The Benefits of Fractional Executives
Imagine this; It’s 2015, you’re a small B2B business owner with $25M in revenue and have not grown the business in a few years because your competition is getting fiercer. You need help with strategy and wish you could hire a consultant from McKinsey or Boston Consulting Group but it would be way too expensive and probably not the right fit. You also can’t afford to hire an experienced executive because they make too much money working for public companies who are typically located in big cities and you are located in the suburbs, or a rural county, where you grew up in the family business.
You have a hard working and dedicated team but no one has true executive training leadership. Competition is nipping at your heels; you feel stuck and need fresh ideas and real strategy because you can’t do everything by yourself.
Wouldn’t it be amazing if you could hire an experienced Chief Growth Officer part time (or fractional) to help you strategize and execute to the next level of revenue growth?
That used to be out of reach for small business owners but now this type of executive support is a reality.
Work From Home (WFH): The positive result of COVID
Fast forward to the present day. While COVID-19 disrupted all of our lives in some way or another, there is one very positive outcome that resulted from this world wide event; the acceptance of employers allowing their employees to work from home creating the new acronym WFH.
Without the pandemic I don’t believe employers would have ever gotten comfortable with this radical WFH arrangement. The main issues that come to mind are trust and productivity. Thankfully, we have communication technologies such as zoom and other business collaboration tool technologies (i.e., trello, jira, google docs) that enabled this trust and proved that employees can indeed be productive – arguably even more productive – since they can work during the time that it took to commute to the office; this alone could add 1-3 hours to your actual work day.
I’m certainly not implying that zoom can replace face-to-face interactions and to be clear, physical dialogue is crucial to business relationships. However, 80% of our FYI-meetings and the actual work that we do can be effectively completed remotely and efficiently. Unlocking this possibility is a paradigm shift in the way we work in the modern world.
Why I created Growth Mindset Advisors
For 20+ years I worked for multi-billion dollar publicly traded corporations in NYC, wearing a suit nearly everyday, taking the subway to and from work, then walking many blocks to the office rain, snow or shine. I traveled 150 days a year all over North America to see clients, visit stores, work with product development teams in Europe, visit factories, as well as attend trade shows while being responsible for up to $225M in revenue (check out my Calvin Klein case study). In many ways it was a thrilling experience that has made me the executive I am today and the corporate training I received along the way added to my knowledge base that I would have never received anywhere else.
However, the downside was I left my apartment at 7am and didn’t return home until 8pm leaving very little time with my wife and kids. The corporate world provides many benefits but the underbelly of the bureaucracy and the dog-eat-dog world of executive survival is rarely talked about. I was exhausted and burnt out to say the least.
Tech-enabled gig economy
But wait, there’s a happy ending to the story! Behold the Gig Economy of the fractional (i.e. part-time but long term) executive. In business school, economics 101, you learn about supply and demand. There are over five million Small to Medium Businesses (SMB are defined as $5M – $50M in revenue) in the United States, which is the driving engine of our workforce. The result is a supply of corporately trained executives who are leaving the grind of their professions to fill the demand of executive support for SMB. It has enabled a win-win partnership.
The benefits of fractional executives for SMB’s
- You gain a world-class corporately trained executive
- Opportunity to hire for a fraction of the cost and for a limited time commitment
- Tap into 20+ years of experience and gain a fresh new perspective into your business
- Immediate access to best-practices = easy wins
- Flexibility to bring on fractional executives during each period of decline or growth
- Built-in advisory sounding board
I am one of those fractional executive transplants from this emerging gig economy who can greatly benefit your SMB.
Allow me to fill this executive sales, strategy and growth role within your business to help you achieve the next level of revenue for a fraction of the cost of hiring an in-house executive. Please reach out and let’s discuss how I can help your business grow revenue.