Fractional
Fractional
Mindy Honcoop: Why Culture Drives Revenue—And How Fractional Leaders Make It Happen
This part 4 and our final installment of the Fractional People People collaboration. Today, we’re joined by Mindy Honcoop, a Fractional HR Leader and Advisor, to discuss the art of guiding organizations toward success. Mindy shares her expertise on building impactful HR strategies, pricing fractional services, and connecting company culture to revenue growth.
In this episode, we cover:
- Why great leaders act as guides, not heroes
- How to confidently price your fractional services
- Reframing sales as an invitation to solve problems
- The direct link between culture and business success
If you're a fractional leader or considering the shift, this conversation is packed with actionable insights.
Connect with Mindy: Agile in HR | LinkedIn
FPP: https://www.fractionalpeoplepeople.com/
All right, hello and welcome. This is another episode of Fractional Podcast at fractional.fm here with my co-host Joshua. Joshua, good to see you, man.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, good to see you. It's a little cold. I just want to say it got down to one degrees last night. And so I'm like turning on all the taps, like hoping things don't freeze. I turn off the heat in the winter in the studio here. for recordings, and I've bugged Lance about that too. It's like the moment this is off, I'm turning that heat back on because it's cold.
SPEAKER_02:I'm cheating today. I do have a small space heater over in that corner that's much quieter going because it's really cold here too at my place. Good to be with you, Joshua. As much as I'm excited to be recording an episode with you, I'm even more excited that we have Mindy Honkoop on the show today, another guest from our Fractional People-People Collaboration miniseries. that we're excited about. So Mindy, you're the founder at Agile in HR. You're a fractional HR leader. You do advising. Yeah, just tell us a little bit more about yourself. How'd you find your way into doing fractional stuff?
SPEAKER_03:And is it cold where you're at? I want to know that too.
SPEAKER_00:For Austin, Texas, yes. Compared to where you are relatively, you probably would laugh at me because it's 51 here right now and overcast and it's been raining the past couple of days. So like gray, drizzly, cold. It reminds me of my hometown, Seattle, Washington.
SPEAKER_03:Oh. I haven't seen 51 in a long time. So, yes, it is a little bit different. But that's okay. That's okay.
SPEAKER_02:I'm an Olympic Peninsula native, so I get the gray drizzle. It's gorgeous. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I miss it. About Mindy, I actually fell into doing fractional work. It occurred. Who doesn't? That's refreshing to hear. Sometimes people, like, sound like they're so put together. And you're like, I'm just still figuring this out, which I think is just life.
SPEAKER_03:That's the big secret for interviewing so many different fractional folks. Like they don't have it figured out. And I think that's a good thing because I never do.
SPEAKER_00:Right. If I talk to most people, I first of all, we learn from failure and I've learned how to get better at doing this from all the things that didn't go quite so well.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:There's the level of success that I have on my LinkedIn that I want prospective customers to see. And then there's the level of success that's real. I
SPEAKER_03:actually had a friend, he was saying, Joshua, why don't you write your resume based on what actually happened? Like, oh, that's a little scary. Maybe I will at some point.
SPEAKER_00:So I fell into it because I left my last chief people officer job and I just started interviewing, right? That's what you normally do as a human. You go and interview for your next role. And I was really passionate about staying in a very focused space, working in smaller organizations, because I do love the ability to create and to be able to find a better way. And you have more room to do that when you are starting out in an organization. Not everything's fixed yet. There's more gray space, more room to play with. And so I was interviewing and I often found my conversations became more advisory in nature. And really through the conversations, doing a discovery session. And often the outcome of that was they went and rewrote their job description and hired a more junior person. And a couple interviews in, one of the companies hired me as an HR advisor. I
SPEAKER_03:have had multiple jobs where in the past I would go through and apply and do, as a designer, you get a design trial. And basically, I would poke so many holes into it, ask so many questions. Like for one of them that I got hired at years ago, they actually rewrote the whole trial for me. And then I was able to pass it. So it's like you just kind of poke around like this. I don't understand this. And when you meet the right people who appreciate someone willing to question everything, then you find, OK, we're going to probably work pretty well together.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. And I learned through life that it's better to be yourself in the interview than And to not, because I am being a social worker and also a recovering people pleaser. You get to know like, okay, what is, wait, what should I say? What is that? What are those motivations? What is those triggers? And so in an interview, it can be very easy to modify, to align with something that isn't at the core of you, of your personality. your own beliefs or values. And that's where the friction starts to happen later. And sometimes I think we do this without even knowing it. I
SPEAKER_02:think this is such a great point because I think early on in a lot of folks who are kind of into this fractional thing, they're so in need of that first customer, that first like anchor client, that it's so easy to take a customer who is not a good match for you and then you're trapped there. If you don't have a full pipeline to move on from them, right?
SPEAKER_00:And it's the challenge of being in scarcity mindset versus staying in abundance. Because in scarcity, we're in survival mode. And then we're saying yes, yes, yes to the things we are often, we're really good at a lot of things. I find that fractional leaders, no matter what speciality they're in, They are very good at... In their jobs, they did a lot of things. I mean, they've successfully gotten to the point in their career, but that doesn't mean that they're great at all those things. And they don't realize, or maybe they do, but I find, at least from my experience, I had someone early on, thankfully, that really helped me go through an exercise and really think about okay, Mindy, you're really good at all of these things, but what do you really enjoy and what are you really great at? What are the things you haven't experienced yet that you need a chance to kind of see? And then what do people need? And what will they pay for?
SPEAKER_01:And
SPEAKER_00:the overlay of that diagram really started to help me hone in on, okay, I'm going to say no to handbooks. I'm not doing an employee handbook ever again. I can work with someone else to do that. And then as a fractional person, I found, oh my goodness, partnership, super powerful, subcontracting under other people that need my speciality where they already have. And that's how I got started. I found larger fractional boutique firms. You really can't call them fractional. They had boutique firms that had an existing clientele But they needed my unique superpower that I had identified. And through talking with people, letting people know what I do, they're like, oh, my goodness, if I get a client, would you be willing to pass a percentage on to me, but subcontract to help support these type of clients? I'm like, of course, it doesn't have to be agile. Yes, it's agile in HR, but it doesn't have to be the forefront. But I got to experiment more that way. And to figure out the answer to those questions. And it helped me be able to for people who were willing to take a risk because often I'd worked with them before. And they knew that I could figure things out. I didn't have to know 100% of everything. And so through doing that, like trial and error of some of those projects, I actually realized because before that, I always thought I can only work with clients in tech because I grew up in tech. But by doing that, I realized I'm not working with nonprofits, manufacturing, which I would never had realized before. And so that kind of helped me as I was building my brand, be able to also kind of hone in on what is my superpower, what is my niche.
SPEAKER_03:And it's interesting. Maybe this just comes with having a longer career and starting. I've done this longer where when I was in my early 20s, you say yes to everything. You try everything. You try the field, you try anything and everything, and then you're building this brochure at 2 a.m. at night for this company that does not care and set that aside. I've gotten to the point where I focus on my strengths and I pretty much just don't do something if it's if I'm like, yeah, I've tried that 10 times. I'm very slow at it and it's painful and I despise it. Right. So you mentioned handbook. Yeah. Is there an example where if someone says, hey, this thing you must do, it is a requirement. How do you get around that? What do you do with that if someone's trying to throw that in your face? And it's one of those things you just don't want to do and you know you're not good at it.
SPEAKER_00:And I haven't signed them up as a client. Because you will get the handbooks after they said, okay, I'm hiring you to do this. And then can you also do this?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, we'll set the scenario. We'll say that you've kind of gotten bait and bait trapped or whatever.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Actually, I will work with someone else to then help me complete that task. I'll find someone else to work with me, to partner with me to complete it because I know that I'm not the best person at that job.
SPEAKER_03:And the other interesting part is sometimes pushing back on whether the thing is necessary altogether, which sometimes you can do.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, sometimes you can push back, right? Because you're like, originally you didn't hire me to do that.
SPEAKER_02:There's a couple things coming out here that I want to push on a little bit more. This idea of subcontracting, now we've kind of hit it both directions, actually. I'm going to take them one at a time. We'll start with the most recent in our conversation. I love your idea of when you get handed a task that is not part of your core skill or zone of genius or unique ability, right? Like all these different phrases that go with that, like a handbook for me is absolutely outside of that circle. I have like, you're really like, if you need a handbook done, you don't probably want me to do the handbook. I'm not going to do a great job at it. Detailed documentation, organizing all of that, like I'll get one together, but it will be a poor product. I am so much better. And I've learned this now after I've trial and error if I am partnered with someone who is really strong with details and timelines documentation because I'm just not and I think a lot of times as a fractional like we think solopreneur I have to do all this stuff myself but I don't know like maybe that's like a story that a lot of entrepreneurs tell themselves that isn't true but it becomes a blocker. Like what's been your experience?
SPEAKER_00:No, that, yeah, it's a, it's a blocker for me at least. And from what others I've seen too, that will come and you have to, you know, for me, it's like, how do I build my team? That's like when I was internal, I had a team and I knew I hired to my weaknesses and you're only as good as your team. And so how do we even as a solopreneur build a, those relationships and those partners that become your team, like an extension of that you can call in when you need. And the employee handbook is kind of a perfect way because you don't also want to pay my rate for an employee handbook that's like a different price. And you want to pay someone who's going to be really good at it and probably enjoys it and probably gets it done faster.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, we can help you find one of those people.
SPEAKER_00:Right. This is just an example, right? And so, That's where I found like it's really powerful to be in communities or to build like an existing network of people that you can leverage and be able to get to a place where you could have a referral model, right? Where you're able to, and people feel differently about that. So sometimes you're passing the discount on to your client versus taking it yourself, right? Or whereas some people will just, because you build over time, at least from my experience, I'm a people connector. I love people that I know a lot of people who do incredible things. I mean, I feel so blessed to know so many intelligent people. And so that if I do come across one of my clients that has a need, I'll be, or not a client, sorry, in this scenario, it's someone that's just has come, hey, Mindy, do you know someone? And I'm like, yeah, actually, in my network, I do know someone. And then sometimes if there's a partnership because I don't work with that person as a client, then the referral, I may take that referral because it was just a connection and there's a referral agreement. I like to pass a discount on personally if it's someone that I'm working with on a regular basis. People have very different opinions about that. But I think that thinking differently, like as a solopreneur, that you... are not the hero. This is another number one thing too, because this is in marketing and selling. A lot of people don't know how to sell unless maybe you're... Hopefully, if you're a fractional sales leader, you do. But we never had to really sell ourselves, our brand and what we do. And that's one of the number one challenges. And I had to really reframe it because I always thought, oh, it's a slimy car salesperson. And... I had to reframe that in my mind. It was holding me back. It was like a lie that I had to overcome and reframe it for myself. I'm inviting a person into a solution that I have for them and they have a pain. They need a guide to come alongside of them to help them realize what is possible that they don't see that's possible because they don't have me as their guide to be able to get from where they're at today to where they need to be. And they may not even see that. And in working with me, they're going to be able to see that be possible. And so what's that hero story? And what are you in that solution? How are you being that person? That person's a hero of their story. And how are you being a resource or a tool that they get to realize they need to be able to get them to a successful story point?
SPEAKER_03:You know, one of the times I realized that I actually like sales was when I was doing exactly that. I was on a call talking to a founder. You're talking to the right person and not someone who has zero power. And you're trying to see if what you have is a match for what they need. And in that case, you just get to geek out on all the details. And there's this whole thing. You don't want to necessarily sell all of your giveaway, all of your advice for free. I understand that. But you get to kind of geek out on here's how. You could be served. Here's where this could go. And let's dream a little bit. And yeah, here's my rates. Here's how I work. That's almost like beside the point because the sale has already been closed. And I realized doing that, the thing I was pushing back against was the sleaziness of it. I mean, we've all been approached by people at our door who will refuse to leave, who are not giving me something that's actually going to benefit me. But when you realize you actually have something to benefit, you're excited just to see if you can help them.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, exactly. Or connect them with someone who can.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that's a mindset shift. I was working with a coaching customer of mine a couple weeks ago and she was talking about how she just didn't feel good about reaching out to this group of people that she'd worked with in the past. And I said, hey, you can think of it that way or we can think of it as like what we did together was really helpful. Is there someone else in your network? who could also really benefit from that because I have something to give and somebody needs that. Just making that connection could actually really be helpful to somebody. And it's like, yeah, you're helping somebody solve a problem they're trying to solve. They need your help.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly. It's just that for me, that was my invitation. And they can say yes or no. And okay, you just don't take it personally.
SPEAKER_01:They
SPEAKER_00:just don't want it and they don't need it right now. But you never know when they're going to come across at their dinner party conversation, someone that starts to talk about a pain that they have and they're like maybe their best friend and they want it. You want to help the people you care about. And they just heard about what you do for people. And now that you now they can introduce you, their friend who they want to help to you. And
SPEAKER_03:let me just say, if they jump so fast when they hear the price by accepting it, you're probably a little low. How
SPEAKER_02:many times have you pitched something? Somebody accepted it so fast that the next time you'd like doubled it, right?
SPEAKER_03:So my brother and I have this rule that right before saying a price, just send the other person a text and say, here's my price. And this happened recently. It was a tiny little freelance thing I was working on. I raised the price by 50% just by texting him. And he's like, well, why don't you do it this way? And the person still said yes without hesitancy. So I'm like, okay. I was way off originally.
SPEAKER_00:Pricing is like you're always refining that. It's not about perfection. That's the other thing I had to get over. I'm a perfection. Well, I don't know if I would say maybe that's not accurate because I love agile. So as an agilist, you really aren't a perfectionist. But you know enough to be able to deliver something of quality. And And for me, like putting that out there, you're putting yourself out there. And the pricing thing, you're just always getting feedback on and constantly iterating on. It's like your website. If you're going to wait for your website to have the perfect words, then you're never going to get your website up there. I just had to let it go. It's like in Frozen, you just got to let it go. And because... that website's always outdated. It's constantly needing to be updated. I was feeling pretty good about my website and I had someone, a very trusted advisor that was giving kind of some free thoughts. And so I sent him the website and he made a Loom video. Man, he ripped that thing apart. And it was awesome. It was a gift. It was a gift of feedback that I'm like, oh my goodness, I hadn't even thought about it that way. It was amazing. It was so good. It's about being open to feedback too. You really have to be open to hearing from others. But don't take it all, don't just absorb the feedback. That's another thing. A lot of fractional leaders will start actioning all the feedback, but you also have to, you know, when you were in the job in-house, when you really felt very sure of yourself, because you'd been doing that job probably for a while, you would be like, okay, that's an interesting thought. Let me think about that. But for me anyways, when I came up, oh my goodness, this is my first time. What am I doing? I'm like a baby learning how to crawl again. I'm just like, oh, this all must be things I must do. Like what in the world? No, we should be thinking about, okay, this is that person's opinion. And let's chew on that a little bit. Like, does that make sense? Is that person our target audience? So If it's not resonating with them and they're not our target audience, then we probably should deprioritize their thoughts, but take them into consideration. Is
SPEAKER_02:that especially tough for a recovering people pleaser?
SPEAKER_00:Oh, yes. Oh, yes. I'm like, let's just say I've failed a lot in that at the beginning. I
SPEAKER_02:ask because I can relate, right? Like the approval ratings mean an awful lot when you're... when you're tying up your success in how other people are perceiving your work. So as a fractional, you sort of do have to find a way to disconnect that because not everybody is your target.
SPEAKER_00:Right. And I started to really, oh, it's actually awesome. I've really started to find the sense of who I am, like reconnect with me and what is my voice and standing firm in that. And because they're hiring you to have an opinion. not to just take action on what they're doing and just be an idea taker. They're hiring you to be an idea giver or shaper or co-creator. And so you need to have an opinion and be brave and know when or is the right timing and how to do that with your clients.
SPEAKER_03:One thing that I've found helps me a lot as someone who I used to shift jobs. entirely based on one person's feedback or another. And then as I've aged, it's like, all right, I'm going to pivot a little bit based on new data. I'll actually do this. I'll be on a call. And this is as a designer, I will note what the person has said. And then I will note what the next person says and the next person says, and then I'll start designing alongside it. And they'll see in real time that I'm modifying what they're saying, but I'm letting them know I've heard them. And now I'm not necessarily going to go with it, but they were heard. And I think that's probably the most important thing people are looking for Did you actually take a moment to listen to me? And then if you disagree, that's okay. So I'll actually type out what they said. And that kind of trips people up a little bit. And then they're like, oh, actually, I don't even like what I just said. Let's modify that a little bit. That's better than just saying no as a emphatic statement. It's more kind of, so I work with kids in a nonprofit setting. And one of the things someone told me is be the river, not the dam. And that works really good with middle age kids because if you just try to stop everything up versus allow things to flow, modify, I find it works a lot easier.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, yes. Because sometimes it's a moment to seed ideas and then sometimes you need to let them experience a less than experience to then like come back and be like, that seed that was planted back then because you let it flow. They're like, oh, oh, oh, can you tell me more about that?
SPEAKER_03:Well, and this actually goes back to something Lance and I have talked about a lot, which is I don't believe that coercion fits into the workplace. I think sharing ideas and seeing where people will go with that is far more interesting because they realize, oh, I actually do have the choice to go with this or not go with this. And when they choose it, that is so amazing. But it's okay if they didn't because it was up to them. And I do not fit well with people who try to do coercion. It just doesn't work for me. I'm like, no, I'm not going to accept that. That's maybe... The one time I will be the dam. I'm like, nope, we're going to stop this conversation right here.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And I mean, I think in a workplace, too, if you as leaders, if you've provided enough guidance and direction, almost like the playground for them to play in because they you've hired that person for a reason. They have their own unique experience and intelligence. And as we mentioned earlier, hopefully you hired someone to your weakness for a point because they're going to offer something that you might is maybe a blind spot for you. But if you give them the room within to play and the agency and the autonomy, that's when the magic happens.
SPEAKER_03:So there was a junior designer I was working with years ago. And one thing that struck me was their incredible talent that wasn't quite fully there yet. And instead of coaching them on the specifics, I realized, oh, this person's going to be just fine in a little bit of time. Let me just encourage them. So I started pointing out like, oh, if you did this, I think that'd be really cool. But I love it. What you're doing is great. And months later, the quality of their work shot up not because of me at all. If anything, I just didn't block them. I recognized that they were going in the right direction and I just became a little bit of a cheerleader.
SPEAKER_01:And
SPEAKER_03:it's interesting. When do you pull the fire alarm to fix a project that's failing? Very rarely, hopefully. Because often people will rise to the occasion if you let them.
SPEAKER_00:Right. Yeah.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I, you know, kind of going back to like your fractional business and starting the fractional business and, you know, realizing that for the first time, you probably only did one thing when you're in-house, but now you are all the things and you're learning the things. And with the money that you have to invest in your business and, you know, where are the areas of greatest blockage, like maybe it's accounting, like And where can we be able to automate where there might be a tech solution versus like having hiring accountant or, you know, are the questions going to be? I mean, this is kind of what I learned really quickly. Like, I can't do all the things like once I get a project, I can't just focus on that project. I also have to think about the next project that's going to happen. Otherwise, I see a lot of feast or famine like. Because people are used to doing the one job. But now we have to become like a manager of multiple projects as well. And it's also kind of what's that tipping point for yourself where you're able to deliver that level of expertise and quality across a number of clients. Like that number is different for different people. And the ability to manage multiple different clients and multiple projects probably within those clients is And it's also, too, like, how much can you do that? Because it's also, like, multitasking, multiswitching. And, like, have you set up the right tools and resources to be able to help you to leverage and equip you to do that well? And to be able to also set your boundaries and be really clear that you are not an in-house person. I think that's really easy when people hire you as a fractional worker, that it's hard for them if you don't set good boundaries. will default to thinking that you're available always and that you're their one person. And so really setting clear boundaries and SLAs is really important depending on the type of work that you're doing for your clients.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, because if you don't have those things and kind of speaking from my own experience, if you don't have any way of understanding the extent of working with this client and not working with this client, you get burned out. You probably aren't charging enough and It'll lead back to, all right, I'm terrified again. Where's this headed?
SPEAKER_00:Right? And that's like when we think about like when you're in-house, like we always think to, you know, being able to think about a project end date, like a contract end date and think about, okay, we can renew this contract. And, you know, how might we think about, you know, based on our experience, start being able to, in a way that's meaningful, think about how do we upsell? How do we, you know, we're going through a contract renewal. Will your pricing change? can rise. I mean, they're raising their prices for their customers, right? So they're used to that. The other thing that I learned is that working, if you're going to move from working with like solopreneurs, or if you're working with midsize small companies versus a Fortune 500 company, like the vendor management process is very uniquely different. So the pricing for, I've realized this is another failure of mine. I love talking about failures. Because it's a learning. So I was working with a larger one. I'm with a larger client. And I just had my normal pricing. I should have raised it because their vendor management team is gold. Their success measure is how much of a cost reduction do they get in the contracts? Like how much they negotiate down. They're supposed to negotiate down by a certain level. And so, right? So your
SPEAKER_03:initial point was
SPEAKER_00:just a normal point.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah,
SPEAKER_00:I'm a one person shop. I'm not a big I'm not Salesforce. So. So, yeah, that was another tip for me. I was like, I'm always going to go in way higher with larger companies that I know have extensive contract review processes.
SPEAKER_02:And larger companies have an expectation that your number is high. It's an extra digit or two. Right. Yeah. I mean, if you come in with with like, here's the money I need. They'll be like, oh, this person's not expensive enough.
SPEAKER_00:Right. Right. The CEO of that company met me. He's like, oh, he's he's a lot of fractional people aren't good at negotiating. And you were just so good. And I was like, no, I really was. It may have felt like that.
SPEAKER_03:But maybe compared to the baseline. I, I think one thing that I. I've noticed with a lot of fractional people is they have no sense of what the market is charging, what their rates are, what it can even be. And for some people, I'm like, add a zero. I'd say if you're at this stage where you don't know how much to charge and if people are saying yes so quickly and you have deal flow, it's probably good to find out what other people are charging. Talk to somebody to understand what's happening in the market because it could be the difference between paying your bills or not paying your bills.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's so true. And, you know, the thing is, is if they really want to work with you, you're going to see the look of shock on their face. And how often are you actually seeing the look of shock? I mean, honestly. So
SPEAKER_03:I had one client that I listed my price and they're like, can we double it and get more from you? I'm like, yes, yes, we can do that. We can do that. They're like, we have more money than time. We need to move quickly. I'm like, oh, sure. It doesn't happen too often, though.
SPEAKER_00:One fractional leader I loved was just giving me like nuggets of talking points to push back when people ask you to reduce. Because sometimes they're just negotiating too, right? It's not that they can't pay it. And his thing is, let's say, okay, let's say he had 100%. So then they're asking him to do 20% reduction. And he's like, okay, I hear you. But that means you want 80% of me? No, you want 100% of me. And so that's why you would pay 100% for me because I would never come in and give you just 80% of myself.
SPEAKER_03:All right, I'm going to try that next time, see how that goes.
SPEAKER_00:Just a tip. I thought that was clever.
SPEAKER_02:One of the best pieces of advice I got at the beginning of my fractional journey was I sat down with Darcy Mayfield, friend of the show, and she said, you need to triple your prices. And I was like, well, okay. And so then I did and I tried that with my next prospect and they didn't even blink. And I was thinking, wow, how much I would have left on the table. And it made such a difference. And you would have done the
SPEAKER_03:same amount of work either way. Yep.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly. Exactly. So I
SPEAKER_03:was reading a book about Netflix. I don't know, the co-founder telling his story. A bit of a, I'm not going to buy it all, but it's kind of interesting. And he kind of explained why they pay high salary for creative people. because they bring everything they have to work regardless so why not pay them the most that way attrition is down and people are excited to be there because they're not thinking about maximizing every dollar they just do their thing because they love doing it and so that's something for me it's like regardless of the price I'm still gonna do the same creative stuff so it would be nice that maybe my family and I can go on a vacation maybe we can pay our bills yeah and At the end of the day, if you're providing that value, yeah, this is a whole topic that I'm still working through myself on a day to day basis trying to figure out.
SPEAKER_00:If anyone tells me they've got their pricing down, I'm just, let's talk more about that. Because then that would be the nugget. You could go sell that.
SPEAKER_03:Yep, that's a business right there.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_02:Perfect pricing for fractionals. There's
SPEAKER_00:also the cost. There's also the challenge of not thinking about your hours as your dollars. That's what also, you know, at the beginning, I was thinking about hours and dollars versus the contract price. Because a lot of people, at least firm and HR and the people field, they want to, okay, you're working this many hours a week. So what's your hourly rate? It's like, it's not like I went out with hourly rate. It's like the the clients that I was trying to attract were like almost like boxing me into an hourly rate. It's like they didn't want to think about it differently. And that's still a challenge I have where I try not to get stuck in hourly, but it's like they can't, it's like they want the hourly rate. And I'm like, how do you put this to an hour? One
SPEAKER_03:way that I've gotten around it is first coming from a position of strength, right? Which is where I don't need the contract or at least I pretend I don't need it. And then what I basically say is like, it's based on deliverables and value and you'll renew if you're happy. Um, and, my incentive is to spend as much time as you need for us to renew and keep going forward. And if I don't need the contract, it almost always works. If I need it, they can tell. And then we pivot to ours and I, like I'll do whatever I can to get it. Um, so that's been interesting for me. Like how I can't, I'm not able to fake it. Um, My favorite time was when I didn't need any work and I kept closing more work and I couldn't understand why until I realized, oh, it's because I'm not coming off as desperate.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly. That's the number one thing. It's that standing in possibility and abundance mindset I call.
SPEAKER_02:I feel like we're getting so many good nuggets about sales and positioning here. I want to close a thought on one early about the subcontractor. You had suggested about some of those I don't know if it was some of those early ones that you found where, where you positioned yourself as someone who could do a thing for someone else who's already like working in a consultant type scenario. Um, I don't think on the show, I don't know that we've really touched on that as a potential revenue source for people who are just getting into this fractional thing. Cause that's the biggest hurdle for people is, is revenue, right? Like, Hey, I'm, I have like six months of severance. I've got to make this work in six months. Um, So how do we get revenue? And I think the more ideas that we have out there about revenue doesn't only look like I sold this SOW directly to you and you paid me for that. So we talked about a referral partnership and we talked now a little bit about can we subcontract it under someone? Those are areas we haven't really pushed into too much on this show, but I'm glad that you brought that up.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I just started, I just, I'm curious. So I just started, you know, when you start talking to people and like what you do, it just created, you know, new ways of thinking about and thinking about how I can offer value to people in different ways. And so like subcontracting or even like exploring working, you I also do, in addition, how do you augment, not just fractional. Yes, you have pure fractional people, but I've also had the chance to play around, and I'm a VP of customer success part-time as a contractor for an HR tech company. The customers are HR leaders, and so it's like an adjacent to what I do, right? I still get to advise, but it's specific to how they use this technology in their workplaces. So much fun. Like how cool to be able to kind of play around in some different spaces and learn some new skill sets. And then also I am kind of adjacent is kind of like equity advising. And so usually fractional leaders have incredible years of experience behind them and they have such richness. And so it's not an immediate revenue maker, but it's like a long term play. And so being able to find equity is advising positions is also really powerful. I think there's also also mentoring. Often we as fractional leaders are mentoring so many people for free. And yes, I love that. Like I will never stop mentoring people for free. But I also there's so many platforms now like mentor crews where you can put yourself up there and individuals can, you know, hire you and you can put your own pricing and packaging up there. It's another avenue, another channel. to be able to get the word out there. I've had so many people start with me as individuals paying out of their own money, that then they pitch me to the business, and then I get hired by the business. So you got to get creative and kind of think about all the different ways that you can work for people to learn about you, at least from my experience.
SPEAKER_03:One thing we talk about often on the show is a lot of people will pivot from W2 to fractional to W2 to fractional. That's kind of moving back and forth, whatever basically will pay the bills. And what I love, so I'm currently on a W2 and that's, I've been there for a while. What I loved that kind of stuck into my brain from fractional was, um, I am not defined by a single job description. I am not defined by a single salary, um, Benchmark. There's more to me than that. And the sky is the limit. Also, the ceiling, the floor is the limit. Found it both ways. And it kind of makes you think, I could dream again. I could be that little kid who imagined anything was possible before getting defined into a very narrow skill set.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. Oh, my goodness. I love that. And then just even thinking about all the different ways you can product yourself. So I like read just from I partnered with another fractional leader and we're starting a three month workshop in March. And so we're going to just try it out. That's awesome. Let's see if this works.
SPEAKER_03:I love that. This podcast came out of that exact type of thing with Lance and I. We're like, we're both doing fractional. Let's talk about it. Let's try and like see who else is doing this. And I think to this day, there's still, in my opinion, some disagreement about the definition of fractional. There is. Perfectly fine.
SPEAKER_00:There is. I agree. Because I've been schooled. I've been put in my place. There's a great, it's the great debate. Great debate.
SPEAKER_02:We try not to draw too hard of a line around how we... I'm
SPEAKER_00:not. I don't fit into any box. Everyone... My grandma used to say, you don't put Mindy in a box.
SPEAKER_02:I love it. Sounds about right. I think we could probably just keep going for a really long time.
SPEAKER_00:That's what everyone says.
SPEAKER_02:But I'm looking at the clock here. I want to ask you... I want to ask you this. Maybe this should be the thing we finish on. Sure. Connecting culture to revenue. You early on and when we were talking, you said something about somebody asked you, what are the things you love to do? What are the things people will pay you for? Culture is such a cool topic. Yeah. Tell me about connecting that to revenue and how does that become something that you can sell? Because a lot of folks don't want to pay for culture. They just figure it's going to happen.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, yeah, you're right. It will just happen, but not in the way they want it to, because then the people will organically form the culture, and then the founder will wonder, what in the world? What is going on? I've lost all control, and I'm trying all the things. Why is no one listening to me? This is because you didn't define your culture. And there's so much around. Really, culture is like kind of the people ecosystem of work. And it's about how do we come to work and how are we working together? What are really the behaviors that drive success within this organization that tie back to our why, that tie back to adding value to whoever we're adding value to? And how do we as an organization want to incentivize and recognize and how do we want to operate together and how do we want to drive decision making and prioritize that? your people are your largest investment in an organization. And to not strategically think about your people and the culture really as the ecosystem of how you're bringing them together to do work together, it's so detrimental. If you haven't thoughtfully thought of it, then you have then those cultures where people are just kind of running around doing the best thing that they can. They don't understand what the company's focused on, how they drive impact to that. They start to feel like they're not recognized, that how are we even measuring success? Why am I even here? And then you're not even attracting the right talent. And then you have people leaving within the first year. It's like, how come we cannot retain and attract the right talent here? Well, because we haven't strategically thought, about your cultural people ecosystem.
SPEAKER_03:And I've been at companies where it was done well and you could just see it working. You could see that feeling from everybody of belonging and pulling in the right direction. And then most other places are faking it and you can tell in an instant and you do not want to stay. I'm curious, just a quick follow-up on that. What do you do when a company has... has all the right pieces in place for culture, it's going well, and then it derails and you don't know. Can you ever pull it back?
SPEAKER_00:Yes, if you're mindful about it and if you're brave enough to call out how you failed and how you derailed and what steps are you taking to regain, often it's regain trust, to get back to... get back to what that what the culture should be and redefining it and coming together as one team to think about what is that we derailed now we need to rebuild and what is you can't get back what you had so
SPEAKER_03:you're saying
SPEAKER_00:there's a chance there is a chance there always is a chance there's always possibility the And how you tie it back to, I mean, everything at the end of the day, if you have the alignment, if you have, if people are working together towards a common goal, that's the profitability, that's a revenue. That's often, and if you're talking about culture not tied to your business strategic outcomes, then it's not really culture. It's just people, tasks, and activities. It's just payroll and benefits, which really payroll and benefits are such strategic elements. that should be thought of strategically. So when we are having our business strategy conversations, if you're having business strategy conversations, it should include people. It should include the culture. It should include every, I mean, change is ever present and a force within work, within our lives and change and how it impacts people. And if we're not thinking about that element within our strategy, then we really do very quickly lose, like you said, Joshua, we derail.
SPEAKER_02:I love that. I love this conversation so much. I can see another episode with Mindy on board in the future. It would be a joy. How can people who want to follow you, founders that are hearing this and thinking, I absolutely have to work with Mindy, how can they find you? Where's the best place to follow along?
SPEAKER_00:They can find me at www.agileandhr.com or on LinkedIn.
UNKNOWN:Okay.
SPEAKER_03:Perfect. And for anyone listening, if you have questions or stuff for Lance and I, email at fractional.fm. We'd love to hear from you. And have a great rest of your week. It's very cold. Hope it gets warmer.
