Quit Burning Profits While Managing Your People Better!

Today's workforce is different. Technology has allowed many employees to work from anywhere in the world. Demands for a remote or hybrid work environment are higher than they've ever been. Yet companies are increasing demands to be in the office.

One of the biggest expenses for most companies is their payroll. People are necessary to keep the wheels turning. But talented and experienced people drive the profit engine.

In today's episode, Books & The Biz discuss striking the balance between onsite work and remote, the boss and their people, and happiness vs profits.

[00:00:02.800] - Dan Paulson

Hello, and welcome back to Books in the Biz. Trying this for the second go around. Rich, how are you doing?

[00:00:10.720] - Rich Veltre

I'm good, Dan. How are you?

[00:00:12.820] - Dan Paulson

I I'd be much better if my, my technology was balanced because that's gonna be our subject today, balance.

[00:00:19.700] - Rich Veltre

There's a good lead in.

[00:00:21.130] - Dan Paulson

Yeah. It is a good lead in because apparently, technology's taken its own Thanksgiving vacation, and I think it ate too much turkey suffering the tryptophan effect. Anyway, here we are again on this lovely day, and I'm just going to, since I forget to say these things, I'm gonna put this on a scroll down below. Look

[00:00:39.510] - Rich Veltre

at that.

[00:00:40.390] - Dan Paulson

Look at that. You know, we're fancy here. So if you're not watching this, if you're listening to this, we do ask that you please like, share, and subscribe, whether you're seeing us on YouTube, on Spotify, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever we're at. You can also visit us at booksnbiz.com. But let's get that out of the way, our shameless self promotion.

[00:00:59.580] - Dan Paulson

So, Rich, what is it about balance that we need to work on? We were talking about this the other day, and you came up with pretty good idea, as far as discussion. So what was your thought on balance?

[00:01:11.050] - Rich Veltre

Well, I think I like to come up with a word, a single word that's sort of the theme for the coming up year. And I've been thinking about 2025 at this point because we're so close to the end of 2024 that I figured, well, what's my what's my word gonna be for 2025? Balance was the word because every time I turned around, I felt like I was talking about, you know, we need balance or we need to put balance into that comment or we need to put a com you know, put that as a common denominator of what we're talking about. And it doesn't necessarily matter. We probably could sit here for 3 hours and talk about, you know, where balance fits in different pieces.

[00:01:50.560] - Rich Veltre

But I think the big 1 that I'm seeing is, you know, people are kind of focused on, you know, I need 1 person. I need somebody to come in, and they're gonna cost me this much money, and they're gonna do practically everything. That's not balanced. That's that's that's the old school world of people need to have their ankles chained to a desk for 40 hours, and then I know I got my value. Well, no.

[00:02:15.980] - Rich Veltre

You don't know you got your value, and it probably isn't correct in the way that new things are happening here, in the way that the world is working, the way that office life is working. You know, you might be surprised to find out that I'd probably recommend that you have more than 1 person, but they'd be fractional. That you actually work with somebody who's gonna work for a certain amount of time, but they're going to have expertise to be able to do a certain task as opposed to I'm gonna chain this person to the desk and then they're gonna learn everything they did to know And they that's gonna be my only person who's gonna have to be my go to.

[00:02:54.010] - Dan Paulson

I think that's a great idea. I I'm gonna play a little bit of devil's advocate here. I think it's you know, with this challenge, of course, we do a lot of fractional stuff. You're also dealing with workplace culture. And as you and I know, it is hard to develop culture when nobody's in the office or when they're they're not in there on a regular basis.

[00:03:15.160] - Dan Paulson

So you have to find ways to, again, create that balance. You know, as I was thinking about this over, you know, the past week from when we first discussed this topic, it's like you've got to really get to a point where you have an internal team that is being developed to fill those roles. And and, you know, we're all seeing it now where where large corporations are saying, look. You're you're not gonna work at home anymore. You gotta come back into the office.

[00:03:41.510] - Dan Paulson

Now I think that's done for a couple reasons. 1, they they see the impact that not having people working together collaboratively in person as a team is is doing to their their sales and their bottom line. I also think the other side of it is that's a very good way to weed out people without doing a major layoff is say, hey. You gotta come back to the office. And, you know, I know, for example, a colleague of mine who moved from where he was working back to Wisconsin, and he says, I'm not going back there.

[00:04:10.670] - Dan Paulson

So guess what? He he took the severance, and he left. But we still gotta get people in working together collaboratively. And I think, you know, where where the fractional side of it, where I see that helping, is you're taking somebody who's been there, done that, who's had that experience, who can bring in a wealth of knowledge. But what they should be doing is transferring that knowledge.

[00:04:36.390] - Dan Paulson

Mhmm. So to kind of append your your fractional work, I I think too many companies look at fractional and say, like you said, this person's gonna come in. They're gonna do all this stuff, and that's gonna be it. But there has to be a transference of knowledge. Otherwise, that fractional person really didn't do their job and didn't function in the way that they should have, which is building up the internal workforce to eventually replace them.

[00:05:05.090] - Dan Paulson

Yeah. And, you know, most fractional positions aren't designed to be lifelong positions. They might last a couple we'll say they were between 2 to 5 years at max, and some of them might only last a couple weeks or a couple months. You know that for a fact. You're brought into sometimes work on just getting the book straight and getting getting the financials in line, and then you're done.

[00:05:25.090] - Dan Paulson

Hands off away you go. On. But I think we are gonna see more and more just due to the workforce being smaller. There's fewer people, fewer experienced people filling certain positions, so we're going to have to utilize the knowledge of somebody who maybe doesn't wanna work full time anymore, maybe has chosen to step out of the workforce. But, you know, for whatever reason, still feels they have something left to give or or they wanna occupy their time.

[00:05:51.190] - Dan Paulson

So that's gonna be I think where we're gonna see some of this balance coming in at.

[00:05:57.110] - Rich Veltre

Yeah. I think it I think it's gonna be a little bit of, you know, every story is going to be unique. Okay? But I think the culture thing is something that I definitely agree with that I think that you have to find a way, you know, because of the declining workforce you can't expect that everything's going to go back to this is the way it was before and this is the way it's gonna be now because I decided. Okay.

[00:06:23.400] - Rich Veltre

You can decide all you want, but the market's gonna dictate, you know, the fact that you're gonna have to find creative ways to do things. So I'm not man I'm not saying that everybody has to be remote fractional, you know. If you want somebody to come in a few days a week to do a certain thing, then, you know, that can be your creativity. How you're gonna find a fractional person to fill a role. Okay?

[00:06:50.520] - Rich Veltre

I have a couple examples lately where it just became, you know, we need a CFO. Okay. Why do you need a CFO? Because we need a CFO. Okay.

[00:07:00.480] - Rich Veltre

So you go in and you find out that there's no team. There's nobody who specifically has either the accounting side or the financial planning side of what the CFO's office has become at least from a standpoint of a day to day operation, you know, inclusion. So now it becomes well, what's the, you know, what's the ramification here? You know, they hired 1 person and expected that 1 person to be able to do everything all the way from bookkeeping up to being the CFO. And when you do that even for the short period, you're not gonna get everything.

[00:07:36.870] - Dan Paulson

Right.

[00:07:37.100] - Rich Veltre

You just can't. There's not enough time in the debt. So had you said, you know, we need to cover this piece of the pie. We need to understand that these are the 9 or 10 different tasks that we have to actually work on, you know. Then you could say, well, who can do those tasks?

[00:07:57.030] - Rich Veltre

Is it somebody who's already in the operation? Is it somebody that you have to bring in? Can you bring in someone with an expertise who's can do cash flow forecast because the old old owner didn't do it at all. He just looked at what's my cash balance. Okay.

[00:08:10.780] - Rich Veltre

I'm good to go. That's it. No forecasting. No expecting. How am I gonna do 13 weeks from now?

[00:08:17.340] - Rich Veltre

Do I have to borrow? Do I have to cover? Because he didn't have anything that you now have as the new owner. So how do you wanna fill the role, and what are you expecting people to do in that new role? So that's where I think, you know, again, balance comes in because had you looked at the, you know, the task list before you hired the CFO and said, oh, I can get 2 controller type people or or I can get 2 people at a little bit lower level or someone who's an expert on the accounting side controller and somebody who's an expert on the budgeting, forecasting, and cash flow, you know, tracking on the right side, you could have put 2 people into that 1 role for the same money.

[00:09:00.930] - Rich Veltre

Right. And you could either say, look. I dictate you have to be here a couple days a week. Okay. You know, that can be worked out.

[00:09:08.550] - Rich Veltre

Now you've hit the balance of these people don't wanna be in your office 40 hours a week. K? But they don't have to be because you gave them tasks that could do it for a couple of days and they can get their work done and you actually get what you want. So that's where again balance became sort of my word, you know. I'm seeing where I can apply balance in multiple, you know, multiple situations.

[00:09:32.570] - Dan Paulson

Yeah. And here's another place where you might be able to apply that. This is actually a situation I'm dealing with. With. So I was brought in by a client.

[00:09:40.230] - Dan Paulson

Small operation. They've been probably in business for a couple years. They're just kinda getting their feet off the ground. You know, budgets are still tight. It's tough to hire somebody full time, especially on an administrative role.

[00:09:52.420] - Dan Paulson

But, you know, 1 of the key areas they needed help with was sales. So I'm stepping in. I'm building their sales process for them with the idea that after a couple months, after I've pretty much laid out the processes, we would then hire somebody into that position. That person could be hired at a a, you know, either a higher commission rate or whatever it might be to offset some of the costs that they would incur, but we had to start somewhere. Now in this case, they didn't have any of the internal knowledge to put that together.

[00:10:22.120] - Dan Paulson

They didn't have the time to put that together either. So having a fractional person come in can kinda help lay out what you need and who you need. Because I think, you know, to your point, when somebody says, well, I need a CFO, and you look at it and go, well, do you really or no. You don't. I think it's because they don't understand what they need.

[00:10:41.750] - Dan Paulson

They don't know what they need because they don't have that level of expertise, and it's almost helpful sometimes to have a fractional person come in and say, okay. You know what? This is gonna be a very short term project, but let's lay out what exactly you do need help with. Now in your case, financial, like you said, maybe they need a controller or they need, people in accounts receivable, accounts payable. You know, again, sales or or something there that that helps offset some of that.

[00:11:09.010] - Dan Paulson

And then it's setting up those systems in place so that way you can say, okay. Now you need to hire a, b, and c to fill these positions. You can get them at these salaries, which, again, for what you're what you would be paying somebody at a a executive level is a fraction of the cost, and they're actually going to get the work done where that fractional person's more, again, a strategic role, not a an actionable role or a doing role.

[00:11:34.880] - Rich Veltre

I think, yeah, I I think it could be both. You know? I think it can be where there's a lot of people out there willing to be fractional, willing to share their time among multiple clients, you know, and they can be the doers. You know, you get into a little bit of a muddy water there. Right?

[00:11:58.280] - Rich Veltre

Because you do get you do get into the fact of somebody who says, you know, well, I'm fractional, but they're really a bookkeeper, or they're really just a a regular accountant, you know, someone who wants to be an accountant. I don't necessarily call that fractional. You know? Because accountants have had that model for years. They just charge for the hours they do for the clients.

[00:12:18.920] - Rich Veltre

So, you know, that I can't see how you can just kinda translate that to fractional. You know? I just think there becomes some confusion there and it becomes a little bit of a, you know, a muddy pond of what's actually in that water.

[00:12:34.200] - Dan Paulson

So how help me with this then. How do you what's a clear definition of fractional in your mind?

[00:12:40.760] - Rich Veltre

Well, I definitely agree with you on the leadership role, you know, that it really has to be someone who can take a leadership role. I think, you know, it gets a little cloudy when someone says, you know, well, I'll do your fractional FP and that your your fractional budgeting and forecasting. Because are you just a part timer or are you building that into I'm going to become more of a knowledge base for that company? You know? I saw somebody said it the other day.

[00:13:13.510] - Rich Veltre

They're a fractional company, and they said that they take the time to really understand the business, you know, which a part time worker is not gonna do that. You know, part time worker is just gonna be, like, okay. What do you want me to get done today? Okay. I'm done at 1 o'clock.

[00:13:33.410] - Rich Veltre

Bye bye. Thank you. Take care. I'll see you tomorrow or I'll see you next week or whenever it is that they're gonna come in. But taking the time to understand the business so they can add value from something other than just a quick task or doing some data entry or, you know, that's where I sort of start seeing the line drawn between, you know, a part timer versus a fractional.

[00:13:58.460] - Rich Veltre

I think the fractional really has to have an ability to learn more and provide additional value by being there as a quote unquote fractional. And, again, I'm not the guy that likes titles, so I'm trying to apply a title so that it becomes, you know, a teachable moment so that somebody will say, oh, I learned something there. But I don't think there's a clear definition at this point, you know. And I and I say that because I've been watching as every accountant under the sun now says they do fractional CFO work. Well, what does that mean?

[00:14:36.440] - Rich Veltre

You know? What does that mean from an accountant standpoint? Are you still the accountant? Or are you now adding additional cert what additional services have you added that you weren't providing before, but now you're calling it fractional CFO? So I I worry a little bit about going down this road of using the title.

[00:14:55.500] - Rich Veltre

You know, what I really wanted to find here is that fractional to me means a little more than part time. It just means that they're providing what you need by a task level basis. And, you know, it doesn't just become, well, I got this guy Monday and Tuesday. You know? It's really you have the guy as much as you need for those hours that they've contracted for to provide you the value that you're expecting, to provide you the cash flow forecast, which happens to be 1 that's stuck in my brain today.

[00:15:33.280] - Rich Veltre

So I've said it, like, 9 times

[00:15:34.640] - Dan Paulson

in less than 10 minutes. I can tell what you've been working on over the past week. So,

[00:15:40.830] - Rich Veltre

you know, but I think that, you know, there's a there's a distinction when you start to ask. You know, I had 1 job where someone literally told me they needed a CFO because they, you know, just needed a CFO. And then when you got down to the task level, I could have gotten it done by bringing in a controller. Because the 9 tenths of what they needed was someone who could, you know, file the new bank reports that they had to do for this company that had never done them before. So they didn't have the knowledge base.

[00:16:11.590] - Rich Veltre

So the fact of the matter is you paid for a CFO to do the controller job. And for me, that becomes a rub. That that really rubbed me the wrong way because I could've saved you a $100 an hour, you know, for what you were looking for. You used the title and you paid more, but you got less. So and most people don't believe it.

[00:16:33.580] - Rich Veltre

They don't they don't think that I'm right, but, you know, I'll educate them.

[00:16:39.020] - Dan Paulson

Slowly but surely. I I also yeah. I also believe that, you know, when we're looking at fractional leadership roles, as you pointed out, leadership's a important component on fractional versus, we'll say, a retained employee or something like that. I also believe autonomy. Because if you think of it if you are a CFO or a COO or a CMO, fill you know, take any c, fill something in there, and you're expected to do a task or do work, you should be given some freedom to use your knowledge and experience to actually advance the company forward.

[00:17:17.270] - Rich Veltre

Yep.

[00:17:17.670] - Dan Paulson

And what I see a lot of owners do is they delegate a task, a specific task. I want you to fix this. Now for example, the sales could be a specific task that I was delegated for my fractional rule. But I'm while I'm answering to the owner, I'm also working independently of the owner building systems and processes, doing documentation for their standard operating procedures, actually doing outreach. So I'm actually performing sales functions on my own.

[00:17:49.130] - Dan Paulson

I'm making decisions on my own without direct oversight of the owner. And to me, that's a that's a huge difference because now they're utilizing the experience and the knowledge that I have to apply to their work and expand their operation. That is a huge difference versus saying, okay. You're gonna perform a sales function, and, basically, you're you're a retained salesperson. You're just gonna plug in here.

[00:18:14.840] - Dan Paulson

You're gonna do these tasks, and you're gonna sell this product. Again, it also goes to that finite. So I I said I was going to do this. I'm only gonna do this for a couple months with the idea that in that couple months, I built the processes that we can now put somebody in there that can do that job more, more cost effectively. So we can still build the the finances right or the benefits right for that individual, but now we can do so.

[00:18:41.540] - Dan Paulson

And they just have to follow procedure. They have to follow steps to that lead to sales. And that's a way different function that, again, a a fractional person would be. So that's kinda where I'm I'm seeing some of the differences and and where, again, as we circle back into, well, what's all this relate to balance? Well, again, you can put people in to do a task, and they will do that task to the best of their ability with the resources that they have.

[00:19:06.930] - Dan Paulson

They don't understand the resources, haven't been provided with any training, or don't have the knowledge. They're they're limited in their capacity. Now you take the other end of it, which is the the leadership or the executive side, and you plug that person in their role. Their job is to, again, expand that knowledge for the organization and create that that experience profile with their teams. So that way they can step back and allow their teams to to function on their own, ultimately.

[00:19:35.280] - Dan Paulson

It should be our job as as leaders to work ourselves out of work. That's kind of how I see it is we should be creating something that eventually replaces us. Now that replacement either moves us into another role of responsibility, especially if you're in the organization. You should always have somebody that could eventually take over your spot so that way you can advance in the organization. Somebody's ready to to fill in for you.

[00:19:59.690] - Dan Paulson

From a fractional side, I think it's really, again, bringing in that external knowledge, sharing it with the organization, implanting it in the the people that work there, and then being able to either move on to another function or move on to another job altogether. So lot different than say a full time employee would be and also at a fraction of the cost because when you hire that person in full time, you gotta expect them to be busy 40 to 50 hours a week to pay for their high salary, to pay for their benefits, to pay for any other incentives that you have going on, which gets extremely expensive and really kinda curtails your ability to hire other people to fill critical roles that you might need to do as well.

[00:20:40.650] - Rich Veltre

Right. Do you think it would be fair and maybe I'm limiting this too much but do you think it'd be fair to say that the the fractional has to have a relationship with the person that hired them that's more in lines with a partner as opposed to an employee?

[00:21:04.520] - Dan Paulson

To some degree, I I think that is more accurate. I would see a fractional executive as more at any partner level than a a genuine employee of the company. Mhmm. I think it's it really comes down to understanding what company needs are. And I to this is where I think most fractional positions miss out is they don't do the research ahead of time.

[00:21:30.760] - Dan Paulson

You know, you were talking about the situation you were brought in to be a CFO, and in the end, you were actually a controller and, you know, they should have hired a controller. Well, what we need to be doing is we need to be going in and and really, okay, get their understanding of what they think they need and then do it a quick analysis. Say, yeah. This is what you need or, no. This is not what you need.

[00:21:50.730] - Dan Paulson

You actually need this, this, and this. Right. And we suggest you hire these positions first because otherwise, you're gonna be hiring for this position, and they're gonna be grossly overpaid for what they're able to do because they're gonna have to fill in a lot of those gaps that you're you currently have in your company. Right.

[00:22:10.300] - Rich Veltre

Yeah. I'm I'm I'm seeing that a little bit. I'm seeing that's also where you can get to imbalance. I was working with 1 company that was so focused on the end game. You know?

[00:22:23.010] - Rich Veltre

The once they got to the point of being, at their steady state, they need they said they needed all of these high level people. So they had a COO, they had a CFO. Well, that was my first kind of red flag that this is not right. You know, because smaller companies can get away with the operations or the finance as long as somebody understands the numbers and somebody understands the process. You can get away with 1 person in that double role when you're just a startup and trying to grow.

[00:22:56.140] - Rich Veltre

But they had marketing, they had operations, they had finance, they had I can't remember what the others are. By the time oh, it's chief legal legal counsel.

[00:23:09.240] - Dan Paulson

Oh, god.

[00:23:10.120] - Rich Veltre

So they had a GC already planned out. Like, this was all planned out. And I'm like, you were 2 years old. How many practices have you bought? Because the whole point was to buy and roll up 1.

[00:23:24.740] - Rich Veltre

So

[00:23:25.060] - Dan Paulson

that makes it really administrative top heavy, which is extremely expensive.

[00:23:29.060] - Rich Veltre

That's yeah. When I figured it out, you know, I was trying to put together a forecast to see where it was gonna end up. I think it was a $1,000,000 a year of top level chief executive people. And I said, but you only have 1 practice under contract. You don't even have it closed yet.

[00:23:47.800] - Rich Veltre

Oh, yeah. That's where we are. These are all the people that we need. I'm like, I no. I can't help you.

[00:23:54.360] - Rich Veltre

Because that just became, you know, this is where you're gonna go if you don't think about the fractional role. This is gonna be I need that level person so I'm gonna go pay for it, but you don't have the money to pay for it. So you're doomed when you start. So it, you know, it just became 1 of those things where the the eye opener is, you know, that if you have to hire people full time to pay for the levels of expertise that you need, you're gonna go broke. There's not a whole lot of easier way to swallow that or say it.

[00:24:32.480] - Rich Veltre

It's just, you know, it's an ugly conversation that has to be had.

[00:24:38.000] - Dan Paulson

Well, how many I'm you're stuck. You're blah. You're talking about a start up here. I wonder how many startups kinda think that way. They think bigger than they are with the intent that that must be the way you do things.

[00:24:51.170] - Dan Paulson

You you hire all these top level people and then magically the sales will come, and this cash burn will slow down because we've got all these all this talent at the top that can can drive our revenue growth. I mean, how often does that really happen?

[00:25:06.710] - Rich Veltre

Very rarely. I think the funny part is I had an example of that from 25 years ago before there was all this discussion about fractional. There was there was a major I had a big meeting with a startup was probably doing you know a 1000000 5 And the the guy comes in, and we were just there as accountants at the time. And he describes this whole, you know, plan, and then in walks another guy who says he's the CFO. And I'm like, at a 1,000,005, how do you have a CEO, a CFO, and who else do you got?

[00:25:45.620] - Rich Veltre

Like, who else is gonna pop out of that door in in the next 5 minutes? And I'm gonna realize that at a 1,000,005, you can't pay everybody. You know? And so that was 25 years ago. So that was the mentality before there was options.

[00:26:00.830] - Rich Veltre

So there are still some people out there who believe this is the model. Like, you still have to hire those people. The difference that I would say is if you're going to go with that model, you need to be moving at light speed. Like, you need to be moving really fast with a real confidence that you're gonna have the revenues coming in to keep that cash flow going. You know?

[00:26:25.100] - Rich Veltre

And I don't know that people realize that. You know? I don't think that people understand the numbers well enough to say, I gotta get more deals going faster because this isn't sustainable.

[00:26:39.600] - Dan Paulson

Yeah. The only way I really see that working is if you've got people on your team that are extremely well connected and also, you know, popular or have, you know, not only with their connections, but they're kinda like dealmakers. And the you know, thinking of, like, you know, if you have Elon Musk on your board or somebody like that that can, you know, generate business and and, you know, build those sales or build those, contacts for you. That's really about the only way that even makes sense. But that's still extremely expensive and extremely risky.

[00:27:16.400] - Dan Paulson

What? Because how many of those people are going to put their neck out, on a new product or service that hasn't been fully tested yet?

[00:27:24.240] - Rich Veltre

Well, they're not. Because because 1 way or the other, they're gonna make sure that they get their cut.

[00:27:32.100] - Dan Paulson

Right.

[00:27:32.740] - Rich Veltre

Where's mine? The Tony Soprano, you know, my hands out. That where's the rest of it?

[00:27:37.050] - Dan Paulson

You know, the rest of

[00:27:37.930] - Rich Veltre

it's mine. So those people are going to do that not for you, they're gonna do it for themselves. So 1 way or the other, either they're gonna build up your business and they already own a percentage of it, or they're gonna look at it like I get a piece of your business now, or I'm gonna be the investor. You know, because that's another area that people kind of forget, you know. If you're starting a business and the first thing you're doing is raising money, you know, it's pretty early and you're giving away a significant portion of your valuation, you know, to, you know, to bring in the money to keep the doors open.

[00:28:16.810] - Rich Veltre

But what you should be doing is building the business, finding a way to build the business, not finding a way to get a capital raise. Yep. Because most people raise their 1st round of capital and then immediately start working on their 2nd round of capital. So they never build the business.

[00:28:31.340] - Dan Paulson

Yes. No proof of concept, just proof of idea.

[00:28:34.540] - Rich Veltre

Just proof of idea. Somebody liked it. They put their money in, and if you make it, they make a lot of money. You make very little money. So I don't like that model as you can probably tell.

[00:28:46.460] - Dan Paulson

No. That's not a long term model. I think that's the the get rich quick schemes that are that are out there.

[00:28:53.420] - Rich Veltre

Yeah. So I, you know, I don't like that model. I think the goal here has to be you build the business and you can build the business with the fractional side of it. You can get some people in that can help you for less of a cost and, you know you don't have to give away all your equity and then hope down the line that you become Google because less than 1% of all people ever became Google after showing a balance sheet and that that you know after showing a profit loss statement with 0 sales and saying they were worth $80,000,000,000,

[00:29:27.530] - Dan Paulson

you

[00:29:27.690] - Rich Veltre

know, those days are over. Yes. Those days are over.

[00:29:33.850] - Dan Paulson

That is true. So what's the what's the moral of our story here? What's the moral of of creating that balance? How how do you recommend that somebody should go about that if they're concerned with, needs that they have internally to grow?

[00:29:50.210] - Rich Veltre

Well, first off, I think you keep balance as the word that's in the forefront of your mind. Don't push it to the back and allow everything that's old to kind of come back in I think this is a new way that things are gonna get done I think that we're gonna be looking at hiring shortages etcetera for a while so I think people really have to start thinking differently you know, if you're still gonna go through well, 20 years ago when I was in school, this is the way they taught me. Well, that's old, you know, 20 years ago is a, you know, is it might as well be a 50 or a 100 years ago because it's that different than it was 2025 years ago. So, you know, go with some of the change, find a way to do things a little bit differently, try it out, you know, actually try it out with the understanding that you're looking for balance, you know? And don't just go down the road of well, I'm gonna hire that guy for, you know, a bazillion dollars of benefits and everything else when I could have gotten 3 different people to do 3 different tasks and been a heck of a lot happier.

[00:30:51.040] - Rich Veltre

So and those people may work out to the point where you say I'm gonna hire them because they could do all this work or they can show you what they can do. So I just think there's a I think there's a new way to look at things and and that's why I think balance is a good word.

[00:31:05.700] - Dan Paulson

Yeah. I I agree with you, and I also agree that, using fractional help gives you a chance to try before you buy or get systems in place that normally would take much, much longer to do because, again, you have people that don't have that level of experience to do it. So if you're asking, I would say a more entry level person or somebody with fewer years of experience, they've gotta build from scratch. Now everyone's got a learning curve. No matter what you do, you gotta go in and figure out what's going on because no business no 2 businesses are identical, and you have to figure out how things work.

[00:31:38.510] - Dan Paulson

But it definitely takes you a lot longer when you haven't been down that road before. So that to me, where the balance comes in is if you can get the fractional help you need to fill certain gaps in your operations or your financial that need to be addressed, that's gotta be the best approach right now. Because as you point out, you can do that by hiring maybe 2, 3, 4 people for the same price as you would hire 1 full time person for with salary benefits and incentives. And that's a huge difference. And that that to me is where, especially in the next year or 2, this balance with fractional is going to come into key play.

[00:32:16.240] - Rich Veltre

I absolutely agree with that.

[00:32:18.890] - Dan Paulson

Hey. Good. Good. We're in agreement. So, anyway, if you need help with that fractional stuff, we got a way to do that for you.

[00:32:26.330] - Dan Paulson

If you reach out to us at xcx0.net, both of us are, you can contact us there. 2 things are going on right now. We are currently looking to find fractional executives. So if you see yourself as someone who's got roughly 20 years or more of experience, has been in some sort of management or leadership role, especially if you've had some where you've managed or dealt with a factory department, whatever it might be, that would be helpful. Beyond that, we're also looking for companies that are needing that fractional help.

[00:32:58.240] - Dan Paulson

They see a gap in their their experience pool. They're looking to train their people up because that's the goal of this. We're not replacing anybody, but we're developing internal teams to eventually fill the roles that we will step out of. And the best way to do that is to contact us at xcx0.net. My email is dan@xcxo.net.

[00:33:17.820] - Dan Paulson

Rich, yours is?

[00:33:19.170] - Rich Veltre

Mine is rich@xcxo.net.

[00:33:22.570] - Dan Paulson

Excellent. And you can reach us there. Next week, we will have a a guest guest on. Mitch will be joining us and talking more about buying and selling businesses, so that'll be fun. Rich, as always, great discussion, and we will talk to you next week.

[00:33:36.670] - Rich Veltre

Sounds good. I'll talk to you next week.

[00:33:38.510] - Dan Paulson

Thank you.