Why Your Business Needs A Fractional COO - Kelsey Daingerfield

This is the Beyond the Story podcast, a show that goes way beyond the story. And now, Sebastian Rusk Kelsey, welcome to the show.

Sebastian Rusk

Hey, thanks for having me.

Kelsey Daingerfield

Well, thanks for being here. I appreciate you taking the time out of your busy COO day to hang out with me for a few minutes and tell your story. I know we recently connected through the great Dan Martell's elite coaching program, which is in a very, very elite and wonderful coaching program. So, so grateful to have connected with you and have you on the show today.

Sebastian Rusk

Thank you so much. You are completely right. I've been in it since end of November and It has been just transformational. It's completely just next level when you're looking for a program to join and actually gain knowledge and friends. Yeah.

Kelsey Daingerfield

Yeah. I always say, uh, you know, Dan Martell ripped rich and rare are three qualities that are very hard to argue with.

Those are good. Yeah.

Yeah. He's also, he's also a hug with a slap in the back of the head.

He's going to call you on it.

You're not getting anything past him at all. So I'm grateful. I'm shout out to Dan Martell. So I, uh, I love telling stories on this show. Obviously it's called beyond the story. So I always like going back to the beginning of the story. to help our listeners better understand for some context, your backstory, what really brought you into present day with what you do, which I think the whole fractional world is fantastic, whether it's COOs or HR or CFOs, I think we're really moving into that space. So I'm excited to hear about how this has all come to life, but let's back up a little bit. Beginning of the story is different for everyone. Feel free to start wherever the beginning was for you and let's kind of walk us into present day with what you're doing as a fractional COO.

So my story kind of, I feel like it's become a thread amongst much of a female entrepreneurs specifically that it really happened when I became a mom. I was working full time. I was in higher ed. My background is pretty mishmash between like medical manufacturing, aerospace, retail, and higher ed. So I've been all over the place. But my common thread has always been marketing and project management, or just operations in general. And I realized when I was, after I had my son, my first child, I was like, this just doesn't feel like this, like I'm not where I'm supposed to be, I'm missing something. And at that point, I was the director of admission systems. So I learned Salesforce, I learned tech, I taught myself and I was managing applications somehow and for our admissions area. And I just started getting this itch of like, there's something else out there. And I went and I got my MBA and I was getting all my certifications. And I was like, let's just keep, let's keep exploring. And I just kept digging into it and started reading different books. I read, what's it called? Rocket Fuel. And that's where I heard about visionaries and integrators. And I read it and I was like, I feel so seen, I am an integrator. And it has a quiz in there and I nerded out and I took the quiz and it was like 98% integrator. I was like, oh my gosh, I found like my thing. And so I really held onto that and I started digging into just what's out there, what entrepreneurship is not something that's in my family. I come from a traditional like mom stayed home and work or stayed home and raised the babies and my dad was in corporate America. And so I just started asking questions and started reaching out to people online and just being curious and. It took me until my when my daughter was born right before she was born, I started doing ad hoc project, I had a friend that needed help with the website. And I was like, well, I built a wireframe 15 years ago. I'm sure I could do it again, figured it out. And I built it out for him. And I know none of this stuff relates to operations, but it's just the way that of like the adaptability. And so that was a lot of fun. I went and had my daughter. And when I was on maternity leave, I met with a previous client. that I helped out with another project. And he was like, why don't you start your own business? He's like, what are you doing in corporate? He's like, you don't want to go back. You don't even know what you're going back to. Cause at that point I was a project manager and I was like, well, I don't know what it is. He's like, you're the only person that has ever been able to come into my company and boss me around and tell me what to do. And you were right. And he's like, and I listened. So there's something there. So I just started leaning into that and gosh, about what's 2021. A year and a half later, I gave in my notice at work and I was like, my business is thriving. I have a client who I run operations for a marketing agency. I have some prospects and I don't want to be doing the split dance anymore of trying to figure out my schedule and work 40 hours and come back here. I want to just do it on my own. Yeah. And it's been, it'll be two years in March and, uh, I'm thriving. I think I almost doubled my income my first year.

Let's go. Yeah.

And it was, it was just a breath of fresh air and it's been ever evolving. I think that's the beauty of entrepreneurship too. And when you run your own show is you evolve, you would, you figure out what you like and what you don't like. And for me, it was, I started out as like an OBM and I was like, this isn't it. What else is there? And I started going more consulting, like, ah, this is kind of it, but not yet. And it was like Goldilocks, like you gotta keep trying. And then I fell into the fractional COO work and I realized it's, I can be an integrator. I'm very adaptable, but I prefer that higher level strategic oversight. Cause I have the ability to take somebody's vision and get on board with it and soak up that energy and then help direct them into the right places to focus on, things to fix, things to really lean into as well.

I love that. I love that. Wow. That's it. Well, congratulations on finding your thing and really leaning into that. And God bless the guy, your old boss that said, Hey, you need to be doing this. It's always those key individuals that show up and come out of nowhere. They give us our next step. It's like, Holy jumping Hannah. Wow. Yes. I was already kind of thinking about it anyway. Now, were you able to spend some time with your little girl when after you had her now that when you made that transition or was that?

Yeah, it's it's been so cool. So I had her and then she was born in October. I went back to work January and I left the following March. And just this past year alone, I have taken more time off, more vacations, and have had just more time to be present with my family, but also with my parents and my sisters than I think I ever have in my life. It's just truly become my perfect blend of work and life.

Beautiful. That is the most important part because that is life. Business will always be there. And of course we have to make a living and do our thing. But at the same time, I always say, people say, what's your definition of success? And I immediately answer freedom.

Yeah. Because it is so many. It's just, there's so many different facets of the word freedom too. And, and one thing that I like, I was listening to one of the dance podcasts and I was driving and I try to use that as like my thinking time. Cause I don't have anyone screaming at me if they're not in the car. And, uh, And I realized I'm like my sole purpose that have that has really come out of this journey is the clients that I work with and I see the most transformation with are the people that are trying to find their blend they want time back they want to be present and. Interestingly enough, it's been more men than women, which I find super interesting. But I've been able to help people get 20 hours back in their week so that they can actually be home and do pick up and make dinner and just be more present as well. So that's just another way to say like, yes, I'm doing what I'm supposed to do.

Yeah, that's the best. There's not a better feeling than knowing I think it's Mark Twain. I could be wrong about that, but I believe he said the two most important days of human beings' life are the day that they were born and the day they realized why they were born. And so true. I don't know if that was Mark Twain, but it probably is. Just go with it, Kelsey. Go with it.

I'll go.

Well, you know, it's kind of what you and I were talking about before the interview and what I've been able to do through my story of being able to you know, fix Sebastian and evolve and step into a, you know, a different version of myself to show up as the best version of myself that then became that trickled over into the work that I get to do through podcasting. I always say the podcast is just the vehicle. Who do you get to become? It's, it's very similar in your story. It's the, you, made a decision, you adhered to the advice that you got from people that you know, like and trusted, worked with before, and you already had that inclination of what was next. And then you took action. Now you're qualified to do what you do, not only just because of professional experience, but because of how you live your life and the decisions that you've made and what you've been able to do because of that. Because when it comes to operations, a lot of it has to do with not just running the business. Of course, that's important in making the business more efficient, but also that contributes to getting more time back in your life and your day, et cetera, on there.

It does. I'm a very steadfast personality. I'm a realistic optimist, is what my husband calls me. I think all of those come together when you're working and you're trying to improve the businesses. Everybody has such a unique story and different things that they're trying to fix. And what may come easily to me can be exceptionally hard to somebody else. So I find that taking the time to ask for help and start asking like, who can help me with this? Who can I lean on for support is the best way to grow yourself and your business because you're making yourself a little more vulnerable too.

Love that. Love all this. This is fantastic. So let's talk about why a business would need a fractional COO.

Oh, great question. Um, not all businesses do. I think it all depends on where you are in your business journey. I find that when you're a business, that's the multi six figure area. That's where you start feeling that crunch. I think Dan talks like the 300 mark. When you really start feeling that you're being stretched thin, you're wearing way too many hats. You may have a small but mighty team, but things are starting to slip through the cracks. You may not be able to focus on the strategy as much as you want because you're working on the daily things. And I think that's when it's important to bring in that fractional CO. When you want to scale, you want to grow, but you don't want to sacrifice your sanity. and your time to be able to do those things. And you know, there's leaky buckets in the business. You have a sense where some of them are, you may be able to fix them, but you can't fix all of them. And you just need that additional support. And I think that's when the fractional CO part comes into it. And for me, it's also, it's a partnership. So when you are getting to that point of meeting that sounding board, because in corporate, there's always somebody to work with. There's always somebody on the side, but when you're running your own business, you're at the top. And that can get lonely. And I think bringing in that fractional brings in that strategic advice, strategic support, but then the person that can help actually implement your vision and start taking it and rolling things out for you. So it's really when you get to the wave the white flag of, okay, I can't do it all. What can I start to delegate? Or if you're feeling that, like some clients, they feel like there's something missing in between their teams. things aren't meshing as well. There's some just friction happening and they can't put their fingers on it. Even at that point, I think that's when it comes in. I hope that answers the question. There's just so many different little things for it.

Sure, yeah. It could be several different variables. So let's use an example. So we have a team of five. Everyone's remote. We're spread across the world. My main job is is running the, not necessarily running the business. I feel like I do very little. I do sales and marketing and I'm the face of the brand. And I do the front facing with the client and the coaching. Everything else gets executed on the backend. Now this year I've been like, okay, cool. Who else do we need? And when I meet with the team, they're like, we're good because until we're at capacity, we're just in extra bodies. I don't think we're going to resolve anything. And I think it's always an even And it's an even flow between where are we at with new business and sales, and where are we at with fulfillment and team. And that pendulum has been pretty even, so I haven't been able to justify. Now, you can always I think you could always justify a biz dev slash sales and marketing person, which I have been considering, but you always also followed up with, well, would they do a better job than me? I don't know. I guess you don't know until you're in it. Oddly enough, we have a, um, new member joining our local networking group, our B&I networking group, and she is a fractional business development person. Yeah. I'll be sure to connect you guys. Actually, we have a fractional HR person and a fractional biz dev person. So I'm very curious to learn what she does. She just she just visited a couple of times and put it in her application. So she'll be joining us sooner rather than later. So I'm curious to learn that because I love the I'm a big biz dev guy because I worked in biz dev a lot prior to being a business owner. And I love that whole idea where. It's kind of sales, it's kind of marketing, but it's more about deals, partnerships, and long-term sustainability that's going to drive new business and new opportunities from there. So I guess let's just hypothetical for a second, which I know Dan loves, but hypothetical. What does it look like to bring in a COO based on my existing infrastructure right now, where Sebastian's the face of the brand, he does all the front-facing and coaching and sales and marketing and content, and then the back-end fulfillment's all done, full-blown assembly line, everything's done in a streamlined process on there?

That's such a good question. So since you're everything's operationally sound at the moment, I think I would first start off at focusing on like, what things are you starting to feel there's tension with? What things do you feel that you need to start delegating out where you'd like to get off your shoulders, or maybe somebody is doing it and you don't think they're the right fit. And I think that's where we look at is your current roles. Who's doing what? Are they in the right place? Is there anything falling through the gaps? And then from there, I like to do a somewhat, it's an audit alignment, or sorry, I flipped that, alignment audit of the business. Because there's some businesses that When you just start talking to them, you may not identify the unique need at the beginning. So by doing the alignment audit, that's where you can focus on teams. So first thing we talk about, like I just mentioned, is getting an idea of who's doing what, where is everybody falling, then getting into the operations. What systems are you currently using? Is there anything that we can automate? Is there anything that maybe you invested in two different softwares? One does this, one does that, but maybe you only need one. And we just start taking a high level overview what's what the flow is between start to finish from leads to signing somebody then signing somebody then keeping them and nurturing them because. We all know if you spend more money to get a new lead than to nurture and keep the people you have.

Sure.

Really walking through all the different facets of the business. And since everything is a pretty well-oiled machine, it'd be the team looking at the sales and the planning and the development, what's going right. What are you doing right now? That's just turnkey. Where do you want to take the business and start looking at that long-term strategy. and making sure we have the right people there. So those are just a couple of the little things that I would probably look at.

That was a great answer, especially with it being hypothetical. I mean, I gave you a little bit of context on there, but of course, every company and brand is different. There's different challenges. Some are similar, some are different on there. I would probably say that consistent lead flow Quality lead flow, predictable lead flow is the biggest hurdle. In fact, one of the masterminds that I'm in, the guy that runs the mastermind created an AI. In fact, I'm gonna send it to you. It's really cool. It's kind of HR-ish, but you'll still get a kick out of it. I don't know if it's live yet, but as soon as it is, I'll send it to you. It is a AI tool that tells you who you should hire next and how much you should pay them. So you go through, answer a bunch of questions, and then hit submit and it spits out a, uh, it's all AI generated, of course, but it kills you based on everything, how you answered everything, your biggest need, your, your next best hire is this. And, uh, you should be paying this individual this in order to, you know, to retain, you know, top quality talent on there. So, um, That's so interesting. Isn't it though? Yeah. I looked at it last time I was in Dallas, cause I remember they ran us through an exercise and I was like, this is dope. And it was, um, it actually told me that I need a lead gen specialist. So I consider that more of like biz dev, you know, when you think leads, you think leads, but you think biz dev, like you put correct partnerships in place. It'll solve that problem.

It's the relationships aspect. where do you want to take it? Like, who do you want to partner with? How do you want to make this work? And yeah, there's so much more into it with the business development than just the whole, the sales funnel and finding people to fill the sales and the leads. And oh yeah.

Yeah. Well, I think you answered a lot of the questions. If someone's listening to this right now, if you're a business owner and you're like, Do I need an operations person? I think that Kelsey really helped clarify a lot of that. I don't know, do you? Sometimes it takes digging into it. Sometimes it takes a discovery call to figure out where you're at and what you're doing. I'll be sure to link all of Kelsey's information in today's show notes. That's the description of this podcast episode. Follow her over on Instagram, connect with her. I'm a giant fan of Kelsey. We just connected through the group a short time ago, but I'm gonna jump to conclusions and say, we're probably gonna make some moves together. uh, in the future and, uh, at, at, at, at bare minimum, uh, become buddies, uh, with, within the same mastermind community. And that's really, that's the best part about business. And when we invest in ourselves as being able to build and nurture these relationships and just support each other, like there's nothing better than being able to just shoot you a text and be like, Hey, so I got this going on and it's like in your wheelhouse of operations. What do you think about that? Or Sebastian, you were talking about a podcast, Mike, the other day on the coaching call. And I remember what was that again? Like being able to have that support ecosystem, so, so important. So I've really enjoyed our conversation. I really have Kelsey, I appreciate your time. I'm excited to see what you and I can come up with in the future. That's the beauty of building relationships through exclusive communities like Masterminds on there. Any final thoughts for our listeners on the world of operations and business?

I would say, if you feel like something's off, If you're feeling like you're starting to spend a lot of time in the weeds, less on your business strategy and the marketing and the oversight. that's going to be a flag. And you may not, you may need a fractional CEO. You may not need that. It's, you may just need somebody that can help you get your business operations organized and they can walk alongside you instead of being integrated in your business. So I think really reaching out to someone, and if you ever just have questions, just shoot me a message on Instagram and we can talk through and help you figure out where's your gap? What do you need? And just truly get support for you.

Well, there you have it. I couldn't have said it better. Thanks again, Kelsey. I really appreciate, appreciate your time. Keep rocking and rolling. I'm proud of what you've been able to do so far, and, uh, I'm rooting for you. I'm believing the best is yet to come, uh, with your business and everything you've gone and create. So keep rocking.

Cool. Thanks, Sebastian.

Thank you. Until next time, friends. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode of the Beyond the Story podcast. We sure do appreciate it. If you haven't done so already, make sure you're subscribed to the show. This way you'll get updates as new episodes become available. If you feel so inclined, please leave us a review. We sure do appreciate it. Signing off from the podcast, launchlab.com studios. We'll talk to you next time.