They know that. They immediately attribute it to, oh, our salespeople aren't performing properly. But, but what's really going on underneath all of that is that marketing and sales are fighting with each other.

We're not even talking.

That doesn't come out in the initial conversation. My sales have slowed down. It's got to be, you know, there's a knee jerk assumption about where the cause is. If you start to ask deeper questions, like not what's your biggest problem but you know, tell me what's going on in the business, like where. What are your people telling you? What do you hear? Like, you have to start digging into much more esoteric questions. And the key is business owners are very savvy. They see salespeople as selling them on I'm going to fix your problem. Learning how to communicate with them and get under the hood and hear the migraine versus the nice to fix is an art form. And I, and I'll give you one question that I've started to use. Tell me about your priorities in your business.

I was going to go there next.

Right. And then when they tell you that, and then we could start to say, oh, so how is that going so far? Where do you see the priorities getting slow and start to. Then you could start to have them unpack more and reveal some of the deeper. Because I don't think that business owners like telling people their problems or, or that they've got problems. They hide it a lot. Especially when they're dealing with people who are consultative and think that they're going to get sold. So it's a gray area, but it's an art form.

Yeah. And the questions are designed in that. I'll touch on two points. The questions are designed that way so that it becomes the client, the numbers, not us trying to solve it for them. Right. And then you try to talk them out of a project that doesn't make any sense.

Right.

Like why are we, why are we going to spend $10 million to fix this million dollar problem? Right. And then they start to think about it that way. But then the follow ons to when we finally get the list of challenges or opportunities, however the client wants to look at it, is then saying, okay, how do those map back to your business objectives?

Right.

And then. Yeah, and then that gets into different strategy management tools that I won't go too deep into. But then mapping projects and processes back to those prioritized business objectives, that's where you start to get real alignment around, you know, sales, operations, delivery. If it's a professional services company. Right, because you talked about sales and marketing being out of touch with one another. But sales and delivery, if they are tied together, there's so many.

Yeah, I only mentioned one. You're absolutely right. You're absolutely right. I just want to have you think about something else. One other point to your, you know, to add on, to riff onto what you're saying. Ask yourself, if you're them, they have these objectives, but some objectives are burning desires and other objectives are goals and nice ideas. What's a burning desire on their part and how do you know it's really burning? Like, they'll do, they'll, they'll do anything to accomplish something. How do we find out what's a burning desire? Like a number 10 or 9. If they're telling you that accomplishing an objective, I asked them, on a scale of 1 to 10, how important is it for you to fix this, eliminate it, achieve it? And if they tell me anything that's seven or below or even eight, I know they're not serious. And even nine and 10, I will ask them more questions. So I think that there's a lot to learn. And these are some of the conversations that we have in community. We have these brainstorming conversations about, okay, how do we get closer to what's really gonna be imperative, a must have for our potential clients.

Yeah. And to touch on one thing, right. In my previous practice, I would go through, you know, identifying what their business objectives are. Right. What the definition of that is. And the definition of terms is so important. And then also ask them to identify why is this objective important. Right. Because then it gets away from just placating strategic objective terms. Right. Like provide extreme customer service. Right. That doesn't really mean anything unless it's defined and we understand why it's important to the business. And it's not just for the client person or group. It's for the whole entire organization to finally understand why that's important. Right. Where they can look at one document and say, oh, I know why we're doing this. So, yeah, I totally agree with you. And yep, I'll stop there.

Thanks.

These are, these are killer questions. Reid, thanks. Thanks very much for those questions and comments. Nancy. Nancy, I'm going to ask you for maybe one or two closing remarks in a moment. Any other questions? Anybody else want to chime in? Question, comment? I've got one question for you, one final question, Nancy, in terms of other communities out there that you feel might be interesting and useful for fractional executives. Anything out there.

So I'm friendly with a bunch of them. We're all friends. Ben Wolf has a community and Joseph Russ has a community. And they're all usually fractional entitle ish kind of thing. You can find them. And many fractional executives are joining several for good reason. It's good you get different things in different communities. I would say that if you were to ask me what we focus on that's unique, what our own value proposition is at Fractional Connections Community, we're really focused on learning the learning experience and also especially elevating the awareness of entrepreneurs. We are on a mission so that it will help the entire profession. So those are our two unique value propositions. I think there are more, but those are our main ones. But I think that, you know, we collaborate with a lot of them, a lot of them, and you find your place. You find, you know, there are great many times there you'll find the same people in different communities, but each leader has their own energy, their own, you know, I'm definitely the rah rah. I'm definitely a rah rah community leader. There's no question. But, you know, I think that everybody's, they're all valuable and we're all working together. So I think, you know, we have a long way to go. We're still just at the tip of the iceberg around this.

Yes, we are. And it's, it's great to be working with you to, to make this pie bigger for, for, for all of us. So anything else, Nancy? Final words, the book, anything.

Yes, yes. If you'd like to. First of all, if you. I would love anybody that's not already connected with me on LinkedIn. Please. I'm LinkedIn.com in forward slash. Nancy Fox, Fractional, because there are a lot of Nancy Foxes I know you can find me on LinkedIn. I connect with everybody. I do. I post every single day with tips, tools, resources for fractional executives. And you'll find me also writing to the SMBs too, so you can see, you know, what I'm, what I'm communicating about. And also, please Feel free to if you would like to go to network like a fox.com and use NLAF in the ebook checkout, you'll get my ebook for free. I'd love to have you do that. And then if you want to check out Fractional Connections Community if you go to fractionals AI forward slip forward slash FCCommunity you can come to our monthly speed networking events. We love to have you. They are free. You can find out more about the community, both the free version and the paid version. You can see right on the website. We'll show you what some of the benefits and features that we're working on right in the community. And you can talk to other members. They'll tell you themselves.

Wonderful Nancy. Thank you very much. Wonderful.

Thank you for having me. It's great to be with you all. Please do communicate with me. I love love love speaking to every fractional. Nothing is more important to me than understanding what your personal experience is about your career, about your objectives, about what you want to work on in your business, what you're grappling with and who you want to meet. Most importantly.

Awesome. Have a great rest of the week. Rest of the month. Nancy. We will see you soon. Everybody. Thank you very much for being here as well. Thanks for your participation and we will see you next time.

Thank you very much. Thanks for having me.

Thank you.