SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello and welcome to Episode 68 of the Fractional Podcast. I'm Lance Robbins. I'm here with Joshua Wold and joining us again, special guest, Michelle Kiefer, MK Frameworks. fractional head of marketing chief marketing officer and marketing executive super excited again to have you michelle always fun to hang out with an old friend

SPEAKER_00 0:31

thank you for having me back i know we kind of got cut off on a couple of things last time and because we there's just so many things we could be talking about so i'm grateful that you wanted to hear more from me

SPEAKER_02 0:44

no no it's great we there was um an xwp alumni call recently and i wasn't i didn't even and get a notification ahead of time. So that's my bad. I can't even see. Yes, I don't even know how LinkedIn works with that. But anyway, this feels like a little bit of, this is incredibly, what's the word? Inside baseball, but we used to all work together. So it feels nice to reconnect. With that said, a topic that comes up a lot, Michelle, with guests on the show, with Lance and myself, is how do you deal with the client acquisition? How do you recommend people find new clients? What are ways that you try to encourage clients people actually getting new people into their channels and just, let's say someone doesn't even have a client at all. What are ways that you encourage people and what are ways that you do it yourself?

SPEAKER_00 1:30

Okay. So I'm going to assume we're talking about like low, like small scale client acquisition where you need one client at a time or two clients at a time, not like large scale client acquisition or like a

SPEAKER_02 1:43

budding agency. Okay. You're a fractional who would love two, three, four clients and they would be very happy with that.

SPEAKER_00 1:49

Okay, cool. So there's a couple of different ways that I have experimented with client acquisition and some of them have worked and some of them haven't worked. I'll say that annoying thing that all marketers say and it really just depends on how well you execute and like the timing, right? So my first strategy that I used to start getting clients was to reverse pitch job ads. So I would apply for full-time positions, get into the interview process and then reverse pitch them once we got to the compensation conversations. I

SPEAKER_02 2:22

was like, there tried that, by the way. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 2:24

All right. So it's worked 50% of the time for me. It really just depends on who you're talking to. I find if you're speaking with someone in HR, it's not going to work and they're going to be... Or if they're in recruiting, they're going to be upset. They're going to feel like you've wasted their time and you've clogged up the pipeline and took an opportunity out of a different candidate that a more full-time seeking candidate could have taken. So you have to gauge it based on who you're talking to. However, if you're talking to a founder, or one of the other sales-oriented or revenue-oriented stakeholders, those folks tend to be much more open to the idea. And so if you're going to do that strategy, really kind of understand who you're talking to within the organization to make that decision. Another tactic that I use is just traditional account-based marketing. And so I work within the niche and I look for organizations within that niche and I look for mutual connections or I look for a conference that we've both attended or something on LinkedIn that we've commented on and just kind of really spend some time researching in and cherry picking who I want to reach out to. And then I LinkedIn sales tactics and you reach out to them on LinkedIn, you send them an email, you send a couple of follow-ups and just see if you can get their attention and say, hey, I'm a fractional executive. This is the type of work that I do. These are the types of folks I do it for. Is this something you'd be interested in? I really For me in marketing, my value proposition and my pain point is a lot around growth and sustainable growth. So you don't have to deal with the shrink and swell hiring and managing up and down resources and things like that. But ultimately, the thing that works the best for me is when I get referrals. And they're not always referrals from previous customers. They're referrals from staff that I've worked with. So again, when you're an executive... fractional executive role, you're not just working with your own resources. You meet other people within the organization. You meet the sales team. You meet the customer support team, the product teams, engineers, and you work with them. And just like I tell a website agency, your website is your best brochure. For a fractional executive, your relationships with the people that are full-time in the organization you're working with is your best brochure. And so... quite a few of the roles that I have even now are based off of like a salesperson or a customer support person. making a referral to me internally. And then I come up that way and get interviews that way.

SPEAKER_02 5:01

You know, on the, I think the first or the second one you've talked about when you're applying for a job and you're trying to do the switch, there have been times where I've recognized if you're not talking to the right person, you're really wasting both people's time, right?

SPEAKER_00 5:12

Everyone's time.

SPEAKER_02 5:14

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 5:14

So if you just like embrace that and recognize that and are honest about that, people appreciate it. So you can do it in a way that's not abrasive, but call it out for what it is. And that builds trust. It It shows that you, you know, you're executive minded. You're trying to be concise with everyone's time and resources. You behave like an executive and just call it out, be transparent, over communicate and see if that gets you somewhere else into a different direction.

SPEAKER_02 5:39

There was a company that I was applying to a couple of years back and I was interested in doing something more fractional with them. And what I talked to the hiring manager, I'm like, I'm not really interested in the role you're offering as is. And he said, Thank you so much for having me. those kinds of conversations, frankly, are fun, right? It's not abrasive.

SPEAKER_00 6:18

It's not controversial. Learning opportunities too. Yeah. I hope that you've kept in touch with that CEO as part of your like ongoing fractional pipeline. Not as

SPEAKER_02 6:26

much as I probably

SPEAKER_00 6:27

should. It's never too late. It's never too late to say hello to somebody. You could have met somebody two years ago and come across a business card in the bottom of a bag. And if you actually remember them, even if they don't remember you, like you authentically remembering someone and reaching out and just saying, hello, I thought of you, or I came across your call. I was telling a story of when this happened. People appreciate

SPEAKER_02 6:49

that. One of my colleagues I worked with in five years prior, it led to a project that was a really great freelance project five years later, right? Because he needed some work. He's like, well, I remember Joshua did this kind of thing and we didn't actually even work together directly. We were peers, but he just assumed that I'd be helpful on the project. And those kinds of things last for a long time. It also goes the other way. If you do a crappy job, like people remember.

SPEAKER_00 7:11

People will remember that. Yes. I'm really curious of the listeners and the people who are fractional and that are paying attention to this conversation. If anyone has ever tried to go back to a previous role and say, like if you left on good terms, but maybe there's a layoff or restructuring and went back and said, hey, are you interested in like an interim or a step in fractional type role while there's restructuring? I've tried it once, it didn't work. One of the stakeholders was interested, the other one was not. So it just kind of stepped back. But I'm curious, I've only tried it that one time. I'm curious if anyone else has tried that.

SPEAKER_01 7:48

We had a guest, Caitlin, Caitlin Little, who converted her employer that she was leaving to a fractional customer, right? So it's related, but it's not exactly what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_00 7:58

Yeah. I have a peer colleague, someone who helped me get started on the market research side very, very, or like eight years ago when I very first started. And that's what she did. She was like, I'm leaving. I need to do something else. And they're like, please continue to help at least a little bit. And so I've heard, I've heard of that before. Caitlin's a second story to put in the pocket.

SPEAKER_02 8:19

I did try it once. It was an early attempt on my pitch, right? And this is actually, it is so good to learn just to kind of do a little bit of make a pitch, be told no and move on, right? It doesn't hurt you. There's a book by, oh shoot, the guy who founded AppSumo. Well, I'll put into the show notes. Sure. Well, anyway, I actually am pretty good at it most of the time, but he says, if you're nervous about selling, go to Starbucks and put in your order and then ask the barista for a 10% discount. And if you're like me, you feel the Tension rising inside. You're like, that's not going to work. He's like, that's the point. You do it anyway. You do it kindly. You're like, hey, I'm having to do this little test for a course that I'm following right now. Can I get a 10% discount? They're going to say no, but that's okay. It's like learning to be in that uncomfortable space with kindness. All this is to say, I got let go from a job and then... I came back to it later saying, hey, my pitch was pay me far less than you did before and I'll do just as much as I was doing before because I wasn't really doing that much before. Surprisingly, they didn't take me up on the offer, but it was my attempt at trying and it was quite fun to try. Shoot, how many other people are doing that? Yeah. Speaking of burnout.

SPEAKER_00 9:52

So I did... So it was one day, I was just like feeling super, super stressed out. And I have... So let me back up. A couple of years ago, I went into a really deep state of burnout. And it was one of the times where I was thinking maybe I should take... It was right before the fractional thing. I've been consulting and freelancing for a long time. I went fully in-house with an organization. And things just imploded. And this is why you don't go in-house full-time. And so... So I went through this huge series of months where I was just super burnt out. And that was when I was fully convinced, fractional. or bust forever. There's no other way. I have to figure out how to do this better. And I have to figure out a way to sustain myself doing this. And so I was able to do that. So this last couple of months ago, I was starting to feel those stresses rising up again, even though I made all these changes and done all of these things and improved the way I was working. I felt the stress coming. I was like, I cannot let it get to the point where I burn out again. It's just, I can't do that. So what's actually stressing me out? And I just kind of intuitively started to take myself through this process, which I was like, okay, if I'm going on a diet, I take things off my plate. So how do I apply that to stress? What stress can I be like, no, I'm not going to let the stress stress me out anymore. And so I started off by making a list of all the things that were stressing me out. I ended up having like 10 or 11 things on my list. And so after I made and just got it out, like personal things, professional things, you know, all these family things, And then I went through and said, okay, I can either accept that this is what it is or or I can change it. And so I went through and said, okay, accept or change. And that called like four or five things off of my list that I've really just had to come to terms with. And I was like, there's nothing I can do about this. I have to accept that this just is, this is where I'm at. This is a season of life. This is the economy. This is the age of my children. This is what it is. I can't do anything about this. So I have to accept it. And just kind of allowing myself to let it go and just kind of get things off the plate. So that's the first round. And then you take all of the things that you have left on your list that you want to change. If you're going to change something, you can really do one of two things. You can either stop doing this thing and that's what you're going to change about it, or you can make some type of improvement. And so again, I went through the list. I was like, okay, is this something I need to stop or is this something I need to improve? And there were a couple of things I was like, I can just stop doing these things. They're not actually serving me and I'm stressed out over this and there's no good reason why I'm doing this anyway. It's not for me. It's not actually keeping me on path to where I want to go. So I'm just going to stop doing those things. And then that just left. Now, this huge long list of 10 things that was totally stressing me out to the point where I was falling into executive dysfunction and burnout. It's like, oh, I've got four things on my list. And of these things... What can I do to improve them? And it forced me to just come up with an actual task or some type of step that I could take for each of those things. And something happens in your brain, the dopamine you get from like having a plan sometimes satisfies the stress. You don't even have to actually execute the plan. Your brain is just happy that you know what to do about it and you can just stop stressing about it. So when I was all said and done and then process of about an hour and a half of like prayerful meditation and like sitting with So I'm curious.

SPEAKER_02 13:38

The person inside of me who takes on more than I should and then end up holding onto and stressing about it for far too long and then eventually dropping the ball in some way or other. What I'm curious is, was there any real fallout from doing this? Like something that really caused an issue in a relationship or something in your personal life from kind of walking away from some of those items?

SPEAKER_00 13:59

None whatsoever, because it was my brain that was doing it and my brain that was assigning all of this meaning that was totally made up by some like ancient fight or flight thing happening somewhere in my brain. It really didn't have any kind of impact. A couple of things, I just communicated with others and said, hey, this is my plan. This is what's going to shift. And they're just like, cool. Because the people in your life, including your clients, want you to be successful because when you're successful, they're successful. And they don't want you burning out either because then you can't continue to help them be successful. And so when you really... consider the humanity of it all. We're in this together and none of us want to be sick. None of us want to be stressed out or burnt out. We all just want to do good work and we can be honest about that. For you to bring something to the table and say, hey, I need to take this off my plate, but this isn't really a good fit for me right now. Or, hey, I need help and I need to delegate this. Who can I delegate this to? What resources can you help me identify? Then it's, you know, people are happy to keep it moving. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:03

There's a book, I think I recommended it last time, Essentialism, where the first chapter talks about a person who said no to almost everything in his job and things went really well. And it feels like we can't say no, right? It feels like we can't turn things down. My

SPEAKER_00 15:16

problem is not even that I can't say no, is I'm a gap filler. So I'm like, hey, no one's doing that. Do you need me to come in and do that for you? Because I can help with that. You're going to have to ask for me to... for me to even have an opportunity to say no.

SPEAKER_02 15:33

Yeah, that has used to be me so much because of severe burnout and just some traumatic work situations. I'm much better at that now. It's like, what's the real thing that I should be here for? And I'm going to focus on that, get it done efficiently, sometimes ruthlessly with kindness. That matters a lot. You can't be a dick. But then close my laptop and go hang out with my family. At least that's the goal.

SPEAKER_00 15:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:58

So another thing I want Yeah. You end up working with a lot of people in

SPEAKER_00 16:21

your situation. grounding down into the human experience. And so, you know, I'm not in this little bubble where I can't empathize with somebody who's going through something. And so I'm really grateful for that. But ultimately, that's what it all comes down to. You talk about kindness. For me, kindness is compassion and empathy. Like those are like when you take kindness and start to break it down, sympathy and empathy and like all of these different, you know, various words that have slightly distinct meaning, but they really just are, how are you kind to somebody else who's going through something tough? And it sucks. I've been in situations where You know, there's really not a lot you can do. It's just like, know that I'm wishing you well and I hope to see you again someday. And, you know, our paths are diverging and there's not really a lot, especially in remote work because you can't physically be there and give them a hug or check in and take them out for a cup of coffee. But you can reach out, just, you know, send a LinkedIn message, send an email message. If you have someone on WhatsApp and just say, hey, just thinking about you, hope it's going well It's kind of like what we were saying earlier. It's never too late to just reach out and say hi to somebody, even if it's been months after you've parted ways because of burnout or layoffs or some other kind of traumatic work event. Someone got fired or harassed or quit in an emotional fury and then regretted it. That was too late. They couldn't come back. I've seen that. That's painful to watch when someone's just like, has emotional breakdown and then accidentally quits a job. Yeah. That's pretty traumatic. So yeah, just be human about it. Empathize and know that it could really happen to any of us. We're operating in a capitalist-driven economy. Human labor, human capital, our knowledge, it can literally all be replaced by another human behind us. There's billions of people on this earth, more and more getting upskilled every single day, not to mention AI and what that can do to take over certain types of roles. And so we just have to remember that. We're all here to work because we all need to make money because we all need money to survive. And that's the essential function. So when something traumatic happens, we just have to really come back to that connectivity that we have and be kind. I've

SPEAKER_02 19:05

found with some colleagues that It's helpful just to let them know that you hear them, right? Like the situation is really crummy. I'm sorry. Like this really, this, you are valid in how you feel like that. Sometimes even if you can't fix it, that helps. Right. And I've now been in enough different work situations and enough places where I've seen people mistreated. And often I feel myself drawn to like, Hey, I've been there before too. It's okay. What you're feeling is valid. Maybe here's some suggestions for how you could re-approach this in the future. But this is a real thing that happened to you right now. and I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_00 19:37

Yeah, there's definitely been some really traumatic things that have happened and it's hard to talk about sometimes. Like you would think that somebody that was there with you and experienced it with you would be like someone you could talk to because you had that shared experience. But it almost like makes it feel worse to bring it up with someone who was there, makes it even that much more real. And we want to escape the trauma and hide from it and categorize it away and forget that it happened. And that's just going to grow into something And we're going to have some irrational fear or bias later in our careers that, you know, it doesn't actually go away. So that's another thing, you know, talking to someone, whether you need to talk to someone or recommend that somebody speaks with someone, whether it's, I think it's really important that all of us encourage each other that being human is hard. And when things like this happen, we can't just, we can't hide from it if you don't want to talk about it. Like there's gotta, you've got to find a way to process.

SPEAKER_02 20:31

I was once in a room with a colleague that was feeling very frustrated. And so they're like, hey, it was maybe eight or 10 of us around the room. They spoke up with our manager there and basically said, hey, our manager has done A, B and C incorrectly, inappropriately, and it has been abusive. You all agree with me, right? And the manager looked around and said, person A, is this correct? The person shook their head. No, no, no. Person B, is this correct? No, no, no. And every single one of us, this is what to my greatest shame to this day, like every single one of us said no. This person started screaming, got up and left. And it was just an unfortunate situation. Looking back, everybody in that situation was well-meaning and trying their best and was in a stressful situation. There was no villain in that room, but it was, how do you deal with just being overwhelmed and stressed? You

SPEAKER_00 21:22

have to look out for yourself, even though you're part of a team.

SPEAKER_02 21:26

Yeah. And it was a situation where that person... thought that they had the room's backing and unfortunately didn't. And that has kind of stood out to me as trying to figure out a way to not reach the boiling point myself. I have thankfully not at work, but in personal situations I have and recognizing, am I about to fall off the precipice? And this person who got

SPEAKER_00 21:46

upset, like to the point where you can't take it back.

SPEAKER_02 21:48

Yes. Like this is still a friend of mine, right? Like I, they're, they're not a villain in what they did. They were just incredibly frustrated. Right. But if you can come back from the precipice and find out what are those triggers that are really burning you out, maybe you can avoid them. Maybe you can de-stress yourself ahead of time.

SPEAKER_00 22:03

Well, last time about being aware of yourself and how you work and what you really need to do and what's taxing you, whether you're applying that for time blocking and trying to figure out the best way to apply yourself. But through having that work journal and having that separate space where you really just explore how you're feeling and how you're experiencing your work, it taps into a lot of that. That's kind of the space where I was at whenever I discovered this whole stress diet process. It was that turning through and considering what does trigger me? What happens when I get off from the call and I have to walk away from my desk and can't come back for a little bit? What was it about that call that triggered me and made me feel that way? And then how do I avoid it? And that kind of goes back to what we were saying at the beginning of this call, like multiple loops here. And my brain is just connecting dots. So when you're doing that account-based marketing and your client acquisition strategy, that's a huge part of it. Reaching out to these organizations and saying, you know, I want to add value to what you're doing because what you're doing is meaningful or what you're doing aligns with my interests and finding the types of organizations that you work with and the leadership, the type of leadership that you work with. I've met chief executives and leaders at conferences that I've kept in touch with and have been some of the people who have referred me to positions because you find those types of people. And I think that awareness comes through being honest with yourself and journaling and considering what it is about your work that brings you joy and is fulfilling and what drives you towards burnout and stress. And that's how you prevent traumatic explosions at work. So it all lives back around

SPEAKER_02 23:46

together. So the other side of the It is my view that most people, in fact, if you're a fan of, I mean, the religious texts I'm most familiar with, of course, is the Bible, but there's this common refrain throughout the Bible and this concept of religion that power is a corruptor. When someone gains power... they often do not know what to do with it well. So I have seen in my own life that someone who was in a position of not having any perceived power suddenly gains it, there's a point to this, and doesn't know how to wield it in a way that is kind, loving, caring, and instead uses it in an abusive manner. So I'm curious in your role for working with others, for moving into a leadership role yourself, how have you been mindful of recognizing the power differential that comes with being a leader relative to the rest of the team? How That's in my opinion, often misused. And how do you like, what do you try to do about that? That's a common topic that Lance and I, whenever we're talking, usually we're It's from the, I'm thinking about the people who are being hired. He's thinking about the people who are hiring. They're all humans. They're all struggling. And there's, anyway, so I'm curious what your thoughts are on that whole power imbalance and how most people, I'm biased, do not use it well.

SPEAKER_00 25:04

So I think that there's a lot of evidence that people do not deploy power well, even outside of the workplace. Like think of all of the power trippy moments you come across in your life. Someone driving in front of you in a lane and not letting you pass because they don't think you should be driving that fast. Or somebody being a jerk in the drive-thru because of whatever trippy little power moment they have. So I've never seen any type of studies done on yielding a power. I try to think of it more as position. And when I was very, very early on in my career as a young, smart woman in business who was up against boys club... Nobody wanted a woman in the room, much less one that was 25 years younger than them and knew how to operate a word. They couldn't. So I've always had a very personal relationship with the dynamic of power and position. And the number of people that I saw early in my career that were in positions of power where they I felt so judgmental towards them. They didn't know anything about any of the things that they were authorities over. And so I always just kind of nested it into myself that when I got to a position of power, I wanted to be the person that didn't exist before me. The person in the room who's just going to be nice or be helpful or be forgiving or extend a hand and a resource. I've always wanted to be that type of leader. And I just embody Yeah. The purpose of a manager is not to produce good work. It's to facilitate others producing good work. And like remembering my job is to like separate myself from the work and focus on the people and make sure that they could do what I, the quality of work that I would have done if I would have been the one to do it. So it was training and mentoring and communicating and recognizing when it wasn't a good person for the job and making shifts. So when it, yeah, I don't know. Interestingly enough though, I am reading a fantasy book where the world is set where people yield power and it's like a pyramid scheme and you like seed your will to like the next class and the next class and the next class so like the top person has like 6,000 people's will seeded to them so he's like ultimately powerful and has like the strength of all these people and so there's There's a lot of thought around power and how to yield it and how could it be yield. And it's just a really interesting conversation. It's

SPEAKER_01 28:08

so interesting because of the assumptions we make about what power even is.

SPEAKER_00 28:11

Yeah. What is it? Is it even a real thing? It's energy, but it's not energy because it's perceived meaning, which is not in itself anything. It's just like... I

SPEAKER_01 28:22

had a stakeholder I worked with a year ago or so and... She was saying that early in her career, I'd say she was probably, I don't know, my age, maybe a little older than me. But earlier in her career, she took one of these aptitude tests, right? That says, this is what you're really strong in. And it was very strong in the soft skills, empathy, compassion. And the feedback she got was like, you're not going to make a very strong executive because you're not strong in these harder personality traits. But here she is a successful executive. And really, that's her superpower is that she builds strong relationships, she builds trust, she empowers the people around her. And it's like the exact opposite of what the paradigm thinking was at the beginning of her career. And now it's like, oh, yeah, like, those are the most valuable things. Like those are the things that unlock the most power for a leader. And it's interesting, you know, you go into a room and people don't know how to deal with the soft stuff.

SPEAKER_00 29:27

I worked on a startup one time called Main Street Pilot. And it was a learning tool that we deployed with universities and sports teams and corporate offices and things like that to help develop soft skills and help people understand how to, you know, be their own version of better through the use of soft skills and just kind of introspective work, but it was non-political, non-religious. It was just a language tool, like to get people thinking about it. And it was a really interesting project. They did so much research in the development of the program and the launching of it. And soft skills are, you know, for you to be an effective human being in any type of business or social environment, ecosystem, like you have to have soft skills. So it's crazy to me that once upon a time, they're like, you don't need those to be a boss, but I think that's founded in like what Joshua saw. I think about like originally what power meant was like, am I loud? Am I assertive? Do I have a, do I flash, you know, success, you know, and, and the shift of what power even means and, and what act to, because to be powerful doesn't necessarily mean to be successful, right? Like, maybe successful at exploiting people, but it doesn't make you a successful human. There's

SPEAKER_01 30:47

a John Maxwell quote from one of his books about leadership is he just, well, basically his definition is leadership is influence. So, you know, like you said, it doesn't, leadership is not success. Leadership is influence. That goes really well. And

SPEAKER_00 31:01

those power influence at scale.

SPEAKER_01 31:03

Right. Yeah. Right. The stronger, the more influence, the more the strong, like the better leader you are. So

SPEAKER_02 31:10

I've had managers that I can contrast. I had some that were encouragers. They were inspirers. They actually made me believe that I could do something that I wasn't even sure I could do. because they believed in me. And so I'd rise to the occasion and give it my best. And they would encourage me to continue to grow better and do more because of their influence, right? There was no demands. It was, hey, are you blocked? How can I help you unblock? Or are you good? How can I clear other people out of the way to stop messing with you so you can get your job done? And those kind of people are so valuable, right? They're not demanding. They're not requiring. They're not micromanaging even. They're checking in to make sure you're okay and then clearing the hurdles for you. And then I've had other managers who I remember this one manager I had would demand that people do things a certain way. It's almost like office space. Like, did you fill in the paperwork this way? And people would just laugh behind their back, right? Like it was a joke, but because they had a title, they were demanding of it and no one respected them for it. And then you could see that this person was nervous. They had this concern of like, how do I, they would pull even tighter. They would require even more regulations, even more requirements to get the, whatever the documentation. And it never ends well. It does not end well for anybody versus the encouragers and So...

SPEAKER_00 32:50

I'm going to challenge you a little bit on the word motivation. Because motivation, it comes, it goes. It's not sustainable. You can't just be intrinsically motivated. You can be disciplined or you can have habits, but... I don't know. How do you stay just motivated all the time? It's just like the core of my being, because I'm ambitious, but that doesn't mean I'm always motivated.

SPEAKER_02 33:16

Well, this has actually been a topic for Lance and I, like why I have certain ways of approaching things. Maybe it's not the right way to describe it, but I am... incredibly motivated to make things in a creative way and the moment someone tries to tell me i must make it in a different way i will fight and scream and yell and push back even if it's not even logical right i'll say no you say i can't do that all right i'm gonna do it and what i've found is there is something innate in me that desires to make beautiful things I'm from an artistic background. That's why I'm in the design field. And so I do have that. I wake up most days if I'm not tired or sick, wanting to go build something creative. And so long as I have the autonomy to do it and the skill set and the know-how and the right team, I just want to do that. So maybe there's a different term, but that's what I view as intrinsic motivation because I just enjoy that. And if all the right pieces are in place with the right team, It's actually like playing. It's like having fun every day. Now, for most of my career, it's not been like that. I like hate Sunday nights. I'm nervous. I can't wait till Friday. But for some periods of my career, I just genuinely like doing the thing. And my goal is like, how can I make more of that happen? How can I have more times like that? And I will add if Tanner, if you're listening. That is the case right now. He's my current manager, so I can just say that. I cannot always say that. There are times where I just actually like building something because you feel like you have the runway cleared for you just to make it and have some fun with it.

SPEAKER_00 34:49

Yeah, I have felt that way before. You know, building a team and designing a team is so exciting for me. And watching people like click into place and find their way of how they're going to work together and perform and deliver outcomes together. I love it. It doesn't feel like work for me at all to do those things. No,

SPEAKER_02 35:09

you can't do it. At least I can't do it 10 hours a day, right? I've got to take a break. I've got to go spend time with my family, like go do things with friends, like take the weekend off, actually like get good sleep, watch movies at night. Like that all assumes that I have a good life outside of work, right? Those pieces have to be in place.

SPEAKER_00 35:27

Yeah, absolutely. Because the balance has to be there.

SPEAKER_02 35:30

It does. And also... it doesn't have to be on a daily basis, but on, let's say, a monthly or yearly basis, you do need to have some level of balance there. Well, thank you, Michelle. This has been great. I know we didn't talk so much specifically fractional, but I think

SPEAKER_00 35:44

Lance and I... We talked about a lot of the human... Yes. Being a human who is fractional side of things. Got a little meta today, a little philosophical. I

SPEAKER_01 35:54

love it. We've probably worn out the nuts and bolts of fractional over the last 67 episodes, so this is the kind of thing to... Yeah, we kind of relish.

SPEAKER_02 36:03

This is evergreen. So Lance mentioned it at the top of the show, but Michelle, would you, if someone's interested in like chatting with you more or maybe working with you, how can they find you?

SPEAKER_00 36:12

You can find me on LinkedIn or you can find me at mkframeworks.marketing is my email address. And frameworks.marketing is my website where you can go and hit the contact form if you want to do it that way.

SPEAKER_02 36:25

All right. And then my final pitch, feel free to ping Lance or I. You can find us all over the world. LanceHRobbins.com, JoshuaWold.com. I'm on threads. I'm on all the whatever, all the things. You can find me. And if you want to, our least used inbox to date is email at fraction Thank you so much, everyone.