Fractional Help for Skin in the Game

Hey there entrepreneurs,

Welcome to the Better Business Brief, where I share takeaways from:

• running a business I’m building to sell for millions
• my consulting with business owners building to sell for millions
• tips and tricks you can use to do the same

A major trend I’m seeing and working on myself right now is helping business owners with PART of their business in exchange for some of the upside of it. This is something you can do with (potentially) no money out of your own pocket, but rather just your own skills.

So today, in less than 5 minutes, I’ll give you:

📝 3 examples of how this can work

👨💼 WHO should work on each

💰 HOW you get skin in the game

Most businesses are service-based businesses of some kind. These are also the kind that I focus on. Often, these types of businesses have weaknesses in at least 2 of the following 3:

-Service

-Sales

-Marketing

Those are your entry points. If you have skills in one of those, you might just be able to work your way in with a business owner who is particularly weak in that area by helping them do it better. Here's how:

1. Service

The actual delivery of/fulfillment of a service is so essential to a business’s long term success. If you are great at selling and marketing your service but not at delivering it, you will have a bunch of angry or frustrated customers wanting their money back and telling their friends not to buy from you. Unfortunately, this is a lot of business owners. Great at advocating for, promoting, and getting the word out about what they do, but not great at following through with it. If you are more of an executer, and you’re conscientious, schedule-oriented, and great at following through and completing tasks, you might just be able to help someone in this position a lot. Let’s say there are two people who have accounting businesses. One is very outgoing, always going to networking events, posting on social media sharing educational content, and just loves promoting themselves, but the other is very introverted, and likes to keep to themselves and just focus on getting work done. The second could come to the first and make a deal that for every new client they sign, they’ll share in the revenue on the agreement that the introverted executer will get all of the service done.

2. Sales

Sales is the backbone of any organization. It doesn’t go anywhere if someone isn’t making rain. You could be an excellent marketer and have an incredible level of service, but if no sales are happening, you just don’t get anywhere. But there are plenty of career sales people out there that just know how to make it happen again and again. For someone who is great at selling, you could come into a struggling business that is having trouble closing sales and take a revenue or profit share of some kind in exchange for any sales you bring in. This allows you to focus on what you do best while letting the business handle the rest. My friend Robert is a career sales leader who’s worked for a lot of major companies, and recently he started a consulting practice and started working with his first client in a position like this. They’re a startup that just got funding, and he came in as a fractional VP of Sales. They pay him a small base (way less than it would cost to get someone with that experience full time), and a small percentage of sales that come in. It’s his responsibility to build a sales team under him and make sure they bring in the sales. And he gets uncapped upside and money-making potential for doing so.

3. Marketing

There are simply so many old, stale businesses out there that have a great service to deliver, are great at delivering it, and can close potential customers on it, but don’t get enough potential customers coming to them. These ones haven’t learned how to market in the modern age. Maybe they’ve always grown through word of mouth, which is great, but you can only go so far this way. This is actually my personal favorite entry point into a business, because it’s the one I feel strongest in. Because of my background in marketing, I understand what kind of activities drive leads into a business. So in my company, we recently started partnering with companies that are great at their service and can sell it well, but don’t get enough leads to grow as fast as they want. How does it work? We set up customer acquisition channels that they don’t have already (usually Google Ads). We either cover the ad cost at first and take a larger revenue or profit share, or have them cover the ad cost and take a smaller share for managing things. We set up tracking so we can both see what’s going on and what customers come in through this new channel, and we take a cut for only customers we bring in. Pretty simple, and we get to focus on what we’re best at.

All of this hinges on one thing: don’t pretend you’re a master of everything. Everyone has strengths. Everyone has weaknesses. Be honest about each of yours and find people to fill the weaknesses while you look to help people using your strengths.

If you like these ideas or found this informative, stick around and subscribe. I do this newsletter every week.

If you did, share it with a friend who may too, as this is the best way for me to grow it and make this better.

They can even sign up here :)

If you have a business that could use help in one or two of these areas, maybe we can work out a deal like this. Apply to work with me at my website here.

Happy value-building to you!

See you next time for Better Business Brief,

-Brody