Speaker 1: Okay. Great.
Speaker 2: Welcome, everybody.
Speaker 2: Hello on LinkedIn. We're doing a fun little experiment where we are going to record an episode of the CTOX
Speaker 2: podcast
Speaker 2: here on LinkedIn live
Speaker 2: as we are
Speaker 2: also
Speaker 2: recording for the actual podcast.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Welcome, everybody. This is gonna be a great episode.
Speaker 2: Awesome.
Speaker 2: Alright. I'll do my intro, I suppose.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to the CTOX podcast.
Speaker 2: Leaving a full time role doesn't erase your credibility. It reveals what you're capable of without the corporate wrapper.
Speaker 2: Today, we're tackling one of the biggest fears fractional leaders and new founders face. Does stepping away from a full time job make you look less credible?
Speaker 2: We'll talk about why this fear shows up, what's actually true, and how to build stronger credibility in your next chapter than you ever had in your last.
Speaker 2: We are welcome. I am so excited about today's conversation.
Speaker 1: Me too. This is probably one of the more common fears people have when they have never done consulting before coming into this role.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So let's
Speaker 2: let's start at the 40,000 foot view.
Speaker 2: What do people really mean when they worry about losing credibility after leaving full time work?
Speaker 1: So the issue is that most people historically
Speaker 1: attach their title with how credible they are. But the reality is credibility doesn't come from your job title. It comes from your ability to create value, and that ability
Speaker 1: travels with you. They think that at this company, I got to be a director or a VP or a CTO. And if they're can no longer command that title for
Speaker 1: Acme Inc, whatever the size of the company is, they think that people look at them as if they don't have credibility because now they're building some kind of a gap in the resume. But, obviously, we know it's not true and not the reality.
Speaker 2: Why do you think this fear shows up even for very highly experienced
Speaker 2: executives and CTOs?
Speaker 1: I think historically, the way most people are used to make money
Speaker 1: is you find a job. And when you find a job, the process generally goes through something like there's a job posting
Speaker 1: or you heard about a job through the grapevine.
Speaker 1: And the process goes through something like talking to somebody in HR,
Speaker 1: maybe eventually like a hiring manager team.
Speaker 1: And the conversation, the substrate you use for the conversation is your resume,
Speaker 1: is your past. Because first of all, that's what HR knows how to do. HR is not specialized
Speaker 1: in our profession.
Speaker 1: They need to interview and onboard personnel
Speaker 1: across the positions in the company. So that's what that's the only thing in common that they can use to understand what you did in the past. Most of them are obviously not professional enough to understand the nuances of everything,
Speaker 1: but that's how they try to gauge, you know, who are you, are you relevant, and so on. That's why they would latch on specific keywords or specific parts of your experience
Speaker 1: and really try to match that against what they were told
Speaker 1: by the hiring manager actually looking for the role. And then when you go to the actual interviews with the team, the hiring manager,
Speaker 1: it's just how you start the conversation for most people. And because of that, they're used to thinking, oh, whatever is in that paper is gonna make this interview successful.
Speaker 1: And if this interview is successful, I'm gonna get the job, and I'm gonna get the salary I get, and so on and so forth. But the reality is
Speaker 1: those that resume is just a prompt. It's just a prompt for a conversation.
Speaker 1: And what they're really looking for is, do I like this person, first and foremost? Right? Everybody just wants to work somebody somebody they like. The next thing is, can they do the work, and are they professional?
Speaker 1: So for that, the quest they're gonna piggyback on maybe something in your resume, but, really, they wanna understand your answers. Right? It it's not a history lesson. They don't care about the anos of your past.
Speaker 1: They care about right now, can you do the work? And, in technology, it's even more pronounced. Right? So they would try to ask you about something you've done recently.
Speaker 1: And if you're
Speaker 1: interviewing for leadership positions, they would ask you about your people skills. Right? Tell me about challenging times. Tell me about successful times,
Speaker 1: to understand how you show up as a leader and also the reference checks are gonna be mostly on that. Right? Nobody does
Speaker 1: most part, nobody does reference checks on
Speaker 1: do they actually know, you know, this little piece of technology that they were talking to you about. They wanna gauge who you are as a person.
Speaker 1: When you shift
Speaker 1: outside of the job posting realm, you know, to get a job, then the resumes
Speaker 1: are just not an issue because that's not how the conversation starts. That's not how the conversation develops. That's not how the trust is built. Trust is built in a very similar way in the sense that they're trying to ask you something and you're trying to answer and build trust in real time,
Speaker 1: but the conversation topic is not the resume. So because most people certainly,
Speaker 1: in the fractional CTO world, so this is somebody with a lot of experience,
Speaker 1: if used to making money with a job and don't have consulting background or something like that,
Speaker 1: that that's how you were trained. You were trained that you have a resume. It's impressive.
Speaker 1: It prompts a conversation. Through that conversation, you build trust, and then you get a job. But the reality is that the fractional CTO route in the consulting realm,
Speaker 1: you build trust in a different way. And,
Speaker 1: you know, when was the last time you hired somebody, let's say, for your house, right, maybe a general contractor,
Speaker 1: and you were looking for the resume?
Speaker 1: Right? Not not very likely.
Speaker 1: At best, maybe, or at most, you would look for a portfolio,
Speaker 1: which is also something we talk about. Right? Being able to talk about your wins, talk about your experience,
Speaker 1: but not the resume, not this delineation
Speaker 1: of how you spent your life in the last ten, twenty years.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Nobody cares, sadly.
Speaker 2: Nobody cares.
Speaker 2: And we see this a lot at the accelerator where,
Speaker 2: folks who are leaving a full time job, but they have not yet stood up their fractional CTO business. There's this identity gap that happens.
Speaker 2: I'd love for you to speak to that a little bit.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So the main context is the first thing to think about, you're not losing credibility.
Speaker 1: You're losing a costume
Speaker 1: because that's how you show up through the interview realm and how you get a job,
Speaker 1: how how you used to making money through
Speaker 1: the jobs. The identity gap
Speaker 1: creates this issue of I'm used to being titled by someone.
Speaker 1: So a company. And usually, right away, the person that gives you the title is not a kingmaker. It's not like a CTO gives you a CTO title.
Speaker 1: Right? It's a non CTO gives you a CTO title or a non
Speaker 1: professional gives you a professional title because they think that's the role you need to fill in the company. So historically,
Speaker 1: if you're used
Speaker 1: to identifying yourself as your role, as your title, as your signature, as your LinkedIn byline,
Speaker 1: as your business card, and suddenly you don't have it,
Speaker 1: then they're a bit concerned. We actually have this pretty often in the program where somebody might come, let's say like, right now, there's a lot of these Amazon layouts. Right? So you might come as a director from Amazon.
Speaker 1: And you're actually one of the questions that I get, I don't know if I could be a CTO. And I'm like, you have managed
Speaker 1: dozens of people, if not a 100 people under you.
Speaker 1: How are you even questioning that? It's just the context of Amazon being such a large corporation.
Speaker 1: And, of course, there's being a CTO at Amazon is very different than being a director at Amazon. But when you're
Speaker 1: servicing a technology enabled business that might be 50,000,000 in revenue, a 100,000,000 in revenue, 200,000,000 in revenue, they don't need 100 engineers.
Speaker 1: They rarely need even 10 or 20,
Speaker 1: sometimes even five. So, of course, you have the skills to figure out all of the technology
Speaker 1: challenges that that business might have. And in that context,
Speaker 1: you would be the chief technology officer,
Speaker 1: the best guy to make technology decisions
Speaker 1: for the business. Naturally, the CTO of HubSpot has a different skill set than the CTO
Speaker 1: of a 50 location chiropractor group. Right? But both of them need technology decisioning and technology guidance.
Speaker 1: So
Speaker 1: going from a full time role where somebody is basically king making you and saying, you are now a director. You are now a VP. You are now a CTO.
Speaker 1: And now you need to basically title yourself
Speaker 1: so other people can understand what you can provide them in value is a trick because they they need the confidence to be able to do it. This is part of the identity gap that comes in. The second thing is
Speaker 1: the understanding of the role. Because usually in a job,
Speaker 1: somebody is creating a job posting, and they're saying, hey. Here's the list of responsibilities
Speaker 1: that we need. And you kinda self identify and you say, oh, yeah. I can do all of these things.
Speaker 1: Ergo, I can do this job.
Speaker 1: But in our realm, in the fractional CTO, you're the one that's doing discovery,
Speaker 1: and you need to interact with the prospect, figure out what they need, and then fit yourself into that as opposed to well, you need to convince them that you can do it and you need to help them articulate what are the actual responsibilities.
Speaker 1: So the other side is this proactive thing that
Speaker 1: until you talk to the business, you don't actually know what they need.
Speaker 1: You don't actually know what you're gonna do. And for most CTOs coming into this realm, that's that's a little bit of a challenge just getting into it. It's very simple to do once you figure it out, but that's part of how they have a challenge
Speaker 1: calling themselves a CTO or a technology or whatever it is because they have to self define it for their client
Speaker 1: and not rely on the client just giving them,
Speaker 1: you know, ready made.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And that imposter syndrome
Speaker 2: really comes in a lot.
Speaker 2: What are the other narratives
Speaker 2: that leaders tell themselves that kinda amplify the fear,
Speaker 2: which may even prevent them from quitting the w two job in the first place?
Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh, there's there's a lot. I would say probably one of the common ones we get is I was never titled as a CTO.
Speaker 1: But then when you look at the companies they worked with, they look at some major corporations.
Speaker 1: They're like, yeah. I mean, that corporation is huge, and they have one CTO. Or maybe they have a few field CTOs.
Speaker 1: So that's a very different thing than being, you know, the general of the US army,
Speaker 1: and then being a commander, a platoon commander, which for whatever business,
Speaker 1: you wanna have, that's exactly what they need. Like, for that business, you are effectively a general. You are leading all of the operations.
Speaker 1: So one is the gap of what titles the industry had given them in the past and understand the difference between
Speaker 1: if you have big corporate experience, most of the fractional CTO opportunity is gonna be in the small to midsize business. Right? So very different set of challenges, and, of course,
Speaker 1: the titles are gonna be very different. So historical titling is one. The other one is definitely very common for us. I don't know how to do marketing. I don't know how to do sale. I'm not a marketer. I'm not a salesperson.
Speaker 1: And and that's by and large true for pretty much all technology leaders, certainly pretty much anybody that joins our program.
Speaker 1: And our mental model for it is a bit different. First of all, everybody does sales. When you get a job, you just sold yourself. When you're trying to push for a project, you're selling that project. But really our best mental model for sales
Speaker 1: is you making friends and building trust.
Speaker 1: It's not like a car sale, like, this is my product. Go buy it because it's you. You're building trust with yourself. So they have it in their mind that the mental model for a salesperson
Speaker 1: is something they see on TV or somebody slick or somebody like an advertising guy, and that's just not true. That's just not true. The other one is marketer.
Speaker 1: They think marketing is this
Speaker 1: super complicated, highly specialized.
Speaker 1: And, of course, if you wanna be a chief marketing officer,
Speaker 1: it is. But end of the day, marketing is creating awareness and going to the market. Right? If we were in ancient Greece, we would literally just go down to the market and meet our people and let them know I have cucumbers.
Speaker 1: Right? So that's what the essence of marketing is. Also in the context of a sole proprietor, which is what most of our fractional CTOs are outside of the ones that are building larger practices,
Speaker 1: you your income goal is gonna get satisfied.
Speaker 1: Most people have tried to hit that kind of 40,000 a month by
Speaker 1: five, six, seven clients.
Speaker 1: Right? Four to six clients for the most part is gonna get satisfied.
Speaker 1: So some people think, oh, there's,
Speaker 1: the market
Speaker 1: in my demand in the market or the market demand or whatever it is is too big, too small.
Speaker 1: Are there four, five, six clients that need you? And the answer is almost unequivocally yes in any single niche that you might think. So they're thinking this kind of big
Speaker 1: government level thinking, big consulting group thinking about the market opportunity where they're just trying to get a handful of clients. So that's another one. Like, them not understanding,
Speaker 1: how to frame what marketing is and how to frame what their opportunity is, and they're latching on the things they read on the news or they read on whatever it is as general business strategy. But when you're a sole proprietor doing consulting, those things don't matter at all. So,
Speaker 1: identity issue around sales, very common. Identity issue around marketing and the complexity of it. The reality is it's not very complex. People do it all the time. It's really just making sure people know what you have to offer and being in front of them. And then once you're in front of them, it's building enough trust to get a yes conversation, get another meeting, another meeting until
Speaker 1: you can prove to them you can actually solve their problem, and then you exchange money. And lastly, it's just the approach of
Speaker 1: how complicated it is
Speaker 1: to create an alternative income source instead of a w two, which, again, for most people would be that
Speaker 1: 40,000 a month goal. I would say in the program, Marissa, most people probably target 20 to 30 a month.
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 1: Yeah. First, wanna kinda replace their income their full time income.
Speaker 1: And it's also not not that big of a deal. So they're using
Speaker 1: very abstract forms of what sales, marketing, market access income is. And because they don't go into the specifics, it just creates paralysis and they don't take action.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And there's a couple of cognitive biases that also play into this and cause even more of a mess. And, you know, there's recency bias.
Speaker 2: Like, I've gotta figure this out fast and land on my feet, or else I'm gonna look like a fool for leaving or whatever it actually sounds like. And,
Speaker 2: you say a lot,
Speaker 2: the quote from our our coach Dan Sullivan that entrepreneurs don't go crazy because of their goals, but because of their deadlines.
Speaker 2: And then we have loss aversion where, you know, oh, man. It's gonna take so much time and effort and energy to do these things I don't know how to do.
Speaker 2: Let me just,
Speaker 2: stay in this corporate box.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And, you know, anxiety, this fear, and we we're saying in the program that anxiety and hope are very similar energies. Right? They're both this made up story about the future.
Speaker 1: Anxiety is a negative story, something you don't like and hope is a positive story. Both both of them are made up. And anxiety in many cases just come from not yet being in the game, in this new game. If you haven't taken action yet, you're judging the outcome before the story is even started, and then you're looped. That's why when people come in, we focus so much on bias to action and not go and watch all the videos and read all the content and attend all the meetings because none of that education is not gonna get you clients. Education is that the things that you apply in skills once you engage with clients. But action will certainly get you get you clients.
Speaker 1: And
Speaker 1: really just trying to diffuse the anxiety that comes with new things, and w two is safe. Job is safe. Title is safe.
Speaker 1: Having, you know, salary comes in every two weeks is very safe. So trying to get people outside of that and into their new future, that's also when when people come in with an income goal. The first one we hear is I wanna make 300 a year, 500 a year. Right? And then in our sessions, we tell them, well, how much you wanna make a month?
Speaker 1: Exactly because of that context that entrepreneurs don't go crazy because of their goals, but because of their deadlines.
Speaker 1: We want you to create a system that gets you that $30.40, whatever it is every month. And does it really matter
Speaker 1: if you got to it in two months or six months or ten months? It doesn't. Because once you have the system, you have it pretty much forever,
Speaker 1: like a job. If you mis negotiate
Speaker 1: your starting salary, you're gonna need to wait a while before any raise. But in a world where you're self employed,
Speaker 1: you just need to figure out this metabolism of leads and money and fulfillment.
Speaker 1: And once you figure that out, you can just do more of it, and there's really no no ceiling to it. Right? We have we have a few people in the program making 6 figures a month
Speaker 1: starting with zero. So it's really about nailing down that system and not trying to borrow concepts from the w two employment world because it really just doesn't apply.
Speaker 2: Yeah. That's a great one on borrowing
Speaker 2: borrowing the analogies because sometimes they're they're very not helpful.
Speaker 2: What are some other signals
Speaker 2: that
Speaker 2: differentiate
Speaker 2: a crisis in credibility
Speaker 2: from a transition period?
Speaker 1: The
Speaker 1: credibility crisis
Speaker 1: really comes from paralysis.
Speaker 1: Right? Like, you thinking that
Speaker 1: because my LinkedIn shows a gap, this is a problem. The reality is in the consulting world,
Speaker 1: nobody nobody really cares about yours too because it's like a portfolio.
Speaker 1: They don't really care how long it took you to do different things. They just care if they have you have the capability or ability or not. And in the job world, the reason why people are afraid of it is because, again, a lot of HR managers look at a gap.
Speaker 1: And they look at that gap and they ask you, like, what happened there? But in the consulting world, you're just looking at abilities.
Speaker 1: You're not looking at time.
Speaker 1: So if you stopped one company, whatever it is, as long as you're still valuable, as long as you're still taking action.
Speaker 1: Maybe you're doing GitHub projects. Maybe you're doing research. Maybe you're helping a nonprofit. Doesn't matter. As long as you're doing things, as long as you're staying valuable,
Speaker 1: the credibility is still there, and the
Speaker 1: transition period really doesn't doesn't matter.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It is interesting to go from that explain
Speaker 2: this gap in employment
Speaker 2: because it really does,
Speaker 2: it's a tell
Speaker 2: to an environment where, like, you need to be a better robot
Speaker 2: as as a human corporate worker, whereas the entrepreneurial word world is so different because it is based on value creation.
Speaker 2: The
Speaker 2: peaks and valleys are important. And we talk a lot about lifestyle in the CTO accelerator, too. So it's like, oh, I took some time off to travel
Speaker 2: to welcome and expand my family to have a meaningful,
Speaker 2: bonding period with my aging parents or whatever the story is.
Speaker 2: These life experiences
Speaker 2: don't fit neatly on a resume.
Speaker 2: And that's that's part of the unlearning that we talk about a lot in the accelerators, like,
Speaker 2: how you used to measure
Speaker 2: productivity and performance
Speaker 2: and success.
Speaker 2: Those
Speaker 2: same metrics will drive you insane as an entrepreneur.
Speaker 1: And you don't need to because going back to
Speaker 1: how you come about getting a client, you do it through discovery.
Speaker 1: You're actually the one asking the questions.
Speaker 1: So it's a very different position.
Speaker 1: Right? You're the one asking the questions. You're the one prompting them to understand what are they doing.
Speaker 1: Why are they doing it? So you can figure out if you can help them get there wherever there is. And that's a very different position than they're inviting you and are asking you questions about yourself because they're trying to understand if you're a fit
Speaker 1: to where they're trying to go. So just because of that flip,
Speaker 1: it's a nonissue, and it really never comes up.
Speaker 2: So for those who are listening and,
Speaker 2: they're considering,
Speaker 2: you know, a bigger future,
Speaker 2: how do you build credibility
Speaker 2: quickly
Speaker 2: in a new fractional or entrepreneurial
Speaker 2: context?
Speaker 2: So,
Speaker 1: again, you don't keep credibility by staying employed. You keep it by staying valuable. And the way to do it is give value. Actually, one of the trainings we do in the in the accelerator,
Speaker 1: people ask us, like, how much should I divulge
Speaker 1: in the first meeting or discovery? Should I, you know, give them the form? And I'm like, absolutely.
Speaker 1: If you can give value in real time and it's gonna take you ten minutes, thirty minutes, that's what it's worth.
Speaker 1: It's all about execution.
Speaker 1: And right now, you need to build trust
Speaker 1: through suddenly making something more real for them, more material. Like, if you can pose a questions that they've never thought about or an idea that makes a lot of sense,
Speaker 1: that's the best way. So listening, doing discovery, and we talk about this what and why conversation or discovery. What are you trying to do? Why are you trying to do it? And as soon as they start talking, you're already adding
Speaker 1: insight. You're adding the spotlights
Speaker 1: of the problem.
Speaker 1: You're showing facets of the problem that they haven't thought about. Maybe you're suggesting a platform.
Speaker 1: Maybe you're suggesting a whole new way to do it. One of my favorite things, for example, is to make companies not do something.
Speaker 1: By far, my favorite thing is to get them to drop an idea.
Speaker 1: It's my favorite thing to do. It's obviously the most that shoots me in the foot. Right? Especially if it's like a big project that they wanted to spend, you know, half $1,000,000 on something. And I and
Speaker 1: it's a joyful moment for me to make them realize they shouldn't do it at all. They should spend, like, $5,000
Speaker 1: and do something else entirely because I built so much trust because I'm trying to think like them, which is really the key. When you're a factual CTO, you're an entrepreneur that happens to be a CTO.
Speaker 1: And when you talk to a CEO, you are talking to an entrepreneur. So you wanna be at their eye level. So you wanna show them that you're thinking like them.
Speaker 1: And Elon Musk has this thing. Right? The worst thing to, the
Speaker 1: the the the only worst thing to optimize than optimizing optimizing something that shouldn't exist.
Speaker 1: I'm paraphrasing something like that.
Speaker 1: And and that's what a smart entrepreneur would do. They would figure out what is the problem I should tackle right now, this month, this week, this year, this quarter. So if you can be at their level and say, hey. How would they even do this? I would look at this problem entirely different, or this is a great idea.
Speaker 1: You thought it might take you nine months. I actually have an idea how we can MVP this in, you know, six weeks.
Speaker 1: So the more you can contribute value and share your insights in real time,
Speaker 1: the more credibility you build, and the if you can manage to give insight
Speaker 1: that would actually suggest that they shouldn't hire you,
Speaker 1: that's a win win. Maybe you lose the contract, but you win a 100% of the trust.
Speaker 1: And if they need you in the future, they'll definitely call you, and they'll refer you out.
Speaker 1: He'll talk to his friends. And if he hears someone, that needs
Speaker 1: any kind of CTO services, they'll recommend you because they see that you're not just trying to say yes yes yes to everything that they have to do like consultants do and try to get the contract no matter what.
Speaker 2: Totally. And I'll plug your Forbes business council article that just came up at the December
Speaker 2: about iteration velocity and getting to the starting line fast and launching experiments. So it's neat to hear that come out in, in the conversations. And, yeah, I mean, in a world where business is noisier and more complicated than ever, having someone at the executive level saying,
Speaker 2: we don't need to do this right now
Speaker 2: in this way. It can be faster, easier, better, cheaper.
Speaker 2: That's a gift.
Speaker 2: It's a gift, and it's one that builds trust.
Speaker 2: So what signals,
Speaker 2: can someone
Speaker 2: gather from the market to reinforce
Speaker 2: their direction? And let's say they're thinking about a fractional career.
Speaker 1: There's a lot. First of all, if you're just thinking about it, I would recommend one of the things, you know, when people come in into the program, we talk about this basic network activation. And one of our mental models is that everybody has a network. It's humans you know. Like, we've seen so many examples
Speaker 1: of somebody getting a client through the neighbor, through the PTA, through a men's retreat, like, all these kinda random places.
Speaker 1: So I would engage with the market more than just read about the market.
Speaker 1: Meaning,
Speaker 1: ask the people that are closest to you, family, friends, neighbors, whatever it is. God tell them, hey. I'm thinking about doing this. Do you have any advice for me?
Speaker 1: Right. Not do you know anyone that needs the service, but do you have any advice for me? And try to gather
Speaker 1: what insight and feedback you're getting. Same thing with former colleagues,
Speaker 1: former collaborators,
Speaker 1: employees,
Speaker 1: bosses,
Speaker 1: and so on. That's that's a big one because
Speaker 1: very quickly, you're gonna get something. Yes, no. And as soon as you get any kind of a yes, that's a great threat to pull.
Speaker 1: The other one is, currently, you can use open source intelligence kind of stuff. So you can use now Gemini Research, Chad GPT Research. We do see a rise in job posting as fractional CTOs, but here's one of the things we tell
Speaker 1: our CTOs in the program. If somebody has a job posting for a CTO,
Speaker 1: go ahead and pitch
Speaker 1: because maybe you can give them a 100% of the outcome for a fraction of the price.
Speaker 1: And maybe they'll look, oh, you can actually do this for me, and I don't have to pay the full time salary?
Speaker 1: Now this would be this wouldn't be very true for pure software companies, you know, series b, series c. They probably need a lot of firepower. But, again, most of the market is tech enabled companies. It's not tech companies, meaning they don't make money by selling technology, but they have to leverage technology.
Speaker 1: So I would look at whatever markets,
Speaker 1: that you're interested in and see what kind of posting activity they have, job activity they have, any kind of industry trends that are happening. Like, we've seen cases where the government suddenly changes regulation, and it has this downstream effect of companies that work with the government and then companies that work with companies that work with the government. So all these things that you can't not do, like, something is affecting the market that they have to do it. We've seen it,
Speaker 1: almost a couple years ago with the big United hack. It impacted a lot of health care companies.
Speaker 1: Regulation changes in manufacturing, same thing. Even Walmart had this big change that trigger a lot of,
Speaker 1: vendors, which is tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of vendors.
Speaker 1: So those are some more open source,
Speaker 1: type of information
Speaker 1: that you can
Speaker 1: investigate if there is something.
Speaker 1: And, of course, if you see any kind of technology leadership, I also like to look at, like, what kind of companies MSPs are reporting that they're servicing or software development agencies that they're servicing because it means all of their clients are paying for technology
Speaker 1: one way or another. You just need to make sure that they're paying enough so it warrants a leader.
Speaker 1: Our metric for that, by the way, is if some if a business is spending,
Speaker 1: you know, a $100,000
Speaker 1: a year in technology,
Speaker 1: fractional CTO is probably not a great idea, maybe purely as an adviser, like a small retainer, $34,000
Speaker 1: making some kind of course correction, some some advice. If it's over 500,000 and certainly over 1,000,000, it's a complete waste of money not to have a talented leader
Speaker 1: that can actually guide the spend. And there's
Speaker 1: incredible amounts of businesses that spend that amount of money.
Speaker 2: I love that you started with network activation because,
Speaker 2: I speak with a lot of our members after their first 10 network activation conversations,
Speaker 2: And something that is a very common and consistent pattern of feedback is
Speaker 2: that they went in
Speaker 2: kind of fearing the conversation and maybe what their peers would say. But instead,
Speaker 2: what they found was they felt
Speaker 2: rejuvenated
Speaker 2: and inspired and engaged because the feedback that they heard was, you're gonna be great at this. Oh, you'd be perfect at this. And there's there's an element of their sharing some of the gifts or skills or strengths that they observed when they worked together or how they knew each other. And so they get a little bit of confidence
Speaker 2: from,
Speaker 2: from the folks nearest to them, which is so important.
Speaker 1: Sometimes we also get, like, if they're talking to former peers or colleagues, let me know how it goes. Right? Because they're interested to see how you're venturing out because they might wanna do it themselves.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And and confidence is an interesting subject.
Speaker 2: How how do you
Speaker 2: regain confidence
Speaker 2: when you no longer have
Speaker 2: a corporate identity
Speaker 2: to fall back on?
Speaker 1: There's a lot of ways. I mean, we look at positive focus as an activity. David Goggins calls it a cookie jar. Right? Alex Romosy says, like, have a, you know, stack of undeniable proof, which is really all of them are saying the same thing is being able to reflect on your past
Speaker 1: and actually see that you've done a lot of big things, a lot of really great things. You've done a lot of transformation. You've pretty much anyone pursuing this is looking themselves as a problem solver that's very generic. Meaning, you can solve any kind of problem, small problem, big problem, different industries,
Speaker 1: doesn't really matter. One of the first one of the first activities we have them do is do this experience inventory, right, this experience audit.
Speaker 1: Like, what stuff have you done? Not just what clients have you had. What stuff have you done? What problems have you solved? Because whatever problem you solved, there's any number of companies out there that had not solved this problem yet.
Speaker 1: And the bigger the problem, the bigger the implication, the more value
Speaker 1: you can create. So being able to retrospect
Speaker 1: and see, wow,
Speaker 1: I actually solved all the problems. It doesn't matter what my title is. I solved this problem. I diagnose it. I made it happen. Made it happen
Speaker 1: under budget, you know, faster, whatever that is. So being able to just look back at the things you actually did irrespective of the frame of the work, if it was consulting or CTO or whatever it is, maybe you're even a junior,
Speaker 1: just
Speaker 1: and one of the ways to think about it is you do this experience audit.
Speaker 1: If you talk to a company right now that's bringing up the same problem, what kind of confidence do you think you would have?
Speaker 1: You're probably just muster a lot of confidence. You're like, I know exactly the problem. You're probably having this issue with the servers. You're probably having this security thing. You're probably over
Speaker 1: you're probably wasting money on these kind of charges or these kind of costs. You're probably wasting time. You probably don't understand what's going on here. You're probably missing analytics.
Speaker 1: Whatever it is, you'll have a lot of confidence because it's a terrain you've been in before.
Speaker 1: You know the space. So being able to retrospect
Speaker 1: and decouple
Speaker 1: your experience from the title and just look at it as
Speaker 1: anecdotal
Speaker 1: or a list of anecdotes
Speaker 1: and not just,
Speaker 1: the rapper, which happened to be your title in the company.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Each of these is stories in its own right. I love, I love having a little evidence folder. And I look at my evidence folder a few times a year on a rainy day just to make sure. And, and often,
Speaker 2: I after that exercise, I remember who the heck I am, and then I can go on with my life and my day. Mhmm. Mhmm.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about another one,
Speaker 2: that we see a lot, which is,
Speaker 2: worrying alone.
Speaker 2: Why does isolation
Speaker 2: make some of these credibility
Speaker 2: fears even worse?
Speaker 1: I think until you have
Speaker 1: clients,
Speaker 1: there's, like, anxiety
Speaker 1: and a question, can you even do this? Right? Because it's not real yet. It's just, like, made up in your mind.
Speaker 1: We have about 300 people in our program, and all of them had that coming in. Right? They didn't have a client, and now they have a client. Even then, they still have
Speaker 1: a fear because they think that the next interview, the next client prospect, whatever it is, they're gonna ask about, you know, something related to Verizon, which, again, just
Speaker 1: doesn't doesn't happen or so rarely happens. It just doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: And and you don't see other people going through the same thing.
Speaker 1: I think generally fears grow when you're by yourself. Right? And they're pacifying
Speaker 1: when you're in the group.
Speaker 1: And until that evidence piles up, it's easier to look at other people's evidence.
Speaker 1: Like, oh, he also quit his job or he also has a job
Speaker 1: and took him three months to get a client. And now he has a client. And, oh, wow. Now he has two clients and now he has three. So you get to borrow from people's progress, and you can easily apply it to you. But when you're by yourself, there's no mirror, there's no pictures, you don't even know if you're in a museum,
Speaker 1: then it just it just grows because there's no feedback loop. Using other people's feedback loop really pacifies it and gives you confidence, especially if you see how similar you are to them in background,
Speaker 1: in milestones, in values, and so on.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It's neat to see. And we have a few examples. Of course, there's the big revenue examples, but also the, like,
Speaker 2: ghosted by the client for six months, seven months, and then all of a sudden closed a bunch in one week. Yeah. And, you know, so there's all those kinda hero stories and, you know, that goes into my CTOX evidence folder of, like, hey. Here are the stories of people just like you who went through some of these same challenges.
Speaker 2: Here's what they did. Here's what you can do too.
Speaker 2: And they and they work through it.
Speaker 2: So we've been talking about
Speaker 2: credibility. We've been talking about a little validation, a little peer validation.
Speaker 2: How can
Speaker 2: values alignment guide your next chapter?
Speaker 1: We think it's very important because one of the freedoms we talk about is freedom of relationship, which being able to choose which humans you're spending time with, right, in a room or in a Zoom, whatever that is. I'll give you a a real example. We had a CTO that joined us, maybe two, three months ago now.
Speaker 1: And in the very first session with us, he asked me, Lior, I'm not sure. I'm the Jesus is very important to me. My religion is very important to me. And I'm not sure what to do because normally, historically, he hit it. He never talked about it. He never put it on anything,
Speaker 1: didn't wear, you know, wear his cross under his shirt, whatever it is. And he asked me what I think about it. I'm like, you should make it as front and center
Speaker 1: as you possibly can.
Speaker 1: And the meaning
Speaker 1: call yourself the kingdom CTO.
Speaker 1: Like, literally.
Speaker 1: Why? Because you want people to buy you.
Speaker 1: You don't want people to not buy you. You're gonna work with them for a long time, hopefully.
Speaker 1: And think about the CEO that says yes to that.
Speaker 1: Like, how much aligned are you
Speaker 1: on values, on decision making, on way of life, on all sorts of things that come up when you interact with another person. And same thing really for anything that you are. If something is important to you,
Speaker 1: whatever it is, in his case, it was his faith. If something is important, whatever it is, make it front center because you will attract the people that are also valuing them.
Speaker 1: And in the context of you building a book of business, again, most people satisfy their income in, like, four to six clients.
Speaker 1: If you wanna hit more, maybe seven, ten, 12, but we're not talking about 50 clients.
Speaker 1: And isn't it nice to have a week where all of your clients are aligned with your values and you didn't have to hide anything or be ashamed of anything?
Speaker 1: And then having them make a remark that you're like, oh, I missed Judd. I should really leave.
Speaker 1: In a job, that's a big problem. Right? Because then you go into a company, then you realize, woah. We're completely not aligned. But if you lose the job, you lose a 100% of your income. In the factional CTO realm, if your book of business is built on five clients, for example, you lose one. That's 20% of your income, way more recoverable.
Speaker 1: But if you do it right, you can make sure that you attract it. It's like a dog whistle.
Speaker 1: The words you use are gonna attract the people that also value those words.
Speaker 1: And that's a great way for you to
Speaker 1: try to attract your first client, and then, of course,
Speaker 1: client brings another client, brings another client, and your experience starts
Speaker 1: creating gravity by itself.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Contorting
Speaker 2: and compromising your values, it has a tax. There's a cognitive load to it. There's an energetic load to it. And if there
Speaker 2: if resentment comes from that, it that can be corrosive.
Speaker 2: So, you know, one of my favorite,
Speaker 2: phrases to install and instill in our CTOXs
Speaker 2: is,
Speaker 2: thank you. Thank you for showing me we're not a fit.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 2: And because there is a genuine
Speaker 2: gift
Speaker 2: that you're receiving
Speaker 2: when you're doing your discovery and you're asking questions and you realize, oh, this person's a jerk or this person doesn't value the same things that are very important to me. Thank you. Thank you for showing me that now. Yeah. We did a whole session for our CTOs on on red flags.
Speaker 1: Right? Exactly for that. Because there's a lot of little tiny red flags that certainly I noticed over time, and now our CTOs are
Speaker 1: embellishing that and we're learning, even more kinds of red flags.
Speaker 1: But you want it. I mean, that's that's the big opportunity of this profession.
Speaker 1: Even if you continue being a w two and you're using fractional CTO for side income, which we have some people doing that,
Speaker 1: you get the freedom of choice. You get to choose your clients. So choose clients that you love. Don't just choose clients that you can serve. Maybe at the beginning, you'll wanna choose them because you can serve because you want that cash, you want that energy built up. But once you have some flexibility, you really wanna focus on
Speaker 1: a great time and really great alignment in your life.
Speaker 2: So as we're recording this, it's the very last week of the year.
Speaker 2: What is one action
Speaker 2: that those listening can take this week
Speaker 2: to build credibility
Speaker 2: in their new chapter?
Speaker 1: Create a win. So there's I would say there's a couple of things. First of all,
Speaker 1: even when people have a job, unless
Speaker 1: they have such a restrictive
Speaker 1: employment agreement, which most people don't, but
Speaker 1: give value.
Speaker 1: Post on LinkedIn, send an email,
Speaker 1: give value.
Speaker 1: And right now in the AI space, it's so easy. Just take a story that you solve, some kind of problem that you have. It's probably
Speaker 1: ubiquitous to you. You probably don't recognize it's a big deal, but the reality it is. And so a way to think about it is, like, an expensive problem you solved or a cool problem you solved as as the adjective,
Speaker 1: and write about it. So other people that are having the problem right now
Speaker 1: can look at and say, oh,
Speaker 1: this helped me. So give value. You can give value with content, give value with email. One of the recommendations we gave our CTOs this week is to send an email, like an end of your email of my favorite tools,
Speaker 1: right, from the year, from the past few months, whatever it is. It's so easy,
Speaker 1: and and it creates a lot of value. And that's really what credibility is. People find you credible when you solve their problem. And part of solving their problem is also making them think
Speaker 1: of something in any way. Maybe you're listening to this,
Speaker 1: recording or this live right now, and you think, oh, I thought about something
Speaker 1: new that's interesting to me. So we got a little bit Marissa and I got a little bit of a plus one in our credibility with you. And the more we do that, the more we're credible with you and the more you will eventually
Speaker 1: wanna engage and look at more stuff we do. So give value. You can choose your channel.
Speaker 1: Do it in a in person meetup, New Year's Eve, whatever it is,
Speaker 1: LinkedIn post,
Speaker 1: email,
Speaker 1: only to your friends, to strangers, doesn't really matter. But find a way to give value
Speaker 1: and go and do it.
Speaker 2: I love that.
Speaker 2: If this episode helped you rethink credibility
Speaker 2: and trans and transitions,
Speaker 2: share it with someone who's considering leaving a full time role, and remind them they're not losing credibility. They're reclaiming it. Lior, thank you as always for this fabulous conversation.
Speaker 1: I'll see you next time. See you then.