Fractional support gives founders access to specialized expertise without the overhead. In this Hello Chaos bonus episode, Jennifer Sutton and attorney Doug Lineberry share how small business growth depends on smarter choices in legal support and marketing strategies. They explore brand therapy, reveal how to spot predatory marketing agencies, and emphasize why ROI should guide every decision. Entrepreneurs will walk away with a clear view of how strategic marketing and fractional services help overcome business challenges while strengthening business leadership.
Key Takeaways:
1️⃣ Fractional support fuels growth
Founders do not always need more full-time hires. Fractional legal support and marketing strategies give you access to specialized expertise without draining overhead.
2️⃣ Brand therapy reveals hidden gaps
Entrepreneurs often sense something is off but cannot pinpoint it. Brand therapy uncovers blind spots in messaging, culture, and strategy so you can align your business for real growth.
3️⃣ ROI is the north star
Every decision, from marketing agencies to legal support, should tie back to ROI. Strategic marketing and fractional partnerships keep small businesses focused on results instead of busywork.
Timestamps
00:00 Welcome to Hello Chaos
01:14 The Value of Fractional Expertise
03:07 Mitigating Risk in Hiring
06:20 Understanding ROI in Business
10:54 Skepticism Towards Marketing Agencies
13:58 Identifying Business Needs
17:07 The Importance of Strategic Planning
20:07 Brand Therapy and Customer Retention
23:01 The Need for Leads and Revenue
25:58 The Role of Fractional Teams
28:52 Defining Fractional Services
32:04 The Benefits of Fractional Expertise
37:13 Marketing Budget and Action Plans
40:10 The Value of Marketing in Companies
42:11 Understanding Fractional Services
46:53 Integrating Marketing with Business Operations
50:58 Intentionality in Marketing Strategies
54:09 Culture and Leadership in Organizations
🔗 Learn more and connect with Doug
Website: https://smpl.is/9qjm8
LinkedIn: https://smpl.is/9qjm9
Email: doug.lineberry@offitkurman.com
Direct Phone: 864-256-4875
Jennifer Sutton (00:14)
All right, welcome to Hello Chaos, the unfiltered podcast for founders really in the messy middle. No fairy tales here, just the real grind, the grit and chaos of building a business. Today I have a special podcast. It's actually gonna be a bonus episode. ⁓ I've got Doug Lineberry here. He is with Onnit Kerman. I always wanna say, it's like off it. It's not on it, it's Offit Kerman. ⁓
Doug Lineberry (00:40)
I'll think of it. Yep. That's it.
Jennifer Sutton (00:44)
They're going to off him. They're going to off Kerman. And Doug and I are old friends. is our counsel when it comes to trademark and IP with both OrangeWIP and Bright Marketing. But we got into an interesting conversation not that long ago around, you're a law firm that helps small to mid-size enterprises, even like, again,
Doug Lineberry (00:52)
Thank
Jennifer Sutton (01:14)
big corporations too, but for the most part, you're kind of helping that small to mid-size company talking to, know, it's like from that viewpoint, talking to me and an agency owner, a marketing agency that supports and serves against small business to mid-size enterprises. And we were talking about the whole idea and the concept of hiring
Doug Lineberry (01:24)
Thank
Jennifer Sutton (01:43)
agencies or hiring law firms or what you know in a fragment fractional sense and some people you know see the benefit of it some people are still kind of ⁓ skeptical or feel like you know so i just want to talk through the the good the bad and the ugly ⁓ because we look at it as i think in our both of our worlds
If you hire somebody with that expertise in a fractional sense, especially if you're a small business, you probably don't need that person for running those tasks for 2000 hours a year. So from an efficiencies, a ⁓ affordability for the value you get to look at kind of like hiring in ⁓ a fractional model, but you brought up, and this is why I think we were like,
this is such a good conversation because it's all about mitigating risk. I mean, that's what your whole world is of risk mitigation. ⁓ But I look at it as like, you know, marketing industry, it's just a weird, you know, we're one of the only industries that have to go through an RFP process, share our process, our approach, and sometimes our work, which we don't participate. If anybody wants free work, we don't do that.
Doug Lineberry (02:52)
Thank
Jennifer Sutton (03:06)
We know that's not the art, you know the business for us, but but you don't see that in architectural firms You don't see that in design firms. You don't see that in accounting where hey, let me vet you ten companies You give me all of your secrets and you whoever saves me the most money That's who I'm gonna hire whoever writes the best brief. That's why I'm gonna hire but it's weird That's been our industry
And same with when I talk to small businesses of like, are you, you are 15 staff person and you aren't even like a $10 million organization. Why out of your 15 people, why do you have three full-time marketing people? That is insane. And they look at and go, well, but I have somebody for social and I need somebody to help me create content and I need somebody that's just like coordinate stuff.
Doug Lineberry (03:51)
Yep.
Jennifer Sutton (04:05)
and nothing is tied to revenue, nothing is tied to ⁓ KPIs or growth. And I look at it I was like, they don't do that with, they're not hiring a general counsel and an IP attorney and a ⁓ contract, like contract law. That's why you go to law firms to kind of get that specialty, that advice, that counsel.
⁓ So you don't have to have that so I know you were running into that you were like that's an aha
Doug Lineberry (04:44)
Well,
it is not hot, Jennifer, because if you're a small business, you've got to be nimble. I do small, medium, and large. And it's so funny, sometimes they share these issues. Sometimes you've got a large client that's got way too, and no offense, way too many marketing people. And you need to add.
Jennifer Sutton (05:02)
⁓ yeah,
and none of them ⁓ are generating like point back to bottom line results.
Doug Lineberry (05:10)
That's right.
know, and Jennifer, that was a big thing when we were talking about the other is ROI, return on investment. Like, you know, you and I are doing this today to get out there and hopefully educate people, but also to expose people to our various services, legal and marketing. You know, what's our ROI on this? What are we going to get back? And so I think that's what you've got to ask as a small business is, hey, is a fractional better than buying a full-time attorney? goes, trust me.
Jennifer Sutton (05:15)
Yeah. Yep.
Right, right.
Doug Lineberry (05:38)
If you want a full-time attorney, you better be a substantial business or you're going to find yourself with an attorney who's going to be bored and then start, you know, what is it, idle hands or the devil's tool. You know, you need to have a certain threshold of work to keep that attorney busy. And if not, then you don't really need an attorney. You probably need a firm or, you know, maybe a consultant who can come in to help you with that.
Jennifer Sutton (05:49)
Right.
Right.
Yeah.
Doug Lineberry (06:03)
Same with marketing and there's a certain nimbleness about that too, Jennifer, because guess what? You know, don't have to eat the same hamburger every day. You know, if you're like, hey, I'm going to use you as a fractional this and maybe I'll come back to you and I want you to be a fractional that the next time you've got that ability. But if you hire somebody, they're permanent.
Jennifer Sutton (06:20)
Right, ⁓ yeah.
Jennifer Sutton (06:25)
quick note, our next round of field guides are in production and we're closing sponsor slots soon. So get on board. We've got three field guides that are in the works. We have a founder starter kit. We have a pre-seed playbook. And then we've taken an independent view of the South Carolina ecosystem because that's the state that we are based in. We took an independent lens in the innovation ecosystem and the gaps.
⁓ and what's needed, the opportunities that exist for founders. It's a really interesting perspective of the ecosystem and we're looking for partners and sponsors for that field guide. We'd love to feature sponsors who believe in building better ecosystems for entrepreneurs, organizations that want real visibility among founders and business owners.
or organizations that are ready to be a part of something that delivers value and not noise in the space. So you can sponsor the Hello Chaos podcast, our digital field guides, the resource navigator, the dynamic resource navigator. You can sponsor even the Weekly WIP that founders use to find the information they need quickly in order to scale and grow. So if you're interested in supporting our community,
Go to our website at OrangeWIP and that's orange WIP for work in progress. Download a media kit or send an email to hello at WIP dot com. And we will work with you to align what your needs are, your content and how do we deliver that into our founder community.
Jennifer Sutton (08:06)
Right, you're stuck with that overhead, that salary. I mean, I just had this conversation with ⁓ another, like I call partner, ⁓ a new startup that specializes in tech stacks. And I'm like, hey, we're guinea pig. If you guys need a test on us, we are happy.
Doug Lineberry (08:08)
Yeah?
you.
Jennifer Sutton (08:33)
to like play around and as they're trying to figure out their startup, their pitch and stuff. But it was interesting of talking to them. They're like, know, small businesses and mid-size, and like I said, we work with small, medium and large, but we really cater to the small to medium ⁓ because they don't have.
Large companies have access to the big agencies where I came from, that's my background, that's my team's background, that big, what we call big agency thinking, where you know how to identify if it's a branding problem or if it's a marketing ecosystem engine problem, or if it's an advertising, and how to appropriately prioritize based on where you need to, how you need to reduce friction and grow.
And we saw that the small to medium guys didn't have access to that knowledge. And what we were finding is the agencies that feed or serve that space are either ⁓ predators, predator agencies, scammers. ⁓ I don't know if it's, well we've seen it both ways. We've seen inexperience, like pure,
Doug Lineberry (09:33)
Truly.
Jennifer Sutton (09:57)
I'm a guy with a computer. got my certifications with Google and now I picked up a couple clients and this is what I do. I just turned the specific like task that I do and I'm just going to work with small businesses because they really they don't even know how to hire right. They're hiring me because they were told they need SEO. They're hiring me because they they told they were told that they need social media or whatever. And and then that company.
churns through agencies like that. And we see it like four, six, 10 agencies in like three years. And then there's other companies that have designed their business models ⁓ to actually be a prey and a predator on the small business, knowing they don't know how to hire and they can get away with basically siphoning large money, know, 10 grand a month.
sometimes 15 grand a month, six months a year and deliver nothing because they're just, it's smoke and mirrors. It's just like regurgitating fake data. ⁓ And so we've seen that it's exploded kind of in our industry the last few years. But my point being like now small businesses, there's this skepticism ⁓ for marketing people. There's a distaste.
for agencies and it's because they've been burned. ⁓ But I was like, need to, so part of me like, I need to get on a soapbox and protect the category that I love, right? But also at the same time, man, like there's not a lot of us out there that really do serve and has created a business model to serve.
the business owner who they hire because they're told that's what you're supposed to do and they think of marketing as overhead. well, I was told I need, well, of course I need social media, so therefore I better hire somebody for it or work with an agency to do it. And we come in and we go, why? Like you're a small business. You have to be super intentional about your time, money and resources.
your priority today might not be social media. That's a long runway. SEO, not saying it's not important, you know, with social media SEO, but those are long runways. What do you need? And we're in a, like our model and our is to be nimble around, hey, look, you're hiring three people, you're spending probably 150, 200, 300,000 and it's all cut up in salaries or
you're outsourcing to two or three agencies and it's in silos and fragmented. And then the weight is on you, the owner, or maybe the operations person going, I don't know how to tie it all together. Is what we're doing, is it working? Is there an ROI? Because we come in and start asking questions like, well, what's your acquisition? Your cost of customer acquisition, what is your total ROI?
what is your ROAS in comparison to the ROI? And they're like, I have no idea. I've never calculated it before. And so like I said, we've kind of designed that model, seeing that big gap in knowledge, seeing the gap in the way agencies are set up of we don't just sell, like we're not selling products. We're selling, we're gonna crawl, walk and run with you.
in a fractional sense ⁓ and tackle the priorities as they come up and work the friction out. But it's just, you you and I talk, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Doug Lineberry (13:58)
Good. Jennifer, let me ask you the million dollar question.
How does somebody know they need you? Or how does somebody learn that they need you?
Jennifer Sutton (14:08)
So here's what I tell people. And this is how most of my conversations go. It's because they know in their gut, like, it usually comes from like a CEO, we are never hired by like the internal marketing people. have, mean, in the 10 plus years we've been in business, we are always brought in by like a C level, VP level person.
whether it is like a chief marketing officer or a COO, a CFO or a CEO who they go, we know something isn't working, but we don't really know what. We're trying to grow and we just feel like we feel this friction, this tension. And we go ask like our, you know, we've either turned through a marketing people and nobody seems to get it.
Doug Lineberry (14:59)
you
Jennifer Sutton (15:07)
Right? Or we hear, because I'll ask like, what have you done? You know, why do you, why did you call? what, and a lot of it is that, you know, we put out content and it's like what you, you said something that sparked it. And most of it, when I go back and look at like, well, what was it? And it's because we've questioned of you're trying to grow and nothing is aligned. Like you, you either, do you have a business plan? Like, do you have a plan?
Doug Lineberry (15:19)
you
you
Jennifer Sutton (15:37)
for growth. ⁓ If you do not have a plan for growth, as in you're a CEO, are you just saying we're growing 5 % this year because we've always grown 5 %? Or was there some intentionality of like, ⁓ no, we need to grow 10 % or 20 % whatever that is. ⁓ Most companies might have like a we just want to grow some percentage.
but there's no rationale for that. And so that becomes like a question of where'd you get that number? Where'd that number come from? And then the next question is, okay, do you have your entire organization aligned to hit that number? Is there an action plan that has like backward retrofitted to go, hey, we need to grow 20%. Is that because
the market is growing or is it because we need to take market share from a competitor? Well, also what if a new competitor comes in, how do we defend it? Going through those kind of answers or I'll throw out questions and again, it sparks the, I don't have an answer for that. And sometimes it's that you gotta get people in the right mindset because ⁓ there is a lot of like,
I don't know. And I'm sure you were, I don't be interested in, do you run into this and the legal sense of shame or fear of acknowledging you don't really know what you're doing?
Doug Lineberry (17:13)
Sure we do.
Gosh yeah, and I mean, one of an attorney's best and worst clients are the self help person. They're like, I'm gonna do it myself, I'm do it myself, I'm do my own contracts, I'm gonna do that legal zoom or worse, yeah, they just kinda like, hey, I'm gonna crank up the cell phone and do it myself. Most of the times, sometimes you'll get clients to get lucky. I met a guy this afternoon, owns a gun company down in Alabama, following his own marks, doing a good job. And he called me with a question to where,
Jennifer Sutton (17:28)
like three legos, like the legos, yeah.
⁓
Hmm.
Doug Lineberry (17:47)
you know, hey, you know, typically these things go through pretty smooth and he had an issue come up that I hadn't seen before. And just like we're talking about, he thought to ask, he wasn't like, okay, I'm just going to ballyhoo this, but we do have a lot of clients that will ballyhoo it. And then they'll call back and be like, ooh, we'll call you for the first time. like, yeah, know, something's wrong. You know, something happened. I can't get this trademark and I really need it. And so.
Jennifer Sutton (18:00)
Right.
Let me clean up, yeah.
Right.
Doug Lineberry (18:11)
For our industry, much like yours, Jennifer, as we do see that, know, called predatory, I think it's an awesome way to describe it because it's always advertised as low cost, but then there's a recursion added. Or it's always available, meaning you're gonna be fed whomever's man on the phone.
Jennifer Sutton (18:17)
Yeah.
Right? Because we'll
get the, we'll get the, ⁓ you do this, you're gonna 10X your business.
Doug Lineberry (18:31)
Exactly, exactly. you know, calls will be cut by X percent. I'm like, in the world of those things, you get what you pay for. You know, you want a marketer who thinks about your stuff, you want an attorney who thinks about your stuff. If you got it, go ahead. Yes, you have.
Jennifer Sutton (18:37)
Great. yeah.
Right. And know what questions to look for. you know, know,
we, we always say, you know, there's a lot of like, I caught the overload of we're ROI driven or we're data driven. And we said that same thing too, until we started really looking at our space and it's like, you know, what we really do, yes, we look at data, but it's really we're curiosity driven, which is curiosity as a strategy.
Doug Lineberry (18:56)
Sure. Sure.
Jennifer Sutton (19:11)
it brings clarity, but it allows you to go and look beyond what that data is. know, we'll get, well, 30 % of people that come to our website is, you know, are women, or, you know, our customers are 30 % women. We're gonna ask why. Like, let's find out why. And is there some kind of insight that we can then use in our messaging and our marketing?
to segment and grow and amplify into that demographic that maybe we didn't uncover before. ⁓ as we talked through with the C-suite, we usually get approached because of three reasons. Either someone comes ⁓ and goes, I think I have a tired brand. Our logo, which is 50 years old, and it just.
you know, it doesn't really represent us anymore. And you can't really read the font or it's Times New Roman font because it was, you know, done in 1970, whatever. and and what we were like, OK, we can do that. But what why did what triggered this? And it's ⁓ well, we were losing customers. I mean, we're losing customers more faster than we can bring in customers.
And I'm like, okay, well, that's not because of a logo problem. You know, this is, you you're a thousand person staff. ⁓ You've been around for 50 years and you guys have eroded like ⁓ your customer churn or whatever has been eroding for five years. So it's not the logo. Like, let's just.
Doug Lineberry (20:42)
Huh. Not at all.
Jennifer Sutton (21:07)
Yes, we can refresh the logo, but it's really about how do we build, usually it's like as we start dissecting, we call it brand therapy, we get in there and kind of do an assessment and audit, workshops internally to kind of uncover the angst, the fear of, which it's so interesting. We started calling our brand workshops brand therapy about a year, a little over a year ago.
I would say the same stuff. We would say that the homework's the same, it's the same activities to uncover what's in people's hearts, minds, and souls. But when I tacked on therapy, and we would say, ⁓ we need to hear the good, bad, and the ugly. This is gonna be ⁓ cathartic and therapeutic. But there was still fear. ⁓
Doug Lineberry (22:00)
True. True.
Jennifer Sutton (22:02)
But I've just like
said, we call it therapy. And then I have like in the room when we do workshops or like on a virtual, I'll say, know, okay, we've got a section over here. It's called the couch that you can just express anything anonymously. Like whatever your fears are, whatever your whatever, whatever is causing you tension around your work environment or the brand or customers, or if you have questions, because again, fear based, right?
when we people hear about brand that means change ⁓ So there's a lot of fear around that but yeah when we started designing it's fun, you know, it's like but people come out just expressing There are no hold back but it's ⁓ But that's what you know, it's like we start uncovering it it becomes there's brand fragmentation. There's lack of clarity. There's inconsistency visually there's inconsistency in the story the voice and tone from
Doug Lineberry (22:44)
Thank
Jennifer Sutton (23:01)
social to the website to the brochures the people internally or the departments are in silos they don't talk to each other so there's no real like customer journey there's no thought process and that's all in branding right but then it becomes like then we get the ⁓ I need leads so that's the other the other side we get is I need leads I need revenue and then we start looking through the advertising planning kind of you know process and what we uncover is
Doug Lineberry (23:17)
⁓
Jennifer Sutton (23:30)
hey, we can generate, but you've got a marketing engine ecosystem problem. And so before you spend money here, let's fix the engine here so your money, your time, money and resources are spent more efficiently and more effectively. But if you are hiring like a marketing manager, marketing director at let's say 60 to $90,000 a year plus benefits or overhead, someone at that like,
salary level ⁓ would most likely do not have the strategic skill sets to know how to navigate those planning processes. Their experience has probably been, even though they've been, they might have 20 years experience being a marketing director at this place or this place, but what we find is they have been managing tasks, not looking at
Where do you want to go business point A to point B. Typically those level of people have never been ⁓ marketing has never been seen as a strategic voice in the company. So they've always been treated marketing has always been treated as an admin support staff. So those are the people that manage the trade shows. Those are the people that manage our website. Those are the people that do our internal events or produce our newsletters.
You know, we go to them when we need business cards. So they've, you know, and so that's kind of our sense of if you've hired somebody or if you have somebody on staff, who is the strategic voice? And, you know, and a lot of times it's the CEO or whatever CEO going, well, I feel like I'm the strategist. Well, are you? Then what's the action plan? Like, how are you driving? How are you using?
brand or the marketing ⁓ piece ⁓ to either ⁓ protect and defend your market, your customers and your share voice or what are you doing to create demand where you need to create demand? And that's where we find, that's where I get the jaw drop of, ooh, yeah.
I'm not thinking that way. I don't have anybody on my team thinking that way. And I've only hired for tasks.
Doug Lineberry (26:05)
And that's awesome because I think that hits the nail on the head. That's why you go fractional. know, once you find that out, you know, don't be afraid to discuss, I don't quite know what I'm doing. Let me explain the situation because it sounds, Jennifer, that, you know, the ability to have that fractional person can not only fill in a temporary hole, but it might also help you realize what holes are there that you'd never seen before.
Jennifer Sutton (26:27)
Right, we uncover some crap. mean, it's, ⁓ and the way our agency's designed, again, there's a couple thousand, thousand or so agencies across the US that are designed like us, that have our same business model. But where we, think, unique, at least in South Carolina and our region, is we are strategists, so we're fractional strategists with a fractional execution team.
that's dialing in on we're building the playbooks, we're building the go-to-market plans, we are ⁓ creating consistency where there needs to be consistency, and then we're hitting the friction points wherever we need, and the highest part, and pivoting ⁓ based on the budget, ⁓ or how much does the company, how much do they want to stomach in growth?
⁓ You know, do they have, do they need to accelerate faster where they've got to put money towards it so we can hit multiple friction points at once? Or are we just crawling and walking with them as you know, and because that's all they can afford. ⁓ But that's where we're unique where, you know, we've got social media people, we've got art directors and visual designers and copywriters and content creators and podcast producers and video people.
But we also have a team of strategists that is playing oversight, building the plans, playing oversight. And then we've got the project management people that are, again, hitting in a priority sense of this is what we've all agreed on, that for you to get to point A to point B, we've got to tackle these five things immediately. And sometimes for small businesses, it means, you know what, you don't really need like.
We're going to do the bare minimum on social because we need to put our efforts, our time, money and resources here. And then we'll we'll get back to the social or we'll get to the SEO or maybe sometimes it's like, no, you're you've got everything kind of buttoned up. But now we've got to work on the long runway of social and and and SEO. And so that's where we're going to put our focus. But we don't just jump in with.
what the business owner tells us, this is where I think I need to be. We come in and go, we're gonna assess your entire business and then we're gonna work on the things you are making assumptions on, because that's gonna be kind of the telltale as we build out the playbook of how do we prioritize. So, which again, it's not a unique approach for sure.
but it is different than what I think most small businesses and mid-sized companies are used to having access to.
Doug Lineberry (29:31)
Sure, makes sense. Now, and Jennifer, well, somebody is watching this podcast now we've said fractional, you know, what do we mean by that? What is fractional? Why would you mean fractional? You know?
Jennifer Sutton (29:41)
Yeah. So yeah, no,
that's a great question. So when I build out, I call like the staffing plans for companies who are like, okay, you know, we want to use you as full service, right? Build our plan. So a fractional might be, okay, for the first 90 days, 60 to 90 days, you're going to have, or based on your budget, you can only afford 200 hours.
of our agency time of our team. Where the 200 first like 69 days that 200 hours is gonna be to is all gonna be focused on building the plan, doing the assessment, therapy, workshops, all of that. And that's really gonna be front loaded with more strict strategy players on the team. And even then 200 hours, I mean, if you look at
And I don't know people you and I are reversed in this space because we come from surface Background where we have billable hours that and billable goals that we that's our business structure I don't that is not normal conversation at other you know in other spaces, right? You know manufacturers bankers, you know, they're
Doug Lineberry (30:49)
We did.
No, no.
Jennifer Sutton (31:06)
It's like no one's even that down to go, you're gonna hire a social media person for your one brand working on three platforms. That's 2,000 hours a year, or I would say 1,800 if you, 1,800 a year when you include vacations, holidays, or whatever, working 36, 37 hours a week, right? It's 1,800 hours. So that's kind of like the baseline of, that's an FTE.
And I'm like, you know, when we work on things fractionally ⁓ for brands like our full time social media person who is working more like 2000 hours a year, they work on 10 different companies. Working all of those. So when you think of like the capacity of you have one, you're hiring a full to work on one, one side and you don't even have it.
tied to ROI or at least, and when I say ROI, because I also don't want to criticize people who, social media is a long runway. So if you're expecting someone that you've hired, whether you've outsourced that or they are an in-house person, it's like, unless you're literally throwing money, paid advertising in correlation or along with your organic.
It is a long, you don't expect sale. It's to build credibility, it's to build trust, it is to have consistency. ⁓ Even if you're doing like a Shopify or anything like that, you're gonna have to boost it or have some kind of paid media function to hit your goals. It is not an organic, fast ⁓ results. So I think that's the other, most owners haven't thought about
Doug Lineberry (32:45)
Thank
True.
Jennifer Sutton (33:03)
even ROI from a runway perspective. yeah, from the fact so like, you know, about full time, it's, you know, for one person, that's 100, you know, straight 40 hour, you know, around 40 hours a week, that's 160 hours. So if we're 200 hours, you're gonna get a mix of communications, you know, specialist, strategist. But if we're doing audits, it might be a mix of, ⁓
SEO and digital people kind of doing an audit on the footprint. So you might have five or six people in that first month working doing an audit, it's heavy on the strategist. Then as you start rolling with the plan, depending on the priorities and or what we outlined in the plan, each month of those 200 hours, it could be a mix of
Doug Lineberry (33:37)
you
Jennifer Sutton (34:02)
social media people or could be art directors, creative art copywriters, campaign builders, media specialists if we're managing a lot of media. ⁓ But you're getting highly specialized people and the use of our tools, like our proprietary and advanced tools to do predictive modeling on advertising to buy efficiently.
that you as a company don't have to purchase, right? You don't have to manage that. But that's what it means by fractional. You're getting a team of people that is strategic oversight with an execution team in a fractional sense of my Legion person, my email person might only be touching your business 10 hours a month. But because they're servicing 10, 15 other clients. But the 10 hours they have.
They there's deliverables. There is a return. There's actions that we hold them accountable to because we're all trying to work towards this this overarching goal that we're reporting on every month and going this isn't working. This is working or you know we're finding friction that we you know as we started working this this uncovered some friction we need to pivot. ⁓
But you have a whole team of people doing that versus what your one person, your marketing person that is more of a project manager, just kind of being an admin support for internally. That's all they're doing. There's not, it's not towards an action. And most likely they have to go, Hey, I need a graphics person or I need, I'm not a PR person. I need a PR person. So typically we find that if you, you know, companies have
sometimes one to sometimes three to five people that are all managing tasks, ⁓ but they're not managing outcomes.
Doug Lineberry (36:07)
Mm-hmm.
That's a good one too. yeah, I think that's a beautiful explanation, Jennifer, because also, you know, a big adage of, additional hires are always a good thing. And, you know, hiring a fractional, guess what? They're going to be in there. But also, the onus is on the group that hires you, the firm that hires you, the small business that hires you. Hey, you how do we best implement this? But I do think once they sort of unleash you into the system, I like how you're like,
Jennifer Sutton (36:13)
Does that? Yeah.
Doug Lineberry (36:38)
I wanna see things that your person who's there all the time, who's enmeshed in that system is missing trees for the forest, you know?
Jennifer Sutton (36:44)
Right.
And we talked to like some of these marketing departments. I I had a conversation with an industrial company here in this region. I they've got 2000 employees, right? They are, you know, they're obviously a national company, 2000 employees, the majority of them are in this region. They have a marketing team of 10 people. And this, I asked the CEO was like, okay, well, what's the growth plan?
Well, we've always grown 5%. Okay, well is that guaranteed? And how do you get there? Is this to defend and protect your customers or do you have to create demand? Hmm, never heard of, I've never, and I said, well, and then what's the action plan? Well, we spend, you know, 5 million in marketing, not including labor that they've hired. So they spend 2 million in trade shows.
another million in like advertising, ⁓ another like million amongst like three or four agencies that they spread SEO to, we need videos and content created or collateral ⁓ material design and then we need to print those. So yeah, I like that five million. So you include labor in that. Yeah, they're probably at seven, eight million in a marketing budget.
to increase 5 % with no action plan. So then I talked to the, well, I'm sure they have an action plan. I'm sure the marketing people, it's a whole department. Surely there's an action plan. So we start talking to them, just more of like interview, focus group, non-confrontational, just kind of under, and they were like, yeah, I don't think our company sees the value of marketing.
We're seen as admin. We manage two million in trade shows. It's not appreciated. And I was like, who determines the where do you go and trade? Because it's what we've always done. And I was like, does it generate business? I don't know. So just start uncovering.
those kind of questions, but it's like, okay, that's a company of that size, but we run into that all the time, but I think that there's this myth from a small to mid-size enterprise that, ⁓ they must have their shit together. Or because they're everywhere, or they do trade shows, social media, they have these like SEO, then that's what we have to then ⁓ hire.
all for that because that's kind of it's just what you do. It's overhead, but it's not tied to anything. So even just like the simple, I'm like, look, let's just take trade shows. It's an easy, tangible thing. And we had their trade show. like, you look in your system? Because you have Salesforce, right? Which I hate by the way. I would never recommend that. And neither would our entire tech team ⁓ out there for small business. Yeah. From small business to midsize enterprise.
Doug Lineberry (40:04)
watch and it hit me real quick.
Jennifer Sutton (40:10)
It's crazy expensive ⁓ for what you get. And then it's designed where you have to then hire people to be your Salesforce person ⁓ versus it is a pipeline management, but it's not a marketing automation tool. And ⁓
there's so many other systems that are like a tenth of the price that has all the same bells and whistles. So that's why I'm like, you know, unless you're like the Michelins or the Millikins of the world where you are at scale, don't do the, and a lot of times Salesforce has like, they've ⁓ frankenstacked like for certain industries.
Doug Lineberry (40:53)
⁓
Jennifer Sutton (41:06)
But like I know a small business that was spending 20 grand a month on both Salesforce and then you have to then you get sold into that you need now the sales cloud. And all of a sudden you're like you're a five seven million dollar business that wants to be 25 million in five years and you're spending so much on tools that for what you need.
You could be spending $2,500 to $5,000 a month, including us as a fractional to manage it.
Doug Lineberry (41:46)
It's funny you put it that way, Jennifer, because the way I understand fractional now, because you've really educated me today, is that you guys provide the infrastructure that a business may not need and may never need. But you're there. And you come to you know it. I guess a big thing about it is, how do you make folks realize that fractional is the way, Jennifer? What's your sales pitch? You're in the elevator with somebody, fractional. How do you make it happen?
Jennifer Sutton (41:56)
All right. All right.
Yeah.
Yeah,
so I try to make it. ⁓ I know it sounds more complex, but it's you know where we are a ⁓ strict. You get a strategy oversight, so a strategist with an execution team that helps you crawl, walk, run that accelerates your growth. I mean, that's kind of it in a nutshell. ⁓ And we do that because you do not need a full time art director.
PR person, social media person, ⁓ CMO, that's a, by the way, a good CMO runs you 250 easily a year. 250. mean, ⁓ so you get, you you get that kind of level of thinking. You also get a research designer ⁓ on that. You get project managers. so yeah, when I do my staff, I'm like, ⁓
Doug Lineberry (42:50)
⁓ true.
Jennifer Sutton (43:08)
You're not getting those full time. You're getting you're getting access to those specialties to attack the priorities ⁓ of the friction that we've uncovered. So you're not hiring for SEO unless you need it. Unless it comes out in the plan that that is the barrier to get you growth. Like we're yeah we're not selling a product.
We're selling, we're selling your growth as well.
Doug Lineberry (43:43)
That makes so much sense because, I think you're right, you know, and I've heard people describe it as getting ahead of your skis. You know, you're a company and you're like, I've got to have this, you know, I've got to that, I'm going to have this. And it's almost like the collecting houses on Monopoly. And instead you're saying, whoa, calm down, you know, so if you want to run the board, that's right. Said, you know, guess what? You can be much more nimble, much more cost conservative, much more ROI focused by not having those things.
Jennifer Sutton (43:55)
Yes.
All right, don't build a fiefdom here. Great.
Doug Lineberry (44:11)
Indeed, it's easier for you to not have them in house than to have to focus on having them in the house and then wonder why you're not getting the benefits you thought you would from.
Jennifer Sutton (44:22)
Right. And to focus to go where because we can't just we can't work in a silo either. So we've you know we are because that's another thing I think it's a weird myth or something that we you know sometimes when we when we walk away from prospects is because the CEO will be like well who might be the like who's our point like we've got a.
We've got to integrate in a line. Like we're going to be operating here as your your marketing department in a box, right? When we work best, it's like we're meeting with the executive team. We're meeting with like the management team on some kind of, you know, ⁓ cadence so that we're all connected. No different of if you had a marketing department and you're, you know, branch manager at ⁓ a bank, you would know who your marketing director is, right? You'd have access.
We're that. So we need to make sure that we're accessible, we're visible, and we can't operate kind of in that vacuum. When I hear from some small businesses super like, so if I just release you, it frees up my time. I'm like, well, who's gonna meet with us to make sure that our data is aligning? We gotta integrate into systems. Who do we work with? And they're like, oh, so you're gonna make me spend time with you? And we're like,
Yeah, like, or you can delegate it, but don't think that we're just like, we can operate over here managing an ad campaign without meeting whatever it is, ⁓ you know, once a month, couple times a month ⁓ to do check ins. That's what we walk away. That's when we walk away.
Doug Lineberry (46:06)
I mean, instant gratification, you we've all heard that.
But that's why I think the fractional is a great thing. You know, if you guys look at the pie chart, guess what? You're a slice of it. And that means that you're there with the rest of the pie. You know, it's a cohesive whole, but you guys don't necessarily show up to work every day like everybody else, but you're there, you know.
Jennifer Sutton (46:24)
Right. But we're there
and we can like, you know, we we design things where or design kind of programs for clients like if they need, ⁓ you know, the strategist to show up in a in a leadership meeting. We're there like we we show up. We we present board packets of like one of them. What's marketing doing? ⁓ So, you know, we kind of take on the role of.
anything that you would think of walking down the hallway or in offices now that have most of their virtual teams or a phone call away no different as a teammate. ⁓ We've just tried to build in some operation ⁓ system so that we're you know we have a ticketing email that you send an email and based on.
Doug Lineberry (47:08)
There you go.
Jennifer Sutton (47:21)
the subject line or whatever you're asking goes to appropriate, to the team. ⁓ yeah, clients use us both as strategy, oversight. Obviously that's front loaded, that's really heavy at the beginning. And then we release more of the execution team and there's always oversight. It's just not as heavy. ⁓ And then there's programs that we've had clients on that were on the
Doug Lineberry (47:26)
thoughts. Yep.
Jennifer Sutton (47:51)
third or fourth or fifth year, the strategist kind of comes in and goes, okay, let's set the plan, ooh, the monthly data, are we asking these things, are we doing these versus, you know, some of like a client that may be on, you know, on one, the first year, a lot more strategic eyeballs, a lot more like research that's being done, hand holding through change management.
culture building, because as I say, we are imperfect humans managing imperfect humans and marketing in a company, if you just make any kind of change or ask any kind of a question, you know that, it kind of sets off people. So from a law firm, how do you guys do your
Doug Lineberry (48:42)
It does.
Jennifer Sutton (48:50)
marketing, lead, referral, is it all just word of mouth? Is it you just doing events and speaking engagements and curious?
Doug Lineberry (48:57)
You know, it depends
on the attorney Jennifer man, it's a great way to ask it because you know, I use social I present you know your clients refer you to other people, you know I'm not a client today because of another client saying hey, here's my attorney talk to him And so it really depends on what you're looking at. You've always heard over the years, know focus your marketing do this Attorneys are terrible at it. You know, we are not taught this in law school. I do think we probably are
Jennifer Sutton (49:06)
Right.
Right.
Yeah.
Doug Lineberry (49:24)
I'm much more focused on having the structural marketing score rather than a fractional, just because we think that's what works best. You know, again, I think your ROI is something critical to ask. And is that question asked enough? I don't know. ⁓ But again, a lot of attorneys don't like to market. And I know that sounds strange because it's how we are, but you you've got to...
Jennifer Sutton (49:31)
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. You either have
like on the spectrum of, you know, the eight eight eights and the and the two two two. Let's let's get all the billboards in the back of the phone.
Doug Lineberry (49:49)
Yeah, that's right. You've got this. Yeah, you've
got the guys you see everywhere and you've got attorneys who prefer never to be seen. And then that's what our marketing folks have to deal with is like, Hey, you know, if you won't work, you've got to have a client. And so how do we get you from you, the client, and then make it stick because he put them as probably the most important thing, you know, but no, I mean, it's a really great thing. There is no one size fits all. So there simply isn't. And I think you will see
Jennifer Sutton (50:05)
Right.
Yeah.
Yes.
Doug Lineberry (50:19)
You'd see vast differences between firms A and B here in Greenville, and Lord, you're better than somebody else.
Jennifer Sutton (50:23)
yeah. Well, so it's the same thing as agencies. And that's what I was
like, you know, just like you guys don't have a formula for, for going, getting your business and even my, that's what ⁓ I caught the myth buster of. If you have any agency that goes, I have a formula, I can get you 10 X. I was like, red flag, red flag, red flag.
Doug Lineberry (50:41)
Yeah, I mean, absolutely.
And the same thing, if you hear an attorney who says he or she can do everything to all clients at all times, run, just run. It's going to end badly. And again, you know, like we talked about in our segment about AI, about being a confident liar, you know, there are a lot of people who will oversell. And I think that today, I'm amazed that, hey, know, the fractional thing is something everybody should consider, but you've got to be brave enough to ask those questions.
Jennifer Sutton (50:49)
Right. Run. Yeah.
Yeah.
Mm.
Right.
Right.
Doug Lineberry (51:08)
And
you've to be brave enough to of shake the boat a little bit and say, hey, you know, we've got a system, but is that a system that's providing ROI, know, a ROAS, you know, what are we getting out of this? Are we doing it just because it's a habit or are we doing it because there's an actual return to benefits?
Jennifer Sutton (51:11)
Yeah.
Right.
That's right. Right.
Right, what's the intentionality behind it? Do we know the purpose of these activities? I that's the biggest thing that we kind of sit, and even when we coach small businesses and the accelerators of, hey, when you map out your three-year S-GAP, like that Strategic Growth Action Plan, all those activities, there's intentionality behind it. But before they walked in that classroom, ⁓
Doug Lineberry (51:26)
Yep.
Jennifer Sutton (51:50)
they were spending money and it's the coaches that are like, well, why are you spending it? Like what's the return for that? Or, you know, as we kind of say in ⁓ the accelerators, ⁓ if you're spending money, ⁓ whatever you're spending outside needs to come back and be returned with cousins, preferably three.
because you just don't want the same, you know, the break evens. But it is like going through of, you know, the bigger the company, obviously they most likely have their break evens. They've got, you know, their numbers, they know their margins. ⁓ They know like the operations side. It's just like they haven't aligned marketing activities ⁓ or even like people strategies or process. Like they haven't aligned all of that to make the engine work hard.
Doug Lineberry (52:22)
No!
Jennifer Sutton (52:48)
work harder. But yeah, that's, that's ⁓ a, I think that's another little, like a little myth out there of the intentionality behind everything. Yeah.
Doug Lineberry (52:59)
And you know
you're asking the hard question because like you said when you talk with a CEO or CMO is like my gosh You're gonna interact with me Yeah, that's what you want Absolutely, you know and it's like if you don't do that you can put her on automatic and they're gonna get back the automatic same role same
Jennifer Sutton (53:06)
Yeah. Look who you're asking me tough questions. Right.
Right,
right. But I was like, you reached out for a reason and most of it has come because you're either losing customers or you've hired really good people because you, for whatever reason, whatever number data you were using, you were projecting the pipeline to be filled. And now the pipeline, you know, there's too much capacity and you're going to lose people if...
if their capacity, their inventory isn't filled or you're sitting on inventory and it's not offloaded. that's where we get the calls when whatever content we put out there, triggers a, my gosh, like that is me. That's my scenario. I'm in some pain, right? And we can help solve most of the pain points.
Doug Lineberry (53:45)
Yes.
Jennifer Sutton (54:09)
What I can't solve is, there's things where we can identify that goes you, when we come in, especially with legacy organizations, larger organizations, and I know this is gonna, you're gonna feel this. Because a lot of times we do employee engagement surveys. But as you know, might, they go work for a company.
but they quit the manager.
Doug Lineberry (54:40)
Uh-huh, that's right.
Jennifer Sutton (54:42)
because it's like what 80, 90 % of the reason why people leave is because of their direct supervisors. But most companies as they grow and scale only promote people not because they're great leaders or great managers, it's because a slot was open. They needed to have more managerial or supervisory oversight in that department.
Doug Lineberry (55:01)
Huh?
Jennifer Sutton (55:12)
but they didn't train that person ⁓ how to manage.
Doug Lineberry (55:17)
And now there they are and these are ⁓ wow, what's this?
Jennifer Sutton (55:19)
And now there they are. wow.
Or you get people that are frustrated to go, I'm in this, and there's no career path for me. And so, know, well, I'm just gonna be the best, you know, the best assistant, but I'm not gonna lead. I'm not gonna shine. I'm not gonna, because there's no growth path here. So we see, so those are the things that we, you know, we can only identify to go, have low engagement or.
You've got, ⁓ like I just did a workshop with ⁓ a company who, again, were working through ⁓ teaching people the new narrative around the brand. Like how do you talk about the brand? ⁓ We did very little tweaks to the look. We just refreshed it, right? We evolved it. We didn't do a cracker barrel. ⁓ You know, that.
the revolution, we just did a little minor evolution, but we gave more clarity around the brand. And as we're talking about it, know, also ⁓ culture is basically the brand internally, how it's manifested internally. ⁓ So as we start talking about like, well, what do you feel the ⁓ we get the culture immediately becomes ⁓ I get a call from the HR manager and they're like, my phone is being flooded by
when we hear they heard that you were gonna do a culture training. And so I've got a list of things I think we need to ⁓ maybe structure your workshop to spend half of the day on like dress code and ⁓ consistency around like vacations and how do you deal with this and how do you, and it was all compliance issues, policies. And I was like,
Doug Lineberry (56:48)
⁓
Sure.
Jennifer Sutton (57:13)
So they heard the word culture and immediately flooded HR department with, okay, well then you need to teach us how to be consistent around compliance. And I said, I don't think we need to do that. I think we need to take a step back and let's build some ⁓ training workshops around what it means to lead. And how do we empower people who have never felt empowered before?
to like all the issues they brought up. Those are things that in their control, that are in, they are empowered to manage their own people. Like policy on like cell phone usage in their department. So I'm like, yeah, you might have a discussion of here's kind of the overarching. said, if your culture is supposed to be about independence and autonomy and fun,
Doug Lineberry (57:57)
Yeah, absolutely.
Jennifer Sutton (58:11)
Do you really want to create a handbook and then just do a compliance? ⁓ It's a balance. You got to have some of that because of ⁓ boundaries and guardrails. But these are managers who can help develop what those policies are versus just relying on an HR department ⁓ to do it. So let's flip it and let's have them talk about
what that means to what does a cell phone policy really mean? What is address code? What should it be? ⁓ And then let's talk about leading from their seat because they've never been challenged that way before. So those are the fun things. But again, when people ⁓ become, ⁓ you know, they're not going to be able to lead. That's where a CEO or a CEO or whatever ⁓
Doug Lineberry (58:48)
you
Jennifer Sutton (59:09)
have to have like this person's not going to get us to the next chapter. I do not have the authority to let people go. just, it just because you just become you create the environment where it becomes really clear of these are people who are going to take you to the next, you know, to the next chapter. These people are really good ⁓ at their craft. They are they're sustainers, but
Doug Lineberry (59:19)
Hahaha! ⁓
Jennifer Sutton (59:37)
they aren't going to, they're not change management people. But you need to keep, you know, you need to keep them happy and try to make them ambassadors for where we're going. And I was like, and these people, they're your detractors and they're cancer in your organization. And you need to figure out exit strategies for these folks. That's about as close as I do, like, yeah.
Doug Lineberry (59:58)
sure. Jennifer,
this has been an awesome conversation today. What sort of last thought do you have for anybody thinking fractional or hesitant about?
Jennifer Sutton (1:00:07)
Yeah.
So, you know, reach out to us and we can have that conversation to figure out where, you know, where are you struggling? Because again, as senior executives in, you know, in their business, you can feel it. Like your gut instinct of something is not working is always right. Like you just haven't figured out where that tension is coming from.
And it might be like very clear tension of we've lost business. We're seeing or we're not seeing the customers. It's been really easy, you know, because there's some categories of like, hey, this category has been on fire and we've grown with it. And now that demand is not there. Now we're seeing plateau or seeing a decline. So sometimes it's obvious from a revenue or a sales, but they don't know.
how to adjust what they're doing. And they've either gone like tried to manage an internal team or they've tried to hire people and they just don't feel like they're getting the traction. That's where it's like, give us a call. Let's do a, like, cause we give, I do free discovery ⁓ calls just to kind of uncover where the tension ⁓ lies and see if we can be of help, right?
So that's kind of the one. And then the fractional is like, you need to have the mindset of, why do you feel like you need to have people on site, on staff? Is it a control thing? Is it a fiefdom thing? Is it a, ⁓ well, what will I lose with it? And then I would kind of flip it and go, what do you, I think there can be a lot of gains of, you using all of those people?
at their fullest at 1800 hours, are you seeing the ROI on that 1800 hours a year? Are you even able to assess what they've done positively that has affected your bottom line? ⁓ And usually when we kind of ask those questions, it becomes a, ⁓ I've never thought of it that way. I have no idea that what they do for 1800
I don't know about you, but usually when I throw out those numbers, they're like 1800 hours. Like, it's a lot of hours. And it's, yeah, so those are how the conversations go, but don't be, know, kind of let down your guard. And kind of what we've learned, and you've heard this in the ecosystem space, working with companies. You know, when you start your company,
Doug Lineberry (1:02:39)
What?
Jennifer Sutton (1:03:01)
you have a lot of people with the startup mindset, even yourself. And then, you you're builders, you're building, building, building. And then you get to, you know, a point, you need to change your mindset to be scale, scale, scale, system, system, systems, processes, processes, and how do you scale from that? And we call it like new level, new devil, right? It's a different mindset. Sometimes it might be different team members, or you've got to work to change, manage.
the mindset of your team to go from builder to scaler. ⁓ And then when you've grown, now you've got maybe a mix of people that are, need innovators and builders in this area, but we need sustainers in these areas. And it's either a different mindset of leadership, it's a different mindset of how you've grown in those departments, but to keep kind the innovation alive. And I don't think that that's how people
think about when they hire. They look at skill set or what I call on paper experience and not necessarily the right mindset for the right ⁓ place and time of what they need for the company in that moment. Fractionally, we have people that we know, okay, we're in the mode. We gotta change our mindset. They're in build mode.
or no, no, we're in scale mode. ⁓ And it's a mindset shift. And there's different tactics that go into ⁓ those different areas. So yeah, I don't know. Did I answer that question? Kind of rambled.
Doug Lineberry (1:04:44)
I think you
know absolutely it's good. This has been fun.
Jennifer Sutton (1:04:48)
This has been fun and long, but I appreciate you letting me ramble and ⁓ I appreciate you coming on and telling me all of your good stuff with AI and with IP and with legal. Because we serve the same, we serve the same sector.
Doug Lineberry (1:04:57)
Hey man, always a pleasure.
We do.
We absolutely do. You know?
Jennifer Sutton (1:05:11)
We're
here to help companies mitigate risk, whether they know it or not. Mitigate risk and grow and scale without buppiness, as much as, or as less as possible. All right, well I appreciate you coming on and we'll put all the tag stuff so people can get ahold of you Doug ⁓ and get their advice.
Doug Lineberry (1:05:15)
whether they know it or not, right?
Yes.
Thank you for having me.
Thank you. No, this is fun. Plus it's a little different.
You know, I like the fact it wasn't just this typical way of doing it with facts. It's just an easy flowing combo.
Jennifer Sutton (1:05:44)
That's That's
we had to do it. I'm a rambler. ⁓ I think it did too. It did. like until next time, you know, we will we will see all of our listeners again next week. Adios. Bye.
Doug Lineberry (1:05:48)
No, worked, man. I think it worked well. You know, you'll see what you think of the video, but it seemed to come across really good.
Bye, Jennifer.