The Fractional Innovator - Fractional C-Suite Retreat - Episode # 004

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. So today's guest is, uh, Focuses on guiding small companies to align their business goals and technology tools. He has over 8 years of experience with high technology and business and worked with some of the largest media technology and retail companies in Europe and the US and as fractional CTO at DataUp. So welcome, Mohassan. Thank you for being here.

Of course. Thanks, Joe, for having me on here.

So the first question I'd like to start with, Mo, is as a fractional professional, as you enter into the C-suites of the world, what is one opportunity that you see that a lot of C-suites might be missing?

Yeah, a lot of, a lot of C-suites often seem to be missing the area of knowledge in different areas, different areas of the business that they do. For example, let's say that someone is e-commerce. I tend to focus only on e-commerce businesses. More or less. So oftentimes they will need a CTO like myself to kind of know about the technical aspect of things that are going on. Of course, you need a CMO, a CFO as well. So I think a lot of times just kind of figuring out who and what you need to be in place is a very important part. And that's oftentimes what I've seen is something that's missing in terms of just the very basic knowledge of, okay, we need to work on SEO or conversion rate optimization or something like that, is like just having that knowledge is so helpful because then you can say, okay, I need this person as a CTO or someone else, or you can get someone like myself kind of guide you through that, which is what I do a lot of times. But honestly, that seems to be the biggest thing is there are a lot of pieces of knowledge that are missing in running a business because as you and I know very well, technology is improving and changing so dramatically that, you know, what I know today is not what I need to know next week. So I really need to keep up with everything and make sure I am keeping up, I'm staying on top of the technology, but also helping my clients through that. And if you can imagine, a CEO would have so much harder time just to know everything that has to happen in their business. So I think just kind of having a little bit of touch here and there and listening to podcasts where other knowledge people come in, like for example, like I was just listening to one by Ezra, He's the co-founder of Boom, and he was sharing all his experiences about Black Friday and how it's improved over the last few years. So he's now sharing, okay, we're making millions of dollars during just the Black Friday and Cyber Monday. And that's not something that you and I would know normally, right? So listening to those kinds of podcasts and your podcast, these kinds of things are, I think, super helpful.

Interesting. So you see the opportunity that C-suites are missing out on. Is the knowledge that maybe they don't know they need because they're kind of in their own space. Yeah, thinking they're not exposed to some of the new innovative ideas out there. Just the idea of bringing in a fractional C anything. Yes, could be what's missing in some of the C-suites.

Exactly, exactly. I think, like I said, like, it's just too much to know for one person. Like, even me, like, I, I I know about the technical aspects of things, but I'm not really a CMO. I wouldn't do the creative stuff. I wouldn't know the best way to handle some of those things that you guys come up with. I can help you on the technical aspect of things, but that's just not really my expertise. I wouldn't know anything about finance. I mean, I do some things for my business, but I don't have the expertise to say, okay, I'm gonna save you $10,000 by doing these tax things or whatever, right? So I think that's why it's really important to have those specific fractional folks that will help you, guide you through that. But also, I think it's useful to have a good understanding of just a little bit of what does that even mean, you know, just that basic knowledge.

Yeah, I think that's brilliant. I don't think I've heard that answer yet. And it just, it makes me think that there's, you know, we don't know what we don't know. That's kind of an old adage. And in the, in the boardrooms and the C-suites, we're limited by the people that are in the room with us.

Yeah.

And even if we have somebody that's got some competency in, in marketing or financials or technology, it may not be up to date.

Yes.

Or there may be opportunities outside of the organization. When you see a change in one industry, it could be applied to your industry. So a fractional professional could give some of that, those insights on a regular basis.

Yeah, absolutely.

Would you recommend businesses consider having like a different fractional professional come in from time to time and just evaluate their current setup? Is that how you would solve that?

Absolutely. Even if I was working with a company as a fractional CTO for whatever I'm trying to do, I think even in my— in that sort of capacity, it still makes sense for someone else to come in and give their perspective because I'm I'm working in the way that I know. I have a very heavy analytics background, so everything that I do is very data-driven. But, you know, someone else might be thinking about it from a creative perspective, for example, right? So like, I mean, see if a CMO would do that, but still, I think it would make sense to, you know, have like an audit, especially for a bigger business, have an audit of something that is happening, uh, you know, once a year or every couple years or something like that. I think is useful. Or a lot of times the way Businesses take an approach of having advisors. I think that's another great way of handling this. Like, okay, these are my board of advisors, whether it's another, you know, maybe technical person or some experience with that, kind of say, okay, well that thing, you know, maybe it could come up, we could do something in a little different way because I'm not gonna say that I'm always right, I'm not. I think that's okay. It's because we don't always know everything that we need to know potentially in the moment that we need it, right? So having another expertise, another person coming in from a different angle, I think is always really interesting.

Yeah, I think that's fascinating. I've never thought of it that way. It makes my mind spin about how, as a business owner myself, I've not had a CTO come in and look at what we're doing. I've not had a— well, we have had a fractional salesperson look at what we're doing. We have had fractional CFOs, but I've not actually thought that I would need a CTO to look at our business because just there's not been a pain point there, right? What you're suggesting is more of a proactive thought, which would be I should just have somebody fresh looking at all aspects of my business, you know, every year, almost like a checkup, like a health checkup. Just once you have somebody come in, um, to see if there's something we could be doing better or different or unique.

Exactly.

We're just fine, you're good.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, especially for a bigger business, uh, that, that, you know, it could cost a few thousand dollars But at the end of the day, the benefit that you get from that is so much more because either the worst-case scenario, you know that you're doing everything perfectly and you're fine, you can just continue on because at that point you're probably flawless in everything, every process that you have. But most likely, more likely than not, you're probably going to have a lot of list of things that you need to improve or something that hasn't been thought about in a different way. So I think that that's really the power of having different people come in and share their expertise or experiences.

Yeah, I like that. I'm an idea guy. My mind starts to think, oh, we could have the Fractional Professional Association offer business health checkups and open your business to 5 professionals, a salesperson, a marketing person, a technology person, operations person, and a finance person. And we'll come in and we'll look under the hood and see what's going on, and then we'll give you a quick report back. And it could be just a a great way for businesses to know they're, they're, they're, they're healthy and they're— everything's good, or there's some areas of concern. And it'd be a nice service offering for—

yeah, I love that. I think that that would be fantastic to do. I do a little bit of that myself before I start with any company, uh, work with any company. I always do this, um, just an audit that kind of encompasses everything on the technology side as well as some marketing side. So I look at, okay, how has your sales been over the— well, I work with e-commerce companies, so sales is in like online sales, right? So how has your sales been over the last year or quarter and how do we associate that with, let's say, your website? That's a big portion of how you are making their sales, right? So that's a big technology piece. And then there's all the components that go along with that. So there's QuickBooks and there's all these integrations that does your shipping and the other things, right? So what are the areas of automation that we can apply to say, okay, this is what's getting done now and we can speed it up potentially or make that better. But these are all the different things happening from the user perspective, user experience perspective. That's something that we don't think about at all, unfortunately, in most of our businesses, but user experience is so critical. So you think about a main street shop, like a retail shop that you own, if you were, or if someone was coming into your store, you'd probably say hello and kind of introduce yourself for the most part, and then kind of as they're checking out, kind of ask, oh, how was your experience? This and that thing. You don't get to do any of that online. So it's really important to figure out, okay, well, how did my customer come in to see the X product that I have on my site? And did they leave? Did they hang out for a while? Did they sign up for an email newsletter or something? So like assume looking at all those different pieces is really important. I tried to do that. I wouldn't go that in depth obviously for an initial audit, but I try to figure out some of those pieces to see, if it's even really a valid thing for me to even work. Like I've done an audit for a business and it's like, there's nothing that you need me here for. You're doing well, continue on, maybe come back next year, we'll talk about more. But that's kind of how I look at everything. Just audit first, figure out what to do and how the company's doing, and then kind of take the next approach of what do we improve and how do we do it?

Yeah, that's great. So tell me a little bit more about what you do and how you got into your fractional role.

Yeah, so I got into this in a kind of a funny way because I was working as a sales engineer before. So for those that don't know what a sales engineer is, basically I am an engineer. I understand all the coding aspect of things, how to understand the management of a product that has to be sold or whatever like that. But also I understand the sales aspect. So I go into the sales meeting in front of a C-exec, and I will say, okay, What are your pain points and how do we do this right now? How do we improve this right now? And so that's kind of what a sales engineer does, not only to talk to the people that are having those pain points, figure out from a technology solution, how do we improve that? So I was working with that at a company called New Relic for several years. I was working in New York and in London for a couple years each and got a chance to work with really, really big companies and it just gave me this feeling of confidence that I could do something on my own, you know? So it just kind of like just made me feel that it is possible, I could do it. So I was saving some money on the side to be able to start my own company and I did that last year. And honestly, it's a great decision. I love it so far. There are challenges like we were talking about before, There are challenges to every business, but working through how to figure that out has really been honestly fun and something that I wouldn't have gotten from my day job before. So I'm grateful to be able to even do this and kind of take on this journey of having this business. So in my business, I work with e-commerce companies specifically to help them figure out how to make their processes and systems better. So for example, I work a lot with e-commerce company or Shopify company. So in a Shopify environment, you might see, for example, there are a lot of different integrations that need to be in place. There are a lot of different things that need to be improved over time in terms of customer experience. So we call that customer CRO. So in order to improve that, there are certain things that we need to have in terms of strategies. We can't always just say like, okay, we're gonna improve these 10 things all of a sudden because that's just not really realistic. So we'll look at all those different 10 things and say, okay, how does this happen over the next quarter or next year? And we will kind of make a strategy on making those little pieces happen. So for example, I'm working with one client right now that we're doing an upgrade of their Shopify platform. Getting a new theme, making sure some of the backend things are cleared up because they have thousands of products. And so there's a lot of different pieces go on with that. I'm basically helping them manage it and not only manage it, but also looking at it from a perspective of how do we improve all of these things that way the sales go up. So it's a little bit of technical aspects, but also working with the salespeople, the marketing people to make sure that everything is just working flawlessly as much as possible.

So do you consider yourself similar to a consultant or different from a consultant, and how?

I would say I'm, I'm a consultant, but in consulting I feel most of the time we would just give recommendations and step away, but I like to be there almost doing like a product project management with the client as things are going along. To make sure it is getting done the right way. Because I've had this situation where I create a plan and I leave, and then, you know, 3 months later come back, how is it going? Well, it hasn't been done the right way or properly because, you know, the things weren't understood properly or something like that. So I like to take the approach, yes, I'm a consultant, but I'm also going to help you through the projects that need to get done.

Yeah. And how do you differ from a full-time resource? Is it just claim they don't need a full-time resource and that's why you're a good fit, or are there differences between someone that would do this full-time for a company versus a fractional?

Yeah, that's a good point. There are plenty of CTOs that are full-time with a lot of e-commerce brands. I mean, there are tons of different e-commerce brands that are small to big, right? So I like to work with 1 to 20 million is sort of my sweet spot, In that area, I most of the time see there isn't really a full need for a whole need for a full-time CTO, because there are things that need to get done, but they don't have to be something that, you know, you're doing on a daily basis. There are CTOs that do a lot of the things, hands-on kind of thing, but I like to focus on a lot of the strategic things and making sure projects are getting done as they're supposed to get done on time. So I take a little bit of a different approach. And I think that works out for my clients specifically because, Honestly, to have a full-time CTO, you'd probably need to spend quite a bit every year. But hiring me on a certain period of month or hours or whatever we contract out to be, that works out better for them because not only do they have a great plan over the quarter, year, we're also helping them through that to make sure that those projects are getting done at the right way. We're not going to necessarily do— there are certain things we do for them, but But a lot of things we like to make sure that we're working with third-party vendors that are doing the things and we can hold onto them. There are some clients who come back to me and they'll say, "Oh, can you do this for me?" Which I do, you know, from time to time, or I'll have folks in my staff do some of the things for me. So we take a different approach depending on the client, but most of the time I think that fractional CTOs are perfect for especially the $1 to $20 million.

Yeah. Are many of your clients retailers that are trying to go to the e-commerce space, or are they native, kind of, we're just going to start an e-commerce business?

It's, it's a mix, honestly. It's pretty much just in between, I would say. It's hard to answer that question because most of the time it's a retail business that already exists and they've, you know, they've been around for a long time. For example, I work with a a company in Fort Worth. They do provide safety equipment for linemen, the people that work up on the wires fixing things, you know, linemen, arborists, ironworkers, etc. And so their business has been around, have been around for 75 years, right? That's a very old business, especially in that industry. And they started in their journey of having like an online shop a very long time ago, over 20 years ago. So they started very, very early, but over time they've improved and done a lot of things to have a really good, you know, online system. But oftentimes we're, you know, sometimes like with some, sometimes I'll work with someone that hasn't really had any store at all. Like I'm working with this startup right now who's building a marketplace essentially where they're sourcing products and selling things from their central location where there are a lot of vendors that have a lot of different products. So basically the idea is, hey, you come to this one place to buy all products that you need instead of going to 5 different places to put 5 different orders. So there are lots of different, I guess, scenarios that are happening, but in most cases I'm seeing a retail and e-commerce mix.

Yeah, that's great. So I'm curious, what would you tell a business owner to look for? What's some of the criteria to hiring a good CTO, a fractional CTO?

Yeah, I think even like a regular CTO, fractional CTO, the, the role, the The role may be slightly different, but in terms of who you're looking for, it probably wouldn't be that very different. One of the biggest things would be obviously the technical background, if they need to have a good technical background, whether it's sort of like mine where I come from corporate and I have various background in engineering and coding, but also managing certain things. I think those are useful, but just making sure they have a technical background, first of all, and project management skills. I think this is so key because When it comes to kind of playing the role that we play, at least from the thing that I see is we have to manage a lot of different things. And, you know, in a single client, I may be handling, you know, like 10 projects at a time because there's just so much going on. And so I think that project management sort of idea is very important unless they have more people in their business, but to kind of handle the smaller pieces, but especially in like a $1 to $20 million business, I see a lot of the times it's a, It's like the CTO is having to kind of make sure everything is going in the right direction. I think like for me, I approach everything from an analytics perspective because I have that background in analytics where I've done that for many years. I look at dashboards, I look at data. It's something that excites me personally, but that doesn't have to be for everyone. But I think it is also important whether it's the CTO doing it or looking at that information data-driven way, but whether that or the CMO, whoever. I think someone needs to look at those things as well.

Yeah. So project management is a big piece. The expertise is important. Um, when you work with clients, what are some of the things that are red flags for you, clients that you don't want to work with? Are there any particular types of clients or products or services that you stray away from?

Not necessarily products and services that I stray away from. I personally am a huge traveler. I've traveled the world, you know, at this point I've been to 7 continents. So I just find a passion with that sort of thing where it's like travel-related things, we're talking about travel. So it's just something that makes me excited. So if there are clients that are out there that are brands that are out there that are, you know, looking for, you know, CTO that are in that space, that would just make me just super excited just to talk to them, even if we don't work together, right? It's just something I enjoy. So that would kind of make me automatically gravitate towards that. There are scenarios where I've literally just told clients, no, I'm not gonna work with you. This is not the right time because they don't understand sort of the need for a CTO. It's just like, okay, I have all these problems technically, let's go fix it. But it's not just about let's go fix it. It's about how do we fix it and what is the right approach to fixing it. For one problem, there might be different solutions, but the more important thing is the expectation piece. I've run into business owners before who was like, "Okay, I need this done tomorrow." It's not going to get done tomorrow, especially when it's a technical problem, because those things, you have to really get a good strategy first of all behind it, and then put some development time or whatever it needs to be, I think that's where there's disconnect where I'm not going to sign up for that project because it's just gonna look bad on me, you know, 2 months down the line when things aren't getting done because their expectation is just not in the right place. So I do try to make sure that the expectation setting is done well most of the time with my clients and most of the time it's good, but that's oftentimes where I just kind of, you know, step away. This is not really my project because The understanding is just not really there. If someone's open to understanding it and talking about it, then absolutely open to having those conversations and figuring out how to work with them.

Yeah. So would you get involved in projects, especially in e-commerce, I would expect, where you have to interact with other C-suite members, marketing as an example, if there's an e-commerce play? How then how much of the gray area do you share? Because you're probably looking at things like technical SEO on the site, attribution to different— from a technology standpoint, different tactics like AdWords or email marketing. I would imagine also just diverse tech in play trying to get data from one source to another. Is going to require getting involved with financing on the QuickBooks side or the other side with marketing on the analytics side. So how do you collaborate within the C-suite?

Yeah, that's actually really important for me specifically and for any CTO, I think, I would think. But the thing that I find kind of strange and also funny, I guess, in a way, because I am oftentimes I'm almost seen as a CMO, but I'm not really a CMO because like I'm not really doing the same thing as a CMO would do, right? Like I understand like your CPC and your ads that you're running in different campaigns. Like I get all that pieces, I get it from a technical perspective, I get it from an analysis perspective, but I wouldn't tell you, okay, well, Joe, now you gotta go run this one campaign for buy one, get one free. Like, I don't know. Like, I mean, I guess, I could assume I could have a good idea maybe, but those would be just assumptions for me. So yeah, like I could see like as I get more experience, maybe I could bill myself as a CMO, but right now it's— I'm a CTO and that's what I do. But what the differentiation that I make for a CTO, for myself and a CMO is I help the CMOs figure out all the technical pieces because there's going to be a lot of things that the CMOs are going to need help with and that's where I I can help figuring out what the best decision is in some of those areas. And so for example, like the easiest way to think about what I do with my clients e-commerce-wise would be to think about automation. Anytime we're thinking about, okay, we need to automate something in our business, that is a conversation for me, not a CMO. We're talking about an integration from one thing to another, that is a conversation for me. I mean, a CMO would be involved or other Other C-execs would be involved, but that would be a project for a CTO to handle. You know, there are things, other things like user experience improvements. Those would be something that potentially a CMO would get involved with. I would also get involved with in figuring out best way to handle it. But yeah, I work with CMOs all the time. I work with COOs a lot as well. CEOs, depending on the type of company, some companies CEOs really let that part handle, be handled by the CMO or COO, which is totally fine. But it kind of tends to kind of circle around those. I very rarely work with a CFO. Yeah, that's kind of it. CMO and CEO tend to be the biggest CX execs that I work with.

Yeah, especially in e-commerce, it's so data-driven that you need to have good data, you need that technology piece in place. And I can see how having you come in and help a CMO understand that— the CMOs typically are not— well, I shouldn't say not. We're more and more, we're having to be experts.

Oh, for sure.

The side of marketing, it's not an— you know, we're not engineers, although I am a chemical engineer. Not every marketer out there is an engineer, right? So having— and even if they were, just like a traditional C-suite might not know what they don't know. I know enough about data and marketing to be dangerous, but you probably can come into a client and in a few, a few assessments understand some real opportunities that I or one of my other CMOs wouldn't, wouldn't catch right away.

Yeah, exactly. And that's a great point because I do try to partner with other CMOs in working in projects that they, they're trying to do work on. So for example, I started working with Jay recently with one of his clients that he's working with, and he did a really good job on drafting a requirements sheet for his client that wants to redesign their Shopify site. And I kind of took a look at it. There are some things that I thought that we would do better in different ways, or, you know, kind of sharing some of my opinions from a technical perspective. So I did that and we're kind of going on along on that project. But I'm kind of helping out in the technical areas and as well as the development areas to make sure that his client is happy. So like, that's an example of where he and I are working together and he's a CMO, I'm a CTO, and we're doing just one project, right? So that's a really good example of how I can work with someone as a CMO.

Yeah, I see that completely. That's interesting. I think the— The biggest opportunity for the C-suite out there is finding a fractional professional. You've said that. And now it's, it's also collaborating with other fractional professionals that, that, that one initial fractional professional could bring into play. And when you look at it from a value standpoint, the cost to access such great talent at the— in the fractional world It's completely accessible, whereas before you'd almost have to hire somebody full-time for, oh, for sure, 6 months or 12 months to get that level of expertise. Now you can just engage them at a fraction of their time for a 3 or 6 or 12 month, or in our case, we're usually 18 to 24 months. We're helping build that core competency of marketing within an organization. What other criteria would you recommend a business owner look at when they're trying to engage with a fractional person?

Other criteria. I think we talked about— you mean like outside of the technical? Yeah.

Person. Yeah, that was one. Yeah. Does anything else come to mind?

Yeah, let me think. So I think the technical piece is what I think about all the time. So that's—

Yeah, I mean, I think you've mentioned it for technical, the expertise and then the project management is key.

Yeah. And one of the things that I'm seeing is as things are becoming more and more technical, the creative side is also, like from a CMO marketing perspective, The creative side is also becoming different because of all the social media changes and all these things that are changing, right? So it's almost one of those things that the folks that have been a fractional, you know, whatever role they play, they're almost having to learn new things constantly and like just figure out how do we pivot and do things in a different way, just like the business owners are, right? So this is the same sort of idea, but from that same same market or seeing the same perspective. So like one of the things that I'm seeing is being creative, but in like the new age, I guess it's like, I'm trying to think of a way to say it properly. So it's like now, as you know, TikTok is huge, right? Like any videos that you have where people are jumping around, running around, that's gonna be more eye-catchy than this long, you know, ad that someone has to read. No one's gonna read that. We all know that, right? So it's one of those interesting things that, yes, like we know, we think about creative, you know, side of marketing in a certain way, but a lot of that isn't really working anymore. So we have to almost kind of reinvent that marketing wheel. It's like, okay, how do we attract customers, you know, in the newest way? So I feel like it's one of those things that as brand owners are looking for looking for new fractional folks, I think it's useful to make sure that they're in tune with the market to make sure what, they understand everything that's going on and what the latest marketing tactic is or marketing thing that's working as an example. Like I said, I don't really work a whole lot on the finance side. So it's something that's outside of my knowledge base, but same thing goes for the operational side. There's so much going on to improve the operational side that you really need to make sure that your COO is up to date in the processes that are latest and making sure that they are the most intuitive in that moment. So that's what I feel like is a useful thing to make sure is your fractional people to not only having that experience of things that they've done in the past, but what are the things that they're working on now that's working and is that the industry sort of where the industry is moving.

Yeah. I'm curious about Shopify. It seems to be a pretty popular e-commerce site. Yeah. But I'm more curious about why— how you got that as your focus specialty, and what you like most about Shopify for business owners to consider.

Yeah, so I work with other, other e-commerce platforms outside of Shopify as well. Like, I work with Magento, BigCommerce and WooCommerce as well. Those are other platforms that an e-commerce business could be based on, but what I notice is Shopify is this sort of flexible but not flexible environment, right? So you can think, okay, like you can make your website, your e-commerce site, this very colorful and fun place, right? That's a very creative way to think about it, but at the same time, they're only going to let you change so much. So it's almost this they let you change certain things to an extent, but they're also holding you down saying, okay, these are the things that you're not going to change. We're going to keep it the same way. And people get frustrated about that. But what I find— but I like that in a way because it almost makes a conversation be very geared towards success. And Shopify, they do this day in and day out. So they know what success looks like for an e-commerce brand. And so What happens is the business owner or brand owner may say, oh, okay, like I have all these different ideas. Okay, great, that's fantastic, but you're only gonna be able to do this amount of that because that's what works and that's what's proven to work. So if you go outside of it, yeah, it's possible, but it's not really necessary. And then you're wasting not only dev resources, you're wasting time and money on doing those things that may not really matter at the end of the day. So I think that's one of the biggest things that I like about Shopify. It's very easy, very intuitive to start a business and, you know, make it better. But that's kind of where someone like me would come in, like a few years later as you're running your Shopify business, it's going to get complicated and you're going to need someone to kind of help you figure out how do you go through that, get through that complication and make better decisions outside of it. Whereas, for example, Magento, I have a client in Magento who's working on this marketplace that I was talking about, right? So this environment is so complex that like every single thing that has to happen has to be thought, had been thought about before. And there are rules for certain things. So, okay, so you're ordering these 3 things or whatever, that's gonna take a different rule. And you're from this specific office in a business, that's going to have a different rule. So that's when you really get to a place where you're probably this like very complicated e-commerce brand or have this need of a complicated brand and that's when Magento, something like Magento makes sense. WooCommerce is kind of one of those in between. You could do quite a bit on WooCommerce, but at the same time, most of the time when people are on WooCommerce, it's a mess because that is the problem because you can do so much and people just do so much. And at the end of the day, you know, that's not all useful. So that's kind of what I see across the different platforms. I personally like Shopify at the moment. I'm focusing on that at the moment, but I, like I said, I also work with other clients, so I'm totally okay with that as well.

How do you get involved with like Amazon or other marketplaces that need to integrate with with the Shopify or the e-commerce store?

Yeah, so I personally don't— haven't done anything on e-commerce or on Amazon yet so far. I know there's the whole Amazon FBA thing and other brands, but most of the brands that I'm working with, they are just on their own platform and they're integrating with like something like Facebook. They obviously have their shop now. There are some customers that have these specific requirements where they want to for example, do like a wholesale environment where they'll, you know, like, it's a silly example, but let's say that you want to sell to Apple only, Apple employees only, right? So they'll probably need like a very specific type of e-commerce store. So there's that idea. So there's some things that done over there, but most of the time it tends to be just that platform. But yeah, I haven't worked with any clients that are working with Amazon yet, but It would just be an integration to Amazon and just making sure the products and copyright and stuff like that would be ported over.

I think it's a unique business model for those retailers that are having to sell onto Amazon and then over time convert the Amazon customer to a native customer on their own site for the repeat business. It's a big challenge that we see some of our clients going through, and I'm just curious from a technology standpoint of if you've had much experience there, but it sounds like—

No, not necessarily, but I had this one client who was working through a vendor who was selling on Amazon the same products, and then there was the products on the native site. And so in that scenario, basically, like, you know, they would ship out these products every month, and then that vendor that had a relationship with Amazon already built They were selling whatever amount they needed. When they ran out, they just asked for more. One of the interesting things there was how to— not necessarily to port people over back and forth, but it was mostly just to kind of create the brand awareness and having a— something that allowed people to become your native customer. And to be honest, that was— pretty difficult most of the time unless like you had like, you know, like you would just give them 20% off or something, which if you're doing that, you're probably looking at cutting your margin quite a bit. But if you are able to do that, most of the time I've seen that your Amazon customers will go over to your native site. But, you know, at the same time, when you think about it, if you're working with Amazon, you're probably giving away almost 20% anyway. So it Sometimes does make sense. So we've run campaigns like that before, try to get some people over, but that works really well when someone needs to buy something over and over. If it's like, you know, I buy with this one thing and I don't need to buy it for another 2 or 3 years, then it's a little bit harder. So that's the kind of— that's the client that I had. There was a product that you would only buy probably like, you know, once, uh, 2, 3 years, and then you probably need to get another one. So that's a little bit of a different scenario, but But there is an interesting opportunity there for sure.

Yeah, very good. Let's transition a little bit. Tell me what you like to do personally for fun.

I travel.

Yeah, tell me about your— what's the most unique place you've traveled?

Most unique place would be Antarctica. That's the place that most people haven't been, so that's something that most people just ask me a lot of questions about. But basically, I had an opportunity in 2016, I realized that because I was traveling for work and everything, by the summertime I had been to 5 continents. So it kind of became a mission for myself to go to the last 2. So I ended up making like a last-minute decision to go to Antarctica that November, just about this time actually, around Thanksgiving. So it's this funny thing, we had a Thanksgiving meal on a boat, on a ship in Antarctica.

Yeah, so how did you get there? Did you leave from the—

Yeah, so there are two, at least from this part of the world, you can leave from two parts: the, um, the Argentinian side or Chilean side in South America. So in the— where I left was the bottom, very, very bottom part of Argentina. If you look at a map, it's like the very top, the, you know, sort of thing that like bends in a little bit. There's a little town called Ushuaia, and from there you basically get on a cruise boat, essentially much smaller than like those humongous cruise ships. It's probably like one quarter of the size of those things, but it's still really big, obviously, to make that journey over the Southern Ocean. But anyway, so it takes about 2.5 days from the bottom of Argentina to get to Antarctica. And once you get there, you're basically just, you know, going from one place to another. You're staying on the boat the whole time. There was a time when we were supposed to do camping on Antarctica itself, but the weather was coming in, bad weather was coming in. So unfortunately we couldn't, but we, one of my buddies, he just kind of did this funny thing. It was like, okay, can we sleep on top of the ship? And so, so we So we slept on the top of the ship that day instead of sleeping in our bunks. So yeah, it was a lot of fun moments, but Antarctica would definitely be one of those sort of very quirky and different places that I've been.

What did it look like? Was that all ice and snow or was there rocks and wild? What's Antarctica look like?

Very little rocks that you can see anyway. All the rocks are, I mean, there are tons of rocks obviously, but they're all covered with snow. And some ice, but mostly snow. So you kind of think about a mountain range that you've seen before, you know, like a very green, and then probably on top you see some snow and, you know, vast sort of environment, you know, in a mountain range. So think about that. Now think about just dropping a bunch of snow on top of all of that. So it's just all looks like white. So it's kind of like looking at a, a white background of everything, but it's, you know, it's got some creativeness to it. So, you know, so that you see a lot of— well, from the point that we were on, we'd be on water, obviously, because the boat most of the time. So we would see water in front of us, like just so much water, and then we'd see just mountains on the side, and there were just humongous mountains. Oh wow, unbelievable. Yeah, unbelievable mountains. Yeah. But once you— so obviously Antarctica is humongous, it's so big, but we just spent time in just a very small part of the edge of Antarctica. A lot of people that are, for example, not really explorers, I guess not that much anymore, but the people that do research now, they go to specific bases. So Antarctica is divided up into several sections of the land, and certain sections are owned— not really owned, but they're dictated by certain governments. So for example, like the US, funnily enough, has a giant circle in the middle. So technically, anything that has to be a rule that has to be made, the US has to be in that decision. But so like you have like Argentina owns like a part of it, and then Chile owns a part of it, and like, you know, like I think France and so forth. I can't remember exactly, but there are countries that own different sections of Antarctica. So once you get into Antarctica further, then the pictures— I haven't been there personally, but the pictures just look like just desolate land of just white.

That's what it looks like. All white.

Yeah.

That sounds fascinating. What's your next destination you want to get to that's equally fascinating in your mind?

Well, it's not something that I have planned, but I do want to go to the Arctic, the north. Side. The leader of the adventure, I guess I'll call it, was this guy who's like just very fascinating guy, just super interesting, who's lived like in, you know, in the Arctic regions to do tours and all kinds of craziness. You know, like he's gone to Antarctica a bunch of times. So like he was telling me all these stories about being up in the Arctic and having like these very interesting experiences. And so I think that's— that would be super, super interesting. So that's on my list, but probably not for another few years. This year I'm trying to go down back actually to Chile to, um, to hang out down there and see some more exploring. Uh, there's the Atacama Desert, so I want to go down there to see some stars and stuff like that. So let's see if that happens.

Well, that's awesome. I love traveling myself. I've not traveled near as much as you have, but it's just so much fun to get away, experience new things, the adventure that comes with it. And then you learn how similar we are to different cultures, but then how unique each culture is. And of course, so much takeaway from that. It's amazing. Yeah.

What's been the most favorite place for you?

Oh, well, it's probably more recent. I just recently took a trip to Switzerland.

Oh, nice.

It was a 9-day hiking trip with 9 of my buddies, and we just— it was a different destination every day, but we had a very fluid agenda for each day. So it was like a unique experience. It was a fresh adventure each day, but we all ended up at the same place at the end of the night. It was so much fun. Switzerland's beautiful. We were in Interlaken area. In between all these different mountain ranges, and we were doing hikes for about half the trip and then exploring for the other half of the trip. That was lovely. And the train system there was amazing. I was, I was so amazed about how easy it was. We could take a train to the top of like a 14,000-foot mountain, right? Yeah, you could start from a train down in the plains and take the train here and then train there and then train there. It was amazing.

Yeah, it's very cool. Yeah, in Europe the, the train system is just, just so nice.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, I'd like to get to, um, Asia. I've not spent any time in Asia. I think that would be, uh, whether it be India, China, Japan, any of those areas just in that part of the world. I've not spent any time. Yeah, that'd be my next big goal.

Yeah, I, I was born in Bangladesh, actually, just next to India, so I spent obviously a lot of my life there. But I got a chance right before I started my business. I took some time off from work. Well, I quit my job, but I, I had some time. So basically I did like 9 months of travel in Asia and Australia. So I spent quite a bit of time then, but But I love it. I mean, Asia and Europe is just so accessible and so different from one place to another. It's just a fascinating kind of thing to just spend time in different cultures and just see what they're doing. And the food, I mean, the food is the best part for me. I love it.

I love— I love the food. That's the best part of travel anywhere. Even in the States, I like to get authentic food from—

from—

I was down in Austin. I said, take me to a barbecue place. And we just— we went to this amazing little barbecue spot. I can't remember the name of the place. It was so good. We don't get that in Nebraska.

Well, next time you come back down to Austin, you'll have to let me know. We'll go for more barbecue.

And we've got a client down there that has a little project I've been working on. So I was able to go down there and kick off some messaging work for them. And awesome. They're, you know, there may be an opportunity to connect you. They've got, I've got another, it's an investment group, so they've got another little project that sells tiny houses.

Okay.

And it's, that's an interesting business. They build tiny houses on the back of trailers, custom.

Oh, interesting. Yeah, I've seen those shows that talk about building tiny houses. I forget the name of it, but it seems interesting. To be honest, like I would, I would like to almost try it for a little bit, but I feel like my soon-to-be wife is not gonna be into that.

Yeah. Yeah. It would be much tinier with you and her in it together.

Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

Yeah. Well, I think this has been a great conversation. I know the fractional world is relatively new for people like us. You just been in it for a little while. I think the most, the fractional CFO space is probably the most mature. It's been around for a while.

I'd say so.

Where do you see the fractional world going from your perspective?

That's interesting because I feel like before, a couple of few years ago, I didn't even know what a fractional anything is. When I started coming up with the idea of a fractional CTO, I actually didn't realize there were other fractional people out there. It was funny when I had that on my LinkedIn, I said something like, "You're fractional CTO." And then, who was it? Rich, I think, reached out to me and was like, "Hey, you're a fractional CTO. We do, we have this fractional professional association." I'm like, "What is that?" And then he kind of told me about it and I was like, "Wow, there's all these other people that are doing the same thing." So to me it was like this sort of random, like I didn't know this existed. And especially in the work that I do, I think there are so few, if I don't know who else is a fractional CTO out there. I think everyone kind of builds themselves as more like a consultant for, you know, technical stuff. So it's interesting like how like everyone approaches all these different things. And for me, like I said, like this was such a new thing. It's like, okay, like I guess this is where this works. But as I've been involved with you guys at FPA, and kind of seeing more fractional people, it's just like, whoa, there's like all these other people that existed for so long. And now I'm realizing, yeah, like they're obviously the CFOs, you know, have been doing this for so long because it's kind of the nature of the business, but CMOs and CEOs and whatnot. And the more, as the day passes, I feel like the more people are kind of starting fractional something, right? So I think the growth in the business is just, massive. And I think this is a really good opportunity for others to potentially, you know, do some of the same things that we do. But in terms of where the industry is going, I think from a technology perspective, like I said, I was saying at the beginning, there's so much shift and change in the technology space that you're probably going to need like a very specific role in the fractional space, right? So like I am a CTO focusing on e-commerce things, you're probably going to need at some point a fractional, like a cybersecurity person or fractional, I don't know, like other, well, CIOs could be potentially similar as well. So I feel like something like that where it's very focused and very in tune with a very specific part of the business because, yeah, you can ask me some security questions, I can tell you some answers, but I'm not an expert in security. So it's kind of interesting, like kind of thinking about all those things. If we were doing a very security heavy project, I would definitely bring someone else that has that experience to make sure that that does get done properly. So I think there's gonna be some of that interesting things where, you know, as the great resignation is happening, there's gonna be a lot more people, you know, kind of coming into this world of, okay, let's do some of the fractional work, but also at the same time, probably some more focus will be important at some point.

Yeah, I see that trend coming and people I talk to see the same thing. There's more and more people entering the workforce as a fractional CEO. Anything. And the businesses are starting to become more aware of it as a, as a good outsource for them to find talent to bring in. How would you recommend the business owners vet one CTO from another? I think that's going to be the bigger challenge moving forward, is if you have this plethora of people that hang a shingle saying they're fractional CTOs, How does a business owner bet that it's a real trustworthy solution and not just somebody who's in between jobs and just throwing off a consulting family?

Yeah, that's a really interesting point. And it would be interesting for me to kind of be not up against other CTOs, but like kind of, you know, kind of see how everyone else does it. Because right now I don't know other CTOs that are doing the same thing that I do. So it's almost like hard for me to say like how to even compare, you know, one person to another. But, you know, that background of either, like I was saying, like the technical piece, like having like, you know, some experience in the thing that the client needs would be super important. If it's someone that's working in, if it's an e-commerce business, I think the analytics piece is just almost so invaluable that you need that piece. Project management, being able to communicate, that's something that sometimes, for example, like I even have trouble with when I'm trying to communicate with my clients. Like sometimes we're handling such technical projects and things that I have to break it down in a very, very simple way, but even then there's miscommunication happening. So like there's this piece of figuring out how do you talk to your client, I think is gonna be a very important piece as well. Going forward. So like figuring out, not, well, obviously there's the, all the stuff like, you know, making sure like they're vetted and, you know, their clients, you're talking to their clients or at least seeing some reviews to make sure that that is a legit company and, you know, they are proven in the way that, you know, things that they do. But at the same time, I think just kind of figuring out the communication style, does it work for me or not? You know, does this person have some background in, you know, analyzing different things and making sure the projects are moving along? Those sort of kind of things I would say would be important to figure out in a role like a CTO.

Yeah, yeah, I hear that very commonly, the communication between a fractional professional versus a full-time employee. Communication is extra important on the fractional side because you are virtual by definition, or you're not there all the time. Yeah, for sure. You have to, in that initial interaction as you're doing some vetting, see how that communication goes. If it's spotty, inconsistent, that's probably how the ongoing relation is going to go.

Oh, for sure.

Attentive and, and, and, and, you know, very clear and concise, it's, it's probably a better sign.

For sure. Yeah, for sure. I would agree with that. It's, um, it's interesting. There's, um, uh, I think especially in the technical areas, sometimes the— that's what I was saying all the way at the beginning of our conversations, like the CEO or the COO, whoever the technical people are working with, they have to almost have some basic understanding of the technical, you know, whatever it is that is going on to even have a conversation that is easy to maintain. Because outside of that, it just becomes one of those things like we're talking about like, you know, completely different things and just doesn't align easily. So that communication piece, I would say, is probably, like you said, like it's probably the most important Very good.

Well, how do we get people— speaking of communication— to be able to connect with you? What's the best way?

I, I would say LinkedIn is probably the best way to connect with me. I'm assuming I can give you a link that we can share.

Yeah, we've got a link, uh, and we'll share that in the show notes. But that's the best way to reach out and connect if they want to have more information and follow up with anything we talked about today. That'd be a good way to do it.

Yeah, for sure. Very good. Yeah, obviously I have my website, DataUp, um, tech, but I would say LinkedIn, especially for someone coming from here, I think would be a good way to communicate with them and make sure that we are able to help if I can. I try to post some information on my LinkedIn from time to time about the things that are going on in the e-commerce space and technical pieces that things people should know. Sometimes it's like today I was talking about the Ezra guy who was Ezra Firestone, the guy who's the co-founder and CEO of Boom. I was sharing some thoughts about a podcast that he did, for example. So I try to make sure that it's somewhat relevant to my, my clients. So that may be helpful.

That's great. Well, thanks for your time today, Mo. It's a pleasure catching up a little more detail. I loved our conversation about travel. I'm, I'm actually traveling tonight to Colorado to visit my son for startup or parents weekend. So I'll get a little travel in this weekend, but it's just quick in and out.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I hope you enjoy that. That's— that should be nice right now.

Yeah, I appreciate that.

Yeah, for sure.

All right. Well, thanks a lot. Thanks for being here. Appreciate it.

Thanks, Joe. I appreciate the opportunity. Have a good day.

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. Spelled wrong on purpose.