Leveraging AI and Overcoming the Founder's Conundrum- Nikhil Hunshikatti- Fractional C-Suite Retreat - Episode #61

Growing a business is hard, but it does not have to be.

Once a week, we take a break from the hustle and bustle in business to talk about innovations and what's new in the C-suite. This is the Fractional C-Suite Retreat, and I'm Joseph Frost. Pull up a seat at the fire, grab a drink, smoke a cigar, and just join me as we relax, learn, and get inspired. This retreat is sponsored by Your CMO, helping organizations grow with better marketing strategy.

Welcome. Today's guest is a fractional CMO at Your CMO. He's got a history from utilizing data-driven tactics and funnel optimizations to everything in between. He's got expertise in driving growth through creative marketing strategies, customer lifecycle management and journeys, and partnership integrations. He gets dynamic results in rapidly changing industries. He consistently collaborates with organizational stakeholders to develop sustainable marketing plans that foster growth, has managed and grown a billion-dollar line of business in the D2C subscription vertical while also driving 2x growth in digital subscription volume and revenue in less than 2 years. That's just some of his accomplishments. With that, I wanna welcome officially Nikhil Hansikadi. Welcome, Nikhil.

Thank you, Joe. Who was all that about? Was that me?

I don't know. I just reading what they told me to read.

It sounded really good. Thank you for making me look good. I appreciate it.

I think it was probably ChatGPT. Give us a good description of an amazing CMO.

Thank you. I appreciate that. And thank you for having me on the show today.

Yeah, it's great to have you. So let's just get right into the question I like to start with is What's one thing that's going on in the C-suite today that you think is a big opportunity that other C-suite leaders should know about that they may not?

Well, I think you referenced ChatGPT for sure. I mean, I'm sure that's— AI is pretty much on everybody's mind, depending irrespective of which business line you are in, right? Everybody's thinking about AI. But in these worlds, I guess the world we live in, one of my favorite— I like to talk in quotes. So one of my favorite quotes right now is a quote that was attributed to Ernest Hemingway, which is, "Write drunk, edit sober," right? So I kind of translate that to our world by saying, "Write or create with AI, edit with human." I think it's important to not let the technology drive you, but for us to drive that technology. And that's the conversation I have with pretty much every C-suite executive that I interact with.

Yeah, I just saw a stat today. Somebody shared a graph and I, I didn't dig into the source material, but the data was comparing two posts side by side, one written with AI and one written by a human over a 5 or 6 month period. It might have been multiple posts. Once again, I don't know. To summarize, the human-written post was, had 5 times as much traffic over that 6 months as the artificial AI-written post. To go to your point, I mean, AI is good, but it's not good enough. And it can be a great guide, great, absolutely, thought starter, but it's certainly today not yet an answer to those types of solutions.

Yeah. And I mean, it's— we have to recognize the platforms that we operate off of.

Right.

And I'll give you an example. I mean, just like you just said about, hey, AI-generated content versus human-generated content, even Facebook's algorithm, which is AI-driven, essentially optimizes for human or user-generated content more so than professionally generated content. There's a reason why, right? And that's the intent. And the experience of that platform is all about user generation. So when— I mean, and this will probably resonate with some of the performance marketers out there— is the quality of your creative, as if you make it look like it's highly studio/professionally generated, it performs— it does not perform as well as potentially something that feels like it's done out of like a garage. Yeah. So how do we kind of maintain that native experience that the platform is meant to have as part of our marketing strategy, whether it's AI-driven or it's human-driven or it's platform-driven? I think that has to be part of the equation.

Yeah. And I think the context for how you're using information is important because I'm okay with AI-driven content if I'm looking up a dictionary response, like, what does this word mean? I, I don't need a human to write that. AI is fine. But if I'm actually expecting to have a conversation with somebody about the meaning of, or about, you know, Who's your favorite author? And I really want to know who your favorite author is and why. I want a conversation and I expect a human response, not an AI response. And the moment I feel like it's not authentic is when it all goes away and it doesn't work. But when I'm expecting the AI response, it's okay. It's perfectly okay.

True. True. Again, contextually relevant.

Yeah, absolutely. Had an interesting conversation today. I'd like your take on it because you do some work with some large non— a large nonprofit, or maybe they're not nonprofit, but they have the appeal of what a nonprofit might have. There's an organization that's currently looking at AI in two ways. As a nonprofit, they are a foundation. So, you know, they're wanting to write content and generate information about their grants and giving and get the word out from awareness standpoint. So they want to use some content there, but they're concerned what the perception will be if that organization is using AI to get the word out. And then at the same time, they're very concerned about people using AI to submit grants and how do they screen AI grants or grants for AI usage. It's a conundrum that people are in these days on both sides of the equation.

Absolutely. And so to address your first point, the Pro Football Hall of Fame is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. And what we do from a mission standpoint is celebrating excellence, honoring the greatest that ever played the game, and preserving its history. So think about those mission statements. So it all revolves around what we are, and we set very clear boundaries. So if we are all about elevating greatness, if we are all about celebrating the greatest moments, if we are all about celebrating the history of the game, the Hall of Fame has probably the best and the most exhaustive archive of historical artifacts and content around the game that everybody loves. Yes, football, right? And is there application from an AI standpoint to kind of dig into, hook into that archive and kind of really build out content? And I mean, we can create reams and reams of content with AI. Intentionally, we've not gone down that path at this point. Is there an appetite? We have to figure that out. But why? So the question is, why haven't we gone down that path? Because we haven't figured out yet, or I think the process of process where we are at right now is identifying whether AI provides that lens of authenticity to the perspective and the perspective of the historians and the content writers that are fully immersed in those artifacts and the game's history to be able to bring that human-level intelligence and perspective into the content that we put out into the ecosystem. So do we have the confidence that it will happen? Do we have the confidence that it will translate? Do we believe that authenticity will come through? Because that's really who we are as a brand. And I would suggest that same, I guess the nonprofit that you're referencing, kind of apply that same filter is lending ourselves to AI is the easiest, is the path of least resistance right now.

Yeah, yeah.

We have to layer on the filters of how are we able to stay true to brand? Are we able to stay, authentic to who we are as a brand? And more importantly, are we able to create content that's going to be relatable to the folks who are going to experience our brand is really what it all comes down to. Applications of AI can be more downstream than upstream in some cases where you can operationalize some of the menial tasks to start off from a foundational standpoint, but more upstream tasks, I feel at this point, depending on, again, it all depends on the brand that you represent. You want to have a lot more human touch at this point than not.

Yeah, I can just imagine all of the possible creative ways to use AI with the archive footage and documents you have. We could create new games that never existed. Let's play the, you know, the '84 Bears against 2024, 2023 Chiefs and see who wins that game and those matchups. And I mean, AI could really do some of that for us. Oh, it's just, I can only imagine the fun you could have with it. But if people were offended by it, it would not serve the mission at all. Yeah. Interesting.

But there are offshoots, right? I mean, we have a puzzle. In our app that updates every week. Now at this point, there's probably, again, there's probably some human who's basically going through the archives and building that puzzle. Can we apply AI towards that? Absolutely. I mean, those are conversations that we need to start having. And that's absolutely part of the road mapping.

Well, you could have like this just stats alone, being able to use AI to quickly retrieve facts from your database online. But then what happens is in AI, you start getting these hallucinations that happen. And as soon as you have one wrong fact come out, one wrong stat about somebody's superhero, the whole thing would come tumbling. So there's those—

That's why write AI, edit human.

Yeah, yeah. Well, we've heard the horror stories already, how that's not worked out for some.

Yep.

Some brands that made that mistake.

Absolutely. So, I mean, you asked at the outset, you asked about, hey, what's on everybody's mind, right? So that's one for sure. And how do we solve for that? I think a lot of the other thing I would like to add is a lot of, at least the two engagements that I'm in the midst of, one is a founder-run operation. And I think one of the biggest struggles for founder and operation as they transition from that startup or early growth stage to mid-stage is how do you transition from being the founder CEO to a visionary and trusting professional managers to kind of run the operation? I think that's That's something that I believe is very relevant to a lot of the mid-sized, small and medium businesses that we interact with, especially in the fractional world, right? Because those are the organizations that need and can benefit from the experience and the background that professional large organization CMOs can bring in, but not at the scale and the commitment., but at least be able to leverage those best practices, uh, that, that we can bring in. So that's, that's, that's, that's an interesting conversation theme, uh, right now under nature. I'm sure that's for many.

Well, awareness of it certainly is part of the solution. What are some of the other strategies or tactical ways to get a founder to get out of his or her own way?

Great question. I mean, if you start digging in, right? So, couple of conversations and I'll give you very practical real-life examples here. So, a founder has the habit when things are going great, they stay out of the way. But if things are not going as intended, they will transcend structural boundaries and go straight to the source of the output. Now, a couple of things happen in that. One, you essentially make, so, you know, from an employee morale standpoint, you don't come talk to me when things are going great. When things are not going great, that means I'm at fault. So, you kind of build a sense of insecurity in that employee's mind. And two, you're transcending authority and structural layers which destroy or disrupt the operating rhythm of the organization. So I think having awareness of the intent is never that, right? From a founder's perspective, they are invested, they're committed, that's the passion that they bring, which is amazing to watch. But having that awareness of what that action can do downstream for your organization and the morale of the employees is important. Two is the second area is, hey, how do you help them balance between, okay, as a founder visionary, you need to think the next 3 to 5 years or 1 to 3 years, let's say, versus the here and now. Like, how do you separate that? Because the push-pull, it's my baby. I've watched it grow. I need to be part of every little step that we take. That is a process. And I think having the right leadership team around you who not just, I mean, they're not yes men, but they're also serving as reminders of your role. Like, hey, we got this. Let's, let's us worry about it. We'll come to you for advice as we are going down this path, but let's kind of let us take it forward from it. So kind of helping them find that right balance. And the third thing I was going to say is, you know, building good bench strength in these small and medium-sized businesses also becomes very important because As you're looking to scale, let's say you want to go from that $30 million to $50 million. I mean, that's 1.6 times your scale. Let's say you have 75 employees, you can get there with 150 employees, or let's just say 30 to 60, right? Just using easy math. You can't operate the way you operate right now with your key leaders in the midst of every initiative. Because you have to build bench strength, you have to build that second in command and that next tier of leaders to be able to take initiatives through. So I think how do we empower, how do we let those employees make mistakes, how do we let them kind of take things through and then coach them from your vantage point? I think those are 3 areas that I think are really important for the leaders and the vision, the founders to embrace as we make that leap?

Yeah, I think it's so common for founder-led companies to reach a point where they either have to embrace what you just described, a pathway to exit the day-to-day operation roles and into more of the future visionary roles. And I do feel that's the entrepreneur's duty is to be the visionary always. And it, when the company's small, you can be the visionary and an operator, but at some point you can't. But then I see a lot of founders, unfortunately, that rather than building a business, they've been building themselves a job and they get really comfortable in that job. And so they they don't share that mindset of growth and they just kind of pretend they do because they're trying to grow, but yet they don't really want to grow. They don't want their job to change, but they can't get the growth. And then they start becoming either frustrated or stagnant. And we have, you know, we've had those engagements with clients like that. I have I've had partners like that that feel there's just, you know, things can continue on as usual and they can keep staying in the way and they end up being the bottleneck to their own growth and they don't even see it. They're like, it's hidden from their own.

I mean, there are instances of where the founder can actually very well transition into that CEO role. But there are instances where that just doesn't happen. And I think it is incumbent, it is extremely important for that founder to recognize that. And part of that is one, surrounding yourself with the right leadership team who are able to help upstream coach you. But more importantly, also have maybe a board of advisors, right, that serve as mentors and coaches that help guide that path forward. Because having that support structure is extremely important because it can be lonely up there sometimes. And having someone to kind of talk things through and bounce things off and use as a sounding board. Those are all extremely, extremely critical factors for helping those founders and visionaries make that transition. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think a board of advisors or even a strong peer group like an EO or a YPO— yep. Organizations have— provide those informal boards of advisors that can help an individual see— sweep a person, grow, or at least awareness of their lack of growth. Absolutely. Yeah. It's a big deal. You know, the other thing I think that is important as part of this conversation is the owner's own kind of area of passion or genius zone. That's the hardest thing for them to let go of. So, someone who's a strong accounting controller, operations-minded, founder isn't gonna wanna let go of that stuff, but will gladly let go of the sales and the marketing and vice versa. So when we come into engagements as fractional CMOs and the owner, the founder has been the default marketing strategist and believes, you know, it probably is really good, but maybe not technically good, they're just experientially good. That can make it really hard that what you're describing for them to truly let go and let you do your job, right?

Yep. Yep. I mean, everybody is a marketer, right? I mean, that's the best part about marketing. And the worst part about being in marketing is everybody can have an opinion. A creative message can have so many different interpretations and everybody has a different, different perspective on what, what that message should and could be. So yes, it's— but that's why it's fun to be able to test, experiment, prove, disprove hypothesis. That's what marketing is all about. And in the world we live in right now with the data that's available to us with some of these performance marketing channels, my God, I mean, you can run— I mean, there's one test that I'm running right now that has 10 different variants. So it's a 10-variable multivariate test that is running concurrently on a checkout flow. I mean, it's amazing to just watch this unfold. And as we read stats on certain things and we kind of start dropping variants because they are under— I mean, because these are all different ideas and hypotheses that we want to test and we wanted to move fast. So let's dump it all in and create an MVT. That allows us to test all those inputs in really rapid order. So, it's good in a way that the world we live in allows us to do that. It probably wasn't the case maybe a couple decades ago.

Yeah, it's gone from A/B testing to A through Z testing because of all of the different technology that's available now. And then back to AI, I mean, AI now, speeds up that operationally and analytically as well. You can operationalize those different variables and then you can analyze the data and the results much quicker.

Yep, definitely so.

Definitely so. So you've been a fractional CMO for a bit. What do you see as the primary differences as a CMO between being fractional and being full-time? Organization?

Uh, great question. Um, I've been in this, I guess, fractional business for about 6+ months right now. Um, and I think it, it, it, it had its learning curve for me. Um, you know, you know, it's all— again, it's all personality-driven, and I'm I'm built to kind of just immerse myself into pretty much everything that I can get my hands on and then realize, oh, I don't have that level of commitment or the amount of time or resources available to me to kind of take on everything. So, the learning curve was how do we focus the initiatives on manageable but still stretch goals that we can take on which are meaningful and are going to drive impact to the organization and fully own those initiatives while guiding and advising on other things. So kind of defining that balance was a little bit of a learning curve for me, but I think I'm, I'm at a point where I'm able to build those guardrails better. Because in a full-time gig, I mean, you own everything. As a CMO, you're responsible for the P&L, you're responsible for making the number, and you are responsible for driving pretty much everything that goes on in your line of business. So making that shift was a little bit of a process, but we are getting there slowly. Two, I guess, is the, you know, the balance between managing teams and holding teams accountable, right? So it's a, it's a, it's a fine balance because you're a fractional CMO and yes, there is a team that you manage or you help drive, but you're not there 100% of the time. So how do you build that relationship How do you build that process of engagement? How do you build the rapport with the team members where trust and credibility transfer happens relatively quickly and in rapid order to be able to make sure that they see where you're coming from and are able to drive that vision downstream versus you being there kind of helping frame that along the path. Communication becomes important. Transparency becomes important. I think having leadership buy-in becomes absolutely critical. I'll say I think what works the best is approaching, and I think I said this earlier, I'm a big believer in experimentation, and experimentation comes with proof of concept. So as you're coming in new to any of these fractional operations or fractional gigs, it is extremely important for you to prove your mettle through small wins that allows us to establish that trust and credibility that, hey, this guy knows his stuff or this person knows his or her stuff and we can take that, I mean, we can chip away at that slowly, but then once you establish that, then you start driving things much faster.

Yeah, I really do think it's a trust issue primarily from the moment there's an opportunity to the closing of that opportunity into an engagement, to the first touch with every new person you meet along the way as you're trying to build the plan and strategies. If you can't establish trust, then it, it, there's no foundation of which to continue the engagement. It doesn't work out long term.

Exactly.

You nailed it. Having some quick wins along the way helps without those. You can get away with it in a full-time gig. You get 6 months before anybody expects you to do anything in a full-time gig. Yep. In a fractional gig, you get 6 days sometimes. What did you do last week?

You're on the clock. You're on the clock all the time. So, and that's a great point that you brought up, Joe. I mean, you're absolutely right. I mean, as fractional executives, we are proving ourselves every minute because that's kind of how the client or the partner sees us as an external coming in. Although, yes, you're still part of the leadership team, but you're still an outsider. Yeah. So you're treated— hey, is that minute spent on an hour spent generating enough value? And that's how you evaluate.

I had a— I have a friend, she does marketing consulting work, somewhat like a fractional CMO, but she doesn't work for us. But I know I connected her with Her current client is another good friend of mine. And so the client friend of mine told me the other day, she says, I love that you connected me with so-and-so and she's amazing. But I just realized that she's so amazing. She's always offering to help. Like, oh, I'll go. And it's a local engagement. Oh, I'll go run and get that. Or I'll go over there and deliver that, whatever it might be. And she goes, I can't pay her that dollar per hour to go do that delivery. I just realized that she's a CMO. She's not a full-time person just sitting on staff on salary. But it was hard because she wanted to just dive in and help. But then the owner's like, well, that's great, but that's an awfully expensive delivery cost to send my CMO over to drop off some flowers.

Yeah, I mean, that's a great point because I mean, I find myself guilty of that, not the driving something over, but hey, there was a project on one of my clients' roster and which was an offshoot of an initiative that I was driving and this team member came up and said, hey, can you help me with something? And it was about writing copy for a, affiliate ad messaging platform. Like, sure, I can provide you some guidelines. And I just went in and kind of wrote up copy, which again, the intent of me jumping in there was making sure that what we present from a messaging standpoint is on brand, right? Because that's the— so are we attacking it from a right value proposition standpoint? Are we clearly illustrating and transparently stating what all the benefits are. So making sure that that aligns. So delivered that, like, all right, here you go. Now hopefully you can replicate that for the rest of the affiliate agreements that we have. And then I was kind of translating this as part of my conversation, as part of our weekly touch base. I'm like, it's amazing. Thank you. I mean, it's great that you did that, but hey, let me know next time because I don't know if that's value. I mean, that's— is that something that you should be working on as a CMO? It opens up— it opens my eyes up to, hey, we may not have this resource, so maybe we need to think about that. Right? Right. So that's always a balance. And it's, I think, something that we need to think about as a fractional, because you're always being evaluated with that lens of, You know, as an outsider looking in.

Yeah, well, in our Your CMO model, we charge a flat monthly fee, so we're not charging by the hour. So that extra copywriting work that you did or that extra delivery that, you know, I would do for a client, that's internal scope creep. Like, that's on me. Like, oh my gosh, my dollar per hour is going way down when I do this activity, which isn't important because we don't charge by the hour, but the concept is real. And I'm surprised or not surprised, but it's interesting to see that even though we don't charge by the hour, your client in that situation was still questioning, should you be using an hour at all on that activity? And that's a good reminder. Even when we don't charge by the hour, we're expected to produce and perform at a high hourly rate when we should be doing low hourly work.

Yeah, I think it's, yeah, we are evaluated on valuable outcomes. Yeah. Not on the— So, and again, that's another balance, right? So, how do you deliver valuable outcomes? Because some of those take time, right? So, I try to structure most of my engagements and I'm a 2x2 matrix guy. You've probably heard me say this before is, Level of effort, level of impact, right? So at any given point in time, you want to be working on things that are going to be iteratively and incrementally driving value while having key milestones/roadmap items that are going to drive step function growth. So how do you balance that? Because again, that's the proof of concept, constant quick wins, right? So you constantly keep delivering those quick wins while you build credibility which allows you to take some of those Step Functions goals. So that hopefully helps grease the skids, so to speak, and helps you gain traction and momentum with the rest of the organization and stakeholders.

Yeah, I think that's a good point is that the fractional executive or fractional professional that is inside of an organization has a real ability to drive some change at a quick pace if they're given enough freedom by the owner, because they just bring a totally different mentality to that role and that area than a full-time person may have in the past. Have you seen that true in your case, that you're able to bring a different level of energy as a fractional than you may have been able to bring as a full-time employee?

Absolutely. And I'll give you an example. I mean, very just 2 weeks back is when we migrated to Shopify for the Pro Football Hall of Fame, right? And again, the intent there was obviously to elevate the stature of the brand and run it on a platform that allows for national scale and best-in-class technology versus legacy platforms. It took, it literally, it was a process of discovery that took almost 3 to 4 weeks into my engagement. Like, hey, this is a no-brainer, we need to have this happen, right? But then from going from there to getting it executed, we had to go through a certain process of evaluation, internal sell-through where instead of just doing e-commerce, migration, we ended up doing a whole point of sale and e-commerce migration. So we have Shopify as the common platform across all. Would it have happened at that same pace if it was all purely driven internally? Probably not, because heck, you have a day job. Nobody wants to uproot the system and technology stack and move on to something different while things are running. Because one, change is not easy. Two, things are humming, why change? And that is a, I mean, that's a function of getting into a comfort zone in your, and the responsibility of a change agent. That's what I look at any of us as fractional. The function of a change agent is to come in and drive that. Process. So would it have happened if I had not been there? Probably not. But because I came in and then it was a wake-up call for the rest of the org, and I'm like, hey, we absolutely need to do this. And it was amazing to watch the collaboration and the rallying that eventually it stopped becoming something that somebody outside the organization is driving. It became an organization-wide call-out. Like the team was getting together, the team was managing the process, the team was pushing the vendor to get things done, the team was, you know, It was all about, hey, how do we connect the dots between POS and e-commerce? So that transition was fun to watch from the push at the beginning to it almost becoming, well, you know, the saying goes, the snowball that keeps rolling down the mountain and catches momentum. It was amazing, but it was fulfilling. Because we got something done in less than 8 to 12 weeks after we went, we got the green light to execute, which is unheard of at the shop, at the Hall of Fame here on any projects. Or I would say in my experience, kind of this level of migration effort being completed with the amount of inventory that we have to manage, it was ridiculous. Hats off to the team to have pulled it off. Yeah.

I would, you know, on the outside, I would have said a project like that is 6 to 12 months. You get it right out of the gate. Oh, yeah. There's no way 12 weeks you'll have that fully migrated and working.

Yes.

Fully working. Yeah. Well, kudos to you. I know I've got another merchandiser you're talking to, online merchandiser that you're talking to. That's a good win to be able to showcase.

It would be absolutely, absolutely. I mean, if these are transferable skills, and I believe all marketers bring transferable skills, it just takes a little bit to gain that trust from adjacent, if not complementary or supplementary industry verticals to be able to see that. Yeah.

Well, let's end on that high note because it's exciting to think about the work that you've done and what's going to be next for you. But I appreciate the time you gave us today and your insights into AI and the founder-led companies. I call it sometimes the founder's conundrum. It's like, how do you get out of your own way? And in culture, the fractional culture change that can be really driven. So appreciate all of your shares on those subjects.

Oh, thank you. I mean, it's been an honor. Thanks, first of all, for letting me be part of your CMO community. And thanks for all your guidance and advice along the way. And thank you for letting me be on this show. I appreciate it.

Yeah, terrific. And for all of our listeners, thank you for listening. And if you want to get a hold of Nikhil, you could reach out to him on LinkedIn. The details are in the show notes. That's probably the best way to reach him. And if you get a chance and you haven't already, please subscribe to our podcast. My producers remind me to ask everybody to do that. So, thank you very much and we'll see you on the next episode. And that's a wrap.

There's another successful episode of the Fractional C-Suite Retreat. See our show notes and more episodes at FractionalCSuiteRetreat.com. This podcast is sponsored by Your CMO, helping organizations grow, save time and money with better marketing strategy and fractional execution. Visit them at Y-O-R-C-M-O dot com. Your CMO dot com. Spelled wrong on purpose.