Partnering For Success - Fractional C-Suite Retreat - Episode # 009

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.

Today's guest is extremely knowledgeable in his field of business. Consulting, has exceptional capacity for teaching others, has consulted for industry leaders, and manages as the managing partner, ProCFO Partners. Nelson Templer is my guest. Welcome, Nelson.

How are you?

Hey, Joe, we're doing well. Thank you for having me on.

Terrific. So I'm glad you're here today with me. As we were discussing earlier, I'm at home in quarantine, so my whole family's dealing with quarantine issues, but it didn't keep me away from the Zoom. And nothing is transmittable through digital viruses as far as I know. So glad, glad we're here. One of the questions I like to start off with is a real simple one. From your perspective, what do you see some of the C-suite challenges are that other C-suite members may not be seeing right now? Or what are some of the opportunities even?

So, well, I guess perhaps may back up a little bit just to define the difference between C-suite and others in the organization, or just the C-suite in general, you know, because you asked, and I, and I've joked about this, but, you know, even for the role that we play as CFOs, you ask 10 different people what they think a CFO is or does, you will get 10 different answers. And I know because I do that quite often. Yeah, a great way to start a conversation in a room of people, or to be thrown out of parties sometimes too. But otherwise, it's a great way to start a conversation with a group of people. But in reference to what you're describing, I mean, a lot of the opportunity exists at the C-suite is perhaps more collaboration or stretching out beyond what people think of as a traditional role, meaning we get asked a lot as CFOs, you know, we get pulled into many different areas of the organization. And occasionally we get the response of, well, what does that have to do with finance or accounting? And the answer is, well, it all kind of has to do with it. And as seasoned executives coming across different industries or working with all different kinds of clients, usually our insight or experience or expertise kind of extends beyond just strictly what you think of as finance or accounting. So the greater impact we can have on our clients, the more we can help, the happier we are, and usually the better off our clients are.

Yeah.

So do you think that C-suite members need to stretch more themselves also?

Absolutely, absolutely. And what's interesting is I think some of the barriers, you know, begin to come down. Like, for instance, we look across our team and we have members who have been Not only CFOs, but COOs as well. And you think, well, that's usually a very different skill set. And the answer is not always. We have members who have been CEOs as well. And again, you think, is that really— you don't necessarily think of the CFOs moving into the CEO role, but we certainly have ones who have done that. And the answer comes down to a lot is the impact that we have on the organization. Forget about the finance and accounting function. We get involved in sales and defining pricing. And we get involved in how that actually flows to the rest of the organization. Is that technically operations? Absolutely, some of it is., but we still think of it as something we can help and impact. So let's do it.

Yeah.

So when does that become a change from an opportunity to a problem? Because I see sometimes the opposite, where there's one person that's wearing too many C-suite hats, and they're not able to execute all of them well.

When do you, when you bleed into, you know, an opportunity versus a potential challenge.

Oh, certainly. We've all seen the good, the bad, and the ugly in that space. So I am not saying everyone should be doing everything. Obviously, that would, you know, lead to chaos, so more so than what traditionally exists even in this market as chaos. So for us, a lot of this comes down to the alignment around where the company is trying to go. You know, when you think about the strategic side of the conversation as identifying those goals across any C-suite versus other members in the organization, almost all of that impact or difference between the C-suite and the other members in the organization almost always ends up being strategic. More so than just strictly the tasks that you can do. So that leadership team, that alignment of, okay, what are the goals of the company? Where are we really trying to get to? What are those measurable targets for those goals? How are we actually going to go ahead and achieve this? Who is respon— then you can get to, okay, who is responsible for the strategy and implementing those so that the lanes become a lot clearer. It's not that, okay, great, well, that's your lane, don't talk to me about it, but more, how can I support you because this is the one you're responsible for. It becomes that part of the conversation instead of, well, this is my responsibility, leave me alone. But that comes from that alignment that needs to happen first. And this is what we're all trying to do, and this is how we're going to work together to get there.

Yeah, so the strategy needs to be set collaboratively with many heads in the room and inputs. That's where some of that expanding your role comes into play, collaborating on that overall strategy. And then when there's alignment And what I'm hearing you say is that we also need to then get outside of our roles a little bit to help the other, the other area of the business align, because it isn't a siloed execution strategy that works best.

It's more of a collaborative strategy.

Absolutely. I mean, yes, there are certain areas, for instance, someone who heads up the CTO or CIO space within an organization. It's not that they need to have, you know, oh, you know, we need CFO in order to do this type of thing. But if they're trying to work on something, and they're struggling with different aspects, the CFO can't say, well, sorry, not my responsibility, you know, and just watch them fail type of thing. You know, if this is what's involved, then yeah, rolling up our sleeves and diving into some of these other areas becomes not only important, but almost crucial sometimes to actually getting some of this done.

So as a fractional C-suite person, how do you, how do you see that different than being a full-time C-suite person?

Well, there's a couple of ways that shows up differently at the fractional level. What's interesting about us is, you know, both, both myself and everyone on my team has been an actual CFO before. So when we come step into working with our clients, we're able to bring a lot of experience and expertise as well as collaborate with each other in whatever works best to help our clients. That certainly helps us deliver at this level. But being able to deliver this at the fractional level very often becomes— allows us to deliver at perhaps a higher level than what they would get if they hired a full-time person. Because a full-time experienced CFO in almost any market is a pretty expensive salary component. Yeah. So from our perspective, it becomes, okay, when do you need that true CFO level of experience in doing this, and when do we help build the rest of the finance and accounting function so it is systematic, sustainable, and scalable with our level of insight and oversight as a part-time CFO?

So as an opportunity to get access to that CFO, CFO level thinking and strategy earlier than an organization might well be able to afford.

Absolutely. And what's interesting is, for the most part, very often we see most companies just don't need that full-time CFO level. It's not that they don't need oversight or management, but they just don't need that true CFO level of experience on a full-time basis. They need help building their function correctly. They need help building a framework for financial management and growth. For instance, we started this conversation talking about that strategic and goal-setting type of thing. So for many of our clients, we are involved in those leadership meetings and setting those goals and setting those strategies and defining who's responsible, what KPIs are we measuring and why, and how are we going to go ahead and do this. But even still, it's not an ongoing basis. It's not a 40, 50, 60-hour week job. It shouldn't be for most organizations.

Yeah.

And I think that's the major benefit of being fractional is that you can— it's a little more on demand and more productive that way. You're bringing in that expertise when you need it to really focus on the problems they need to solve, the opportunities they need to look into.. And then when you don't, you can dial it down, but it's still there as a fractional versus a full-time. You're, you at a certain scale, you need that full-time expertise for sure. But if you're not at that scale, now you're filling that bucket, that full-time bucket with maybe non-strategic work, more tactical and, and, and not as, not as productive activity. So that's where that fractional role really can show off as being more valuable in the long term.

Absolutely. And it's funny, I remember talking to the CFO of a large organization, probably multi-billion dollar organization, or certainly over a billion dollars. I don't know if it was two, but certainly in the, you know, certainly over a billion dollar organization. And I was connected with him through something else, but we were talking about what each do, and he's asked me point blank, I don't understand how you can do this part-time. And I was joking with him because I was talking to him about 5:30 in the evening, and I said, okay, you, you're the CFO of this organization. How much of your day was spent on actual CFO responsibility or CFO-level activities. And he just burst out laughing because even at a company of that size, most of his day was not spent on CFO-level activity or responsibilities.

Yeah, no, that's so real. I think another aspect that as a fractional professional, as you engage with a client, you can easily be kind of projectized. So, oh, that's our fractional CFO. Project. And it's, it can become more difficult to have that collaborative, get outside your lane impact on an organization. So how do you, how do you overcome that? How does your team overcome those? And they're, they're, they're kind of, they're the real, those, those barriers that get placed as a fractional because you're not on site, maybe, or you're not full time. And so you're not, you're not as, not as much of a peer as the other C-suite members.

How do you get past those barriers?

So for us, we spent a lot of time approaching that very conversation because it is a natural barrier and it's something we recognize in order for us to truly help our clients is one we definitely need to overcome. So our approach to that has been from the get-go is how do we gain that depth and breadth of engagement with the clients so we can help them what they're doing. So what very often, as almost all fractional C-suites, we get called in because there's a problem, right? How often do we get called in? No, everything is going great, we just decided we need this fractional level help at this stage. Believe me, it would make our jobs much, much easier if that actually did happen, but it doesn't really happen that way. So there's a problem usually, and almost always when it— when something comes up. So for us, we help define, yes, this is a problem, but it's not the actual— actually, this is not usually the actual problem. It's usually the symptom. So from our perspective, it becomes, how do we put this symptom that you're having or this problem as you're seeing it in the context of this greater finance and accounting function? So for instance, if they run into a cash flow problem, yes, they're having a cash flow problem. But why are they having a cash flow problem? What does their cash flow forecast look like? Are their fixed costs too high? Are the variable costs not being captured by pricing? Are their customer terms too lenient? Are they not taking advantage of supplier terms? There's all these other pieces that come into play with defining what the cash flow problem is and why are we having it. And very often it's tied to all different areas within the organization. So from our perspective, when we get started, it is first demonstrating what is the full range of this function? What is this whole thing supposed to be doing for you? Yes, we're going to dive into this specific problem because that's what you have right now, but it is in the context of this greater function, this greater system, this greater framework, so that it allows us to— yes, this— once we put out this specific fire or this particular instance, then we can go back to, okay, great, now where else in this function has this— are these, are these areas not working? Because we've set the tone when we get started, this is what this whole function is supposed to look like for you.

Yeah.

So you get very intentional about making that impact.

We have to be. It's the only way we can actually, to your point that you made, have that impact and really be able to contribute. And that's something we're actually very considered in our approach and that we want to be able to contribute. We're not interested in working with a company just because, you know, as we joke with many of our clients, you don't pay us our rates to do, you know, just to do task-oriented type of work. It's not a good value for us. And most of my team has experienced CFOs are not really interested in doing certain, you know, some of those kinds of things. We want to be able to contribute. We want to have that impact on our clients.

Great. So you alluded to this earlier in your response. So how do you describe what actually a CFO does?

So it depends how long we have for this conversation. One of my quick responses is we help the finance and accounting function grow up. More importantly, you know, as we've discussed, we help build the framework for financial management and growth. You ask, and you'll— so I don't— you know, when we joked about this before, we asked 10 different companies, you know, what the CFO does, you will get 10 different answers. But you ask 10 different CFOs, sometimes 10 different answers. And I've had the privilege of having those conversations as well. So that's what we focus on is we back the conversation up a little bit to what is the role of the finance and what is the role of the finance and accounting function in growing organizations in general? Because you can forget the title for the moment, but whoever is managing that function, what is it that they're supposed to be doing for you? Starts with what is the function supposed to be doing for you? So we've had some, we've had conversations with some people and they tell us, oh, we need a new controller. And I said, great, what does a controller mean to you? And we got into the conversation, they don't really need a new controller. They actually needed a bookkeeper and a CFO. They just had it as a lump lump together in one kind of role. And they were frustrated that someone who they had in this role kept burning out after 3 months. And I said, well, of course he's burning out after 3 months because you're trying to do too much with just his name or title and one function instead of splitting it up into really what the company needs. So from our perspective, that's really what that CFO does. So it's not a simple or quick answer. But I certainly hope it provides a little more context around what it is we're actually doing when we work with our clients.

Yeah, it does. And I think we get the same conversation started when we're talking to clients about what a CMO does and what a CMO doesn't. And it's so funny, you know, the expectation, it's, it's, it's all over the board. You know, some people want their, their CMO to come in there and sit in the boardroom and build a strategy and look at big picture. And some people want them to come into the office and get into the website and update the blogs and write them. You know, it's— and that's definitely not what a CMO does. Most of our CMOs have done that sometime in their previous lives and experience, and therefore can do that work and will do that work if it's, you know, an urgent matter. But that's not the same thing as what they should be doing, for sure.

And we've certainly come across those scenarios as well. And that's why I joke with many of our clients when it comes to some of the questions that they have, was like, you don't want to pay us our rates to do to do that kind of work. We'll help bring in and manage those resources if that's what you need. We'll help mentor and train the staff to do this kind of stuff. But from our perspective, of course we get operational, of course we roll up our sleeves to get something done, but it's always in the context of, is this the right value for what you're paying us to do versus what training we're helping or bringing in and managing the resource to do instead of us?

Yeah, exactly. Well, very good. What are some of the other challenges that a fractional professional faces in your experience that unique to that fractional role?

So that's interesting because across our team, about half of them came from doing this on their own and half came from a full-time role. And what I find interesting, and you know, when, when we go through, when they go through onboarding with us, it's always interesting, the ones who are coming from one environment versus the other. So the ones who are coming from the full-time role have faced a different struggle than the ones who are coming from trying this on their own. You know, the ones who are coming at this from a full-time role, very often their struggle is how do they gain that engagement and trust and leadership role with an organization only on a part-time basis. And that's again when we use the tools that we've developed to be able to guide them to say, this is how you should do this, and this is how you onboard correctly, this is how you engage with the client at this level. As opposed to the ones who have done this on their own in some way, shape, or form, it's more about these are our go-to-market strategies, this is what works at this level, these are the opportunities we generate, and this is how we do this.

Yeah, two different struggles. That's, that's really interesting.

Which one's harder? That's a good question. For myself, my own background, I came from doing this on my own. I did this on my own for 7, 7 and a half years across nearly a dozen different industries. And there are certain challenges, obviously, when you do this on your own, you know, from— it's very difficult to develop and deliver at the same time, which therefore leads to feast or famine. And you only have your own experience and expertise to offer, which shows up in several ways. So one, you run into the objection of, have you worked in this industry before? Even though you and I both know most of the issues we're helping many of these companies solve have have nothing to do with the industry that they're in. But the flip side to that is you don't have any teammates or colleagues to really be able to work, you know, to brainstorm and to be able to have these conversations with. So for those 3 challenges, that's what led me down the path to eventually form this company. But I remember for myself transitioning over from a full-time CFO into my first part-time role, it definitely takes that mind shift to actually be able to have the mindset shift to be able to tackle it at this level while at the same time only on a fractional basis. And that's also what led us to develop the tools we have now to help those make the shift, you know, in a better way to be able to gain that engagement, to be able to gain that trust within the organization as they are able to help those clients.

Yeah, I think both paths are difficult. We have CMOs that come from both paths as well, people that have been out on their own and, and, uh, consulting in some way, shape, or form.

And where—

what, what I find their biggest challenge is that we help solve is, is how to have more of a recurring practice stream of revenue and less of a project-based. And so they're looking for those answers from an organization like ours. And then people that come from full-time are, this won't work, just bring me some work, give me something to do. And they don't necessarily understand the, the ups and downs of freelancing that, that will come eventually if they're out on their own for long enough. They just need that next project. And then once they have it, then you're like, you said, I think understanding how to be effective part-time or fractional versus full-time, it's a real interest.

So just out of curiosity, which one do you see as harder transitioning from, on your own or from a full-time role?

I think, I think it's harder, um, from my perspective as kind of the owner of the business, I think it's harder somebody coming from, um, from out on their own already consulting into our world. And the only reason is sometimes they bring bad habits and it's hard to, it's hard to do things differently than you did them before, even though they may not be getting you the results you wanted. And so we, we were able to embrace them and take, and it works and we're not a very rigid environment, so it's not hard to fit in. But when you're just coming full-time into what we do, it's all brand new. It's the only way you know how to to, to do it, and that's easier to train people on the process and get them excited about it. Um, but that— the, the getting that first client can take 3 to 6 months sometimes if you're just going out on your own to finally get that right first client.

And that—

get that sense of anxiety is real for, uh, for new CMOs and new professionals in general. And it's hard to watch somebody go through and have the faith that, yeah, they're coming. You just got to keep doing the work. It'll be here eventually. So that'd be my answer.

Yeah, sounds pretty similar.

Yeah, it is. So another question I have is, as you're looking, as you're talking to clients, what are some of the criteria you suggest they look for when hiring a fractional CFO or any fractional professional? What do you think the the criteria they should be looking for are?

So I tell this openly to many of our clients and to many of our team. I will almost always look for fit over industry experience. And I joke with our client— I say this semi-jokingly to our clients, I should say— industry knowledge and experience I can leverage off of other people on the team. The fit with you as a business owner and as a leader in your organization, I cannot. So I'll always look for someone who's a fit with you as opposed to somebody who's been in your industry before. Yeah, I think that is true. That is so crucial. I've learned in defining the long-term success of almost all the engagements, uh, I've learned that the hard way, unfortunately, as I'm sure you have as well, when the— when it didn't actually work out as well as we may have wanted for our clients. But, uh, I have actually transitioned some, some CFOs, you know, brought in different CFOs on the team who were then a better fit for some of those clients along the way that were then able to actually have that impact.. And I always find the fit is so much more important. And I do think, you know, from the client side, they just look at it very often, and I understand where they're coming from. It's logical as well. If you haven't been in this industry, how are you going to know certain aspects of this? You know, the advantage to having a large team as we do of now more than 30 CFOs, we've been in just about every industry imaginable, and probably some you may not have come across all that often as well. But we've been across so many different industries that we have the industry knowledge on our team. My team, the CFOs, they'll speak about the specific nuances to the industry, but the fit with the business owner is almost always going to be the biggest key to success along the way.

Yeah, for sure. I hear that a lot.

It's surprising.

It makes sense. It's not surprising in that way, but it's just surprising that every fractional professional I've talked to, that is also the number one criteria they think is important. Outside of fit, What other criteria is important specifically for fractional CFOs when you're trying to hire a good one?

So I also find the ones who want to engage in that kind of environment. You know, you have some CFOs who spent their entire careers in Fortune 100 companies and they now want to work in the, in this small companies. They enjoy this, they want to have this impact. While at the same time you have some who have worked in some larger companies who they want to get involved at the strategic level, but they don't necessarily want to get involved as much in the nitty-gritty. So again, fit goes both ways. It has to be the fit with the client, but it also has to be the CFO's fit. You know, this is the environment that they will be successful in. They need to understand what's going to be involved in making sure that, you know, to drive the client's success. And is this an environment they actually want to pursue? Because you throw, you know, again, to your point, you know, someone who's just joining the organization said, oh yes, they want a client, they want a client, they want a client. And of course, if we have the right clients, then we always want to put it in front of them. But at the same time, we also need to understand that CFO, what are those environments where they are going to be successful? What are those environments where they are going to be able to have that meaningful impact and make those contributions? Because again, when you try and fit that, that square peg in a round hole, nobody ends up happy.

Yeah, exactly. And last question on, on fit. What is the advantage to a client to working with an organization like yours that has multiple CFOs that can be fitted with versus a standalone CFO who's out on his own or her own and doing the same work? What's the advantage of an organization like yours over the solo practitioner?

Well, at its most basic, you know, obviously we have more to choose from to make sure it's the right fit. But beyond that, we've also developed better processes that allow us to engage with the client. It's not just my own experience that, oh, this is what I've done in the previous number of clients I've worked with. This is what we've done you know, as 30 CFOs across now the hundreds, if not close to 1,000 clients that we've worked with along over the years. So this is the length and breadth of our knowledge and experience and expertise that we can now bring to bear for our clients.

Yeah, that proven process I think is so important to have. You've, you've worked through a lot of those best practices in getting a good onboarding, getting a good engagement started, having good results, and, and, and that's not intuitive in the process of matching that I think a company who's never used a fractional before, they doesn't appreciate, nor does an independent freelancer that's gone out on his or her own appreciate the value of either until they've been around it enough. So we were similar that way, our two organizations, for sure. We got to— we don't have 30 CMOs yet, but that's all right. We have the value of a process that we know works, and it definitely helps everyone in and around that process. One of the things we talked about several months back, and I wanted to bring it back up, is the idea of marketing ROI. We, we get that question a lot. What's the ROI on, on marketing? And how, or how do you measure ROI? And I just wanted to get your take as a CFO. When you work with organizations and you start talking about ROI and marketing, What are the things that you recommend or things that you look at specifically to help that CEO or that marketer have a better grasp of what that ROI should look like and feel like?

So again, going back to where we started, I think our conversation initially, some of this goes back to understanding what is the full picture of what is the full effort that's going on in the marketing space. Because the trap that I think many fall into is pointing to a specific thing like our blogs, you know, what was our ROI on our blogs? And the answer is, well, The blogs lead to people to do this on your website, lead to people to do this on your social platforms, lead to people to do this over here. So you can't separate the blogs from the other activities that you're doing. So when we look at ROI, we try and look at it as what is— yes, the total dollars we're investing across all platforms, across everything over here, what is this returning for us? And perhaps, you know, again, we look at this from this— at the strategic level is understanding what is it we're trying to do here. With this? So are we targeted in our approach to this? Do we have specific customers we're going after? Do we have revenue streams in particular we're trying to generate off of these marketing efforts? And being able to define what the goals are allow you to then measure the results a lot clearer.

Yeah, so you got to take a holistic approach to looking at that ROI. Do you also get into, as a CFO, when, when companies are going through that marketing budgeting process giving some suggested parameters of where they should be setting budgets as a percentage of revenue or as a cost per acquisition? Or are there other metrics that you help people understand?

So the short answer is yes, of course. But, you know, I try not to do specifically, you know, there's no rule of thumb for any of those, unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on which seat you're sitting in. You know, if I know marketers will always give you a number that's almost always much higher than you think will be, oh, if you have this much revenue, then you're in this industry, sure, this percent percent of revenue should go to marketing. And yeah, it's nice if you can spend that much revenue on marketing, but it's not always strictly just a percentage of revenue that's going to define what you should or shouldn't be. That goes back to the strategic conversation of, okay, you're in this industry, you can look at what peers may spend, but first of all, make sure that's accurate information, not just the person who's trying to sell you their services information. But also, it's what does that actually result in? It's not strictly about the percentage that you spend or the dollar you spend or the cost per acquisition. Sometimes it makes sense to spend a lot on the cost per acquisition because your close rate is this high and the recurring revenue that generates off of that client is ridiculously high. That all of those factors go and become involved when you're talking about defining some of those metrics. We are a very big believer in having metrics in place to measure the successes of different aspects or to measure the results and the outcomes of many of these, of many of these initiatives. You need to track them, but it can't be in a vacuum. It has to be in the context of what you're trying to do from the strategic level. And it has to be in the context of a goal you set for what you're doing when you're spending the this money.

Yeah, absolutely. I'm glad to hear you respond that way. Because it is so hard as a marketer to sit in and have those conversations, because it should be easier to come up with a range of, or a guideline that's within an industry, you know, fairly accurate, but it's so different. Every stage of a company has impact on that number, whether you're starting up, whether you're You know, you're, you're the, the lead dog or the, the second or third, and you're, you're trying to establish yourself, uh, you know, how do you ROI awareness? And even, do you even need awareness? Because so many times that's what people think of as marketing is branding and awareness, but yet you can't measure it. But should you be able to measure it? How could you measure it? Uh, those all come into play, and we let our CMOs guide those conversations. We actually don't have a prescribed method within our organization. As we build a framework for that conversation to happen, and we have a— we do that, we do go through a process to try to identify the different lifetime values of clients and use that as our biggest benchmark is what's a client lifetime value. And then what's the recommended investment to acquire those clients. And those are probably our two biggest KPIs that we— or conversations that we have around budgeting. But it is unique to— from every size of company to type of company out there.

Absolutely. And perhaps mostly unique to their goals. And the same two companies in the same industry, you know, depends on what they're trying to do. Some of them are looking at it as, no, we're fine, just keep going, steady growth type of thing, because they're looking at it as they want to support the lifestyle of business owners. And some are looking at it as we want to, you know, 10x within 3 years because we're trying to do all of this in the same industry, in the same size company. So So yes, one is going to spend a lot more on marketing because their goal is to obviously this hypergrowth phase that they think they can go, they can go embark on that journey. While the other, yes, they need to spend the money on the marketing because they want to maintain and continue to just still steady growth, but it's obviously a very different formula for that company.

So where are you spending money marketing your business?

So the digital presence is very, very important and I think is going to remain so and perhaps even become more so. Everyone's been talking about digital since websites first launched in the mid to late '90s. And when it became a, you know, everyone needs to have a website. The customer journey becomes very, very important. Where are you sending people to? How are they engaging with your brand and your story as what you're offering? So for instance, we're in the middle of rebuilding our website, not because the previous website was bad, we just felt that certain aspects of it, we wanted it to be better. So we're in the middle of doing that. You know, the SEO presence, the PPC that we're actually doing over here, that's all part of the strategy and looking at it, and we're looking at it, you ask how we measure certain things. We're looking at it as specifically the number of opportunities that get generated here as part of our process to be able to define and measure that. Every opportunity that's come up that hasn't been from a direct referral, it's how did you hear about us? We're trying to understand what this actually is, recognizing that it's very rarely just one touchpoint anymore. It's almost always, what did I say, we're up to 7 to 9 touchpoints or something like that, or even higher, depending on who you ask, before they actually choose to engage or have a conversation. So it's understanding, yes, when you have that, when you do finally have that conversation, they're just referencing the last touchpoint they had. But they may have seen something I posted on LinkedIn, which sends us to a blog, which goes to our YouTube channel that suddenly says, oh, this is pretty interesting, let me fill out a web form and actually have a conversation with them.

Right. Yeah, you're, you're spot on there. I would, I would guess a large percentage of your business comes from a direct referral.

Yes, many of them do. We get brought in by trusted advisors of business owners, and I enjoy speaking to those trusted advisors because very rarely does someone walk up to them and say, hey, do you know a good part-time CFO? They would make my job again much easier if they did, but instead they usually, they're complaining about different aspects of their business. And that's why we speak to so many different trusted advisors, accountants, lawyers, bankers, and almost every type of professional service out there that speaks directly to a business owner, because we know, we understand when business owners need those resources and we refer them in quite often, whether they've outgrown their current accounting relationship or whether they should be getting something different from their banking relationship, or whether they should have a different conversation with a different level of attorney because of what they're going through. Through. We understand many of those because we've been there before as CFOs. So very often we do get referred in and we enjoy being able to have that direct access to the business owners through their trusted advisors, recognizing that we can be a solution to help many of our clients achieve their goals.

That's, that's terrific. I think we, we look at most of our business also coming through referrals, and, and it is being that trusted source for people feel comfortable referring you to, referring to you. Outside of that, we're spending a lot of our marketing dollars on positioning ourselves amongst other referral, other fractional professionals. We think that people like you and me are, have clients that are similar, and we're looking for similar clients. And so by affiliating with others in the same space, that we're spending money doing that through speaking and blogging and podcasting and We've started a Fractional Professionals Association. So that's where we're spending a lot of our money. We used to be spending a lot of that, a lot more money on direct marketing, trying to get out and interrupt people and get them interested. And in our space, the executive, the CEO, the owner, founder, they're not responsive to that. Not very responsive. You know, we got to be very lucky to get a good lead that way. So we're redirecting our spend. And then we spent a lot of money supporting our CMOs to, to position themselves within their markets of interest. So whether that be a specific vertical or geography, our efforts are how do we get you out in front of that audience? As the, as the expert, as my business partner calls it, the mayor of your market, how do we get you to be the mayor of your market? So when people think about marketing in that specific area, they think of you. And so that's kind of our approach to our own marketing dollars.

Yeah, that's a great approach to it, and it is so necessary. So we look at it as— going back to the point, I guess you recognize the direct interrupt approach wasn't perhaps returning as much of an ROI, which is why you're shifting to, you know, where you are today. So we have some of that, what I'll call loosely interrupt marketing. Obviously it is very tailored, specific to the level that we want to engage with them on. And to your point, It's not always about, oh, well, we're spending this amount. We need to see this amount beyond this. It's so much, much more so. It is more about the engine that is ongoing so we can get to more people without beyond what we reach with our own two feet. Right. We look at some of that as, so again, most comes from referral. I don't really see that changing, but we do like creating that digital presence and the digital opportunities as a way of making money without actually, you know, directly doing more of the work or having more conversations directly because there is only a finite amount of hours in the day.

Yeah, definitely. Well, let's, let's segue a little bit to outside of work. What are some of your, uh, your interests? What do you like to do outside of the work environment?

Well, I have 3 young daughters, twin 7-year-olds and a 9-year-old. As I joke with my wife, they drive us crazy, but they're supposed to. So they pretty much take up a lot, a lot, a lot of the time. Uh, you know, we do try and take several family vacations throughout the year. I figure we work hard enough and we should be able to, you know, we'll If that's not what we're working for, I don't know why we're doing this. So I like being able to spend the time outside of work with them at different environments. I like the work that we do because it does allow for some flexibility for being able to carve out time as we want to, as we need to. So that's certainly a very big part of that. I would say I used to have hobbies before the twins were born, but I can't remember what they were at this point.

Yeah, I'm familiar. My children are all older now, but my youngest is 17. She's still at home, and I've got a couple in college and one post- college. But yes, that your— their hobbies become your hobbies. That's, that's the way that works for a while, which is great. I don't, I don't— I loved it. And I love— I still do. I think it's one of the best things out there is to be able to be a parent and experience their, their passions alongside them. What are some of those things that your girls like to do?

At this age? So they're getting into the sports, they're getting into the ice skating, they're getting into the dancing or gymnastics, they're getting into those kind of fun things like that, you know, almost seemingly almost every week it's a new interest type of thing. So, but that's the age for that, and we like— we enjoy letting them explore the things that they are of interest to them. Or plan on going away at the end of January down to Florida, and we'll see what happens with COVID and Omicron, what that really ends up looking like. We're going regardless. What we'll be able to do there, we'll have to wait and see, but we plan on going as of right now. Um, so I enjoy being able to carve out those few days here and there just to be able to go away on vacation with them as well. Where in Florida are you going?

Orlando. Oh yeah, are you gonna do the Universal Disney World experience?

Well, yeah, something along those. We did the Disney one 3 years ago. This year we're up in the air on whether we want to do 2 more of the different Disney parks, whether we want to do the Universal parks.

Apparently the debate is still ongoing. We did Universal when we were there last, and, uh, there was a few years back, uh, pre-COVID, and I loved it. It was my first time ever been to a park like that. My wife had gone before. So it was a lot of fun, but we did not do the, the Disney princess thing like I think would have been nice if we had younger kids, which we didn't, but they enjoyed it.

3 years ago, yep, 3 young daughters. So I think I went to 8 or 9 or 10 different Disney princess experiences.

Absolutely. Good for you. That's awesome. Um, where, where do you like to travel? Do you like to stay domestic or international?

At this age, it's still domestic. At this age, it's still domestic. They're just getting to that age where we get to explore the different cities, you know, but we're still trying to keep it for the most part— we don't want to make the travel itself as burdensome. So it's more about, you know, if we have to start getting on a 14-hour flight, you know, with the twin 7-year-olds and a 9-year-old, I don't know how many of us would survive that flight intact. So it's a, it becomes more of a, you know, where do we want to go within a reasonable amount of travel time where we want to start doing this? So they're starting to see the cities more, the museums and aquarium, things of different cities is a particular interest to them, which we're actually now expanding what we know, which cities are going to tour around, those kind of things. But so far it's a lot of fun. We're looking forward to what we're going to go cover this year and next year with them as well.

Yeah, that's fun. That's a great age. Yeah, you have a lot of years of fun ahead of you with, uh, and, and with 3 That was when, like, the third one was the one, and you, so you wait, your two are your twins or your youngest?

Yes. Okay. We went straight from having a double team on the oldest to zone coverage.

Yeah. We went straight there from one to three.

Okay.

Um, yeah, that, that two to three leap for us was when it became just exponentially harder to manage. And then the fourth was just chaos.

So Yeah. What about you?

What other hobbies outside of work these days?

Oh gosh.

You know, I, I stay pretty busy. I have a lot of work, but it's all fun work for me. I'm starting new ideas and new ventures quite often. So those— that's almost a hobby to me. That's great. Jokingly, I get, I get made fun of for starting too many things and not finishing. But I, you know, my theory is this, that you've got to start a bunch of stuff. You don't have to finish a bunch of stuff, but the things that you're committed to finishing, you definitely have to finish. And it's okay to start things that don't go anywhere as long as everybody— no one's counting on you to finish that one thing. So I spent a lot of time ideating and innovating in my journal. I like to visit my kids at college, so, or where they live. So we've spent the last couple of years going back and forth between Colorado and Philadelphia where the kids are quite a bit. And that's fun for me traveling. But I guess the biggest hobby I have now is international travel. Now that the kids are almost all gone and we're empty nesters, we are starting to think about places we can go. And fortunately, I've been able to go on some for work and play this last year and in this upcoming year. But my wife is a schoolteacher, so she hasn't been able to join yet. So we're waiting for that time where we can both experience those travels together. She can go in the summer, but in the summer we got the kids with us, so we kind of— so it's hard, it's a hard mix there.

But I've got—

it sounds like fun. This spring I've got Barcelona and the Dominican Republic and Cabo and the Philippines all on the, on the docket.

So that's what I'm looking forward to.

Well, that sounds great. Enjoy. Yeah, assuming that, you know, everything's— every— the world stays healthy and this COVID thing is under control.

That's my plan. That sounds great. I hope you enjoy those trips.

Looking forward to hearing about them. Yeah, well, I'm excited to share. One day we'll have a maybe an international CMO business and we'll be— I'll be able to to make it all work-related, but now it's kind of fun and, and, uh, that's good enough.

I need those breaks now and then.

Sounds good. Sounds good. Well, great. Well, Nelson, really been fun spending time with you today, and appreciate you, uh, hopping on when I'm at the, at the house, not the office. And, uh, I had a dog come in and out of here a couple times, so there's a little bit of distraction, but I think we got it handled.

Yeah, it's all good. We've seen everything in this Zoom environment. We're going on almost 2 years now. We've seen it all.

We've been at all at this stage. Yeah, it's almost like it's just background noise. You just expect it, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I know our viewers picked up on some good nuggets. I certainly picked up on a few nuggets. As we were talking, I'm thinking, I need to, need to share that with, with this person or that person. So thank you so much for your input, and I appreciate all of your time and effort.

Of course, Joe. Thank you for having me on.

Always a pleasure chatting with Yep, and have a great 2022. And if you ever want to kick back and have an impersonal Fractional C-Suite Retreat again with me, we can just hop on a Zoom and do it ourselves.

That sounds great.

That's great. Thank you. Great.

Thank you.

And that's a wrap.

There's another successful episode of the Fractional C-Suite Retreat. See our show notes and more episodes at fractionalcsuitretreat.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 yourcmo.com. Your CMO dot com.

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