In today’s episode, Jim and Tyson chat with Ben Wolf! They dive into the journey of fractional leadership. If you’re interested in learning more about what a fractional integrator is and how they can help your firm, check out this week’s episode.
Ben Wolf, founder, and CEO created the Fractional Leadership organization because he saw the complete lack of any centralized resource for the fractional executive leadership industry, whether for fractional executives themselves or for business owners looking for information about it.
Ben is also the founder and leader of the largest Fractional Integrator (COO) firm in the world, Wolf’s Edge Consulting.
He created Fractional Leadership to be the market leader for the Fractional Leadership industry, offering professional development, connection, peer advisory, and advocacy for solo practitioners and firms in the fractional executive industry.
For business owners, Fractional Leadership is an educational resource, including the first book on the industry, Fractional Leadership: Landing Executive Talent You Thought Was Out of Reach. Fractional Leadership provides business owners with a wealth of information on all aspects of the fractional executive world, including through its blog, the Win-Win Podcast, and social media. Fractional Leadership also refers Fractional Leaders to businesses, whether a CMO, head of sales, COO, Integrator, CFO, or technology leader, giving them up to three vetted Fractional Leader referrals within three business days.
1:02 organizational chart
5:41 fractional leadership
9:03 law firms have an interesting challenge
13:30 hitting the ceiling
17:44 EOS process
21:43 that which you love doing and are great at
25:58 fractional integrator
29:12 the measurables, the milestones
33:14 they love getting things done for other people
37:16 lack of communication
40:47 what is the right structure for their firm
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Transcript: Fractional Leadership with Ben Wolf
Speaker 1
Run your law firm the right way. This is the maximum lawyer podcast, podcast, your hosts, Jim hacking and Tyson metrics. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome to the show.
Tyson Mutrux
Welcome to July’s guild back to back. So we’re going to talk about some big picture stuff with Ben Wolf. We’re talking about fractional leadership, which is gonna be pretty exciting stuff, I believe. And then after that, we’re going to talk about some of the things you’re doing with the least boy, which sounds pretty amazing. Before we get to that, Ben, tell us about you and your companies.
Ben Wolf
Sure. Well, yeah, I’m Ben Wolf, and founder of fractional leadership. So we are essentially an association, the first one for fractional leaders, which is a term for fractional executives, which basically means somebody that is an experienced executive sitting on your leadership team or on your organizational chart was a lot of experience, you know, building a firm, like yours before, and or a business like yours before and not necessarily a law firm. And doing so doing so previously would cost you too much more than maybe some companies can afford or is not, you know, beyond the scope of what they need. At that point. They need to experience executive and marketing, sales operations, finance technology, and they can come in and do that on a fractional basis when you can’t afford somebody like that full time. But you really need someone with that experience. In order to be able to scale the firm,
Jim Hacking
then I know that’s what we’re talking about is scaling because you have some of our favorite books that we talk about in our group on the wall rocket fuel traction, who not how and then there’s one behind your head. I can’t see which one that is no, that’s actually
Ben Wolf
my book, fractional leadership lending executive thought was out of reach, which, which is surprisingly, because I didn’t realize this when I when I started writing it. The first book on this entire industry of fractional executive leadership actually wasn’t one before that, which came as a shock to me. And yeah, so that came out last October. I think
Jim Hacking
a lot of people have heard sort of have a fractional CFO, but talk to us about I mean, as a law firm that’s grown a lot over the last two years, and we’re sort of hitting a ceiling, I can see the real need for I mean, I was a arts and science history major. I can see where a fractional whatever can help fill gaps for people. What’s the right mindset that people should be thinking about when they’re asking themselves? Do I need extra help? And how do I do that? How does a fractional that are fractional who helped me achieve that?
Ben Wolf
Right? Well, I like that you tied it into the who not how concept, which is quite appropriate. How do you tell when it’s the right time, I would say that the trigger for this, like many other things is that you’re hitting a ceiling, that you feel like, let’s say you’re trying to market your firm and trying to get the word out there. And then you as the head of the firm, or was one of the partners, just find yourself having to watch YouTube videos, figure out marketing, learn everything yourself from scratch, or maybe you are been bringing on just to use that marketing example. You could say this for finance, or any of the other fields. But you know, you’re trying to market yourself or you’re using an outside marketing agency, but you’re just kind of realizing they’re not really getting it, they’re not really getting the messaging, then you have to kind of babysit and micromanage the messaging and the social media and all these things in the blog posts. And it’s just, it’s just so much work, right. And the whole reason why you’re bringing on their marketing agencies so that you could focus on what you like doing best, you know, whether it’s business development with, you know, with clients or client service, you know, whether it’s public speaking big relationships, or just managing the law piece of it, I mean, whatever your favorite piece is, whatever, whatever you’re the WHO for right, where you know how to do it the best and you love doing it are great at whatever it is, and you keep getting pulled into this other area. And it’s just, it’s just the the two parts of yourself are fighting, you’re hitting the ceiling, you can’t grow the firm without doing better at, let’s say in marketing. But whether it’s with an agency, whether it’s with you having to figure out stuff yourself, it’s just not worth it anymore. You can’t doesn’t make sense anymore. You need someone who’s actually not just an intern or junior person that has to figure it out themselves also need someone that’s actually built a business before or built multiple businesses before product launches, marketing campaigns, whatever it is, but there they could go all the way from the strategic to managing a team, whether that’s an internal team if you have some marketing staff internally, or whether it’s an external team or using an agency, freelancers or freelancers or some other sort of outsourced resource, you know, bringing on somebody who’s built a marketing organization before it was run a marketing organization at a company your size or bigger before as the CMO that’s kind of what you need. So you’re hitting the ceiling so bring on someone bring a who on instead of having to figure out the how who can manage all of those hours external or internal resources and help you figure out the strategy. So you can just take it off your head, take that weight off and actually focus on the stuff you enjoy doing and are much better at
Tyson Mutrux
that problems, get it off mute. So Ben, like we are in a position now where we are deciding, okay, do we go out and we search for executives do we try to hire from within and then get the training necessary for them to do fill some of those executive roles? And I wonder with your company, fresh leadership, which Fairbrother what’s known as fractional leadership.io. So if you if you want to find the website and reach out to Ben, that’s the website, the domain. But what does your company do? Do you connect the dots connect the people? Do you do the training? Do you do both? What is it that fractional leadership does. So
Ben Wolf
fractional leadership, and I appreciate you sharing the URL is, has two sides to it. So one side is that it is kind of the preeminent Association for the fractional leaders themselves. So people that want to provide some sort of C suite C level, service to clients, multiple clients at a time on a fractional basis. For each one, we provide connection, peer advisory groups, professional development, and a bunch of other resources for members of that community to connect with each other and to get better, and to continue getting better over time. On the business owner side, we provide a lot of education. So if you go to the website, you can certainly you know, get on the newsletter get on the blog. We have blog posts, podcasts, social media, plus the book, fractional leadership, landing executive talent you thought was out of reach, which is on Amazon, and audible paper, hardcover, Kindle, whatever. So you could learn about we you know, what is fractional ownership? How do you figure out is it for you? Is it not for you just a little bit more in depth than we can on this on this quick conversation. You can learn about it there, the target market of that book is business owners. So that’s one thing you can get his education to find out, hey, what is this goal a little bit more in depth how to test if it’s for you or not, and then guidelines on how to find the right faction leader if that solution is right for you. And we do also offer a vetted referral service. So we have a number of our members of fracture leadership that we’ve checked their references, we’ve had conversations about core values, we vetted them, so that we can feel confident that we’re making an introduction that is going to be worthwhile, and then go to the fractional leadership that I owe, click on the business owners piece, there’s a little button there, you could request a vetted referral. And, you know, you basically go to that page, you could set up a 15 minute conversation with somebody to explain about your situation, your firm, what you’re looking for. And then we kind of work behind the scenes to figure out the best match or matches for you. And then we’ll send you three or up to three, vetted referrals within three business days, essentially, try to make the process just easier, because otherwise, it’s a very manual process. Again, we talked about who not how you end up having to kiss tons of frogs go on Google, you know, meet 15 different people, a lot of them are just not even in the ballpark of what you’re looking for, or you can’t afford them or whatever, they just don’t have the right industry experience. So we just try to help you skip all that with these minute referrals, who’s your
Jim Hacking
avatar client, who are the best kind of firms or business owners for you and your team to work with.
Ben Wolf
So on the business owner side, as opposed to the fracture leaders, I would say it’s businesses or firms with typically between five and 250. People, I know it’s a wide range, but you know, it’s not necessarily going to be such a great solution. If you’re just a solopreneur at this point. Or if you just have maybe, you know, one associate and one paralegal or just kind of a very, very small thing you need. It’s usually good to have some sort of leadership team with you. So it’s an Oregon to total organizations of around five to 250 people really could be anywhere. I mean, there’s some clients that are doing it are on the 750 750,000 to 1 million range and the lower end to, you know, obviously 50 or 100 million on the higher end. And it’s interesting that, I will say in general law firms have an interesting challenge when it comes to bringing in outside management, which is that some firms have a lot of stakeholders, any of whom could basically veto any decision they want, because they’re the rainmakers, and they’re the partners. If you have some firms that are either very united, very much able to, I guess, have certain people that are humble or you okay, they kind of like all agree on whoever is going to be some central leadership, and everyone’s going to kind of go with that whatever is decided along their process. But if you have firms where you have, you know, 510 15 Partners, a bunch of rainmakers, and kind of any one of them can kind of veto anything that they don’t like, or just not go along with it. You’re gonna have a hard time executing any kind of management in whatever part of the firm it is, and it kind of initiatives you’re gonna have a hard time migrating goes throughout an organization, if you have a lot of people with I don’t know if I should say, fiefdoms, I don’t want to use derogatory terminology, but, but we’re aware that doesn’t become possible. If you have like one central partner, and maybe a bunch of associates or non equity partners, or, you know, a small group of partners that are just very able to very much able to get on the same page, it could work, when you get too big or too many big stakeholders and rainmakers, it gets kind of hard to initiate major change in any part of the organization because of the number of vetoes that you have.
Tyson Mutrux
So I’ll ask you one more question, then Jim, I’ll ask you one more question, then we’ll talk about what you’re doing with the lease, because you’re doing some really cool things with the lease. But I wanted to go I shouldn’t ask this as a follow up to the last thing you said, it’s, and I want to know, like, how do you vet these executives? Because I’m sure a lot of them have a lot of talent. And a lot of them probably think they have a lot of talent, they don’t. So how do you cut through all that to figure out who’s qualified, who’s not to be in these fractional roles?
Ben Wolf
And it’s a great question. And we go into it with a level of humility, right, because I’m not a marketing expert, I can’t judge a CMO or I’m not a finance expert, I can’t judge the CFO, in terms of the quality of what they do as a CFO. So we try to keep it simple and recognize our place and where what we’re what we can be experts in and what we can’t be experts in, we just try to keep it simple, we have certain core values that we feel all of us need to share in order to serve each other well and serve the clients that we all serve well. So we have serious behavior. You know, like you’re interviewing people, you have behavior based questions. So we have behavior based kind of conversations with all new members that relate to our core values. And sure, they’re always going to be a core values fit with the community. And then the other thing for the ones that we refer out, is, again, we can’t be experts in finance, or marketing or technology. But what we could do is we could talk to three of their actual clients who they have served on a fractional sea level basis. And so for any of those referrals that we make, we have actually independently spoken to and gotten an independent reference from three of the clients that they’ve actually served before. So again, obviously, they might have others out there that hate them, I guess it’s theoretically possible. But if they got three that, you know, they really liked them and give them a great reference. And they’ve actually served in this type of capacity. I mean, that’s, we’re not really going to look into a deeper than that. I was there’s no guarantees. But that’s, that’s what we do to do our best.
Jim Hacking
Ben, could you give an exam just so people get their mind around it? What’s a good success story of where somebody’s working with a fractional leader has really paid off?
Ben Wolf
That’s a great question. Stories are always so much more helpful than just general principles. I’ll give an example. Just because it’s I have it more ready at hand, then, even though it’s not in the area of law. But I’ll just give an example from from a marketing agency, you know, that I know about is with a fractional CEO, where it was a marketing agency they had, I think they had about six or eight people on board. And they were, you know, maybe a little over a million in revenue. But just the owner of this firm was just in everything. I mean, they were in every sales process, closing every deal involved in every, every client delivery, right, every project, they were involved in that involved in the finance involved, or the bookkeeping, they’re just like in everything, they had some helpers. So some other people were getting stuff done, but there was still in everything. They just realized that he was hitting the ceiling. And if not able to grow his firm anymore. He couldn’t scale because he was in everything, and is only so much of him. And he was super stressed out. So he brought on a woman named Leah leaves. Great fractional CFO, I know, I’m specializes in working with marketing agencies. And she she kind of came and she’s built marketing agencies before. So again, she’s a CMO. She comes in, she’s done this before, not our first rodeo, she knows what it takes to do it successfully. So she set up professional development programs for the team members, metrics, processes that they could follow, so that not everything had to come back to the owner of the firm. And again, I know it’s a marketing firm, but I’m sure a lot of owners of small firms have the same thing. They sell all the clients, they you know, they get all the engagements, they get all the they’re involved in all the client service, and they get some help with paralegals maybe associates, maybe some other staff, but I’m sure to experience some of the similar pain points. And so Leah was able to come in and set up processes set up professional development so that people could feel like they had a growth path within the organization set up processes and electronic systems to manage workflow better. So they weren’t so manual as they were before and weren’t so just everything in their head as they were before. And it was able to set it up that they were able to grow and I think over about nine month period, she got them to actually 18 team members or triple their size, I believe double or triple the revenue. I forgot it was in the two or 3 million range within less than a year and actually kept their price Foot margin, the same as it was when they were smaller, because usually when you’re smaller, obviously, you’re going crazy and stressed out. But you could have a higher profit margin because you’re the, you’re the main talent, right doing everything and you’re not paying people, because there’s fewer people around, but they were able to, they were able to keep the work that they did efficient in the way that they scaled, because again, she’s just done it before isn’t that’s all it looks like, is having somebody who’s done what you need done before. So you’re paying a lot less than you would as a for fractional than you would for someone like that full time. Because we’re not talking about somebody that’s you know, a 70,000 $80,000 a year person, we’re talking about an experienced executive, somebody that’s built a firm or a company like yours, or similar size before, you know, perhaps before perhaps that 200,000 $300,000 a year or more plus benefits and taxes and everything and Social Security that you’re paying, and is able to do that for a lot less than that on a fractional basis might be more than you’d hire from for an under experienced person less than what you need. It could be the same or even slightly more than that, just maybe the same as that. But you’re getting the more fractional basis because they’ve done this before they could do a lot more than someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing. I hope that answers that answers the question, but that’s yeah,
Jim Hacking
it totally did. That was a great answer. And just what I was looking for, did you want to ask Ben about what he’s working on with a lease?
Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, let’s, let’s hear about I’m excited. Let’s get into the nitty gritty. Let’s hear about what you’re doing. I’m excited about this.
Ben Wolf
Well, I don’t know you guys keep telling me how familiar your audience is with EOS or the Entrepreneurial Operating System. So you know, that operating system or kind of a set of management tools that small and midsize businesses can use. So I have a company Wolf’s edge consulting, which is a firm of fractional integrators are part time integrators, meaning CEOs. For companies running on Eos, we use the EOS management framework. So Elise, buoy, I don’t know if she’s listening to her watching this, or if she will afterwards. But she’s definitely one of our one of our amazing clients. Very, very growth oriented, and always looking to learn how to do things better, and you know, caring about our team, caring about our clients and caring about getting better all the time. So she reached out to me, and we ended up having one of our great team members, what we have 12, fractional integrators or 12, CEOs on my team, and we’ll have sedge, all working just with companies running on Eos, and providing coos to them on a fractional basis. So one of our amazing team members who also happens to be our internal head of sales, Jen Hamilton is the fractional integrator at Elise’s firm. And so she’s, she’s amazing. And that’s, I mean, it’s basically what we’re doing with our so we’re coming in and helping with their EOS process, helping manage the leadership team, and, and be a resource to the leadership team. And you know, and through them, kind of rolling out and migrating the, you know, kind of the good management and effective and results based management have vus from the leadership team and really migrate that down to the extent they weren’t already doing so throughout their organization. Obviously, the manager level the frontline attorney level, the staff level,
Tyson Mutrux
I got a I got a follow up to that, Jim, you don’t mind? Go ahead. But I mean, to me, like fractional to it seems like temporary, you know what I mean? And maybe it’s supposed to be, but are there opportunities of for those individuals that are the fractional leaders to come on full time with those companies and actually be members of the firm that they’re no longer? They basically strip away that fractional level, like ever? That’s fractional title, and then become, you know, COO,
Ben Wolf
right? Yeah, no, it’s a good question. It’s a fair question most of the time, no, just because the people who are going to be really good at being a fractional leader or a fractional COO, are because they, they want to do that, like, that’s what they love doing. They love doing it for multiple clients, they love the variety, they love, the fact that you can make more money than you can have a full time job. They they like the like the variety, they like the constant challenge, because at some point, and part of that fun of being a fractional leader, is that you get the you get an organization, there’s a lot of transformational change. And then when you get them to a good place, and you could transition them over to a full time solution, you help them hire that full time integrator or that full time CFO or you help them elevate someone from internally you helped mentor and coach somebody from internally who could rise into that integrator or that CEO role. And then, you know, step out of the, you know, transition them into that role and then step out of the way, let them let that let them grow into that role full time. Because if you were there long term or if you were there full time, what happens is that you you kind of make whatever transformational change is practical or recommended. And then there’s kind of a more of a management or an incremental change after that. At. And for people who go to fractional very often, that’s not what they love doing right? They love making transformational change. And the only so much transformational change you can make. At some point, it becomes counterproductive. So you want to get some to that level, transition them to a full time solution, and then move on to the next client that they can make transformational change whether it takes six months, 18 months or two years. So that’s typically it’s a different skill set, right? The different skills that have coming in and making transformational change, and then kind of managing an organization over a longer term, that’s not necessarily the same person that’s going to be love doing and be great at both of those things. Sometimes you find that you look out you find that person, but not always the same person. So having a fractional person allows you to kind of do that and then transition over to the person who gets wants and has the capacity to do well on a long term basis. That kind of incremental, incremental improvement, incremental and long term management, we’re stable management and you know, when you hit that plateau, and obviously that plateau, you continue growing, but you continue improving all the time. Once in a while you look out, you know, somebody, they just love you so much, they just fall so much in love with you, you fall so much in love with them, and people do you know, turn away from the fractional life. Sometimes that definitely does happen. I’ve heard of it happening. But if you’re, if you kind of go into it kind of banking on that being the ending, it’s not really something you could bank on. I would say that,
Jim Hacking
so at least sends or purpleheart will and she says, Hey, Ben, she said that Jen thrives with chaos. Once our firm is all neat and tidy, it won’t be fun anymore. Right? Sounds like a lease. And it sounds like a lot of us one of the things you just said instead of get at one and have the bathroom. You said love love it,
Ben Wolf
you know that what you love doing and are great add, we talked about who not how the Dan Sullivan language. So another thing he talks a lot about his unique ability, which is what the the the nexus between what you love doing and you’re great at. So that’s kind of the whole point of having a fractional leader is what is that hopefully, you know, or a fractional CFO in this case is that piece of managing people and all the follow through and everything. That’s what they love doing. And they’re great at it. So you allow them to do what’s in their unique ability, so that you can focus on what you as the firm owner is in your unique ability. So again, maybe you love the business development, you love talking to new clients, or maybe you love running the cases or during the big trials or whatever it is like you have whatever it is that you love doing and are great at whether it’s more the technician piece, more the sales piece, whatever it happens to be more of the visionary piece, maybe being a thought leader in your field, and being a big speaker, whatever it is that you that you love doing and are great at whatever is your unique ability, that’s where you’re going to add the most value to the firm. And by bringing in a fractional CFO or fractional integrator or any other kind of fractional executive allows you to okay, you know what you take ownership on your shoulders of the marketing of the of this farm. And we’re in collaborating with all the other members of the leadership team as part of the team just on a fractional basis, or doing that with finance or doing that with sales or technology or people operations or whatnot. And then you as the firm owner can focus on your unique ability, what you’re what you’re great at, that does tie into Tyson’s question also, which is that making transformational change is that happy place that’s the unique ability. That’s what many fractional leaders, fractional integrators love doing a great at and then you know, kind of managing a stable organization. And managing incremental change is not their happy place. It’s not what they love doing it are great at so they’re gonna move on to an organization where they’re great at that. And they could bring in that long term that may be more stable, long term, more follow through oriented less on the transformational change piece, long term integrator, whether that’s again, somebody you’re elevating from inside, or whether that’s somebody that we can help you find as an external hire, and then help you transition over to, and that’s going to be somebody who that’s their happy place. That’s what they love to integrate at. So fractional full time. You as a firm owner, it’s just you know, it’s kind of a network of different roles and always trying to be maximally adaptable and agile, to pick the right people to do the right things where everybody could be in their unique ability, where they’re going to be much more effective than just kind of forcing yourself or forcing other people to do things that’s not really within their unique ability.
Jim Hacking
Running your own practice can be scary. Whether you’re worried about where the next case will come from. Feeling like you’re losing control of your growing firm or frustrated from being out of touch with everyone working under your license, the stress can be overwhelming. We will show you how to turn that fear into the driving force of clarity, focus, stability and confidence that eliminates the rollercoaster of guilt ridden second guessing and mistake making to get you off that hamster wheel for good.
Tyson Mutrux
Maximum lawyer and minimum time is a step by step playbook that shows you how to identify what your firm needs and how to proactively get it at every stage of the game. You’re prepped and excited for the inevitable growth that will follow. Name the lifestyle that you want. I will show you how to become a maximum lawyer and minimum time, find out more by going to maximum lawyer.com forward slash course. So, Ben, a lot of the members, they actually do go, they go through Eos, and they use EOS. And Jim uses EOS. I’ve read, I’ve read the box, I we use scaling up and I know a few other members use, you know, scaling up it, they’re very similar methodology. But let’s say you take on let’s say you were to take on a fractional COO, you know, an integrator? What’s that process like to, for lack of a better term, integrate them into your processes? And do the whole let’s use the US as an example, you’re doing that the whole process of doling out who does what? Right? Well, I’ll,
Ben Wolf
I’ll just describe briefly a picture of what it looks like, in my firm I was there, every firm or solo practitioner might do it a little differently. But typically, you know, we have a sales process, but starting after that, right, so we’re gonna start to get going, we’ll have the fractional integrator or the original CEO, will typically like spend a day with spend a day with you. And that could be virtual, or, you know, it could be in person forever. And we like whenever possible to do it in person. But it’s been a day to you day together with you that spending real time with all the members of your leadership team, having a discovery day basically learning. Tell me about your job, tell me how things work at this firm. Tell me what you think is working, what’s not working, and kind of getting everybody’s perspective and learning and kind of absorbing an overall picture of what’s going on what the issues and opportunities are. And, and then at the end of that day, getting together with the visionary or the firm owner, the business owner, and kind of also, you know, getting clear on what, you know, what does success look like? I mean, we talked about this in the sales process also, and kind of get clearer on some of those things. But what does success look like? What does the success for this engagement look like? What are the things need to look like six months or 12 months from now, in order for you to feel like this engagement was a success, whether your business is where you want it to be at that point. And then when you can kind of discuss and negotiate what that looks like, and what’s realistic, and what’s feasible. The conversations with the other team members may give the person a perspective that the business owner even though they are full time and have been there for years, with everybody from day one, don’t actually have they don’t actually realize what’s going on fully, at least or at least in certain areas, obviously, in some areas of fractional will never, you know, unless they were even if they were there full time for a year, they wouldn’t understand certain things as well as you guys internally. But we you know, after that learning, get clear with you, what kind of communication method works for you? Well, you mentioned Strategic Coach Jim, right. So you have the communication builder. And if you’ve seen that tool that they have, which is kind of do you like to be communicated with verbally? Do you like to get it by email? Do you like text messages? You like voice notes? You know, is it the morning is better, the evening is better, right? Everybody has their own way that they best like to receive information, and the best way that they like to give information. So like to receive information with like lots of detail, or just give me the bottom line, everybody has their own communication style. So get clear on what the right what the right communication style is with you. And then what we do is we set up a cadence for working together. So there’ll be a leadership team meeting every week, we typically like to have brief check ins, or depending on the intensity of engagement, possibly more than brief check ins, but at least brief check ins with every leadership team member, preferably a number of hours before at least that leadership team meeting so that we can touch base on Hey, what are your two dues for this week? What are your metrics for this week? What are your milestones that are coming up on your rocks on your major projects? What are they to kind of reconnect because people get so busy right in with client work with with whatever it is that they’re doing? They get so busy with the day to day you get so busy with the fires that always need to come up and need to be put out that it’s very hard to step back and work on those things that are important for the firm to get where you want it to get to but not as urgent as some of those fires or some of the emergencies that come up day to day. So kind of refocus on those one on one meetings back to the you know, the stuff that they’re working on. That’s important but not urgent, again, the measurables the milestones towards the major quarterly rocks, towards whatever’s working, what’s not working, meeting every week, typically with the firm owner, right to kind of get them caught up with everything you’re learning from everybody else and see what’s on their mind and kind of compartmentalize all the stuff that’s on their mind and all the stuff that they’re worried about. Whatever’s annoying them can compartmentalize that into wherever each thing belongs. And then hopefully, we’re able to work out among the leadership team a lot of stuff so that it doesn’t that so that it can be resolved below the leadership team level. We’re kind of bunch of stuff with the firm owner with the visionary below the leadership team level, and then really maximize that time that the leadership team spends together, making decisions and addressing issues that are the best use of their time the most effective use of their time on depending on the intensity of an engagement, there also may be working on the fractional CFO, fractional integrator may be coming in and working on a major project or a rock on their own, maybe they’re getting a major process, maybe they’re getting one of the core processes of the business documented. So they’re working with team members and getting some major process documented and figuring out what measurables to connect to that documented process how to get that process trained, and kind of work on the rollout of that process and how we make sure we’re quality controlling afterwards and getting a trained and whatever you’re gonna working on the rollout of a major process, maybe that’s one example of a quarter of the rock or maybe there’s a new workflows, you know, a new CRM that you guys are rolling out, or you want to roll out to start managing your workflows and your sales process. So kind of maybe work on managing that and not doing all the detailed work, but maybe managing the outside vendor that’s doing that managing the inside people that are working on that, and just kind of taking over ownership of making sure it gets done and gets done right. So that it’s not just one more thing that’s on the owners of the firm’s head, that nobody else really has the responsibility or capacity to think about. So kind of get that off of their head as being the only one who’s responsible for it. So that’s, you know, kind of maybe take on a rock, or like a big project, meet with the leadership team, meet with the leadership team, as I meet with the leadership team, meet with them individually meet with them, as a leadership team, meet with the firm owner, it’s a little bit of kind of painting a picture of what it looks like on a week to week basis. And then ultimately, what we do, like I hinted at earlier, is that we try to signal the end of the engagement, when we kind of make the transformational change that we can make whenever they are ready for that full time solution for that full time integrator or CEO. Or maybe when it’s ready for somebody internally, hey, that is the right person, we can elevate them help mentor and coach that person up into the integrator role. I had one former client of mine that I was with for almost two years, an ad tech firm, who, where I was the fractional CFO. And after two years of working with them, we realized that there was you know that their head of product, right, because they were a tech company. So they’re basically their head of product would be a great integrator. So I have to work with him kind of coach and manage him and then and then help him with the transition of him into the integrator role. So he kind of, you know, we kind of helped him how to do even more delegation than what he was already doing in the product department so that he could free up more time. I helped them, you know, help teach him and mentor him on what it looks like to be a great integrator. I mean, obviously, he had great natural skills in that, but help give him some more management and mentoring in that, and then do a one month transition process and then transitioned him over. And it’s going great now, you know, where he stepped back a little bit from some of his day to day roles and got stronger managers and his product team, and then was able to was able to take over more time kind of managing the whole business and managing other leadership team members, I can certainly imagine maybe senior attorneys or partners or senior associates that, you know, could be in a firm that might might have the capacity if they’re so inclined. If they’re great at and love managing people, then, you know, they love getting done getting things done through other people, not just getting things done personally, you know, they could potentially be be good potential integrators for for, you know, for potential elevation to that role, if that’s if that’s what they aspire to do.
Jim Hacking
Tyson asked me, Ben, right, as we got started, what I was doing today, and what I was doing was we were redoing our accountability chart and included in there, we’re going to be starting to work with a fractional CFO. So I’m wondering what advice do you have for me and my current leadership team, as we sort of incorporate them into a leadership board that’s been running things on our own for and the UN and NGOs for about two years?
Ben Wolf
Well, one is I would, I would want to ensure that you guys involve the fractional CFO in your leadership team meetings. So they’re going to be in your whole tense. Okay, awesome. This is one thing because again, like as you as you probably know, like if this stuff that happens in the marketing seat that affects finance, and stuff that happens in operations or legal services, that affects the financing sub site opens in finance, and other people will need to hear it, like everything that everybody does, if they’re working towards the greater good of the firm, everything’s gonna affect everybody else. So if they’re excluded from that, obviously, that that would not be utilizing them to their fullest. So that’s great to hear. I guess I would just say to make sure you’re clear with yourself what success looks like, and then communicate that to the CFO, before they come in or while they’re there. So that might be one of the biggest frustrations for any kind of I mean, it’s, it’s, it applies to full time employees too, but But certainly, I’ve seen it in the fractional executive space. One of the biggest problems and reasons why engagements fail is because of unexpressed or unclear expectations on either side. So you If you’re not expecting, you know, if you expect certain things, you expect them to kind of manage all your bookkeeping team and you shouldn’t have to talk to the bookkeepers anymore. And then but you don’t. You don’t make sure that’s explicit. Like maybe they assume you’re just looking more for advice and just kind of someone hands them the numbers once a month, and they kind of look it over tell you their analysis. And that’s, that’s it, they’re not actually managing the finance team, or what’s their involvement with billing? What’s their involvement with billing review before those go out to clients? Because I’m sure all the attorneys want to review their bills. Right? So you just have to make sure what’s the you know, what’s the intersection between operations and finance? What are you expecting from them? Are you expecting them to manage financial operations? I mean, I don’t know the answers any of these things with you. But just make sure that you’re clear with what you’re expecting? Like, if you would be kind of disappointed if engagement didn’t have X, Y, and Z? Well, make sure you tell them. That’s what you’re expecting. And that’s, that’s what you see as a successful engagement. Because when you don’t say it, you just assume Oh, of course, that’s part of it, you know, you know, of course, you’re making an assumption, of course, they should be part of it. And they might be making an assumption, well, of course, that’s not part of it, right. And then you know, and then you have dashed expectations on your part, and they get frustrated with you, you’re frustrated with them. Hopefully, you can work it out, if you could just communicate openly and honestly, but the best thing is, obviously communicated before you even get started. Make sure you’re on the same page. And sometimes you might have an expectation, they say, well, that’s not exactly what I do. And then you could negotiate, you could just talk it through, hey, maybe I’m not right for you. Or maybe I could do that. But just Okay, great. Now let’s just kind of renegotiate things. And maybe I need more hours, if you expect this, you can kind of re discuss it, at whatever point you bring it up. But just make sure whatever is in your head that you would be kind of miffed if they weren’t doing it. Or if they started doing it, you’d be kind of miffed, if they did that, just be kind of just be clear within your own head, what those things are, and then make sure to say them out loud. And then discuss it through together because it just kind of dashed expectations, and kind of when you don’t state something and you assume one thing, they assume something else. It’s just that’s the biggest reason I think why engagements are gonna are going to fail. Although once it starts, I would just say lack of communication is another reason why might not succeed, primarily this would be on them, which is that they should be actively communicating with you so you know what’s going on. So you know, what’s going on with them, you know, what they’re working on, you know, what their priorities are, you know, what they’re seeing, and also, again, just that you communicate with them about what’s bothering you, or what you’re what you’re seeing, so that there’s just full communication on both sides, I would say because when you stop communicating, or if you stop meeting regularly, they end up going off in different directions and starting getting siloed. And you’re gonna end up making assumptions that they’re not doing the things that they should be doing, which might be right or they might not be, but you don’t know, if you’re not talking regularly.
Tyson Mutrux
I do want to ask if you don’t mind, and I don’t think at least bias because she’s she’s one that recommended you. But I want to I want to share some more details as to what Elise has got going on. Because we all love a leash. She’s a she’s a, you know, a force to be reckoned with. So just just want to hear a little bit more about the details as to what she has gone on.
Ben Wolf
Well, how or what I can,
Tyson Mutrux
yeah, without, you know, without, you know, violating
Ben Wolf
a lease is, from my conversations with her from everything. Jen, who’s the fractional integrator working with her, has been telling me, you know, at least is and this is a great quality, and she’s getting so much more so much faster results from her work with Jen because of the qualities that she Elise has, which is that she is humble, she is looking to grow, she wants to learn and listen from her team members from Jen, you know, and it’s just she’s not fighting every potential change, or every, like, Yeah, I’m not saying you know, some clients are like that, you know, they’re kind of fighting everything. And you come, you know, and it’s true, like, you know, I want to make sure to say this is that we’re coming in as a fractional executive, we don’t know, we don’t know your business, whatever form of law, you practice, or law in general, we don’t know your team, we don’t at the leadership level or below that we don’t know your customers, we don’t know your product, we don’t know your field. And we come in knowing that we don’t know those things. And that’s fine, right? Because what we, what we do know and what we are good at is managing people managing accountability, you know, how to how to manage projects, and leadership teams, and vision and align vision with what people are doing, and set up measurables and accountability and like make decisions and then get those decisions executed on like, that’s the stuff that we’re good at. So what we do is we come in and we we channel your knowledge or because you guys are the experts in your people, in your product in your customers, your clients. You guys are the experts in those things. So we kind of learned about those things at a high level don’t need to get into all the detail. And then without making our own judgments. Like we just assume that you’re right you know, they Basically, I mean, we might ask probing questions, because maybe you’re not sometimes, but we don’t know that we just finally find out through probing questions, and then help you get to clarity about what’s right and channel your knowledge, you know, the wisdom in your leadership team and the wisdom in you into the skills and you know, management that we have to actually get stuff done. Instead of hitting yourself against the same ceiling and hitting, feeling like you’re hitting your head against the same wall again and again. So when it comes to Elise in the, in the work with her firm, Jen is, is coming in working with Elise meeting every week working with her leadership team, and helping them get clarity around, what is the right accountability chart for them, what is the what is the right structure for their firm, that’s gonna get them where they want to get to, what’s going to be the right structure that gives all of the members of the team a great feeling of having a path forward, doing what they’re great at, of being in a great culture, even in a in a remote firm, like hers is and, and so, figuring out and channeling all that knowledge into a way that’s executable, and helping to be that kind of outside voice, right, because sometimes you’re just with the same people all the time. And they see a fish can’t see water, right? Because it’s all around them, we can’t see air, because it’s all around us. So similarly, in your firm, like a lot of stuff goes on, and you just stop seeing it because you’re always in it, you’re swimming in it, so you don’t see it, like a fish doesn’t see water. So having that outsider come in, and they can ask a lot of questions, and they’ll see things that you just stopped seeing or never saw. Because you’re because it just kind of slowly developed like the frog, you know, with a water bowl slowly, you just got used to it. So even though it’s a lot of pain, you don’t see that that’s anything not normal about that. So they as an outsider help you see those things aren’t normal, or that are counterproductive, and help you get back to clarity again and effectuate effective change. So you can actually get the firm to be how you want it to be to be more in line with the vision that you have in your head that maybe existed. And that’s why you started this firm. But you kind of did you can’t figure out how to practically get you know what Z looks like. And you’re at a but you can’t figure out how to actually navigate what’s you know, what actually is B and what C and what’s D that will get us to z. So kind of what we help you do is, you know, we find out from you what Z is right? What’s that destination that you’re typing into the GPS, and then we help you be that kind of ways or that GPS, that kind of tells you Okay, based on that destination, and based on what you’re telling me about where you are now, your GPS location, I can say okay, this is your next turn and your next turn in your next turn. And we’ll kind of work with you to kind of repeat that process, rinse and repeat every quarter, you know, what are your next few moves? That’s gonna get us? Or that’s gonna get you towards where you want it to be? I don’t know that was kind of going around and around the answer. I’m not sure. Did that help?
Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, it was absolutely, it was great. And we’re about to wrap up that and I’m gonna tell people a little story about your really quick. But the beginning, this is how prepared Ben was. So Ben, based on the topic changed his background side, just Yeah, like that side, he actually unscrewed it and changed it just for this. So it was so great. I’ve never seen it before. So great. But, Ben, let’s wrap things up, tell people if they want to work with you how to get in touch with you go
Ben Wolf
well, if you’re looking for a fractional integrator, if you think that might be something you could use, myself or one of the members of my leadership team are happy to have a conversation, Wolf’s edge integrators.com That’s a wolf’s edge integrators.com Wolf sets with an S Wolf’s edge integrators.com You can reach out to us, you know, find out more information there. Obviously, you can reach out to us through the site. And we’ll be happy to have a conversation, we do a discovery call, we can actually send you a summary email to kind of reflect back to you what we’ve heard, like where you want to get to what things want to look like, what the issues are, why it’s important to make sure we understand the context correctly, we circle back internally to think Hey, who’s the right team member that might be good for this? What’s the right solution? Or what are the right options that might get you to those goals that you’ve articulated. And then we have a second call where we kind of go over our proposal together and see if there’s something that makes sense or not. But we’re happy to go through that discovery and exploration process together Wolf’s edge. integrators.com
Tyson Mutrux
love it. Thank you so much. It’s been great. Very informational. Have a great day, Ben, really appreciate you. It’s
Ben Wolf
great to meet you. Thank you.
Speaker 1
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