61 What Business Owners Should Know About Utilizing Fractional Consultants

SPEAKER_01: This is the Empowering Healthy Business Podcast, and I'm your host, Cal Wilder. Each episode, we'll dive into topics important to folks who want to run businesses that are both nicely profitable, sustainable, and scalable, and who want to achieve balance in their lives and realize their potential inside and outside of work. The show is sponsored by SmartBooks, provider of bookkeeping and accounting for businesses. Let's get started.

SPEAKER_03: Yeah, great question. So uh many larger organizations have the role of a chief operating officer, and that tends to be uh someone who's kind of responsible for executing the vision of the CEO and the owners, and just working within the business, making sure that all of the different functions of the business are in sync with one another, that the leadership team is uh held accountable to delivering on their results and things like that. So that's a very common role in a large organization.

Um, many small businesses have those same challenges and needs, and yet they can't necessarily afford a full-time uh experienced executive to come in and run their business. And so the whole idea behind our business, key performance integrators, is to be able to offer that executive level support and service for on a part-time or fractional basis, so that the business owners can really take advantage of all the years of knowledge and experience that that these folks have to help them achieve their goals and grow their business.

Really, it it all starts with a really good strategic plan. And so we can we can help a business to develop that and uh create clarity so that everyone in the business knows what we're doing and why we're doing it. And then we really make sure that there's a good process in place to measure our performance against that plan every week, every month, every quarter. And and that's really the most important thing that we do is create that plan and then hold people accountable to delivering on that plan.

And one of the areas that many, many small business owners struggle is that accountability piece. We have a client that we recently took on that um, you know, it's uh uh the owner, CEO, her brother-in-law is on the leadership team, and uh she struggles with okay, he's family, and yet he may or may not be delivering in a particular area. And how do I have that conversation and not make it so personal and whatever? So we can really help be a neutral third party there to help really get to the root of that and make sure that everyone is accountable for delivering results and delivering on their commitments.

SPEAKER_02: That's a good question. And there are so many different things that can lead to that, right? One could be compliance, and you know, every state has different rules and regulations. It's not like it was 20 years ago where there was more of a state, I mean a United States framework.

Now it's more individual states and even cities that you find in California that have their own individual rules. Uh, it is also employee relations, which are critical. You might have some employee issues that are festering, that need somebody from the outside to help out with. It's you realize at a certain point that you need, you know, different HR programs, whether it's performance management or performance feedback or coaching and training for your leaders, or it could be a reorganization or recruiting that you need some help with.

It could be a variety of different things that you just know there's something that you could be doing better, or you could be doing more of, or that you just don't know if you're on the right track. And that's where you need somebody to come in on a fractional basis and give you some support. It is uh every state is different in terms of how how they look at a variety of factors. So, for example, every state has a different site that you go to.

You have to register the employee in that state. You have to pay unemployment insurance, right? Workers comp. Uh, every state has different laws in terms of just as an example, leave laws, sick leave, do you have to pay out vacation time, unused vacation time during a termination or end of employment?

Um, there's also when do you need to have uh start doing the state tax withholding? And that's a big issue because it's not consistent. Every state is different, and it could be anywhere from 24 hours working in that state to a month working in that state before a company is required, required by the state to withhold taxes. SPEAKER_00: What I see often is that founders and CEOs, whether it's from a lack of knowledge or more likely a lack of time, because we all know that founders and CEOs, their time and their bandwidth is stretched thin.

They're asked to do so many things and wear so many hats. And with this, what we'll see from a marketing perspective are a random assortment of marketing activities absent a foundational marketing strategy. And what that's going to be result in is just limited results from your marketing. So I often come in to solve specific problems, and that is probably more useful even than the revenue stage that you're at.

So are you seeing maybe a lack of predictability in revenue growth? Are you seeing an unsustainable cost of customer acquisition? Is there really high customer churn? Some of these problem statements that tons of startups, tons of small businesses are dealing with that potentially could be solved by a marketing resource, whether that's fractional or in-house.

The other thing that I think is smart marketers should be asking the founders when they get there is do you have a marketing problem or do you have a sales problem? I think a lot of CMOs are wearing kind of a co CMO and maybe CRO, chief revenue officer hat where they're where they can diagnose these broader issues. SPEAKER_01: Another episode in the books. Thank you so much for tuning in.

For show notes and more, visit empoweringhealthy business.com. If you would like to have a one on one discussion with me, or possibly engage smart books to help with your business, you can reach me at Cal C A L at Empowering Healthy Business dot com or message me on LinkedIn where I am easy to find. Until next time, this is Empowering Healthy Business, the podcast for business owners, signing off.