#TDSU Episode 280:

⏱️ Timestamps:

00:00:00 - Intro

00:02:08 - The future is fractional

00:02:53 - Balancing senior and entry roles

00:03:39 - Remote work revolution

00:04:59 - Cautious optimism or concern

00:06:02 - Hiring for outcomes, not people

00:08:03 - Fractional work's social contract

00:11:34 - Planning the next discussion

📺 Lifetime Value: Your Destination for GTM content

Website: https://www.lifetimevaluemedia.com

🤝 Connect with the hosts:

Dillon's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dillonryoung

JP's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeanpierrefrost/

Rob's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-zambito/

👋 Connect with Jonathon Garcia:

Jonathon's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/jonathanagarcia

[Jonathon] (0:00 - 0:25)

Focusing let's say today on early stage startups, they don't need bloat, they don't need you know a three-month cycle of hiring followed by a three-month ram to figure out that it didn't work when they could bring on someone like myself on the sales side or success scaled on the CS side and do something more of hey this is the result we need, we're going to achieve it faster than we're gonna backfill at a fraction of a pause.

[Dillon] (0:34 - 0:46)

What's up lifers and welcome to The Daily Standup with lifetime value where we're giving you fresh new customer success ideas every single day. I got my man JP with us, JP do you want to say hi?

[JP] (0:46 - 0:48)

I need to strip that baby down.

[Dillon] (0:50 - 0:53)

That'll make no sense without the context.

[JP] (0:54 - 0:57)

Give him the context, give him the context please.

[Dillon] (0:57 - 1:02)

Nope I will not and we have Rob with us.

Rob can you say hi please?

[Rob] (1:03 - 1:03)

How you doing?

[Dillon] (1:04 - 1:08)

And we have Jonathan with us.

Jonathan can you say hi please?

[Jonathon] (1:09 - 1:09)

Hey everyone.

[Dillon] (1:10 - 1:15)

Hello hello and I am your host my name is Dillon Young.

Jonathan thank you so much for being here, can you please introduce yourself?

[Jonathon] (1:16 - 1:25)

Yep yep my name is Jonathon Garcia and I'm learning all right now from unfortunately not so sunny Stockholm. It was much nicer earlier but happy to be here.

[Dillon] (1:25 - 1:32)

Go ahead Jonathan, do you want to dignify that dad joke?

[Jonathon] (1:32 - 1:44)

Stockholm syndrome I mean if it was if it was two hours earlier it would have been a totally different view and yeah I'd be like oh my god I'm in love with this place but right now not so much.

[Dillon] (1:45 - 1:49)

Yeah I feel held hostage by this place perhaps right?

[Jonathon] (1:50 - 1:55)

Yeah yeah the weather the weather from Estonia followed me here unfortunately sorry sorry Sweden.

[Dillon] (1:56 - 2:07)

Jonathan you know what we do here we ask one simple question of every single guest and that is what is on your mind when it comes to customer success? I would love to hear what that is for you.

[Jonathon] (2:08 - 2:38)

Yeah so the topic that I wanted to talk about was how the future is fractional probably for most senior and also junior roles. I work I have my own company it's called Globally or Globally to play on words there's another dad joke there and and yeah just the the fact that I think that now the the trends are for senior level roles and entry level roles I think the future is going to be much more fractional and and less just full-time buyers.

[Dillon] (2:38 - 2:53)

Okay so you said senior but you also said entry is there anything in the middle or do you think that we're entering this world where it's sort of like everybody is for hire with a skill set across multiple companies?

[Jonathon] (2:53 - 3:27)

I would say the sweet spot that I'm seeing is if it's a larger scaled company they're going to want to have people that are full-time that they can depend on and and have some kind of a forecasting whether that's in sales like what I do as a fractional AE but I work very closely with fractional customer success and support and then if it's more of a startup I see that they want to have more of a founding presence fractionally to build out the process and then copy paste copy paste and then they'll hire on cheaper people that will be full-time so that's what I'm seeing so far.

[Dillon] (3:28 - 3:38)

Yeah part-time high level expertise. Yeah. This is how I think of fractional a lot of the time sounds like you think about it the same way.

JP what does this make you think of?

[JP] (3:39 - 3:42)

I mean what's that commercial want to get away?

[Dillon] (3:43 - 3:45)

I think you want to get away is that what you're saying?

[JP] (3:45 - 4:59)

Well I mean I say that in just in terms of like the idea of I think new work as it were not being sort of beholden to the office sort of opens up something that I think is really great for people to be able to show up and do their best work I mean if if somebody can do their best work from home and you know that's what remote means to them and that's fine that's great if someone can do the work and be able to travel and their company doesn't have any tax implications to them traveling which is one of the hiccups that I've heard with some people doing this then I think that like that's great as well I mean it's I see it as one of those things it makes me think about the future of work you know just the ability to to just not be tied to an office the ability to sort of own your time which I think allows a person to just be able to show up a lot more as I'm saying I mean ideally just be able to show up fully when when they are there I haven't done it too much so I can't say from personal experience but I do like remote work

[Dillon] (4:59 - 6:02)

I do like I do wonder though Jonathan you said this from a it sounded like a standpoint of optimism right yeah flexibility independence but I think look if I want to put my pettismist hat on as though I ever took it off you know I talk a lot about the the leverage hiring companies particularly in America have over their employees already does this make it even easier to treat them like you know I'll just say trash like widgets like single-use plastic like we've seen folks say before I worry about that even though I I do actually I'm very excited by what you said the future is fractional and I love that idea because I get bored right I want to keep trying something new doing new stuff meeting new people looking at new businesses but do you have any concern about that Jonathan before we kick it over to Rob no I mean I've been thinking a lot about

[Jonathon] (6:02 - 7:22)

this and a few a few of the statements that I came up with like if I had to distill this down the future being fractional is for founders especially and startups what they should be hiring for is outcomes not people they shouldn't be trying to just be trying to fill up slots so to speak and so this is you know I'd love to talk about this again later on but focusing let's say today on early stage startups they don't need bloat they don't need you know a three-month cycle of hiring followed by a three-month ram to figure out that it didn't work when they could bring on someone like myself on the sales side or success scaled on the CS side and do something more of hey this is the result we need we're going to achieve it faster than we're going to backfill at a fraction of the cost and then scale the right way as opposed to just hiring for the sake of filling a spot so I get what you're saying about you know in the future could that make us more disposable yes but at the same time we're always disposable it's just now they'll figure out who's disposable faster and they'll find the talent that can help mature the you know full-time hires afterwards I don't know if that made sense but no it's 100 sense I think the the the concern

[Dillon] (7:22 - 8:03)

I had and this it's not a debate I want to give Rob an opportunity in here but the concern I have is if everybody's not on the same page so Jonathan you run a business where it's agreed upon that this is the relationship Rob you run a business where it's the same thing but like in a JP's case is he comfortable and is that the scenario he wants to to be considered quote-unquote fractional and I know the answer is no but I wonder if employers are increasingly wanting that relationship and that's that's also not me blaming anybody who offers fractional services but Rob why don't you

[Rob] (8:03 - 8:23)

jump in yeah I think it's such an interesting it's sort of a almost like a little social contract you have yeah with your employer you know between uh some company and globally or some company and what was the what was the customer success one do you guys I just want to write that down just success scaled rolls right off the tongue

[Dillon] (8:26 - 8:29)

put your logo on the screen I guess

[Rob] (8:30 - 11:34)

no so but so here's what's really interesting because we fractional is a relatively new concept and part-time work is not a relatively new concept freelance comes from the days when people would hire literally free mercenaries lancers people would hold a lance like that that shit is old old as old but this notion of like fractional work is relatively new in the modern work sense I like what JP said about like the future of work essentially you know what we are at the sort of cusp where we're not even just introducing fractional but now we're starting to see these little breakouts of like what does fractional mean does it mean part-time does it mean does it mean consulting does it mean advisory work does it mean operations work and I think what's really innovative about Jonathan's model is I haven't often seen people do fractional work at the more contracting level right of like for example like founding AE that's a really unique position to take to the market and it's one that I value it kind of makes me think of like you know Jonathan I always use football analogy so it's like kind of like bringing in like a Josh McCown during a rebuild right somebody who's who's a journeyman who's been in all these different teams I hope he thinks more of you than that I was like who's McCowntown USA Aaron Rodgers is a good one Jameis Winston no no I don't know anyway I but the thing is so I think it was as I as I tracked this conversation I thought it was interesting because we started out we talked about like sort of the perspective of the practitioner right and it sounds great increased variety lots of learnings so much freedom and autonomy the ability to travel the world and do cool stuff like what Jonathan's doing with his dog which by the way check it out if you haven't already it's super cool I don't know anyone else who's figured it out besides Jonathan and even Jonathan I hate to tell you you haven't fully figured it out but hey here to be honest as your friend but there's a lot of downsides too like the income risk is brutal right the fact that like the expectation setting as you said Dillon is brutal because a lot of times you're caught in this weird middle ground between like what am I actually expected to do and what would be enough to satisfy my client the company and I think that that's where the conversation shifted now to like what does it mean to be a company bringing on fractional talent what does it mean to inject a catalyst into the system that gets the whole thing started or moves it to the next level and you know doesn't always work but when it does it's a beautiful thing it's like you'll see lightning changes faster than any other you know traditional method like what Jonathan was saying when you go out to market you hire for three months you ramp for two months and then finally you hope to see some results it's a totally different model Jonathan that is our time but I

[Dillon] (11:34 - 12:34)

guess what I'd like to to tease out next time and a question I have is how you properly the fascination for me is really how do you set those expectations how do you manage that relationship because I think that's where the best fractional folks win is because there's a bit of arbitrage there right of like okay well how do I bring on as many customers as possible and still deliver something of value to them but my margins are higher or I'm doing the work that I specialize in and that I'm the best at and literally nothing else like I'm really interested in that conversation so I'd love to have you back and talk more about that but you cannot return until you're in a different country in a different time zone so just figure that out and then and then come back Jonathan sound good sounds good all right well until that time we have got to say goodbye later guys

[VO] (12:40 - 13:16)

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