The Future of Work in 2025: AI, Fractional, & Culture

Founders of companies should be spending 20 to 25% of their time on talent acquisition, finding talent from competitors, attracting new talent in the market. But when you meet a lot of—

Nobody does that.

Exactly. Exactly. And I think that's one thing that we see often in the market, and we train and work with our clients to show them that really when it comes down to building a successful company, you need capital, you need the best talent on earth, and you need strategy.

Hello and welcome to the Conscious Design Podcast. I'm your host, Ian Peterman, and I help turn product ideas into sustainable 7-figure businesses. Join me for another episode where innovation meets business savvy. Today, I'm really excited to have Colin and Khalil. They're the co-founders of ExecNow, where they help fast-growing companies like Nuon Energy and Verily to find the right executive talent quickly and efficiently through their diverse network. Welcome to the show, guys.

Thanks for having us.

Oh yeah, sure.

Absolutely. Well, everyone loves a good origin story. So before we dive into where you're at now, let's talk about how did this start? What got you guys to get into this line of business?

Well, Ian, first of all, thank you so much for having us. And origin stories are always my favorite. And what's even more fun now is with a co-founder, we each kind of have a different spin on the origin story. So with the audience in here before This is Collin and I saying, you tell it. So I'm on the hook this time. One of my favorites, honestly, Collin and I were introduced through a mutual client of ours. And sometimes with other vendors, you take the time to get to know them or you don't. In this case, kind of that moment where we both were on a meeting and I could just tell we were on the same wavelength, we were trying to solve some of the same problems. And so I took some time with Collin just to kind of understand and download how he saw the future of work, where he saw deficiencies in leadership where he saw opportunities. And naturally, that was a 2-hour conversation. And I come from the world of Nike. So, that's where I really cut my teeth. And one of the big mantras at Nike is simplify and go. And I can't tell you how many times that I've pulled that out when I was overthinking something and I just needed to do it. In this case, we really needed to disrupt executive search more so to expose not a talent problem but an access problem. Some of the best talent that we represent is that, the best talent, and why they weren't getting opportunities, they were being systematically cut out. So, at ExecNow, we're not only an executive search firm, we're also an advisory. So, we help CEOs and founders really build future-proof their companies, not only through innovation, but all the way through their IPO. And so, we're really thinking about how do you differentiate? How do you truly get the best talent by finding those talent pools? How do you implement it? So, Yeah, it was, you know, now we're looking back almost a year and a half and Colin and I launched this pretty quickly and kind of did that simplify and go methodology.

Yeah. Well, I think it's important to, uh, not take too long. So I love the fact that you guys were like, oh, this is good. We like it. This is a good idea. We're meshing well. Let's just pull the trigger and go and not wait 5 years while you figure out that You should have gone 5 years ago.

Yeah, 100%. I mean, I think that's one thing I really admire about Khalil. And when we started this partnership and built this business is we saw an opportunity in a market that is pretty stale, needs disruption. And a lot of companies go to these, these legacy and old school executive search firms that are super expensive, that don't necessarily provide expertise or results. And we're more nimble. You know, we can create those relationships, add value really fast, and have unique perspectives on the market that I think makes us a little key differentiator as we go to market. One other thing to mention is as we build our clients out and, and as we build our own firm out, mission and values is so critical. It's a foundation of how to start a company. And so I think that was a big alignment when I met Khalil, is finding that alignment on values. How do we want to build our company? We want to be human-centric. We want to find the best talent in the market. We want to disrupt a space that largely has legacy companies in there that are doing the same work that's stale and not finding the best talent. So when I think of entrepreneurship, I'm always thinking about mission and values. I think that's what got me really excited when we started building this out together is that we had the same vision, we had the same values, and we had the same mission.

Awesome. Yeah, it's super important for those to align. It's Very, you can't, but it's very hard to do business if those don't align. It's really not going to last. So I wanted to dive into a little bit on what you guys have seen. I know you guys have worked in this space, right, for a while. This is your career. The business is new, but it's not like you guys just started working in this executive leadership space.

Yeah.

What have you seen? Because you mentioned it really briefly, is that it's not really a talent issue. And I've, you know, I work on the product development side. We're the agency somebody hires. And so sometimes I get tapped in and do business consulting and things like that. And oftentimes people are like, well, where are all the good people? Why can't we find anyone? And I know from like working out there, like, There's plenty of people out there. So I'd love for you to talk a little bit about what is this disconnect? Because we don't have a shortage. There's just plenty of people just in the US. There's plenty of people to do the work. How is there this massive disconnect that you guys are working to bridge?

Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, I think the core crux of it is oftentimes as companies start to scale, sometimes they lose touch of what's important when it comes to leadership or culture or needs. And so oftentimes times you'll find companies, whether they're in their Series B or even a Fortune 50 company, they'll be essentially putting a bandaid on something that is already hurting. So, rather being reactive in the market, rather than growing your culture in a way that you can start to develop leaders within your organization and also find and attract the best talent outside of the organization. So, more of an approach where you're proactively looking in the market. The reality is, is that Founders of companies should be spending 20 to 25% of their time on talent acquisition, finding talent from competitors, attracting new talent in the market. But when you meet a lot of—

Nobody does that.

Exactly. Exactly. And I think that's one thing that we see often in the market, and we train and work with our clients to show them that really, when it comes down to building a successful company, you need capital, you need the best talent on earth, And you need strategy. And those 3 mixtures of things makes companies successful or not successful. So a big portion of a company comes from that talent and that culture they're building. But oftentimes executives, the CEO, the COO are so busy that they lose touch on that. And so we help realign companies with their mission culture and making sure that they're attracting the best talent, but also developing that internal talent to bubble up as well.

And just to give a direct example to that, I had the experience of being head of product for a Fortune 20 company. And to Colin's point, culture is not seen as a product. And I always thought that was super interesting. We spend all of this time on R&D, we spend all this time building a product, and then we have this really high turn rate and no one can figure it out. Well, let's start off with where you're allocating your time. And I think that's a really astute point by Colin, right? We need to be spending more time understanding our recruitment and talent acquisition processes. There are inherent bias there. There are systematic issues there. And it's only going to get worse with AI because AI isn't going to come in and solve all your problems. Only going to supercharge those problems. And I don't think leaders are really ready to have that conversation. So, at this Fortune 20 company, what I really saw and what led to the end of this product wasn't that we weren't a product-market fit, wasn't that we were actually slated to become a trillion-dollar product. It was that the board and the actual C-suite didn't have a culture and they didn't really have communication, good communication with one another. That's what led to the demise of the product. And I think that really highlights where we're at today when we're starting to think about talent, think about the future, is to Colin's point, a lot of companies have become reactive. No one's become curious enough to try to be proactive and try new ways of building teams and creating cohesion within the organization. We actually are seeing now with AI, them thinking like, hey, AI is just going to take this and figure this out when that couldn't be further from the truth.

Yeah. Increase the workload of everyone there. Not actually think about whether they should, how the structure of the team is or anything like that.

Exactly.

Yeah.

I've run into that too, especially on, it's funny you mentioned a product team, right? Product, especially the product side, that's all about, well, we have the R&D budget. We're getting almost all the extra capital. And then it's, oh, AI, we'll just throw that in there. And now everybody's worth 3 people. So we're good to go. We don't have to hire any, we don't have to worry about hiring. We're good. They're, they're going to triple their output magically by all of this. I haven't seen it work yet. So neither have I. The culture side. So On that, and you obviously are, you're more than just, oh, here's a person, do you want to hire them? Which I feel like is a lot of, and I've worked in the recruiting space. I actually do that for some, some clients. I help them find people, especially technical and, you know, design side. But a lot of times, even if you try to offer more consulting, there's sometimes pushback of, oh, well, just, just give me people. Like, give me, I just want 10 people to pick from. So how do you kind of counter that and really show, hey, there's more to hiring than just give me a list of 20 people, we'll talk to them and we'll pick one. Like that's, I feel the way you guys are talking about, like those old habits just won't die.

Yeah.

I feel like that fits perfectly into one of those buckets that it should have stopped, that should not. Not be how you do it. So how do you guys show that value and get people around that?

Yeah, I mean, yeah, that's a really critical question. And I think you've had exposure to this as well, developing for your consulting. You know, with us, I think it's a little easier because we find companies that are mission and value aligned with us. We're not a boil in the ocean here. We're not trying to be consultants for every client that's out there. We are looking for companies that want to innovate. That want to grow, that want to go against the grain. Those are the companies we want to work with. And so our portco, it is, you know, Fortune 500. It's a lot of early-stage startups in AI, biotech, as well as green technology. But when it comes down to it, I think finding that mission and values alignment really matters. So what I mean by that, kind of getting to your question, is we go in with a mentality of we're going to partner with you. This isn't a one-and-done deal. You need a COO, you need a CFO, you need a head of operations, et cetera. We're not here just to find a job for you, place them, and leave. That's not our business model. That's some legacy competitors out there. That's their model, but that's not how we, we want to do business. We want to go there, add value where we can, and then build that relationship. So our model's based off of land and expand. We essentially start off with 1 or 2 projects. And as that relationship builds, the value's there, then we expand. And it's not really a pitch or a sell at that point because there's demand. They understand the value we're offering. So it's an easier conversation. Whereas I think some companies go with the approach of closing a deal and then working on closing that next deal without providing that value. So it's a bit more natural, I guess, for our business model where we typically work with leadership or the founders and are able to form that relationship and provide value enough where we're able to expand rather than closing a deal and then going and asking for more business, if that makes sense.

Yeah. Right. And just to expand on that, I think, you know, that couldn't have said it better, Colin. I think a part of this that was historically overlooked is the complexity and the nuance within change management. I think that that is a parameter that feels easy to define, right? I have an SOP, I have a job description, I have a 30-60-90. Like you should be able to go and do these things. Yeah.

Point A, point B, we're just, we're just going between, guys.

Right. And then the legacy search, you know, firms are like, hey, Where's our placement fee? We're gone, right? And left you essentially with this other bag, which is you never really understood the baseline of trust and communication between that position and their team members. Maybe you didn't account for churn happening after that leader left, which changes the dynamic and the speed at which you maybe promised your new leader they could go. You know, really being an advisor at the core, but also really assuring that change management moves smoothly in that first 90 days and beyond. It's the new age, right? It's the next gen. And AI is making that even more easy by really helping us break down the pain points within change management. Also, something that other firms never really tested for or spoke to is emotional intelligence. We can find hard skills all day long. What we can't find a lot— exactly.

That's on LinkedIn. Everybody puts those on LinkedIn.

Here's your hard skill. I want people to put, what's your emotional intelligence score? How emotionally intelligent are you?

That sounds scary for a lot of people.

Yeah, it does, because this emotional intelligence piece is something that, that is a little more of a looser metric. But essentially it comes down to how well can you build trust and communicate in perfect environments, which is what I think legacy search firms did, is they assumed everyone was in a perfect environment. And also, how do you react in an environment that's breaking and budgets are shrinking And payroll is shrinking, right? So there's, there's all these different nuances that come within change management, all of these different things to think about from communication and trust and advisory that we're now offering. So for example, when we work with a founder, we just got off the phone this morning with a founder. The biggest issue they're having is balancing fundraising while continuing to build their firm and to entrench leadership in that firm with an ever-evolving employee base. That's really complicated to not only run that, have visibility, but also go and fundraise confidently. So you bring someone like us in to really give you a touch rock moment to say, as a leader, what are your priorities and what can we take off of your plate? We prescribe that for you and we're off and running, right? So now that leader has a clear direction on this is what I'm focused on and this is what ExecNow and Colin and Cole's team's focused on. Now I can take that bandwidth and energy and put it back into my number one priority, Which is raising funds right now. And I understand that now I have a team around me that's, that's focused on getting me to, to where I want to be and prioritizing. So all of that to say, I think to, to all of Colin's points, but on top of that, change management's just been something that's been diluted and simplified. And now we're actually giving some complexity and next steps to it.

Well, and then I would actually say sometimes that change management just gets plain ignored. Like I've worked with, especially in the startup world. No one thinks about it. They're like, oh, we're adding a new person. Like nothing's changing. We're just working on the same thing and not realizing the depth of your culture. Like we've, we've worked on, we do branding work as well. And that's heavily, we'll go into a company and they'll go, oh, why does our brand, why do our employees not really resonate with our brand? Like, well, did you integrate them? Did you, what happened when you brought them on? Do you, you've hired 50 people since you started.

Yeah.

Did you have any kind of change management? Did you, did you tell them about the brand? Like, no, we looked at their hearts. Like they have, they can do these things. And we were like, okay, this is great. We have to not only, yeah, you're going to, we're going to end up rebranding you, but it's going to be far deeper because now we have to figure out how to get you from where your culture is right now, either back to what you were. Or help you define a new culture and you're probably going to have people leave. Like, this is, you know, the, the branding project you brought us in for is now hiring and firing people and reculturing your entire entity. Because if you try to keep going, add another 50 people, like you're, you're going to be so far gone compared to what you, because the founder especially is like, oh, we're still here. I never left here. Like, well, that's, that's nice.

And to your point right there, like, that's the issue too, is a lot of founders are on step 20 and their team's at step 1 still. And they just, that, that gap widens, you know, that exactly is your point. Such a great point to make.

And this process integration. So one of the things that, that I came up with is that, cause people, I, we have a client right now. They're, they're growing really quick. They're going to 10x their employees in order to hit their demand. Like they have this, this high demand. And at first they're like, oh, well, here's, you know, Here's the hard skills, and then finally got to okay. Here's the soft skills, and then it was well. You're worried because they're like oh we don't want our our culture to get diluted. They don't want to lose our culture because their culture particularly right now is why right? It's a reason that some people are coming on board right now. It's so different and valuable in their industry right now that that's is a major attractant right? And. So then we, we had the conversation. Well, how do you, what are you doing? They're like, all their metrics for the first 90 days were, here's the numbers you're going to hit. This is what you're going to do. This is what you're going to deliver. It was very hard skill focused.

Right.

So the, the term that we used is like, well, you need to create an integration policy. Like this 90 days isn't just for, hey, could you do the work?

Like.

Anybody with those skills should be able to do the work. That's not really like, yeah, you're making sure they didn't lie on their resume, right? But it's a 2-way integration. You need to make sure they actually integrate in and don't cause problems. And I think that really clicked because we've been working together for a few months and there's like, I don't know why even some of the candidates are like, oh, I don't know why it's not a good fit. Like, well, it's, there's these layers, like what you guys are talking about. You got to look at those layers.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And make sure it's there and you, and you can integrate.

Yeah. I mean, I love that perspective and story that you just shared here because I'm thinking about onboarding and depending on what stage your company is at, if you're a 200,000-person company, well, onboarding certainly looks a lot different than if you're a 50-person or 100-person company. But a lot of startups, they're running so fast that they're not thinking about that onboarding process.

They don't, they don't have a handbook. They don't know nothing.

That's literally what needs to be built. There needs to be an employee handbook, an onboarding process. You know, you don't want to have a situation where someone comes to your company and they're having to put their desk together. And I know that's like—

But that's the reality. That is the reality.

And for some startups it is, and understandable. If you're at a 10-person startup, that's likely the case. But when you're a 100, 200-person startup and you've raised your Series B, have raised $300 million, like you should have processes in place to scale. That even means that when you make a hire, before that hire gets onboarded, a week before they join, they should be getting some company swag, a gift, things of that nature that get people excited to engage with companies. And so, I think that onboarding process actually statistically has some relevance because if your onboarding process is stale or legacy, Those employees don't typically stay around. There's a retention issue. So it's all kind of circular— how you treat employees at the start, how you engage with them, how you make sure employees are happy throughout their, their tenure at your company, or how they advance. All those things are actually part of culture. And so when we see companies that are saying, you know, our culture is hitting numbers, it's hitting targets, well, we need to think a little bit deeper here. Because, you know, the truth is, the best talent that you can find for your company, they're going to have offers from other companies as well. And so you have to be competitive in these spaces as far as culture.

Yeah, I think that's a great point. If they really are as good as you think they are, then they probably have multiple offers they're looking at. And if you're just doing those hard numbers, then all they're doing is, well, this person, I have to work this many hours and get this much pay. And I have to work this many hours. And, and that's all they're— that's really all you can compare as the candidate, which I feel makes, makes it harder, especially as a startup. You can't shovel out the money to beat, you're not gonna beat a Fortune 500 company.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that's where mission and values comes to play. What is the mission? You know, one of our, our clients, their mission is to help regarding renewable energy and climate change. They have a mission that people gravitate towards. They're excited to work there. They are mission and values driven. Then you can find great talent that might be taking a pay cut and more risk on the equity side in that case, right? Like, you might be able to not pull all those levers that the best talent could go and work for a Fortune 10 tech company at. But at the same time, some folks aren't just chasing money. They want to go to work and feel good about what they're doing. So it's really important and I think mission critical at early stage companies, as well as larger firms, to constantly be touching base with that culture. Making sure people are excited to work there, that mission and values are aligned as you start to grow or as things change. I also want to say, you know, on the values and culture front, it's not just the onboarding, it's engaging your talent while they're at work, making sure that you're competitive throughout the process, that you're offering whatever top pay and equity and benefits you can as a company, and to overcommunicate. I think what happens is that A lot of executives, when it's a Series A company, are so busy and there might be some gatekeeping of data or where the team is at. Simply overcommunicating with your team will build that rapport and trust with them as well.

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And I want to just add to that culture piece because I want to say some of the quiet part out loud for my startup founders out there. A lot of the time when I hear this word culture, we're afraid we're gonna lose our culture. We're afraid we're gonna lose control and boundaries are gonna be established is what I hear. And that's typically the case, right? We've been used to running so quickly on the weekends, in the middle of the night, that now once you're starting to pass that critical mass of 50-ish employees, you have to, to your earlier point, like you start to have to have boundaries in place and parameters in place. And that's a really hard Pivot because that essentially is you relinquishing controls into your systems. And again, that's why this new age search piece is really interesting because a lot of companies just don't have that either bandwidth or structure to come in and do work like that. And that's the work that naturally is going to make integrating an extra 50, 100, 200 employees that much easier when you can clearly identify these things in, for example, a handbook or in an SOP. So, just want to say on the other side of the culture, Is how founders I find kind of hide behind this need for, for control. And again, I get it. It's what got you there, but what got you there won't necessarily get you to the next spot. Exactly.

Yeah. And Ian, I wanted to bring this up because I think this kind of segues into diversity inclusion, right? DEI is something that has right now been targeted and is something that I think by and large people are scared to talk about or the market looks at as a negative. And what I would say to that is really simple. If you're going to bring a product or service to a global market, your team needs to reflect society. I mean, this is simple math here.

What? You mean you have to actually think about who you're marketing to?

Yeah, exactly. I mean, and I think furthermore, and founders certainly get this at some levels, that friction, the friction, different perspectives, ideas, and the best idea winning, that is the magic sauce for companies, right? If you're, you want to be competitive in the global market today, You want to have the ability for the team to have ideas, feel safe to fail, and also have friction points. So, you know, we've decided as a firm that we're no longer preaching or going out in the market and saying, you know, diversity inclusion is, is super important. And if you get it, you'll be with us. Like, we're past that for our company. We're no longer gonna pitch necessarily D&I because we know it's so integral that The audience that doesn't get it, that doesn't get having a diverse and inclusive workforce, like, Godspeed, good luck in the market. So, you know, if we lose 80% of that market, we're fine with that because we know innovative, like, thought leaders and leaders right now in today's market understand that it's, it's something to leverage, I guess. So I guess I should say we're not scared to talk about it, whereas we know a lot of people are, because smart leaders understand.

Right.

that it's actually quintessential to running a business in this day and age.

I'm glad you brought that up because it's something that, you know, I build internally. We build our design teams for my design firm. We get people together that normally wouldn't be combined. You know, we find really good success on a project if you're— someone comes to us and they want to design, you know, let's say a new car. If you just have car engineers working on it, you will have no new ideas. I don't know if anybody's looked at cars recently. They all just copy each other. There's nothing, there's nothing really, nobody has come up with a really innovative car in a long time. I think like maybe Tesla's ex Falcon wings. And then before that it was the minivan. Like that is the last 20 years.

You're spot on. I mean, I would say Tesla's getting pretty stale.

Too.

But anyways, I digress.

You know, they had their one thing. Yeah, they had their thing, but they're, but they're following, they're copying the, the book, which is, well, after you get to a certain point, now you have a bunch of auto engineers. Yeah, there's no— the new blood is gone because now they've worked at Tesla so long, they are the auto engineer that's done nothing, nothing else now.

And I want to add to that because I think it's, I think it's interesting that you mentioned cars, and I just want to say 2 things. First, you know, when we were coming up with our company, going through the exercises, mission, values, logos, naming, one of the things that came up and was really strong throughout the whole process was this breaking down of echo chambers as one of the big problems in innovation and leadership today.

Silos suck.

They absolutely do. And what was really fascinating, if you go and look at our logo, execnow.co, and check it out, you'll notice that there's a symbol breaking away from another symbol. And actually, the designer who made that Is from Zimbabwe. So, and he was actually a car designer for Rivian and some of the big names.

Okay.

And so it was really strategic to go and find someone that had already been through this process of trying to break into an industry that was stale. And so while he had no experience in exec search, while he didn't understand any of that, he understood that we wanted to stand out through our branding and that we wanted to really make a name for our company as the pivot in exec search. Like that is the innovation that's happening today. So I just thought it was funny that you mentioned the car example because that's so near and dear to me because that was something that we really took through our process when we were trying to look at Exec Search, look at leadership today. It really does draw a lot of parallels to the auto industry and where it finds itself in this need to kind of break into a new— we see the same thing with recruitment.

Yeah. And I, Khalil, consider you couldn't have said it better. And, and, uh, you know, I heard you laughing a little bit on, uh, and said silos suck. And I 1,000, 10,000% agree. I mean, that is, That is when companies are, are essentially slowly dying. When they start to silo off ideas, communication, that is the strategic advantage earlier stage companies have. They can be nimble. They can move fast where they shouldn't have those silos everywhere. You look at NVIDIA and how NVIDIA's organization is ran. It is a flat organization with team leads.

Right.

I just think the old paradigm of having manager, mid-manager, the bureaucracy, it just doesn't make sense for most companies. I would advise companies who are just starting to think different. You do not have to build the company the same way, you know, Ford made their company in 1928.

Yeah, right. You don't have to use the same 30-level pyramid to get out.

Exactly.

Exactly. It worked. It worked in the 1910, 1920, 1930. But guys, it's been 100 years. It's okay. It's time to do it different. Yeah, I've experienced— I worked— now they're bashing all the big companies, but I worked at HP. It was one of my, one of my first jobs. And it was, I think I knew of 5 managers above me, different levels. And I did not get to the VP level. I did not touch the seat there. I was nowhere near. And that, it was that kind of experience is why I don't like my current firm. We, there's team leads. Yeah.

You're caught in the video.

I own it. There's a team lead for whatever we're doing. And then everybody else. There's no more than 3 levels to any—

I remember, I remember at Nike reporting to my director and being like, if there's one thing that I want to communicate to the boss that's 7 levels above you in your biannual meeting that I need for our department, it's this thing. And I think back to that and I'm like, how crazy is that? Me having to fit into a pretzel to get these basic things done. So it strikes a chord because that's exactly what we're trying to reinvigorate.

And I think that the irony of all this though is that those large companies, whether it's HP or a top 10 tech firm, what they want is to be more nimble. They want that communication, but they've created so much bureaucracy, it's impossible. So, you know, it's, it's not a surprise, Ian, that your, your firm is hired by those companies, or our firm is, to go mix things up. But it's, I mean, again, the biggest competitive advantage earlier stage companies have is nimbleness. Making sure value communication, mission alignment is happening at the early stages. Most people don't want to go into a job and sit at a desk for 9 to 10 hours a day. That is not the aspirations that I know of a lot of people, but people get stuck at those larger companies. There's so much opportunity to make impact and work at mission-driven companies. And so I just think about how do companies make sure they avoid that bureaucratic large organizational system that is really easy to fall into because it's kind of the default.

Oh, especially. And if you get, you know, you're talking about startups that if they're in their Series B, now you have, you know, you have multiple VCs involved, right? And there's that. And there's so many points of ingrained silo it, break it up, 5 levels of management. Like it just, it's so ingrained. And one of the things I'll throw on there too is if you think about your company, right? And you're like, oh yeah, there's 7. I worked at Nike too. So yeah, 7, 7 levels up. I need something, guys. I need, can you please give me something? But there's also 3 degrees of separation.

Yeah.

So when you actually think about it, if you have more than 3 levels, you're just introducing, it's easier for me to go talk to the president Of, I don't know, pick a country outside of the US. It's easier for me to do that because I'm only 3 connections away than it is to talk to my manager 7 levels up that I actually need something from. I don't, I don't need to talk to the leader of Zimbabwe. I need what this person in my company is, but that could actually be easier because there's only, you got to find the right person, but.

Yeah.

That, you know, thinking, keeping that in mind as you're building your structure, it's whenever I use that, that usually helps people go, oh yeah, why am I putting 7 managers in between?

Exactly.

You know, you guys have seen the market changing. What do you guys, you know, there's obviously the mission values, you got to involve, think about the brand and all of this. What else are you seeing as a trend, you know, between now and, and kind of moving towards, you know, obviously you still need diversity involved. That doesn't actually go away, but kind of what else do you see as a trend moving forward that companies should be looking out for?

Yeah, I think Khalil will, will be able to nail this. I wanna tee up a little bit, like we are so excited about fractional work and the future of work and what that looks like.

Okay.

Nimble companies can be how, uh, you know, companies that are 10, 20 people now can be multi-billion dollar companies with the, the leverage of AI and agents, uh, but also fractional experts. So I think we should probably delve into that a little bit.

Yeah, fractional piece is going to be a non-negotiable, like diversity, equity, and inclusion in your workforce's model if you want to be competitive. Fortune 500 companies right now are focusing more on AI engineers in the fractional world, but eventually they will start to integrate that at all tiers of the company. In 2021, after I made my first exit, I found myself laid off 3 weeks before my wedding. And I had been someone that had generated $60 to $100 million for Nike. You know, I had all the accolades. You know, I was on a trajectory and all of a sudden I didn't have a job. And so I started looking around. I started doing research. At the time, LinkedIn had said there were about 3,000 fractional folks. They denoted themselves as fractional. 3,000 people. As of last year, that number had skyrocketed to 150,000 people on LinkedIn specifically that they could measure. Where I found myself was pitching directly to CEOs a fractional CPO role, which essentially my pitch was that you can be innovative and move very quickly given the advancement of AI, but also given your competitors' bureaucracy. You need to move quickly and you need to have leaders in place who know how to move quickly. And not moving quickly for the sake of moving fast, but moving quickly strategically. So SOPs, implementation, communication, having all these things in place that would allow you to move fast. So overnight I found myself with a fully robust, you know, fractional business, which is when Colin and I had ended up meeting. You know, my first year within fractional work, I had made about $320,000, which was— made me— made my head spin, but it showed me there was a demand here. And the demand was really coming from the startup world. We're talking pre-seed and seed companies needing that competitive advantage to go and fundraise. Now, I'm seeing it across the board. I'm looking at companies who are raising hundreds of million dollars and are setting across these huge budgets for fractional experts to come into their business and build things and do them well and do them quickly. And so, fractional is kind of two-faced. And I look at it in 2 different ways. It's the future of work. But it also enables companies to unlock innovation even quicker. I think where the media has spun fractional work is that this is a worker who's between jobs and not bought in, when that couldn't be further from the truth. Fractional businesses are typically fueled by referrals. And so, if I come in and do a really bad job, you're not going to refer me to anyone else and no one's going to hear about me. And so, there's actually this huge budding industry that's just starting to Find its feet where fractional work can embed in some of the biggest companies. And I think Google last year put out a fractional AI engineer, which was the first time I had ever seen that on LinkedIn. But yeah, when we're looking at fractional leadership and looking to place fractional executives, this becomes really exciting. It's the best interview a candidate can give, and it's the best risk-free trial a company can have. Now, you're gonna have to spend some money here, but it's a Fraction of what you would spend figuring out 6 months to a year down the road that your full-time executive is not a match, has no emotional intelligence, and that your team hates. That is a way bigger risk than bringing someone in for, you know, a quarter of the price or even half the price to really give them a dialed-in project to go and execute against. Now, I will say everything we spoke about at the start of this interview becomes doubly true. You need to have your shit in order.

Yeah.

Pardon my French, in order to fully get the breadth of fractional work, or else it just turns into another toxic position that is a symptom of your, maybe your broken culture. So, I would say there are companies that are ready for fractional work, but I would say majority of companies aren't actually ready because they don't have the infrastructure to be able to effectively integrate it. And that's another piece of what we do within change management is there is a difference between integrating a fractional leader And a full-time leader. Fractional leader has a really small time to come in and make change. So you can't hold them up because if you do, you give them that out essentially. Whereas a full-time worker, there's a little more time. There's a little more room for mistake and error. There's a little more room for testing. And so Colin teed me up because he knows how passionately I feel about fractional work and that I truly see it as this huge differentiator and a potential business center in a company if they do it right.

So how would you, you know, thinking, because we have, I'm used to employees, you have your contractors, kind of the gig economy is like really short-term contractors where you don't necessarily have a big relationship, right? It's really small work. And now you're talking about fractional. How should people be thinking about what's the useful, you know, how does this take that spot next to those other? Categories that everybody has in their head and be able to think about, you know, structuring, like basically what is it good for and what should you, what should you never, never do fractionally?

I'll start this and then I'll let Colin wrap it up. I think the biggest difference, cuz I hear this, what's the difference between a fractional and a consultant? Historically, consultants have been strategy focused. Like your goal is to come in, build a strategy for a team to execute against. Whereas a fractional is not only strategy, their implementation and potentially owning it. So like they are your point of contact, right? When you go and fundraise, your fractional CPO is very well your CPO at that moment. So that's the huge shift that I think people are trying to make. Yes, there are consultants that implement. Yes, that is true. But at the crux of it, fractional leadership is different than a consultant because you have that tried and true ability to go from strategy to tactic.

Yeah.

to implementation, and then to proving the ROI of that strategy. Whereas consultants typically aren't required to go down that full pathway. But Colin, I'll let you add to that as well.

Yeah, I mean, I think you nailed it. I think something to point out here, you know, it, it, the, depending if you're labor or you're the employer, there's different perspectives, right? I think one thing about fractional work, I mean, the work we do is fractional. There are some clients that pay us a monthly retainer and then upside for hires. There's other clients who come in and say, we have a quarter project of change management we need you to work on with us. So in a sense, we're a fractional and consulting firm. But I also want to distinguish different types of labor. Fractional is not gig work. And that's not to put down gig work. It's important for our economy. I certainly use gig work throughout my day. I think most people do, whether it's an Uber, Or getting, you know, a cabinet fixed. But I think fractional work is expertise. It's someone coming in on a project basis that can expand to potential employment if that's part of their services. But so from an employer standpoint, you are getting experts, you are mitigating time, and you're going to spend more capital upfront, but you're mitigating risk as well because it's proven experts. So that's just an example of what I think of fractional work being done. And that could be an example of a Series A or B company, especially at a Series A company, you don't need to hire a CFO yet, a chief financial officer. Highly do not advise that.

But a lot of folks do though. Yeah.

It burns your, your money down.

So when you get a full C-suite, that's like, well, and so that CFO is, is basically doing monthly books and then on a quarter, uh, putting your numbers together. Like that does not make sense to hire a full-time worker there at a Series A company. But hiring a fractional CFO completely makes sense in that case. Similar to regulation. So if you need a regulator, if you need someone who's done FDA work at a biotech company, it makes a lot of sense to get fractional experts in there if you're still an early stage company, right? So there's a differentiator of bringing on experts when you need that expert and when you need that full-time expert to come on play. So I think that's on the labor side or on the The hiring side. What I want to speak of to people who are in the field or curious about fractional work, if you have an expertise and knowledge in something and it's valued in the market, you can be a fractional worker. And I would argue for a lot of people, they're scared of fractional work or becoming a fractional worker because they think, how do I get to market? Do I have a website? How do I create an SOW? How do I brand myself? All the simple stuff to just start a business. And by the way, we can help with that. But that's not, you know, what, what you have to be thinking about as a fractional worker. A lot of times workers who work at a company think that they're safe, that, you know what, I have a job, I have benefits, I'm at least safe. Fractional work sounds really scary, you know, but it turns out once you start fractional work, you realize that you earn more of your equity and pay, and you have direct relationships with founders or C-levels or business operators. And you're learning constantly. So you're owning your whole book of business. So I think fractional becomes really attractive to folks once they start to learn the benefits of fractional work. You can actually make more money with your expertise. It's not for everyone, but there's a lot of competitive advantage to do fractional work. And I think the way the market's heading with AI and agents, that we're going to see a more and more or a larger demand in the marketplace for that expertise and fractional work.

Right. So it sounds like, you know, just the kind of quick summary, correct me if this is wrong, but it's really for these high level where you'd typically be locked into hiring a VP or C-suite person that you just don't have the amount of work to justify the salary bill to do that. And as a way to bring people on, maybe try some stuff out, and then especially for these companies that are raising See, I know how important it is to go, when you go raise money, to go, yeah, I have somebody that can fill the CFO role. I have all the— because they're looking not at just the founder, but who's the personnel stack behind you to bring in that work without necessarily giving away 10% to every person, which is a different model and you only have 100% to give away anyway. So that doesn't— That doesn't last very long, but give you that, that, you know, personnel stack basically behind you to go, yeah, we have the technical know-how, we have the people, and maybe be able to expand to hiring them once you have, let's see, you secure your Series B. Now we have the $300 million round. We can spend $2 million a year on, on our top talent because you're going to be busy and you can justify that better. Exactly.

Exactly.

Amazing. Yeah, I've seen that on the rise some, so it's great to have you guys talk about, about it. And really just the, what I haven't heard is like, how do you leverage that? How can you as a business be smart and apply it? And the different, you know, they're not just a consultant, which I think is, you know, from the business side is, well, are they just another consultant? Because I already have, you know, 100 of those people reaching, reaching out every week trying to sell me consulting services.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think that's the good— that's the big paradigm shift is, and then again, this will come into focus. And I think fractional was birthed out of kind of this bad name for consultants that I think they had made, which is you come in and do the minimum and you leave. Whereas a fractional is like, hey, I'm coming in for something very specific that I know. I'm coming in to set up your HubSpot. I'm coming in to set your go-to-market strategy. I'm coming here to set up your AI agents to run as the CEO.

Right?

Like these things are highly tactical and talk right back to ROI. So, and in my experience, you know, my retainers, you know, they're 4xing my retainer within 6 months or faster. And that's tried and true. So you'll know a consultant when you see one and you'll know a fractional when you see one. And I think it's just taking time to start to see that in the market. But it's a really exciting time for folks who are hearing about it even now. Like I mentioned, that number is across the quarter million now on LinkedIn. So about a quarter million people distinguish themselves as fractional, and that number is actually looking to exponentially increase this year, given the economy, et cetera.

Got it. Amazing. Well, this has been really great chatting with you guys. I think there's a lot of really good information. We covered a lot, a lot of things, and I think it's super valuable. You know, it's, it can be overwhelming for Businesses, but even if you're a startup, and this is what I'll say to startups, you gotta think about these things. If you don't, you're gonna turn into the next crashed bad culture startup that nobody wants to work, work for. So, you know, keep in mind all this stuff. It is doable. And, you know, working with guys like you, being able to get the consulting side, maybe guide Have the guidance through it and make sure you're checking those boxes off before, before you have to go pay another consultant, you know, half a million dollars to fix your problem and a fractional person to go execute and solve. Like it gets exponentially more expensive if you don't do it right to begin with. So that's, uh, yeah. And, uh, would love, you know, any other comments you guys have, but then also for everyone, where, what's the best way to reach out to you guys?

Thank you so much, Ian, for having us. You can follow us on LinkedIn, ExecNow. You can visit execnow.co. And really just remembering leadership diversity, whether that's personnel, whether that's, again, fractional first, full-time, isn't just an HR goal. It has become a business necessity across the board. So, right now, we're in the future. So, it's time to act and feel free to reach out. It's too late, guys. We're here. Yeah, we're here already. Feel free to reach out to us if we can be of service.

Yeah, appreciate your time, Ian. Thank you.

Thank you.

And that wraps up another episode of the Conscious Design Podcast. If today's episode inspired you to bring your product idea to life and turn it into a sustainable 7-figure business, visit petermanfirm.com or click the link below. Your ideas have the power to change the world, and we're here to help make that happen. Thank you for joining us, and I'll see you on the next episode.