SPEAKER_03: 0:00

Welcome to Fractional, the podcast where we talk about the future of work, working fractionally and building a life that's meaningful to you and those you love. This is episode 64. We have Taylor Crane back as a guest. And Lance, my co-host, has a little bit of sound issue, but we're going to hear his fantastic voice. Welcome, Lance. Good to see you. Yep. Thank you,

SPEAKER_02: 0:29

Joshua. I'm here. Excited to have Taylor. It was episode 50 that Taylor was with us. So it's been 14 weeks or more because I think we might have missed a week in between. So excited to hear how things are going and what's different between now and then and Glad to

SPEAKER_03: 0:43

have you on the show, Taylor. Welcome back. And I want to just kind of look at that from the fractional angle. How many hours are fractionals working? How many should they be working? But first, start with employees. I would be curious your thoughts on a typical worker of 40 hours. Are they working more or less? What have you seen so far? I have lots of thoughts as well, but I want to give you the floor on this first.

SPEAKER_01: 1:33

Yeah. And so... I think it's an important question to understand where fractional fits into the puzzle and where some of the value from fractional comes from. Historically, typically, when companies hire full-time employees, they hire employees with the expectation that those employees are working about 40 hours a week and in a full-time in that kind of relationship, it's certainly like an hour's arc being tracked, right? And I think you're, you know, nor should they be, but it's every, it's everyone's implicit understanding that full time equals 40 hours of, you know, roughly of output. And I, what I have learned over the last, maybe I've been doing this practice for like, actually probably like six or seven years now where I, I time log a lot of my day, uh, on different, different like professional or work related activities. So when I was working full time, uh, I always had side projects and I would track my hours on those side projects. So I, cause I'm a self quantification kind of nut and I just enjoyed seeing like, oh, I work five hours this week or 10 hours this week on the side project. And I can do things like understand like how much time I've worked over the last year on the side project, maybe even in the future calculating ROI, et cetera. That then carried into when I started my first company about four years ago. And I started tracking my time for that company. And to be clear, like it was my company, like nobody was asking me to track my time, but I wanted to. And I found it, first of all, motivating for me to like, almost like gamifying my work and like pushing myself in what was hopefully a healthy way. But the insight that I gathered from that is that it is actually very hard to work 40 actual hours. And therefore, my conclusion is like, anyone who thinks that they are working 40, but whatever they think in their head, if they're not tracking their time, it is grossly overestimated. It's just, and there are reasons why I think this is true. Like there's these micro moments in the day where like you're not actually doing work, but they add up quickly. And so- It's an interesting insight. And one way that I relate it into like the conversation around fractional work is when I talk to hirers about hiring fractional. One of my taco points, frankly, is that you have a team of full-time employees and I guarantee you they're not actually working full-time. And so one of the benefits of hiring fractional is when you hire someone fractionally, it's a much more explicit conversation, how much hours they're working or how much hours they're putting in it. And that creates a more transparent relationship and one where as a founder, you have more confidence and sense as to where your money is going from an ROI perspective. So I'll stop there.

SPEAKER_03: 4:18

So one of the things that I've seen companies often do is because they're not sure how to encourage people working better, they encourage people working longer. So they call out the team member who knocked out a weekend. They call out the one who worked till 2 a.m. And that is regularly praised and rewarded and acknowledged as that person did a good job at this company because they were working outside of the normal nine to five. We love that. Please keep doing more of that. And part of that is because there's not a real way of knowing what level of quality someone is bringing. So Lance, I see you want to say something that I've got so much to say as well. Go for it.

SPEAKER_02: 4:57

Yeah, I was just thinking, as Taylor, you were describing this, like number of hours actually worked. I'm assuming that this is, you're working from home and you're not measuring time that's getting worked as time that I was in a certain location, right? Like if we're thinking about, I was at the office, right? from nine to five. And so I worked for 40 hours this week. Does that really translate? And is there a difference when you think about individuals who are working remote and they're working 40 hours versus I was in an office for 40 hours?

SPEAKER_01: 5:29

Totally. You just gave me sort of an insight into framing this as when we work full-time jobs, it's a lot noisier or messier to try and equate a full-time work into the output, the actual quality of output. Whereas in the fractional world, I think the relationship between the work And sort of the hours commitment is much tighter. Therefore, you know, if I hire Joshua as a design leader at my company and I brought him on, let's say, fractionally for like 10 hours a week, I know that that time is all being well spent and is all going towards productive output, if you will. And it's really cool. It's really

SPEAKER_03: 6:08

important. Well, and we actually talked about this at one point, Taylor, about someone that was needing 20 hours of work. And I was open to doing some freelance, but I had a full time job and I had to just straight up say, I can't do that because I know what 20 hours of work takes out of me. Like that would mean I'm not working. I'm working every night and weekend in order to do my day job and that. Yes.

SPEAKER_02: 6:29

So I just had this. Yeah. this really terrible analogy that I'm going to follow. But when I was a kid, we never bought cartons of juice. We bought the frozen concentrate. Maybe we were poor. I don't know. And you have to like take the plastic ring off and you open the end and it's frozen. You have to like mush it out of the canister. You guys having some of these memories? So when you buy service from a fractional, I think you're buying the concentrate. And what you might get out of 10 hours of work is nearly the whole jug of orange juice anyway. But you bought

SPEAKER_03: 7:00

it at Concentrate. that you're not working anywhere close to what you think you are. The moment you put a timer in, I don't know exactly how you do it, Taylor, but for me, if I step away for water, if it's more than a minute, I pause my time. Yes, it doesn't. And maybe I should count it. But if I'm off talking to my spouse or if I've gone to wash the dishes, my time is paused. That's not how I think about it. But I take breaks throughout the day to allow my brain to move. Maybe I should log that, but I don't. I want to actually know when I'm sketching on my iPad or writing or designing on my computer, how much is that actually taking? And for it to be 40 hours long, would gut me. I would not be, I would be almost impossible. I would not be able to function the following week.

SPEAKER_01: 8:04

So when I transitioned into my first company where I was working for myself and just tracking all my work time, I noticed that it went around when I hit the 25-ish hour mark, maybe 30 hours of actual time worked. That is what felt to me like a full-time job. So that, in my body, that felt like what my previous work was like. And so pushing to 40 hours of actual bogged work is like, it feels like you're moving into overdrive.

SPEAKER_03: 8:38

It does. And having logged my time, I would check charts. I would see at the end of the week how tired I was and I'd go look at my time. And I noticed a 30-hour week, my wife basically hadn't seen me that week where I was so exhausted and come to the weekend, I've got nothing left. A 25-hour week was hard. But I could go back and do it again the next week. And a 20-hour week was just absolutely fantastic. But then I was starting to get nervous about my clients. And then... When you split it up that way, because I'm not doing consulting, I'm doing fractional. I have a W-2 now, but I'm thinking back then where I am actually needing to get designs done. I'm actually needing to create things. That does take time. So if you split generously 30 hours across five, six, seven clients, that takes becomes very diluted. And frankly, the few times I pulled it off, I was so worn out and I started losing clients.

SPEAKER_01: 9:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 9:34

Yeah, I can totally see that. That makes a lot of sense. So I would just challenge anyone. You don't need to log it forever, but just do it for a week. And I use toggle. It's a free app. I, it runs to my watch and my iPhone as a live widget. So I won't forget. And it's on my like, put it everywhere. So you don't forget. And I don't use any of the automated services. I just manually swap it out between projects and you don't even need to have any notes or descriptions. I do because I want to categorize data, but you could even just literally project play or pause. And at the end of the week, check your time on that and then check it against how happy the client is. And it's an interesting gauge. And I found, maybe giving away a little bit of the secret sauce here, but I found that if I spent only five hours on a client and I did that for four weeks in a row, I was probably going to lose them. If I spent 10 to 12 hours on a client, and by the way, the way I would set these up is I'd let them know there's no hours involved. It's just a flat rate. So that was the promise up front is a flat rate. 10 to 12 hours is I would keep them. 15 hours to 20, they were over the moon, but I would be so exhausted that I want to drop them. I can't handle this any longer. So 10 to 12 hours was kind of the sweet spot for them to be very happy because I've been doing this for a long time. I can bring value, anything more or less, and we start to run into problems. Yeah, I like that framework a lot. So I'm curious, Lance and I have started to just talk to different fractionals, gauge the space, and our view seems to be that a lot of people really... are not yet at the place where they're landing fractionals. They want to, they want to land clients, but they're often following different materials, listening to different podcasts in this. I hope it can work. So is that something that you've seen? And if so, where would you advise someone if they're in that place where they haven't landed anything yet, but they're hoping to?

SPEAKER_01: 11:25

We call this either, you know, you're fractional curious, or maybe you're one step beyond fractional curious, and you're actively looking to start building a fractional business for yourself. But You've not yet landed your first client. And your first client is generally the hardest one to land to. They tend to get easier. It's actually, I think, relevant to understand that they tend to get easier over time because, A, you get more practice in doing it and more practice in pitching yourself, et cetera. But then also, assuming your work is good, your clients will start preferring you. And you'll also have more fractional work to be able to talk about, perhaps. you know, whether that's on LinkedIn or whether that's more private networks, like even personal networks. And so first client is generally the hardest. And by the way, this is coming from someone who has built a talent marketplace for fractional work, right? Trying to find more fractional leaders, more clients to work with. Having said that, the way that I would say about 90 to 95% of fractional leaders get their first bite is through their data. And so that's going to come from past employers, past bosses, former colleagues, that you've made aware that you're, you know, beginning to do fractional work or you're looking to do fractional work. And because they've worked with you in the past, they personally, they, it's a much easier sell, frankly. And also, I would say also like there's a, folks will get their first clients from like what, secondary connections to. So let's say a former boss of yours knows someone that is in need of a fractional CMO or a fractional design lead or a fractional engineer, but 90 to 95% are going to come from your network or once removed. And then from there, you can begin to build more of a lead generation motion where you could be doing outbound outreach in some ways, you can be doing content creation, to perhaps be using talent marketplaces like Fractional Jobs. So there are other things that begin to open up to you as you sort of get the wheels turning and get moving on it. But yeah, that first one, that first push, if you will, is going to come from your network.

SPEAKER_03: 13:32

And let's say someone with that first push, do you recommend just letting people know you're open for business? Do you recommend setting up a website and showing your rates? What have you seen as being successful for someone just to get their feet wet to land that first one through a secondary connection?

SPEAKER_01: 13:49

So if you have the opportunity to be public and open with it, on let's say LinkedIn, I think that's a great place to start. And I'll talk in a second about how I actually got my first client, which was through Twitter, but same as like, you know, basically the same as LinkedIn. So I started doing fractional work over a year ago now, so maybe like 15 months ago now, or maybe even a little bit more. And the way that I got my first client was I posted on Twitter a draft of my blurb, my blurb about like, you know, what kind of fractional work I do, if you will. It was like two sentences and then like five bullets on, you know, this more specific tactical stuff that I can do as a fractional head of product. And someone saw my tweet that I actually went to high school with many, you know, many, many years ago and reached out to me and was like, hey, I actually have something that I've been really eager to start working on it. I think I could use you to help bring it to life. And then that ended up being my first client. So that's in the realm of like, you're able to be public about it, you can announce it and stuff. There are some folks that have full-time jobs currently, but they're looking to break into fractional work. And it's a lot harder to be public about, you're doing fractional work, but you have a full-time job. And so in that case, the thing that I've seen work the best is doing outreach to those that are immediately in your network that you trust. Maybe it's email, maybe it's text, what have you, that more privately let a bunch of folks know that this is the kind of work you're doing. And if they have any ideas for you, any people that they should meet, they can help network you a bit more behind the scenes.

SPEAKER_03: 15:19

If you're good at what you do, or if you've had colleagues who have... We may have talked about this before. Sometimes... A person will say, oh, that guy is a really good product person. And they don't have a clue. They have just interacted with you in a way that shows your character and who you are. They've never actually seen any of your work, but they get a vibe from you. And often they'll recommend you just purely off of that, right? So how we interact in so many different levels of communication and it matters a lot. So I guess that's what I'm trying to say is there are often connections that would surprise us. And I've been often surprised that someone years ago that I had a small connection with is open for work and they're desperate to find the right person to solve their problem. And they don't even need to interview. They're like, sweet Joshua, can we just talk and see if we can work this out? And that has happened time and again. And it is so rewarding because at that point, it's not about me selling myself. It's about us talking about the problem they're having and seeing if we can find a fit. That's more interesting.

SPEAKER_01: 16:20

Yeah, I totally agree. I

SPEAKER_02: 16:21

find that a lot, actually. Yeah. It's interesting that I think, you know, Joshua, you add Should they build a website? What should they do? I think we're talking about branding and everything that we're talking about right here. Every interaction that you're having with anybody in your network, that could be an opportunity. The way they experience you is your brand. And I think there's so much of a gut instinct to make sure my website looks good and make sure my headline says the right thing. Because that's what people who are experts in A lot of practice areas that aren't marketing or sales maybe are thinking that's what my brand is. But really like what you just described, Joshua, of like someone feeling comfortable to reach out and say, let's have a chat. And you're taking that call and creating good experience for them. Like that's your brand too. And honestly, I don't think anybody goes to my website. I don't know if it's

SPEAKER_03: 17:14

valuable or not. And that point, it's not that we're saying the website and the like websites matter. I think copy matters. Your LinkedIn profile matters. We've had some great feedback from other guests about the value of that, but it is a, probably a distraction for some people to get so perfect about the exact little copy. And Lance, we've talked about this in the early days where both of us were spending all this time on our websites, not time on just having conversations with people who could help us. And there's diminishing returns, even though there is some value in the technical side of things. Taylor, I see you nodding your head. Go for it.

SPEAKER_01: 17:49

No, it strongly resonates with me. I actually don't have a website, personal website, certainly not one for my fractional work. Not because I shouldn't or it's bad, but it's just been a prioritization equation. And to your point, I've spent My time, you know, I'm doing a lot less fractional work today because I'm building fractional jobs, but especially when I was like really building a client base, I was much more just conversation driven and using my LinkedIn as sort of a website, if you will. I think there are some exceptions though. So like as a designer, for example, having a website with a portfolio is like quite important, but for other roles, it's less important. I also find that I see that people will invest a bunch of time into their website as almost a procrastination tactic. because they think it's like a productive use of time, but actually it's like, it's kind of busy work. And it's like, they're avoiding the tougher stuff of like having conversations, doing outreach to folks, like stuff that like a lot of us, if we're not sales, we've been like kind of feel maybe cringy about or like self-conscious about. even though it's going to be the thing that actually leads to most of your leads.

SPEAKER_03: 18:56

And that's something I've noticed for myself. I despised sales until it was me talking to someone about how I could help them and then making a lot of money as a result. And suddenly it's very interesting to me, right? Because there's a direct connection to if I close this sale, I get to help them and I also get to feed my family. So I'm more interested. I'd love to get into, last time we talked, you were two months into Fractional Jobs and it's been a little bit longer. I'd love to know, how's it going? What are some learnings? What are you excited about? Just anything you want to share. I'd love to know just how that journey is going.

SPEAKER_01: 19:28

Yeah, so it's been six months now since I launched Fractional Jobs. And I think I'll highlight a few things that's changed or evolved since then. Actually, a lot's come to my mind right now. Maybe first and foremost, like I am now squarely back in the founder seat again. Like I... Started my first company four years ago. I sold the company and then started doing fractional work myself, thinking it would be like several years before I started the company again and sat in the founder's seat full time. And when I launched Fractional Jobs, and probably when we spoke like two months into it, I was still very much in the camp of like, this is something that I'm building, but I'm also, and I was doing fractional work alongside it. And at the moment, I'm fully focused on fractional jobs. And I think that's a, what that's sort of, what I'm implying here is that it is going well enough that I feel like I should be sitting in the founder seat and like really trying to drive this forward. And so I think that's quite good. We, so like we started out as a pure job board where folks can come post fractional jobs, candidates can apply for jobs and then hires can look with the candidates and then reach out to where they want to. Like, you know, most job boards work very, very quickly pivoted. into what is more of a talent archivist, where we help companies understand what hiring fractional looks like. We help them find the right candidates for the role. And we're helping candidates find, in some cases, even working with them to better prepare themselves for fractional work. In some cases, it's their first fractional gig. So it's the common, much more white love type offering. And the business model is also changing as a result. Where we're at today is we're approaching 7,000 fractional leaders in the network today in about six months. And we've worked with dozens of startups. We've done 20 hires so far. And the pace is accelerating, which is most important. So we're now doing about five hires a month. And I mean, we need to like 10x that, right? But I feel... good that the metrics seem to be moving in the right direction. Like the number of fractional leaders we have, the number of companies that are coming to us that are looking to hire. It's actually, it's important to understand this. Like when I first started the company, the big question mark was, is anybody going to care about this? Like, is there, I had a sense that like there were going to be enough fractional people interested in fractional work, but like the bigger question was like, are companies going to want to hire fractional, especially in this way? And I'm getting more and more companies reaching out to me or saying yes when I reach out to them. And I'm getting more companies. I just got off a call today with a founder that we started talking about a full-time role. And I used to work with him years ago. And so I was helping him understand what hiring looks like for PMs. And at the end of the call, he's like, by the way, I actually want to talk to you about hiring fractional too. This is new for me. It's new that people are that founders in particular, CEOs in particular, are proactively thinking about fractional and using the terminology, which I think is really important, about hiring fractional, and also seeing the benefits of it, in theory at least, and wanting to pursue it. And so I think these are all good signs.

SPEAKER_03: 22:48

Of the hires that you've been able to successfully see connected together, What's been the mix roughly of this is the first time a founder's hired a fractional versus this is the second or more that they're hiring a fractional? It's a great

SPEAKER_01: 23:03

question. I don't have the stats offhand, but it's got to be at least 80 to 90% first time hiring a

SPEAKER_03: 23:11

fractional. Really?

SPEAKER_01: 23:12

There's been a couple of hires we've made where the process was led by someone who was fractional themselves at the company. So that's sort of like a... you know, they've already, the company's already hired fractional and that fractional is hiring more fractionals. But I'm just like replaying, replaying some case studies through my head and like almost everyone is the first fractional hire. First fractional CFO, CMO, and yeah, yeah. I don't know the percentage, but probably about

SPEAKER_02: 23:37

80%. Wow. Is this an indicator that like the buyer side of the market is getting access to more education? There's a mindset shift going on? Because I think when we talked before, we were calling out like this is probably the biggest hurdle is educating the buyer side of the market. Do you feel like there's progress or momentum there?

SPEAKER_01: 23:56

Personally, as a company for actual jobs, I do not think that I have done a great job yet at like educating the market in a more in a mass way. I think I do a good job educating folks when they come to me and they want to learn more about hiring fractional, but I've not yet cracked the nut on how can fractional jobs educate companies at large. However, I'm related to fractional jobs specifically, I think. I'm seeing more and more founders and CEOs and hirers using the language of fractional. And so that tells me that through fractional, many means they are picking up or putting down, if you will. And that feels like it's like, again, the conversation I referenced today with the CEO, I was genuinely surprised that he was proactively interested in hiring fractional and using the word fraction.

SPEAKER_03: 24:43

I'm going to make a statement that's probably not fully correct, but it feels interesting to me. If you're a founder debating between employees and fractionals, especially if it's someone, let's say a designer, that's an employee that's you have 40 hours of on-call where they're on-call. They're likely not working 40 hours because that would exhaust them and drain them. And you're paying a premium for that. And for some people, that's absolutely worth it because of the way they think. They're like, ah, let's just hop into a meeting right now and talk. Let's just get something done. And I have strong opinions on the value of that. But for some founders, that's really important, right? So if that's the type of person you are, fractional is probably not as good. If though, you have a little bit more, hey, let's give these designers some autonomy. I can be a little bit more clear about where I'm going and I can share it to them and maybe give them a day or two to come back to me. They'll record looms. They'll do async. We'll talk a couple of times a week, but we don't have to be in a room all day long and wrestle through this for me to get good work. Then fractional is probably going to be perfect for you. And I think that contrast is interesting. And I'm trying not to pass judgment on the differences, but I do think those, for some founders, they're starting to see, I actually just just care about getting quality work. I don't really care about butt in seat. And how do you think that education is going to come about? Like if you had a magic mirror looking forward a couple of years, do you see the market making a major shift or do you see this continuing to be more of a niche product?

SPEAKER_01: 26:09

Can I first challenge you a bit on your describing? I think within the design function and within the engineering function, I think you're are quite correct. In large part, because these are functions that, especially when we're talking about ICs, it requires a lot of head down time, a lot of deep focus work. And if you're hiring someone fractionally, you really need to make sure that they're, as a founder, you want to make sure that they are spending as much time as possible in that deep work mode, because that's going to be the most valuable use for your company. There are other kinds of roles where as a founder or CEO, you might want and need that role to be more I need a meeting with you right now. I need to pick a grade. Let's talk live. Let's get on a call. For example, Fractional CMO, which is probably the most popular fractional hire these days. We just placed a fractional CMO at a Web3 startup. And a big piece of what the founder and CEO was looking for was a thought partner that they could... brainstorm with and learn from. And this person, though, is not an executor, right? They're meant to actually advise and then build out a team that can do the execution. And so I think, I guess that point is like they're, depending on the type of work, type of fractional work we're thinking about, the needs are different and the ability to like be more of like that, you know, I'll be in a meeting with you. Let's talk wide kind of thing. It can be more possible.

SPEAKER_03: 27:31

And that's a great point because that type of person might have more, Paul Graham wrote years ago about the maker schedule versus the manager schedule.

SPEAKER_01: 27:39

Yes, correct. Exactly.

SPEAKER_03: 27:40

And that type of person is probably going to be okay having their day broken up into seven different segments, right? Where a designer and an engineer, you're going to drive them crazy if that has to happen to them. I'll give my brother as an example. He has worked with many companies in the premium SaaS space that just want to get on a call with him. And they're happy to pay a premium because they're like, hey, you've been kind of leading strategy in this area for 20 years. Can you just help me understand if I'm about to make this big pivot for my company, what's going to happen with ABNC? And then he'll just rattle off for an hour And that is worth a lot of money to them in the right context, right? And then he'll go away. And unless they paid him for more, he will just move on to something else. And he's perfectly happy doing that. In fact, it's more interesting for him to have the pull where, hey, I want to just pick your brain for an hour. I'll pay you a bunch of money. For me, that's not quite how I operate. And I'm really glad you called out those differences.

SPEAKER_01: 28:33

Yeah. And so maybe to try and bring it back to the, I think the initial question you asked was like, is because of some of the work or style constraints or work constraints of fractional work, is this going to stay more niche or is it going to feel like it's going to go mainstream? And so my answer to that question is as it goes more mainstream, which I think is inevitable, there will be different kinds of fractionals that that work in different kinds of ways, even within the design function itself, that I think just like in the full-time world, you're not a fit or I'm not a fit for every single company that's hiring a product person or a designer. I think it's the same case in the fractional world. And so I think a lot of the work that's going to be done as this goes mainstream is the right kind of matching, like finding the right fractional for the job, finding the right company for the fractional. And it will be very varied in terms of different styles.

SPEAKER_03: 29:27

I think that's a good way to look at it. We've even seen in interviewing a bunch of people that there's a lot of different ways fractional is defined. And we talked about this last time, but could you remind me, what is your broad definition of fractional and has it changed from the last time we talked? It has not changed.

SPEAKER_01: 29:44

That's the easy question. So the way I define fractional work is part-time work typically paid on a monthly retainer and performed by experts in their field. It's three prongs or three criteria. Part-time is obvious. That's where the word fractional literally comes from. The monthly retainer is an implication that this person is kind of embedded into the team, right? They're treated in a more ongoing fashion. And then the expert in their field implies and says that we're looking for someone that has the experience to come in and add value from day one. We're not training them up. We're hiring them because of their existing experience. We want them to execute or deliver on that experience or whatever, come with that experience from day one as an expert. So that's the definition.

SPEAKER_03: 30:35

I've seen this from my end, but I'm curious from your end. Obviously, you've seen people who are building a fractional business, right? Where they're going to have multiple clients. They're figuring out the management of that. We had Julia on recently, and that's what she is doing. Are you also seeing people, and you called this out last time we chatted, so I know this is an element of it. Are you also seeing people moving from full-time to fractional or from fractional hoping to go back to full-time? Like, is that something that you're watching as well?

SPEAKER_01: 31:01

Yeah, I'm seeing this from both perspectives. I'm seeing fractionals that are interested in potentially converting to full-time at some point. And I'll also see companies being explicit with me that we want to hire a fractional right now, but we want to hire someone who is at least open to the idea in theory of converting it full-time when that becomes available. Because for them, it's like they get to progress with the same person as opposed to having to replace the person. You know,

SPEAKER_03: 31:27

it's actually, from a worker perspective, it's pretty neat where you could have, provided there's no conflict of interest, you could have a full-time W-2 job, take on a single fractional with the intent that it could go full-time, and then you have the choice in the future if things are going well, do you continue the current or do you pick up the new? It actually could be a really neat thing for some workers who they can't just jump out and leave, but they're not sure if they're ready for something new. Try before you buy. Yes. And this is something I've seen a lot with colleagues over the years where maybe they're feeling a little stuck. They're not learning as rapidly. They're seeing some, their income is not increasing as much as they want. So maybe taking on a single client and seeing where that would go. I'm curious how you've personally dealt with or seen others deal with vacations as fractions Having Julia on recently, her answer was basically she hasn't solved that part of it yet, where every other part she's pretty happy, but she doesn't really take a vacation. I'll add, when I was full-time fractional, when I would take a vacation, I would just extend the retainer for every single client. And that became a lot of logistics, manual logistics to deal with. So I'm curious if you have any advice or if this is a challenge you're also seeing.

SPEAKER_01: 32:35

It's actually not something that gets asked very often. So I appreciate the question. I mean, it is something that have to think about, right? We should be taking vacations, of course. And that comes from success, right? That's also true. So you're speaking because you have so much client work that you need to figure out a strategy for how to take time off. So let's bucket into two different kinds of vacations. You have like a long weekend vacation and then you have like a week plus vacation. The long weekend vacation is a lot easier because you can structure your time in your week or maybe in a couple weeks leading up to it in a way that like taking a Friday or Thursday, Friday or Wednesday, Thursday, Friday off, you know, is very doable. It might mean you're working a little bit more the week before and a little bit more the week after. Sort of balance things out and make sure things are like, you know, okay for you to be signing off. Just frankly, like you would in a full-time job as well. I think the harder part is like the week long or week plus vacation, week, one week or two weeks. And I think this just requires some upfront expectation setting events. And it does require adjustment of, if you're on a monthly retainer, for example, it requires an adjustment. So like if you're paid, you know,$5,000 for the month or$10,000 for the month, and for two of those weeks, you know, you're on vacation, you should be prorating. So I guess it's like, let's bring this up into two conversations. It's like the finances of it is like, because we're not paid for vacation time, so we need to account for that. And then there's just the relationship of it that the expectation setting, right? And so like, I think that's so different from a full-time job where you're just like, you know, giving a front notice, hey, this is, you know, this is going to be coming up and this is what we're going to be doing about it. And that piece feels very similar to a full-time job. So like the weird thing is the finance of it. And I think it's important to, And that's

SPEAKER_03: 34:29

something I did. And I never had a client have a problem with it where I'm like, basically, you're getting a it's a five week or six week month because I'm taking off a week where I'll right before I leave. I'll do everything I can. Right. When I get back, I'll do everything I can. But I need to step out for a little bit. And I personally never saw a client have a problem with that. And that's something I did. As you just mentioned, if you're taking a long weekend, that's perfectly within the realm of being a fractional, right? As long as in the two or three days you were there, you got everything they needed done, maybe you worked so long days, that's kind of the point of owning your own business to have that flexibility and maybe find a way to take it. Lance, go ahead.

SPEAKER_02: 35:04

Yeah, no, I'm thinking this is such an interesting conversation because I think a fractional, the temptation is because I don't want to take a lower monthly retainer, I won't take the vacation, right? Or I might just take the long weekend here or there, but I can't afford to take the vacation, which actually, frankly, has been my experience over the last 12 months. I've done nothing more than an extended weekend here or there and not taken a vacation. But a year of doing that, I'm starting to feel I need one. And so that's something that I have to wrestle with of, all right, my budgeting needs to be adjusted to think about what does it look like for me to take a week off?

SPEAKER_03: 35:40

And I think it's okay to be at a point where you're like, I'm just going to buckle down for a while. I'm also a huge fan of mental wellness. I talk about this every episode. So it's like, take care of yourself. But also, it's okay if you just you're like, ah, next couple months are going to be a little bit harder, but it's helping me reach a certain goal. I

SPEAKER_01: 35:58

think

SPEAKER_03: 35:58

both of you

SPEAKER_01: 35:59

sort of made me realize that we forgot a piece of the vacation puzzle, which is the budget, your monthly payment. By taking vacation time, you are effectively suggesting that you're not getting paid for that time, which I think is accurate. And that is hard to balance when doing fractional work. In the full-time world, it's a much easier equation. I'm given two or four weeks of vacation time, I'm going to take it. It's free. Not the case for fractionals. That should be baked into your rate, ideally. Now, like, That's a whole conversation and there's a whole strategy to it. But ideally, you're making enough money in your monthly rate or your hourly rate that taking typical two to four or six or whatever weeks a year that you want off does not work. put you under a friend.

SPEAKER_03: 36:50

That's a great point because as fractionals do, I remember I would run the math like, oh, I'm going to make this much this year, but I was not accounting for, well, I hope I wouldn't work 52 full weeks this year based on that rate. It should be, what is this rate times, like you said, 48 weeks or 47 or even 51 weeks. Like don't do it times 52 weeks that the math will not work out. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02: 37:16

It's the personal discipline, right? Of, of here's what I got paid as a retainer this month. Here's the percent that I am setting aside so that I can take a break because I beg to descend to my rate. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 37:28

And we're a little, we're getting short on time, but I want to bring up like find a good CPA to work with, like, especially as an American. So this is, I'm not giving any advice. I'm just sharing my own personal experience. Like I have an LLC. I have a CPA I work with. They let me know about estimated taxes. These kinds of things are very important because at the end of the year, you can get majorly screwed if you've not been paying attention to even how you should set aside taxes, like even having a way of understanding that. So final question I want to just ask, we talked a little bit about this, but Who do you think fractional is not good for? From a company perspective, we mentioned a few things, or from a person perspective, have you seen situations where you're like, hey, I would not advise you to do this at this time for these reasons? Do you have any advice for someone who maybe is trying to get into it and you're like, I don't think you're ready at the moment?

SPEAKER_01: 38:20

Okay. I have one answer on the company side, maybe, and one answer on the fractional side. Or do you want me to pick one or the other? Oh, both is good. Let's go for both. So on the company side, this may sound obvious, but I say, I end up repeating it often. If you have the need for a full-time hire and you have the budget for a full-time hire, then fractional is not for you. I need to repeat that sometimes, not often, but like sometimes, because I'll talk to folks that are like, well, actually, I'm open to hiring a full-time CMO. I'm also open to hiring a fraction CMO. And you can make the argument, yes, that like, You might find a fractional CMO who is as good as a full-time CMO on Westwork. I think that's totally fair. But if you really feel like you as a company have the need for that full-time CMO and you have the budget for it, I think you should prioritize going for the full-time CMO and not trying to hire a fractional. I think West might be a success because you're going to want more from them. On the fractional side, I see a lot of folks that are looking to break into fractional work. while they're looking for their full-time job, their next full-time. So, and I get it. Working for a full-time job is annoying, especially in today's market. And you're seeing potential opportunities for fractional work. And you're like, well, why not? In the meantime, I can do this. The reason that I don't advise it is because breaking into fractional work and building a fractional practice is not trivial. It's not easy. And it takes dedication and it takes you wanting to build a fractional practice. It's a lot that goes. And if from... I think for most folks, they might not totally realize that. And so they try thinking to themselves, well, as soon as they get a full-time job, I'm going to take it. But in the meantime, I'll do fractional work. And what ends up happening is they are spending more time than they should on the fractional work side of things. And it's not going to be very productive, because they're not really dedicating to it. And instead, they should just be focused on getting a full-time job because it's what they want.

SPEAKER_03: 40:20

I love that. So I'd love to hear who is Fractional Jobs good for? What type of people are you so excited to come through your doors and chat with you? What's the pitch? If someone's listening, what would make them a great match to come talk to you?

SPEAKER_01: 40:34

So Fractional Jobs, we primarily work with early growth stage tech startups. So that's kind of our sweet spot. So if you're doing fractional work or you're looking at breaking into fractional work and you have a history of working with and inside tech companies, big and small, early stage, growth stage, you know, even late stage and you're looking to work with other tech type companies, I think we're probably a great fit for you. There are other niches too, but like, that's kind of like the sweet spot. And we work across function areas. So we have, we have roles, marketing, engineering, design, operations, sales, legal, like general counsel roles. We have like 10 plus different function areas.

SPEAKER_03: 41:14

So I'll narrow this in a little further. This is great. If I'm a founder where budget is tight, let's say my runway is tight, but I think I really need someone across these cross-functional roles. Do I just post an ad? Do I have a chat with you? What does that kind of initial contact look like? Especially if I'm not sure, if I'm like, I think I need a CMO, but I'm not sure. How would you guide someone through that?

SPEAKER_01: 41:37

Yeah, we typically would have an intro chat with the founder, trying to understand their need. That conversation is really interesting and illuminating, right? Because we really dive into like, what is the actual problem we're trying to solve with this hire? And that conversation Sometimes we come out of the conversation with like, oh, you're trying to hire a fractional CTO, not a fractional product, or you're actually trying to hire a full-time person, fractional's not for you. So it always starts with that call. I think that call was the best place to start. Sometimes it starts with an email, but like, The most successful ones that we do are ones where I get to know what the founder's needs are.

SPEAKER_03: 42:13

And then from there, you'll work with the founder to write the job ad basically, right? And to kind of put it out there.

SPEAKER_01: 42:19

Yeah, we do all the work. So we write the job description, we blast it out to our network, and we help the founder understand like who are the right people that they should use.

SPEAKER_03: 42:26

I love that. That's fantastic. So the URL of, and then your LinkedIn will post into the show notes, but it's fractionaljobs.io. Anything else that you would add for, I guess, what The final question, you've answered this essentially, but if someone's looking for fractional jobs, how would this help them as well? Like a fractional trying to find work?

SPEAKER_01: 42:45

Yeah. So fractional jobs, in addition to, of course, having job opportunities, we also have what are called playbooks and our toolkit as well. And the playbooks are meant for helping you understand frameworks for what fractional work is, how to break into fractional work, what it actually looks like on a day-to-day basis. And then we have the toolkit, which are a growing list of resources, tools, communities that we recommend that you might consider using to build your own fractional practice. So for example, one of the tools in our toolkit is an accounting firm that focuses on folks like fractional leaders. And we think they're a great fit for a lot of them.

SPEAKER_03: 43:20

That is fantastic. That's a fantastic tool. And I'm presuming if someone's in the United States, that's probably a perfect, well, go talk to them, right? Go have a conversation. I think so, yeah. I love that. Thank you so much for coming on. We'll include those in the show notes. And for anyone who has any feedback, feel free to email us email at fractional.fm and we'll be back soon.