Fractional
Fractional
Heather Corallo: How to find your customers
Heather returns to share how she finds customers, what to do when the market contracts under you and how to pivot, defining your customers, and going where your customers are.
https://fractionalpeoplepeople.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/heathercorallo/
https://www.thecanoeproject.com/
https://www.amazon.com/Myth-Revisited-Small-Businesses-About/dp/0887307280
Edited by Caleb Johnson at http://embrin.com/
For questions and feedback email@fractional.fm
Hello and welcome to episode 57 of the Fractional Podcast. I'm your host, Lance. I'm here with my co-host, Joshua Wold. And today we're super excited because we have a returning guest by popular demand, our most listened to guest to date. You can find her on episode 51 of So if you're listening now and this is your first time listening to the Fractional Podcast, click pause, go over to episode 51 and listen to that one first because our guest today is none other than Heather Corallo. Super excited to have you join us again, Heather. And we have quite the lineup today.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, well, thanks, Lance. My cheeks are burning from blushing so hard. Thanks for that really. kind and welcome intro.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And for those who didn't take my advice and go back and listen to episode 51, Heather's the founder of the Canoe Project. She's a fractional service provider and she's a coach and does a lot of things, but most of all, she's an entrepreneur and is gracious enough to come and share her expertise, her experiences, her perspectives with all of us today. So Heather, one of the first things I want to kick off with is that when we decided, hey, let's do an episode two, we put up a poll and we asked people like, what do you want to, what do you want to hear Heather talk about? I gave a few suggestions. A couple of comments came in with suggestions, but the number one thing that we're hearing across the fractional industry and our networks is how do I find customers? That is the biggest pain point. And we'd love to like kind of focus there as much as we can. There's other fun things we might want to talk about and get into, but I think this is what the people are asking for. So, you What should someone be thinking about who's in a fractional position? Either they're starting out or they're feeling their business is just not going where it needs to go. Like, what are the first things that you say to someone like that?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yeah. Well, First of all, I say if you're a fractional new to entrepreneurship individual and you are having a hard time, I see you. I hear you. I am here with you. We are all having a hard time. It is a really tough market right now, especially for people in HR who have people operations, talent development, you know, traditional HR role and subject matter expertise. I think that right now, my main business sector that I focus in is technology. And we've certainly seen a significant amount of layoffs over the last 18 months that have not only impacted the technologists inside those organizations, but the non-billable or non-revenue generating roles. And that so often includes the people operations team. And so there are a lot of Thank you so much. traction, you're going to have very difficult time selling that into an organization unless they are actively hiring and they have been recently funded. That's going to be a really hard sell. That doesn't mean you can't do it, but it does mean that the behaviors that align to strong entrepreneurship are going to be that much more important right now, such as articulating your value proposition. What exactly can you do inside a fractional opportunity and what value does that bring to my organization going with you versus going with another staffing agency or some other you know bringing someone on internally understanding your value and your pricing models how are you generating revenue what are you willing to adjust and shift and be creative with when you do get that sales call and you've articulated your value proposition now you have to begin the deal and so what is that about what is that sales strategy and your revenue strategy? What does that look like? And how flexible can you be in order to, again, attractive enough in this market to close the deal? I'll stop there.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I guess looking at my own journey before when I was full-time into doing fractional, one of the things that helped me start out was my full-time job took a pause, wasn't able to do that anymore. And I worked with my own network. So I'll describe my scenario, which we've talked about a little bit. but I think you can then see where the pieces fit and don't fit. And within a short period of time, including from Lance, I was able to get some fractional roles. And then that sustained me for a little bit. But there was also a job board for basically freelance roles, which for six months, I was able to run the game and be able to convert them about once a month, a fractional lead, then the job board completely dried up, and there was nothing left. So suddenly, I found myself not able to do it anymore. So maybe a question I that's burning in my mind right now is to kind of ask in a more specific way, if you have no source of leads currently, currently, what are ways that you yourself and advise other people to find even the first point of discussion?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I think something that's really important in that moment is really understanding your customer because we want to go where our customers are at. If we're on LinkedIn and we're talking to everyone in the world, our message may resonate but it may not for a large majority of that audience. And then you're spending a lot of time talking to people who don't match to you. In the event where your network has dried up, I think what's most important is to go back to your operating model and look at who is your customer persona and where are they? Because you need to go to where your customers are at, not wait for your customers to come to you by some word of mouth. Like word of mouth is great and warm introductions are, I mean, we all want them. We all want those customers to come organically through our network. But when that's not available, it's really important to be able to look at your customer persona and say, all right, I'm looking at CTOs in the Healthcare, med tech, business sectors. I want them to be, I really care about my, you know, I want to work with organizations that have similar values to me. So maybe I'm going to narrow that niche even further. And I'm going to go, I want to look at certified B Corps that are in healthcare that just rose a series B or C or D or E or F that just got money. Now I have a trail to go after and to start, you know, nobody likes to do the cold reach outs, but there are ways that we can, you know, at least if you're cold reaching out, you're reaching out to people you want to work with. And can you
SPEAKER_01:tailor? And they fit. You know, they're a fit.
SPEAKER_00:You know that if we use Bant, right, from a sales strategy, do they have budget? Do they have the authority? Are you talking to a person? Do you know that the need exists inside the organization? And will your solution be timely? Well, we can assume that if they've just... achieved investment that they have the budget. If you're looking at CTOs specifically, you can search by leadership titles, et cetera, or organizations or meetups or conferences where those individuals who are decision makers are going to be. And then understanding the need, rapid growth with money and investment comes growth. And so you're tying that to some sort of talent acquisition strategy. And now it's about, okay, I have one road, right? I have a customer channel. Now it's about how do I approach those individuals? Well, you better have a really good value proposition. And that's when that next phase of knowing what you're offering is really important because you're only going to have so many chances to come across well to an individual inside that vertical or inside that business sector that you're looking to support and add value to.
SPEAKER_01:I've seen some people do this and I've tried to figure it out on my own as well. Reaching out to theoretical customers and asking guidance on value proposition? For instance, I've seen SaaS companies just have lots of interviews with potential customers saying, hey, we're trying to build a product. We would love to just talk to you for 30 minutes to see. Is there a world where that would make sense where, hey, I'm trying to figure out my value proposition. Can I have your attention for a few minutes? Have you seen that work?
SPEAKER_00:I have, but I think you need to be a little bit more intentional about who you reach out to for those types of conversations, at least initially. Because when you're first starting out, you don't know what you don't know when it comes to value prop. And those initial conversations, you want them to be as nice as possible. And so I might reach out to someone who's one or two connections away from me on LinkedIn to ask that, but I wouldn't reach out cold to someone I don't know. And I might say, Can I buy you a virtual coffee for 30 minutes? Right. And I get hit up all the time to talk to people about some new product that they're building or whatever. I'm like, if I don't know you and I'm not that product is nowhere related to my interests or expertise. I'm not going to say yes to that.
SPEAKER_01:And that's actually a good point because I've been hit up occasionally and it's not even a product remotely relevant to anything I've worked on. So it's like, why would I spend a half hour of my day versus if it was a product that sounds like something something I would buy, I'm interested in talking to the founder about that.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly. Yeah. And so I think it's got to have that match. And ideally, you're going to go one or two degrees out in the circle to do that, at least on your first round for defining value prop.
SPEAKER_02:I have a thought here, too, about your value prop. And, you know, I hear you saying like, hey, the market's a little bit flooded right now, especially in the tech space, right? People selling XYZ service that's a non-revenue generator. So, you know, How about in terms of positioning, how we talk about ourselves? So if somebody says, hey, I sell talent acquisition services, does that move the needle as much as, hey, I solve this problem that I know you have as a stakeholder? Yeah. That's
SPEAKER_00:exactly it. That's exactly it. I just coached someone earlier today who's got a beautiful website. And in normal times, it would make a ton of sense and I would know what she's offering and I would be interested. But you need to be able to tell me in 10 seconds how you're going to solve my problem. And somebody coming to me with, I sell talent acquisition services, does not solve my problem. If I am an engineer working in a med tech or a leader in med tech. I'm going to go... I should go Heather the coach or Heather the talent acquisition partner. I should have read... all of the job descriptions that they are currently hiring for. And I should say, these are three people that I just placed at X company that have similar backgrounds to the ones that you're currently hiring for. I am an expert in FPGA and hardware and I'm familiar with the entire stack for whatever technology it is that you're kind of covering. I'd love to get 15 minutes of your time to hear what your challenges are, right? Like that's more interesting than the broad, hey, I'm a talent acquisition specialist and I could do all of the things for you and make your life better. What is the problem and what is your medicine to solve that problem?
SPEAKER_01:So actually, I want to test in real time a potential thing that I think it's helpful to think of different industries and test it as well. So if I was a designer, when I've done fractional work, I've had The most success with founders who just did a seed raise or pre-seed raise, and they need two to six months of a designer's time to get an app off the ground. Those are the people that I've had the most success with, and frankly, the most fun, because it's like two or three people, and they need a designer. So would it be something like sending a message to a founder who I saw just had a seed raise and saying, hey, I see that you've just done this. I'm wondering if you could use some help from a designer because I just worked with these other three other founders in the last year who were similar to you. Here's what we accomplished. Here's some struggles we had. Would you be open to talking to me as a fractional designer? How would that kind of a conversation sound to you? Or how would you make that better?
SPEAKER_00:I'd add your portfolio immediately. But I am a tech startup founder. And I have gone through that experience, that very experience of raising around and then being like, great, now how am I going to build this thing? And as a non-technical founder, having a technical individual reach out to me like that would be really helpful. And I would feel good about that. I think in a different industry where it's not like the service that you provide, Josh, is such a trade versus a service offering that is more non tangible, it gets a little murkier in doing that as effectively. But I still think that it's a worthy approach and certainly better than like posting on social media, hoping that somebody sees it. It's just hard. Finding customers is just hard. And there's a lot of marketing strategies out there to deploy at top of funnel, at middle of funnel, using your networks. And it's a lot to think about. I think what I What I would say to people that are entering this stage and entering in entrepreneurship is that you need to understand marketing and like how that actually works. And you need to understand sales and sales strategies. And I talk to a lot of folks who are doing this, but they're they're like they have a great value proposition and they're talking about it with their networks, but they haven't done the work of like reading the sales book. or actually like reading the marketing book, watching videos from Marty Kagan on like building awesome products, like what you're what we're doing in fractional service offerings is similar to building a product and put and taking it to market. So if you can apply the same behaviors, I think we have a much better chance of moving the needle faster, because that that Nut has already been cracked and solved a gajillion times with very little money and folks needing to get things off the ground and going to market. And we can apply the same behaviors as using a service offering versus a technical product or an app. And and have those same behaviors be dramatically affected.
SPEAKER_01:And I think one thing you're touching on and we were chatting about a little bit before the recording, if you've been around long enough, you'll see lean times and fat times, right? Where everyone needs help. Nobody apparently needs help. And these are usually cycles, right? Where if you're in a down cycle, probably going to get better for some people. So it's like, hold on and keep tweaking and modifying and just know that if you're brand new to this. It's going to be OK. You may not come out the same way that you went in. Things might change, but things will often get better in some way.
SPEAKER_00:I think it's just important to know where the market is, right? Like we can't pretend that that's not true. And when things are hard and you're just starting out, depending on the market, a business sector that you're approaching, that you're trying to provide value to, you've got to know what that market is going through. And to say I offer talent acquisition services to tech early stage technical startups, well, you'd better understand where's the powder. Why haven't venture capital firms been funding for the last 18 months? Who's getting that money and who's not? Because if you're still trying to sell blockchain engineers, but everybody's looking for AI, then you're barking up the wrong tree and you got to understand where the market is or you're going to just spin your wheels. And so, you know, learning all about like new talent acquisition strategies. Hey, awesome. But you should probably be reading TechCrunch and not be reading the next HR book. Because your job is to sell your business, not be the subject matter expert until you get the deal.
SPEAKER_01:That's been something that also has helped me that there's podcasts I listen to in my industry, which helped me to just get a gauge on what's happening over the long term, right? So whether it's, yeah, reading online, journal, magazines, podcasts, books are lagging indicators, right? Where they're going to be about a year after the pact. So you want something that's a little bit more immediate. And what I love personally about podcasts is if it's in the right market, if it's the right people on a weekly basis, they're going to be giving updates that will help with where you're going with things.
SPEAKER_00:100%. Totally. That's actually a great idea. I didn't mean to say actually. That's not such a jerk thing to say. That is a great idea. That's a great idea. Hey, I just listened to your podcast. Here are three things that I found incredibly valuable. Would you give me 15 minutes of your time so I could tell you about my value proposition and get your feedback? Now that is an email that somebody might respond to.
SPEAKER_01:And one thing just in our business sector segment, whatever, business and technology, one of the top podcasts I recommend listening to is Stratechery. It's paid. I'm not being paid to say this, but I've been listening to it for five years. They have two or three podcasts all bundled into one, and they're incredibly helpful for us. actually three, four times a week getting little updates. And that is such a great way of just knowing what these hosts are thinking in the space. They're going to be wrong. But what I love about Stratechery specifically, it's Ben Thompson on a monthly basis calls out how he got things wrong the previous month and he gives corrections. He's like, hey, last month I said this, I was dead wrong. Here's how I've now learned and how I'm modifying my thought process going forward. And I love that.
SPEAKER_00:I love that too. That is such a great approach, that sort of anti-fragile approach to learning Yeah. years, I am also completely capable of delivering HR and executive skills at an accounting firm. I'm delivering manager training at a property management company next week or next month, rather, in New Jersey. There's
SPEAKER_01:actually such a value to that, right? Because you think of these companies who maybe are 15 years old in terms of the technology stack they're using or just the way that they think about remote, for instance. Lance and I have talked about this. He was helping give coaching to one company and they were using Skype, a That may not be the exact example, but
SPEAKER_02:there's
SPEAKER_01:tools have
SPEAKER_00:changed. Wow. I accept that and be willing to adjust my own communication style and preferences and value prop to meet them where they are. I absolutely
SPEAKER_01:love that. I'm reminded of a friend of Lance and I, his name is Jason Lexell. We might've had him on the podcast. I'm blanking, but we need to at some point. He works with an industry that is non-tech related and I'm forgetting the exact industry, but they have like a nine to 12 month lead time. from initial conversation to closing. And he's had clients for a decade plus, and he loves it. He loves the way that works. However, he commented to us last year, doing a little bit of work in the tech industry, that it was so nice for him to have a slight pivot to work with people who would close in a day, who would take his feedback in a week and fix it, versus he gives feedback in this other industry, and it might be a few months until they apply it. So he can't learn as quickly. And it was funny seeing him from the opposite perspective be so excited to at least play the waters in technology. Not to give up his current business, but to see, oh, It gives a whole other perspective on how you can handle conversations when you switch industries.
SPEAKER_02:I'm curious about this customer persona or ideal client profile concept. Because I think this is something that I've personally been working on over the last few weeks and will continue to work on more. But what are some of the parameters that you like to set up when you think or you like to think about in terms of this customer persona? Like, do you think about headcount? Do you think about revenue? Do you think about funding stage? Do you think about industry? Like, What are the things that you maybe weight heavily in how you identify who these people are? Is it those demographics? Is it the kinds of problems they're experiencing? How do you approach this concept of an ICP? Because I think there's probably a number of listeners out there who are thinking, I think I should do that, but I'm not sure how.
SPEAKER_00:Well, first I want to ask, what is ICP?
SPEAKER_02:Ideal
SPEAKER_01:Customer
SPEAKER_00:Profile. Right. So those acronyms, we call them all sorts of things. I just want to be really clear. And And I think there's two layers. So some of the questions that you just asked were about the organization. And we were talking earlier about like, how do you find a customer and who is the customer? Is the customer the decision maker? Is the customer the CTO? Or is the customer the organization? And so there's like two different Efforts that need to be done when you're deeply defining that customer persona. The first is based on your value proposition and your values. Who is your ideal customer? Like what solution? Like who has your problem? Who has the problem to your solution and your expertise and what you are passionate about? I am passionate about real technology. I am not passionate about real estate. So I am not going to go after real estate companies. I'm going to go after tech companies. So then what is my solution? Again, for that industry, okay, it's executive talent search. Well, what stage of a technical organization usually has the need for executive search? Probably not seed or series A. We're probably looking at Series B, when your founder is no longer appropriate to lead at scale and the board or venture or, you know, someone, the advisory staff or the executive team is actually looking to replace the founder. That's like stage one of the maturity lifecycle when executives change. Then, you know, maybe like organizations that have taken another step in their growth where they're like major growth and scaling is about to occur and they're adding executives. to that organization because their verticals are starting to scale or an organization is in turnaround. They hit the news and the proverbial poop is hitting the fan and an organization is probably going to be in need of that. So you've got three different personas. Then it's, do they have the money? Do they already have an internal talent team? Big question. Because if they already have somebody solving their problem, they're not going to talk to me. Why am I better than the people that they are already paying?
SPEAKER_01:Or if they have an internal talent team, is there a reason why they're looking to change that, which that's even more nuanced?
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. Absolutely. And in certain executive searches, that's done for exactly that reason, because there is nuance and maybe it's being done confidentially and, you know, et cetera. Let's use that as the example. We have an executive search that's being done confidentially. We can correlate that perhaps to something that's in the news. Somebody has done something terrible or, you know, just like using Uber. Uber is always looking... for new executives because of things that were terrible in the news. And God bless their HR team. Then you drop down into like, who is the decision maker that I could talk to? That's the customer persona when I'm thinking about like, okay, what's the next step for me getting to the deal? And that is, I'm thinking about what are their pains? What are their fears? What are they frustrated by? What are they hearing others say? What are they hearing from colleagues? What's the attrition? What's happening inside their organization that's impacting them? And there's also, what do they need? What do I think that they need to do differently? Or what have they said in the press that they need to do differently or that they really appreciate? And going through this empathy map almost for the individual, And you search on Google, search empathy map, you will find tons of templates for who is your customer persona and what is an empathy map and how do you get closer and closer to that person. That's a totally valuable exercise to do because when you're reaching out then and you're doing your engagement with that individual, you can touch something in the communication that AI ain't gonna touch. Chat GPT is not going to write that introduction email well. But you might be able to write something that's far more intuitive and empathetic to their experience that will engage the communication in a way that you otherwise wouldn't be able to do. I hope that's not too theoretical.
SPEAKER_02:There's a thought that's standing out to me here is there's two broad, right? I do executive search for tech companies where you might have you haven't ruled out maybe 100,000 companies. The percentage of those that you're a match for is very small. If you get very, very specific, you do the empathy map, you have all these details brought in, you've narrowed the field down to 1,000 companies, but you're a high percentage match for those thousand companies. So your efforts are gonna be high ROI, whether it's cold outreach, or you find someone to make an introduction, or you attend an event that these people are at, you're gonna see the return versus first option.
SPEAKER_00:100% of the time. It is go to product, go to market 101. Who is your customer? Do not sell to people who don't want what you have to sell them. Like it is a complete waste of time. And it's why like, I'm sorry, but you will rarely see me post on LinkedIn. Not because I don't love the folks on LinkedIn, but because that network and the people that are on my timeline or whatever, those are not my customers. They're my peers. And that's wonderful from a thought leadership perspective and an engagement and a community perspective. But I am not spending all day figuring out the algorithm to LinkedIn. It's a much better use of my time really getting to know my customer and then going after them very directly and not by being, not doing cold outreach, but by having higher engagement in their communities themselves.
SPEAKER_01:What does that look like? Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, it's so uncomfortable. It's so uncomfortable. I go to tech conferences and I don't, you know, it's hard because when I was solely a leader in my career and I was going to tech conferences, I was not technical other than like dangerous enough to have a technical interview conversation. And it limited me in my ability to connect and approach and be engaged in panels or unconference conversations, which otherwise would have been incredibly valuable for me. But I didn't have enough credibility because I didn't understand the language that And so I spent a lot of time, and I know that this is a bit of an unfair experience because some people haven't had that time and now they're forced into entrepreneurship. I had that time internally, and I want to acknowledge that, to go and be more technical. I went through a software apprenticeship for 12 weeks as the VP of strategy at Eightlight. Before I did my real job, I was able to learn more about systems and programming and engineering, which completely changed my ability to communicate with that community. I'm not an engineer, but I can hang and I can hang hard and I can talk about all sorts of things. And I'm not talking about talent acquisition with them. I'm talking about something else. But then when they do need talent support or a coach or training of some kind, they remember me because I have empathy and credibility. in their space.
SPEAKER_01:So you're offering help for the things that they're thinking about and struggling with, and they're seeing that you're in their space understanding the nuances that they're dealing with day to day. So when they actually want the service you can provide, you're going to be the first person they will consider, right?
SPEAKER_00:And that's a long tail play. That does not happen overnight. It does not happen in six months. And we're We can't always just be talking about like, well, how do I find my next customer in the next six months? Because if you're building a business, you have to think strategically and like, what's going to help me two years from now? And
SPEAKER_01:that actually touches on something I was thinking of earlier. This stuff is, frankly, for me, frightening, right? There's so much. It feels overwhelming. It feels extremely hard. It actually feels harder than the trade that I've established, right? And that I've learned how to do. And the answer, frankly, for some people may be that it's not the right time. That this is not the right time to go do that, depending on your life stage, your personal situation. And that's okay, right? Be kind to yourself. That is okay if you're not ready to jump into this. Because there are lots of ways to live life, lots of ways to find fulfillment. And this is, in my experience so far, failing and succeeding a little bit. It was... One of the most fulfilling, freeing, autonomous things I'd ever done, but it was also terrifying. And that, I want that again. I'm not ready for it currently, and that's okay. So that's why I live vicariously through people we invite on this podcast.
SPEAKER_00:I love that. And it's so true. It is really hard. But I want to encourage folks, like, think about when you were internal. Maybe you were in a small or medium-sized business. Maybe you were at an enterprise. We all can look at our executive team and be like, wow. They were like real, real messed up. They were real difficult at times. It seemed like they didn't know what they were doing. And guess what? They didn't. And neither do we. And we're all figuring it out. And now you're the CEO. If you're the head, if you're starting this fractional business, you're the CEO. You're the difficult person who doesn't know what they're doing. And like better than just look yourself in the mirror and be like, yep, that's me. I got to embrace that now. And like find a friend, like go like join a Slack community, go to meetups because everybody is feeling the same way unless they chose to do this, which very few people do.
SPEAKER_01:One of my favorite CEOs is Alex Ross from Gregg, and I worked with him a couple of years ago. What I loved was his absolute transparency all of the time that he was figuring things out. And what that meant is he was daily learning and improving as a CEO and calling out his flaws, but also having the confidence to say that he was going to try to figure it out and push forward. And so I was listening to him on a podcast a couple of weeks ago. So much improved over two years ago when we worked together, just learning all this new stuff. And I immediately appreciated the humility he had to say, hey, I don't actually know, but I'm going to take my best guess based on what I could learn today. And I love that kind of mentality.
SPEAKER_00:And the grace that he gave himself and he modeled for you in that time is so incredibly valuable. We just all need to give each other a lot of grace because it's hard. It's hard. The payoff can be wonderful. I'm going to pick up my kid and Four minutes and I'm done for the day and I get to shut my computer off and I have that autonomy and that freedom that comes at a price. It comes at a cost. I'm not internal. I'm not working 50 hours. I'm not making six figures. Well, I am now, but I also have like 10 different companies that I'm working
SPEAKER_01:with.
SPEAKER_00:It's not guaranteed. You got to also embrace the things that are actually working for you. And in my case, it's like, I'm going to go pick my kids up in four minutes. That's working for me. I got to celebrate the little things as we're like going through this journey, which is really hard. And whether you're by yourself and you've made five hundred dollars with your first client or you're working with a partner and you made two hundred and fifty thousand and you have a goal of making. 750 next year, which is a stretch goal and you have no idea how you're going to do it. Like you got to give yourself some grace and like be grateful for what you have. Cause I mean, it could be worse.
SPEAKER_01:I want to go back to my, my, my roots and say, amen. Like
SPEAKER_02:so good. I can't believe we're already running to the end of our, of our time. This has been so great. There's so many other things that we want to talk about. So maybe there'll be a part three in the future. Are there a couple of resources that you want to recommend for people who are like, how do I start selling stuff better?
SPEAKER_00:Yes. Okay. So I want to recommend a coach who I have not actually had this woman coach me, but I have seen, I have been to a couple of her talks. I've seen her workshop. Her name is Alison Davis. If you are in the FPP Slack, she has recently given a workshop and the deck and video are pinned for your viewing consumption. And it was just like, everything she says was gold. And I've been doing this a long time. So I like so appreciated what Her approach was. That's the
SPEAKER_02:fractional people, people slack. So if you're a professional provider, independent in the HR and people space, you can follow the link, reach out to me and reach out to Heather. We can get you connected.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I think from a sales perspective or like how hard is entrepreneurship? I think the email. now called The E-Myth Revisited is my number one book for people to read. It's a bit of a dream killer, but it's important that we like are honest about like how hard this is. And then you have to decide whether or not it's something that you really want to do. And that's an excellent book to kind of get your own personal measure. And finally, I think from a from a sales perspective, I think, well, I guess I'll just say, I think finding someone in your community to partner with or work together It's such a lonely endeavor that even if it's just one person, it doesn't have to be a meetup. You don't have to leave. You can do it virtually. Find a buddy. It is really, I think the secret to my success with Starling Training is that I did not do it alone. And I want to be really transparent with that. This go around with the success that we've had with our training business was done collaboratively. And that's double the network and double the friends and double the loneliness and double the tears, but also double the joy. So find a friend.
SPEAKER_02:Find a friend and start a podcast with them.
SPEAKER_01:That's exactly what we did.
SPEAKER_00:And
SPEAKER_02:Heather, I know you do coaching as well. Are you taking folks
SPEAKER_00:on to help? I do. I am taking folks on. Who's
SPEAKER_02:a good fit for you as a customer for coaching?
SPEAKER_00:Oh, man. Well, I would love to say that I'm a business coach, but I'm really, I am more of like a whole self coach. That is what I'm looking to spend my time doing. Of course, I'm happy to help people in this space, but I don't want to just tell people what to do. And so the coaching in this dynamic is a little tricky because what worked for me is not going to work for somebody else. And so I just ask powerful questions, but I can't necessarily and point you a good, you know, videos with Marty Kagan to learn about product development and going to market. But like, I want to be careful with that. I am actually delivering a program for the FPP community for the next six months, which is just about building connections and having empathy for each other while we figure this whole thing out. So that's an opportunity to hang out with me. And yeah, that's where I'm at. That was
SPEAKER_01:perfect. Well, I'll finish out here. Email at fractional.fm if you have any questions or feedback. Thank you for listening. And we'll be back again next week.
