Episode 5: It’s Really Freaking Hard to Run a Fractional Marketing Company & Here’s Why

Branden O’Neil 00:00
I came to this realization last year, where I just realized I actually my company, Atlas Rose, the company that I started, is my part time job that kind of sucks, like that stings. And that's true for all of us, fractionals, all fractionals or business, the thing that actually pays your bills is your part time job. Your clients are your full time job. And then again, you've got your family and all the all the things that come into that. So when you put that into perspective, why is it so hard to grow and to run a fractional business? It's because it's a it's a part time job.

Randi Beth Burton 00:40
Welcome to the Atlas Rose Podcast. Topic for today, it's really freaking hard to grow a marketing company. If you're a fractional marketer, you know this. You grow businesses for a living, but your own business gets what we call your crumbs. It's a pain that that we feel often. Your clients get your best thinking your business gets what's left over, and you're either writing a revenue high and then you're afraid to lose it, or you're scrambling for the next client while serving five others, and you're usually doing that alone. So I'll reiterate, it's really freaking hard to grow a fractional marketing company. Brandon Monica. Does this resonate with you?

Monica Spieles 01:29
Oh, the crumbs. Yeah.

Branden O’Neil 01:33
I mean, it just is, and I'd love for us to go through reasons why. So I was doing some research. I was just curious. I know we've done this research before, but you know, what are some of the more recent stats around how many CMOS there are out there right now? Fractional CMOS, because that's in our 14 years of being in business. We started off as as being coaches, but really it was like fractional CMOS before that was even like fractional wasn't even a term when we started. And so just seeing how that industry has kind of created itself and now grown into fractional CMOS, it feels like there's as many fractional CMOS as there are realtors out there nowadays, and there's so it's like they're everywhere. And so that's cool, and then it's also not cool because it's unregulated and and we can talk about that in a minute anyway. So I was looking at some statistics. I'm gonna throw some of those out, out at you guys. So the fractional executive marketing space grew 57% since 2020 with an 18% year over year growth. So since 2020 the last five years, we've seen 18% year over year growth growing 57%.

Monica Spieles 02:43
That's a lot. Well, if you think about emerging jobs, and if you look at that as being an emerging role that didn't exist before, that's insane that's insane growth. And to really understand the parameters of what does that mean, what should you be looking for? Why does that role exist? I mean, all the things that come with a new, emerging job, just because it's a familiar title or responsibility gives us this comfort level of what we're looking for or who we're engaging with, but it really is. It's not like the previous roles. There's a lot of differences, both in operating in it and in hiring it. So that's a pretty crazy stat in my mind, for how rapid that was since 2020.

Randi Beth Burton 03:26
I would venture to guess I don't have a stat in front of me, but most small, small businesses didn't have to get on Zoom calls to run a meeting, and didn't know how to do that, and just the The occurrence of that habit, and businesses open the door for fractionals to be able to serve anyone, any place you're no longer limited by serving the person in your backyard, which I think opened or created this industry to the size that it is today, the big part of that.

Branden O’Neil 04:00
100% agree, I think too. I think that the allure of entrepreneurship with what your expertise is is pretty high. So if you're an expert marketer, if that's what you've been doing, and you want to go be an entrepreneur, then why not take your expertise and go be an entrepreneur with it? So what you have is you have a lot of executives that are coming out of corporate you have entrepreneurs, maybe young marketers that really haven't earned the CMO title yet, but from a marketing yourself standpoint, there's nothing that regulates against that. So then you've got a bunch of those types. You've got people that are switching jobs, or maybe have been consultants for a while, but you've got a lot of adoption of this fractional cmo title with no standard to it at all. And I was talking about with the allure of the entrepreneurialism behind it. It's the same with all entrepreneurialism. And. With any business, it always sounds great. It almost seems easy. It feels like a no brainer, like I've been marketing companies for a long time, and I help them grow, right? And then so and so wants me to help them, and so and so wants me to help them, and so I'm just going to go out on my own, and I'm going to make a ton of money, and this is going to be great, right? And then we convinced ourselves in the beginning that we're never going to lose a client either. We're never going to lose...

Monica Spieles 05:27
That's not possible, who would walk away?

Branden O’Neil 05:30
No, I'm a great marketer, and why would they ever want to get rid of me and all that stuff, right? So then you get punched in the mouth for the first time, which happens, and you're gonna get punched in the mouth, and then you get punched in the mouth again and again and again, and then all of a sudden, it's like, oh my gosh. This, this part, this entrepreneurialism is just hard, right? So that's, I think, a big adoption, is that I went a step further on the stats, and I was like, Okay, so we've got a lot, obviously, a lot of people flooding into being fractional CMOS. But how many businesses are even using them? Is it just that we're that we're all trying to go after the same five companies, or something, you know, like, is the marketing growing? And I found this stat. This one was actually, I did not know this one, and this one's crazy about 25% of US businesses currently use fractional leaders. Currently use fractional leaders. 25% of US businesses and projected to hit 35% by late 25 so obviously, there's an old stat we just turned into 26 but so by late this past year was supposed to be about 35% that's unbelievable.

Monica Spieles 06:42
It's wild. It's unbelievable. Also because you said fractional leader. So we're not talking about a consultant, which is when you think about that mix of the emerging job of a fractional leader, and what was there before? What was there before was a consultant. So the expectation that was set before us and for businesses hiring outside help was someone comes in, they evaluate, they assess, they present, they leave, or they help a little bit, then they leave. So the expectation of a consultant has even been very different as we've emerged into what a true fractional leader looks like. That expectation, that precedent, is short lived. I think even just the boundaries and the what you should expect, all of that is very new and continuously being refined. And that is wild to think of how rapid that growth is for more than a third of our of our businesses now operating that way, that could be problematic.

Branden O’Neil 07:41
Especially when there's there's no guidepost that says this is the right way in the wrong way, exactly right and the right mix. And the other thing is, I would guess that the companies themselves, they don't know how to lead a fractional so companies hope, if we've got any companies that are listening, any owners that might have a fractional or thinking about fractional, it's easy to think about them as a consultant. But to my CMOS, the moment that you come in as a consultant, consultants, by the way, come in, they use you language. You guys should do this. You need to do this. Your brand this, right? All that stuff. If that's your language, then you're a consultant. You're essentially coming in kicking their puppy and saying, Good luck with that. And you don't want to be a consultant, because companies don't need a consultant. They need leaders. So to the businesses, to the owners out there, you have to lead your CMOS or your fractionals in a way that actually brings them in. And it's they're the same as any other employee, they're just less hours. So you should hold them accountable the same way you do to the rest of your employees, right? You should treat them the same way. They should be invited, the same things, all that stuff. It's just hours. That's the only difference. Functionally, it should be the same and fractionals, you should treat yourself that way. That should be part of your offering. You need to rewire your brains such that you're not an outsider, you're an insider. You're not an outsider, you're an insider and and that is very powerful, that difference.

Monica Spieles 09:08
Yeah, because you're more effective that way, it's not for the sake of longevity. It's because you are more effective when you are an insider. You get to be exposed to the real operations, the real needs you get to have the leader, like conversations that you often get left out of as a consultant, because that's evaluated from the outside, if we need to bring you into that conversation or not, you know, you're just in the room as a leader. And so it's it, yes, it leads to long term relationships, but it's vital for an effective one.

Branden O’Neil 09:41
So I know that our subject, the theme today that we were going to talk about, is just that it's really freaking hard to run and to grow a fractional practice. We say fractional practice because that's true. Obviously our lens is fractional marketing practice. And I think that this is one of this is this is we kind of backed into a learning and then. I'll just sort of let's touch on this in a second. Is that Atlas rose believes that we are leaders before we're marketers. And just part of the difficulty of running a marketing, a fractional marketing practice, is if we get that twisted, if we believe that we're marketers, really great marketers before we're leaders, you're going to burn through clients. You're not going to have the lifetime value of a client that you expected as you got into this in the first place. Let's talk about that a second. Like, why do you guys think that is? Why is it that when we show up as a marketer, when we're the best marketer in the room or in the on the planet, even as a fractional CMO, why is that not good enough?

Randi Beth Burton 10:40
It goes back to what conversations you're having, is a piece of it, like Monica was talking about, people's definitions of marketing are one thing also. And so if you're coming in for a particular project or or as something marketing related, it is directly associated with that thing, and not necessarily looking at it as it relates to the entire business. And so when you come in as a leader, you're asking questions that that the business owner is asking themselves, hopefully, and so you're asking greater why questions? You know, what's our goal here? What are we trying to achieve this marketing function potentially is going to help us get there, but if you're going in just solely for that function, you're potentially missing some of the bigger questions you should be asking.

Monica Spieles 11:32
Yeah, it's, it's really, I think it comes down to alignment. And you would think that that comes naturally when you're operating in your your silo, your your lane that you're supposed to be sticking to, but it doesn't a lot of times. It's amazing to see how disjointed sales and marketing can get in what they're doing. And so when you've got alignment, not just in sales and marketing, but across again, the whole team across the business, all the efforts point in the same direction. And so when you're having those conversations around the one thing we need to make sure happens this year, are my efforts aligned with that? Is my budget aligned with that? Does that support everyone else on the team? They sound like basics, but it's just amazing how often they get missed when our focus is in, oh my gosh, this content piece, or this campaign that I want to run, or this show I want to go to, is going to be amazing. It's going to do so much for our marketing program, and did it on our brand, yet your blinders are up and you're not really looking at anything else happening in the business. It's so easy for that to happen on the for the sake of doing what marketers do best. I mean, truly, we can get just so caught up in that. So it's, it feels like such a simple answer, but it really does come down to alignment. I like that.

Branden O’Neil 12:52
I think it also comes down to ownership. If we stay in our marketing lane, like, let's just say we're a marketer, right? And we've all kind of got our own bent, the way that we came up through our careers and things like that. But let's just say we came up through a content marketing we were content marketing expert, and then we wanted to expand on that, and then we became a CMO and things like that. However that path looks, then things always tend to look like a content like content right? That tends to be the hammer and everything looks like a nail sometimes, but then Let's even say that you've gotten good at being the generalist, you're still needing to grab onto the ownership of the real business problem. So the exact Atlas rose teaching is we are leaders before marketers, and we're entrepreneurs above all else, right? So that's kind of the formula. So above all else, we're entrepreneurs, because at the end of the day, the client could care a less about content marketing. They hate marketing in general, and they really don't even want to sell. If their business could grow without sales and marketing altogether, they would do it 100% who of us wouldn't just love a business where clients come to us and buy stuff without us ever having to really even talk to them? We would all do that. That's easiest.

Branden O’Neil 14:10
So it's sort of a necessary evil. This marketing and sales initiative is that way, if we sit back and we wait for our client to tell us what needs to be done, or even when we reach in and we are building a strategy that's still through the filter, even if we're a marketer, if we stay in the marketing vein, and we're building a strategy off of what we are receiving from the business owner, the leadership team, there's no way that we could ever own that situation, because we don't really know What's going on in the business. We've divorced ourselves from that, or we've never asked to be within so therefore we can only respond to what is being filtered down now. And we all learned that lesson as a kid, to the telephone, right? We played telephone as a, as a as a kid, and so it goes back to that. It's always going to get. You, you're not get it's not going to be correct. So what we need to do as leaders is we need to reach into the business, understand exactly what's going on, so that we can own the whole the whole growth process. That's where we need to be.

Branden O’Neil 15:12
I was in a an annual the other day, and our pinnacle business guide. His name is Mitch. Mitch. He was talking about just owning a situation. And he threw me a marker from across the room. He threw a marker and he said, Hey, just, just let me know when you want to throw that back. And I threw it back immediately. And he did it again. And we start. I started to understand what he was doing. Then he said, Now, watch this. He walked the marker over to me, put it in my hands. And he said, Now I want you to go over to the whiteboard and draw at the bottom left, draw a circle. And so I did. I got up, walked over there, drew a circle. He said, Okay, now bisect that circle. So I drew a line down the circle. He said, Thank you. Let me have the marker back. I handed the marker back. He said, that's called ownership. That's called owning the process. So if we're waiting our clients, this goes to prospects too, as a prospect lesson. But if we're waiting our clients to tell us when we hand them the ball and say, Hey, let us know when you want to do content marketing, or when you want to build a strategy, or if you want to do business with us, just let us know we're here. We're friendly, you know, and that kind of thing, then maybe it'll happen. But people want to be told what to do, and the only way that we can do that is if we reach into the companies, be leaders, and own the process, own the growth of the company. Plays a long lesson.

Monica Spieles 16:34
Ownership mentality. Well, it's a good one, because, again, it's the reason of core value of ours is ownership mentality, and that's it just builds in that lens, no matter what you're doing. It's like, you can't choose to ignore everything else. And I think when you start creating that mentality wherever you go, it can be dangerous, because in my situation, I've learned that sometimes I just go too far, like I'm so invested, and I'm like, how could you not see that? You know, I just I get really invested, but I would much rather be that invested in the bigger picture and in the mission, in in what it means to even run a healthy business with my clients, than to be really okay with being on the outside, having my limited view and saying, I hope I last long enough to do some cool things. I'd much rather have the the the ownership mentality. That gets me a little in, a little bit more of a mess. Honestly, it's a little it's messier, but it's what challenges you, and it's what actually brings you to to innovate some really amazing things for your with your clients, because you get to be in, you get to be in the trenches with them.

Randi Beth Burton 17:41
What do you think? So that a lot of being in the trenches with a client, you get it because they've given you permission to be there. A client recently asked me, from my perspective, how things were going, and he was kind of apologizing, like, I know we're kind of all over the place. We're a little bit hard to manage, and that's why we wanted you guys, because you have a system, but how are we doing? How's it going for you? And I just told him, I said, I feel like I have permission to make decisions, and so I want to keep moving forward. I'm not feeling bogged down by your lack of process, but I'm going to just keep going until you tell me to stop. Now that came on, that came off of the early parts of our relationship and having conversations around my seat that I would be sitting in. What do you think? And I think this would just be helpful for people listening. How do you get that permission? Like, what are some practical ways that you have found to start relationships with clients where they do give you permissions to get in the trenches and to get out of your marketing silo. How do we do that?

Branden O’Neil 18:46
We've created a process for that, for us, for Atlas Rose. If you're an Atlas Rose marketer, follow the process. It's going to happen. You just have to follow the process. There's a few key moments that need to happen at the beginning of the relationship in order to and here's the key word, earn the title of CMO, not impose the title of CMO. Again, nobody cares about marketing. Nobody wants it. So you coming in with this title of CMO is not even believable. You being in marketing anyways is already not believable. They don't trust you. Just because you're in this industry, they don't trust you. Unfortunately, that's where we've gotten. That's the truth. So you have to do a lot of unwinding of their mind, and you have to earn it even more than any other fractional out there. CFOs are probably going to be trusted out the gate a lot sooner than marketers. I feel like that's obvious. So the way that you earn it? I'll just pick up on one and I'll shut up Monica, because I want to hear what you have to say too. Is the way that you earn it is by doing the hard work in the beginning.

Branden O’Neil 19:58
For Atlas Rosers, what we do is we go in and we again, part of our process is you have to do the hard work of that 12 month strategy. So when you cut corners and you call, when you call a strategy, when you call something that's not really a strategy, a 12 month strategy, or we call them 12 month roadmaps, when it's not in depth, when it you haven't done the research on the industry, when you haven't picked up the phone and talked to their customers, when you don't do the competitive analysis, when you don't do your operational plans and right, if it's not thorough like a real deal, IBM would be proud of this strategy. Coca Cola would be proud of the strategy. If you're not at that level, you're not ever going to earn, in their minds that title of CMO. It's an uphill battle forever. You're always going to be fighting out of a pit. So that's one way.

Monica Spieles 20:53
I mean, I echo that I was going to say it's earned, not bought. You know, just because a contract signed, just because they decide to take a chance on you, it doesn't mean that you can start marching in and act like I'm I've got the trust. It does take time, and even beyond putting in that hard work. Again, it's going to sound obvious, but just the the accountability piece, showing up and doing what you say you're going to do, and holding yourself accountable to the things that you say you're going to do is one of the to me, the second most important way to earn that trust, because they don't have time to hold you accountable. They don't have time to hold your hand or make sure you're doing a thing that they hired you to do.

Monica Spieles 21:32
So when you show up and you have again, that's why he's why Brandon, when you say it's follow the system, follow the process, it's in that because we are choosing to hold ourselves accountable as leaders. I'm going to show up and I'm going to talk about the results. I'm going to talk about if, if we're getting the most important things done that we said, we're going to focus on. I'm going to talk about my strategy over and over and over. I'm going to I'm going to renew it for you, because then remind you of what we agreed to, those things, not just doing a song and dance every time I show up, and hopefully you forget the thing I was supposed to come back with being holding yourself accountable, having a system in place and a process in place that does that and doesn't make them feel like they've got to go double check all the things, is another way you start to earn that trust, because it's results based. It's moving forward. It's in line all of that. It's felt, it's seen, and it's known, when they start to see that come to fruition, but to have something in place that they can begin to trust in you. When you trust the system, they start to trust the people that are in that system. And all that goes with it. It's huge. It's really important. And then it's reps getting more and more of those reps in and just being accountable.

Randi Beth Burton 22:44
Obviously, I'm hearing from both of y'all, I have to check my ego at the door, so just because I maybe carry a fractional cmo title, and I've said I want to be in the C suite, this is the level that I'm leading at to approach a new client like it's a crucial job interview. I've got to go do my research. I've got to ask good, curious questions. I can't just come in and say what's worked in the past, or this is absolutely 100% what you need to do. No silver bullets in marketing, but that can be, I think, for an entrepreneur, marketer, who's who has their business, that your ego, there's a lot of faking it till you make it, that people go through, and there's a check that you have to give yourself of setting that aside and coming in truly as a as a partner, as someone who's contributing value to this company who has now invested in me, and I'm going to prove it and earn it like you were saying. I think that's really good. That's valuable and hard to do when you're trying to prove you deserve to be there.

Monica Spieles 23:54
Actually on top of that, so when you're checking your ego at the door. We just had a great conversation this morning around being a guide, another core value, shout out, but it is an important one, because it's wrapped around that leadership aspect. When we are taking the time and we're patient with not just bulldozing the conversation, this is what we need to do. Get out of the way. You're an idiot, and it really is taking the time to guide, to coach and really help them understand why we're taking the path we're suggesting that also is another great trust builder, because we're not just saying, well, just take my word for it, and believe me, obviously we are sitting in that seat for a reason, but it really helps when you get to bring them alongside and help them understand the reasons for what we're doing, and build that trust along the way. And then it becomes easier and easier as you go through and actually the relationship that's built when they start being educated in the moves we're making, and for what reasons, you start to naturally grow that partnership. And it feels like they're actually becoming. A better marketer than you are. It's like because they're so they're so in tune with their business, and they're starting to understand the methods and the reasons for doing things, that the partnership and the conversations start to lean that direction. And again, just the trust that's built off of that, instead of a asking for blind trust, is so much healthier. And I enjoy that part, I think, probably the most, the awe and the joy of most the time of people getting to learn the reason why, God, that makes sense, is a fun process to be a part of.

Branden O’Neil 25:30
Our theme is it's it's really hard to run a business like this. We've been talking a lot about client kind of relationships and things like that. We will get to what the number one thing on everyone's mind is biz dev, right? So it's like, how do you get clients? That's the number one thing. I just want to say, we're going to get to that in here in a second. One last thing I do want to say on clients is sometimes you have a client that doesn't get it, or sometimes you bring on a client that you shouldn't have brought on. Sometimes a fractional CMO is not what I actually what a client needed in the first place, and you did a good job, and you're convincing them of it, and you got the business right. And it's just sometimes you bring on a client that you shouldn't have. And Monica, I particularly want to hear maybe a story or two. We can leave names out, but of just difficult clients, maybe not ones that we shouldn't have had, but just difficult clients, and what some of that's done for us. But again, to tee you up on this is like, how much time does a difficult client take and and then if you're on that, and you're going over on your scope, and then it's not getting you're not getting to your business, you're just kind of talk about that.

Monica Spieles 26:41
Yeah, yeah. I see the the core theme we have found when it comes to clients that weren't a good fit. It's like, we always knew, actually, when you trace it back, you're like, I saw the giant billboard before we signed and it said, Do not, do not do this. They're not a good fit. It's always the same conversation around that. It's, ah, but they're such good people. And I just feel like we could really help, and this is a great opportunity. And so you just, you convince yourself, for all those reasons, because we because, you know, when you've got the desire to just serve and help small business, you just, you're, you're just like, of course, we can do it. We'll be the ones. But you have to know first of all what your red flags are. And for us, it was when they are have to be convinced of the value of strategy. Okay? Big Red Flag. Big Red Flag, when Sure, I want to hear what you have to say, but at the end of the day, I want to give you the list of things that we need to do, and that's it. Big red flag.

Monica Spieles 27:41
There are several others. But then what that results in is exactly how you teed it up for it's it's one you start spending way more time than you should. You already have crumbs to give to your business. We you'll hear us talk about that term all the time, but the crumbs of what we have left is, is what gets to be poured into our business development efforts, into our productizing our services and our products and thinking for our brand, all of that gets the crumbs of us. So then we're spending more time on problematic clients. We're probably bending the rules and and apologizing, asking for forgiveness, waving invoices, and then all of a sudden you're you're creating services you weren't positioned and built to do in the first place. And then all sudden, you've got an identity problem, and you're not even serving your client in a business that is recognizable of your own, because it's not your brand. And so all sudden, there's just this whole confusion of the state of confusion you live in around, what is my business? What do I do? What makes me valuable? I'm going to question my product and service, because one person who was not a good fit for it is not enjoying the service that I'm offering. So then I'm thinking, Am I in the right business? It should be changing my services. And then you go down a whole nother path. So it just is. It's a little degree that turns into a long road, off path that keeps you from really scaling.

Branden O’Neil 29:06
It's hard to figure out exactly where the line is right, because, oh, man, I saw a quote the other day. It was like, difficult clients, I can deal with toxic clients. Have to go or something. It was something like that because Monica, you and I, and RB, you and I, we can, we can go around and tell stories of difficult clients that has led to innovation. The reason why we've created a lot of the processes that we've come up with is because we were trying to figure out how to solve this issue of a client not quite getting it or whatever right. How do we communicate better to a client. How do we make sure you know whatever the situation was, and so that's tough too. It's like, that's part of what makes this business so difficult, is like, how do you know when to not bring on a client? How do you know when to fire a bad client? How do you know when they're a bad client and should be fired? How do you know when you should lean in? And innovate for them. That's all difficult stuff. That's especially when you're doing it by yourself. If you don't have anybody that has experience, or if you don't have a community around you, or some guide or coach, or somebody like then it's it's just really difficult to discern on your own, because in the midst of it, you're thinking, my kids gotta eat next month.

Monica Spieles 30:21
Yeah, the highs and lows of entrepreneurs and so actually having creating foundational principles is one of the first and most important things that can be done. Like, what do I stand for? What do I believe? How does my business serve? And you kind of have those little pillars that you just you can cross reference and check. But having a community and having a perspective is so helpful. It's so helpful. When you're in the trenches, you just it's hard to see clearly.

Randi Beth Burton 30:49
One of the practical things that Atlas Rose, that we do at the end of a project or milestone with a client, is we call it a post mortem, which maybe has a negative connotation to it, but I love that we do this because it gives us perspective. It's like, okay, here's here's what was really hard, here's what was working about what we did. This was a challenge, and that's where a lot of the innovation in the way that we've been able to serve our clients has come from. Because we've said, okay, the things that got us stuck, how do we avoid that in the future. Is it communication? Is it the structure? Is it the cadence? What is it so being able to do that with one another, I think, has been incredibly valuable. And in learning, when we want to say no to something in the future, like that's just if that client's like this, then we don't want to serve them, we recognize the rabbit trail that that could lead us down. And then the second thing, I think, is it's it's a lot easier to not make concessions when you've got a healthy pipeline working for you, which maybe you'll kind of get into where you were leading us. Brandon on biz dev. How do we do it? But how, as a fractional Have you found success in not living and dying by the success of your current client set and being worried that if you lose a client now you're going to be in scramble mode. How have you overcome that over time?

Monica Spieles 32:15
You don't I was waiting for it. I'm like, Yeah,

Branden O’Neil 32:22
Secret sauce, there is none.

Monica Spieles 32:24
There's no secret sauce.

Branden O’Neil 32:26
News flash. That's entrepreneurialism. Like, if you're going to be an entrepreneur, which you are as a fractional owner, you are going to be in that world, like you are always going to live in this world where even if you're even if your book of business is full, guys, we've been in a place where we're completely sold out, and within months that changes to a desperate, not a desperate situation, but a very, very different situation. It can happen, and it does happen. The market can change. And guess you've seen it. What's the first thing to go in the budget? Oh, yeah, high marketing. Yeah, high dollar, high dollar marketing. Line items are going first. That's the reality of where we're at. Covid. I mean, for goodness sake, we were slammed. We were killing it. Covid happens, and within weeks, we had nothing. We were working for free. We worked for free for months just to keep relationships going. It can happen in an instant, and that's the reality of it. And so there's never a time, there's never a time where you're like, I'm good. I don't have to worry about it ever again, right? There might be little, little snippets when you're full that you kind of have full security.

Monica Spieles 33:44
But we've experienced the highs and lows of what mo bundle talks about in the snowball system, where you're on a high of all your client load, you're full, you're sold out. So you stop working on filling your pipeline. You stop having all you stop the all the business development activity that you were just charging so hard with, and you take your foot off that gas pedal, and then all of a sudden it's as you start to end relationships or projects or just coming to a close, whatever it was, you go back and you realize you have to completely restart that engine again. And it's just a really difficult restart, as opposed to, say, I never took my my foot off the gas pedal. So that's, that's the the system we were in for so long. And can be really brutal when it comes to again, serving working on a business and in the business at the same time.

Branden O’Neil 34:34
Yeah, so to answer the question a little bit more directly, is we have to be doing biz dev all the time. You have to have a really simple method of biz dev. So Monica, you just mentioned mo Bonnell and the in the book, Snowball system. And if you've not bought that book and read it yet, you should. It's a really fantastic book. Work. We also have a biz dev meeting. It's a public biz dev meeting for fractionals that we host weekly. Go to our website or find us on LinkedIn to get information around when those are when, when those are available. But it's happening weekly, and basically it's just fractional is getting together and helping hold it's like, it's like our biz dev meeting, right? It's a It's if we had a team, and I was on a sales team, this is the sales meeting. I'm holding myself accountable to the goals that I set ahead of time. So it's we see a lot of traction in that, but it's built around, like an ultra, ultra simple system of simply conversations. Conversations is like the number one thing that you need to have and track, and that's all your activity, and that will lead to business we can never get too busy to do our conversations, and we haven't got a definition to what those conversations are. And a hint is that it's actually even more simple.

Branden O’Neil 35:56
A conversation is even more simple than what you even think it is when we're talking about it right now. We've tried everything. We've had massive, nationwide strategic partnerships with hundreds of people. We've had, we've, I've hired on sales, sales folks, full sales teams. We've tried doing big marketing campaigns ourselves. We've, I mean, we really have tried everything over the course of our 14 years. And we had a two year period where, I think we brought on, we had, like, an extreme drought where we brought on like, one or two clients, I think we sold, yeah, yeah. Two years, two clients. That's tough. We went from that, we said, something's got to change. And then we moved into this, this methodology that we're going to that we that we teach and that we help our our marketers go through of conversations, and then changed up some products and stuff. We went from those two in two years to 100 the next year. We sold 100 deals the next the next year. So this stuff works, right? It works really well. That is really helpful. I mean, to have a full pipeline and to have a mechanism that you can kind of throttle in, throttle out, hopefully not turn off, turn on. That's really, really helpful.

Monica Spieles 37:14
I think that key you're the simplicity factor is, is absolutely key, at least, to start. There are a million different CRM systems out there. There's a ton of teachings on on sales and business development, and we've, we've found some that we really love. But just going back to that simple concept of conversations, it does wonders. And I just love that. That's where we get to start with a lot of our fractionals and a lot of our network, because it's, it's just you don't have time for anything else. You don't have time for complex, for complexities. You have a business to grow and run, and then a life to live, so on top of that. So there's just a lot. There's a lot in there.

Branden O’Neil 37:54
Keep it simple. You just mentioned you've got a life to live, and you've got your clients to serve the and, and, and, and, and then we've said crumbs several times. I came to this realization last year my company Atlas rose, the company that I started, is my part time job that kind of sucks, like that stings. And that's true for all of us, fractionals. All fractionals or business, the thing that actually pays your bills is your part time job. Your clients are your full time job. And then again, you've got your family and all the all the things that come into that. So when you put that into perspective, why is it so hard to grow and to run a fractional business? It's because it's a it's a part time job. It's hard to do things. It's hard to be really strategic and smart and motivated and everything like that. When you're tired, you've already worked your full time job, and now you need to go into your part time job, right? That's, it's hard.

Monica Spieles 38:53
I have a whole conversation around that. That's yeah, that might tee a step for another Yeah. Actually, that's a that'll be a lead into the conversation around circumstance and vision and and that not being enough. You've got a part time job. It feels like a part time job, but that's everyone's circumstance, and we can certainly get around that. So do that up for the next time Brandon.

Randi Beth Burton 39:22
Before we wrap up, do you want to tell our listening audience about The Bourbon Room?

Branden O’Neil 39:27
Yeah, sure. So we we have two core events that happen regularly. One is the biz dev meeting, public biz dev meeting I was mentioning earlier. So certainly come if you, if you're struggling with your biz dev efforts or just want to be held accountable. Please do come to that. Then there is an informational meeting around our licensed marketer program. And so we would love for you to come that and to that and understand what all we offer are licensed folks. And you can think of our licensed program. It's like a franchise. Guys. So this isn't just a marketing system that we're going to train you on you can follow. Yes, we've got 50 plus tools that we can give you in a method. All that stuff is true, but we really lean in on the business side. So we've been again, we've been doing this for 14 years. We've built a multi fractional practice. We've generated over $20 million in sales, right? So we've been fairly successful, and we've taken all those learnings, all those pains, all those all the things that we've learned, and packaged that up in a model that we can just hand to you, right? So all all of that we're giving to you, even our financial models and what you need to look at, and the team and everything, everything, right? And then we're going to walk alongside with you, along with the community and all that, so you don't have to do it by yourself. We're really just trying to see all these fractional practices. We want the right ones to grow, because we will ultimately want to change the industry. So long winded way of saying you should come to the Bourbon Room informational meeting.

Randi Beth Burton 41:02
Do we get bourbon in the Bourbon Room?

Branden O’Neil 41:04
You can bring your own bourbon. It's difficult to pour people bourbon through the virtually, but if you, if you come, figure that out, sometimes, if we ever meet in person, I will pour you bourbon myself.

Randi Beth Burton 41:17
In the show notes, we'll put the snowball system. I'll put the public biz dev meeting. We would love for you to join us as a guest to the first one. Come check it out. Find some community with other fractionals and and I'll put a link to The Bourbon Room in the show notes as well. Awesome. And we'll see you next time.