Fractional Executives: A New Engagement Model with Nancy Fox

In episode 123, host Eric Dickmann talks with Nancy Fox - Co-Founder and Fractional CMO of Fractional Connections, an association of fractional executives and SMB owners. Over the years, she has trained and coached executive leaders and corporate professionals to enhance their leadership, communication, and business development skills. Nancy is a community and network builder, a keynote speaker, and the author of "Network Like A Fox."

Fractional Connections was founded to bring the fractional community together to learn from one another and share extraordinary opportunities and insights.

For more information and access to the resources mentioned in this episode, visit: https://fiveechelon.com/engaging-fractional-executives-s8-ep8/

A fractional CMO can help build out a comprehensive marketing strategy and execute targeted campaigns designed to increase awareness and generate demand for your business...without the expense of a full-time hire.

The Five Echelon Group - Fractional CMO and strategic marketing advisory services designed for SMBs looking to grow. Learn more at: 

https://fiveechelon.com

Transcript

Eric Dickmann: 0:31

Today, I'm excited to have guest Nancy Fox on the program. Nancy is the co-founder of Fractional Connections an association of fractional executives and SMB owners who come together to share opportunities and insights as a network builder, she has also authored the book Network Like a Fox. Love the name, Nancy welcome to the show..

Nancy Fox: 0:51

Oh, thank you for having me, Eric. I'm so excited to be with you.

Eric Dickmann: 0:55

I'm excited to have you here because I love what you're doing in this space. And I'm really interested to dive into some additional details, but the introduction I gave was short. Tell us a little bit about your background and how you came to co-found Fractional Connections.

Nancy Fox: 1:10

Um, it wasn't a straight path. I'll tell you that. I'm not, I'll tell you a lot of, um, uh, fractional marketers came through the marketing leadership pathway. That, that really, it really wasn't exactly my pathway. I'm a cor a former corporate executive and I came outta the women's underwear business. I was in women's underwear for a long time. I was in charge of product development and, uh, and, and marketing, but more on the product development and design side. And so I was in charge of getting conceiving, strategizing and getting products into. So interesting. And interestingly enough, um, when I left the industry and left corporate life, which many, many people are doing now, Yes, it was my choice, but it wasn't my choice. I had been thinking about it and wanting to do it for about four years. But at that time, people weren't jumping ship. They weren't escaping the corporate jungle. It wasn't really done people didn't start businesses back then. But I knew I didn't wanna work for anybody anymore. And that was really a challenge. So I started doing a lot of executive coaching and training and I was astonished because I didn't realize how much about business. I knew generally. I thought I only knew underwear, but it wasn't true. It wasn't true. And I found out that business is business and, uh, I quickly developed, um, uh, a cadre of clients in, pharmaceuticals in telecom. I think my first client was Verizon and, uh, you know, uh, and the city of New York real estate, uh, toy industry, all these different industries really is fascinating. And then, um, I started doing a lot of work with professional services, law and accounting firms, and that became a very consistent niche. I was teaching them business development and eventually I became a fractional chief business development officer, and I was training all of these accountants and lawyers, how to network, how to attract clients, how to land clients, how to talk to clients, how to build, you know, build their businesses. And, um, I loved it. It was so much fun, but as you know, things, you know, Goes in cycles in professional services, when it's almost like, you know, there was this big swing where they needed, you know, rainmakers. And so they, they invested a lot in that. And then all of a sudden they had so much business, um, but they couldn't get talent. So then it swung to recruiting. And when I started to watch what was going on with that, and then the pandemic emerged, I sort of took a step back to see what new trends were emerging. And I noticed in my own networking. in my own interactions with business people and leaders that this, um, trend was starting around fractional leadership. And I said, what's this fractional thing. And, uh, I didn't realize that I was a fractional. I just didn't have the name for it. You know, we used to call this part time. We used to call this outsourced, but what's different now is that, uh, leaders at very high levels, C-suite, e suite levels, um, are choosing not to go back into getting another job. They're leaving by their own choice. They are, um, wanting more variety, more freedom, more autonomy. Uh, and while money is important to them, it's not number one on the list anymore. It used to be, they really want more time, you know, to, uh, they want more variety in their challenges at they wanna be able to contribute without being in a box. And I think a lot of leaders have so much to bring to the table that they felt stifled. They felt squashed. And it was intolerable to them. And so this, the Wall Street Journal did a very interesting article and they talked about the, uh, the rise of the white collar gig economy. And when I started to see that happening, I got very intrigued and I started interviewing hundreds of fractional executives. I started reading, uh, there was, there were a couple of books out on it. Um, very few, very, you know, it there really, I think, um, Ben Wolf wrote a book called Fractional Leadership, um, aimed at the, the business owner, but I was intrigued by what was going on with fractional executives themselves. So. Fast forward a as a networking ninja and as somebody who loves to put people together, um, I, my colleague, uh, Angela Finlay, and I started to work on putting the networking endeavor together and we started inviting business owners to meet up with fractional executives and it's taken off. The thing that's so incredible about when you, when you have, um, conversations and network with people, if you really listen, it's like the best market research in the world, isn't it like, you're just really listening to what's really on their plate. What's really bothering them. What are they, what worried about, what do they want? What are they hungering for? What are they willing to pay for? What are they not willing to pay for? And we started to realize that while. they were, they want clients, of course. Um, everybody wants to have more clients, but as soon as you start to get. You don't have any time to market anymore, and it becomes this rollercoaster of, you know, feast or famine, and you get clients, then you have, then you have to start from scratch and start networking again and start, you know, prospecting it. So it went like this. And so we decided to put together a complete curriculum for fractional executives for how to build a real business out of this and we call it the fractional operating system. And so now we're putting together an entire training, uh, and curriculum for them. Um, supporting what they already have going, but really helping them to build a thriving, um, lo how to launch, grow and scale a fractional business. But we're also the other part of the other side of the equation. And I want everybody to hear this. Like, I know how the, the struggle is that SMB small to medium says business owners, they need talent, but they don't know that fractional talent at this caliber is really available to them. Not across the board. It's little bits here and there. Right? So we wanna show them through workforce planning where their skill gaps are and how fractionals can fill them beautifully and perfectly and cost effectively.

Eric Dickmann: 7:13

You've mentioned a couple things here. I wanna drill down into a little bit more because I've certainly seen it. I'm certainly on this path myself. There are a lot of people, whether they're part of the great resignation or they just have decided that their time in the corporate world is up and, you know, they wanna focus on a different way of working, helping different kinds of businesses. And so it seems like from that half of the equation, It's pretty clear, right? There's been a lot of opportunity for people to go out, become solo entrepreneurs, or join a small consulting partnership and offer these kinds of fractional services to small businesses. But I think what you've articulated and is so important is a lot of businesses don't really know what to look for. They're not necessarily looking for somebody that's a, a fractional, you know, chief revenue officer, a fractional chief marketing officer or whatever title it is. They know they maybe need some help. But they're used to that help coming in the form of just sort of a complete outsourcing to a consulting practice, right. Or to a full time hire. So it's interesting to me what you're doing in terms of your training development, to really helping those companies understand that there is another option and that option is fractional executives coming.

Nancy Fox: 8:27

Yes, absolutely. And here's the other thing that when they hear about in when business owners hear about fractional leadership, um, they're hearing about it from their friends. And because their friends have done it sort of seat of the pants. Not really knowing exactly how to onboard the right people, how to even select the right people sometimes the results are great. Sometimes the results are okay and sometimes they're not good. So, you know we're presenting an entire webinar and a training to small business owner groups, uh, like EO and Vistage and sharing with them the, uh, the advantages around fractional leader and the pitfalls to avoid and why they're, you know, and so then we have, can have a conversation with them to look a little deeper in how it would really apply to their business. One of the companies that we spoke with, uh, is, uh, fascinating. Their core business has been going like this and they started to watch this the trend happening. So as this business was going down they bought another company and they started a new division to sort of balance this out. But now they wanna have fractional leadership in there to help them grow those two new areas of their business. They have an idea about what I need a CRO. I need a, a CSO. I need a COO, a CFO, where do I need first? And they really need to have some direction about which ones to bring in for second, third and so on. Um, and you're right. You know, the kneejerk reaction is to do a full-time hire or nobody, you know, and that's not a good solution. So we have choices today, but here's the beautiful thing. This is no longer just taking a body to put into a company that like do the work. These are incredibly talented, highly skilled, highly great expertise top top-notch people at the highest levels, eager and willing to provide their expertise to growing companies. So it's really cool.

Eric Dickmann: 10:21

It's interesting too, when you were talking how you present this training and going to networking groups that already exist. So even that implies that people aren't necessarily knocking on the door saying, explain to me what this whole fractional model is about. You sort of have to put it in front of them to help them understand, uh, the capabilities of it. I know that. When I see jobs posted on LinkedIn or other places, many times, I look at those and I say, this is a perfect opportunity for somebody to come in on a fractional basis. Does this size company really need a full-time person to do this? Knowing that they're probably gonna have to outsource some of that work anyway, because they don't have enough talent internally to, uh, execute the tactics that they might wanna do, but they just don't know to ask for it.

Nancy Fox: 11:06

It's they don't know what they don't.

Eric Dickmann: 11:08

Right.

Nancy Fox: 11:09

And our, our, our mission. We have two, uh, twofold mission. One. We wanna help, um, fractional executives who have remember these are executives who have not been in their own business ever. It's like, I like me. I, I did, I, I had sought out help. Uh, I knew I needed help, but a lot of times they don't know that they need this kind of training. They, they think that they're going to go into a firm that's going to give that, match them with assignments, and then they won't have to worry about that because they'll just get enough and that'll be it. And it's not the way it goes. Uh, even the matching companies, the recruiting ish companies that are doing this refraction, they can't always guarantee that you're going to get assignments because they have a lot of fractionals to serve. So, um, we wanna support both sides of the equation. We wanna support the business owners to really learn how fractional leadership is like, it's the answer to their, you know, to their big pain, biggest pain point, which is, you know, cuz after all, when you bring a full-time employee on, it's not just, you know, the salary, it's the entire package, it's the investment in recruiting. And to if they leave, you know, the cost is immense. So it's a big, it's a big undertaking and it's a huge cost situation. So, we see the equation on both sides as being the timing is essential. Now this is we're at the, just at the tip of the iceberg. So it's very exciting. When I talk to these folks, they're so smart and they're so motivated and they have so much to bring to the market. And so many ideas and skill sets, you know, cuz we're not we're we are skill, um, agnostic. We work with fractional CSO, sales officers, CFOs, GCs. We work with marketing people. We work with all different, you know, HR people, we work with all of them. Um, so it's not really about what your skill area is. It is really about, you know, how are you positioning yourself in the market?

Eric Dickmann: 13:06

And I think that's one of the real benefits to many of these small businesses is you're getting a seasoned professional who has years of experience and has worked with some of the best names out there in the industry, and now can apply some of that knowledge to a business that candidly probably couldn't afford them on a full-time basis. Uh, so you're really getting that upleveled skill at a fraction of the cost. One of the challenges that I think we have, in being a marketer this is very apparent to me, is that many small businesses would never hire these C level titles. Right? That's just not something that exists. It's mostly a fortune 500 kind of a, a titling. But it it's really meant to represent a concept, uh, of leadership of a certain role within the business. But it does present challenges because a, a small business who maybe just has a founder and a dozen people working is probably not hiring a CFO, a CMO, a COO that's just not in their repitoire.

Nancy Fox: 14:02

It isn't and they don't know that's the thing they don't, you know, uh, I, and by the way, it's not only just for startups, you know, that are thinking like this. I had, I worked with a 40 million, 43 million company. It was okay. I, I, I, when I saw this, I went, I, I almost couldn't believe it. That company didn't have an HR department and that part, the company didn't have, uh, a CFO or even a controller. And the owner of the company said, um, I asked him, I had a whole strategy, was working with him in the entire team. And I said, okay, um, let's work on your numbers every single week. We're gonna have a weekly. He goes, I hate working with numbers. I hate, I just leave that to the accountants. He just like the sales part. And that's what entrepreneurs are really like. They focus on the stuff that they're, they focus on. Primarily two things they focus on and they focus on sales. That's what they focus on. they really focus on and then they're put at fires, you know, they just really love, I want, I want more business. I want more orders. I want more clients. I want, you know, that's what they really, because they're, they're focused on revenue cuz that's, what's going to keep the company surviving, but you have to really, you know, you have to start looking. You have to build a company for not just today, but you know, tomorrow. And they don't know exactly when they're supposed to start looking at tomorrow and you're supposed to start looking at tomorrow, today. You need to, that's why I said even startup companies, it's not too early to have a workforce planning session. Let's show you how to plan your workforce. So you're not gonna hire, you know, maybe you're not gonna hire your full-time person today. Maybe not even in six months, but let's discuss what fractionals you need and when you should bring them in and how they should work together with you and what you should, how you, how to onboard them, how to get them to work with your people. So it's so many different things to learn. How do you put all and, you know, business owners are so distracted. They only, they they're so busy trying to put out all the fires that how do they work with a fractional executive? They, the fractional needs their attention in order to get his or her work done. How do you do that? All these different questions and issues. And that's why, you know, we love to have these, um, strategic, uh, sessions with people because it makes a real difference to, to accelerate the results to, to, oh, avoid the pitfalls and accelerate the results. That's what we're there for.

Eric Dickmann: 16:23

Well, I like the way you look at both sides of the equation too, because you talked about this earlier. Many people who are coming in to do this role have been used to working in that corporate environment where they've got, uh, their business plan for the year. They sort of know what their marching orders are. They don't worry about lead flow for themselves or anything like that. What I've noticed is that many people who enter this space, their first couple of clients, maybe their previous employer, or maybe some people that they had very strong relationships with when they were still in the corporate world. And so everybody kinda starts out with a bang, right? Because they've got these relationships, they get those early clients, but it's the second and the third and the fourth client that are a little bit more challenging, because then you're having to do your own marketing. You're having to generate your own leads. You're having to bring people in. From a network that's now growing a little bit more distant from when you were in the corporate world. Do you see that as well.

Nancy Fox: 17:13

Absolutely. It's incredible. You're absolutely right. And you know, it's like, that's, I'm saying, you know, at first, um, a fractional will get your first that's what that in your launch phase, your whole main thing is I've gotta get clients. I gotta get clients, I gotta get clients. How do you grow? How do you grow? Because they stop after. Oh, okay. Because they're only thinking in terms of one or two steps in front of their, you know, in front of them, they're not looking at, you know, month 6, 7, 8, And so there isn't a, a, a real plan for how to keep that going. And secondarily, they really leave a lot of chips on the table because they're not, they're not distinguishing themselves. They're not positioning themselves with any unique value propositions. They're calling themselves a fractional sales officer, a fractional marketing officer without really, you know, um, nicheing their business or distinguishing it. And so they become part of the pack and that's not even in their, that's not even in their, you know, forget the rear view mirror it's not even in their front view mirror, you know, they're not even looking at that. So, so we help them. That's a huge thing. I can't tell you how many fractionals I look at their LinkedIn profiles. I have conversations with them and there's things they say about what they do and who they do it for are so formulaic and so common, there's no distinction. So people would never, I had a client who had a specialization, um, in, uh, in particular kinds of companies in a particular, um, niche market, you know, in food and beverage, and it was nowhere to be seen on his profile. No, but nobody would know. He was like a master at it. He had turned a lot of companies around in food and beverage, and nobody knew. Why, because he, it was nowhere to be seen. He was marketing a general. I'm a fractional marketing officer. I'm a fractional sales officer. I'm a fractional, you know, CFO. There's no distinction.

Eric Dickmann: 19:04

Hey, it's Eric here and we'll be right back to the podcast. But first, are you ready to grow, scale, and take your marketing to the next level? If so, The Five Echelon Group's Virtual CMO consulting service may be a great fit for you. We can help build a strategic marketing plan for your business and manage its execution, step-by-step. We'll focus on areas like how to attract more leads. How to create compelling messaging that resonates with your ideal customers. How to strategically package and position your products and services. How to increase lead conversion, improve your margins, and scale your business. To find out more about our consulting offerings and schedule a consultation, go to fiveechelon.com and click on Services. Now back to the podcast. Well, one of the things that you mentioned earlier, too, that I think is interesting, and I see this as the future as well, is for certain size businesses, there are multiple slots that could be filled by fractional executives. And I think once you're sort of working in this space, or once you've accepted that this is a strong value proposition, you may say, well, I need. chief revenue officer to come in and, and fix some problems on our revenue side. And that person may come in and say, okay, well, as part of that, we need some marketing support. So let's bring in a fractional Chief Marketing Officer, and all of a sudden you could find two or three. Or more maybe roles being filled by these fractional executives, because one of the things is these aren't necessarily meant to be permanent roles, right? Sometimes it's just getting the business to a point where maybe a full-time hire makes sense, or you could bring in somebody that's a little bit more junior or less experienced. But I see this happening a lot and that's one of the things that really maybe intrigued with Fractional Connections and the whole idea of networking is because when you bring people together who serve different roles, potentially within the same company, that's a great opportunity for people to collaborate and to look for opportunities to work together. Was that part of the thinking behind it?

Nancy Fox: 21:06

Well, you know, I'm gonna be really honest with you. It wasn't my idea. But as again, as the Intel that we get from you guys is fast, fascinating. You started to share with us that you wanted to go in, in pods of people. Mm-hmm um, that is something that we are and talks with people about right now. And how do we, how do we create this initiative? Where there are gonna be pods, um, talent pods of fractional talent going into companies as they are growing and evolving. It's definitely in our plan. Um, and that's where I think also to your point, Eric, the network is really so powerful because, um, without it, we can get so much more done together than we can individually. And so I have found that the entire market of that's aiming at fractional executives, leadership, talent, we're collaborating. We're not finding that we're, you know, we're not looking at our, our, at our approach as competitive. We're really looking to collaborate with each other and to add different pieces to the pie. Our sweet spot, our superpower is educating and training and developing, um, talent on both sides. We've regularly connected opportunities with fractional executives, it's just not in our monetization structure. It's not in our business model. We don't get paid to do that. Um, it's just what we like to do, but there are firms who do an outstanding job of that, bringing the right people with the right assignments. And that's great. There's a need for that, but we, we just focus on professional and business development. That is our superpower. That's our sweet spot.

Eric Dickmann: 22:45

Yeah, and I think it would be helpful for the audience to understand a little bit more about what Fractional Connections is. So it's, it's a LinkedIn group, but then you also do, uh, speed networking, uh, meetups. And, uh, you're regularly sharing information, doing webinars. Talk a little bit about sort of what the structure is of Fractional Connections and, and why that may be of value to people listening.

Nancy Fox: 23:07

Um, it's so funny. Uh, I wanna tell you guys just in all transparency. um, we've gone full circle. When we first started, we thought it would be, uh, a training company. Um, we always knew that networking was gonna be a very, very big part of the equation. I'm just very passionate about it, and I know how much opportunity gets, you know, comes out of it. And I also, personally enjoy it so much. I love connecting people. So we knew that networking was going to be a big part of the, um, the rollout for us and to get known in the, in the market, that there is this thing that you can be part of and, and join us in this. And so we created, um, the Fractional Connections, virtual speed networking. We do it once a month. We're not charging you for it and what's great about it is we bring fractional executives together. We do have business owners and investors who come to. It's only an hour. We get a lot done in an hour. We've enjoyed it. A lot of people have been loving it. We get a lot of, we get probably, I don't know, 60 people, every time, something like that, you don't have to be a member. And it opens up the dialogue for us with so many more people. And then on the, uh, on the other side of the equation, we've also created a LinkedIn group, private group for fractionals it's called the Fractional Connections group. We're also doing, we do some webinars as well. I've done a lot of trainings on, um, different topics, like how to build a pipeline, how to build a flowing pipeline. That's a free webinar. We've done one on how to do VIP strategy days as a really great revenue generator for your fractional business. It's an add-on to your business that is not only excellent for your clients, cuz they get a lot done in one day. But it's very lucrative for you and it's a great opportunity. So we've done a lot of trans I just, and I'm doing every Monday, I'm doing LinkedIn lives for everybody. So, um, jump on for 15 or 20 minutes and give you some tips. So we have a lot, you know, we have a lot to offer. Uh, we're also doing, and I, I mentioned this before we're doing, um, work, uh, workforce planning sessions with SMB. So if you have a colleague, you know, or a possible, um, That you would love to have them see more about what fractional, um, opportunities are available. We love to deliver the, the, you know, the lunch and learn to them. We've been doing lunch and learns and it's free. So they get to learn and it get, it really supports your effort to, um, gain visibility, credibility, encourage your potential clients to see fractional leaderships as a benefit to them. So without pitching them, right, that's our aim.

Eric Dickmann: 25:43

No, I love that. And clearly, networking has transformed your business. It is sort of your superpower.

Nancy Fox: 25:52

Well, you know, I have to say one more. Other thing I know I've shared a lot with you guys, but I will say one thing, if I could tell you that there is one, um, nugget one hub that made such a difference, and that was LinkedIn and, um, using LinkedIn with the right messaging, with the right consistency, with the right hashtag tagging and with the right profile structure presentation it transformed. We were able to, in two months we were able to generate a very huge following. That's pretty, we doubled our followers in, you know, two months. So, and I it's doable. Not it's, we're not just, you know, we're not special. It's you guys too. So you need to use LinkedIn differently. So we've added, we're just about to post this on our website. We're gonna be adding LinkedIn profile renovations for fractionals. So, um, because they're leaving a lot of chips on the table. Some people want to. They wanna redo their own, uh, profiles. That's great. But if you don't wanna do it yourself, we will do it for you. We'll even do we have services for posting, uh, for, you know, for fractions, because we know that there's some, they have special needs, so we're doing some different services for people to help and grow their businesses faster, get the traction that they want, um, and feel that, you know, because it, it takes a lot, you know, where do you, what do you do first? Just so much. So we we've, that's why we've set up an entire structure and a sequence and a curriculum. So you can follow along. It takes a lot, we know, but we want, we wanna be there to help you along the.

Eric Dickmann: 27:26

Well, I love your enthusiasm. You know, we've been connected, I think for a couple months now and the quality of content that you're putting out there, I think is fantastic. It's serving kind of this unique a niche of the, uh, the fractional marketplace. Like I said, so much of the content that you make available is for free they're great networking opportunities, and we've covered a lot of things here. And so as we kind of bring the podcast to a close, if you would just repeat sort of where people can find you and your business, and some of the training opportunities that you've talked about, as well as where they can find some of these great resources on LinkedIn.

Nancy Fox: 27:59

Okay. Great. So first of all, thank you everybody for, you know, just bearing with me. I know I shared an awful lot. So the first thing is if you, uh, would like to come to our complimentary, uh, virtual networking, um, it's every month, And you would go to, uh, fractionals.ai/networking and just sign up. It's very easy and it's free. And then, um, if you are a fractional and you would like to join our complimentary LinkedIn group, um, you would go to linkedin.com/groups/FractionalConnectionsGroup. And each of those words, Fractional Connections and Group is capitalized. But if you do a search, you'll find. Um, and then also, if you would like to go to fractionals.ai on our website, we have a free webinar that you can, that you can go to, um, on pipeline building. Um, and we have other resources. We have VIP day, uh, VIP day information. If you wanna be, uh, if you would like a free IP day for your business, we can talk about that. But if you wanna learn how to do VIP days with your clients. We would love to show you how to do that. If you wanna get more information about having your LinkedIn profile match, your unique value proposition, definitely reach out to us. We're gonna be, I'm happy to share about that as well. And you can reach me@nancyatfractionals.ai. I know a lot of links, right?

Eric Dickmann: 29:19

A lot of links. We'll make sure we put all that in the show notes so that people can find them. But, you know, Nancy, I really do appreciate all you're doing for the community. There are some great resource. Here some great networking opportunities and some great training that you're putting together as well. Thank you for your time here today. This has been a great conversation.

Nancy Fox: 29:35

Well, Eric, I wanna just say, I've listened to a lot of podcasts and shows on fractionals. I think what you're doing it's just so superior. I think the quality is evident and I really wanna thank you for having me. And if your listeners got just one little nugget out of today it'll make my day. Thank you, Eric, for having me.

Eric Dickmann: 29:56

Thank you for joining us on this episode of The Virtual CMO podcast. For more episodes, go to fiveechelon.com/podcast to subscribe through your podcast player of choice. And if you'd like to develop consistent lead flow and a highly effective marketing strategy, visit fiveechelon.com to learn more about our Virtual CMO consulting services.