Fractional
Fractional
Relentlessly Generous: Mike Malloy on Entrepreneurship & Impact
Today, we’re joined by Mike Malloy, Founder of Malloy Industries and Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University, where he teaches business and entrepreneurship. Mike shares his relentlessly generous approach to business, empowering entrepreneurs to build, market, and scale their ventures.
In this episode, we dive into:
- What it means to be relentlessly generous and why it will change your business
- Mike’s personal journey—through failures and successes
- Advice for early-stage entrepreneurs on marketing yourself and building a sustainable business
Along with his value of relentless generosity, Mike shares tools and templates to help fractionals with strategy, and improving decision-making.
Resources & Links
📌 Connect with Mike:
- Malloy Industries
- Email: mike@malloyindustries.com
📌 Tools & Templates:
- Strategic Business Review Agenda
- Jobs To Be Done <> Value Propositions Worksheet
- Becoming So Good They Can’t Ignore You (Free eBook)
- End of Week Report The Malloy Way™
- Meeting Agenda & Legal Contract Templates
Join us for a fantastic conversation on generosity, entrepreneurship, and building a business that lasts.
All right. Hello, and welcome back to the Fractional.fm podcast. We're back again. I'm here with my co-host, Joshua. Say hi, Joshua.
SPEAKER_02:Hey, good to see you, Lance. It's been a little bit. Hey, nice to be here. And I just want to say, in North Idaho, it's sunny, and that just makes me happy.
SPEAKER_01:And it's going to be sunny. We're getting into the mid-50s this weekend, and I don't know what to do with myself. Get that
SPEAKER_02:sunscreen out. Yep, that's right. It's time.
SPEAKER_01:That's right. And the other voice you're hearing today is Mike Molloy. Mike is a founder at Molloy Industries. He's an adjunct professor at Georgetown University. He teaches about business and entrepreneurship. And Mike is a guest here. Thank you for being here, Mike. Super glad to have you. Shout out to Mindy Honkoop for the introduction. And always great to connect from one guest to another. So welcome to the show. Tell us a little bit about yourself, Mike.
SPEAKER_00:Hi, I'm Mike Malloy. I've got previous experience as a Deloitte consultant, traveling sunglasses salesman and startup CEO, then incubator program director and adjunct professor. And I'm passionate about being a relentlessly generous and enthusiastically fun force for good in the world, helping entrepreneurs buy back their freedom and time so they can focus on what matters most to them both professionally and personally. But just to be vulnerable for a minute with you guys, as a result of My mom passing away in the fall of 2021, a week after we found out my wife was pregnant with our first son, our chief cuteness officer here at Molo Industries. I realized that I couldn't be the change alone that I wanted to see in the world and kind of found myself at the forefront of the future of work during the quiet, quitting, great resignation era. And that led me down this path to be all in that the future of work is fractional. So therefore, I'm the CEO at Molloy Industries, which creates more time and freedom for CEOs by giving their undesirable hats over to vetted fractional executive specialists. And we really help entrepreneurs buy back that freedom by really, they don't have to do it all themselves. Brute force isn't the answer. And that there are super smart people, hopefully like some of your listeners, who can come in for one or two days a week and really transform a business. And save time for the entrepreneurs as well as save money. Fractional is the more cost-effective method. It's a fraction of the cost of a full-time executive.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, totally. So to boil this down, then as far as a business model, in basic terms, you're connecting fractional leaders with founders and executives who need help in a specific area of expertise that they don't have and they don't have time to learn how to do. And so you create that win-win for both parties and you kind of broker that relationship. Exactly.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yep, we have built a marketplace with the supply side of fractional executives. We have about 360 fractional executives that we've vetted in our community. And the demand side is kind of growth stage B2B companies typically doing one to two to 10 million on their way to 20 to 50 million in annual revenue. I know we're not necessarily working with the early stage startup, a couple of guys in a garage with an idea. We found once you get to that two comma club, you tend to have the budget to invest in a fractional executive who can help build and scale the company with you. So you don't have to wear all the hats. You can start to bring in people who've been to the rodeo a few times before.
SPEAKER_02:So I'm curious with these executives you're working with who are looking for fractionals, are you having to pitch them on the idea or are they already ready for fractionals and just want to know the process? Where do they usually fall in that? Because we have talked to guests who are working on helping to convert the market to that idea. So I'm curious where you fall in that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, there's definitely a bell curve of like educational marketing that's necessary for CEOs to know what a fractional is. Oh, you mean like a part time employee or you mean like, well, no, like a fractional. They are a core member of the team. They're sitting in a leadership seat. You just don't need to pay them for 40 hours a week and you don't need to give them all the benefits and overhead. You kind of pay for the expertise you need. Certainly in our business, it's a very flexible model on a month to month basis. where we have like a three-step process for CEOs to work with us. That one, there's an assessment, you'll talk to me or another expert on our team, help us understand your growth opportunities, what the specific needs are and your unique environment. Then we have the Malloy Match, which takes like three to five days coming out of that first 30 to 60-minute meeting, where the CEO will meet their hand-selected specialist. And we'll kind of ensure that they get the right expertise and that the person is a great culture fit for the team. And then typically within seven to 10 days, we'll do a quick kickoff where the fractional executive specialist starts in days, not months that it takes to find a full time hire. And then they can start confidently scaling. And our contracts are flexible month to month. We try to lower the risk of both making a bad hire or taking a long time to find somebody to get in that seat. And, you know, one of the things we do is like a second match free guarantee. If we match you with somebody and for any reason in the first 365 days, it's not a good fit for free. We'll come back in. We'll find somebody else to put in there. We'll make sure we kind of make it right and understand why that one didn't work out. And we kind of check in monthly with with all of our fractionals and with all of our clients to make sure that folks are happy and, you know, getting the impact they need.
SPEAKER_02:So a bunch of questions that are coming out of all of that. First, you made a comment earlier on that fractional is the future. Are you talking to these founders and CEOs about temporarily having fractionals until they get big enough to be able to convert to full time? Or are you setting the idea that fractionals is probably all they need long term?
SPEAKER_00:All they need long-term.
SPEAKER_02:All right, tell me more about that. I'm curious, because you mentioned not needing the 40 hours. What is that future of work? I want to hear a little bit more of your philosophy there.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, absolutely. And I think there are a few different choose-your-own-adventure paths. So I'm not saying it's only a forever thing, but we've been in business for almost four years. We have one client we've been working with for three and a half years, and we're never going to stop. We're pretty good at where we're at. We have other clients where they're paying... 10K a month for 40% capacity from a fractional CMO or a fractional CRO. And they don't need more. And there's no like path where that person can't continue to lead this function. What they can do is bring in more junior folks underneath them as they grow. On the sales side, that might be SDRs or account executives kind of reporting up to this sales leader. On the marketing side, sometimes that's internal marketing. marketing coordinator people. Oftentimes, it's herding a bunch of external vendor third party cats who do different specialized niche marketing things that funnel up to this person's strategy. And she also kind of steers the senior leadership team on what they need to do and related to marketing. Let's say if there's press releases or content strategies or whatever. But they're able to do that in, you know, approximately 40% capacity, like we don't We don't always do hourly billing. We try to just say, hey, here's a retainer. We're going to do this much. We're not lawyers measuring six-minute increments. We're much more focused on the impact and what you need. We've worked with over 100 clients. Only one time have they hired our fractional as a full-time employee. So it's happened, but it's not our business model. We're not like a traditional recruiter headhunter that charges 33% of the first-year total comp plan for like$75,000 or whatever. Our business model is based on literally we charge a$3,300 success fee if and only if somebody hires a fractional from us. And then we do the contract. There are 1099. We're overseeing it the whole time. But we check in monthly with the client to understand what do they need. And so I'll tell you a story. I had a sales call today. There's a company. It was like 10 months ago. We had five meetings. I scoped it out. I matched them with somebody. We got the proposal. We got the contract. The last second, they're like, actually, I think we're good. We don't need your help. And I was like, OK. Smile and nod. And I got a great book recommendation I'll throw out there, Give to Grow, which it basically says, take everything as an opportunity to deepen the relationship. And sometimes you hear that no, like you kind of are a little frustrated. Okay, well, if you need anything, we're here to help, and I've shared some resources along the past year, and we send out holiday cards. So this, I'm just showing on camera here, is our, like, Happy Valentine's Day card. We send out with some dad jokes on the back. But speed away, speed away, you guys. Do you know who always has a date for Valentine's Day?
SPEAKER_02:I have no idea.
SPEAKER_00:Calendar. It's Calendar.
SPEAKER_02:Certified dad right here.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I've had more years of practice at dad jokes than you, Mike.
SPEAKER_00:I like it, Lance. And so I got an email today from this future customer. Ten months ago, weren't interested. I guess yesterday I was I took my son out. We had a picnic at the beach for lunch. I got a phone call. Hello. Hey, you know, I was like, oh, what's up, man? I'm having lunch right now. Like I said, I'll send you an email. But like, give me a call back. Make a chance. I got home. I got an email. First thing in email was, hey, Mike, love getting your holiday cards. Your jokes are the best. Next line was, hey, I know we weren't ready to start last year. We're ready to start now. Do you think you could place somebody to start like tomorrow? And I was like, oh, tomorrow something has happened where they weren't buying then, but that now has now become now and like now they want to buy. So I wrote back. We had a 30 minute, 45 minute call today. And basically the COO's last day is Friday. Today is Wednesday. Oh, shoot. And so, okay, there's an urgency. They already know, like, and trust us. They got very close to it. But for the listeners, like, no now often means no right now, but it doesn't mean no never. And like 15% of people you talk to are going to buy within the next 90 days. 85% of people are going to buy are going to buy from like day 91 to a thousand. So having some method, whether it's sending goofy holiday cards or email newsletter or or just like a once a month, you remember to send people a thoughtful email or text or something, keeps you top of mind because all things being equal, people do business with people they know, they like, they trust, and they're in flow with. And if you're not in flow with them, if you're not showing up in their inbox every once in a while, they're going to forget that you're the person they should go to when it is a hair on fire. Oh, my COO is quitting in two days and I need to, you know, make sure we still know how to send our NDAs and payroll and all this stuff next week.
SPEAKER_02:One of the aspects you're talking about there is you're building up trust, right? You're building up permission. Seth Godin talks about permission marketing, making yourself available and slowly giving drips of information. I had a client one time that they'd come to me for one type of task and they came back a few months later to repeat the task. And as we're on the call, he's like, and I need to hire someone else to do this other part. And I'm like, well, I can do that too. And Then it ended up being there's a third thing I could do. And he was much happier to just expand the scope of the work with me than to try and build up trust with a new person and see how that all fit in. And it was a great project. I loved it. So I love what you're describing there of I've never thought about the 85%. 85% will come from later. So how are they thinking about you? How are they perceiving every interaction? Are you giving them something to come back? And I'm curious. How do you compare that with not giving away too much? And maybe that's impossible, but maybe like not actually making money off the transaction.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, great, great question. And I'll share a couple of tidbits here. One is a thing I learned from Dean Jackson. It was a great marketing guy. Brand is an acronym that stands for buying reflex affecting now decisions. And so the stronger the brand is, when there's a now decision, do they think of you? So you're trying to be there when there's a now decision. Our number one core value is relentlessly generous. We're givers. If you know Adam Grant's kind of givers, matchers, takers, everybody we work with wants to add value on the front end. And if you add enough value on the front end, the math on the back end takes care of itself, man. And it's okay to break even or even lose a little bit of money on an initial offer or two. I think the winning the work phase, do as much as you can. Don't worry about billable hours and all of this stuff. Just like, hey, how can I help them? How can I help them? How can I help them? And in every interaction, have something that you can, at the end, be like, hey, would it be helpful for your listeners if I shared a link to our strategic business review agenda template that we do with our clients, we also do with our future clients, and it's an hour meeting to kind of talk through where are they now, where do they want to go, ultimately getting at like what are the five things you need to accomplish in the next 365 days to feel more pride confidence and excitement in your business and you ask for five because three they get to pretty quickly without fail that fourth or fifth one is like always something we can help with and we really needed to like pull it out of them and joshua i thought of this when you brought up that like oh i could also help with that other thing and this other thing too like that's what you get to when you have this relationship and if you know what they want to do and then the next question is like when Like, what's the time horizon? Like, I got on the call this morning. I was like, hey, it seems like this is pretty urgent. Like, what changed in your business that, like, you guys need to solve this now? And I was like, well, tomorrow's my last day. And I was like, okay. So, like, now I get it. And the more there's, like, a hard deadline of something they have to do or, like, I got to do my taxes, you know, by April 15th or maybe October 15th if you do the extension thing. But you got to do it by then. I've
SPEAKER_02:never done that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And so, I think... understanding what it is they want to accomplish and positioning yourself as a trusted advisor. Like my business card literally says founder, CEO, and trusted advisor.
SPEAKER_02:So I want to pivot a little bit here because there's a whole other question I've been thinking about. You're setting up an environment for founders to be able to bring in great team members and to grow their company, to push it forward without having to go to full-time hires. What is the bull case for the fractional executives to benefit from this in the long term relative to maybe having big fat compensation packages from individual companies? Why are they choosing to do this or are they even choosing or do they have no other option? What's the benefit to them long term?
SPEAKER_00:Flexibility, autonomy, control, lifestyle design. I work from home at the beach with my wife and my almost three-year-old son.
SPEAKER_02:I'm
SPEAKER_00:wearing pants right now, but I don't have to. I think that's a huge part of it. So I went to Georgetown. I got my master's in comp sci there. And Cal Newport, who's a famous author, was one of my professors.
SPEAKER_02:We've referenced him often on the show. So that is really cool to hear. I was looking at his website today. I was reading one of his latest posts.
SPEAKER_00:There you go. So I'm going to reference So Good They Can't Ignore You. which talks about acquiring career capital by adopting the craftsman mindset. You stretch out your comfort zone, you get better and better. And eventually, and this is a Steve Martin quote, like you're so good that they can't ignore you. If you're a smart knowledge worker with a decade or more of experience, there's stuff you're really good at that you could turn down a promotion at a job that's going to soul suck you and instead move to the beach and say, hey, I'll work for you guys like three days a week. We'll do other stuff over here. And like, maybe the other stuff makes money or maybe you, get into needlepoint, which was my hobby that I picked up during COVID. Do you want to describe what you're
SPEAKER_02:showing for the listeners, what that was? I
SPEAKER_00:am actively working on a beach scene eyeglass case. I've done the sky and the palm tree, but I got to get down to the sand and the waves. And never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that I would be an avid needle pointer at age 38. But COVID was a weird time, guys. And I stumbled into a needlepoint store one day.
SPEAKER_02:I bake sweetbreads, you needlepointed. We all got through it one way or the other.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And so to circle back to your question of like, do people have an option? They do. Like they can certainly go look and find other full-time jobs and whatever. But the more skills you have, the higher you can charge for it. And I have a hypothesis that most people are undercharging themselves. And what I would recommend is come up with a number in your head for an hourly rate, take a real deep breath in and then double it and tell people that's what it costs per hour to work with you. And so I practiced it in front of a mirror. And guess what? If somebody says they're not going to pay you$450 an hour, great. But now you've anchored that that's what you're worth. And if they get you for 250 or 200 or even 125, that is a steal. But if you said I'm worth$90 an hour, maybe, argue, I don't know. And my journey quickly was like I had a tax guy a decade ago charge me$200 an hour. And when I started Fractional, I was like, I'm better than that guy. I'll charge$200 an hour. And one of my pieces of advice for people who are just getting into Fractional, every week meet with three people who already know you. for informational interview, customer discovery, coffee chat, you're not selling them anything. But in the meeting, ask them, hey, what would you hire me for? Like, if you think of me, like, what are the three things that come to mind? I'm just trying to figure out my marketing, positioning, value prop jobs to be done, etc. Listen to them. And I did this with my friend Liz Whitehead, who I met with earlier today. Amazing. And I told her, I'm gonna charge 200 bucks an hour. She's like, why don't you charge 250? I don't know. And since that meeting, I charged$2.50 an hour. It was just that. And I made 50 bucks. And then at this point, I don't want to do any billable work. Like our business is for matching and like I need to step out of it. But I had a couple of legacy clients. So I told them at the end of last year, like, hey, it's November. Like I'm going to keep doing this at$2.50 an hour. But if you need any help in 2025, my new hourly rate, it's$4.50 an hour. Okay. Nobody was like, that's ridiculous.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:You need to get some no's before you realize you're at the top end, right? If you just get yeses all the time, keep raising your prices.
SPEAKER_02:I had a project where the person said yes so fast, I realized in that moment, shoot, I messed up here. And actually, I have a deal with my brother. Every time I'm about to send a price to a client, I just text him the number. He texts me back, increase it by 30%. It's just a thing we do. And I have made thousands of dollars off of that little mechanism right there. All right, so there's so much there. The counterpart then that you're describing is people are not being taken advantage of as fractionals because you're also helping them to understand their value. You're showing them mechanisms to make sure that they're finding their value in the marketplace. And as Cal Newport talks about, do the thing that you're made to do, not something an intern would do. Do less of that. Do more of what your 10 years of value in the marketplace offer. I love that. So that's how you're basically counteracting a fractional not being taken advantage of. It's finding what their value is and making sure they're charging equivalently.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, exactly right. And I think one other piece of that as well is that with the rise of AI, AI can do a lot of stuff. But a lot of smart, busy CEOs don't have time, myself included, to be in ChatGBT and all these new AI things all the time. You can just drive that and hand them the output and do it pretty quick. That's okay. They want the end in mind. And on the budget thing too, the question that I always ask people is, Is there a range you're considering investing to solve this problem or to achieve this outcome? What's the range you want to invest? And then back into that number with a retainer and hourly rate.
SPEAKER_02:Okay. This is a whole side question, but I've got to ask this. You mentioned that Cal Newport was your professor. What... I was reading his post today or one of them on like social media, basically cut it out of your life. It's not valuable from a consumption perspective. Do you actually talk to fractionals about that? Like finding ways to make their time more valuable? The reason I say all this is three months ago, I quit social media. Best thing I've ever done. I quit it a week after the election. I was just so done. So is it almost like you can find more time if you're not wasting your time or is that just like too personal? You don't really talk to people about that.
SPEAKER_00:I don't think it's too personal. I also don't really talk to people about it, but I quit social media like many years ago, largely thanks to Cal Newport with the only one that I use is LinkedIn. And that's because that's where I do business development. And like I post on Facebook or Instagram maybe once a quarter. I also like don't share pictures of my family on the Internet for privacy reasons. So I don't have much to show. But I post on LinkedIn every day. But I also have a team that helps me create the content and schedule it. And it is a very efficient thing. My minimum acceptable day for LinkedIn is I just have to add two comments on other people's posts. Cause that's how you grow on LinkedIn is not by you raining down wisdom on the world, but go follow people that are smarter than you and have larger followings and add thoughtful comments that add value. Not great post Lance, but like when you listen to this podcast and you, you listen to it because you saw Lance or Joshua or me posted on LinkedIn, add a comment about, Hey, I loved it. The, you know, 12 minute Mark, when you told that joke, about what do you call a cow who lifts weights?
SPEAKER_02:Go for it.
SPEAKER_00:Shredded beef.
SPEAKER_02:Yes. All right. That actually calls out the fact that 99% of LinkedIn comments are absolute junk, right? So if you can stand out and have something valuable, there's just so many thoughts that go on from there. But I love the idea of My first time I quit social media was about six years ago for a month because of the Deep Work book from Cal Newport, and then I did it again. And then finally last fall, I'm like, I'm just done. I don't know how long it's going to last, but I'm done, and it's been fantastic. So that's a whole other podcast we'll start up someday. Okay, Lance, take it from here.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, okay. Just watching our clock, and I think there's just so much good stuff we could get to. Mike, you touched on... You said the word vulnerable a little bit, which I think is so great when folks get a little bit vulnerable with our audience here. Tell us a little bit about the personal side of your journey, how you decided you're going to do this. I mean, you gave us a snippet, but I just think there's probably something there that would be super interesting to hear.
SPEAKER_00:So if we rewind like five years ago, I don't know if the listeners ever heard of it, but there was this small global pandemic that people kind of hibernated. Yeah. And so six months before that, I got married and we moved into a great apartment in D.C. It was in the basement. There was no natural light. There was unreliable Internet. But it didn't matter because we went to work all the time and we were out in the city. And then this happened and we lasted six months and then we moved to the beach in Delaware. And I at the time was running an incubator in D.C. for early stage social entrepreneurs. Fast forward to spring of 21, they said, hey, come back to the office. I was like, hey, guys, you didn't notice that my background was two and a half hours away, but it is. And so that was the start of Malloy Industries, which was just the Mike Malloy single shingle. I knew some entrepreneurs. They hired me for, you know, a couple grand here and there to do some things. Then I got like a 20K project and I was like, oh, all right, there, there, this is great. And then very unexpectedly, my mom got sick and passed in early September. And My wife was due Cinco de Mayo. And so I had like seven months to figure out how do I build a business that isn't Mike's billable hours? Because I took the month of September off. I didn't work at all. I just was with my dad and grieved and kind of went through this stuff. And it sucked. You know, people have lost people like it sucks. And when I came back, I said, hey, how do I take off May and June and maybe next summer? And like, if I want to take paternity leave, I want to be a dad. How do I do that? And I realized I need other people to do the work. And so started a customer discovery path to talk to potential fractional executives and friends and entrepreneurs. I've done like more than 500 customer discovery interviews at this point, which is why I'm so confident that, hey, there's a there there. Doesn't mean everybody is going to be a fractional or every company is going to hire fractionals, but there's a massive market. And what people need is the access to the talent. They don't know everybody. I'm like my unique ability besides telling dad jokes and wearing Hawaiian shirts is pattern recognition and like empathizing with entrepreneurs. Like I glazed over the fact that I had a sunglass company for six years. There's for profits, there's nonprofits guys, and then there's no profits. Uh, I went bankrupt at 30 and like lost all my money, did not return anything to investors, had to move in my parents' basement, flat broke, met my girlfriend, fiance wife, uh, during that stage who did not marry me for my money. Very clear. That's how you
SPEAKER_02:know that you're okay.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And so through all of this transition stage, I realized I can connect other people. They can do the work. And I can just kind of be the facilitator, the trusted advisor, and have now built a team of, you know, I got five or six core team members who work part-time with me, help in various areas. so that I do what I do best and they help make everything run smoothly. We have like end of week reports that all of our fractionals submit. Oh, here's a pro tip for the listeners as a fractional. I don't share our template with you guys, but it's a Google Doc every week on Friday. Here's what I did this week, the key meetings, action items. Here's what I'm doing next week, key meetings and action items. Here's where I'm stuck client and I need you to give me access to this thing or review this deliverable. And here's my upcoming schedule because I'm off next Tuesday for the dentist. Next Friday is my partner's birthday. And if you send that every week and you over communicate, that's how those relationships extend in perpetuity. That's how you increase the retention and even expansion of work with people when they're not like wondering every week, what is that guy doing for 10, 20 hours a week? And it's a running document, so you can see all the previous weeks. It just kind of builds. I think I got one today from somebody, and then we've got like 45 pages worth of this over the past year.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and I will...
SPEAKER_00:share in the share notes. We have like meeting agenda templates we do in Google Docs for all type of meeting. But also I just share our legal contract templates and our proposal templates. And one of the things in there is a joint accountabilities that says I'm going to respond to a phone call or a text within four hours, nine to five East Coast, Monday through Friday. I'm going to respond to an email within 48 hours and I'm going to be off during dedicated family time and vacation time. And so like everybody I work with knows next week is spring break. I'm not teaching in Georgetown. I have the week off. I have no meetings. As long as you give people a heads up, it's fine. You have to own it.
SPEAKER_02:You're addressing one of the things that I really appreciate is you don't have to be a parent. You don't have to have a life partner to get this. But it seems that I run across people who have had those two elements. They're like, wait a minute, life actually matters. Things outside of work matter. And having lost someone very dear to me as well, I have those moments where I'm able to pause and say, yes, I enjoy what I do. I like to make things happen. But at the end of the day, the small group of people around me in my life every day, they are so precious and there's a limited amount of time left with them. So that kind of brings it around to you do these things because you enjoy them, but they're not the only thing that should exist. And so I just I love it. That's my personal soapbox.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, Mike, you mentioned something at the outset that I want to ask about a follow up relentlessly generous. What do you mean by that? What does that look like? And maybe a couple different areas of your life.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, there's a great book called Relentless. I think Grover is the author's name. He was like Kobe's mental coach. He coached some great athletes. And so to me, Relentless is just like, I'm going forward. There's no stopping me. There's no, oh, 99% I'm going to do it. 1% I might do it. Like 100% is easier than 90%. nine percent because you're always wondering oh is this the time that i'm gonna have ice cream after eight o'clock at night like no i never i don't eat anything after eight o'clock period and like that's a rule and if you have a rule when people offer you i got a rule i don't eat after eight sorry uh i'm trying to sleep man i'm gonna go to bed early and i got a little kid so um so relentless to me is like hey we are going to be generous no matter what like whether people appreciate it or not but the most part they do um that's how we have built our whole business. And like, that's something that's been ingrained in me since I was a kid, like with my parents and you know, how, how I was raised and went to Catholic school from second grade through high school, college, grad school, little Jesuits go set the world aflame, men and women for others. So, you know, trying, yeah. Uh, trying to just be aligned there.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. I'm looking at our clock. There's so much I want to ask. Um, Early-stage entrepreneurs, early-stage solopreneurs, early-stage business owners, what is something that would be one or two pieces of advice that you would want to give to someone who's like, hey, I'm trying to get into this. What do you see the early-stage folks struggle with the most and what's the advice they can most use right now?
SPEAKER_00:They struggle with everything, but they're not thinking about everything. And so here's an example. I know you're in Idaho. What time is it right now where you guys are?
SPEAKER_01:It's almost three o'clock. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Boom. I asked a question. I directed both of your attention exactly where I wanted to go. One went left, one went down on his watch. But what are the questions you, dear listener, can ask future customers to direct their attention to the problem, the pain point, the challenges that they have that suck, that are irritating and hard and annoying and frustrating that then make them want to look for a solution. And but you're standing in front of them. And I'll give you a two-sentence Mad Libs. Do you know how? Describe the pain point, shine the spotlight on it, make them think of this challenge, a thing that's really hard and annoying. I might say, do you know how a lot of entrepreneurs are wearing too many different hats and juggling 17 hair on fire problems and have to context switch all day between different parts of their business? Second part, well, what we do is insert your unique selling proposition there. And it doesn't have to be rocket science. You know, you should have a one-liner like, well, what we do is give CEOs a fractional executive specialist to quarterback their team and make them more money because it's a fraction of the cost of a full-time executive. So do you know how pain problem what we do is? And I have wordsmithed that thing at least 150 times in four years. I would never get it tattooed on my body. You know, it is a living, breathing thing in every conversation folks are talking to. Oh, where do their pay-to-digit bills eyebrows? If you're in person, even on Zoom, those are called incitometers. So when they go up, oh, people are interested. Oh, you hit something that, you know, because they might need money. They might need time. They might need peace of mind. You know, what's the thing where they're like leaning in versus when are they checked out and kind of on their phone on the side? That's how you know you have their attention and just kind of dig deeper there. And there's a a great sales framework called PASTA. Problem, accentuate the problem, twist the knife, talk about the solution. What does that transformation look like? And then offer them. What's the offer you want to make them? And would it be helpful if, you know, we had another conversation and I could walk you through my XYZ framework or, you know, would it be helpful if, you know, we met next Tuesday at two and here's another pro tip to BAM fam, book a meeting from a meeting. Anytime you're talking to somebody who might hire you, the goal of that meeting is to get the next meeting. So pull out your phone while you're on the meeting, look at your calendar, get it on the books. Don't follow up with seven back and forth emails and they ghost you. You know, the faster you can get to the next meeting or at least get on the calendar, you can then start that meeting by talking about the problem, accentuate the problem. Because again, they don't care about the solution, the transformation, if they're not thinking short term goldfish brain about the problem.
SPEAKER_02:So you've given a bunch of tactical and strategic advice for how to approach this. If someone's just feeling tired and overwhelmed and not sure if they're going to succeed, not sure if they're going to make it, it sounds like you've been there. I know I've been there. What would you say to them to maybe have a little hope that this side of things that you're describing could be possible, that they could get into this world?
SPEAKER_00:So a lot of that overwhelm stems from this future place you want to get to you have all these clients where he pays you and there's a ton of money flowing in you're like so far away from that that you're focused on this gap and that's going to wear you down if you rotate around 180 degrees and look behind you at the gain and wherever you come from where you were a year ago or where you were when you graduated college or if you even have one client who's ever paid you money and like sent you an email that said something nice about you create a little label or folder in your gmail saved And when you feel super depressed, go read some of those saved emails about people saying how much they appreciate you and that you help them. Or if you have photos of you even like volunteering for Habitat for Humanity or something, like have things to remind you of the good you have done in the world gives you some more momentum fuel to move forward and do more of that good, especially on the tough days. Like this is a Thursday afternoon. I'm having a great day today. It's been a great couple of days. I was super depressed on Monday. I had an anxiety attack. I had social anxiety. And nothing specific happened. I just was overwhelmed. I hadn't slept well last week. And then I was kind of sick over the weekend. But I was talking to my wife. I was like, honey, I don't have it today. I got to just kind of go for a walk. I'm going to take a nap. But that happens. That is this entrepreneurial roller coaster. Higher highs, lower lows. Stabilize as best you can. you know, a little breath work, meditation, exercise, all those things can help. At the very least, like drink water.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Thank you. I really appreciate that because I feel overwhelmed often and I keep water right here at the desk. And there's just a little humanity to this that no one is perfect and actually being willing to admit that you're struggling with things makes people more attracted to you, makes people trust you more. So open up a little bit. I think that's a great thing.
SPEAKER_01:Love it because I think there's a lot of people who are expecting themselves to not have the trough between the crests. But even folks who are successfully making it as an entrepreneur, like yourself, Mike, that's reality. It's real life. And that's just how it is.
SPEAKER_00:I'll put a small plug for stoicism in here. I think Ryan Holiday is the Daily Stoic or the Daily Dad book for dads out there. great, great resources. The thesis of stoicism is the only thing you can control is your own reasoned mind. Everything that happens out there, it's outside of your hula hoop of control. It's how do you respond to it? What is the story you tell yourself? And I really got into stoicism as I was going through bankruptcy and was super depressed and needed to realize a business could fail that didn't mean I was a failure. And so one of the things I do in all my check-ins with my CEO coaching clients, with my direct reports, our staff meeting. We start with, hey, how are you guys doing one through 10 personally? How are you doing one through 10 professionally? And what's one thing you're grateful for? And we separate those two numbers and we check in the beginning because you could be a nine professionally, but maybe you're a four personally because your significant other broke up with you or somebody in the hospital. Or the business can be tanking, but it doesn't mean you have to be such a negative place. And I'm going to encourage everybody to use the rule that there are no sevens. You've got to pick between a six and an eight because there's a big difference and a seven's a cop out. And so six or lower, hey, maybe they need some help. Eight or above, eh, they're probably fine.
SPEAKER_01:Love that format. I'm going to try that in our next leadership meeting. That's awesome. Mike, I'm going to stop us here. I'm sure we could talk to you like five more
SPEAKER_00:times. Lance, before you cut me off, though, I have to ask, do you guys know where rainbows go when they get in trouble?
SPEAKER_02:They go away. Tell us.
SPEAKER_00:They go to Prism.
SPEAKER_02:Prism. All right. My son's going to love that one.
SPEAKER_00:That's good. Joshua, it's okay. It's only a light sentence.
SPEAKER_02:All right. I've got one for you. What's brown and sticky?
SPEAKER_00:I don't know. What's brown and sticky?
SPEAKER_02:A stick. I love it. Awesome. I love doing that with kids. We need to know where people can find Mike.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. What's that, Mike? Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. Our website is Malloy Industries, M-A-L-L-O-Y-I-N-D-U-S-T-R-I-E-S.com. If you go to Malloy Industries slash pod, we have a landing page for podcast listeners. We'll put some resources and stuff up on there. And I'll give you guys some good stuff for the show notes. And if you didn't get the reference, Malloy Industries is just a Stark Industries Ironman reference. So give me like another 15 years, I'll have an Ironman suit. That's what we're working towards.
SPEAKER_02:We'll get there eventually. And for anyone listening, feel free to reach out. Email at fractional.fm if you have questions. Thank you so much.
