How to avoid the employee trap as a fractional CXO, as a fractional leader.
So as you know, I've, I'm very much in the world of fractional marketing officers,
chief marketing officers, as well as.
There's a very.
Substantial trend towards other forms of fractional leadership.
Some.
Noticing, you know, CSOC chief security officers.
I'm noticing.
Fractional chief information.
Officer's fractional tooth.
Financial officers.
And all those have their own little kind of nuances and nitty
gritty nitty gritty pieces.
And obviously my expertise is in the marketing area, but I want to kind
of focus on how do you avoid becoming basically an employee if you're
positioning yourself as a fractional leader, as a fractional CXO of some kind.
So that's what I'm going to get into today.
And this kind of came as a question from member a Darren and the group.
He has that he's going from being a CMO full-time to doing this
as a fractional CMO service.
And he's kind of wondering, well, how do you get, how do you avoid getting
pulled into the employee kind of trap?
How do you set boundaries so that you don't become basically a.
A part-time set of hands and you know, that's the thing is when you.
When you're not super clear on the scope of what you will do or not.
Uh, it's really easy to get sucked into being a pair of hands and ultimately
to kind of become an employee.
So there's a bunch of tips that I'm going to give you today, and we're
going to kind of break those down.
There's there's five big ones in particular with a lot of
kind of sub pieces to us.
So let's, let's jump into how do you avoid getting sucked
into being an employee, but.
You know, creating healthy boundaries, et cetera.
So the first and most important thing with all of this is setting
clear expectations during the sales conversation that you're not an employee.
It's really easy to get excited when you're charging five to $10,000
per month, or even some people may be theoretically more than that.
And you're saying, look.
Uh, I can do all this for you, you know, you should hire me.
And then it's really easy to get excited and to kind of sell yourself and then not
kind of slow the conversation down and.
Get clear about what you're going to do and what you're not going to do.
So really just kind of, first of all, setting an expectation
that you're not an employee.
And what are, what are the differences between an employee and a, and
a, uh, an, uh, an a full-time.
Uh,
Contract.
CMO.
There are many.
So any, any kind of contract relationships.
You use your own equipment, you do work that you believe is
necessary to get a business results.
So the client can just say, here's all the tasks I want you to do.
Go do it.
It, uh, that.
Technically puts you into an employee relationship, which, you
know, whoever your local, uh, tax.
You know, agency is not going to love because that's an employee
relationship that they're just paying you as a contractor.
Uh, you get to work the hours you want, you get to work
where you want, how you want.
Uh, you can say things like you're available for scheduled calls.
You'll respond within X hours.
But it's not like they can make you show up at the office nine to
five every single day, because then effectively you become an employee.
So there are some legal specifics that make an employee and employee in
a, in a contractor or a contractor.
So it's really just important about understanding what the legal
ramifications are, but then also just kind of setting, resetting the
expectation that you're a consultant at the end of the day, they are very.
Senior and experienced and intelligent consultant.
And you're not just a set of hands.
And so kind of setting that up front.
So kind of being like, look, if you want me as a part-time employee,
I'm not that here's what I will do.
And here's what I won't do.
And, uh, so really getting really super clear on setting those expectations about
who you are and who you're not because yes, a fractional CMO positioning is good
to kind of get people to be like, okay.
So you're like hiring a.
Uh, part-time.
Uh, marketing leader.
Great.
But you also then want to push back and be like, okay.
But that just so you know that it doesn't mean you just get a, part-time
set up hands from a marketing leader.
Um, To do whatever you want.
It's really about getting a business objective accomplished.
And I do that the way that I know how, and we'll get into that in the next part.
So first is just setting those expectations clearly
and almost pushing back.
And this is the heart of this is your first client or two pushing back a
little bit and saying, okay, before we get into this, let's just make sure
we're, we're clear on what that is.
And that kind of puts us into step number two, or idea number two, which
is to create a clear scope of work.
And you did mention in the community that you have a clear scope and
yet the client continues to ask for more and that's kind of normal.
It kind of sounds as though.
There might be.
Going back to the first idea.
There might be few expectations that are a little bit kind of
misaligned, and you have to decide how you're gonna manage those.
And it's not always easy.
So it's really critical upfront during the sales process, which is too late
for you in this particular case, but we're learning for the future.
To really say, Hey, this is what it is, and this is what it's not.
And to put that into your scope of work and just to kind of remind them, but
the differences between an employee and a contractor from the beginning.
So what kind of scope items would you put in a fractional CXO style?
Uh, engagement.
And so here's some of the things that I think about when I do my CMO stuff.
First of all, I don't ever do fractional CMO work.
As a done for you kind of managed service.
I call it managed advisory services as well.
I don't do that for longer than three months now because it completely
derails my business and it sucks up every available minute that I have.
Uh, when I had two of these clients, when I first got started, they took up,
I don't know, 80% of my time or more.
And I had some lingering client work for my agency working.
Anyway, it can really just become a vacuum that sucks up all the extra time.
If you're not careful.
So you're going to experience this.
There's really no way around.
You just have to go through it and you have to be okay with
kind of pushing back and setting boundaries and then sort of being.
Making yourself unavailable.
If you need to.
Uh, so that you don't get overly.
Taxed at the end of the day, but because this is your first client and
your only client, I'd say just, uh, manage those expectations and just keep
going above and beyond for you for.
Until you get additional clients and then, and then be a little bit stricter.
Climbing, not like that, though, if you kind of pull back on your availability.
So just kind of reiterate that this is what you're doing, this
is what you're available for.
Uh, this is why you're not available for that kind of thing.
So what kind of things are in your scope of work?
Well, one.
For that level of.
Thing I charged 9,500 us per month for a maximum of three months.
Then I tried to downgrade them.
But I'll offer weekly deep dive calls and often a weekly
implementation call as well.
So sometimes they'll have a marketing manager already, so we'll do
kind of more of a strategic call.
How are things going?
Let's design the system.
Let's build out this project.
And then on the later call, let's call it.
You know, Monday we meet on strategy and Thursday we meet on implementation.
I'll say, go and try to do this thing.
And then let's reconvene on Thursday and I'll actually work through with this.
With you and write the copy of those emails and help you develop that
strategy and help you build that thing and kind of really just kind
of be there to do implementation.
What that does is it shows people that, okay, here's
where I'm giving you direction.
Here's where we're creating the plan, measuring things,
looking at things from a.
A broader perspective.
And this other call is where we're going to get in the weeds.
So sometimes the CEO.
Is involved in that same Monday call the strategy call, but
then we say, look, CEO, do.
I just don't don't even show up to the Thursday call.
I'm going to work on this with someone else on your team or one of the
other people on our outsource team.
So don't even worry about that unless we need you, we'll pull you in.
But that's where you're actually going to do implementation work.
And ideally you're not doing any implementation or much implementation
outside of that second call.
So I always try to contain implementation work to.
To calls because then it keeps everything kind of neat.
And I can organize it and structure time for it as a fractional CMO
though, that may not be completely.
Uh, possible for you.
There's going to be stuff you're going to need to do outside of calls, as
opposed to an advisor relationship where.
Really.
They're buying access to your brains.
So there is no deliverables outside of those calls.
So going back weekly, deep dive, weekly implementation calls that kind of
creates two anchor calls in your week.
And that should be enough to get a lot of things done.
That's number one, number two.
Uh, and you can obviously do it however you want.
You can do three calls.
We can unlimited calls, whatever you want.
Uh, all my services are unlimited by the way, but I try to structure anchor
calls so that everything kind of.
If there's need for extra calls, we'll fit it in there.
Otherwise everything gets plugged into those calls.
So what you will do versus what you'll not do, and that this is where you
get really clear and an FAQ section on your services page can really
help with this, or just a bulleted list of what qualifies, what doesn't.
So things you might do our proof of concept work.
So you might wireframe a piece of a website or kind of create
a pencil drawing or, um,
Outline a plan or whatever else.
Um, you'll do a budget.
For example, you'll help them hire people in you.
Uh, externally usually, but sometimes internally.
You'll manage projects.
You'll, you'll maybe do some light software configuration, but you're not
going to be the one to kind of Zapier integrate all the things in the world.
So it's kind of contained to light software configurations
and that sort of up to you.
Uh, to decide what that is all about.
But what you won't do potentially is create, publish, ready content.
Do you know, web like live website development, you may
not do real graphic designs.
And this is up to you.
If some people in the fractional CMO space do more of this, you just need to decide.
Am I going to produce.
Basically ready to roll, ready to publish content design development
stuff, because then where's the limit.
Then you have to sort of cap it.
What I like to see for fractional CMOs is, and this goes for the other.
You know, the other forums as well.
Uh, is it, you know, if you're saying a fractional chief, uh, uh, uh, technology
officer, I don't want you writing full-on code, maybe a proof of concept
code, maybe some, uh, scratch concept, maybe some sort of, uh, a plan for how
you're going to structure the code, whatever, but not like ready to ship code.
Then, then you're basically a set of hands and you're just
doing, you're just freelancing.
Uh, with a fancy title.
So I'd rather, you see, you do proof of concepts, initial configurations,
kind of strategic thinking, budgeting, planning, hiring, and management
of the stuff, but not execution.
So ideally there's lists with examples in that gets baked into your services and
your service pages and your agreements.
But ideally you're not shipping.
Ready to go stuff.
You'll still get pulled into.
Hey, can you just write this LinkedIn post?
Hey, can you just do this?
And that's where you say, look, let's get a freelance writer on retainer,
on call so we can send over these types of writing things to them.
I'll manage them, brief them, get them to feed, make sure that the quality is there.
And that allows me to stay leveraged and stay managing your work instead
of doing it and getting stuck in the weeds, because there's just not enough
time in the day to do all the things.
And lead all the things and then for you to have a life and have a
business and you'd have to charge, you're basically full-time employee.
Once you start getting into that work.
So that to me has to be a cutoff that has to be really clear in your FAQ is in
your service agreements, in your website.
Uh, as to what that is.
Another kind of lever or pieces of your scope to have to follow
is who has access to you or not.
So do suppliers outside suppliers have access to you?
Well, if you're managing them, yes, they're going to have access to you.
You're gonna have to manage them.
Do employees that are outside of the marketing environment have access to you.
Maybe, you know, but do you want.
You know, the salespeople coming to you and saying, Hey, we need this thing.
And do you want the front desk person and be like, Hey, can you print us this thing?
Can you design this thing?
I would say, no, I would try to limit it to one person in the
organization and the CEO or whoever.
The person hiring you has access to you.
Otherwise it's third party vendors.
You can do whatever.
So all work requests sort of from the client side.
Come through one person and the CEO, maybe.
Or just the CEO, depending on the size of the business.
Everything else.
Um, You know, nothing else comes through otherwise it's, it can
be just a mess when you have.
15 people in the organization.
Uh, messaging about, Hey, I need signage for the washrooms or.
I need this for something else.
Keno.
Can you design poster?
You're not there to receive tasks in orders from everyone.
One person can give that to you.
Make sure that's really super clear about who has access to
you in that, in that thing.
Other things might include.
Are you doing remote or in person?
I prefer not to work in person because by the time I drive
somewhere park, Go into an office.
Like that's already hours of my day taken up and my days are quite full already.
So, um, I always say everything is, is remote.
If you want me in person, we can, we can negotiate that I have a half day rate
of X or once a month or once a quarter I can come in and we can do a workshop.
That's up to you, what you want to do with that, but limit the in-person stuff.
If you can.
Uh, otherwise if you get pulled into two days a week, they're
going to basically be treating you like an employee two days a week.
If that's a bad precedent, you want to be not.
Looking like an employer, it would be treated like an employee.
And it's up to you to know how to kind of navigate that and to push back
once it's starting to get a little bit too much in the employee territory.
Another thing that isn't in the scope.
And this is a side note is I don't really typically attend.
Employee events.
So if there's like a, you know, The maybe pre COVID, there was more of
these kind of meat, you know, team.
Uh, bowling or food or whatever.
I don't really attend those because it positions you as an employee and
it's, it's really up to you and how you want to manage those relationships.
But I frankly, I just, I haven't, it hasn't come up since COVID and
I just wouldn't do it anymore.
And most of my clients are remote.
But I would just be very careful about getting too integrated.
As an employee, like person, because it really does change how they perceive
your expertise and, uh, and then what they're going to be wanting you to do.
And then they'll get offended when you're not acting like an employee.
Like everyone else.
You're a consultant.
You have to remain a little bit, a little bit distant in terms
of a professional distance.
And not be too employee looking.
What's next.
So will you use the company's employee, your company's email address?
Uh, I typically.
I have I won't anymore.
I'll typically set up like a marketing@yourbusiness.com and
that will be the marketing email and anything I have set up.
You know, software wise or anything gets.
You know, signed up with that particular account.
Uh, but I won't say take kevin@yourbusiness.com because
it just creates a mess.
And then, then it's another email to manage and then
it just too much confusion.
So that's how I manage that.
I really don't want myself to be integrated.
That deeply.
I want to be.
I want to make myself redundant whenever possible.
So that I can move into a different tier, which I'll talk about in a sec.
So these are the things that are in your scope.
You know, how will you organize things?
Will you store things on your servers or there's, what are you promising
in terms of, uh, in terms of where some of the files are going to be
I have that stuff in there.
Uh, explain, you know, if, if you feel like there needs to be a limit
to the number of hours you work great.
But remember this is an advisory business.
This is a managed advisory service.
It's not a part-time marketing manager work.
Otherwise it's execution now the what?
Then you have to set hours and price and really create
limits on days, weeks, hours.
Uh, or months, however you do it.
So that's how I would do it.
So, you know, one of the lenses I look at is if a CMO
wouldn't do it, neither do you.
So if you, if the CMO is not going to sweep the floors, neither are you.
If the CMO is not going to publish on social media, neither are you.
So that's kind of the lens I look for.
And I'm thinking like a corporate CMO.
So that's all number two is creating a clear scope.
We've talked about setting expectations, which is number one
during the sales conversation.
Number two is that clear scope and I gave you a bunch of different parameters and.
Kind of areas that I create limits around that really, really helps.
Number three is building your Rolodex.
And this is really where the difference between, um, the CMO
who gets out of the weeds and not is having a good set of people to
outsource and delegate the work to.
If you can't delegate the work, you're going to be doing the work.
So your job is to be able to find and hire the best people.
Great ways to do that are through word of mouth and through, you
know, asking friends and saying, who do you have a graphic designer?
Do you know this person, whatever that's going to be, how you're
going to find people the fastest.
I know.
A friend of mine, Jordan from Cognito.
He tells me that he, you know, on the down low we'll look up people
on LinkedIn from big agencies.
And see if they have anybody who's working in the field that he needs,
and he might be able to get them.
You know, if you're looking for a highly qualified person, look up the SEO at
your local big agency, and chances are, they're going to Moonlight do some
work on the side, and they're gonna be really high quality embedded as well
as a nice little way to get a part-time freelancer to do a great job for you.
If you need to.
With minimal searching and minimal, um, oversight, although always
manage on over, always oversee.
So, uh, and then other ways are like Upwork and these other platforms,
and there's probably many more.
It's a referrals platforms and doing some LinkedIn research, maybe poaching,
some part-timers from bigger agencies.
That's a good, good way to do it.
But you need this Rolodex and you want to put them in direct
relationship with your client.
They, the client pays them.
You don't pay them.
You don't mark up their time.
You don't.
You know, middleman, anything, you just manage the projects.
So it's up to them to negotiate with the client, talk to the client, you'll do
the negotiating for them, but ultimately the client signs a deal with them.
Uh, you want to make yourself completely redundant again, that
that helps you to kind of remain.
Uh, at a level that, uh, doesn't, I mean, people are, people want to
integrate themselves so much, but then it becomes really messy and
complex part of selling this stuff is.
Is basically making yourself neutral and a step removed and unbiased and
impartial to how work gets implemented.
And the only way you can do that is.
If you're not making money on the implementation in my, in my opinion.
I talk about that a lot in other podcasts.
Um, why you should separate strategy and execution anyway.
So that's number three is build your Rolodex.
Number four is set an upper limit on your time if needed.
So if you find yourself getting in the weeds,
It's really a matter of saying, okay, um, I need to set limits.
So maybe I'll make myself available all day, Monday and all day Thursday.
And so everything we need to do gets done on that.
And I'll be available to answer questions or field.
An occasional call between that.
Otherwise I'll dedicate those two days to working on your business.
That's one way to do it.
It's not ideal.
I haven't had to do that, but.
Rather than saying I'll do 20 hours or 15 hours.
That's a, it's not great.
Or you say, I'll give you the mornings of this, this, and this day.
For implementation and then whatever we can get done in that time is great.
And that's up to you on how you want to design that.
So that's the setting an upper limit on time.
So if you find yourself, but that that's usually a symptom that you're
getting too much into execution managing shouldn't be that much of a full-time job.
You should be able to manage a lot of work.
But, you know, it's easy to get sucked in and because this
is your one and only client.
You're probably going to do more execution work than you, then
you like, that's just realistic because you want to do a good job.
You don't want to lose her only clients.
Just kind of the way it is.
So, uh, first get busy and then get a little pickier under
scope I'd rather over deliver.
And then.
And then, uh, it keeps the client versus the other way around.
As long as you're just not getting taken advantage of obviously.
Number five.
And this is the last idea is plan the down, sell to advisory work.
So I talk about this early and often with clients, I'll say,
Hey, yes, I'll do this for you.
Now, my limit is.
Is three months on this.
Uh, Zemo plan and then I won't do it anymore.
I just, I say maximum three months in the service, and then I go to advisory work.
And I say the best thing you can do is eventually hire someone to
do this in house and I'll move to an advisory capacity and help
ensure the smooth transition.
Provide senior leadership, but ideally you have a $70,000 marketing coordinator
whom I can mentor and train and get developed on the systems and the
measurement and the performance tracking and, and, and the organizational
structures, all the stuff that I talk about and, uh, have templates for.
You'll get them.
They get them all set up in that.
And if you're interested in what those templates are, just go to mind.
kevin.me/o S and I have a bunch of templates where I share KPI sheets.
Uh, methodologies and like, how do I organize things with my clients
and, uh, personas and all kinds of document templates you can use
and start running with right away.
Um, if you need that stuff and that goes for anyone listening to this as well.
So you just want to plan that advisory work.
As part of your natural transition out the door and that advisory work is going to
be you basically all the same stuff minus.
Any execution and minus any management.
So now when someone comes, they're doing proof of concepts,
you're only on calls with them.
Guiding those proof of concepts and setting the direction,
bringing in examples.
And a swipe file.
And you know, here are ways that I want to do things, or if you do any deliverables
that becomes a template that you can create and repeat over and over again.
And that's the natural transition out of using your hands is how
do I create more templates?
And how do I keep a list of ideal examples of the things that I'd like to accomplish?
This works really well if you're in a niche, because then all of your examples
are really relevant to that niche.
But, um, again, You're going to probably take on whatever clients you
can at the beginning, but your goal is to create as many templates and
resources and assets that you can use to then potentially sell it as a course
or products or memberships or other leveraged form of selling your expertise.
That's downstream from where you are refers to got to do the work you got
to create occasional deliverables.
Just think if I'm creating a deliverable, how do I turn this into a template
or a repeatable process, which will make my feature that much easier.
So just to recap one we're setting expectations during the sales
conversations that you're not an employee and kind of really just clarifying what
an employee is versus a contractor.
Just, just so that they're aware, because they may be used to hiring
mostly employees and therefore not super sure on what the boundaries need to be.
Number two is creating clear scope.
And we talked about all those things that go into that.
There's probably many more, but you learn these things as you go.
So just do your best with that in the beginning.
Put it in into an agreement and anytime a client breaches that sort
of boundary, make sure it's clear.
In the future on your services page.
Uh, just so you don't make that mistake.
Again, in the future.
That's how you make your services better and more effective.
Number three is build a roll at X higher, higher out everything.
You can try not to be doing too much yourself.
Get someone in every category, a writer, designer, developer.
How did these people around?
So you can delegate tasks and projects as they come up.
And find people at different price points that really helps as well.
Uh, to, to basically net out your costs and say, well, you know, I'm
good, I'm good at finding people who are a little less expensive than
your average agency and therefore it kind of, uh, and that's up to a good.
Total price that the client ends up paying overall.
So find people expensive and less expensive and then bring different people
in as needed for different projects.
Number four is build an upper limit on your time if needed.
Think about number of days per week and number of calls.
You know, availability, that kind of thing.
Uh, but that allows you to throttle kind of the work that you do.
I prefer unlimited access to me, but, um, it kind of depends on how much
you're getting sucked into the weeds.
Uh, and number five is planted down, sell to adviser, works to
keep telling the client look.
The ideal situation is someone takes this over.
Whether they're a full-time or part-time coordinator, some clients will bring in
someone from an administrative role and they'll become kind of like a, there'll
be a dual role, maybe sales and marketing.
Uh, and you can hand over a lot of project management and task
management and, and proof of concepts and execution work to them.
So that can work really well as well.
But basically the plan is to get them into other, an employee full-time or
a part-time employee, and you would move into an advisory capacity and
that's the most leveraged form of.
Of intervention that there is other than selling products.
So I hope this helps.
I hope, you know, the first few engagements, as I mentioned, they're not
going to be perfect, but they do get more and more labs are leveraged over time.
Focus on delivering great value.
First and foremost, prove that value.
Get your reporting all set up again.
I've got a spreadsheet in that, in the operating system at Kevin AMI slash.
Yes.
Prove the ROI of your work prove the performance, your work.
Create visibility.
Um, and, uh, just do your best and you know, all these things
will get better with time.
I know it's, it's a lot in the beginning and, uh, As you get that second client
then focus on mostly selling advisory services after that that's going to
help you as well hope this helps my friend thank you for the question
and uh, i look forward to chatting with you in the community bye for now