1654 – Hitting The Ceiling with Wolf’s Edge Integrators’ Ben Wolf

0:28Hey there, thoughtful listener. million in revenue. Just head to upmyinfluence.com and watch my free class on how to create endless high-ticket sales appointments. You can even chat with me live and I'll see and reply to your messages. Also, don't forget, the thoughtful entrepreneur is always looking for guests. Go to upmyinfluence.com and click on podcast. We'd love to have you.

0:57Ben, you are the author of the book, Fractional Leadership, Landing Executive Talent You Thought Was Out of Reach. You are the founder and CEO of Wolf's Edge Integrators, and you're also a fellow podcast host. Your show is called Win-Win, an entrepreneurial community. Ben, it's great to have you. Thanks so much, Josh. Great to be had, and nice to meet you. Well, I kind of shared the highlight reels. Go ahead. Or, you know, I guess I kind of drew on a coloring book, the lines. Go ahead and color all that in for us and in your work today. Well, it definitely had a winding road, I guess, professionally.

1:35I was at one point a corporate bankruptcy attorney for a number of years at a big Manhattan law firm, after which I ended up joining a healthcare startup, which is kind of a long story how that ended up happening because it's kind of a left turn. but grew that business from startup, from founding to over 130 people and to the largest agency of its type in New York state. It's kind of where I got my personal start in the entrepreneurial world because I didn't really have it before that, already after age 40. And so just learned a huge amount from running a business at a couple of people to five people to 10 to 50 to over 100 people and, you know, in the largest agency, like I said, if it's type in the States, I just learned a huge amount from that.

2:22Spent time as a COO at another healthcare company and then went out on my own as a fractional COO or fractional integrator. Started off as a solo practice, ultimately turned that into a firm, Wolfs Edge Integrators, which now has, is now the largest COO firm, fractional COO firm in the world. And, you know, started the podcast along the way, I wrote the book on fractional executive leadership, first book that actually had been written on that industry, which I was surprised about when I wrote it. But, you know, so just kind of found my place in this space of the fractional executive world. Yeah.

2:59So give me, you know, and of course, you know, your book is doing quite well on Amazon. Again, it's called Fractional Leadership Landing Executive Talent You Thought Was Out of Reach. Talk about that concept, how fractional leadership or approaching fractional leadership gives you perhaps better outcomes. Sure. It's basically a response to what I call the entrepreneurial catch-22 that business owners experience, which is you've gotten past the startup gauntlet. that you've sat in all the seats, you've been maximally agile, but at some point in your growth, you get to the point where what used to work is no longer working, you're hitting the ceiling, and you've gotten big enough where you need more experienced talent, more experienced help, not just whoever you have elevated from the start.

3:54But you can't yet afford, in order to continue growing, but you can't yet afford that experienced talent until after you've already scale. So you're kind of in between that entrepreneurial catch 22. So fractional executives using them is essentially a way of getting on experienced talent that you couldn't afford full time, but you can still get vast majority of the benefit of that, even on a smaller scale to help you get to that larger scale. So that's essentially having people sit in a role, whether it's marketing, sales, operations, finance, people, technology, that's on your org chart. There's a role in the business, but they're just fulfilling that role on a fractional basis.

4:34Yeah, which we, at Up My Influence, we happen to work with a lot of fractional leaders, and we kind of help them match them up with opportunities or jobs and that sort of thing, or just kind of high-level networking. But talk about this from a, I guess, if someone is considering, or maybe this might be a good route to go to attract in or bring in a fractional COO, where should they be in business? or what indicators might they see that they say, you know what, I heard a podcast and Ben Wolf was being interviewed. That guy was pretty smart. I think just based on what I heard and kind of what's going on around here, I think I need to have a conversation with Ben.

5:18Like what might be going on in their life that they need to really take a serious look at bringing in a fractional COO or fractional leadership? Yeah, well, typically you're just, you're feeling a lot of frustration. You have morale issues, retention issues with the team, people getting frustrated, you getting frustrated, you as the business owner feeling like you have to always be intervening. Nothing moves forward without your intervention, without your kind of babysitting and pulling and pushing and tugging everybody forward, lacking right people in the right seats. there's a lot of frustration.

5:57You need help. Someone that's actually, again, built teams, built systems, got right people in the right seats, identified the right structure for your organization that's going to get it to the next 10x level that you want it to get to, not just where it is now. And so I guess feeling like you've tried a bunch of stuff, it's not working, you're hitting your head against the wall, and you just need someone who's actually done this before to help. Now, again, that could be, as you said, with the COO, more for the business in general, or it could be, you know, overseeing all the functions of the business, or it could be that it's more focused, your frustration is more focused on marketing.

6:32Maybe you need a fractional CMO. You can't afford to hire a full-time CMO because it costs you 250, 300 ,000 or more plus bonus and benefits and everything else. But you need someone with that level of smarts and experience. So you can get a fractional CMO and they can oversee your marketing team, the lower level people or your agency or your other outsourced resources. Or the same thing with sales, sales leadership. You can get experienced fractional executive sales leader, the manager or sales team, set up their processes, their metrics, train them, get them up leveled. And it's a much better solution than what people often do is, which is hire the best individual contributor from your team, hire the best salesperson, let's say, is your manager who doesn't have any management skills or experience, and it just creates even more frustration.

7:20And not only that, now you lost your greatest salesperson as a full-time resource. The same thing applies to finance with a CFO, any of those other roles. You're hitting the ceiling, you need someone more experienced, but you can't afford full-time. That's sort of the trigger, the indicator. Are there some things maybe we might want to take care of first before starting to have serious conversations. In other words, I don't know that you necessarily want to bring in a fractional CO is like, you're not ready for me. Like, I'm just wondering if there's any table setting we need to do before we bring our guest in.

7:55Yeah, it's, it's going to be like, you need to have doers. Like they may not be able to be fully independent, maybe you're managing them. But if it's a sales, you know, if it's a sales team, if you have no sales team, and it's just sort of like you're bringing in a factual sales leader, but there's no salespeople, or you bring in a CMO, but there's no, you know, there's no sales doer. I mean, there's no marketing doer. You bring a CMO, but there's no marketing doers. There's no social media people, content writers, you know, graphic designers, whatever. You don't have any of those resources. So you need, you know, some resources.

8:30And again, those could be outsourced resources. When it comes to COO, again, for, you know, if it's just you, as like, if you're a solopreneur, you're probably not ready for a CMO. Typically clients are bringing in a fractional COO have a leadership team. Maybe they're still underperforming, but they are a leadership team or a management team. So that's typically going to make it a lot more effective if you have people that those fractional executives can elevate, train, and create accountability for and coach and level up. Yeah. And Ben, And talk about specifically about like when someone wants to have that conversation, what is your first conversation typically sound like when you're talking with a founder or CEO that's overworked, they're way too, you know, the leadership mantle is a little bit too heavy on their own shoulders.

9:26How might you imagine kind of those first 30-minute conversations going with them? Yeah. Yeah. Well, we do do educational conversations, so it's not really sales oriented, but just answering questions. But if we're talking to somebody who might potentially need this sort of COO help, we're talking about getting an understanding, first of all, of what their main issues and pain points are, where they want to go, and importantly, why that's important to them. What kind of life or what kind of business do they want to have that they will have when they solve these issues or when they get to their outcomes?

9:58I'll share a couple of examples just from people I'm talking with today. I'm talking to one law firm where there's five partners and there's just a lot of misalignment between the partners. People want different things out of the firm, and it's just causing all kinds of conflict and chaos. And there's a lack of, I guess, more mature management below the partner level. So we're there to kind of mature that management, get the partners in alignment. That would be sort of their goals. Another example is to talk to another HVAC service and installation company today that essentially just has a very low-functioning leadership team.

10:36Like really, everybody's kind of being babysat and supported and helped along with the crutches of the owner of the business. There are other leadership team seats, but really he's just kind of supporting everybody and almost sitting in all the seats, even though there is a leadership team. So we need to get to the point of a self-managing business, of an independently functioning leadership team that each one owns their functions, whether that means up-leveling the people in them or replacing those people and getting the right people in there. But either way, those are going to be some of the focuses that comes out of those conversations, for example, that I mentioned.

11:15And your book, again, it's called Fractional Leadership, Landing Executive Talent You Thought Was Out of Reach. It's on Amazon. Who needs to read this book? And what would you imagine the transformation that would take place when they read this book? Well, anybody should read this book who is facing that frustration or that trigger that we talked about earlier in the conversation. They're hitting that entrepreneurial catch 22. They feel like they need more experience to help, but they can't afford to hire people like that full time. You want to know what it is. You're curious. What is it? Is it for you?

11:51How does it work? And I go into depth in the book on marketing, sales, operations, finance, technology. How exactly does it work? How much does it cost? How long does it last? Who is it good for? Who is it not good for? What kind of fractional leader do you need, etc.? Answering all those questions. I guess I would hope that people come away from it with a much better understanding about what it is because it seems strange. You can outsource maybe a customer service team in India, but how can you outsource executive leadership on your leadership team? So it seems strange. And so the book just kind of explains, hey, what exactly is it?

12:25How does it work? any of the fractional leaders or executives of any type who are listening to this or watching this also read the book you it's something you might want to give to your clients do a lot of the sales process before you even start working with them because they'll you won't be starting from scratch it won't seem as strange to them if you can kind of sell to there's actually a bulk sales link on the on uh on fractional leadership.io that people can get and um you know i would hope people can get an understanding of whether it's for them or not and how to go about funding one if it is.

12:57Yeah. Hey, Ben, you know, before we kind of get into, you know, kind of making some direct connections, tell me about your podcast, because this is super easy. So to our friend that's listening right now, all you have to do is just search for the win-win podcast and entrepreneurial community. Go ahead and hit subscribe so you can listen. But Ben, tell me, give us a little bit of a trailer for your podcast? Well, the trailer is that it's for business owners of small to mid-sized businesses. So it's not for solopreneurs, it's not for individuals or self-help or mindset type of things, right? It's for practical knowledge and information that is valuable to people who own businesses of, let's say, 10 to 250 people, somewhere in that range.

13:43There's all kinds of topics, just anything that would be useful to people of that category. We actually have one. We just booked Chris Voss, author of Never Split. The Difference is going to be a guest in a few weeks. And so very much looking forward to that, but some other great guests, obviously, as well. Yeah, excellent. Your website, WolfsEdgeIntegrators.com. We've definitely talked about who needs to be connecting with you and what kind of those initial conversations might But when someone goes to your website, what would you recommend they do? Maybe they're listening to this podcast because they're searching for you.

14:19They found it. Now they listen. They're like, okay, Ben, what's next? So what's next? I think the first most useful thing people can get from the website is go to WolfSedgeIntegrators.com. You'll see right at the top there, there's a guide called how to become a mostly unneeded boss, how to get a self-managed company. So there's a guide, about 10, 15 pages that we'll put together of like insights that our clients have gotten on how to make their company self-managing, how to become a mostly unneeded boss. So I definitely recommend everybody, you know, if you want to continue the sort of knowledge or exploration after listening or watching this, WolfStageIntegrators.com.

15:01Get that, become a mostly unneeded boss guide. And I think that's going to be maximally helpful. And of course, you could also explore the website. We've got a ton of information about what fractional integrators or fractional COOs are, how it works, and of course, to learn more if that is something that would add value for you or your business. Yeah, excellent. So again, your website, WolfsEdgeIntegrators.com. You have a really cool-looking PDF there, the Mostly Unneeded Boss. Do you want to tell me just a little bit more about what's included in that guide? So what's in there is five strategies that you can use, that you should use if you want to not be that boss or that business owner who is just beset by frustration and always, again, pulling and pushing and babysitting everybody and having to micromanage and just having an overgrown job rather than a business.

16:00but how to turn your business from an overgrown job into a business, right? To become a mostly unneeded boss in that scenario. We've got a great line at the top of the website. There's like an image in the back of a couple of professionals drinking coffee and the quote, don't worry, I've got time. My business runs itself now. I mean, just the goal is to teach you techniques that are going to get the business to that point where you can have that kind of life. and of course still make the profit and fulfill the mission for which you created your business in the first place. Yeah, excellent. All right, so let's review here.

16:38WolfsEdgeIntegrators.com. That's the website. The Win-Win Podcast Entrepreneurial Community. And then of course your book and I'll have you close this out with the quick call to action on your book as well because that's an easy one. And you don't have an audio format yet, do you? Yeah, yeah. It's on audio, paperback, wall cover. However you like to get your books, Fractional Leadership, Landing Executive, Telling You Thought Was Out of Reach. You can explore the concepts. See if that's for you. Understand what it is. And it honestly could change your life to not make it so unattainable to get like an experienced executive sitting in a role on your leadership team.

17:20Does not have to be as insane as like this$300 ,000 hire. You don't have to wait till you can afford that. Nope, start bringing in the big guns now and do it in a way that kind of fits within your budget and really what you need at these earlier stages. Again, it's called fractional leadership landing, executive talent you thought was out of reach. Ben Wolf, it's been great having you. One more time, your website, wolfsedgeintegrators.com.

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