Fractionals Unplugged with Jay Kingley

Wendy Marx with Thriving At 50+ is consistently amazed when she see profiles on LinkedIn that simply say Vice President or Business Coach. They’re as differentiated as cardboard with no reason to linger.  Small business owners typically hang out their shingle before they’re branded and differentiated. This gives you no reason to connect with them. They’re not offering something distinctive or...

Will Dukes with SalesPartners observes that law schools teach attorneys how to help clients solve legal problems but not how to get the clients in the first place.  Will’s seen attorneys become insanely frustrated as the PERFECT clients for whom you would be the PERFECT attorney for, just walk out of their office because they were just looking for free legal advice.  Why isn’t it enough...

Zac Stucki of Homeric Consulting shares that many 7-figure marketing agencies enjoy surging sales but suffer from sagging profitability. Growth and scaling aren’t the same thing.  Growth is about increasing the size of your business. Scaling is about increasing your profitability as you grow.  Zac explains the problem as most 7-figure agencies have a project-focused worldview. They think...

Pardees Safizadeh of Alboo observes that product-led startup founders need to create messaging that resonates with their prospective customers if they want to scale.  Without the right messaging, there's no foundation to support profitable marketing and sales campaigns.  Paradees laments that most decision-makers target a broad audience which dilutes their messaging. They may be getting...

Lee Barnathan of LB Communications informs us that 97% of people who start writing a book never finish it. The vast majority of people who have experienced what life has to offer have a story to tell that's worthwhile, unique and compelling, but they never get to do it for a wider audience. Lee cautions that there is a world of difference between having the story in your head and getting it down o...

George Mayfield CEO of Frameworks Consortium says too many companies hit a wall in growing their business is because they’re relying on hard work and luck. George strongly recommends carving time out to work on your business by borrowing time from others. As your business becomes more successful, it becomes more complex and harder to run without help. Most business owners continue to try and manag...

Steve Rucinski of Dreamriver Group states that there has probably never been a more challenging time to be an entrepreneur, founder or owner of a business. The range of elements  to be managed has grown exponentially over the last few years due to among other reasons the pandemic, supply chain disruption, inflation, and employee abandonment. The problem is that business owners are trying to d...

Sabrina Greenwood-Briggs of Sabrina Louisa Consulting observes that the current trend of Quiet Quitting where employees doing the bare minimum of what they have been hired to do is becoming a pervasive problem for employers. Often staff are not vocal about the disconnect, but internally they are weighing whether or not their values, specifically those addressing their personal needs, align with th...

Anna Henry of Shift Sustainability Consulting tells us that consumers are anxious about climate change and are beginning to demand that the businesses that they patronize are supporting this cause. Many consumers believe that brands have just as much responsibility for – and ability to take – climate action as governmental bodies. Anna points out that survey data from The Economist shows a 71% ris...

Jeff Krukin of Earth-Space Commerce Advisors points out the tremendous potential that companies have to do business in the commercial space industry.  While you’ve heard of space industry companies like Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin, Elon Musk's SpaceX, Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic, and even the space force military branch, you may not appreciate how much these and other companies in the sect...

Chia-Chun Chung of Cadence Process Consulting observes that hard tech company founders have much uncertainty on how to go from “breakthrough performance” in the lab to “the new normal” for their product.  Scaling up uncovers unexpected problems that lengthen the time to market putting the company trajectory in jeopardy.  There are 3 big challenges to overcome when you go from the lab to...

Alex Burkhart of Zooky observes that while many enterprise executives desire to make a mark as innovators in their business, they fail to properly understand what it is they are trying to solve, who they are selecting to help solve the problem, and how they are going about solving the problem. Alex points out that innovation inside a corporation requires very different types of thinking and talent...

Scott Kaplan of Quick Hit Sales Tips observes that sales is one area where most CEOs think they should and must do better. Frequent pain points are needing to level up the sales skills of their team, getting new hires up to speed, consistency, and management. Scott points out that these issues are often caused by a lack of experience in using the right sales tools, poor coaching skills in the lead...

Nicole Hanusek of Smack Happy Design points out that an out of date website can result in the growth of your business stalling out because you’re not getting the right leads.  Many business owners think their website is a create it and forget it. She observes that your website reflected your business when it was created but over time your business has likely changed but your website hasn’t. S...

Nick Kobayashi of Open Door Consulting laments that employers don’t understand that a big reason why employees are quitting is because they don't see a path for growth. Since the 1980's, employer's have looked at employees as commodities. The employer/employee relationship changed and the responsibility of training and continuing education fell to employees. Now, employers are starting to pay the...

Joe English of 360 Consulting observes that so many businesses struggle to meet sales goals and expectations in spite of their best efforts. This manifests itself in stalled out proposals, inability to take sales to the next level, lack of time to manage sales, inability to find the "right" salesperson, or having the wrong compensation system. Joe points out that there are 4 reasons why companies...

David McClaskey of the McClaskey Excellence Institute observes that two-thirds of employees are NOT engaged in their jobs. This results in your customers not getting products and services delivered so they 100% meet the brand specifications every time and not feeling welcome when they do business with your company. It also results in high manager turnover and low employee productivity due to stres...

Excellence only happens on purpose. John Gallagher of Growing Champions observes that too often, leaders fail to believe that success can be achieved in business AND life. Their definition of success, and thus, their personal worth, is limited to the title they have on their business card or the speed in which they climb the corporate ladder. John argues that executives should consider eternal imp...

Jonathan Barnes of Work Heartily highlights the enormous challenge of needing an experienced executive team before you can afford one to go from Stage 1 of a business (start-up/mom & pop) to Stage 3 (enterprise).  Twenty years ago you tried to make this transition on hope and prayer, and most didn’t make it. Today, Jonathan points out how companies can embed fractional executives as part...

Natalie Cook  of  Cooper8 Strategies  clears up the confusion on the difference between accounting and finance. Finance is really about strategy, deep thinking, and forward-thinking. Accounting is a numerical recording of your results and is backward looking. Instead of only reviewing financials sent by your accountant every month (which you should do), Natalie recommends taking out...

Nadia Boutaoui  of  NanoNares  likes to zag while everyone else zigs. Starting with a Minimal Viable Product (“MVP”) is the conventional wisdom in the startup world. An MVP is a launch version of a product with the elementary set of features to learn about customer needs and gain customers with the least effort. Nadia advocates starting with a “problem first design thinking” approac...

John Carpenter of Expense Reduction Analysts observes that topline sales is a powerful growth engine for business, but controlling expense is an often neglected but highly effective way to grow.  Nothing is more efficient at increasing profit, EBITDA, and valuation than a dollar of savings on expenses.  A dollar in savings will increase EBITDA and profit by one dollar.  On the other...

Joshua Goldberg of Nath, Goldberg & Meyer warns that protecting your intellectual property on an international basis is both necessary and non-trivial. Josh points out that there is no such thing as a world-wide patent, effective anywhere you might be doing business or might want to do business. Patents are territorial, with each country around the world having its own separate patent system w...

Lee Barnathan of LB Communications is on a mission to prevent a common mistake made by too many business owners that costs dearly when deciding on an email campaign. They aren’t asking one fundamental question at the outset: Why do it in the first place? Is it to build credibility? Establish authority? Boost revenue? Create or strengthen brand awareness? Build or sustain relationships? You can’t s...

Matthew Irish and Dave Hubin of The Embark Group point out that companies that invest in a great employee experience are up to four times as profitable compared to those that don’t.  But executives are trying to improve their employee experience  with massively incomplete data and ultimately end up working on the wrong problems which come with significant costs in things like time, produ...