Who is Emma?
Emma Westley is a marketing expert who understands the challenges that startups face, especially during uncertain economic times. With her expertise, she helps companies do more with less by coming up with creative solutions that allow them to market their products efficiently within limited budgets. Emma firmly believes in the importance of providing value to customers and helps businesses develop marketing strategies that resonate with their target market, ultimately adding value to the company and its customers.
Key Takeaways
[00:03:01] Reducing budgets and unrealistic expectations thwart success.
[00:05:11] Part-time senior freelance work gaining traction.
[00:07:59] Flexible work schedule for multiple companies.
[00:14:50] Fractional work attracts people with many interests.
[00:17:12] Emma discusses fractional senior management, subscribe.
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Transcript
Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast)
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
fractional work, self-development, time management, flexibility, leadership, teamwork, communication, urgent matters, problem-solving, Talk Like Ted, marketing, startups, "rule of three", Apple, internal presentations, It's Not Rocket Science Five Questions over Coffee, technical difficulties, Emma Wesley, Emerge IO, chief marketing officer, part-time work, job market, budget constraints, productization, positioning, marketing unicorns, senior management, podcast, newsletter subscription, growing businesses.
SPEAKERS
Stuart Webb, Emma Westley
Speaker A [00:00:21]:
Hello and welcome back to It's Not Rocket Science five Questions over coffee in front of me. I have a good strong cup of coffee because I need it right at the moment because there was a slight technical failure before this started which I had to fix. Always love it when a plan comes together. But I'm here today with Emma, emma Wesley, who runs Emerge, Emerge IO, a small business marketing company. She is a fractional chief marketing officer. She works for small businesses as their marketing officer and I hope we can have a really great session talking about that today. Emma, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker B [00:00:58]:
Thank you Stuart, nice to be on. And I unfortunately don't have coffee because I don't drink coffee, but I have tea. So I hope that's acceptable tea is.
Speaker A [00:01:06]:
Tea is as acceptable as anything else is. I would suggest that glasses of wine whilst you're doing this are probably a bit one stage too far, but that's how you so Emma, tell us about the sort of people you help with their business growth.
Speaker B [00:01:24]:
Sure. So I predominantly focus on b to B companies. I've done a 20 plus year stint working with B to B companies. So that is my lane, I will stick in it. But I mainly help startups, tech startups and early stage AI startups for example. And then additionally service based companies, professional services or other service based businesses, small businesses and maybe creeping up into the medium sized as well.
Speaker A [00:01:58]:
What's the problem they've got that you help them to solve?
Speaker B [00:02:03]:
So I think at the moment especially the biggest problem is doing more with less. That's something that probably a lot of startups will know anyway for years. But especially at the moment, with continued uncertain economic times, limited budgets, maybe not getting the funding that they need. All of those factors are sort of coming together at the moment. And what quite often happens in these sorts of situations is marketing is hit with budget cuts. And it is this whole, like, doing more with less money, less resource. But those companies still knowing that they've got a viable, a good solution with platform or a service that they know will add value to the customers that they're trying to sell into.
Speaker A [00:02:54]:
And what have they done to try and overcome those problems that you help them to sort of fix with your services?
Speaker B [00:03:01]:
So very often when I get into a company start working with them, what I see is they've tried sort of doing everything but just scaling budgets back. So if for example, they're doing paid, some sort of paid marketing, all they've done is just reduce the budget on that marketing and hope for the same results. Or the other big danger is on the resource side and this has been going on for years, but it's happening more and more at the moment is companies trying to find these marketing unicorns so they'll think, okay, we need someone in to help and what does that person look like. And so they start listing out all the sorts of responsibilities that that person will have. And when it comes to marketing, it'll be SEO, content marketing, paid marketing, lead gen, demand gen, and the list goes on. And what they end up getting is maybe a candidate. Although a lot of them struggle trying to find the right people. But they'll get someone in who's who's not right for the business and has not got the right skill set and they're just expecting too much of this. Person because one person can't always cover all of those different areas and yeah, they just end up either handholding them or not achieving the goals and especially the, the business goals, because with that process, they'll often find that their marketing stuff is not aligned with their business goals as well.
Speaker A [00:04:39]:
And that's where you come in with your service and what you do to help.
Speaker B [00:04:46]:
So mainly in terms of the amount of time I spend as a company, so I'm fractional, and this term fractional is gaining a lot of grind at the moment.
Speaker A [00:05:00]:
And I just wanted to make sure everybody understands fractional, because that is a bit of a new term. So I think we need to define it, tell us what fractional means. And it doesn't mean that you're only half a person, I presume, or maybe.
Speaker B [00:05:11]:
Even a quarter, I don't know, maybe soon, maybe that'll be part of the AI cloning revolution, will be cutting myself in half or something. So there's a few different definitions at the moment because it's such a new term and I think companies and people like myself are sort of trying to work out what that term actually means. I've been doing it for about five years now, and it certainly wasn't called fractional a couple of years ago. So it is sort of a term that people are getting used to, but essentially it's being part time at a company, usually at a more senior level. So at a leadership level, or at least director level, but not being a part time employee, so you're still a freelance resource, so the company isn't having to pay benefits or overhead associated with even a part time employee. So you're still a freelance, self employed or whatever. And yes, you're working on a part time basis, but at a more senior level. And what I find with the companies that I've worked with is I'm definitely embedded in those companies. I feel like I'm a part of the team. When I work for a company, I'm really focused on it. I'm committed to their goals. I wear the T shirts, as would often be described, but maybe that afternoon I'm doing the same thing for another company. Or on a Tuesday I do it for one company, on a Thursday I do it for another. Something like that. So it's a difficult concept to get your head around and it certainly only works for certain types of companies, very often remote companies that are used to asynchronous working, that sort of thing. And certainly something that's gaining traction at the moment, partly because of the market, the way the job market is changing currently as well.
Speaker A [00:07:24]:
This is a balancing app for you. You know that you have to switch mindsets, you have to switch focus and you're as present and you are as involved in company A as you are in company B and you don't allow any distractions from one. But how does the business owner manage their involvement with you? Because on a Wednesday a need might crop up and you're not technically working for them on a Wednesday. So how do they manage that aspect of their lives?
Speaker B [00:07:59]:
So I find the best way is actually being more flexible for companies. So rather than doing it on set days, I work set days for set companies is just saying you've got X amount of time or X amount of my sort of resource. But I will be flexible with that throughout the week. So I will still commit to going to their meetings on their schedules. If they've got specific leadership meetings or team meetings that need to happen, I will attend those. And it does take a little bit of as a fractional, it takes a little bit of juggling, a lot of sort of different calendars and different ways of working for different companies. But once you get used to it and you find the right balance for yourself as well, then it works. And from a company perspective, they can just call on me if they need support, if it's urgent or whatever, and as long as I can do something relatively soon, then that's fine. So just as a quick example, regardless of how many sort of companies I'm working for at any one time, I will have all of their email clients open at the same time. So if something urgent pops up, I can jump on it or I can assess it, at least I can look at it and go, okay, that doesn't need to be fixed immediately. And then obviously communication is key. So if somebody does try and get in touch with me, what I can do is at least ping them and say give me five minutes and I'll call you. Or at least that sort of regular communication so that people know where I am and if I am or I'm not available. And then finally I think there are for companies as well, it helps them focus, so it helps them sort of understand actually is that important, is it urgent? A bit like going back to the whole urgent priority matrix. It makes them think a little bit more about actually is it important, does it really need to be fixed at the moment or can it wait? And very often what happens is in that waiting, the issue is fixed or a solution will come up. Jumping on things straight away is not always the best approach.
Speaker A [00:10:30]:
I know that you've got a valuable free offer for people, and this is a sort of 30 minutes session free with you in order to sort of get people clear on some of the things they want to sort of sort out in their business. So do you want to tell us about the 30 minutes session?
Speaker B [00:10:50]:
Yeah, so I've called it a pick your brain session, which a lot of people will obviously recognize and sure, lots of other people get asked about, you know, can I pick your brain? And it's a 30 minutes session either for companies that want to explore what fractional is, you know, is it right for them, would it work for them, especially if it's in the marketing area? Maybe it's for startups that are feeling a bit constrained, a bit pinched at the moment with budgets and thinking, I know I need to do that, but I don't have enough money for it. So what are the other options resource wise that I can pull in or I can leverage? And then on the flip side, I also do these sessions for other fractionals. So people looking to get into fractional work, maybe if they've just been made redundant or they're thinking about actually a slightly different way of working, I can sort of share some of the things that I did certainly did wrong along the fractional journey. Any other sort of tips and advice for how to get started and things like productizing services or packages, positioning, all that sort of stuff.
Speaker A [00:12:08]:
Brilliant. So there must have been some book or course which started your journey into sort of learning this. So what was the spark? What was the thing which started you in this journey towards both marketing and fractional? Marketing Officer.
Speaker B [00:12:26]:
I don't think there was any one book that sort of got me into fractional, but there is one book that I always come back to in terms of how I work and how I do my marketing, especially with startups. And it's a book called Talk Like Ted by Carmine Gallio. It'll seem completely random, but basically this guy, Carmen Gallio, he's been through lots and lots of Ted talks and he's analyzed which are the good ones, which get engagement, how do people pitch their talks. It's fascinating insights into the world of Ted, I suppose, as well. But the thing that I really grasped onto and love is he talks about this rid of three and how the brain is primed to think in threes. There's some sort of mathematical side to it in terms of pattern recognition, but also it's a good number for people to grasp as it's not too few, but not too many, basically. And so I just use it for everything. When I'm actually doing my marketing work, positioning statements or trying to come up with marketing plans, I use the rill of three. If I'm doing my own sort of thinking through concepts, I always try and sort of bucket into three concepts. I think in the book he also mentions that it's something that Apple use quite a lot and especially their leadership follow this rule, especially when they're doing sort of internal presentations. And it's so simple, but it really works. It's brilliant. It's really good for remembering things as well.
Speaker A [00:14:21]:
Yeah, it is a good concept. Emma, we've been chatting for a little while and there must be a question that's burning in your head that I haven't yet asked you. So rather than me sort of trying to guess what that is, I'm just going to ask you to tell us what the question is you would like us to have discussed, and then obviously you've then got the job of answering it as well. So I haven't got any work to do in the next few minutes. So over to you. What is the question I should have asked and then would you please answer it?
Speaker B [00:14:50]:
Yeah. So going back to the whole fractional thing, I think one of the interesting questions at the moment is why so many people are attracted to fractional as a way of work. And I've been having quite a lot of conversations recently with people either getting into fractional for getting started or have been doing it maybe a few years or a longer time. And I think I'm coming up with this sort of common personality thread of people who are drawn to fractional are people who like to juggle many balls, but it's not that they want to go part time or they want to sort of necessarily reduce the amount that they're working. It's that they just want to do work differently. And they want to also have time for self development, learning, being able to just having that head space to go right. I saw this tool the other day that someone recommended. I'm going to go and actually dig into it and learn a little bit about it. And ironically, that sort of self development actually then helps the clients that fractionals are working on because you're getting it for free as a company because you're not having to pay for that development time. But I see that as a really common thread with people like myself, that I just want a little bit of space for myself, but I'm not going to go off and just go to the pub or something in that time. I'm actually going to do something that's useful for the clients and for the business.
Speaker A [00:16:32]:
They get a lot of value from that.
Speaker B [00:16:34]:
Yes, definitely. Without realizing.
Speaker A [00:16:39]:
And I guess they got access to a fairly senior, well experienced person for a fraction of the price they pay because otherwise they can only afford 20% of the budget for a senior person, they'd end up with a very junior person. And so they're getting a huge amount of experience for a lot less capital outlet.
Speaker B [00:17:00]:
Yes, definitely. That's the first and foremost thing of fractional, is getting that senior experience, but at a fraction of the cost. Yeah, absolutely brilliant.
Speaker A [00:17:12]:
Emma, thank you so much for spending a few minutes with us and opening our eyes to the new world of this fractional senior manager. I'm just going to invite people, if you would like, to get onto our newsletter list so that you get to hear about what we're doing and who's going to be coming up in the next week or so, please go to the link on the screen. At the moment, it is https link thecompletroach co uknewsletter that is link. Thecompletroach Co UK newsletter. Join the newsletter. You'll get an email about once a week which just sort of explains who's coming up, what they've got to talk about and how you can get more detail about who they are. And obviously, at some stage you'll also hear about when this gets released, not only live like it is now, but when it comes out on the podcast. And I would really ask you, please subscribe to the podcast and tell all your friends about it because that helps us to get even better guests. More information out to you about how you can grow your business. Emma, thank you so much for spending a few minutes with us. Really appreciate you spending the time and I hope that the fractional work continues to go well.
Speaker B [00:18:27]:
Yes, fingers crossed. I think it's definitely a gaining movement, so hopefully more companies will pick up on it. And thank you, Stuart, for having me on.
Speaker A [00:18:37]:
No problem at all. Thank you very much.
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