SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Fractional, episode 22, where we talk about building a life and a career that works for you and how the impact of fractional work plays into that. I'm your host today, Lance Robbins, and this week, Joshua is out. So on the other line, we have an exciting guest, an entrepreneur, Hazel Evans. Hazel, thanks so much for being here with me, and welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_01 0:21

Thanks, Lance. It's great to be here.

SPEAKER_00 0:24

If you could give our audience an idea of who you are, where you're from and what you do, we'd love to hear about you and your company and tell us all about it.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

Thank you. Yes. Well, I am Hazel Evans. My company is Highland Valley Digital. We are a fractional executive firm. You can probably tell by my accent. I am from Scotland. I am located in Silicon Valley. So I am the Highlander in the Valley. That is my company. My focus is digital. I personally am a COO, which covers everything from marketing to sales, to HR, to operations, inventory management, you name it. And I really like the world of retail. That is my historical background.

SPEAKER_00 1:17

How did you get from Scotland to San Francisco?

SPEAKER_01 1:22

I actually started my career in the world of globalization. So taking companies who were US-based or UK-based or European-based into the global community through localization and translation. That brought me to the States around 23 years ago, and I've been here ever since in Silicon Valley.

SPEAKER_00 1:44

Fractional is something that... is kind of a new term. It's not a new thing, but it's really gaining a lot of momentum right now. We've had conversations at length on this show about how we define fractional. It seems like there's a number of different ways to think about what a fractional is. So I'd just be curious, you know, when you think about as a fractional term, firm where it's you and it's other folks who are filling fractional roles. Do you put some borders around that? This is a fractional and this is not. How would you define that?

SPEAKER_01 2:17

That is a great question. And you're actually very correct in that there's a lot of information on fractional right now. So fractional, from my perspective, was around many, many years ago, traditionally in the CFO space. In companies where I was an executive, I actually hired fractional CMOs and that's when I got to know this, maybe around 15 years ago. Now there is quite a broad range of fractionals. So the firm that I have focuses on fractional executive level. So that's a little different to just the general term of fractional. So what that means is an experienced, professional who is typically VP level all the way to C level in their past with other companies, has that level of experience, who works on a part-time basis for a specific role, be that operations, marketing, HR, whatever it may be. The fractionals in my firm, they're very strategic. They're working on strategy. They have the capability and experience to lead a team. They are trusted advisors and confidence to the CEOs that we partner with, but ultimately they are responsible for delivering those business outcomes. And that's what makes that team an executive team. There are other levels of fractional. So I do see fractional marketing managers and essentially it's a little bit like the new gig worker in that sense, because there are tactical people who may not have the experience or skillset at sea level, but still want to work a part-time basis for multiple clients because they love a specific niche. And I've seen that develop a lot over the last couple of years.

SPEAKER_00 4:09

Do you see fractionals at any given level? We talked about executive, you said there's other levels of fractionals. Do you see a common thread where the focus is on business results and deliverables versus the traditional freelancer who may just sell a bucket of hours to a client or is that line blurring?

SPEAKER_01 4:31

I think it depends on the role and the way things are being charged. and the experience level of the individual. So if you are looking for results-driven deliverables, strategy, team leadership, you're into the executive level, those tend to be retainer-based agreements. These are people who come with process, experience, a network of resources, introductions potentially to clients. It can be anything of that nature. So people who are really gonna drive your business forward. Typically, as you go down the levels into the different fractional roles, you'll start to see things that look a bit more like a freelancer, where someone might have a bucket of hours for a project on an assignment. Overall, there are deliveries. Everybody is responsible for the delivery. So I think all fractionals take that really seriously. But different levels may charge differently. A freelancer, a contractor, a consultant, they all charge different ways. And then a fractional executive charges a slightly different and we as package usually.

SPEAKER_00 5:40

That's interesting. It's so fun to get the different perspectives, different experiences of how everybody is playing out and living out this fractional pursuit. So for your career path, moving into becoming a fractional yourself, launching Highland Valley Digital, when did you decide, hey, I'm going to move from full-time employment to independent? Was this a gradual thing, something that built on the side, or did you just jump in with both feet? I'm so curious.

SPEAKER_01 6:07

Yeah, this happened for me... really because I'd been in the corporate environment for many years as an executive, most recently at Ralph Lauren. And prior to that was Sephora and the LVMH family. And really what had happened was during COVID, I had returned back to the Bay Area because the offices were closed and my contract was actually ending. I just thought, gosh, what can I do next? Do I stay in the corporate world? Or do I take the skill set that I've earned over the last sort of 15 years and do something different? A couple of people had reached out to me on LinkedIn and said, would you work for my company? Would you consider it? And I thought, gosh, maybe I would. Talk to me more. And they said, you know, we need some help in operations. We need some help in marketing. You just ran the Ralph Lauren Marketing Agency. You could really help us with, you know, building out a network of marketing folks and doing some shoots. and stuff and I was like gosh that's really interesting so I said give me a break and I took a couple of months off and I said you know what I'm actually going to do this and then I decided to launch this fractional work as an individual which quickly grew because once you put yourself out there and people know that that's what you're doing you start to generate a lot more interest and it snowballed fast forward sort of six months and then you've got a few people fast forward another six months you've got a lot of people and essentially now I have my own agency without ever really needing to go out there and fund this in any way. It's all bootstrapped and it's working well and lots of partners and clients and prospects are just flowing in, which is amazing. So it was really just a case of someone reached out to me with an idea and I said, let's do it. And it worked.

SPEAKER_00 8:03

That's fascinating. OK, so you were at the end of a contract and you kind of had a crossroads of Like, do I just go look for another job or do I kind of bet on myself and pursue this? So obviously this is working well for you. I'm always curious, people who leave executive roles, because a lot of people in their career think that they will work and work and work and someday achieve an executive level role, leaving an executive level role to do this. What do you think? What are the pros and cons to doing it this way versus what you were doing before? And I'm guessing the pros are pretty heavy.

SPEAKER_01 8:37

The first six months, there's probably more cons than pros. It really boils down to, do you have the strength and commitment to go through what is essentially building your business? You're building your website, you're creating your content, you're creating your sales materials, you may be building your processes. There's a little bit of work that that's needed to get ready. I was fortunate because I'm operationally minded, so process and things like that, I like that. So it was a little easier because I kind of wrote my own roadmap to say these are the things I need to do in this order before I could feel confident to go and market my business. That really helped. However, I would say that it was tough. to start with, like any business. You know, no one knows you, you have to do a fair amount of sales to just let everybody know what you're doing. So I took the opportunity to go through my LinkedIn network and introduce myself again to those in my network to say, hey, guess what I'm doing now? And that generated referrals, that generated interest and clients as well. Doing things like that were good, setting up things like email campaigns, LinkedIn outreach and so on, and really just regenerating your social networks, it takes time. However, the pros of this is you actually start to figure out that there are many, many companies who need help. And some of them need help in a short-term basis. Some need help in a longer-term basis. And your skills are really transferable between companies. And you start to learn that, gosh, if I can do this for one, I can do this for many. And it does snowball really quickly. I'd say the other pro for me personally is I only work four days a week and I don't tend to work another day beyond four days a week. And that's deliberate. And that's something you can never get in a corporate job. Corporate rules don't allow four day work weeks, maybe in the future. But that's a rule for me and that's a rule for anyone who is in my firm and working with my clients is that we don't commit anything more than four days a week and that way we have a good work-life balance and also great mental health because, you know, who doesn't like that three-day weekend and then when there's a public holiday, it's a four-day weekend. So that's a nice benefit. I would also say some of the other benefits of doing this is the network. There are so many great people, yourself included, who we can partner with. This is what makes the gold. When you have a great network of fractionals that you can partner with that can lift your client, all both rags. And that is just amazing. We can't do that in a corporate environment as easily to bring people in because there's so much red tape and you need to be a big business and so many rules to sort of get into a corporate environment. This allows the small and medium businesses to work together, grow together, and sometimes do mergers together because fractionals Fractionals have the ability to pull companies together in ways that you can't do as a corporation. So there's many, many benefits to being a fractional, not just doing the tactical work, but actually bringing your network together that I have found to be really beneficial.

SPEAKER_00 12:11

I love that. So if you're listening in your early stage fractional, there's a few pages to put in your playbook right there that Hazel just unloaded for you. I have noticed also that it does insulate you a little bit from that maybe demanding executive, right? Like you're saying, you can say, nope, sorry, I'm not working this day. And what are they going to do, fire you? It just gives, I don't know, it gives you a lot more... independence. And like, for me, that's been really, really valuable. And a lot of people that I hear from too, if someone is thinking about getting into this and we look at their skillset, I'm curious if you see in the folks in your network, does a generalist or a specialist really thrive in the fractional environment? Is there space for both? Is there an approach that really works well for, for anybody to take this on? Or is it kind of limited to who's going to really succeed in this arena?

SPEAKER_01 13:10

That is a great question. And I've actually chatted with a lot of fractionals about this topic. So my personal belief is a niche is gold. If you know where your specialty area is, it's much easier for you to sell that. There's an old sales analogy, which you may know, if you sell to everyone, you sell to no one. So thinking about that, if you're selling a specific service in, say, marketing or operations or HR, that's very clear to a client who's ingesting that and looking for that. There are generalist roles. So think operations could be considered a generalist role because you're tapping multiple skill sets in multiple areas. But if you are a generalist of HR, that may put you in a junior role versus a senior role, where you might need to be a strategist to be in a more senior role. So it really is thinking about the role, the task in hand, and where it fits. Most fractional executives that I partner with have a specialist area. What is coming up now is a sort of twofold area of really interesting. So I have deep expertise in marketing operations and product management, having that sort of trifecta is really interesting to people because you're a bit more multi-dimensional, but not a generalist. So I think there's room for two depending on the role level. I think there's more interest developing for someone who can do a little bit more than just one dimension. But overall, I think and believe and have seen that if you are a specialist in a specific area, that is the fastest way to make your sale and your potentially first sale as a new fractional executive. Don't go too broad. Start small. You can always expand later.

SPEAKER_00 15:25

I was reading this week about one in three senior or executive leaders at And I didn't see if this was industry specific. So this is in the US, but I don't know what industry. So this could just be in general. So about one in three are women. So there's a disproportionate representation here at the senior leadership table. I am really curious from your perspective, from your experience, does fractional create opportunities for women and underrepresented groups to make their way to the senior executive table where climbing a corporate ladder from within may be more difficult to achieve that kind of impact in a business. I am super curious to hear what you think about this.

SPEAKER_01 16:10

I think it does, 100%. There are many companies today who have a diversity and inclusion strategy. and they are seeking more diversity and inclusive leadership. It's very hard to find. So speaking from the corporate side, how do you even find that person? How do you target that person? There is a huge diverse community in the fractional world, which I am very proud to be part of and support. That is something that my company is known to seek and it's broadcast publicly that I am a huge supporter of this. I definitely believe there are many opportunities in this space for a company to hire someone who is in that diverse category and show the leadership in their company that this is the way to go. So they can lead by example without necessarily having to pay the full fee of a corporate executive. If you think about it, maybe a four to one ratio, you could hire four diverse individuals in leadership roles for the price of one C-suite role. And companies can actually elevate their diversity and inclusive policies by doing so. And they will try to do that, especially small companies, because many of the large companies who are small companies and clients sell to, can't show a clear diverse program to be even included in RFPs with large enterprises because they do want to see diverse companies. They don't want to see traditional white only companies coming to the table. Large corporations, they have evolved, they completely support and promote diversity so they are looking for companies who are diverse as their vendors, as their partners, as their suppliers. So if our target audience is those small and medium businesses and we can bring that, we also bring the benefit of helping them grow their business in different ways and speak to other clients. So I think this will become more of a mandate in the future than it has done. And this is a great area to be in with the SMBs.

SPEAKER_00 18:51

There is more friction for somebody when they're looking at internal mobility, moving up the ladder, who maybe has not yet been an executive, but maybe has the skills to become an executive, versus someone who can say... I've done this maybe even if it's only once, right? I've done this once before for a business like yours where a CEO is going to say, I'll take a bet on that versus promoting internally in order to hit some of those goals that an organization might have around diversity. I

SPEAKER_01 19:26

think that's possible. There's definitely friction going in the corporate ladder, right? In corporate you can be siloed into a division or a department and some of those extra skills that you have that could level you up in a different department can always be shown or used because you're in department one but you have skills for department two and that department two you could be a c-suite leader in department two but because you're in department one It's very hard to get to that. As a fractional executive, you can actually showcase those skills and say, I have experience here. And to your point, companies will take a chance or say, that's absolutely what I'm looking for. And then you have your first client that can become that reference for you. And you have that experience under your belt. I would also say in terms of friction, I've seen in the corporate environment that people do don't want to go any further up and that's maybe more to do with support further up the chain. Sometimes there isn't support for diversity and inclusion at higher levels, which can mean the person looking to go up the ladder may choose not to with the company because they may not feel as comfortable in the next level up as they do in their current level. So sometimes they self categorize themselves as I cannot, I am not C-level or I am not level because whatever their fear is or I won't be accepted at this level because of my race or my gender people do see that and actively do not put themselves forward and I think that's a myth I think they should but we have in the real world we do have challenges because not everyone is supportive of diverse individuals, be it race, body type, age, gender. Not everyone is supportive. And if the leadership team in a company is not, then good people don't always put themselves forward.

SPEAKER_00 21:43

You're absolutely right. And they will either opt out, they will find a role where they're safe and comfortable to continue in, or they'll find another employer.

SPEAKER_01 21:51

We have a ways to go in society to make everything equal. And we try, and many of us continue to try, but we are not there yet. So I do think fractional roles allow people who want to be more diverse and want to elevate their careers to build a business around this and actually move forward fast forward 10 years I think we'll be having a whole nother conversation because I do see the evolution of support for diversity and inclusion it's happening it's right here it's right now but it's still in its infancy

SPEAKER_00 22:31

I am very curious to see what the conversation will be 10 years from now there's such a conversation about remote versus an office right now it seems like remote gives distributes a lot of opportunity to people who are not going to thrive in an office or in a location where the office is. As a fractional, how often are you finding yourself needing to be on site? Is this something that somebody who says, I can work well remotely, but I'm never going to get that opportunity, if they pursued a fractional, are they basically creating a remote opportunity for themselves as well

SPEAKER_01 23:09

i'd say yes and no so fractional doesn't always need to be remote it depends where you are i believe the best balance is to be flexible whereby you can go on site if you want to or you can attend maybe a client meeting or an investor meeting in person You don't have to do this every week, but if you limit yourself to being completely remote, you could lose opportunities, particularly at the executive level. I attend key client meetings with my clients. So if they have a client and it's a senior executive, I am the fractional COO and it may be required. I would prefer to be there in person. That's me personally. It's just nice to get to know people. Relationships are built. If there's event a company event you might want to attend you know if there's a company gathering a holiday party it if you are completely excluded you can find yourself in a situation where you're just not part of the company and that means that you're Contract may not go as long, you may be in and out. However, there are fractionals who only work for like three month agreements or six month agreements and then they're in and out and done and they're moving on. In the world of operations, it tends to be a little longer because operations can't move as quickly necessarily as maybe a three month marketing campaign can. So it depends on what you're brought in for. I recommend you are flexible, but you don't have to travel often I personally travel maybe about once a month to a client site or a client meeting of sorts and that's really about it the rest of the time I am remote and that's because we are working real time we're doing stuff you know on zoom what I would also say and I think this is part of where you're going with this is that relationship thing As a fractional leader, never be off camera on Zoom. You're the one that should be the most visible. so there are people who just put their names on zoom that will almost certainly guarantee that no one will know you get to know you see your faces you know see your reactions to thing things you get to know people as you talk to them on camera every day and eventually when they're sitting next to you it just feels like you're right on camera so those relationships are built so never turn your zoom off when you're with your client

SPEAKER_00 25:46

Great advice. Great advice. And it sounds like there's a great diversity of opportunities to design a career for yourself in fractional. And it sounds like fractional is a driver and a vehicle for everyone. more diverse opportunities for more diverse people as well. So I'm really excited about where this goes. We're going to wrap up. So thank you so much, Hazel. How can people find you? Where do we go to learn more about Highland Digital and you and your work?

SPEAKER_01 26:17

You can check my website out, highlandvalleydigital.com. You can also check out my LinkedIn account, Hazel S. Evans, and reach out anytime. I'm Happy to give advice. I'm happy to chat with anyone who's interested in talking about fractionals. So feel free to reach out.

SPEAKER_00 26:39

Okay, great. We'll have those links in the show notes. So if you're listening, you'll be able to reach Hazel that way. So thanks for being here. You can always email us at email at fractional.fm. We love to hear your feedback. We really value that. So please do let us know what you think. And we will see you next time.

SPEAKER_01 26:59

Thank you, Lance.