Premium Advice - Fractional C-Suite Retreat - Episode # 020

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, everybody. Today, my guest, he is a great leader of people. He specializes in creating liquidity to pay estate taxes, helps business owners save money. He is the director of special projects at Kimsa, and I'm excited to have him on our show. Welcome, Chris Quant. How are you today?

I'm doing great, Joseph. It's great to be here. I'm excited.

Yeah, I am too. I think it's a refreshing change of guests. We have a lot of fractional professionals and C-suite members. But this is an interesting topic that applies to everyone. And I'm really curious how, how the conversation is going to go. So I look forward to it.

Yeah.

With that, let's just jump in. I mean, what the first question I like to ask my guests is, you know, from a, from your perspective, what's one of the biggest opportunities that C-suite, C-suite members are missing out on today?

I would say, especially for C-suite members, the unique employee retention strategies that are out there. Usually when people are thinking of the conventional way of doing it, you know, you're either setting aside a bunch of cash to go towards a pension or some sort of benefit in the future, which might not be the best use of that capital. They might want to invest in new equipment or hiring more salespeople or something like that. And then the other option is giving away equity, which can also be unattractive to business owners. So at Kimza, we try to explore unique ways to, you know, make some incentive for people to stick around for a long time, but without taking up a bunch of cash flow or having the owners give up equity that they may not want to.

So what are some of those alternatives?

Yeah, the one we primarily use, it actually involves insurance.. And it's getting a bank to lend you the money to pay the premiums for the insurance. We call it premium financing in the industry. And essentially how it works is the bank lends money and there's a bunch of different ways you can structure this. The bank lends money to pay for the insurance premiums. The company may need, may or may not need to put down some collateral, but a lot of times they're just paying the interest on that bank-financed premium. And then what they can say to their key people is say, hey, if you stick around, for the next 10 years or so and meet certain KPIs, we'll pay you this additional benefit in retirement. And because we're using a life insurance policy, that money comes out tax-free to them. So depending on their age, if they're younger, that's a lot better for the economics of the strategy, but it can be up to $100,000 or more in tax-free income. In retirement to incentivize these guys to stay.

So you're using the insurance vehicle to kind of offset some of the tax ramifications. I'm assuming it's some sort of kind of front-loaded insurance policy, and that's why you use the bank to finance it so you can keep your cash flow, but then you're just paying a long-term debt service on that. From a cash flow standpoint, that's the, that's the play.

Yeah, there's, there's a lot of different ways to design it depending on what the business owner's goals are. For the strategy, but typically we front-end load it as much as possible. And the IRS actually only allows you to put in a certain amount of money for the insurance policies, otherwise it kind of is viewed as a tax haven. And so we go right up to that limit that the IRS allows, and then that money in the policy begins to compound. And over time, the policy itself, the cash value can pay off loan that the bank made, and the company is really only making interest payments. You can get between probably 4 to 8 times leverage doing it that way. And, uh, one of the baseline strategies is just having the employer contribute half of the premium, and then the bank contributes half for the first 5 years of the policy funding. And then years 6 through 10, the bank is actually taking over and paying the entire premium. So the, the business owner puts in about 1/4 of the amount that's contributed and it works out really nicely. And that's available to pretty much anyone. It's, it's not something that you have to get any loan documents for. There's no personal guarantees, nothing like that. So it's more available than people think.

And what is the actual retention that that does then in your experience? Is that attractive to the right people?

I can't say that I've been around doing this for 10+ years. You might've been able to guess that, but I think it's a strong incentive. And the nice thing is that if the business, if the person decides, hey, I have to take another opportunity or they want to leave for whatever reason, that policy becomes a business-owned asset so they can use the funds that would've gone to the person in whatever way they see fit.

So I take out a policy on my CFO and she decides to take a new job. So that asset stays with the business. There's an asset value within that insurance component. Where's the insurance live then?

Yeah, so we use permanent policies and I don't know if you're a big life insurance guy and know a bunch about it. Most people aren't, but permanent policies have essentially two features. One is the cost of insurance. And so this is actually, you could think of it as a one-year term policy. Every year the cost of insurance increases as your probability of dying goes up. And then the other part of the policy is referred to as the cash value. And the cash value is usually tied in some way to a market index, think like the S&P 500. So as the S&P 500 goes up, that part of the policy is able to capture some of those gains. But because it's a life insurance policy, when the market has a down year and declines, there's actually a zero floor. So the policy doesn't lose money, but it also doesn't gain anything as well.

Yeah.

So the insurance just goes away then in that scenario, the value The, uh, the growth in the, the growth and the cash value goes away in that, in that scenario, but you're still paying for the insurance. The cost of insurance is included in the premium every year.

We just want— I guess when the, when the employee leaves, uh, in that scenario, do they take the insurance with them, or, uh—

No, that, that all stays. So if there was a death, the, the, um, the employer would get the death benefit, and then they also have access to the, the cash values in there. And that starts to get a little a little bit out of scope for me. I typically am working alongside professionals who are highly skilled in executive compensation and walking the client through it. So I could go a little more into what I do as Director of Special Projects, but I know enough to be dangerous. And then once it gets into the details, I bring in a professional who specializes in this area.

Yeah, I've talked to enough of insurance agents and some of those professionals, the tax logistics and strategies and intertwining, it's pretty amazing what can be done these days. And it's effective, but you do need somebody who knows what they're doing to help you walk through it.

Yeah, there's a lot of people out there who are doing this improperly or doing premium finance for people who, you know, shouldn't be doing premium finance. Finance. It's, it's typically best that the person is able to pay the premiums, but they're just using the bank to, you know, make it a little bit more of an effective strategy. Whereas some people like to figure out ways where their client can get a ton of insurance using premium financing, but they wouldn't be able to purchase that amount of insurance on their own.

Yeah, it is interesting. I'd never heard of the bank finance premiums. That's a Just another lever for leverage to make a return more, I suppose.

Jason Peterson: It's been around about 20 years or so, and it's really a product of the low interest rate environment that we find ourselves in. So you can borrow bank money fairly low. However, I think that once interest rates go up, which I have not experienced in my lifetime, it's pretty much been in a downward trajectory since the '80s before I was around. I believe that as bond yields go up with interest rates you're paying at the bank, because all interest rates flow together, these strategies would probably still pencil because they're able to get more of the guaranteed return portion of the policy, even though the financing costs have gone up.

But we'll have to see. Interesting. Yeah, that's, that's good. Well, then let's talk a little bit about what you do at Kimsa as special projects.

Talk me through that a bit. Yeah. So I would say at the start of an engagement with a business owner, and typically when I'm brought in, it is a business owner who probably has a net worth of $5 million or more for, for me to get involved. We do service business owners who have smaller businesses, but typically for all the strategies I implement, it's about $5 million to get involved. And I work alongside a CFP, a certified financial planner, and we take the client through a discovery process, takes between an hour and an hour and a half, essentially getting some financial details, details about their goals, you know, and get a nice picture of who they are and where they're going. And then we plug that into an algorithm and it spits out, you know, between, between 10 to 20 different areas of planning that may be relevant to the client. And some of these areas we do in-house, like asset management. We have a CFA who manages portfolios for people. That's a Chartered Financial Analyst. And then we also, you know, have deep insurance expertise. So in those areas, we're typically doing a lot of that in-house. But when it comes to advanced estate planning or tax credits that they should be taking advantage of, or how to structure their business to be most tax efficient. Usually at that point, we bring in other specialists that we work alongside, and I'm the liaison between the client and those specialists and know enough to be dangerous, but not enough to do it all myself.

Are you working mostly local or virtually outside of Portland?

We, uh, so we started out in 2019 when I joined, and everyone was essentially in the Portland office. And, uh, there was a large exogenous shock, COVID, that caused everyone to disperse a bit. People who wanted to live other places chose to do so. And so now we're spread out. We have some people in Portland, we have people across the river in Washington, we have people in Phoenix, Arizona, and Texas. Texas. So we're spread out. I would say most of our clients are from one of those places. It's nice, especially when you're managing, you know, someone's finances and putting together a plan to meet them in person at least once. But, you know, after the first meeting, they generally, for convenience, meet primarily virtually. But, you know, we don't really have any limits to where we can do business with people, pretty much anywhere across the country.

So one of the things that I think you have in common with some of our fractional professionals is that we're all looking to talk with business owners. That's an audience that we feel we can serve just like you can as fractional CMOs or CTOs or CFOs. And I'm curious, how— what are some of the tactics that you've seen that have been successful in getting in front of qualified business owners?

Yeah, that's a great question. I really like to work with partners such as yourself who do great work for business owners and who can bring value to my clients. So I like meeting. And then also within what we do, there's estate planning attorneys and other people that we actually need to implement the strategies that we're putting together for our clients. So I try to prioritize meeting with those people, CPAs, estate planning attorneys, you know, even other investment professionals who don't necessarily do the work we do. Those would be the best referral sources for us. But then outside of the core competencies that we have, you know, I like to meet with EOS people are great. I know a lot of EOS guys, leadership consultants. We work a lot with PEOs, professional employment organizations. Some of them are structured as ASOs, administrative service organizations, and they essentially take all the HR and payroll and benefits responsibilities away from the employer who probably didn't get into business to do all of those things and manage it themselves. So pretty much just any professional who is, you know, working with business owners and does great work for them.

Yeah, that's where the majority of business-to-business business normally comes from, is word of mouth referrals. Do you guys have, or do you have a particular methodology about going out and building those relationships and staying in touch to generate those referrals? That's what I find is interesting. Everybody's a little different about how they approach that part of their marketing? Some are more rigid with, here's what I do, it's once a quarter, it's this, this and that. And some are just kind of, you know, kind of happenstance. If I bump into somebody, it works out. What's your approach?

Yeah, that's a great question. I typically like to start with a Zoom call like this just because it's pretty convenient and see if I connect with them. Sometimes you just can tell you're not connecting well or they don't share your values and You know, rarely, but most of the time it goes well. And then after that, I generally try to schedule something in person so we can meet face to face. I don't think people generally refer out their greatest clients, which are the people I'm trying to work with, after a 25-minute Zoom call with me. I'm not at that point in my salesmanship yet to to get people to do that, but I like to go meet with them in person, you know, learn a little bit more about what they're looking for and see what the, the best synergies are between what I'm doing and what they're doing. And then, you know, just try to keep a consistent cadence of reaching out. I don't want to inorganically, you know, come up with reasons to, to reach out, but just making sure that we're connecting on a, on a regular basis, and I'm keeping them top of mind when I'm meeting with clients. Clients that could have problems that they could solve.

Yeah. I'm curious how the EOS implementers and other maybe strategic consultants, how they have felt about bringing in a tax strategist like yourself into their clients. Is that something that they see the need pretty clearly, or do they kind of have to be nudged where they have to start asking if there's a need?

I think it just depends on how we are brought in. I would say the first topic I brought up, employee retention, especially with the world we're living in right now, a very tight labor market, that is probably the path of least resistance for being brought in to do some, do some work on the Kimsa side. And that gives us an opportunity to get to know the business owner, get to know the EOS implementer, a little better, they can see how we work. And then once there's other opportunities for more advanced tax strategies, estate planning, if it's viable and things like that, that's probably when we would, you know, go into those areas of planning.

Yeah, I see that. Interesting. Do you get a chance to work in your history with any fractional professionals?

Yeah, I would say fractional CFOs. They are in alignment with what we do, trying to be as tax efficient as possible within the business. We don't work within the business as much, so that is not something where they are competing with us directly, but they understand and value the work we are doing. The other, the other fractional professionals like CMOs, I would say that when we're going through and talking with clients in general terms about how their business is going and what some of the challenges that they're facing, we don't stick primarily just to our area. We like to, you know, get them to tell us the story of their business because a lot of times it unlocks insights that are, you know, standard discovery process. Doesn't do. So I, yeah, I would probably ask some questions. And if they were having a marketing issue or a sales issue, maybe bring in a fractional marketing or sales professional to work with them.

I've got to imagine you hear a lot of the retention employee-related challenges right now. Are there other key challenges that you've heard recently that kind of across the board or any insights that you've seen many of the businesses trying to overcome or opportunities even that they're looking at?

Yeah, well, last year, about a year ago or maybe a little less than that, the folks in D.C., they came out with what their plans were to change some of the areas of the tax code. And that generated a lot of, you know, they helped us a bit with business development there because people were worried about what was going to happen. There was a lot of different things going around, like the wealth tax or lowering the estate tax exemption. It's currently at $25 million if you're married, about $12.5 million if you're a single filer. And so if they lowered that to $5 million or even lower than that, a lot of people who weren't subjected to federal estate taxes would now be within that window. And so that was something that drove people to, you know, do some planning that they may have been putting off. And we understand people— what we do requires people to think about their mortality, to do some planning work that may not be, you know, the most fun use of their time. I understand the hesitancy or the desire to procrastinate doing it. But, you know, anytime there's word going around that the tax rules are going to change, that's always a nice incentive for people to, to reach out to us and see what we can do on the tax side.

Yeah. Is a lot of your work or any of your work driven by kind of exit planning?

Yeah, that's, that's, that's a great time for us to be involved, not just making sure that the business owner, when they are exiting, that they have enough to live off of, you know, making sure that we understand what their expected burn rate is in retirement. And knowing that they're selling the asset that has generated most of the cash flow for their entire life, what can we do to replace or replicate that cash flow? How can we sell the business in the most tax-effective way possible? Are they charitably inclined? What sort of charitable vehicles, you know, people have heard of charitable remainder trusts, donor-advised funds. There's one I like called a pooled income fund. Just a little bit of a blend between those. And all those do is give the client or the business owner a tax deduction and allow them to have income for the rest of their life depending on what the structure is. And most people are just unaware that they have these options and their team of advisors aren't, you know, bringing it to them.

So that's, that's where we come in. What are some of the more interesting exit strategies for owners to minimize tax or maximize?

Yeah, there's, there's a few things that, that we like. There's always the ESOP, which is the Employee Stock Ownership Program, or I forget always what the acronym stands for, but essentially it's selling your business to your employees. There's a lot of tax benefits for doing that. You usually receive warrants So long-term stock options essentially, so that you retain some piece of the company or get— have some sort of exposure to the growth once the sale is completed. That's a very tax-efficient way of doing it. There is another— not— are you familiar with 1031 exchanges like for real estate? So you sell a piece of real estate you find a replacement property and then you 1031 to defer the capital gain. There is another structure that's a 453, Section 453 deferral, and that essentially allows the client to use a similar structure to a 1031, but for any sort of investment or usually equities like a typical stock portfolio. So they another entity essentially assumes the sale and then that those proceeds are managed in a brokerage account by the financial advisors and you can defer the capital gain burden about 30 years. So that one is pretty cool. That's where I really have to bring in the specialists because I know enough to tell you that, but once it gets into more details, I always make sure that the specialists are involved.

Does that have to be— does that have to do with the Opportunity Zones or is that just more generic?

No, that's, that's been around longer than the Opportunity Zones. Opportunity Zones are another way that people can take advantage of that. And we have some Opportunity Zone specialists that, that we would work with if someone was considering using that vehicle.

Okay. Interesting. There's so many different things. I can only imagine how you try to keep up with them all.

Yeah, I have, I have some nice flowcharts that would hurt your eyes to see where we could figure out what clients qualify for. And then after you figure out what is economically viable for them, you then have to figure out what is in alignment with their goals. You know, for example, their might be a business owner who doesn't want to turn their kids into the Kardashians and decides that they're not sure they want the kids to inherit all this money. And they might also not be too opposed to paying the taxes. You'd be surprised how many people are fine with paying the taxes, feel it's, you know, they've benefited a lot from being American and would like to,, you know, pay some of what they've earned throughout their life back so that, you know, we can all have roads and things like that. So really figuring out what the client wants and then going over the different options that they are economically qualified for is a big part of what we do at Kimsa.

And let's switch gears for a bit. We both share an alma mater at the University of Kansas.

Oh yeah. Yeah.

How do you think our team's going to do this weekend?

I am cautiously optimistic. I've been, I went to, so they won back, it was '08, right? The last time they won a championship. Uh-huh. So '09 was my freshman year there. So I've been ever since, ever since my freshman year, I've been really hoping and waiting for them to finally win a championship. I believe, you know, mathematically they're, they're favored to win, but I've seen a lot of tournaments in my day and I know that until the championship game, when you win that, that anything is possible. So we'll see. I'm very excited for watching it with my family this weekend. My brother just moved back from Texas and he is a fellow Jayhawk as well. And so we're going to watch it probably in the comfort of a home. I think we might get thrown out of a bar if we go there because we We tend to yell at the TV.

Yeah, we've got this. This episode will probably air, I think, next week. It might be right after the tournament. So we may either be— everybody listening, laughing at us or thinking, right on, good job. My youngest daughter is doing a college trip. She's a junior this year and we are driving through Colorado. We're going to get schools there and then we're going to drive over to University of Tulsa, which is where I got my undergrad, and then we're going to go to KU on the way back to Omaha. And that's, uh, so she's excited to take a look at KU as well as those other schools. So yeah, I might have a Jayhawk in the future.

We'll see. Yeah, we'll see. Are you taking her to CU Boulder in Colorado?

Or— yeah, so I've got two kids in Colorado now, one at Colorado School of Mines and one at, uh, Denver University. But we are going to see Denver University, Colorado College, CU Boulder, and Colorado State. We're going to take a look at those four schools over there.

All right, well, it might be— Kansas is a beaut— KU has a beautiful campus. Everyone's probably picturing it completely flat, and yes, it's literally the only hill in Kansas. And, and you have to— and all the student housing is, or at least where I lived, was at the bottom of the hill. So there was an extra hurdle to getting to class, having to walk up this hill every day. But it really is a beautiful campus. It's, uh, tough to compare it in terms of beauty to Colorado.

But did you get to watch a lot of games, basketball games in the stadium?

Yes, I was fortunate. I was able to go to a lot of student section games. And then a friend of mine had season tickets through their family. My— I think it was my senior year there. It was when Embiid and Wiggins were on the team. And so we got to see that team, which was amazing. I'm sad that they didn't end up working out with all of Embiid's injuries, but I got to go to a ton of games.

How about you? I've only been to one game and I thought it was the most amazing experience. The crowd was so incredible and you're packed into this small high school gym, it feels like. But man, it was, it was electrifying. It was wonderful. I'd like to go back. I, when I went to school there, uh, it was, it was, uh, getting my MBA, but I was a non-traditional student. So I, you know, I graduated my undergrad, I was working full-time, and then I went back to get my MBA. And so I didn't, I wasn't on campus, I didn't have that, you know, undergrad lifestyle, but I was able to make it to one game while I was going to school there.

That was fun. Yeah, they're really a great time. It's— I love all the traditions and it's really fun.

And what's going to happen? Is the Big 12 kind of dismantling again or what's—

I don't keep up with all that stuff. Yeah, there's a lot of football that interferes with basketball. We had Missouri leaving. That was a pretty fun game. I think it still ranks one of the best games ever. Their last Missouri-Kansas game at Allen Fieldhouse, we were down I think almost 20 going into the second half and came back and won it in the last moments. And it broke decibel records. So I know they left, but I have a suspicion that they're— they this year played each other, and I think they're going to continue to play each other because that rivalry goes back to Civil War, you know. Yeah, pretty intense. And then I think another team left this year, but I I can't remember that, but yeah, the Big 12, you know, is subject to what happens in football.

Yeah. Well, what else do you like to do for fun?

I'm a big reader. Every new referral partner or even some clients I meet, I always ask them what their favorite books are. I love personal development books, usually listen to those on Audible. And then I'm a big history buff. I'm reading about LBJ. It's a book called A Path to Power written by Robert Caro, and it goes over his early years. And there's a 4-part series that Robert Caro has going through all the Lyndon Johnson years, and he's really an interesting guy. So I love US history. And then I play some tennis as well. Trying to think of other hobbies.

Love traveling. Yeah, I'm reading— I'm not reading a book right now, but I'm reading a lot about the Stoics. So I've been kind of studying a lot of Seneca, Seneca and Marcus Aurelius, and, you know, a handful of other names out there. And it's enlightening, it's very insightful. And some of those just very common sense approach to philosophy of your everyday life. It's such a great takeaway. Maybe I appreciate it because I'm a little older in my life now, but just a lot of acceptance, a lot of, you know, it is what it is. And it takes a lot of that anxiety and, and angst away that I had in younger years about things. So I've been trying to share that with my kids more too. I think I think if I wish I would've been a little more stoic in my early years, gives a fresh perspective on things.

Yeah. I wish I would've listened to my parents and grandparents on everything though. I didn't get into reading until later in life. If it is looking back on all the advice I was getting, that'd be what I would encourage kids is either your parents know something. Do you read the original texts? I think it's, Letters from a Stoic or something by Seneca, or do you like reading more modern books that are written about it?

I'm more into— there's actually an email that comes out once a day called the Daily Stoic. So I get that every morning about 8:00 AM. And that's generally right about when I'm having coffee with my daughter before I take her to school. She can drive to school, but sometimes it's like 3 blocks away. So So we just kind of read it together. So that's a chance to just touch base once a week on something. Sometimes they're better than others. I just saw today a list of, you know, 4 or 5 of the original books, letters, and a couple others. And so I was gonna buy them and get them on my desk because I think I would really enjoy some of the original text, not just, you know, a digest or someone else's summary of what was said.

Yeah, there's, there's a great theory called the Lindy theory, which is essentially a book that was written 2,000 years ago has a higher probability of being around in the next 2,000 years than a book written 10 years ago. And essentially the lesson is you should pay attention to old texts that have made it, stood the test of time. And my biggest thing is I have a hard time reading the Old English style. So I just read The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon written in 1776, and that was a struggle. It's supposed to be beautiful writing, but it's hard for me as someone born in 1990 to follow it like I could a book written in this century. Yeah, I've read—

I can't think of what it is, but I've read a couple books like that where they were written a long, long time ago, and it's tough. I think, oh, you know, you get a certain way through the book and then you're able to start digesting a little better, but it stands out as being almost foreign, a language, as you're reading it. I've read books that are kind of poetic in that way as well, like kind of the writing, it almost poetically on purpose. It's not really broken English or Old English, it's just different than you normally would read something. And those can be very hard to get through. But I don't know, I don't find enough time to read is the other problem. Like, I read my phone too much, which I, you know, in some cases it's reading, depends on what I'm spending my time on. Other cases it's nice just to put it down, pick up actual physical book and read. That's a totally different experience than reading a short article on stoicism on my phone.

Yeah. I like to make sure I make time, but I also have no kids and other than work, not as many responsibilities. So I'm able to make time. Where do you get your news, especially news related to fractional professionals or marketing professionals or just news in general?

Yeah, that's a good question. We do a lot of internal peer-to-peer conversations around marketing-related stuff. So whether it be less news and more what's a new tactic or something you've heard about, and it usually will generate in that conversation and someone will say, well, there was a really good article on this, or you should check this out. And so that seeds where I go looking for things. I'm not a big consumer of, you know, the trend of the day, and I don't sign up for a bunch of tactical digests. There's not a— I like Seth Godin as an author. He's done some really nice work. His most recent book is a few years old now. I think it's This Is Marketing. Or what is Marketing 1 to 2, but great book. He puts out a blog or blurb every day almost, his digest. I used to subscribe to stuff like that, but it just kind of becomes noise and not really informative. So I rely on the insights of our team to generate a lot of that. I'm also the founder of a fractional professionals association. So we have a monthly meeting and we have a group of fractional peers that come in, not just CMOs, so CTOs, CFOs, CIOs, COOs, et cetera. And we'll do breakouts and a lot of times we'll ask, what have you learned? What's new?

What's different?

And so we'll get again insights from other fractionals about what they're reading or what they're seeing or what they're doing and that kind of seeds those insights. So I get more of that value, I think, from peers and networks than I get from any external website or other resource.

Yeah. Nothing like meeting people who are actually doing the same work as you and getting their real live insights. I think that, that's hard to replicate. Yeah, it is.

One of the other questions or topics we can talk a little bit about, I'd be interested in your take. I'm spending some time really studying leadership. And I'm curious, like, what are some of the characteristics that you find good leaders possess? And there might be people within your organization that bring it to mind, or even some of the business owners and entrepreneurs that you've worked with. What are some of the leadership characteristics that you've seen?

[Speaker:SCOTT_LYNN] Yeah. Well, I mean, integrity is obviously a top one. In our industry, the word fiduciary is thrown around a lot, but that's just essentially doing what's in the best interest of the client. And in the financial industry, we have a ton of conflicts of interests and incentives to not do what's in the best interest of the client. We could sell them higher fee products. We could put them in and things that are unsuitable. There's all sorts of different ways you could do it, but making sure that we are structured and that the leadership has structured our business to ensure that the client is getting the exact solution that meets their needs. So that I think is, is really important. Open-mindedness. So within our company, we have a diverse array of different opinions on on how we should attack planning. And I would say that everyone on the team does a great job of, you know, listening to other people's viewpoints and being willing to, you know, even change their positions in the face of new information. And that starts at the top. I think you have to be setting an example, you know, at the business owner level to to do that. So those are a couple of things. How about you? I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.

Yeah, no, those are two good ones. Characteristics, I was thinking there's a few that really stand out to me. And so being able to inspire, I think, is a trait and characteristic that I feel good leaders possess. And that can be done in different ways. It doesn't have to be some super eloquent speaker that inspires you. It could be a hard worker that just inspires you. So, but that ability to inspire others, I think, is a characteristic. Then also a developer of people. I think good leaders are innately able to, and we and desire to develop others around them to be better, not just surrounding themselves, but really working and helping and growing people around them. I think having some sense of vision, and I think oftentimes vision and visionaries get kind of maybe put on this up in the clouds kind of vision, but I think of it more like just seeing— maybe it's part of open-mindedness a little bit, but seeing things that others don't see, where you want to go with that role or that position within the business. Just being visionary in that way, not just doing the same thing over and over. Being good decision makers and not making necessarily good decisions, but just being able to to make a decision and move forward. Like, that's a huge—

Yeah. Being— one thing I've learned is that conflict is pretty much inherent, especially when you're working on teams within a business. So being able to flush through that conflict effectively where, you know, the team members are respecting each other's opinions and then even if they don't agree on something, to make a commitment, even if it wasn't your idea and they're going against you, and to go with that commitment as a team. And that doesn't mean saying, you know, sabotaging and saying, well, I told you guys this was going to be a bad idea. You should have listened to my idea. No, it's putting all of your effort into what was decided as a team and believing in the decision that the team made.

Yeah, that's important. And for, I think, for that leader to be able to make that decision and move forward, but then for the other people that are watching that leader If that doesn't happen, it sends the wrong message and it's, you know, that's a dangerous leadership role here.

Yeah, and related to leaders, I'd love to ask you, when you're brought in to engage a client, do you find often that they, you know, they like the idea of ramping up their marketing and bringing in an outsourced professional, but when it comes to implementing the recommendations that you're making, things slip sideways a bit and they're not willing to do the work on their end necessary. I've talked to EOS guys about that and they say, you know, it is slightly common where business owners say, hey, I want to get right people, right, right place, you know, have some accountability, have better use of our data. But then when it comes to actually doing things and changing old habits, it falls apart a bit. So I'd love to hear your experience.

Yeah, that's a, that's a, that's a good insight. And I've seen it both ways. It does start with that owner because if the owner's willing to give up that responsibility and let somebody else run, then it works out really well. But if the owner is not, he or she still wants to do that role even though they hire somebody else, it becomes really difficult. So the number one thing that I tell business owners when they're considering a fractional professional is you've got to be willing to take off the hat and give it to somebody else that you trust and that you feel will do it better than you. And if you can do those two things, find that person that you can trust and do it better than you, then, then it'll be a successful engagement. But if you don't trust them, meaning I've been burned by marketing a dozen times, I've hired the wrong person, the agency's always screwing me, like whatever the the trust factor is. If they can't regain that trust in the person, doesn't matter who you hire, they'll always be second-guessing. Is it the right decision? Do they really know what they're doing? Are they looking out for my best interests? So they have to be able to build that trust. And then they have to feel like that competency of that person is going to be able to do it better than they can on their own. And in marketing, particularly, most business owners are naturally, because they've been been in their role as a business owner for a long time, either they started the business, inherited the business, or just grown up in the business, they're pretty good marketers. They understand who the customers are, they understand who their competitors are, they know their product and service better than anybody else. They've probably been selling most of the big deals for a very long time. They're good marketers. And for them to find somebody they feel that can do it better than them, it's maybe an ego play, or they just really need to find somebody that can do it better than them. And that's where that fractional CMO comes into play. Because a CMO should be able to do it better than you as an owner. But a marketing director or more tactically focused person who hasn't had a breadth of exposure in the real world or outside maybe some, some niche opportunities, isn't probably going to do marketing better. And so that's where they've kind of faltered in the past is trying to find it. And you see the same thing in CFOs and CTOs and CIOs, it just differs a bit. But trust and competency are the two things that as a fractional leader, you need to be able to establish with that owner first, and then with the rest of the people on the C-suite, because they all— then the same thing comes up, like the CFO needs to believe that the CMO is going to use make good use of the money that they're asking for. The CTO needs to make sure we're going to integrate, and the martech that you're recommending actually is good and better than what we have. The salesperson needs to respect the marketing, and then they need to align and integrate. So those leadership characteristics are really important in a fractional leader, just as they are in a full-time leader.

Yeah, that's really interesting. Well, in our industry, What's, what's tough is most of our business owner clients, they have other advisors either that they continue to work with and they just handle investments or something that we don't necessarily need to make changes to. Or, you know, they decide not to work with them anymore because we, you know, uncover some, some malpractice or are able to do things more efficiently. It's just tough. There's such a such a wide spectrum of people who call themselves financial advisors or financial planners. It's tough for me to say to someone, "Hey, you're really going to the Red Lobster of this and you need to be," I don't know, "at Morton's or whatever your overpriced steakhouse is for the services that you need." It's hard for me to distinguish the difference. And what we try to do is We're fee-based, and fee-based means different things to different people. So we do charge fees on investment portfolios, but we're also fee-based in that when we start doing the planning work, we just charge a fixed monthly fee to do that planning work so that the client knows, hey, these guys are going to take a look under the hood, see what you have, diagnose, and then And it could be that they've done everything correctly, they are as tax efficient as possible, and there's nothing we can do. And if you're paying $3,000 or $4,000 to get that second opinion, I would still say that's worth it. But it is tough because it's not good to poo-poo someone's other advisor, and that's not something that's going to win you business. Inferring that they made a stupid decision with a guy they like to golf with.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, your business is hard. Ours is similarly hard. We're generally in our opportunities not going in and looking at somebody else's work. It's normally the absence of anybody doing what we're doing ever in the organization. So it's a $5 to $50 million organization, the owner's been wearing the marketing hat or the salesperson, or they have a junior marketing— when I say junior, marketing director, marketing manager, maybe not a C-level strategic thinker. And that person stays on board, and usually we are working hand in hand and developing— once again, back to the leadership— developing that person to be a better marketer, more strategic. And so we're not in a position of second-guessing someone else's decisions on the team. Now, They've already made years of bad decisions. Generally, that's across the board. Part of that's just because marketing is one big gamble anyway. You got to always be testing. So there's going to be a lot of failures. So it's really easy to point out something that didn't work. Like, that was stupid. Why did you do that? Well, we just tried it. It didn't work. That's okay. So we don't pick apart past marketing. We just try to look at what's the opportunity today. What you look like moving forward.

Reminds me of Thomas Edison. What did he say? Something like, I didn't fail, I found 980 ways not to make a light bulb. Yeah, so yeah, that's interesting. When would you— do you consider marketing agencies to be competitors, or are there times where they are better fits, or do they actually bring you in? I'd love to know the relationship with a traditional creative agency.

Yeah, I mean, agencies are generally really good on the brand creative work. They're not very strong traditionally, in my opinion, on the strategy. Like, their strategy— the strategy of an agency is, how do I sell more agency stuff to you? Because they have a full team of copywriters and designers and photographers, and, you know, they just have that group of people. They got to sell work to them all the time. So when they go in, of course you're gonna need a new brand, a new design, new logo, new this, new that, new that. Where a strategist like us, we come in just more like a fiduciary partner. We have nothing else to sell. We want to identify what the right opportunities are. And then when we realize, okay, we need some strong creative work, let's start working with an agency. We're able to oversee that agency in a different way than a traditional owner would. We know what they don't know. We know what the owners don't know. We know how those agencies work. We know what what things should cost. We know how to get the most out of those engagements and generally either save money or get more for the same dollars. I think they would consider us competitors because they oftentimes cloak strategy as one of their offerings, but it's really just how do we sell more agency stuff at the end of the day. That's in my opinion, maybe it's a little harsh.

But any of your agency referral partners watching this, they might be less inclined.

I have less— I don't have many agency referral partners. Now we have a lot of what I would consider kind of more niche and boutique agencies. Someone who's really good at SEO or really good at AdWords or really good at social media. And those agencies, when they stay in their tactic lane, they're great and they'll bring us in. We're complementary in the same sense because they want to they need somebody who can build an overall strategy that sees how they can optimize the SEO piece and/or how they can optimize the pay-per-click. So we have a lot of those agencies that are referral partners that we bring into our clients when it makes sense, and they bring us in when they need help on the strategy side.

And what percentage of your engagements are focusing on the digital marketing, and what are, you know, maybe more traditional? I don't, I don't know what the different categories are.

But yeah, just about everybody's doing some form of digital these days. It's pretty hard to imagine a business that doesn't have a website or a social media presence or an app or some sort of reviews. Like, there's— digital is, is everywhere. So now there are certain businesses that are real heavy in digital, meaning that's where they're spending tens of thousands of dollars a month on AdWords or real robust content marketing strategies where they're spitting out blogs and social posts. And those are some of the more SaaS-based business, technology-based business, consumer direct businesses. A lot of the traditional kind of B2B business models, Less of that, but there might be a big email component. But, you know, we look at every business as different and we start with the customer and that's what drives the tactics we choose to suggest. So when we talk to customers of yours, as a good example, I talked to 5 to 10 of your customers that recently started doing work with you in the last 12 months. I'm going to gain some insights into when did they start to look for a tax specialist or strategist or a new financial planner? When did they start looking? What was going on in their business? We call those triggers. What's triggering it? Could be exit strategy, could be retention problem. Some of the things you point out could be triggers. And then through the interview process, what did you do when you started looking? Where did you go? What were you looking for? And then they'll tell you, I Googled, or I went to my business peer group, or I asked my neighbor, or I was golfing and I ran into somebody. You start to discover what the path of that, or called journey, the buyer journey is. That buyer journey then gives us the tactical cues. Okay, so you never even searched on Google once for tax strategist? No, never. Okay, we would never then want to have a digital strategy for you that was based on SEO or pay-per-click. Then we ask things like, what were some of— what were you afraid of or some of the concerns you had? Well, I thought I was, you know, thought I was going to be overcharged, or I thought it was going to be played some huge commission and it would take me 20 years to ever recoup the upfront fees, or, you know, these are real concerns that people have? And then what were some of your things that you were looking for? Well, I was definitely looking for somebody local, and I wanted somebody that had done this before in my industry. You know, whatever those answers are, those give you insights into your messaging. So between those, what the customer tells you, with 5 to 10 interviews, we can generally get a really good start for what the triggers are, what the tactics are, what the messaging should be. And most of the time when you do that for a business owner who's been in that business for 5, 10, 20 years, the answers to those 3 questions, what the triggers were, what the journey is, and what the decision criteria is, is completely different than it was when they started the business. So that's how you start building that trust. We actually are a better option. We know how to do this, maybe not better, but different than you used to do to do. And therefore you build the trust and now you can start engaging them to, and to trust you on what to have and what and how to execute.

Yeah. And is it usually pretty— do you have a system for reaching out to those customers or is it a— are they usually clients that the business owner is willing to, you know, have you reach out to for, for the purposes of extracting that information?

Yeah, we follow Adele Rivera— Rovella, sorry. She has a book called Buyer Personas. It's an old book, it's been around for probably 10+ years. And she's been doing these buyer interviews, is what they're called, for organizations for a long time. She's wrote the book, she talks about it. And the recommendation is the ideal person to talk to is not a customer, but it's somebody who's made a buying decision with your competitor within the last 6 to 12 months, because that's an unbiased buyer journey. When you— the second best is with your customer. Now, there's some biases that come with your customers, because maybe you knew them, maybe they were already in your sphere of influence, like, but you can still pull out really good insights, even though there's a little bit of bias there. What we do is ask for customers, because those are much easier to come by. Then give me 5 people that didn't buy from you in the last year that did buy from your competitors. That's a harder list for you to generate and for me to get in front of than tell me 5 people that bought from you in the last 12 months that I can talk to. So we start there and they're both equally valuable, but the preferred way is a competitor. So actually someone who's bought from a competitor.

Yeah. Well, that's really cool. Well, Well, how would you recommend I start or I implement diagnosing, you know, if clients are ideal fits for various fractional professionals, maybe ones that you've interviewed on this podcast? Because I would love to— I'm always looking to bring more value to clients and I'm already in my daily business, you know, referring them to other professionals. Sometimes ones that I'm working alongside with, sometimes ones where I'm not involved at all.

So I'd love to know your thoughts.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, I give a signature talk called The Future is Fractional and it's 30 to 60 minutes. I'd love to have the opportunity to give a talk to your clients or even prospects, either in person or virtually about understanding that the future is fractional. I think it's the best opportunity for business owners today is take advantage of this great resignation with all these amazing fractional people out there, but they have to understand, you got to take the hat off, you got to figure out how to trust them, what are the right criteria you need to look for, how do you hire them the right way? And so I walk through that all in my talk and that would be a great way to introduce the concept. And it's not about marketing when I give that talk, it's about the fractional professional as a whole. And then the takeaway is I've got this list of fractional professionals that are part of our association that I, I share with, with the audience. So here's, you know, here's trusted vetted people that I know that you could start with if you have a need. And the feedback's been great on those talks.

I think you mentioned before, but what are the typical revenues where it makes sense to bring in a fractional professional as opposed to hiring someone full-time? And is there a level at which it doesn't make sense and you do need to bring someone in full-time?

Yeah, each, each kind of fractional area is a little different. So when I ask this question, and some of it's based on people's interest levels, so I had a CTO on the— or CFO on the other day on the podcast, and He likes to work between $1 to $15 million in revenue. He thinks that's where a fractional CFO makes a lot of sense for a company. Once they get above $10 or $15 million, they should have somebody full-time in the seat. We say it's $5 to $50 million as a CMO who we look to serve. But we serve people that have $100+ million companies that just either needed someone in the interim or just have never had one before and they need the first step to get to a full-time. There are some CMOs that I talked to that would rather work in the 1 to 5 or the startup world as a CMO. As long as it's well funded, they can do that. CTOs are, you know, they can come in as a fractional CTO on a project-based, really on any size company, or they'll come in and run a, you know, the CTO role in large company. Fractional integrators, people that come in and fractional operations people, Really, it's any size that needs it. So it's, it's not easy to answer the question. A lot of times when you think about strategy, usually most people that are in a strategic role inside of a business full-time might be doing strategy, I'd say 20 to 40% of the time. The other 60% of the time, it's probably full with tactical to-dos. And so So if you think of that mindset and you could separate the two, like we just need strategy from our fractional person and then we need a full-time execution team member that's executing, it changes the way you think about it. And that's not a traditional way of doing it, but the last thing that most of the CMOs that we work with want to do is they don't want to get into the website and be posting blogs and doing social media tweets. They want to be building the strategy and then developing internal team members to execute or finding the external team members that do. And you can say the same thing with the CFO. They want to do really smart CFO work. They don't want to be sitting in there inside QuickBooks doing the bookkeeping and accounts payable and accounts receivable. But business owners, as they grow, they're looking for these unicorns all along the way. And a better approach might be to separate, cut the head off the unicorn and Yeah, that—

and so staying at a high— at the high level is probably pretty important. And do you get dragged in? Uh, does scope creep happen, uh, very often, or attempted scope creep?

Yeah, it does happen. It probably happens in almost any professional services role. Scope creep's an issue, uh, fractional role for sure, because you can do so much you have done so much. You've done everything from, you know, 20 years ago, tactical, work your way up. So you've done it all. So it's really easy, one, for the client to ask because they're going to naturally ask for more work. But it can sometimes be a bad habit of the fractional leader to just jump into, okay, fine, I'm just going to do that for— because I can. And when we bring people on our team, we train them on, you know, If you're going to build a good practice and be known as a strategic leader, you can't be doing tactical work. And so we have, we've built coordinators into our system that help the CMOs. We've, we instruct them on how to manage scope issues. It's a big, it's a big deal in our business. And it's just, and I hear it every day with other fractional professionals, it's a big deal for them as well.

Yeah, yeah. I, even in our industry, Absolutely.

Same thing. I think it's bigger when you have businesses like ours and yours that are fee-based, that are not— when I say fee-based, so we usually work and most fractional professionals work for a flat dollar per month, not a dollar per hour, where agencies and other professional service firms like attorneys and accountants, they'll be dollar per hour. So that scope creep is perfect for them. It's more billable. For somebody who's at a flat monthly rate, you're kind of trying to manage that process.

Yeah. We are flat monthly rate as well. We're not billing people for emails or things like that. So it is tough to manage, especially because everyone on our team is dedicated to bringing value and it hurts us a little bit if a client has a problem that isn't necessarily in our wheelhouse, but we know that we can help them with. You know, it's— I try not to, you know, get on Zoom and try to figure out people's tech problems because they know I'm a millennial. But, you know, if it is something that I could get done for them and, you know, make their day easier, I'll do it. One time I did during COVID I had a client who had COVID and they couldn't get groceries delivered, and I did deliver groceries for them. So that's probably the highest level of scope creep that I've experienced in my career. But I mean, that's— those are the things I think that clients remember and, you know, might discourage them from going elsewhere.

So yeah, I'd have to think back, but I'm sure I've got some fun scope creep stories as well.

Nothing pops to mind, though. Yeah, that was a funny one, but it was tough. I think it was when the Omicron was peaking and there wasn't— everyone was ordering delivery groceries. And probably the people who are delivering the groceries all had it. So it was a tough time, but glad we— looks like we're on the other side of that. And one other question on— for your role specifically, are you wanting clients where it's a long-term engagement they have you on and it's— there's no set end date, or is it— they're typically some sort of lifecycle of, you know, you're brought in, you build out processes, Do you make sure someone is in place to, you know, do more of the tactical work, the administrative work, and then exit out? Or is it something where they are, you know, calling upon you potentially in perpetuity?

Yeah, good question. So for our work at Your CMO, we set a 2-year goal for our clients, a marketing goal. So we're looking at kind of a 2-year picture, and then we use a series of quarterly sprints to get towards that goal, set priorities every 90 days. What do we need to do this quarter? What do we need to do next quarter? But we're also month to month. So we offer a lot of flexibility to our clients. The goal is we want to be there and get to that 2-year goal because that's also what the client is looking for and that makes sense. We can get there sooner sometimes and then that means we end the engagement or we can get there and restart another 2-year goal. So we have clients that go— that we've had for 5+ years. We've had clients that sometimes it's real clear that there's just a real short-term project need, maybe 3 to 6 months. They just need an interim gap filled, and we can do that. That's not ideal. Ideal is 18 to 24 months. We're building something along the way so that when we exit, we've developed somebody internally that can manage what we've built built or we've brought somebody in from the outside that can manage what we've built, or we get to that 18 to 24 mark, we've done that, built it up, we've got the team that's managing that, and then there's a new investment goal. As long as the company's looking to pivot, that's a good need for a CMO because you're always trying— there's just so much to learn and figure out or build. They're looking to build an internal team, that's a great reason to bring in a leader. Or they're just looking to scale, like they're really— growth is a great focus, then investment in a CMO makes sense. If it's kind of a flat organic growth and not a whole lot of need, then it doesn't make as much sense.

That investment's not smart. And how many of these can you have going at once?

Well, Our typical CMO is going to handle 2 to 3 engagements at a time. We have some CMOs that have been around for several years that have more, but that's because they've got— the scope has gone down to more of a maintenance. They just want to see them quarterly or, you know, once a month and just kind of maintain what they've got. And so they'll have maybe 5, 4, 5, 6 in that scenario, but 2 or 3 of them are really maintenance level. But 3 kind of fully engaged fractional opportunities is about— it's a good number. The CMO is not getting, you know, not pulling their hair out, getting overworked. The client's getting a good amount of their time.

That's kind of a sweet spot. And going back to our labor market discussion earlier, is there— do they have to bring you back in if the person that you trained internally or maybe even recruited decides to go to another opportunity, or do you try to instill a culture where—

Yeah, that's a great question. That doesn't happen. Yeah, that's a great question. So I'll tell you that one of the— in my signature talk that I share, one of the things that companies need to look for when they hire a fractional professional, whether it be a CMO, CTO, or whatever whatever. It's somebody who's committed to the craft of being full-time fractional because there's a lot of people out there that are fractional because they're in between their next full-time jobs. And that's what happens. They come on, they're there 3 or 4 months and then they're, boom, I just got a full-time job. See ya. And you don't want that. And so we, because of the way we are set up, we're a franchise. Our CMOs are making a commitment to that way of life. They're signing a franchise agreement, clients. They're not looking for employment. They're definitely invested in building a practice, so they're less likely to take a full-time gig. That doesn't mean that they might not get poached by the client. Sometimes that happens. The client says, why don't you just stay with me full-time? And, you know, that has happened, or some other amazing opportunities happen. It's rare, but we, we are more likely to CMOs that want that fractional lifestyle than other organizations that are out there.

Okay. And who did you found your CMO? Sorry if I should have done my more due diligence.

But yeah, I did. My business partner and I founded it about 6 years ago.

Okay. And the franchise model, that kind of creates some stickiness to where people have skin in the game. Is it skin in the game? Or do they like, is there some sort of of revenue share between the group, or is it more the franchise goes towards they get to use your brand marketing materials, all that good stuff, and that's what they get for investing in the franchise fees?

Yeah, the, the franchise came about last couple years. We were operating with kind kind of like a franchise, but without calling it a franchise or doing any of the exhaustive legal work to become a franchise. And so when we were realizing that we wanted to grow our business, we just wanted to either make a decision, we'll go all in on providing. So for us, what makes you a franchise is they're using your brand and they're using your mark, I think is what it's called. There's significant operating expectations and control that we provide, and they're paying us a fee for that, you know, access to those things. And we went to our CMO, said, do you want us to pull anything back? Do you want us to— of course, yeah, don't charge us anything. Well, we can't do that. But no, they wanted to use the brand. They didn't want to be, you know, Joe Frost LLC. They want to be your CMO, Joe Frost. And they wanted— and it's not as much control as it's just the operational support that we get. So they get a full-time marketing coordinator that works alongside them on every one of their clients. They get a structured approach to how to deliver fractional marketing. We're not telling them how to market, we're not telling them what tactics to use, but we're telling them that in our engagement, we always start with an audit, we do collaborative 2-year planning, then we do 90-day sprints, and then we've got all the materials and tools and resources so that you can deliver that service to your clients, and the clients love it. We've got the technology they can use, we've got the website they can use, and we do lead generation to help them build clients. So they join us, they get all of that. That's what they pay for as a franchise. But the ones that don't want it are people that are in between full-time jobs, like they're just tire kicking, or they've already got a successful consulting business and they're happy doing what they're doing and they don't want to change their ways because way works for them. Our way is different, or they're just not ready, you know, they're not ready to make that long-term commitment, they just want to try it for a little bit. So that's, I think, where we differentiate is because it's a franchise, it's now given both sides a better candidate and a better match. We've got CMOs that are more committed, we have clients that are getting somebody who's not going to just come and go Yeah.

Well, I think it's a great platform that you've created and especially with the trend towards entrepreneurship and a ton of people starting small businesses over the last several years, I think that there's going to be a growing need for more fractional professionals and I'm excited to see where you guys take it.

Yeah. Thanks. We're excited too. Well, this has been a really good conversation. I know we're We're running up on our time, but I wanted to thank you for everything that we've talked about today. It's been fun. We kind of went all over the place.

I think the most fun was talking about the Rock Chalk Jayhawks and hopefully we win. Yeah, I'm hoping so. Maybe I'll shoot you some emails if I, you know, if it's good news. If it's bad news, I'll be sulking. We won't talk about it ever again if it's bad. Yeah, yeah. We just, we erase it from our memories.

Exactly. We'll cut that bit. I'll call the editor on Monday.

Hey, can you pull that out? Yeah, we should have just predicted what happened and then we could have edited it in. Then we would have looked like, you know, we're Nostradamus or something.

That would have been good. Yeah. What's the best way for people to get a hold of you?

I would say email is great. It's chris@kimza.com. Kimsagroup.com. That's a great way. You can also go on our website and there's something you can click to reach out to us. We will have engaged Joe, so it's probably not as optimal as it could be.

Yeah, we'll have the show notes with all the different ways to get you, but the best way is just send you an email.

So yeah, send an email. I don't know if I'll put my cell phone number on there, but I generally, once I start engaging, I align to whatever the the client wants. We've got people who like to text, email, some who only do phone calls, you know, some who don't have emails and we have to send them letters in the mail, things like that.

But we're adaptable. All right. Well, and thanks to all of our listeners. I hope you had a good time like, like I did with Chris. And we will catch you the next time.

All righty.

Thanks so much, Chip. Yeah. Bye-bye. 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 YorCmo, helping organizations grow, save time and money with better marketing strategy and fractional execution. Visit them at YorCmo.com. YorCmo.com, spelled wrong on purpose.