Why You Should Hire Fractional C-Level Talent Instead of a Full-Time Employee: Sue Mysko - Chief Marketing Outsider

This is the Beyond the Story podcast, a show that goes way beyond the story. And now Sebastian Frost, sue, welcome to the show.

Thanks so much, Sebastian, for having me. Great to be here.

It's great to have you here. Thanks for taking some time out of your busy day to hang out with me and tell your story. That's what we do here on this podcast is tell people's story of how they really got to where they're at right now with what they're currently doing with their business and life, etc. You and I connected over email through a mutual connection that I may or may not remember, so it's good to connect with you and finally put a face with an email. I think that's what was faced with a voice. Yeah, face with an email is the way it goes. So, welcome to the show. Well, let's kick things off. Well, first thing I like to do is back up a little bit and, for some context for our audience, help our listeners better understand a little bit more about you and your backstory and what really brought you to present day with what you're currently working on.

Yeah, thanks so much, sebastian. So I've spent my entire career in professional services marketing, so working for companies like Accenture, like Deloitte, kpmg, and when I hit the fabulous 50s and decided it was time for another pass, I took on the role of fractional CMO. And when I became a fractional CMO, I started to see there were a lot of challenges and I've had the opportunity to not only serve clients as a fractional, but I also have the opportunity. I'm part of an organization and I coach fractional. And when I started to talk to these fractional, the same three things kept ringing true, and the most important was they were struggling to find leads. And then, when I interviewed companies, it was the same thing they were struggling to find people that they needed in order to grow their business. So it became obvious to me that there was this real opportunity to bring together these companies who are struggling with fractional executives in a way that is beneficial to both parties.

This is what I always think of when I think of fractional positions. Do you think this has become a thing for companies to utilize because a full-time C-level executive wasn't necessarily needed as much these days due to technology and the job, or, at the same time, maybe they weren't doing their job as good as they could? Because when I think fractional, I think it's more like a contract position of some sort, where if you don't do your job, then you're just not going to have this position and we're going to replace you with someone who's actually going to get it done. I'm always curious about how fractional became so popular these days.

I think there's a few things going on there. I think number one is that, if you look at the number of companies whose growth has plateaued between one and 10 million in revenue, that is the first big challenge, and so the stat says that only 1% of companies ever make it to 10 million in revenue, and so we're trying to get those companies up there. Two is the lack of expertise. We've got all these small business owners. They know they need to grow, but they lack those expertise. They lack the expertise to do it, and so they're struggling financially to say you know what? I know I need these experts, I know I need to grow my company, and they need someone at that senior level, and so by bringing someone in fractionally, they can do it affordably. And on the fractional side, the difference between fractional and part time and I think this is a really important distinction to make A fractional executive encompasses kind of, I would say, three key elements. One, yes, they are part time, but two, they're a C-suite executive. This person sits in the C-suite. And number three, which is super important they're responsible for growth. They're responsible for delivering growth, they are responsible for contributing to the bottom line, and this is what makes it so different from a part time executive. It is the fact that they are in the C-suite and they are results based and they are committed to the growth of that business.

I love that Excellent explanation. I'm glad you cleared things up for me there. That's exactly what I wanted to know and I was curious about. I got a good friend that's a fractional CFO and does very, very well for himself. It's probably a fractional CFO for well over a couple dozen companies, which I was like wow, I'm like I'm not going to get a one or two. And he was like no, we've got a majority of that we do that with. I haven't seen it play out as well with CMOs. That's cheap marketing officer in case of your eyes are wondering what all these letters that we're spitting out here on so for a CMO, when you talk about responsibility of the growth of the company, I've heard that a lot. We had a fractional CFO and ended up being a house of cards and didn't end up panning out. They promised us the world, they got in and we didn't get anything in return because of that. In your experience, have you seen that happen, or how do you screen or filter that out to make sure that you are in fact bringing someone on in a fractional position as a CMO to actually get results and do something?

It's the same as hiring a full-time person. You would go through the same vetting process you would to hire a full-time person. They would be looking at what their pedigree is. Where do they come from. You would look at what models they're bringing in and what are they following in terms of the strategy and the strategic approach. You would look at in terms of marketing, how are they linking their marketing to a bottom line results and to the proper KPIs that a company is gonna need in order to grow. And so if, looking at bringing in a CMO, I would spend the first 30 days building a strategy and saying here is the strategy, here's how this strategy is going to link to your business goals and objectives, here are the KPIs and this is how we're gonna track it. And we're gonna track it on a weekly basis. We're gonna sit down, we're gonna look at the results and we're gonna say are we on track or off track? And it's having that, those KPIs in place, but having the rigor and the discipline to be tracking them and knowing which ones to track and the ones that are going to actually drive the bottom line.

Love it. So let's talk about hire a fractional Great name. By the way, straighten to the point, there's no guessing on there.

I was shocked when I came up with the idea. I was absolutely shocked when I said let's go just check out HireFractionalcom. It was available and I whipped out my credit card and I was like soul, that's the name, it's mine.

So walk me through how this all came about, other than choosing the name. That sounded pretty simple. There's a stroke of luck in there somewhere, right, absolutely. But how did all this come about? You had a great career working for large corporations, and brands decided to branch out on your own. A lot of that has happened over the past few years because a lot of people were forced to go and do that. But walk me through your process on how it all, how you arrived at hey, this is the next step for Sue.

So I am still an active fractional CMO and I'm running these both in parallel. So it was truly through my own experience of saying I have got this deep expertise, I have got proven frameworks. How do I go about finding clients? So, as a marketer, it was always the what's the next best thing and what does this look like in linking to my own KPIs. It was just through discussion with a number of people and we were just brainstorming one day and we said why wouldn't it be great if there was a database where small businesses could go and do a search? And do a search by hey, I need a fractional CFO who is in B2B and is in the telco industry. Then it truly it was born from there and I was like, yeah, why doesn't somebody do this? Then I just said to myself why isn't that somebody me? I grew up in a family of entrepreneurs and I just looked in the mirror and I said now's my time and so, yeah, so I just bootstrapped it, I went out and built it all and we're now. We launched at the beginning of November and we're out in market.

Love it. Congrats on that. So is it a directory or is it a placement agency, or is it a hybrid of both? How does it all work?

It is a directory, it is a two-sided marketplace. So sync Airbnb, sync Uber. So on the company side, so companies can come and join for free. So we recognize that small businesses are struggling to grow, we recognize the economy is tough. So the companies are welcome to come set up for free. They can put their job, they can post their job for free, they can build their profile for free. What that does is it connects them to fractionals in the database. They can come in, they can search, they can direct message them and there are no commission fees. So this was a big thing for us. That, like you say, is it a recruitment agency? No, it's not. There are no commission fees. So whatever the fractional and the company agree to under contract, we don't take any of it.

Love it. This is much needed. You and I were chatting briefly before the interview here that this whole term of fractional fill in the blank whether it's C-suite or whatever the position may be has become more and more popular. I would say I just learned about it over the past couple of years on here, but I would say it's become more and more popular as more people have branched out on their own, doing their own thing, more consulting. Consulting has always been around, but the world that we're operating in right now, so there's definitely a huge need for this. I love what you say about small business too. So this isn't just large, multi-million dollar corporations looking to fill a position that may not be full time. This is allowing anybody who owns a business that's looking to grow that business and find the right people to help facilitate that. This is the solution for them. Am I on the right track there?

You're absolutely on the right track. You can get three fractional executives. You could get a CFO, a CMO and a CIO for the same price for each of one of those executives. So by going fractional, you can build out that leadership team that you need. If you're doing one million in revenue and you want to bring in a single fractional, you can. If you're doing two, three, four, then it allows you to bring in more fractionals. I've worked in organizations where there's been a fractional CEO, a fractional CMO and a fractional CHRO. They built their business off of fractional because they just recognized that they could get the senior leadership and the strategy they needed to grow their business, because they just want to be in their business. This is, I think, the most important thing. Business owners just want to do the thing they started off to do. If you're a tech person and you just want to write code, you don't want to think about having to market your business. You don't want us to have to think about payroll. You don't want to have to think about operations. So you can hire those people to think about that part of the business while they can continue to be that visionary that they started off and why they started their business in the first place.

Love it. So you launched in November. How's it going?

It's going really well. I am so proud to say that, on average, we're putting probably 35 to 40 jobs in the database every single week.

Love it. Sorry, go ahead, no.

and we're just I mean, we're seeing an absolute. The number of fractionals each day is rising. When we were doing research, we looked at the number of people in LinkedIn who listed themselves as fractional. Back at the beginning of October, there was 50,000. By the beginning of December, 60 days later, it was up to 70,000 people who had self identified as fractional. So people are very much becoming fractional and we're seeing that by the numbers of folks who are joining us each week.

Love it. What would you say? The biggest lesson you've had since November is Lots as a small business owner myself.

lots One is just, I would have to say it all has to be around talent. I would say, you know, hire slow, fire, fast. Find the right people for your business. If you're hiring a fractional as I have, I have fractional in my own business, of course Take the time to do your due diligence. Hire the right person, because they will add so much value to the business. That would be number one lesson. And number two is just get as much volume as you can. Take every opportunity to promote yourself, promote business and to get out there and get as much volume as you can.

Love it. So this has been great. I feel like I'm an expert in fractional positions now. I mean which I just knew about them. So the world of the wonderful world of podcasting, always delivering a mentoring session when you least expect it on here so I love it. Well, congrats on all the success you've had since November. You're very excited about this. You can tell by the tone of your voice and the way that you speak about your brand and your company and what you're up to, and you're also a product of the product, which I absolutely love. You're in the trenches as a fracture and you've got fractional in your business and you're connecting new business or new fractional with new opportunities and vice versa with businesses. So I absolutely love that. If someone's listening to this right now and they own a business and they're looking to scale and they're looking to grow, I mean, hello, who isn't? What are some final thoughts you can leave them with when it comes to placing fractional employees?

Yeah, I would say the number one thing a business needs to do other than go to hirefractionalcom would be to yeah, let's go. Come on, people, I would say honestly, really take a look, and I have an assessment that will help you understand which fractional you need. Every business says, hey, I want to grow, but you really need to understand where the gaps are in your business. Maybe it is leads, and maybe you do need marketing, maybe it's operations, maybe you need someone to actually manage the process, and so the number one thing I would say other than come to the site, would be to really take a deep dive and really understand what the core issue that you're faced with, so that you can hire the right fractional.

Love it. So it's been great to meet you, great to chat with you and learn about what you're doing. Wishing nothing but ongoing success. I'm definitely going to check out hirefractionalcom. If you're listening to this, you should too. We're going to drop a link in the show notes. That's the description of this podcast episode, in case you're wondering what the world of show note is. Thanks again for your time, sue, and keep rocking and rolling and bringing those fractional opportunities to the world of business.

Awesome. Thanks so much, Sebastian. It's been great being here.

You got it. Until next time, friends. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode of the Beyond the Story podcast. Be sure to appreciate it. If you haven't done so already, make sure you're subscribed to the show. This way, you'll get updates as new episodes become available. If you feel so inclined, please leave us a review. Be sure to appreciate it. Coming off from the podcast launchlabcom studios, we'll talk to you next time.