It's so common to see the tip of the iceberg and say, oh, they're doing that. Let's do that. Oh, they're doing that. And they end up really, really hurting your business because not only do you not see what's happening beneath the surface, but you're taking the tip of the iceberg from five different businesses that you like to follow and trying to do all five of them and underestimating the work that happened below the surface.

Welcome to the Agency Hour Podcast, where we help web design and digital agency owners create abundance for themselves, their teams, and their communities. This week we're joined by Scott Princione, fractional CMO and founder of Growth Connect. And today we're exploring the business model of a fractional CMO, the benefits of positioning and pitching yourself as a fractional CMO, how to avoid being burnt by outsourcing talent and a whole lot more. If you've been hearing the fractional buzzword around the watercaller and you want to know how you can leverage your marketing skills and offer more value to clients without giving away free strategy, then this episode is for you. I'm Troy Dean. Stay with us. Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, please welcome Scott Pressamone from Growth Connect to the Agency Our Podcast. Hey Scott, how are you doing? Yeah, doing well, Troy. How about yourself? I'm very well. Thank you for joining us here. Um we were just chatting in the virtual green room here before we hit record. How did our paths cross? What is who's our common connection?

Yeah, so that would be Tim Kelsey. So there was a uh I guess it was a little while ago that he joined Agency Mavericks, and it sounds like he's been doing a lot in your community. So uh I've worked with Tim since about 2014, and uh he suggested it would be a good uh collaboration for us to talk to each other.

Awesome. Dude, you don't look old enough to start work with Tim in 2014. Were you like a teenager when you started work with Tim? What's going on?

Yeah, I I do have some gray uh gray hairs in my beard if you look uh closely. So I'm I'm 38 now. Uh have a couple kids. Uh maybe the spiky hair makes me look a little bit younger.

But awesome. Good on you. Hey man, I'm I'm rocking a midlife mohawk to try and make myself look younger. So, you know, uh, I know how it goes. Um now, for those that don't know who are you, what is Growth Connect, what is a fractional CMO? Just give us the too long didn't read version and set the context before we dive in.

Sure. So first I go I'll start with the fractional CMO. This is a term that you might see more often. A lot of people are putting fractional CMO on their LinkedIn profiles. Uh, so it's kind of a popular thing now. But we've been working, I've been working as a fractional CMO now for probably about three or four years. And what it is, is it's a uh part-time executive. And I think that's what you'd call it in Australia, is just a part-time leader who's joining a company or organization. And um, from an executive leadership level, right? So there are fractional CFOs, fractional CTOs. In my case, obviously, since I focus on marketing, uh I join companies that way. But I think it's important to make this distinction because the first time people hear like, oh, wait a minute, you're part-time executive level working for a company, that kind of sounds like a consultant. And I think that's a that's a fair um assessment. But where I distinguish a consultant from a fractional is that rather than just advising a company, you're almost joining as an employee in the way that I attend meetings, I attend all the executive meetings. Usually I'm seeing things like profit and loss of the company. I uh in in some cases, depending on the engagement level I work on in in companies, I will actually manage people. Like literally, they're my direct reports, but I'm only dedicating a part-time to that one business because I, of course, work with more than one business at a time. So that's the gist of what a fractional CMO is.

Got it. I want to I want to unpack that because this is, you know, uh this is part of the model that we uh advocate and and coach agencies through. So we're gonna unpack this in detail. But before we do that, what were you doing before you launched Growth Connect? What was your involvement at pronto marketing with Tim? Tim, by the way, for those listening, Tim is now actually a coach here at Mavericks Club, started off as a client, uh went through the process and uh was just so helpful in the community that we reached out to him and said, Hey, I think we need a and he's based in Thailand, and we definitely needed a coach to look after uh Asia Pacific region for us. And so he joined us a few months ago as a coach and was just recently at our Mavcon event on the Gold Coast and and spoke and hung out with the the agencies that he's mentoring and met them in real life for the first time, which was super cool. So, what was your role uh and how did you meet Tim and how did you how did you get on board at Pronto and and then what and what was your role there?

Sure. Well, so Tim is a great, great guy. I mean, that I wouldn't have been sticking around working with Tim, continuing to work with Tim uh from 2014 up into now. So anyone who hasn't met Tim, if you see him at an event, please uh give him a shout. He's uh he's only gonna help you, right? So um great, great guy. But but basically, um my exposure was when I joined, I joined Pronto Marketing again back in the relatively early days. So 2014, the company had been around for several years, but it had always been growing in that website support area. So at the time, it was basically website support only. And around the time that I joined, there was a big push to say, how can we get new revenue streams? And so what Tim and I worked on very closely together uh was to create new marketing services. So this was things like SEO, advertising, ebooks, um, design services. And so my technical role at the time, I think I joined as actually the first, this is the official role. I was not the unofficial title would be talker. Um, at the time, no one was actually talking to clients on the phone because it was uh purely clients would come in, buy some support service package, and just go from there. But guess what? When you're trying to sell higher dollar services like marketing services, you need to be able to talk on the phone. And Tim was the only person talking on the phone at the time. And so he had me join as a fellow talkative American and said, Hey, can you actually talk to our clients, explain to them how SEO services work, or explain to them how Google Ads Words work? And uh that was kind of a semi-sales role, but truthfully, neither Tim nor I are uh aggressive salespeople. It's really just explain the service, try to get the right service um to the person, like if they need it, if they're a good fit for it, and then sell it to them. So that was what I did initially. And that, you know, I worked with Tim and we grew those services over the next three or four years. That then turned into developing new services. What we find is, you know, we actually have to have to adapt the pricing models. We have to adapt how we're packaging things together. So he and I did a lot of that over the years. And um then that later, I mean, I'll fast forward a little bit, but eventually that turned into me branching off a different division of the company called Growth Connect. Maybe call it like a business unit, but still under the same umbrella. And that's where I started offering the fractional services. There's a lot in between there, but hopefully answer that answers your question.

So is Growth Connect still like a subsidiary or a business unit within Pronto? It is, yes. All right, there we go. I wasn't aware of that. There we go. Um, okay, so I'm gonna start with the why, right? Like what problem did you see in the market? I know John Janch at Duct Tape Marketing has been a big advocate of CMO for a while. I've been, you know, using fractional digital strategists when I coach agencies, I help them position themselves as a fractional digital strategist. What gap or problem did you identify that led you to the decision to research, explore, and start offering fractional CMO as a service?

That's a great question. Actually, I'll be honest, it was a client of Pronto's that really planted the seed in my head. And it was actually an IT company, and they worked in, you know, they offered, I think, or V CTO services, so virtual CTO services. And, you know, during that time, when I was talking to many clients, I'd always hear them say, Hey, I just wish I had a little bit of help with this, or I wish I had a little help with that. And when he planted the seed and said, Hey, Scott, like, do you think you could be like a virtual CMO? Or maybe you guys could start offering that service. So I went down that track. And again, it was things I was already doing. I was already having, you know, multi-hour calls with clients. And, you know, while the introduction might have been explained marketing to me, in the end, it ended up being actually advising them on some decisions. But we said, you know what, maybe we could package this as a service and not just be giving free consulting advice uh on on these phone calls. So I went down that for a while. And to be honest, it started out as a semi-account management kind of maybe this is a layer on top of what Pronto is offering, and it could be a um, we just help guide clients to the right pronto services to buy. And I think that's honestly the track that a lot of agencies go down when they hear the quote buzzword of fractional and they say, Oh, you know what, this is a new revenue stream. Let's just start um, you know, packaging our stuff together and having this layer of advisory on top, and that'll work great. But after having done that for a little while and growing a small team around that, what I found was there wasn't a conflict of interest, but I wasn't actually able to provide the level of service I wanted to because I really wanted to be on the client side of the table. Meaning maybe we don't actually offer, maybe Pronto didn't offer a service that they need. Maybe, maybe the way that we were doing Google Ads wasn't the right fit for some e-commerce store that we that Pronto wasn't specialized in. So, you know, this this wasn't our goal in the beginning, but what I ended up doing over time is saying, how what does it look like if I am not incentivized to just sell pronto services and instead I'm incentivized to just help the client 100% from the start? And to be clear, I know agencies, of course, are are always have that in mind as well, but I I still wanted to go even further. And so I had to formulate a model where it would help prontos, bottom line, it would help profitability, but I wouldn't just be incentivized to sell pronto services. So um, so what the model ended up being is more of a consulting model to where the price is a fixed price based off the engagement level I have with a client. I'm not actually incentivized to sell any pronto services at all. And really, I'm just billing out my time in my advisory. And no matter where that goes, if that goes to pronto, if that goes somewhere else, if that just means that I'm hiring internal team members, which I often end up doing for the clients that I work with, um, then it ended up being that. And guess what? Everyone wins because the client gets someone who's really dedicated to their business. And Pronto, as you said, since I'm still under that umbrella, um, still gets the profit from the money that I'm earning through my clients.

Got it. Do you hire when you this is a very important distinction I want to make here. When you hire a pronto team to do things for your clients, are you footing the bill or is the client paying extra to pronto and have a direct relationship with pronto?

Um the client is footing the bill, not me. So things are not going through me at all. So in fact, every time that I decide and talk with a client about a new hire, we might need to make internally. So oftentimes that's a marketing coordinator, a marketing technician, something of the sort. That's them footing the bill, but it's me taking on those responsibilities. But to your point about if it's pronto, it's me saying, look, I I honestly will say you might want to work with pronto or you might want to hire someone locally in the cases they need something different. Either case, it's me giving advice and then me and the owner working together to make the final decision.

And you're not getting a kickback from pronto, so you're not incentive to sell their services. So whether they end up hiring someone at Pronto or hiring a local person or hiring their own virtual staff member somewhere else, you're going to manage that team member and and kind of make sure that that team member fits in and gets the job done, whether they're at Pronto or not. Understand? Exactly. Um I want to talk about pricing for a second. And I don't, I'm not asking you to divulge your pricing model, but I want to talk about the fractional, the benefits of fractional, right? So on your website, there's this little calculator that says, you know, you know, CMOs in the States earn about 8,800 a month. I argue that would be more in Australia. I would argue that you're probably looking at, you know, 100, 120 plus a year to hire a CMO in Australia. Um, that would, I think, would be a starting point. What's the what typically what do you see agencies selling fractional CMO for? Give me a range because I want to understand how what is the benefit to the client, right? They're they're hiring a fractional CMO who I I get it. It it it they're working a fraction of the time in the client's business because they're managing multiple clients, they're a fraction of the cost. I know what the other benefits are, which we can talk about in a second, but what I'm interested in here is like what is the economic benefit and the saving to the client by hiring a fractional CMO rather than employing a full-time CMO?

Yeah, it's a great question. I would say that the sometimes people think that it's going to be significantly cheaper. So you could say something like if an internal CMO would be, let's say it's just $100,000. Oh, maybe this is like $10 or $20,000. And that's not the case. I just want to ground this and say you're not saving that much money by going fractional. Uh, I think honestly, most of it comes down from your oh, and then let me just take a step back and explain why. So I will divulge that when I say working fractional, I mean I am deeply involved in the companies I work with, as are the other fractionals that are part of our network. But um, that means basically two to three clients. Okay. And so um when we're working with two to three clients at a time, you could say, well, great, the best case scenario is that you are saving um two-thirds of the cost, right? Because I'm splitting my time. But realistically, as a fractional, I don't have three clients every month of the year. And in fact, I'm also taking a risk and you're not paying benefits and things like that for me. So in the end, pretty much the best that you can expect, in my opinion, is saving about 50% of what you would have for an internal hire. That's kind of the best case scenario. Um, but usually it's a little bit closer to it's more about who you can get, who you have access to. So you can get someone that's more experienced at a slightly better price than you'd expect and at a much lower risk than you'd expect. So that's kind of why I think a lot of people go fractional. If you're just looking to say, I don't want to hire full-time because I want to save money and I'm hoping I'm able to get like 80% off by going fractional, I think you might be looking in the wrong place.

Got it. One of the benefits I see, one of the main benefits I see hiring a fractional CMO or a fractional digital strategist, whatever you whatever you want to call it. The reason, again, just transparently, the reason I don't position myself as a fractional, I've got a handful of private clients who are not agencies, right? I spend most of my time, 90% of my time running agency Mavericks. You know, we're in good shape. It's a great company, great team, doing really good work, love our clients. I have a handful of private clients who are not agencies. And the reason, like transparently, I don't need the money. The reason I do it is because it keeps me sharp, right? It keeps me in the trenches and um it allows me to stay in touch with what's happening in the real world. And one of the I don't position myself as a fractional CMO because I don't want a client come to me to say, hey, we're doing this trade expo and we need a booth and we need all the stuff designed for the booth, because that's not my wheelhouse, right? So I'm purely digital. So I position myself as a fractional digital strategist. And one of the benefits I talk to clients about is I know this. Like if I hired a CMO to come in and work in our business or a digital strategist to work in our business, within six months, that person's gonna be locked in a silo called agency Mavericks, and they're actually gonna lose touch with what's happening uh in the rest of the world. So I like working with agencies because agencies see inside dozens or hundreds of businesses every month and can go, hey, this is working really well over here in a in a business, in a client that kind of is similar to yours. Let's try that in your business, right? And they have the more the more clients you have, the more sandboxes you have to experiment and play and figure out what works. And so that's one of the benefits that I pitch to clients is you get access to someone like me for a fraction of the cost of hiring full-time for um I also see across all these different industries and different uh clients on a monthly basis. And uh you I also have access to a great network of of technicians and marketing specialists who can get things done. If we need to skill up your team or we need to outsource or we need to white label, I can I've got a great network of people I can call on. What are some of the other benefits that you use when pitching fractional? I'm totally putting on the spot here, um, that that aren't aren't purely just the economic saving.

Yeah, I I think that you hit the nail on the head, to be honest. It's the exposure that can be so valuable. Because I've also often found, well, one thing you know this, Troy, is that when you talk to a business as a semi-outsider, right? As a consultant, as an advisor, as a strategist, they're gonna put more weight to what you say. And of course, it's warranted because of as you said, you have that exposure. But it's also just healthy to have that, I think, as a company, because guess what? It's actually quite lonely at the top, right? And if you're an owner, you know, it's like who who can you explain if you have a second in command or director you're having a challenge with? And I'm sure that they're talking with you about that stuff too, because yeah, as much as you have your space you work, that's it. Everything, right? So, so I think that that can be so valuable because of course the biggest thing would be the knowledge of what's happening in other businesses and what's working, what's not, what we could apply. And not only that, sorry, uh I'm gonna double down on some of the things you said already, Troy, but when you work outside of just one industry, you're able to then apply things that are happening in other industries to the industry of the client that you're working with. So um I I think that that is hugely valuable to clients. I think having a little bit of a therapist on the phone when they need it can be valuable. Uh, I also think uh something else I've since I mentioned I I do have people that are direct reports to me at my clients' businesses. And I also find that they will divulge a ton to me too. So not only will the owner share a lot with me, and of course I'm not sharing and uh divulging, and I have NDAs and all this other stuff, but but point is they will divulge stuff to me, and then my subordinates will divulge stuff to me about you know, a little bit of office drama or things that people aren't able to tell the boss or the big boss or directions that people are kind of insecure about. And I'm always now able to be a little bit of a mediator between these things. And um, I found that to be incredibly helpful because when people see that, oh, this marketing department is operating really smoothly and oh, Scott's doing this thing called like stand-ups and he has these sprints going and things like this. And then all of a sudden, now other departments are saying, Oh, maybe we'll do that, or maybe the way that we uh onboard our uh team members will be similar to how Scott onboarded this other team member. And remember, I'm just taking these from other clients and other companies, as you said, Troy, that I've worked with. So it's about getting exposure that you wouldn't otherwise get. And when you hire someone and say, I'm gonna get a full-time marketing director as a company, it's just you really are crossing your fingers a little bit. You're saying, I hope that I pick the right guy, and I hope that that person, guy or gal, and I hope that they are still staying up to date with the the trends and get able to kind of do all the stuff. Whereas in the fractional space, that's kind of guaranteed. I'm not a fractional if I'm not doing all that stuff. So yeah, that that's I think some of the biggest benefits that it that will come to business owners.

I want to I want to talk about Growth Connect in a minute because I I I'm very rapidly getting my head around your business model, which I want to unpack. I think it's really interesting. But before I do that, one of the things that people don't realize, and you you kind of hit on it before, right? Like you're already having these multiple, multi-hour conversations with clients on Zoom or the phone. I I think a lot of people are afraid of going down this path because they think, well, who am I to position myself as and and offer fractional CMO? What I want people to understand, and I'd love to hear your experience on this, is a lot of what you do, not all, but a lot of what you do as a fractional CMO, you're already doing, right? You're already helping a client. And usually what happens is you're doing it once the client agrees to work with you, and then you go through the onboarding process and you go, right, what is the strategy? We're going to build this website. How are we getting traffic? What's the conversion event that we need to measure? What do we do with remarketing? Oh, there's this joint venture partner who's sending us a bunch of traffic. We need to track that. And you're doing this work in the onboarding. One of the things I really enjoy doing as a fractional is helping my clients figure out a plan and get clarity. And then more importantly, helping them stick to the plan and avoid all the distracting, shiny widgets that come along on a daily basis, and just helping them stay on the plan and gradually biting the eating the elephant one bite at a time, and then looking back in six months' time and go, wow, look at the progress we've made, because we've just done the really boring work of sticking to the plan. And I actually would argue that that's one of the most valuable things you can do as a fractional CMO or digital strategist because clients don't have a plan. They're distracted with all these tactics, they're trying all these random things. You come from outside their business, you don't have the emotional baggage and the legacy stuff in the business. You look at it objectively and go, here's the plan that I think we should execute based on my experience and what you guys want to achieve. Now let's stick to the plan. That clarity and stability, I think, is super valuable and cannot be underestimated.

Yeah, I I couldn't agree more. And in fact, I think something you've probably talked with um uh Mavericks members about, I think I've probably heard this from Tim, is don't make the strategy part free. Right. And so, as you're saying, if you're having those conversations and you're you you have to get through the strategy in order to figure out which tactics make sense, oftentimes there's There's this tendency to say, Oh, I'll give that for free, and then we'll start, uh, you know, then we'll be able to sell the the recurring ad service or whatever else, and that's where we get paid. And where I think the fractional model could make sense again, uh, for potentially for agencies, is when you actually do separate those two things, then you could be selling the strategy on one end and then also selling the services. Now, like I said, you'd have to be a little bit careful about conflict of interest because I do think um that's of course why I separated it and created a business business unit around this. But I totally agree with you. And and go getting to your point then about the uh holding people accountable. Um, you know, I hate to say it, but it I always use the analogy of being a uh a coach, right? And I'm not the most fit out there, but I think you're a heck of a lot more fit than I am, Troy. But but basically I I think of it, I want to run with them, I want to go on a jog with them. Let's say it's a zero to five K sort of thing, couch to 5K. It's like, look, like being busy as a business owner, sometimes you do say they there's distractions and everything. And I want to say, well, hold on. You you want to run the 5K, right? Okay. So we're gonna run 1K, or we're gonna walk, I don't know, uh, three, three miles today, right? Let's go. Now I'm changing to uh uh American units here, but we're gonna we're gonna walk three miles and I'm gonna walk with you. I'm gonna make sure that we're able to do this together. And then when you're running, it's like I'm gonna run with you and make sure that your um your stride is right and stuff like this. And so I am in fact not doing the work for you. Similar to a consultant, you could say, but I'm not doing the work for you. I'm not gonna run for you. I'm not gonna do the booth for you, right? But I will be very hands-on to make sure uh, because I do also get in the offline space. You said you you're not in that area, but um, I am not going to go to the vendors and uh talk through how to get some you know canvas put on top of the tabletop, right? What I'll do is I'll manage the team members that will do that stuff and I'll help coach them and make sure that they are doing the right thing. So being very hands-on, I think it's kind of the uh the best of both worlds in a certain way.

Yeah. Um and and part of I've done this several times and I will continue to do it. Part of your job also is to say, you know what, I don't think we should have a booth at this trade expo. Because if we look at our goals and we look at our plan, this is going to be a big expense. It's it's gonna cost money, it's gonna take staff out of the business, it's gonna cost team. What's the opportunity cost of doing this instead of I was chatting with a a um a potential partner recently who was looking at sponsoring one of our events, and he said, you know what, at the end of the day, I could just take this money and put it into ads and acquire more users than attending your event as much as I love you and I would love to come to your event. I'm like, dude, I can't argue with your logic. 100%. I agree, man. Well done. That's smart. So I think part of the strategic role is, you know, then if we decide we are going to go to the booth to have the booths at the trade expo, what happens after the trade expo? What's the follow-up sequence? What do we do with the business cards that we that we collect? Do we have a QR code there for lead gen on the day? These are the strategic um uh decisions and the strategic role that that we play because usually team members, first of all, the business owners are too busy to think about this stuff. And team members are just busy with tactics, which is where they should be, right? And it's this uh it's the strategic layer that I love the most because you know that and I think that's the piece that's missing from a lot of campaigns. And I think what happens is people see what their competitors are doing online and they go, well, I need to have a toaster pop up on the website for lead capture. And I always ask, you know, what we can't see is what our competition is doing behind the scenes. We can't see the strategic layer. That's invisible. So let's talk about the strategy and then let's remove all the tactics that are going to be distracting and just deploy the handful of things and do them really well so that we stick to the strategy and get to the goals. Now, strategy might be wrong, but let's let's give it a chance before we uh before we um jump shit because I I think one of the biggest challenges for business owners, and I've seen this impact teams, is when business owners don't have faith in the strategy or they're not getting results quick enough, they they chop and change ideas, they move the goalpost, and the poor team members are the ones picking up. I've done this to my team over the years. I'm much better at it these days, and they're also much better at now telling me to shut up and get back in my box because I've given them explicit permission to do that. Um, the the poor team have to pick up the pieces and and finish all these projects that the business owners started because the business owner's impatient or bored and and not getting the results that they want to get in the time frame that they expect.

Oh my gosh. Absolutely. I mean, I have to double down on some of the points you made there, Troy, because uh just using the iceberg analogy, it's that it's so common to see the the tip of the iceberg and say, oh, they're doing that, let's do that, oh, they're doing that. And they end up, you end up really, really hurting your business because not only do you not see what's happening beneath the surface, but you're you're taking the tip of the iceberg from five different businesses that you like to follow, right? And trying to do all five of them and underestimating the work that happened under like below the surface. So you have to say, like, how do you play to your advantage? And as you said, Troy, when you are working with these clients and you're developing a strategy, uh, a lot of it comes down to saying it's about focus. I mean, I I honestly think the definition of strategy is focus. And it's as you said, the strategy doesn't isn't necessarily right. But as long as you're focused and you stick with that for let's say it's three months and six months, it's not to say you're not making adjustments along the way as new data comes in. But if you can't stick with something for six months, uh, you know, there's a problem there, right? Um, and and honestly, that's the tough I it's the enjoyable part of the job, I'd say, but that's also the tough part of the job is that sometimes the people that we work with don't aren't used to hearing no. And I think uh it's it's it's really important that they get that pushback because uh it's gonna be better for them if they do stick with things versus jumping from tactic to tactic, which is all too easy for all of us to do.

Yeah. In fact, on the um, I just want to highlight we'll put a show, we'll put a link to the show notes in this um in uh underneath uh wherever you're listening to this or watching this. Growthconnect.io slash join. This is a page that that is basically an invitation for um people who may have been may have marketing experience in corporate who want to kind of go out and do something different, but they're not they don't want to start their own business because it's too risky, right? So Growth Connect is a network of CMOs, of fractional CMOs. I want to talk a little bit more about this business model in a second, but um, one of the things that says on this page is that you uh you have to be comfortable saying no to clients, right? Your job is to develop a marketing vision and strategy for clients, help them build their in-house marketing team and establish repeatable marketing systems. I I've I've seen this, I actually know um the owners of some of these outsourced white label companies, right? So, you know, design, development, uh, WordPress maintenance. Uh I'm in contact with the owners of, you know, automation, uh, white label, the kind of the all-you-can-eat white label services, right? I know I know a lot of those guys. And one of the things that they've all struggled with is churn. And they've all told me privately that, and I'm I'm not gonna name them, obviously, but they've all told me privately, the thing that's missing, the clients that churn are the clients that don't have a strategy and or don't have a project manager in-house who can who can manage the white label team, right? And I know a few of these companies have actually experimented in adding a strategy role. So they have their top-tier plan will include a strategist to help. And I I I know some that have even gone out to market and tried to tried to recruit a marketing coach to work with them in-house to basically help their clients develop a strategy. So then when the work comes through to the studio for execution, that the client has actually done the thinking and understands in advance why they're doing what they're doing. Right. So here's what I want to say to everyone listening to this. If you're I actually think this is the most valuable service you can offer your clients. And if you don't have the team to deliver the stuff that you're going to be helping your clients figure out, that's okay. Because you've got Pronto here, Tim's a coach, we can get it connected with him. You've got a whole bunch of other white label, all you can eat marketplaces around the world that can get the thing done if the strategy is solid, right? Now, for those of you who aren't an established agency and don't want to do your own thing and don't want that risk, there is also an opportunity with Growth Connect. So without making this a pitch, but this is new to me. I just want you to explain the Growth Connect model to me because I'm just discovering it for the first time. Full transparency. I didn't do a lot of research before this because I I like to discover things at the same time as my audience. So just walk me through the Growth Connect business model for someone who might be working in corporate as a marketer and wants to get out of that world, but doesn't want the risk of going and getting their own clients and having their own, you know, infrastructure and all that kind of stuff.

Yeah. So the way our model works is as you said, we only really focus on people that have had experience, let's say they've been a marketing director, as you said. Um, if you've been like an account manager or something, I'm not trying to be uh mean about this, but it's just a level of this probably isn't the time to level up. I think it's really important to have leadership experience where you're actually leading teams. And uh that's when you say, maybe I want to branch off and go into the fractional space, in which case I'm a good person to reach out to when you're trying to make that transition. I've also had people uh here at local networking events where they are, maybe they're retiring, in fact, right? And uh, you know, in their 60s, they've run some big companies and they're saying, you know what, I don't want to close this down right now. I'm thinking about the consulting space. Um, but this fractional thing is interesting. How does that, how does that differ? And and they come to me as well. So that's basically the type of people that I think is worthwhile working in fractional. And one further thing I have to say about this is even in the fractional networking groups that I'm part of, there's a bit of a rift because what happens is plenty of people are out there putting a fractional label because they just think it would be cool. And then some people have the experience. So um, I'm not saying that you shouldn't grow into it if you're not in the space, but I just know that that tension does exist of people kind of faking it until they make it. And I think it's not a super healthy place to be. So, okay, so now what do we do? With with Growth Connect, as you said, we have a join button. So if someone is interested in becoming a fractional and making that full transition, that's someone, feel free to fill stuff out there. If you are an agency owner and uh maybe similar to Troy, you're kind of thinking, hey, maybe myself, I'm I'm a little more hands-off on my agency now. And I am thinking about, like, I just like that work of helping other businesses. Maybe I'll take my time and be more of a consultant or a fractional. Again, that's another thing where you're not necessarily joining Growth Connect, but hey, reach out to me because I'd be happy to share advice on making that transition. Um, now the way our model works is that people who, I mean, to be honest, it's a little bit narrow now, it might expand later, but I'm based in Thailand. And so work permits can be kind of tough here. So what we are really doing is we're saying, hey, look, if you can do this job, you are kind of you're able to work on your own, you're able to work with clients who have all this experience, and you want to fall under our umbrella and you want to be able to work from Thailand legally and be able to offer these services to clients that I've just described, then you can join our network. And if you pass the vetting process, you'd actually be an employee, right? So you actually would have a work permit and everything like that, and you'd be able to offer these services. And of course, we offer them outside of Thailand. We offer to them some Thailand businesses, we offer them to anyone. So I actually have, for instance, part of our network. Uh, there's a person who worked in the UAE and he's French. And guess what? His client target base is uh not the same as Growth Connect overall, but that's that's who he knows. That's his network. So that's how who he is offering services to. So really we're more of an umbrella or a network, less so than uh you join us and we just get you leads and everything. It's a little bit more like a peer group where we have pricing models, we have partnership agreements we give to our clients, we have weekly sessions where we talk through the client challenges that we're having. So we're a little bit more of a peer group that's bundled under a legal working entity with work permits. And so that's the bread and butter of how we operate. And sorry I'm going long on this, but it's to say we make money because we take a piece of the revenue that comes in. Because as I said, I think it's really important for all of us fractionals to work from the best perspective of our clients, not just get a bunch of kickbacks. So the way that we work is if I bill myself out at an hourly rate, at a monthly rate, right? Prompt always gets a piece of that, right? And anyone who joins our networks, the same thing. It's that, you know, a piece of that is going to the company for facilitating the work permits, for giving the advisory stuff internally. Um, but you can make as much money as you want, similar to a salesperson. But unlike sales, it's not this act of go out there and sell some service and then make money off that deal and then find another customer. We're incredibly sticky. I mean, it's actually almost embarrassing how sticky we are when we work with a client because we're hoping to work with a client for six months or a year. Um, oddly enough, we've almost never lost a client. So, like that three or four years we've been doing, we have clients that have been with us paying for fractionals for three plus years. So um, so that's kind of the model, and you can do quite well financially by doing it. But honestly, I just think it's really rewarding work because you're having an impact on these businesses.

Uh, it's great. I I I I really like it. I mean, the the you know, I'm 50 now, right? And I so I think about what I want to do in my 60s, which is weird. Because frankly, because I've had friends I've had friends pass away in their in their mid to late 50s, right? I've had friends pass away in their late 40s as well. So, but I I'm hopeful and optimistic that I'm gonna be here in my 60s and I'm still gonna, you know, like I love working. I love, I love being connected to people, I love doing things, I love adding value, I love getting praise, I love achieving results, right? I love all the things. And but, you know, when I'm in my mid-60s, do I still want to be um at the helm running a company? You know, I don't know, maybe not. Something like this definitely appeals to me in that kind of, well, I'm almost retired. I'm happy to manage a handful of clients a month. I don't really want anything more than that, but I don't, you know, like the whole setting everything up, all the contracts and the payment, all that kind of stuff. Like I just would be over that at that point, right? So I definitely see the appeal of this. I'm also curious about the network. It looks like you're building out a talent network of freelancers and agencies that uh that this that the fractionals can tap into. Can you just kind of walk me through how that works? Because uh the reason I'm asking this question is one of the big stumbling blocks that people are gonna have is all right, as a fractional, um, I I help design the strategy, but then how do I go how do I find good talent to execute? Because everyone's been burnt in the past with outsourcing work to people and just being really disappointed with what comes back.

Yeah, as you said, we did build out a bit of a network. And really, this is a network that we're growing organically, right? So if I uh know someone who knows someone and it's a writer and they're they did a project and they worked well for me. Well, guess what? I don't just want to keep that person you know locked in a box and just leverage them. I'm gonna share that with the rest of the network. So um, really that's all it is. Is it's just this organic people that we've grown to trust. And there's actually, again, no kickbacks in any of this. It's just merely uh for the benefit of everyone to know who the good talented people are. So we have that section of our website. We're continuing to grow it. Honestly, I need to update that page a little bit to show more people because there are plenty of uh writers, advertising people, things like that that we've learned to leverage. One point though that I do want to make here, if I didn't make already, is as you said, Troy, the execution is so critical. And you need to have those people that you can go to and those agencies that you can go to that you really trust in these certain spaces spaces, right? Um, but I also am a huge believer, to be honest, in having at least a marketing team of one minimum, right? So if you just imagine a three to five million dollar business, oftentimes they say, I know I'll hire an agency and you're gonna get work done for me. And or they say, Oh, I'll get a fractional plus an eight, right? But I really believe there should be a person, if at all possible, on the ground within the business. And that's where we really emphasize when we work with clients, let's get a marketing technician or a marketing coordinator, let's get them hired. Let's make sure, because that also adds visibility in the office, right? If if even if other teams within a company, the operations team and all these other teams are like, oh yeah, we're working with this marketing, these marketing people, right? That's one thing. But if there's someone in the office who's setting up the video gear and is saying, guys, we need to interview, we need some more media for this XYZ thing that we're working on, right? That's now some staff there with their, you know, that they can see in the flesh. And I think that's actually a really critical piece, even if it's just one person. And so I'd only emphasize have at least one person, plus then uh you can supplement that, as you said, whether it be with freelancers, agencies, fractionals, and so on and so forth.

Love it. Um, before I let you go, and I feel like we're gonna have you back on the show at some point because there's just so much to unpack here and so much to talk about. The two things I want to talk about. First of all, we so for those listening, you know, like the paid discovery method is a training that we have that basically helps you understand how to sell strategy and how to design strategy and deliver that and get paid as a standalone product, right? Whether you or not you end up working with a client, that's a whole other conversation. We've had plenty of agencies sell paid discovery, deliver a strategy, and then say to the client, man, we're not the drawage you're looking for. Here's a great strategy, go find an agency because turns out the client's a nightmare, right? And we discovered that during paid discovery, and you know, we want to end the relationship amicably. Uh, then kind of upgrading those clients into a growth plan, which is essentially very similar to fractional CMO or fractional digital strategy. We're finding our agencies are converting about 85% of clients that come through some strategic paid discovery into ongoing growth plan, right? And I think that's pretty obvious when you think about it because they've already got some skin in the game, they've invested a small amount of money in the strategy piece, and now it makes perfect sense to keep working with you to help implement the strategy because you're the one that designed it, right? What is your what are you observing? Like what is the main objection or the pushback from clients when kind of pitching this paid strategy piece? What are you observing across your fractional network and how are they overcoming that?

Yeah, I mean, to be honest, we've probably could have learned from you, Troy, on this piece of how to have really good paid discovery. Um, I sort of learned a little bit as I went. And, you know, what the objections that we get are, oh, I don't need that, right? Because remember, they're thinking, I just want the thing to happen. I just want the tactic. I just right. And so it seems like a delay. So in the past, our paid discovery had been a little bit, we called it a marketing blueprint. And it was this thing of gather all these information around what you're doing for ads, what you're doing in person, like everything. And then also then we said, oh, we'll we'll then develop what our brand voice is and we'll do this and we'll do this. And we stacked on so much stuff into that strategy piece that in the end, we were burning ourselves out and some of the things the client didn't think they need needed. And so it was um, we're always kind of adapting how we're going about that discovery session. But I mean, to answer your question, what is the main objective, uh objection that we get? It's really just, oh, this is four weeks, right? They literally think four weeks is a long time. So this is four weeks. Do I really want to wake four weeks before I'm running ads or something? Or do I really want to do this thing that I already have? Oh, you're gonna do personas or ICPs? Like we already have those. And the thing that's really frustrating about that is I can't think of a time when we've had that objection and then we found out, oh, sure enough, they have these great ICPs and they know exactly what they're doing. And that like the reality is there was something in the drawer that someone created a long time ago that no one believes in, no one understands, and no one trusts. And that was, quote, their strategy that they wanted to skip past. So to be honest, I just think it's what you said about a client maybe being a nightmare and avoiding that. I think it's important to know who to say no to. So if someone is so objects so much to going through strategy because they already've got it, um, you know, chances are they're probably not gonna be the best person to work with. So I think it's okay to lose those 20% of uh clients or prospects and instead work with the ones that are at least open to it. And guess what? If you can get them open to it, chances are they're gonna be wowed by the time they go through that paid discovery and they're gonna be like, oh my gosh, I was totally wrong about this. I'm so glad I did this with you, Troy, or with the agency that you work with. And and then you're gonna have a good customer and good client to work with.

So that's just my opinion on it. Totally. I uh and what we're seeing is the clients that go through this process end up becoming the best clients that the agency's ever had because they're bought into the process from from day one. Final thought, and this could be a whole other episode, really. But uh, what are you seeing with AI and how do you think it's gonna impact the fractional space?

Well, I I must say I I do love AI and I also, but I don't love the buzzwords of AI or the buzz side of AI, meaning like these are 17 tools that you should use today. Like I'm sure our Twitter feeds are full of that or X feeds. Um, but I I'm using AI Lit quite a bit, um, to be honest. Even things like podcasting, which I think is so important. That what you're doing, I I'd recommend a lot of agencies do some podcasting. And guess what? When I'm planning my podcasts, um it's incredibly useful to say, hey, looked at this LinkedIn profile, looked at this, look at this site, come up with some questions for me. And of course I don't use them verbatim, but I think it's so important to do that. And guess what? Now I don't need an assistant to do that for me. And now I don't need my you know executive assistant to be doing this stuff. So I think um it's it's it's very valuable. I'll admit, I'm not deeply embedded into all of the tactics of it since I kind of play on the strategy layer. I think there are plenty of ways that maybe running uh Google ads and having some basic ad copy written by AI um could be ways that people are really utilizing it. I'm usually not caught in in that level of detail, but um, but all I can say is don't sleep on it because I I think it's gonna be the people who know how to use AI and have the ideas and know how to narrow their ideas and leverage AI to do it. And then there's going to be uh the people that we really need hands-on to do work, the people in the middle, right, that are kind of like just did the work their boss told them, right? I think they're gonna be in trouble. I mean, and in an agency, if it's someone who wasn't great at writing copy, didn't really optimize like the conversion flow and just like knew how to quote make a landing page or knew how to like write some ad copy, right? If they weren't the top of their game, I mean, truthfully, AI can do better than those people. So um, yeah, I I think that's the trend things are going.

I agree. Uh well, we're definitely gonna get you back at some point on this show because there's lots to unpack here, and I'm really enjoying the conversation. I wish we could keep going. Uh Scott Pressamone from Growth Connect.io, thank you so much for joining us on the Agency Hour and look forward to speaking with you again. Thank you so much, Troy. I really enjoyed it. Hey, thanks for listening to the Agency Hour podcast and a massive thanks to Scott for joining us. I'm definitely gonna get him back for part two. Be sure to check out growthconnect.io slash join. If you're looking to join a network of fractional CMOs and become a fractional CMO yourself, so you can work with business leaders to transform their marketing and stick in that strategy role as Scott and I were talking about, which for me, at this stage of my career, is the most fun I have. Right folks, remember to subscribe and please share this with anyone who you think may need to hear it. And remember, in 2016, Mozart sold more CDs than Drake, Kanye West, and Beyonce. I'm Troy Dean. Let's get to work