1837 – The Role of a Fractional CO Integrator with Cassie Saquing

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2:08With us right now, Cassie Socking. Cassie, you are a fractional COO integrator, and you're also the founder of CHS Consulting Group. You're found on the web at cassiesocking.com. To our friend listening to our conversation, my recommendation is you just click on the show notes, click around so you can follow along on Cassie's website because, Cassie, your last name is S-A-Q-U-I-N-G. So that obviously is part of the website, CassieSocking.com. Cassie, thank you for joining us. Thank you so much. I'm excited to be here, Josh. Yes. Well, tell me, what does a fractional COO integrator do? You know what we do is we go in and we basically like reset a business.

2:52So if you're kind of a six-figure business and you're looking to scale or even to sell down the road, we go in and we establish all those systems and processes along with the money management piece because that's part of the system, right? And start the KPI tracker, all these fun things that really, really ground the business down and start to turn key it so that if you want to scale and go to the next level and if you ever want to get out of the daily operations of your business, this is the way to do it. Yeah. So tell me how you work with people. Like, what does that look like? You know, so what I do is I go in and I just start to assess.

3:29We look at like the leadership team. We go through the staff. We start to really like for me, I run a business for almost 19 years myself. So looking kind of from the top to the bottom of leadership, how things are done currently versus how we want to get into it and then what kind of systems that takes. And we start, you know, just documenting what's happening with the business and all the things that are said, all the things that are done, and how can we change the behavior? And then part of that is going into cash flow and understanding, you know, the money flow into the business and out and how we can control operational expenses and things like that.

4:05What does it really take to bring things together so we know how to grow it? And I know a lot of businesses kind of get stuck. They hit that ceiling in about six figures or multi-six figures, and they really want to go beyond that. So it's really all about establishing, first of all, rapport with the business owner and then the team, and then just retraining the team on their behaviors and how they operate in the business, and then establishing all those systems together, how we communicate, how we say things in the business, what is the personality, what is the culture, mission, values, all the goals that we have per quarter and how are we actually going to get there?

4:44You know, a lot of businesses talk about goals and all the fun stuff, but they don't ever actually make the strategies to get there. And so let's kind of give, if you were to give like a TED talk to a group of founders, CEOs, and you were to kind of condense down maybe like a core message that you wish all founders and CEOs would hear. What would you imagine you would talk about? And feel free to give us a very mini condensed version of what that TED Talk might be. How's that for a question? Well, I would try, but as a CEO integrator, I'm a talker by nature, so I'm going to try to keep it simple.

5:24I think it really all boils down to decision-making. If you're the CEO, the founder, the owner of your business, you really hit decision load very quickly. When you're the one who's the bottleneck, you're the filter for everything in your business every single day. And this is the issue that a lot of owners are facing or, you know, different all kinds of businesses, agency models, you know, individual practice owners, service businesses, even online businesses that are just trying to get to the next level, but they have no time, but they're making all the decisions. So what I do and what you should think about is how can I take those decisions off of my plate and put it onto someone else in my company and work from there so that I can actually free my mind to do what I'm best at, which is that visionary of the business.

6:09We're, you know, looking ahead, fulfilling the vision and the mission and the value, all those things like pulling that together. Because what we do is we get stuck, you know, in our business, not looking at it from a 30 ,000 foot view. And we just get stuck and we keep spinning our wheels. So how do you start moving those decisions? If you start filtering through what are my expectations, what decisions am I making every day? Start making a list and moving that off your plate. You're going to be able to scale and then hiring someone who can really integrate that. boots on the ground, get the wheels moving, and everything unstuck on bottlenecked.

6:43And you'll have a lot of more headroom and more time and space to move your business forward. Yeah, I would imagine it's kind of interesting, too, about, I'm sure you have some observations around personalities and how often kind of visionary personalities kind of create that CEO founder role. and we hope that they find someone that is an integrator, right? Is the get it done or, you know, I've got Alisa, who's our COO. And, you know, because left to my druthers, I could come up with ideas every day, right? And not all those ideas should be integrated, but it is just so great to be able to have, you know, someone in that role.

7:32You know, just speaking to other founders, if you don't yet have that, But I'm going to let you know, life gets better when you have an integrator in a leadership capacity to get your vision executed. Because again, it's like if I were responsible for getting done everything that we need to get done, there's no way. Like it would take me years what we're able to get done in months just because many hands make light work. Yes. But there are, you know, there's so many issues of trust and also grieving that control. I think a lot of people who start companies, myself included, I think it took me two years to let go, which is way too long, right?

8:10But I think we relish that control. We relish that ability to just move mountains in minutes, right? But the reality is that there's always needing, there's somebody who needs to be behind you kind of creating this structure. Or else, you know, a lot of times I find them cleaning up messes. And that's just how it is because visionaries aren't always capable of understanding the context or what it really takes to get things done. But at the same time, my role as CEO integrator is to allow that space for the visionary to keep staying in that genius zone, staying in that energy of creation, marketing, bringing money in.

8:43Like the main role of a CEO is to bring money into the business. Right. And they have to stay in that role. If they get bogged down, they're just going to like die inside. Right. Just going to like your soul is going to wither. So I think that you're absolutely right. But it's a grieving process. You have to let go. So the longer you've been holding on, you know, if you come in to a business as COO, as integrator as five years versus 20, it's going to be a whole different level of grieving and processing for the owner. All right. So let's let's say we've got an audience of owners right now, which we do.

9:18And, you know, it's maybe they don't have someone in that role or maybe they have someone who's kind of fulfilling that role. But it's really just more of a project management person, you know. So it's what would you recommend if they say, well, I don't know if I'm ready to hire someone, you know, that seems like it might come with a big budget. but maybe I can get there pretty soon, really soon. And so what are some things that they can do prior to that kind of more fractional CEO or CEO integrator engagement to kind of get ready, I guess, for someone stepping in? I love that question because I think that's really the first step.

10:00And I think a lot of us don't realize as owners, our first step is actually documenting ourselves. Like literally taking, I recommend a whole month, But even if you just take two solid weeks and write down what you do every single day, and then also how do you make that decision? And I find a lot of CEOs or owners or founders really say to me right away, I can't document myself. It's my magic. It's my special potion. Like, you can't document that. But the truth is, yes, you can. No, you know, somebody's not going to be you. Like, I'm not going to be the owner. But I can interpret and translate that owner to the rest of the team eventually as it grows.

10:36So if someone doesn't have that capacity to hire someone yet, I do recommend you documenting yourself for at least two weeks, preferably four. And if you have a cyclical, you know, based business that's like, you know, seasonal based or something, I mean, I would recommend even longer. But then the idea of the next step would be to, I would say, like, find your mini me. Someone who has the potential, but yet that has that yin and yang energy. Like if you're the visionary, find someone who is grounded, who doesn't freak out at every moment because they're just like, oh, OK, let me process that.

11:08Don't get mad at them for saying, give me 24 hours to think about this, because they're actually like integrating and creating systems in their head for you. And they're going to serve you really well. So find someone who has the same values, the same mission, the same kind of ideals, whatever it is that you can connect on, which takes some time. We have to connect, but find your mini me and start then taking that list that you've created and start moving things over one by one little test. Like I've also seen owners just be like, here you go. Bye. I'm going to Tahiti for two weeks. It's like, no, no, no, you can't do that.

11:39So you have to like gradually start putting things on their plate. Like maybe your project manager or your PM is a really good candidate for this role. And they can grow into that that role of really, really boots on the ground integration for you. Cassie, are there any AI enabled tools or, you know, uses of AI tools like ChatGPT or whatever that you're seeing that you're finding are huge time savers or productivity increasers or just, you know, again, kind of really assist in that, you know, kind of, I would say, just getting stuff done, integrating, just anything that you've seen and you're like, you know, that's pretty clever.

12:19And I like that. I think that's going to be important. I do use ChatGPT a lot, but only what I create for my clients is what I call playbook. So a lot of times we say, well, we have a manual, we have a handbook. That's not the same as how to do your individual job. And so when I kind of have a playbook, especially for all your C-suite levels and then your managers, your directors, however you've labeled them in your company, eventually you're creating these pockets or containers for them to land in when you hire and scale. But I would say that the first thing is, is to write out as you document yourself, run it through chat GPT and explain like, you know, please create kind of an owner manual for this position, CEO or visionary of my company, this type of company, you know, word it in a way I usually I know I'm like really simplified here, but I usually word it, say, with warm word.

13:11I work with pediatric mostly like, you know, I have a daycare. One of my big clients is definitely in a pediatric practice owner. So like I want it to be warm and fuzzy, right? That's my goal. So assigned in a personality. I do that as well, for sure. You do it a couple of times and you find what really fits for you. And obviously chat GPT follows your, your lead and kind of creates your own personality on that. But the things I do really recommend having some content written first and then entering it in and having it kind of rephrased and repurposed in a way that's very professional, but yet, you know, relatable and connectable.

13:51Yeah. So many things I want to geek out of it because I've been like obsessed with ChatGPT over the past many months, but just recently, like, wow, because we have so many operational things going on as well. So, you know, and Cassie, that's another thing, too, is, you know, we also think about, you know, the secular nature of business. I think a lot of us, like, will go through as, you know, in business and in the SMB world, right, we can kind of really go through these big pushes where there's something big about to happen. We're planning for an event. You know, we've got a product launch. I mean, can you maybe share just a bit about, you know, kind of those ebbs and flows and activity and how an integrator or someone, you know, who's really kind of in that leadership position helps with the overall, I don't want to say culture of the company, but helps kind of weather those storms.

14:47Because there's storms in some way, they're very exciting and stuff, but they can cause a lot of stress to an organization. Yes, I love that question, Josh, because it's so true. I find that most visionaries are like, let's have six events per month, you know, six launches. And you're like, wait a second. And the more, you know, just as a rule to state, the more staff you have, or the more, the bigger the team, the more lead time you need. So it has to go through the cycle, it has to go through everyone. So you just have to make sure that, you know, the more people you have, the more lead time you give because you're so used to doing everything on your own.

15:25You're a solopreneur. You're just like, you know, I'm doing my thing and I can just reach out and make change and move mountains in a minute, like I said before. But the more you grow, the more you have to establish these boundaries of like, okay, so we have a team of five. How many events or launches can the company really handle? And that's the integrator's job. That is completely the integrator's job to create those positive boundaries. Like, Hey, I really believe that this company right now in its, in its iteration at this moment can handle one launch per month or one big event, right? The budget or killing the people.

16:02Like sometimes we forget, right? When we're visionaries, we're like, let's go, let's go, let's go. And we just forget, like there's a, what's happening? Where is everybody? So I think establishing those, And it changes as you grow, you can handle more and you create teams and you spread things out. But especially as you're six to seven figures and scaling, that's really important to maintain that. And I know that's frustrating for visionaries, but you can also do an annual calendar and map things out to kind of feel that need for the visionary to feel like, OK, at least we have things planned.

16:34We've got things on the books and we know what's coming up. And so, I mean, just for us, like we're launching a product that's pretty much already was, you know, pretty much already built. But, you know, just, you know, we have to just set up so many different flows and, you know, just all these little tiny considerations. It's just amazing, you know, when as the organizations get bigger, how many moving parts there can be. Or, you know, again, if you have a greater volume of customers or just, yeah, it's, and again, you know, it's easy for visionaries to say, you know, come up with a fresh idea.

17:14But again, again, I think a great integrator is going to try to break that down and to show what that actually is going to take to do it well. Because, again, it's kind of that stopping, pausing, planning and laying it all out. And you're like, whoa, there's a lot of parts there. um and and so just you know thank you for answering that because you know i think right now like that's we're in a push right now and so just you know just i'm grateful for alisa again who's communicating well with our team and organization um and and trying to take you know what what uh you know what's being laid out into you know more manageable bites um okay so cassie your website CassieSocking.com.

17:57Share for someone that's been listening to our conversation. They can go to your website, but what do you recommend for people who are enjoying the conversation and want more? Oh, I appreciate that. You know, I really want to offer a free gift. And I think a lot of that is like my goal this year. I've been working with high ticket clients and, you know, private clients and these things. And I, my goal is really to get it to more people because I do feel like managing your cash flow, containing your operational budget, understanding your process documentation, all these things are so important to the next steps.

18:32Like what are the next steps for you if you really want to grow or you want to sell? Some people are like, I really don't want to scale it. I just want to build it to a place where I can just sell it and I'm ready to go. A lot of that is going to be based on your company valuation, right? It's about how much, how consistent is your revenue? How much is your cash flow and your profitability? all these things go into that. So part of it is like, you know, offering people a free webinar. It's called cashflow freedom webinar. I just want freedom for everybody. So it's at, you know, bit.ly slash cashflow freedom video, and you can go find that there.

19:04And I'm also at profit passion Academy. I'm there. Like if people want to DM me and ask me questions, I'm available. I'm I'm the one who answers it for my consulting. Cause it's really important to me to have that connection with other business centers as well. Yeah. Cassie Socking, again, your website, cassiesocking.com, Cassie, C-A-S-S-I-E-S-A-Q-U-I-N-G. And Cassie, again, fractional COO integrator and the founder of CHS Consulting Group. Cassie, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much, Josh. I appreciate it.

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