Fractional
Fractional
Charleh Knighton: Inputs and outputs, pacing yourself as a fractional
Charleh Knighton, a fractional CMO, joins as a guest this week to talk about her journey as a fractional.
Some fantastic topics discussed:
- Marketing yourself as a fractional
- Pacing yourself as a fractional to avoid burnout
- Working as a fractional CMO and how to use systems to support her work
Links:
- https://kub-digital.io
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlehdickinson
- Charleh w Friends Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwdTYWgjqjoBmUhQ4Db7xgYlqdXz_d2Tw
Books referenced:
- https://www.amazon.com/Traction-Get-Grip-Your-Business/dp/1936661837
- https://www.amazon.com/infinite-game-simon-sinek/dp/073521350x
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Edited by Caleb Johnson @ embrin.com
Hello and welcome to episode 52 of the Fractional Podcast. I'm your host today. Joshua is out playing hooky at the dentist office. So we don't envy him. He's not having any fun, but I'm here with Charlie and Joshua's missing out. I'm excited to introduce the this audience to Charlie Knighton. Charlie's a fractional CMO at KUB Digital and founder and CMO at Vision. And she's here to share with us all the inside scoop on being a fractional CMO, first CMO guest that we've had on the Fractional Podcast Show. So excited to learn from you, Charlie. Happy to have you here. Tell us a little bit about the work that you're doing now and how you found your way into this fractional space. We Can't wait to meet you.
SPEAKER_00:Hello, thank you so much for having me. And what a privilege to be the first CMO. I'm quite honored. Yeah, let's deep dive in. So the origin story. So slightly different route compared to the traditional. I've always been self-employed. There's something about my brain where as soon as I could get out of schooling, I was straight into just doing my own thing. And it comes from KUB. is the brand name that I've always sat under. It's actually the family business. So my dad is a business coach and marketing strategist. And the original vision was to grow an agency. Now, this was back in 2015. So some time ago now, and the landscape looked very, very different. My skills also very, very different. And along that journey, I've started to work with small businesses and start to identify what are the challenges that they are trying to overcome in order to continue to grow and continue to scale and that's also whilst technology is completely changing so I think what 2015 Instagram has just come out you know if we want to contextualize this timeline for people you know Instagram's if Instagram was very much in its infancy and Facebook was only what five years old seven years old at this stage to the to the math public so social media as a as a channel for marketeers was still very very fresh and i was on the sort of budding end of that and for me then because i was then an owner of an agency i was very much working with always with the directors and the ceos and talk listening to their problems and it was only till actually one day one of my clients called me their fractional cmo And I was like, light bulb moment, you know, when it's your favorite client doing all of your favorite work. And I'll be sometimes doing it's your favorite work and it's your best work. You know, they're calling you a fractional CMO. I was like, OK, there's there's something something about this that I need to investigate. And that was three years, three years ago. Now, and in that time, I've completely pivoted what the vision is, what the direction is, and actually how I better serve my clients to reaching their goals.
SPEAKER_01:So okay, so hard in on the CMO after the fractional CMO after hearing the client say that about three years ago, which is really before fractional became a mainstream or well known term. It's pretty new. That's really interesting. So There are so many of our listeners, so many people that are coming into this fractional space within the last year, year and a half, and now continuing the surge coming in. What is something that you wish you could grab a new fractional by the short collar and say, you have to do this, you have to market yourself? What is something that's just really critical for us new fractionals?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, well, let's go into the big fear. Let's start there. When Let's say you've come through a route where you've been climbing a corporate ladder or you've been climbing a career ladder and you're now in a situation where you're taking a big plunge into the entrepreneurial self-employment landscape. You're effectively going from a world of I need to be able to focus on my job and do my job the best I can be to now a new landscape of I need to focus on my job plus all of this other stuff that comes with effectively running a business and you now need to put on a business mindset which will be painful it will be a learning curve but you will be better more better off better off for having done that journey in that process and so when we're saying like how do if we take it back to the question of do you know how do you go about promoting yourself and how important it is to keep promoting yourself if you want to stay away from the fear of losing a client or trying to gain a new client. You've got to keep putting yourself out there to go on to the next project. Let me just sort of clarify that as well. If you know you've got a nice lifestyle of four clients that are ticking over and you're doing your best work, that's great. But at some point, it's going to come to an end and it's going to turn over because statistically, the the chief marketing officer has the highest turnover of position compared to anybody else in the C-suite because the CMO has one of the hardest jobs because, like I said, technology changes, data changes. It seems to be like this mythical art to a lot of other CMOs because they don't know what's happening all the time. So you do get a lot more pressure that comes with that job and that role to hit KPIs. So I do say you've got to think of yourself as a business owner even though it's you as a person that's doing the work. Does that make sense? So for example, my setup, yes, I do market myself as me, as me doing the work, but there is four people behind me making sure that the project management boards run, the finances are done, my own marketing is done, the... Maybe some customer support is being done. So I am running it effectively as a business with its own business model. And then I've still got vendors on top of that doing some extra bookkeeping or all the stuff that comes with running a business.
SPEAKER_01:This is such a great point to bring up because I think so many people, when they think about fractional or they think about the word independent... they think alone, solopreneur, right? And maybe it's even a badge of honor that I did this by myself. And like, you say there's four people on your team. Are those full-time employees? Are they part-time employees? Are they contractors? Like, how do you, if you don't mind sharing, right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. There's the four full-time. And I actually scaled down to go to this business model through the reasons of, I had a team of a bit larger, a larger team of full-time employees. Scaled down to just the four employees. Because they were all very complementary of my weaknesses. I had to be really brutally honest of like, where are my strengths and where are my weaknesses? So they could fill those gaps so that I could delegate and we could be better as a collective. And then we've got the suppliers and vendors who are more of a contractual basis. So that it allows me to flex up and flex down with the market and what's happening with different businesses. you know different things that are happening you know this comes up every marketer should know what the SWOT analysis is
SPEAKER_01:yeah so this is oh this is great so I was just thinking as you're talking like so the person who's relatively new they're they're just trying to get their their funnel going they're trying to get revenue going they have a look they have a little bit you mentioned be brutally honest with yourself about the things that you're not great at right like no one should expect to be good at everything i think that's one of the fallacies that we buy into in this factual solopreneur thing that you should be able to do it all like well maybe you can do it all but you won't do it all well at least
SPEAKER_00:and just add into that and whilst you're going to be honest to yourself when you're looking at your business and and how it can run smoothly but also one of the things i've learned is being honest to your client as well it is a And I say it's a learned thing for me because that is such a hard thing to even admit to go, hey, this is a weak spot in this massive subject that's marketing. You know, I would need to bring in somebody else into the team to fulfill your needs, to fulfill your challenges in order to make this better. And if... And if I can only go by my experience, it's proven to be more beneficial for me just to be honest and to say, look, these are the parameters of my skills. I can't solve it, but I can make your life easier by bringing somebody else in and doing it that way. And
SPEAKER_01:that can be scary because you feel like if you don't always present yourself as the expert at everything, then there's the risk that this customer is going to go to someone else who is good at it. But, you know, I had a, I had one scenario where a customer came to me and they wanted a workshop on mission, vision, and values. This was earlier on. And I hadn't run one of those on my own, you know, for myself, for a customer before. And, but I really felt like it aligned with my strengths. And so it was a nonprofit. They didn't have a lot of budget and I'd been working with them on, you know, operational stuff and the, the Chairman of the board asked me, would you do this for us? And I, and I had, and I was like, sure. You know, I'm excited about this. He's have you done this before? And I said, no, I've not done this before, but I'm confident that this is in line with my. strengths but I was scared I was scared to say that I didn't want to say I was hoping he wouldn't ask me right because I knew I could do the work well but I was hoping he wouldn't ask me and when I had to say no I've not done this before but this is what I expect he didn't he didn't seem to skip a beat and and later on I found out he actually wrote a testimonial for me and he said one thing I appreciate is he'll be honest about what he can and can't do and or has or hasn't done. I thought, oh, it's good to see that come full circle. But I do think customers will appreciate that because if you set those expectations that are unrealistic for yourself and then you under deliver, you've hurt yourself more than if you were just honest.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, exactly. And if there's anything, you know, a tidbit to help people feel more confident, if you're put into this position, I always almost have to remind myself that The value that I'm giving the client and the value is, is I'm here to make his life easier and I'm here to deliver the results at the end of the month. So I'm making his life easier because I'm going to manage this person on his behalf and tell him the updates. So to be fair, it doesn't affect his day to day, what he's operating on in his life. job role as the founder and CEO. And because I brought this person who is better than me into it, my results are going to get better. So at the end of the day, it's a win-win scenario for everybody, but it's just a terrifying process to get there.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Part of the value as a fractional, as a vendor is your network too, right? That you know someone who's really great at this thing that you're not like in the best position to do. And so you save your customers the time and headache of vetting and finding and sourcing all of that. And you bring that person in. I like that.
SPEAKER_00:I like that you've gone full circle there. We started the conversation of like, you know, going about promoting ourselves as, you know, a business identity, you know, rather than individual. But that was the other thing is the networking because you start promoting yourself and you start connecting in with the key people as well. You end up building this network of of resources that just comes in to say that just helps your client at the end of the day. And it makes everybody look amazing. So I think that's a compound effect.
SPEAKER_01:Totally. I like that too. Yeah. You've got this roster of amazing leaders, business leaders across all areas of the business should be able to help anybody in some way, even if it's not you delivering the service. Okay. I'm, I had a thought while you were talking to, so for, for, for those people, And I'll include myself in this category, right? Who are relatively early in their fractional journey. They're getting traction. What do you think about fractionals for fractionals, right? Like if it's me and my, like I need help with marketing or I need help with finance, but I'm not going to hire a full-time person in the position I'm in yet. Is that an obvious thing that's right under our noses that as fractionals, we could also engage with other fractionals?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, absolutely. I've got a advert out for a fractional because I need some help. Yeah, this is because if we think about it, we're fulfilling a gap in the market where people don't need somebody. They need somebody who's high skilled, but they don't need them full time. And again, if we then look at our business as an individual fractional, we sit into that camp. Because we need some high level skill because the level that we operate, very much we're in that C-suite strategic end. So we need other people around us as part of our leadership team, but we don't need them full time because really, we're not 10 plus million people. you know, business as a one identity was still in that lower end small business realm, so to speak.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:So I am a big, big fan of it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And of course, the more delivery work that you can do, the more revenue you generate and offloading the non-delivery stuff to a teammate makes all the sense in the world.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. Absolutely. I can imagine there'll be some partnerships that would work closer than others. I can, like, for example... The two roles that I work a lot with is always the CTO and always the COO. You know, those two, because just the nature of where the CMO sits. Sometimes if there's a revenue, CRO, in this fractional world, I've learned all of the different C phrases now.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:But it's just a representation of how the C-suite level should be working together. And the good model, if anybody wants to go into it and look more, is traction, Gino Wickman, and the organizational chart, you know, If, for example, if I was, I am a fractional book, if I didn't know about traction years ago, that would be absolutely the one book I'd go and start reading no matter what. C-suite fractional person you are, because it's the book that the CEO is going to be reading on how he manages his leadership team. And if I and you, we are a part of that senior leadership team, I've got to understand how I sit and who should I be talking to and who I should be liaising to.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I'll give a plug for Gina Wickman's Traction book as well. I've worked with a the entrepreneur operating system. And it shows, it really shows. I've worked with a number of customers who are a bit vague on their mission and their values and their org structure. And that also shows in a different kind of way. So yeah, the EOS is a really great resource.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. I know it is a business book, but I love that you brought up, I was saying about the vision and the mission. As a marketeer, If I have no idea what the vision of the mission is, I have no idea what my parameters are around my messaging or positioning or adverts or copy, you know, absolutely anything that I'm creating. So that's always going to have that direction.
SPEAKER_01:And that trickles down to me and the people on the HR side, right? I don't know what I'm helping people be excited about. I don't know what I'm using for my recruitment marketing, you know, the employer branding without that. And I've been absolutely shocked. at businesses that I've consulted with where I've asked, you know, could you tell me off the top of your head, you know, what are the core values here? What is the mission statement here? And senior leaders, they don't even know.
SPEAKER_00:It's wild. To me, it's crazy. It's like, where are you steering the boat? You know, you're the captain here. Like, where are you taking everybody?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's foundational, but I don't know. Sometimes it just fades, I guess.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I can see it. If a business has gone from 1 million to 100 million and that leadership role has been passed on to generation, like through people, and it's just not been communicated, you just might end up in a position where, okay, this is what we do as a business. This is how we operate. And we kind of forget that there was an original mission at the start to, I don't know, usually most people want to take over the world. So what was the revolution mission at the start?
SPEAKER_01:Right. No, they just sell widgets, but it's making good money. They just keep selling widgets. Yeah,
SPEAKER_00:exactly.
SPEAKER_01:Totally. All right. I'm thinking about also this idea of how do you be in it for the long run as an independent? Because I've experienced the highs and the lows and the roller coaster and the stress. And like, I think I've aged more than two years in the last two years. Joshua has said here about he... losing a bunch of weight, getting sick multiple times a month. How do you get into a pace where I think I can do this for, I mean, you said you started the fractional thing like three plus years ago, but you've been independent for quite some time. So are
SPEAKER_00:there any trade secrets? 13 years of that we're basically being self-employed to the point now I do sit in the camp of I'm basically unemployable, like really good luck, you know, giving me a proper job. I do, I think that is a great question because one of the things I love to talk about is the infinite game of business and really, because that's what every business is. There is, it's infinite. There isn't no, there is no end. And then us as humans, Really, realistically, we only have 4,000 weeks in our lifetime. So we are a bit more finite in how much we can play with. So every second does count when it comes to running a business. So when you get back to the original question, though, because business and particularly marketing can feel like this never-ending thing, because as soon as you get to a goalpost of hitting a KPI... the goalpost moves. It moves on to the next one. And you can get stuck in this hamster wheel of just feeling rubbish, really. Just feeling not great. Because you're not attaining your goals. You feel like you're working all the time. And I have boiled things down to how you can weight the infinite game into your favor. So what I mean by that is there is a few things that I think are like the top of my list. So number one is health. And it sounds really stupid, but at the end of the day, as a fractional, we are the business. And if we're sick, if we're not around, really there isn't, There isn't a business yet because us as identities aren't big enough than ourselves at this moment in time. So health becomes priority number one. And that means eating vegetables, getting eight to nine hours of sleep a day, exercising. And in the daily routine, that has to come first. For example, I have a nutrition coach. I train in CrossFit. I sleep about nine hours a day and that is legit.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, no sleep culture.
SPEAKER_00:None of this, no sleep culture. Absolutely. Because I'm here for, I'm here for the next 60 years. And if I run off four hours of sleep and if I'm highly caffeinated, I drink lots of alcohol to cope with emotions to, if I didn't do any exercise and I put on weight and I you know, basically it's an input out thing. So if I inputted all of that rubbish, I'm going to get rubbish out. Whereas I input lots of vegetables, water, lots of quality sleep, lots of human interaction time, you know, with my quality time with my husband, that's a really positive input that I could just be pouring into work, for example. So then now you only have eight to nine hours a day to do work. So every second of that absolutely has to count. So if you frame it like that You've got to think smart. Okay, how do I prioritize and organize all of my daily tasks to fit in with my goal? So does that look like 20% has to go working, running on the business? Is the other 80% working on the end of the business? And what does that balance then look like to solving things? This is very theoretical and hypothetical. And in practice, it's never 100%, but we have to at least put some some things into attain. Yeah, have a goal. Into our habits, yeah. Well, I say, I kind of stopped using goals a little bit. I'll explain why. So there's got to be a vision. There's got to be a direction. But the concentration of effort is less about thinking about the goal, but thinking about the systems. So the stuff I'm talking about is the little habits that we do every single day that are all geared up and tailored to where I want to go. So health is a really easy one to think about because you can't just turn up to the gym. You have to turn up to the gym every day. You can't just not drink water. You have to drink water every day. And it's the same with your business. You can't not promote yourself. You have to promote yourself a little bit every day, even if it's just 10 minutes or we're doing it now. It's just taking about half an hour of our day. We've allocated that time to do that one facility and it's almost like a checklist. And you find then that level of consistency to survive one more day. And that one more day turns into one week. And that one week turns into 52. And next minute, you know, it's 13 years down the line. And like, wow, I'm still here. You know? And I think that's a big, large contributor to it. Because you will get the ups and you will get the downs and you will get the uncertainty. And it's the people who can ride out the uncertainty and And the ones that can be mitigating as many of the foreseeable risks that will come across your way, you'll always survive. And that's why this is kind of nice, goes full circle, is you've always got to be promoting yourself. You've always got to be generating leads because it's leads that are the lifeblood of survival for playing the infinite game.
SPEAKER_01:That was a lot. That was a lot in there.
SPEAKER_00:That was a lot. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:That was
SPEAKER_00:great.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Wow. You said so many things that I was just like, yes. Oh, you were saying the ones that survive, right? And I was, I heard this the other day that there are no failed businesses, just ones that ran out of time. Yeah. Right. So it's, if you can keep going, right. And sometimes like there are external factors that you can't necessarily control sometimes that impact those things. But like if you run out of financial runway, your time is up.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yeah. A good example of that story is I had a food business before I went into full-time marketing. I had a food business that was a paleo brownie around 2015. Then Brexit got announced. So my cost of materials went from ATP, so kind of what,$1, to I think they're about$2.50 now. I was like, I can't keep... So I had to make a very fast decision of, do I go and get an investor to front load the economies of scale that's going to be able to give me the scalability to take that cost down? Or do I get out now and I pivot into something new because I have this external factor coming in? At the time, I absolutely felt like a failure. Like I had been running this business like since, like I said, 16, 17. It was my baby that, and I was its top customer. I basically built a business to facilitate me for my needs that I was like solving for myself. And so it felt really personal, that one, when I had to make that decision to close it down and I felt like a failure. And now looking back, I'm just like, actually, if I hadn't have made such a quick decision to pivot, Like I have no idea where I'd be now because the quick pivot into basically starting a marketing agency and setting up that way, I basically secured my income again. Well, I secured my income before I closed down the business basically.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:And I just moved over.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And so had you not seen like the need to do that, right? You might've burned through a lot of reserves, a lot of capital, and then it had a much harder goal of it, like getting started in something new.
SPEAKER_00:I probably would have had a great full-time job. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Well, we think we know how that would have gone.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Not well.
SPEAKER_01:I'm sure you would have done great, but you probably would have hated it. No, that's, yeah. No, I think there's really something to being able to hold on through different seasons. Because I've felt the seasons of, hey, this is going swimmingly. Like, I think I could keep this up to seasons of like, Oh boy, I hope this changes soon because I don't know how much longer I can do this, but I do kind of hang on to the thought that if I keep learning and I keep adjusting every time I go through a season, sooner or later, those seasons won't be as extreme and I'll find a much more sustainable, happier pace. But I do think that first couple of years for so many people who go independent is, you need a seatbelt.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, oh yeah, yeah. I absolutely, if there's any message to be like, if you're in your first couple of years and it feels rough, like good job, you're doing it correctly. Like you're exactly on the right train. This is exactly how it should feel. And if you can just sit in that ruby crappy feeling, great job. You're doing great. And you're just like, I like, but one thing I do like what you just said there was as you're going through the different seasons, you just kept on tweaking and kept on changing and kept on adjusting, you know, and that is, I'd say that's the big thing that's always propelled me. Every time it's been the, let's call it the winter season where, you know, everything is a bit doom and gloom. There is that cliche that, You do learn the quickest because you work the hard. My natural instincts now is if it's a bit wintry, I'm digging my heels in, I'm working harder and pushing, going slightly unbalanced because I'm trying to understand what is the lesson that I'm learning that I need to change because the feedback I'm getting back is not what the feedback I want. So something needs to change in order to get the feedback I do want.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Okay. You just said something there too, that I thought was really key. You, so you made a, such a great case for balance earlier, but even there you admitted in the winter season, you might tip out of balance for the sake of, of having the next season actually happen and that being a better season. And so, yeah, I think to everyone who's listening, who's like, Hey, I'm in winter right now and it feels terrible is it's a season and, and give yourself a break for feeling out of balance and, that this will pass and the next season will be better and and it's okay
SPEAKER_00:yeah absolutely absolutely and so when when it does get to those winter seasons where you do have to put those extra extra hours in you always have to put i always sometimes put like a bit of a marker on my calendar to do a bit of a check if i know i've been running for too long But then I found the things that helped me get through those seasons is again, is health. Actually, I'd go full circle. And making sure that if I'm going to talk about like it as a system, those systems and those habits are absolutely drilled down to a T. And again, you don't need to be alone on trying to do them yourself. So it became infinitely a lot easier when I had a nutrition coach. who every week just kind of helps me making sure that I'm eating the right foods that I need to be eating and drinking. And I have allergies and immune system stuff on top, so he's always helping keeping my allergies in check. And then also my husband who I will be, I sit in the camp where I'll forget to eat or I will forget to do the food shop. What he's fantastic of is one, reminding me to eat and two, doing the food shop. So I like that we keep going back in full circle that you don't have to think about these things as one person that you're, because you're not alone. You're actually better if you kind of do it as a collective and leaning into each other's strengths.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, I love that. That's great. Yeah, you're... You need a team, even if it's not a team of employees, you need people around you that are gonna, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Business became, I'd say business infinitely became a lot easier when I've had good partners around me, for sure. And that's, I know you say partners in, as in close friends, as in relationships, you know, it didn't have to be romantic or anything like that. It just had to be that, you know, there's really good friends who will weather the storms with you. You know, they're the ones that really stay around.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So in contrast to your newly wedded self, I'm looking at 19 years this fall. And there are times where I'll walk in. So my office is attached to my garage, detached from my house. So I'll come home from work. I'll come back into the house and my wife will take a look at me and be like, I think you need to go for a walk. And I think I'll, you know, there's many times where I'm like, you know what, you're right. I'm really stressed and I didn't even like recognize it. You know, she sees it in me and says, you know, why don't you go take a walk? Why don't you take 20 minutes and go outside, you know? And then, you know, it's not that I come in angry, but she can just see it on my face, right? So...
SPEAKER_00:She knows. She's a smart cookie. I like it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Tell me a little bit about... When you're onboarding with a new customer, do you have... I was looking at your LinkedIn, and if you're an aspiring CMO and you're listening to this, go to Charlie's LinkedIn and look at her about summary, and you'll see that she has this productized... version of her service offering on there and i thought it was really smart yeah how long did it take you to get from i'm offering i'm offering marketing services to this is my really scalpel precise offering and how do you yeah how do you like roll that out to a customer
SPEAKER_00:good question because i don't think i'll ever feel like i've got like that perfect system product down Because in my brain, I'm thinking like, there's always room to make it better. The starting place for me was I spent a considerable amount of time putting SOPs and QMSs into my agency. And at the time I felt it was, I found it frustrating because I was having to spend employees time trying to document every single process. But actually what then it gave me was information Every single template, every single tool, every single kind of anything a business would need to grow their marketing dream team and follow the correct procedures to get the results that they wanted. And that was, I think, the light bulb moment, you know, was actually I spent four years, four years collecting all of these templates and just me putting it all into one place. I was like, right, that's my starting point. to how do I, I wanted to answer the question, how do I make it so, so easy and frictionless that when my customers, new customers come on board, they just, they just feel so confident that I've got everything handled and everything, I know exactly where I'm taking them and what order I'm taking them in and things. So then that was, I put that all into one board that they can get access to. And in it, I believe this is a bit more of a CEO's job. CEOs aren't
SPEAKER_01:always doing all their job, so.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So I wanted to, if I tried to put myself in their shoes in, okay, what is every... What's every step and stage that they're going to go through in the first 90 days or the first 30 days? Because we know as marketeers and salespeople that if you nail the first 30 days of the experience with the client, they will stay for you for like one year, two years, three years, because you set such a great precedence at the start that their perception of you is that you're amazing. And then if you do make mistakes, because we're human. They're more forgiving because they're just like, don't worry, it's a mistake. So I think to get into that kind of standardized and productized approach, that would be the starting points is in that first 30 days, how can I be getting the best results for them? How can I make it so easy and so quick? that it just feels like a really great experience. And you see, I'm saying all these feeling words because really the first 30 days is very much a feelings word.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, no, I'm like itching to comment on this 30 days piece because it's so hard to get anything done in 30 days. You know, you're coming into an organization, you're meeting the people, you're trying to figure everything out and And then decide even what you would do in that first 30 days. So I like what you're saying about feeling because even delivering something that's of any value at all in 30 days and creating a great experience for somebody, they probably, like you said, fall in love with you and want to work with you exclusively from here on out.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly. And my top tip is, say you've been in your first two years, you would have gained enough experience to know what are some really easy, low-hanging fruits where you can just go in and you can fix them straight away, for example. And when people say, you've got to go the extra mile for them, if you come in and fix a bunch of stuff straight away because you know it's on your checklist, that are of common things that aren't set up correctly or give you really quick results straight away, make sure that they are in your first 30 days, for example, because then that just really sets the tone on how you're going to be working together. Because you're right, to do anything that's really valuable, you need three to six months to really get things going. So that's what I would, that's what I, well, that's what I do.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Do you use that, First 30 days to sell a longer engagement or from what it looked like, people sign up with you for 90 days no matter what, right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, to be honest, there's no contracts with me. I've always grown a business on having a great relationship to having, you know, really having great respect between my clients and really doing great work. So, no, it's because... I work so hard at that front end and I make sure that there's quick wins. And then I have a roadmap that actually goes out for a whole year. It means I can get through that year. Where it originated from is actually from a sales technique. So somebody did a study. When you go networking, when you meet somebody for the first time, somebody will do... they'll base all of their assumptions on you, on how you look and how you talk in that first like three to five seconds. And that will set the tone. It takes a further three and a half minutes to change that perception.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah. The same is true in hiring. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Same. Yeah. Hiring. It's the same when you go to websites. It's the same. The principle is always the same. So when you're thinking about your product, I don't think you're thinking about your service. It's like, how can you, almost kill them in the first five seconds. So they've always got this perception of you to allow you to actually really do the deep depth work.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Oh, that's so good. I'm looking at our clock. We're running close. We could probably continue for another hour, but we better wrap it up. How can our listeners find you, learn more about you? What's the best place to connect with you? Yeah.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Okay. The main site of kind of what I do is kub-digital.io. I am the only person with my spelling of name on LinkedIn. So C-H-A-R-L-E-H. So that's a really easy way to get me. But how we connected is I have my own podcast, which is called Charlie with Friends. And it's all about getting to know the people behind the businesses and so that you can take one tangible action from the podcast and put it into your business the very next day. That's it.
SPEAKER_01:All right. Fantastic. Thanks so much for being with us, Charlie. Super fun conversation. If you want to share any questions or any feedback with us here, you can always reach us at email at fractional.fm and we will see you next time.
SPEAKER_00:It's a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you.
