Sam Altman and his associates reportedly have a betting pool about when there will be a $1 billion company staffed by a single person. The premise, of course, is that AI agents can carry out all the other functions that companies would ordinarily need, so the company itself can be run by a singular human being who has created or purchased custom agents to complete said functions.

This has obvious and wide-ranging implications for business leaders around planning and strategy. Should business leaders be thinking about new sets of business tools and vendors? Should business leaders be thinking about new operational models? Should business leaders be thinking about new organization charts? And maybe most obviously, and starkly, how should business leaders be thinking about their current staffing needs and capacity?

Sam Altman is a genius and far be it for me to argue with him. On this point, however, he is wrong, and here’s why. Sam (Yes, I’m on a first name basis with him even though he does not know who I am) is looking at companies in terms of how we define and understand a company today. However, as soon as the development of AI tools allows people and companies to automate today’s functions and turn their focus to new functions, ideas, and ways to service customers, people will optimize themselves and companies will look very different than they do today.

Let’s look at this another way. Human Resources does not have a long history; it’s existed for a much shorter time than you think. But over time, companies started to make more money, and people began to find new ways to exploit companies. Companies became more efficient through automation and technology, and therefore more protective of their money, property and the status quo. They also had more money around because of said efficiency, and built HR teams to protect themselves legally.

Of course, HR teams have evolved to do more than that, but the basic function of an HR team is to protect a company, legally, and the need for that functionality only exists because it can exist. In other words, greater efficiency has led to the ability to add functions that are now necessities, but would have been seen as luxuries in the past.

It’s similar to Parkinson’s Law, which states “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” In his 1955 essay, historian C. Northcote Parkinson also talked about the idea that the number of workers within public administration, bureaucracy or officialdom tends to grow, regardless of the amount of work to be done. This he attributed mainly to two factors: that officials want subordinates, not rivals, and that officials make work for each other. As our corporate environments continue to look and feel more bureaucratic, we can clearly see the crossover between the public domain discussed by Parkinson, and the private corporate domain.

I gave the example of human resources above, but let’s also look at customer success teams. The customer success function, like HR, did not exist in the not-too-distant past. Organizations had product, sales and administration departments/areas, and sellers dealt with clients, so there was no need for a dedicated client success or service function, specifically in the B2B world.

Over time, as markets became more congested and fragmented, and switching costs decreased, it became easier for clients to churn, so it made more sense for companies to start hiring more people and spending money to keep clients around. As the technology fueled competition, and made room for more slices of the pie to be cut, it also grew the size of the overall pie, and therefore freed up money for businesses to focus more on interpersonal interaction and relationships. In other words, more technology made it so that companies could find a competitive advantage in spending more time on the non-technical pieces of their business in order to differentiate.

We can argue about whether this is good or bad for business, or for clients, or for the economy, but the point is that, historically, step function leaps in technology have not led to smaller workforces. In fact, they have led to larger workforces once the market has adjusted and companies have figured out what to compete on. Sure, Sam may be technically correct in a kind of transition period, as there may be companies who find efficiencies before the overall market adjusts. Once we reach economic equilibrium, or anything close to it, companies will find something to compete on, or something to leverage for efficiency, and will therefore not want to cut resources. It will be more efficient and profitable to add resources to improve their abilities in these areas, and that will include adding people.

Let’s look at another historical example for fun: spreadsheets. Electronic spreadsheets vastly diminished the amount of time that an accountant needed to spend building reports. Could you imagine writing numbers into graph paper every time you needed to build a revenue model? However, the advent of Excel and Google Sheets did not lead to smaller accounting teams, it led to more historical modeling, and the need for higher levels of certainty and greater reporting detail which has led to larger accounting and finance teams, and the proliferation of forward-looking modeling and financial analysis. Reporting that was unimaginable 40 years ago has become table stakes for any business.

“I get it,” Sam might say, “but AI is different because it can do anything that humans optimize themselves to be able to do.” In other words, we no longer need an accountant to run that report, because an AI agent can do it. So we are in a fundamentally different place in terms of technology development. He has a point here, but let’s clarify.

As it stands now, we don’t have Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and we won’t have it until mid-century at the very earliest (according to the most recent predictions). AGI will conceptually be able to ingest wide arrays of inputs and act with human levels of expertise across many areas of function as opposed to what we have now which is limited by task and breadth of function.

But even as we develop AGI, assuming it plays out as we expect it to, AI already is, and will always be better than humans at many things and not as good as humans at other things. The most successful companies will know how to leverage comparative advantage. AI models will have to compete with other AI models and there is a significant cost to customize and host, so humans are likely to retain a comparative advantage in the areas where we are more efficient, like human interactions, judgement and planning.

Think about it: as AI models continue to improve, and are forced to compete against each other, we will need humans to build those ever-improving models, so at a certain point, it will make more sense to find the jobs that humans do best and and focus the AI on the things it does best rather than continually iterating on new AI models for each and every function. This is what mature markets will bring to AI development, when we get there.

We can also look at this from a very human perspective. Fads tend to change over time to reflect what is hard to acquire. We see this with the retro bespoke style movement. We can also see this, interestingly, through sociological studies on skin color treatments. In most northern European and North American countries, historically, tanning and skin darkening has been a sign of beauty, while in tropical countries it has been much more likely to be the case that skin lightening treatments have been signs of beauty. Simply put, things that are harder to come by are seen as valuable for the very reason that they are harder to come by.

So, it is very likely that over time, as it becomes increasingly easier to execute on functions and outputs that differentiate businesses today, it will end up being the things that businesses cannot do today, that new technology will eventually allow them to do, that will be competed on most fiercely. Those new functions and outputs will be harder to execute on, and therefore more valuable to customers. Those new functions and outputs will be at the cutting edge of technology, and therefore necessarily need human input and humans to work alongside the technology. And because those new functions and outputs will be harder to compete on, businesses will look for ways to gain an advantage. And that will often mean hiring more people to perform in very different-looking roles, but nonetheless, hiring people.

This will mean that in the not-to-distant future all the functions that we currently understand that need to be accounted for in a company may be able to be executed on by one person and a cadre of AI agents. However, the new frontier in business will be the functions and outputs that differentiate one business from another in customer service, in efficiency, and in product-to-market capabilities. These things will always exist at the vanguard of technological improvement, therefore always necessitating some level of human involvement and teamwork between humans and technology.

So, what does this all mean for planning and strategy decisions in the coming years? We don’t know exactly what the world will look like once AI tools are more ubiquitous, but it seems a safe bet to assume that it will be very important to focus resources on how to build productive relationships between AI tools and highly skilled workers. In many cases, this will mean investing in people and processes that focus on how to input information into tools, and how to extract information and usable outputs from those tools that can be leveraged by those highly skilled workers in order to make themselves more efficient.

Thinking about the problem from this angle can help business leaders think about tools, operational models, and organizational charts in a way that supports the world as we know it and the potential future world that is still unclear and evolving.

___________________________________________________________________________________

Canopy Expert Advisor Dan Greenberg is a revenue leader with general management background and an outstanding track record of growing revenue organizations through thought leadership and operational rigor, as well as developing internal and external relationships and partnerships.

Interested in bringing top-tier fractional experts like Dan into your organization? Tell us about your project here.

The post The AI Economy: Why The Reality Is Likely Different Than the Hype appeared first on Canopy Advisory Group.

Any business owner or leader knows that there are numerous ingredients that form a recipe for growth and ongoing prosperity in an organization. One of the most critical ingredients of all is one we don’t talk about nearly enough: the invisible architecture that supports every successful organization.

The Hidden Foundation of True Wealth: Why Valuing Every Contribution Matters

In the spotlight of business success, we celebrate the obvious winners: the visionary CEOs, the top-performing sales teams, the breakthrough innovators. But behind every standing ovation lies something far more powerful: an invisible network of contributions that makes all visible success possible. 

The custodian ensuring a professional environment, the administrative assistant orchestrating complex schedules, the junior marketer whose fresh perspective sparks the next breakthrough campaign. These individuals form what I call the “invisible architecture” of success.

Understanding and valuing this architecture isn’t just about being nice, it’s about recognizing a fundamental truth that separates leaders who create lasting wealth from those who merely accumulate money. True prosperity flows from acknowledging that every person in your ecosystem contributes to your success, and that recognition creates exponential returns no individual effort could match.

The Economics of Genuine Appreciation

When people feel genuinely valued, something remarkable happens, they stop thinking like employees and start thinking like owners. They notice opportunities for improvement. They go beyond their job descriptions not because they must, but because they want to contribute to something they feel part of.

The numbers back this up. Research consistently shows that companies with highly engaged employees who feel valued and appreciated outperform their peers by 147% in earnings per share. But the impact goes much deeper than engagement scores. When you create a culture where every contribution is acknowledged, people begin to see what else they can do instead of doing the bare minimum.

Consider the examples of the administrative assistant, the custodian and the junior marketer I outlined above; those contributions only happen in environments where people feel seen and valued.

Breaking the Hierarchical Illusion

One of the most destructive myths in business is the belief that value and contribution correlate directly with position and salary. This hierarchical illusion creates artificial barriers between “important” and “unimportant” people, leading to missed opportunities and untapped potential.

The reality is that in our interconnected business ecosystem, the person who seems furthest from decision-making might hold the key insight that transforms your entire operation. The night security guard who notices patterns in after-hours activity revealing workflow inefficiencies. The customer service representative who identifies the common thread in complaints pointing to a major product improvement opportunity.

When we operate using only a hierarchical point-of-view, we create information silos pockets of valuable knowledge that never reach those who could act on them. The cost isn’t just missed opportunities, but the erosion of trust and engagement throughout the organization.

The Neuroscience of Feeling Valued

Understanding why valuing others’ work requires looking at what happens in the brain when someone feels genuinely appreciated. Recognition activates the brain’s reward center, releasing dopamine and creating what neuroscientists call a “recognition high.” This strengthens neural pathways associated with the recognized behaviors, making them more likely to be repeated.

Feeling valued also activates social bonding systems, particularly the release of oxytocin, the “trust hormone.” This creates genuine emotional connection between the person and the organization, leading to loyalty that goes far beyond contractual obligations.

Perhaps most importantly, appreciation activates the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for creative thinking and problem-solving. When people feel safe and valued, their brains shift from defensive, survival-focused thinking to expansive, innovative thinking. This is why companies with cultures of appreciation consistently outperform competitors in innovation metrics.

Invisible Architecture in Action: Real-World Success Stories

Howard Schultz’s transformation of Starbucks provides a powerful example of this principle in action. When Schultz took over as CEO, he made what was considered a radical decision: treat part-time employees, whom he called “partners,” with the same respect and benefits typically reserved for full-time corporate employees.

This wasn’t a feel-good policy, put into place for PR purposes. It was strategic recognition that the barista making your morning coffee was as crucial to the Starbucks experience as any corporate executive. Schultz regularly visited stores, not to inspect but to listen, spending hours learning about challenges, ideas, and dreams. Many of Starbucks’ most successful innovations came from these conversations with front-line partners.

For example, the famous Frappuccino, now a billion-dollar product line, originated from a suggestion by employees in a single store who noticed customers asking for blended coffee drinks. During Schultz’s tenure, Starbucks grew from 17 stores to over 16,000 worldwide while maintaining remarkably low turnover rates in an industry known for high employee churn.

Southwest Airlines offers another compelling example. Under co-founder Herb Kelleher’s leadership, Southwest built its entire business model around the proposition that if you take care of employees first, they’ll take care of customers, and shareholders will benefit as a result.

When other airlines laid off employees during the post-9/11 crisis, Southwest maintained employment levels, asking employees to share in temporary pay cuts but promising no job losses. The response was extraordinary: ground crew worked extra hours without overtime, customer service representatives went above and beyond for passengers. While competitors struggled with bankruptcy, Southwest remained profitable and emerged stronger.

Practical Strategies for Building This Foundation

It’s one thing to understand the concept and another to put it into practice. Creating a culture that genuinely values every contribution requires systematic approaches:

• Deep Listening: Make regular one-on-one conversations with people throughout your organization a priority, not just with direct reports. Ask questions like “What’s working well that we should do more of?” and “What’s one thing you’d change if you could?” Most crucially, act on what you hear.
• Public Recognition: While private appreciation matters, public recognition has a multiplier effect. Sharing stories in company meetings about how seemingly small contributions made big differences. Use internal communications to highlight behind-the-scenes work that makes visible successes possible.
• Investment in Growth: Show you value someone by investing in their development through stretch assignments, mentoring opportunities, or exposure to different parts of the business. This sends a clear message that you see potential and believe they’re worth the investment.

Why It Works: What Organizations and Leaders Gain by Focusing on Invisible Architecture

There are a few primary reasons why shifting to this mindset and connecting the philosophy to action can be powerful multipliers within organizations.

The first is what I call The Compound Effect. When someone feels appreciated, they become ambassadors for your vision, multiplying your influence far beyond what you could achieve alone. In that way, valuing others creates a compound effect that moves beyond the individual, multiplying throughout your entire ecosystem. 

This operates on multiple levels: the direct biochemical impact on the individual, the ripple effect on other team members who witness recognition, and the external impact on clients and partners who interact with valued team members. When people feel valued, their confidence and positive energy become part of every interaction, enhancing your brand in ways no marketing campaign could achieve.

The second is because of the impact appreciation and recognition can have on Long-Term Wealth Creation. Valuing others creates wealth in the truest sense. Beyond financial returns, it can bring sustainable prosperity that endures across market cycles and competitive challenges. When you build an organization where every person feels valued, you create “social capital,” which is the network of relationships and trust that becomes your most valuable asset.

Like the effect of individual appreciation, this social capital compounds over time, creating exponential returns that exceed any individual effort. It becomes your competitive moat, something competitors cannot easily replicate because it’s built on authentic relationships rather than systems or processes.

Invisible Architecture, Visible Transformation

In pursuing wealth and success, we often focus on visible metric revenue, profit margins, and market share. But the true foundation of lasting prosperity lies in the invisible architecture of relationships and contributions surrounding every achievement.

The custodian, the administrative assistant, the junior marketer; these aren’t peripheral figures in your success story. They are integral parts of the foundation upon which your wealth is built. When you recognize this truth and act on it consistently, you don’t just create better business results; you create authentic prosperity that enriches everyone it touches.

The choice is simple: continue operating from the illusion that wealth comes from individual brilliance or recognize the profound truth that all success is collaborative. Those who choose the latter don’t just get richer. They create wealth that transforms not only their own lives but the lives of everyone around them.

In the end, the most effective wealth creation code might be the simplest: see others, value others, and watch as your own wealth multiplies in ways you never imagined possible.

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Canopy Expert Advisor Rutherford Pascal is a leadership coach and keynote speaker with a proven track record of helping leaders and organizations achieve transformative results. Interested in bringing top-tier fractional experts like Rutherford into your organization? Tell us about your project here.

The post The “A.I.” We Too Often Forget: Appreciation and Impact appeared first on Canopy Advisory Group.

As critical as they are, these attributes can be more challenging to vet for in discovery calls and interview processes. And depending on the specific position you’re hiring for, certain qualities may be more beneficial than others. To that end, “What should I be looking for?” is one of the most common questions we get from founders, business owners and organization leaders.

To help you begin to answer it, we’ve put together one-page reference guides for each C-Suite role. 

Each guide includes an overview of the fractional executive role, salary and fee comparisons (full-time vs. fractional), a list of scenarios in which a fractional executive hire can be ideal, and four key areas to look for to help you find the best possible fit for your organization.

Hiring a Fractional Chief Financial Officer – What You Need to Know

Get the Guide

Hiring a Fractional Chief of Staff/Chief Operating Officer – What You Need to Know

Get the Guide

Hiring a Fractional Chief Executive Director – What You Need to Know

Get the Guide

Hiring a Fractional Chief Marketing Officer – What You Need to Know

Get the Guide

Hiring a Fractional Chief Revenue Officer – What You Need to Know

Get the Guide

Hiring a Fractional Chief Technology Officer – What You Need to Know

Get the Guide

Hiring a Fractional Chief Human Resources Officer – What You Need to Know

Get the Guide

These quick reference guides can absolutely provide you with a solid jumping off point; they are not meant to be exhaustive. If you’re interested in more detail for any of the executive roles covered in the resources above, check out the full guide: Demystifying Fractional Executive Hiring.

And while you can never guarantee that a new hire will work out the way you’ve envisioned, you can certainly increase your odds. Canopy is here to help you with your fractional hiring, supporting you and your team from start to finish. Tell us about your project here.

The post Hiring a fractional executive? Know what to look for with these quick reference guides. appeared first on Canopy Advisory Group.

For companies in the $5 to $25 million revenue range, and especially those selling services, there are many ways to manufacture growth. Healthy and sustainable growth, however, requires the right structure, the right people and the right mindset, as well as the ability to seize the opportunity when presented.

In this article, I share my thoughts on what it really takes to scale a business. My goal is to move beyond generic tips and Silicon Valley platitudes, offering real-world insights for founders and leaders facing the practical and often personal challenges of growth.

Growth Requires Letting Go

Let’s start with the hardest truth: if you want to scale, you have to stop doing everything yourself. In a service business, that means giving up billable hours, handing off client relationships, and delegating decisions. It often means making less money personally, at least for a while.

Many founders wrestle with this, and rightly so. When you’ve built a business around your own expertise, it feels counterintuitive to step back. But it’s the only way to create leverage, because scaling is contingent on your ability to enable others to do what you do well.

One example that has stuck with me came from a conversation with a leader selling his business. His secret to success? Growing by trial and error and experimentation. 

This leader invested heavily in a team of young salespeople during a high-growth push, and he got results fast. He knew that an investment in a salesperson wasn’t their annual salary and bonus, because within three months he would know if he had the right resource. If he needed to, he could cut his risk and his costs at any time.  

But the real key?  This leader wasn’t afraid to turn over staff for non-performance.  He treated hiring like a growth experiment, not a permanent commitment. That mindset: decisive, data-driven, risk-forward, and detached from ego, is what allowed him to scale.  

Healthy business growth rarely happens by accident. It usually requires a decision to invest in something that seems risky, whether it’s people, technology, geography, or a new vertical. According to Salesforce’s 2024 State of Sales Report, 79% of sales leaders reported increased revenue after making strategic investments in people, enablement, or tools. The businesses that grow most rapidly aren’t simply doing more of what they’ve always done. They’re betting on something new. Those that don’t, stagnate.

Processes Will Evolve. Values Shouldn’t.

As your business grows, your processes will evolve. And they should. What worked for 10 employees won’t work for 50. Over time, your culture will shift too, especially as you bring in new leaders and teams. That’s normal.

But your values? They are the bedrock of your organization. Use them in hiring, feedback, and even in client selection. Talk about them at company meetings. Collect the stories of cultural heroes and villains and make them part of the lore of your organization. 

Take the time to define your values clearly. Your values are the glue that holds your company together during the messiness of growth, and they tell people how to behave when you’re not in the room.

Seize Your Breaks. Then Leverage Them.

Every company needs a break. If you grow, you will get your stroke of fortune.  Maybe it’s a marquee client. Maybe it’s a game-changing project. Maybe it’s a big-name hire.

But the mistake is treating the win like a destination instead of a launchpad.

When opportunity knocks, your job is to turn the win into a system. Serve the big client well. Use their name in your marketing or for a reference and understand what was done to win and how you can repeat it. Build a process to win similar clients and projects and embed those lessons into your organizational DNA. 

Strategic leverage is what separates growth spurts from true scale. Don’t just land the big fish. Build a fishing fleet.

Set Real Goals, Not Hollow Ambitions

A line I hear all too often: “We want to be a $100 million company.”

There’s nothing wrong with big goals. But “$100 million” is often a round number masquerading as a strategy. It sounds impressive, but it’s usually untethered from reality.  

Why $100 million? And how? What needs to be true to reach that level?

If you want to transform this statement from a dream to a goal, start by imagining what your organization looks like at $100 million:

• What markets will you need to play in to win?
• What kind of team will you need? 
• What do your clients and offerings look like?

Then, work forwards and backwards:

• What must change in the next 12 months?
• What do we need to invest in? Where will the money come from?  
• How will we know if we’re successful? Do we have intermediate milestones?
• How does the team at $100 million look different than the team today?
• What are the hard truths about us or our business that we need to face and change?

Set goals based on what you can build, not just what you want to be.The risks of not doing so are real: 44% of growing small businesses report cash flow challenges, and 58% cite rising costs as a major barrier to scaling. And even more daunting, only 0.4% of startups ever grow beyond $10 million in revenue within five years.

Scaling Isn’t Doing More. It’s Doing Differently.

Early-stage businesses succeed through hustle. Mid-stage businesses succeed through systems, and it’s a shift that can be jarring.

As you scale, doing more of what already works is often not the answer. Instead, you need to:

• Replace ad hoc workflows with documented processes
• Move from founder decisions to delegated authority
• Upgrade your tech stack to match your complexity
• Create and communicate the [your company name here]-way

If your answer to growth is just “work harder,” you’re not scaling. You’re stalling.

Scaling means shifting from heroic effort to organizational capability. This requires strategy. Do the hard work that comes from honest reflection of your organization’s strengths and weaknesses.  

Don’t Outgrow Your Ability to Deliver

It’s easy to get caught up in chasing revenue goals and new logos. But if your ability to deliver lags behind, you’ll burn client trust faster than you build it.

This is especially risky in service businesses. Every new client stretches your team. Every overpromise chips away at morale. And I’ve seen too many firms “negotiate with themselves” by cutting corners, lowering prices or bending commitments to land a deal, only to regret it later.  

Growth should feel uncomfortable. It shouldn’t feel chaotic.

Protect your delivery capability. Price based on the value you create. Hire just ahead of the curve. Invest in training. Say no when you must. Scaling means growing your operational backbone, not just your top line.

To Be a Leader, Build Leaders.

You can’t scale if every decision flows through you. Your real job as a founder or CEO is to build other people’s judgment. That means:

• Coaching, not just managing
• Letting others make (and learn from) mistakes
• Delegating outcomes, not just tasks

If you build strong leaders, they’ll build the business for you. It will feel and be slower at first. But it’s the only way to scale sustainably. And according to surveys of scaling entrepreneurs, three of the top factors they cite for meaningful growth include:

1. Investing in talent and leadership development
2. Adopting digital tools and automation (89% say this is crucial)
3. Focusing on high-margin client segments

Growth invariably brings new challenges for the CEO. A few I’ve seen stump even the most effective leaders at high-growth companies include:

• A sales leader who delivers the goods but leaves a trail of bodies behind them. They’re unpleasant or arrogant or worse and the organization resents that leadership doesn’t address it. 
• The people who were with you from the beginning who now feel disenfranchised because they haven’t grown with the company. They feel that they have been pushed down into the organization and further from you as others are hired above them. 
• Replacing B-players with A-players. That’s a good thing, right? Beyond bringing new talents and skills, A-players can be motivated, vocal, and sophisticated, and bring with them a whole new set of expectations around compensation, responsibility, and advancement.  

Your job is to figure out how to handle these new challenges while staying true to your values and enhancing your culture. 

This is What Scaling Really Feels Like.

Most founders don’t hesitate because they lack ambition. They hesitate because they’re smart. Scaling introduces risk: financial, emotional, and reputational. And when the business carries your name, every decision feels personal.

But here’s the truth: trial and error is a scaling strategy and most of those bets pay off, or fail, much faster than we expect. Hiring a senior leader feels like a year-long financial gamble, but you’ll know within months if they’re the right fit. Expanding into a new market may seem risky, yet early feedback can validate, or challenge, your assumptions quickly. And handing over operations isn’t just a symbolic move, it’s a strategic shift that often becomes necessary long before it feels comfortable.

Knowing this means understanding your limitations. You may be the visionary, the rainmaker, the cultural anchor. That doesn’t mean you’re the best person to run daily operations at scale.  Knowing  know when your role should evolve is a strength, not a weakness.

And successful founders know something else: it’s lonely at the edge of growth. The bigger the bet, the fewer people understand it. So if you feel fear, hesitation, or doubt, you’re probably doing it right.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, scaling requires the courage to act even when the path isn’t perfectly clear. Your team, your clients, and your investors need you to make decisions. Sometimes you’ll get it wrong. That’s okay. Make the call, learn from it, clean up the mess if you have to, and move forward. 

Rob Novick is a Canopy Business Strategy Expert with more than 20 years of experience in management consulting, acquisition integration and business planning and ownership. Interested in bringing top-tier fractional experts like Rob into your organization? Tell us about your project here.

 ¹ Entrepreneur 2024
– https://www.entrepreneur.com/growing-a-business/over-half-of-small-businesses-are-struggling-to-grow/482623; Salesforce 2024
– https://www.salesforce.com/blog/15-sales-statistics; Chase Business Survey
– https://media.chase.com/news/us-small-businesses-change-strategies-chase-survey

² Source: Entrepreneur, 2024
– https://www.entrepreneur.com/growing-a-business/over-half-of-small-businesses-are-struggling-to-grow/482623

 ³ Source: EY Entrepreneur Ecosystem Barometer, 2025
– https://www.ey.com/en_us/newsroom/2025/06/entrepreneurs-are-confident-their-business-will-grow-this-year

  ⁴ Sources: Entrepreneur HQ
– https://entrepreneurshq.com/small-business-statistics/; and LinkedIn commentary
– https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jennscilabro_quick-question-so-forbes-reported-this-activity-7201968692987899904-z74b

The post Scaling Your Business: What Every $5–25M Leader Needs to Know appeared first on Canopy Advisory Group.

A great hire can push a team to unprecedented levels of success, while a poor one can cause problems well beyond sunk costs. And the stakes are even higher at the executive level. There’s more money, more responsibility, bigger expectations and often, a greater need. Most organizations can’t afford to get these hires wrong.

By now, you’re well aware of the fractional trend sweeping through the U.S., in which organizations are choosing to bring on high-level, high-skill talent on a part-time and project basis in a range of different C-Suite roles. Organizations can save money while getting access to a leader they could not afford otherwise, while also de-risking the hiring process through contract lengths and the ability to turn support on and off based on their needs.

But like any other type of working arrangement, a fractional executive will work extremely well in some situations and be less effective in others. While every organization is different and every situation has its own nuances and complexities, the following scenarios were identified by Canopy’s own experts as those in which a fractional executive would be the ideal choice.

1. Unlimited ambitions, limited budgets

Cost effectiveness is routinely listed as the top benefit for organizations in bringing on a fractional hire versus their full-time equivalent. Whether or not you agree where that benefit belongs on the list, our community of experts agrees that it should be a factor you consider in approaching any executive hire.

It’s well-documented that hiring a fractional expert, especially at the executive level, can save organizations a bundle. When you factor in the timebound nature of the work and the fact that most fractional experts will not receive health insurance or other benefits, the savings can run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. In the case of a financial executive, assuming an average per hour rate of $350 per hour and a year-long contract, hiring a Fractional Chief Financial Officer (CFO) might cost an organization close to $168,000, while total annual pay for a full-time CFO might run an average of $742,011.

If you have large projects on the horizon or you have critical needs that can’t be filled with your internal team, and you’re limited on budget, it makes economic and strategic sense to consider a fractional expert first.

“Even for organizations with a lot of resources and reserves, it can take months or even years to recover from a bad hire. The ability to de-risk an executive hire, even slightly, continues to be a powerful selling point for fractional experts,” said Griffen O’Shaughnessy, founder and CEO of Canopy Advisory Group. “Significant cost savings aside, fractional hiring offers a way to access expert, executive-level talent without locking you in if things go sideways.”

2. Executive leader transitions

An executive-level hire is a big deal in any organization. Even if these hires don’t work out as planned, there’s a ton of pressure on founders and CEOs to “make it work,” at least for a certain period of time. On the flip side, when the new leader performs extremely well, founders and CEOs need to worry about how to retain an individual who will be in high demand.

Regardless of how an executive leaves the business, the hole they leave in the organizational structure presents both opportunities and challenges. From the perspective of the founder, CEO and Board of Directors, the opportunity is to bring in new skill sets and new thinking. The challenge is to minimize the disruption and, in the case of losing someone valuable, limit the damage from their departure.

The situation is often extremely suitable for a fractional hire given the need to bring someone into the business quickly, the strategic nature of the position in a period of transition and the level of experience required to navigate a potentially difficult situation (including the possibility of preparing for a full-time hire in the role within the next year).

“When you lose a high-level executive who was important to the business, there’s often no clear direction, and the team may not know where to turn,” said Canopy Marketing Expert Kate W. “A fractional executive immediate senior-level expertise without the full-time cost, no annual salary, no benefits overhead. They can step in quickly, stabilize the team, assess the landscape, and drive strategic action.

3. Periods of rapid growth

Early on, much of the messaging around fractional hiring centered on the use of fractional experts as stop-gap measures in transition periods. While many organizations continue to use fractional hires to bridge these gaps, a growing number are discovering the value of fractional experts in accelerating growth plans.

Whereas the first two scenarios are clearly tailored more toward hiring a fractional expert than a full-time resource, the growth stage is a situation where you’re making more of a strategic choice. Regardless of the discipline for the role (e.g., CFO, COO, CRO, CMO, etc.), a full-time hire can certainly prove to be an excellent choice, especially if the individual ends up being a longer-tenured member of the organization and is a leader that the founder and CEO wants to grow a team around.

Reasons a founder or CEO may wish to go with a fractional expert in a growth scenario include:

• An interest in keeping costs down while maximizing impact
• The need for speed-to-impact, including areas like faster onboarding and truncated time-to-result
• A desire to bring in an executive leader with very specific situational experience
• A market or organizational situation that prioritizes agility and the ability to react and adjust quickly

4. Navigating large-scale change

While the departure of a leader or leaders certainly qualifies as change, these are far from the only situations where fractional executive hires can be instrumental in helping an organization withstand turbulent times. And unlike a situation where a single leader leaves an organization and the founder, CEO and Board are forced to move quickly to replace them, a large-scale adjustment to the direction, model or structure of an organization can (paradoxically) provide a bit more breathing room for leadership to approach the problem more strategically.

Similar to the rapid growth scenario, founders, CEO and Boards have the potential to be successful in this situation with either a full-time or fractional hire. In this case specifically, the choice can be largely dependent on the strength and clarity of the organization’s business plan. Clarity on direction often brings with it an understanding of the team that’s likely to be able to fulfill the long-term vision, and in these instances, leaders tend to lean toward full-time hires who can grow with the organization. While fractional experts can perform quite well in this scenario, organizations may choose to skip a bridge option and move straight to a longer-term hire.

Conversely, for all of the reasons fractional experts thrive in any organization, founders, CEOs and Boards may choose to bring in an experienced expert to help them build the future direction of the organization. In this case, they can also provide recommendations on who to hire to build a full-time team, and when it makes the most sense to hire those roles. 

We have also seen leaders set a new direction and then compile a group of the best fractional experts available to drive the plan forward. Whether or not this is a longer-term solution, it invariably helps the organization gain the traction and foothold necessary for a new direction to get off the ground.

Canopy Nonprofit Expert Meg G. described what a fractional expert engagement can look like during a major organizational change: “Sometimes during the life of a nonprofit, the Board of Trustees may find that a total restructuring of staff and mission is required. I went through this for a magazine, during which I was called in to supervise the restructuring and to shepherd how the magazine approached production, management, marketing, fulfillment and more. The process took approximately nine months.” 

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Thank you for reading! If you’re interested in hearing more from our experts on when and how to hire fractional executives, check out our guide, Demystifying Fractional Executive Hiring.

The post Hiring an executive? Here are the top four scenarios where fractional makes sense. appeared first on Canopy Advisory Group.

Now, it’s time to face down the next big decision: which fractional expert is right for the role, your organization and your specific situation? Like any hire, getting this right is the most important factor in whether your plan succeeds or stalls out.

To give yourself a better shot at finding the right person the first time, the first tip is to go to a company like Canopy Advisory Group to help. Canopy provides business owners and organization leaders with access to a community of more than 200 vetted fractional experts across a wide range of disciplines, which can massively speed up your fractional hiring process, as well as giving you the peace of mind that comes with knowing that every candidate exists at the top quality tier.

The second tip is to know what to look for in the interview process. In hiring a fractional expert, you’re looking for the combination of experience, competence, confidence, attitude and skills that are most relevant to the specific problem you’re trying to solve with your hire. All of these elements become even more important when you’re hiring for an executive-level role.

To help you make the most of your fractional executive interview process, we asked members of our Canopy community of experts to identify the attributes they feel separate the great fractional experts from the rest.

Communication and Stakeholder Management

Every expert who weighed in, regardless of their discipline and area of expertise, included exceptional communication skills and the ability to work across departments and levels as critical attributes for any successful fractional executive.

While excellent communications skills are an asset in nearly any position (in-house and otherwise), they are especially important for fractional executives given the nuances of the role. 

To be successful, a fractional expert must 1) get up to speed quickly, 2) make progress in limited hours per week and in a set time span and 3) generate buy-in across an organization to be able to assign work and drive projects. All three require the skills of an empathetic and effective communicator, and someone who can immediately gain trust and come across as someone members of the team will enjoy working with.

“Communication, makes the difference between clarity and chaos. The best Fractional CMOs communicate proactively, consistently, and with purpose,” said Canopy Fractional Marketing Expert Kate Wells. “They define the what, why, and when, and they make sure everyone, from executives to interns, knows where things are headed. They don’t just lead marketing, they align teams, shape culture, and drive momentum.”

Confidence and Conviction

Confidence and conviction are critical attributes for fractional executives because of how much they can increase speed-to-impact.

The more presence and poise a fractional expert can bring to early meetings, the better impression they will make. And that impression can make the difference between an organization that will rally around the expert and help them achieve the goals of the contract or project, and one where progress stalls out.

As many of our experts said, conviction is at least as important as confidence, as the best fractional experts can both make quick decisions and defend them.

“Search committees, consultants, and interim positions are no replacement for a ready-from-the-jump executive-level leader who can take the heat, keep up with the pace, speak to the team and board alike, and manage critical relationships with stakeholders, clients, competitors and the media,” said Alex T., Canopy Nonprofit Expert.

Situational Experience and Proven Agility

We heard loud and clear from our experts that one of the keys to hiring the right fractional executive is to look deeper than surface-level sections on a resume. 

If you only hire for titles and recognizable company names, you could be missing out on the person best suited for your role. Instead of hiring solely for experience in the discipline, hire for the individual’s experience in the specific situation you’re in today. For example, if you’re a startup looking to take that next step in growth, you might be better served looking for an expert who is experienced in or even specializes in helping organizations and leaders in that area.

In a similar vein, be cautious in vetting experts who come across as having all the answers. Agility is one of the most important attributes of top fractional executives, according to our own experts, and if an expert isn’t adaptable, it can cause them to struggle in situations where things are changing quickly.

“The most underrated quality of a Fractional Executive Director is a sense of humility,” said Canopy Nonprofit Expert Meg G. “They can’t possibly know everything about your organization, but they should be willing to learn how things work.”

Don’t underestimate the value of bringing in an expert who is smart enough to know their limitations and flexible enough to know that projects, initiatives and strategies won’t always go as planned.

Collaborative Nature

One area where fractional and full-time executive roles are more similar than they are different? The most successful hires are often those who others enjoy working with.

This doesn’t mean that you should hire a “Yes” person or someone who sacrifices competence in other areas to build relationships. It means that, all else being equal, the fractional experts who have the required skills and experience and who also possess the ability to generate buy-in and enthusiasm will outperform their counterparts.

Because of the value of the expert getting up to speed and embedded quickly, it’s simply too important in fractional roles to hire experts who are not proficient in these areas.

“Chemistry and trust matter just as much as credentials,” said Canopy Human Resources Expert Amy P. “You’re bringing this person into rooms where power, people, and emotion collide. Look for someone who can be direct, grounded, and unflappable—but who can also build trust with both leadership and employees.”

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Thank you for reading! If you’re interested in hearing more from our experts on when and how to hire fractional executives, check out our guide, Demystifying Fractional Executive Hiring.

The post Hear from the experts: What makes a great fractional executive? appeared first on Canopy Advisory Group.

The negative impact of job stress on our mental well-being has now been documented in numerous studies, providing backing to the anecdotal stories of nearly every person in the U.S. workforce. To use one example, 84% of the respondents from a MindShare Partners survey said their workplace had contributed to at least one mental health challenge.

Leaving a toxic work environment or a situation that kept us at a high level of stress gives us such a sense of relief and release that there was little chance it wasn’t a significant factor in our overall mental health.

In some cases, though, the conversation ends there, partially because we don’t make the connection between mental and physical health. Because the process of mental healing that follows a difficult work situation is often our primary focus, we can forget the heavy toll this level of stress takes on our bodies. In addition to useful guidelines for organizations, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Framework for Workplace Mental Health and Well-Being contains a stark warning from former Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy: “Chronic stress from workplace abuse can lead to depression, heart disease, cancer, and other illnesses.”

The impacts of these types of work environments can’t be brushed off as trivial, as they can be contributors to difficult and even life-threatening conditions. So, what can we do about it?

The Great Resignation, the fractional revolution and the flight to meaningful work

One of the answers to the workplace health riddle may have already been put into motion when the COVID-19 pandemic pulled back the curtain on a host of workplace issues.

As soon as it became clear that many people could do their work just as effectively (and in some cases, more effectively) from their homes as they could from an office, the highest performers quickly realized that many of the policies that their workplaces lived by were, at best, severely outdated, and at worst, wildly draconian. All that time wasted on commutes just to be beset with a day full of office distractions, one week of vacation a year for employees who had been working at the same company for 5+ years, keyboard and login tracking software, being passed over for promotions because the other person took the boss out for drinks every Friday; it didn’t have to be this way.

So, when it came time for these same companies to force people back into the office or otherwise return things to the way they were, these professionals promptly put in their notice and became fractional experts and freelancers instead. For high performers, there are many well-documented benefits of making the transition from in-house to fractional work, including larger earning potential, the ability to expand your professional network, and the opportunity to choose your projects and work based on your interests and values.

The ability to achieve true work-life balance and flexibility on their terms may be the most critical benefit given the health concerns documented above, and it’s already the most valued by the experts themselves: 90% chose it as the best aspect of fractional work in a recent survey.

The importance of that flexibility is one of the reasons Griffen O’Shaughnessy chose to leave her in-house career and launch Canopy Advisory Group. Because she had lived it herself, she knew that the full-time world simply wasn’t set up to accommodate all types of professionals and life situations.

“The idea for Canopy came from my own experience in the corporate world. I worked for large, successful firms, put in the long hours, and worked my way up the ladder like many other professionals. And that worked perfectly well until we had our first child. Suddenly, I had a new, critical priority taking up my time, and juggling motherhood with the high-powered, always-on corporate job wasn’t working. Something had to give,” she said.

“In talking to many other executives and professionals, I realized that parenthood was far from the only catalyst for these types of moments. Our lives change, our situations change, our priorities change, and for many talented professionals, the 9-to-5 corporate grind is no longer what we need or want. Now, more than 15 years later, I know that going back into that world wouldn’t be right for me, and that it would likely be detrimental to my health. And I know that so many of the members of our fractional community feel the same way.”

The connection between being able to set your own schedule and to be engaged in meaningful work with health is difficult to quantify. Until more data is available, we’ll be looking at anecdotal and qualitative evidence. What we’ve heard loud and clear from the members of Canopy’s community of fractional experts is that they’re not only getting paid what they’re worth and making a bigger impact; they’re both happier and healthier since making the change.

For Canopy Expert Advisor Shannon Johnson, the move from being overworked and overstressed to a life of balance removed more stress than she knew she had been carrying.

“Stepping into fractional advisory work has been a game-changer—I get to help multiple clients in ways that truly make a difference, all while keeping the balance that lets me bring my best to both work and life. I’ve been surprised by how much of a weight it has taken off my shoulders. So much so that I’m not sure I knew how much was weighing me down before,” she said. “While stress still exists, it feels different because I have more control over the outcome. I’m not any less busy, but I’m much happier, and I am absolutely seeing the positive effects on my physical health.”

For others like Canopy Expert Advisor Dan Martin, there were signs that his work stress was causing physical issues, but in the busyness of the daily grind, he struggled to make the connection.

“I was having a host of minor health issues that I was chalking up to other factors, and I’ve talked to a lot of other people who were in the same boat. When I made the decision to do my own thing and got a few months under my belt, these constant sources of pain started to go away,” said Dan. “I didn’t notice it at first, but thinking back, it’s absolutely the case and stress is the obvious culprit. It’s probably also a function of better sleep, which seems to positively impact everything else; that’s the biggest night-and-day difference I’ve seen so far.”

For Canopy Expert Advisor Meg Galipault, the flexibility offered by fractional work is a blessing due to a condition causing her chronic pain.

“Working full-time for an employer and the increased expectations of working in-person were so stressful for me. I’ve been dealing with sciatica (something new to me) and I would not be able to work in an office with this,” she said. “A fractional career gives me the flexibility I need, while also giving me the feeling I’m doing something worthwhile. I’m able to circumvent the stress associated with trying to heal while working.”

The future: a better understanding of the connection between health and work style

The science of the effects of career stress and things like chronic pain, depression and other diseases is still catching up with the tectonic shift from traditional, 9-5, full-time work to an environment where 47% of the U.S. workers in a Howdy study were already engaged in contract work.

As we continue to dig into the impacts of this sea change on the domestic and global economy, on hiring, work environments and the concept of “work” in general, and how the next generation of workers will choose to create their careers, the importance of understanding how to avoid the negative impacts of work on our mental and physical health will continue to rise.

With the new world of work taking shape before our eyes, it’s not too much of a stretch to imagine a fundamentally different environment in which expertise is valued, workplaces are held accountable for their cultures in a way that impacts their wallet share, people can choose the jobs and work styles that are right for them, right at this moment, and that happiness and health are the true measures of success.

Interested in learning more about Canopy Advisory Group and the benefits of hiring fractional experts from within our community? Get in touch – we’d love to connect.

The post How much can changing how we work affect our health? appeared first on Canopy Advisory Group.

As a result, storytelling-related projects can and often do get passed over in favor of projects that offer more immediate gratification: SEO content creation, social media advertising, Black Friday sales offers, desperation-fueled winback campaigns. 

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: the resonance and relevance of your foundational narrative and your core stories will make or break the effectiveness of all of these tactics, and every other initiative you’re considering for growth, like your newsletter, your blog, webinars and podcasts, event sponsorships and direct mail. Having strong stories, sticking to them and using them strategically is one of the non-negotiables in marketing and organizational success; more than almost anything, it separates the organizations who survive and thrive from everyone else. 

To further dispel the mythical haze that has settled on storytelling, what makes these stories powerful and important isn’t creative mastery (although we could all use a little more of that). It’s getting to the stories that so perfectly show the connection between your organization and your potential customers, clients, donors or members that your audience has no choice but to pay attention. It’s about scaling back to the smallest number of stories possible and then it’s about repetition, consistency and discipline.

Simple? Absolutely. Easy? Not at all. Worth the effort? Every time.

What Stories Do I Need for My Organization?

One of the things we get wrong about stories is thinking we need hundreds or thousands of different messages. If we blanket and saturate the market on every topic that even remotely ties into our product or service, our prospects will have to see one of them, right?

Maybe, but if those messages are all different, you’re not showing people who you truly are. The right stories are less about brand awareness, which is often focused on making the most people possible aware that you exist, and more about brand applicability, showing the limited group of your ideal customers how your brand connects to their problems. Any person who is remotely interested in purchasing your product or service is going to do their research, and if they don’t see a cohesive, easy-to-understand story that tells them why they should care and how you will help them solve a problem that’s keeping them up at night, they’ll move on to the next provider.

What we truly need is a few great stories that we repeat in messages customized for each different mechanism; a long-form blog post will naturally have a different message than a 200-character social post, but the story can and should be the exact same. So, what are these core stories?

Bedrock Stories: The Ones You Know by Heart

Think of your bedrock stories as how you would answer the “Tell me about your organization” or some version of that in a side conversation or in a text message reply or when you’re on stage introducing your company at an event and you only have a minute.

These stories live at the very core of how you talk about your organization, and they generally focus more on your “why” than your “what.” Bedrock stories are the answers to, “Why do you exist and why should your customers, prospects and your stakeholders (other people who may not be buyers but who need to know who you are and what you do) care?”

If you’re the leader of your organization or the founder or owner of a business, nobody should be telling you what these stories are. You can certainly get help refining them and articulating them, and that can absolutely help bring these stories to life. But the raw material has to come from you. Your brand is your brand, and who you are is who you are. You can test different messages and tweak things as you go; if you can’t bring these to mind immediately, that’s a problem.

The central bedrock story for every organization is your strategic narrative. Andy Raskin, the godfather of the concept, defines a strategic narrative as “the category-defining story that guides our strategy—what we build, how we go to market, how we interact with our customers and investors.” A strong strategic narrative is one of the most critical ways to set and maintain the direction for your organization.

Your strategic narrative ties what you do into a bigger change in the world, so your product or service isn’t floating in the Sea of Sameness and also ties every communications and marketing and sales effort to the core purpose of your organization. If you do it well, your strategic narrative can double as your pitch deck or call script, easily customized for each potential customer or donor or client.

A more tactical definition of a strategic narrative is, “a single story that sets your vision for a desired future.” The elements of a strategic narrative are:

• The shift in the market or the world that creates urgency and has big stakes for the people you’re trying to reach. For Square, this was the fact that many small business owners still had to accept cash payments, limiting their growth; the product created huge opportunities for a market that previously had few.
• Painting a picture of what the desired future looks like. This means moving beyond what you say is happening or will happen. Too many messages stop at whether something will be better or worse in the future, with many using scare tactics (“if you’re not preparing, you’re already behind!”). If you truly want to sell an ideal state to people, you have to know what it looks and feels and sounds like, and you have to be able to paint that picture. Why is the desired future state better than the old way/current way? What’s different? What’s the same? 
• Showing what it means to thrive and what it means to struggle in the desired future. Now, bring that urgency and those high stakes home for people by creating a simple side-by-side picture of life in the old (current) world and life in the new world. While most people will innately want to be in the new world, they need to see what’s going to happen to the old world (and the people who choose to stay there). In most cases, your organization is competing less against your competition and more against inaction and the status quo. Your job here is to get that status quo to feel very uncomfortable.
• Sharing the tools people need to succeed in the new world. This is where your products and services fit in. I think of this portion of the narrative as part tying what you do to why you do it and part overcoming objections about your organization before they’re raised. It’s your chance to identify those things that are slowing down the people buying your products and services and showing why they are so important in the desired future state.
• Backing up your claims with data. Especially in an environment where it’s becoming ever more difficult to trust a lot of the data that’s thrown at us every day, the change you’re telling the world about and why and how your product/service fits into it must have the backing of data. These are the primary sources on which you’re basing your market need, the rock-solid data points your potential customers’ problems, and what you have to show as to how your product or service makes a quantifiable difference.

While every strategic narrative is a bedrock story, not all bedrock stories are strategic narratives. If you only have one bedrock story, though, make it your strategic narrative.

One of the more well-worn (pun intended) and also best examples of strong bedrock stories is Patagonia. As you likely know, Patagonia makes quality, expensive, long-lasting outerwear. Their brand is strong enough and has been around long enough to be known for those products, but that’s often not the first thing most people think when they think of Patagonia.

The organization has long been one of the most outspoken and vociferous supporters of the environment, and they also built a reputation for taking action with their Common Threads Pledge and other initiatives to reduce carbon footprint and build a more sustainable company. Then in 2022, the founder effectively gave away the company, donating all future profits to support the environment and making Earth Patagonia’s only shareholder. That’s a bedrock story – it’s not about what they do, it’s about why they do it and what they stand for outside of the goods or services they provide. 

Product/Service Stories: Answering the “What Do You Do?” Question

These are the stories you tell to explain your products and services in your customer’s language and through the lens of the problems they’re trying to solve.

In my life as a corporate marketer, the biggest mistake I saw companies make was conflating product content with sales content. “Product marketing” meant creating product sheets, competitor comparisons, sales decks and other “enablement” tools for sales to use with prospects. These items can all be useful, but without the right underlying stories, creating them is a waste of time. 

Your core product/service stories aren’t an exhaustive list of features or a menu of services. They tell your prospects and current customers, donors, members or other stakeholders very clearly what you’re offering, why they might need it, what they’ll get out of it, and other important details that they need to make a decision, like how you’ll be paid. They lay important groundwork for sales content, which should be treated as a way to distribute these stories through a channel or medium instead of an area to make up new messages and offers on the fly.

The other big mistake we make in talking about our products and services is failing to use the language of our customers. Too often, we think we know best because we created the product or service. So, we talk about the product or service how we want to talk about them, and if people aren’t responding, it’s because they aren’t seeing the message or we haven’t hammered them hard enough with cold outreach. The real problem is the message itself.

The only perspective that matters is how your customers are perceiving the product and service you are offering. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t tell the truth about the product or service; if what you’re saying isn’t the truth, you’ve already lost. It simply means that you need to shift the way you present your core offering and the features that surround it in a way that resonates with how prospects and customers are thinking about it. 

Kleenex is a great example of adapting a product to how customers are viewing it. Kimberly-Clark’s original concept was a disposable towel to wipe off makeup, and that’s what they went to market with. The product was selling, but instead of wiping off makeup, people were using the darned things to blow their noses! The company pivoted, sales skyrocketed, and the rest is history.

Another of my favorite examples is Bic. The company ran this advertisement in 2024:

Bic doesn’t lead with a grandiose story about the great shift in the world and the market need for cheap pens. It’s not what’s most compelling about their product. Bic’s story is about stability and consistency and staying the course. And the story works, because it’s so uniquely Bic. Bic knows their target market and customer very well. It’s probably not executives making a million a year – those people are the target market for Mont Blanc. For Bic, it’s people who need to write a check for the contractor and they’re rummaging through the junk drawer looking for something that works.

Teaching Stories: Education With Business Intent

Your teaching stories are the stories you tell your prospects and customers to help them begin to solve their most important problems (with or without your help). Done well, these stories:

• Show your expertise without hard selling any part of your products or services
• Build credibility for your brand and solutions by placing you at the head of your specific category in the minds of your current and future target buyers
• Remind your audience that your first passion is in helping them be successful

I love Seth Godin’s definition of marketing primarily because it gets to the heart of why organizations must focus on doing this well: ““Marketing is the generous act of helping someone solve a problem. Their problem. Marketing helps others become who they seek to become.” Teaching stories are your way into a buyer’s mind and heart before you get around to pitching your product or service. 

These stories must be helpful, they have to be created and delivered with no expectation of immediate return, and they have to be more specific than generic. Especially with the tidal wave of high-level, cookie-cutter “content” flooding every corner of the market, being “educational” is not enough. The difference between what I call teaching stories and educational content is that a core teaching story needs to teach the reader something they didn’t know, cause them to reframe existing knowledge or beliefs, or provide a fresh perspective on a common problem. Once again, easier said than done, but I promise that it’s worth the effort.

The biggest mistake I see with teaching stories is conflating the concept with creating a ton of how-to content. I’ve certainly been guilty of this in my career. Even with AI overviews and the changes to search engine optimization, how-to content can still be a useful part of your content strategy. If you create very good how-to content that satisfies the parameters listed above, they can also serve as valuable teaching stories. Starting with how-to content can cause you to create assets that are not tied well enough to your model and goals; it could be the best content in the world and generate a ton of engagement, but it’s unlikely to make an impact on your top- or bottom-line.

Your core teaching stories need to be closer to the prospect or customer need and pain point. Imagine you’re a small business selling spa tubs in Colorado. The temptation is to immediately start writing blog posts or creating videos about the top 5 reasons to own a hot tub. While you’ll still hear this approach extolled by certain pundits, I think it’s a tactic in search of a broader strategy. Here’s why:

First, think about how many other people can and are writing or filming on that same exact topic. You’re immediately competing in a crowded space and likely against people with a lot deeper pockets. Second, think about how far that content is from your end goal, which is generating a strong lead and then selling them your product. Playing out that strong, a person would have to be considering a hot tub in Colorado, they would have to land on your piece and site out of the hundreds out there, have to like what you wrote, start researching more deeply about your company, call to speak to a sales rep and buy a hot tub. We’d all love if things actually worked this way, but they don’t. Is that content piece worth having? If you can create a version that’s different enough from what’s already out there? Sure, but not by itself. How-to content should roll up under a true teaching story that gets closer to why people do and don’t buy hot tubs in Colorado (and more specifically, why they should buy them from you).

The core teaching stories for this company, if they’re located in Colorado, would likely be focused on turning around the objections to buying and owning a hot tub in Colorado. This could mean stories about the health benefits of hot tubs in a semi-arid desert climate, stories about how the annualized cost of owning a hot tub in Colorado is less than people think, stories about how a hot tub can add to the resale value of a house in Colorado or in the mountains, stories about the common pitfalls of hot tub ownership in Colorado and what hot tub buyers need to know before making a purchase.

These stories are still educating people, but they’re doing it in a way that provides value for you and your organization closer to the purchase. To gain the trust required to get people to make any purchase, and especially a purchase that’s more than $100, you need to help them first.

Once you have the key objections covered and you’ve made sure you have content on your site that covers all of the positives your prospects are likely thinking about, then you can get into more of the how-to content about maintenance, having the best hot tub party, and maybe most importantly, how to tell people to get out of your hot tub when they’re overstayed their welcome.

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As a Canopy Expert Advisor, Dan Martin works with business leaders to strengthen the foundations of their marketing and communications programs, helping them save money and drive revenue. He brings a blend of strategic and tactical skill gained from an 18-year corporate career in finance, tech and nonprofit organizations. Dan earned his MBA in marketing from the Daniels College of Business.

If you’re looking for fractional experts like Dan who can help your business thrive in 2025, Canopy Advisory Group can help in every facet of the discovery, hiring and onboarding process. Contact us today to schedule a free consultation.

The post The 3 Types of Core Stories Your Organization Needs to Grow appeared first on Canopy Advisory Group.

When organizations or individuals approach me with complex problems, I don’t see obstacles—I see unexplored potential waiting to be unlocked.

My approach to problem-solving involves listening, learning and understanding, analysis and reframing, and innovation. Challenges are not roadblocks—they are invitations to develop newfound capabilities, reimagine existing processes, build organizational resilience, and strengthen community networks. By embracing this philosophy, I transform client challenges into strategic opportunities for meaningful, sustainable progress.

The project to revitalize Denver’s Union Station is a recent example of a challenge that, through thoughtful corporate communications strategy efforts and the engagement of a strong group of partners, transformed into a significant opportunity for the city. In this post, I’ll walk through the different elements and outcomes of the project to show how and why our diverse team of individuals and organizations was able to work together to achieve our goals.

The Problem: Balancing Public Concerns With Human Interest

Denver Union Station has long been an important landmark and a point of pride for the city. When the Station was renovated and reopened in 2014, it once again cemented its place as the beating heart of Denver. Fast forward to 2020, and while Denver Union Station remained a bustling attraction and a center for local residents, restaurants and businesses, the area began to experience issues of public drug use, vandalism, violence and a general lack of cleanliness.

Concerns about safety and sanitation rose in tandem with a dramatic increase in homelessness in the area, resulting in a sharp drop in visitors to the area and revenue for local businesses.

In August of 2021, Denver Union Station teamed up with the Downtown Denver Partnership Business Improvement District (DDPBID), Regional Transportation Denver (RTD) and CSG (Consolidated Services Group), a social enterprise that provides commercial cleaning and maintenance services for urban environments, transit hubs, and special districts, to confront the problem head-on.

Setting Clear Goals and Objectives for Success

While each member of the team was representing one or more constituencies and stakeholders, alignment on shared goals and objectives was critical to the project’s success. Working together, the team identified the following:

• Help individuals living on the streets downtown with housing, substance abuse, mental health and other healthcare needs.
• Keep downtown beautiful with diligent cleaning and maintenance of streets, transit centers and gathering spaces.
• Ensure that solutions are created and implemented with all aspects of the issue in mind.

The Solution: A Multifaceted Plan to Combat a Multifaceted Problem

The first step in the process was working with the City of Denver Office of the Mayor to convene a community of experts representing each aspect of the issue, including substance abuse assistance, security, re-entry services, businesses and residents impacted, housing and shelter services, mental health and healthcare providers, and public realm cleaning and maintenance. As one of the leading partners called to the table to strategize solutions for this multifaceted challenge, CSG brought me on board as a fractional expert to lead corporate communications strategy for the organization.

In May 2022, Denver Action Partners Downtown Action Team (DAT) was created, and work began in earnest. CSG developed a dedicated team that proactively surveyed and maintained high-use public areas of downtown Denver. The DAT team complemented additional CSG Clean Teams servicing the Union Station area to provide around-the-clock, daily care of the beloved Denver landmark.

My focus on effective strategic communications, both internal and external, was an integral piece of the project. Throughout the project, I helped CSG align messaging with the company’s mission and values, which further motivated employees and solidified their role in creating true social impact. 

When a team is working on a project of this magnitude, it’s not enough to remind employees that it’s “all hands on deck” and that “everyone works extra hard.” Employees need to buy into the “why,” and that was a big part of my focus throughout my time with the team. 

Outcomes, Benefits and Takeaways

When the project was completed, Denver’s Union Station had not only been restored to its former brilliance; there was also a strong plan in place to preserve the landmark for the future. RTD, DDPBID, CSG and the city of Denver were able to positively impact the homelessness and cleanliness issues, welcoming visitors and locals alike back to downtown to live, work and play. In addition, the combined team was able to offer a pathway to a more inclusive Denver for those facing hardship.

For CSG’s part, in the span of only a year, the team:

• Removed 7,349 graffiti tags
• Completed 981 pressure washes
• Swept and disposed of 2,040 objects
• Safely discarded or recycled 1,695 bulk items
• Cleared 33,039 flyers from public structures

CSG Clean Team technicians committed to spending each day deep cleaning the public areas around Union Station. After months of consistent service, DUS saw increased visitor traffic, fewer sanitation and cleaning reports, and reports noted fewer incidents of crime.

In addition, CSG’s brand reputation benefited greatly from their work on Union Station, in part due to the consistency and quality of the external communications throughout the project. The partnership was so impactful that it was recognized by Downtown Colorado Inc. as the 2023 Governor’s Awards for Downtown Excellence, Best Partnership. 

Beyond once again seeing in action the value of having an aligned, cross-functional team working together to drive change, my most important takeaway from the project was the importance of the group’s broader focus on long-term impact. 

As a strategic communications advisor, I understand and adeptly translate the interconnected industry of business improvement districts, urban environments, public safety, and commercial cleanliness. My expertise in corporate communications, employee communications, media relations, and community engagement has enabled clients like CSG to build strong relationships with stakeholders and drive positive change in downtown Denver.

Interested in bringing an experienced fractional expert like Leslie into your organization?

Contact Canopy Advisory Group today at (720) 989-1705 to schedule a free consultation or tell us more about your project here.

The post Collaborating for Impact: The Team Effort That Helped Revitalize Denver’s Iconic Union Station appeared first on Canopy Advisory Group.

As leaders and owners, we often have a clear vision of our strategy, where we want to be as a business and even a broad roadmap for how to get there. In some cases, our vision for what our team should look like is less distinct.

There are numerous reasons for this discrepancy, one of which is how little time most leaders truly have to consider future strategy. From the outside looking in, a person might think that a leader or owner would spend a third or even half of their time planning ahead. In its most recent study on the topic, Harvard Business Review noted that CEOs spend an average of 21.5% of their time on strategy. In a recent Forbes article, executives were encouraged to spend at least 12.5% of their workweeks on strategy. In my experience, the percentage of time most people spend on mapping out the future is much lower.

The more pressing issue I see in how teams are built is how easy it is to fall into the trap of short-termism in hiring and staffing. It’s hard to blame leaders for this, as they’re as responsible for the effectiveness, productivity and cohesion of the team in the short-term as they are in the future. The decision to focus too heavily on the makeup of the team today and in the near future, however, can hamstring leaders in the future by limiting agility and forcing turbulent and trust-eroding actions like layoffs and furloughs.

The other difficult part about identifying short-termism is that it’s often a result of asking the right, or at least extremely valid, questions about your team:

• If this person leaves, will I need to backfill that role?
• What would happen if we didn’t backfill that role if that person left the organization?
• If I need different skills than what this person brings to the table, should I replace this person with someone with a different skill set? What if the new person brings the skills we need but we end up missing the skill set of the current person in the role?
• Do I need to bring in a smaller number of higher-level, higher-cost people and limit the number of junior staff or bring in a higher number of junior staff members and focus on bringing in only a few higher-quality managers to get the most out of them?
• We don’t have anyone with X skill and we need that skill set to fulfill a strategic priority. How will we afford to bring someone on board if we don’t have any additional dollars for headcount?

All of these questions and more are important to consider as leaders, and answering them can help you make progress toward the effectiveness of each member of your team. But that doesn’t answer the question of what your best possible team would look like. 

Changing the Hiring Conversation From Tactical to Strategic

The light bulb moment for me was when I identified that all of the questions listed above focus on individuals. Hiring is inherently about individuals and as leaders, we absolutely have to get that part right. Where we can go wrong, however, is in failing to look at how every element of individual hiring will affect the company’s future.

That mindset shift alone brings the conversation from “we need to get someone onboarded by the end of December” to a more strategic realm. Bringing a new full-time hire in before the end of the year can provide a useful Band-Aid for a particular problem or problems, but it also has a long-term impact. That salary is now on the books until that person leaves or they are forced to leave. Unless they come in at an extremely high level, they must be offered some opportunity for growth, which adds more recurring costs. 

And if that person is a salesperson, how will bringing them on in a full-time role affect other sales hiring and hiring in other departments for the future? Is it a position you can build around? Does their compensation leave you flexibility for other adjustments or does it mean that person will be your only sales resource for the foreseeable future? How will the new role work with the other teams and provide value to the organization above and beyond a sales target?

This shift is also the reason why I’ve found the “best possible team” to be such a valuable guiding principle, and something to return to when I or our clients are starting to veer toward short-termism. Answering honestly can immediately broaden your view into what’s truly needed and what’s possible for your organization and your team.

To build your best team, you need to understand exactly where your organization is today, where it’s going, and how you plan to get there. From there, building the best team possible is about understanding the competencies you need, when you need them, and what you can afford. Taking the time to review your team at this level can provide you with that all-important balance between aspirational and realistic, helping you understand what’s immediately attainable, what’s a stretch goal and what may be out of reach (at least for now). Most importantly, it will help you set up your team for success in the future, driving decisions based on agility, buffers against unknowns and the experience of your team instead of overindexing against plugging a single hole today.

So ask yourself, if the stars aligned and you could get everything you want, what would that perfect team look like? And remove the obstacles and limitations you may be unconsciously putting on your answers. This year and beyond, your perfect team doesn’t need to be made up of only full-time employees. It doesn’t have to be limited by geography or a commute or office space. It doesn’t have to align to a traditional organizational structure or 9-5 working hours or hierarchical framework. It just needs to work for you and your employees, and it needs to be forward-looking, knowing how quickly things can change.

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At Canopy, we help you build your best possible team, offering access to the very best fractional experts across every discipline. If you’re interested in learning more about how fractional experts and a blended team can work within your organization, we’d love to chat!

The post What Does the Best Version of Your Team Look Like? appeared first on Canopy Advisory Group.

I say perceived obstacle because I do believe it’s an issue that organizations and leaders can solve through proactive and reactive means. It is, however, a valid and important concern to discuss and plan against before moving forward with any fractional or consulting engagement. 

The best leaders know that issues with team dynamics and communication can effectively cancel out even the best-laid plans. Thus, if you’re bringing up these concerns, there’s a good chance you are a strong people leader. Thank you for being a leader who is doing it right!

In this post, I’ll share my tips on where and how to focus on preserving internal dynamics as you and your team work with external consultants and contractors, including fractional experts. In looking at engagements with contractors on the whole, you have opportunities at key phases throughout the process to make an impact.

Before the Engagement: Goal and Priority Setting

The first, and likely most important, opportunity is making sure you answer key dynamic questions during the goal-setting and priority-setting sections of your project.

There is no bigger risk to fractional projects than a lack of clarity around goals and expectations. In addition to the alignment around what success looks like at the end of engagement, what the project is aiming to resolve (and what it’s not), and communications agreements, this is a step in the hiring process for outside support where I advise leaders to document their answers to the following questions:

• How will this project affect the priority list, capacity and workload for key staff who will be involved? 
• Which, if any, projects will be halted or slowed to introduce capacity for work on the fractional project?
• What do you need to do to rally the members of your organization to ensure they’re a help instead of a hindrance throughout the project?

You can obviously take a much more in-depth approach at this stage, including bringing in the relevant members of your team to help you uncover any blind spots you may have on potential impacts to team dynamics. If you’re in a larger organization, your managers likely have their finger closest to the pulse on morale and the different dynamics that exist with individuals in the organization. Use their knowledge!

Even if you only answer the three questions above, it will get you thinking about how you and the consultant, fractional expert or freelancer will work with your team before the engagement begins.

During the Engagement: The Importance of Day One and Frequent Check-Ins

As leaders, it’s easy to make the mistake of assuming that, because we understand the value to the business of bringing in outside support, our team will immediately feel the same way.

It can certainly happen that way, but it also has the potential to stir up resentment and distress, and not only in lower performers. More concerning, these issues likely won’t arise before the engagement begins.

To proactively counteract some of these feelings at the beginning of an engagement with a consultant, fractional expert or freelancer, I recommend leading a meeting for all of your staff on day one. The goal of the meeting is to introduce your expert or experts and the project itself, and to get your team excited about it. While this alone may not remove some of the obstacles the expert might run into, such as people delaying the project by dragging their feet or pushing back on every detail, it’s always helpful to get everyone else on board. And if enough of your people are enthusiastic about the project and want to be involved in making it successful, that will do a lot more to bring the skeptics along for the ride. 

The day one meeting also helps you avoid putting your project in a silo. If everyone is in the know at the very beginning, you can eliminate a fair number of project-delaying issues, such as unnecessary confusion between internal teams about responsibilities, having to hold multiple onboarding and informational sessions throughout the project as new people are brought in, and general lack of understanding about the project strategy, goals and placement on the priority list.

Post day one, as the engagement becomes a part of every day work for at least some members of your team, making time for separate one-on-one conversations with your outside and experts and the members of your team involved in the project becomes critically important. This way, you can see the warning signs of major issues before they happen. I also recommend leaning on your most trusted people at this time, as they are likely to tell you the truth about how things are really going in an engagement, especially as it relates to dynamics. And if you don’t think they’re telling you the full truth, be direct and let them know you want to hear it, warts and all.

The Post-Engagement Phase

It’s important for business owners and leaders to remember to continue to focus on dynamics after a consultant or fractional expert is no longer working with their teams. Schedule at least one post-engagement meeting to talk through all of the great, the good, the bad and even the ugly. Position the meeting as a way for the team to contribute directly to improving the next engagement with their feedback. Generally, individuals are happy to be involved in these sessions, nearly everyone has an opinion on how something can be improved, and it sets the stage for your transformation into more of a blended team vs. a self-defeating “in-house vs. the world” mentality.

It’s Doesn’t All Have to Be On You

Congratulations again to you for focusing on your team dynamics. I’ve never met a business owner or leader who wished they had spent less time in this area.

The last point I’ll make about dynamics relative to engagements with outside experts is that, if you bring on the right consultant or fractional expert, they can take some of the work off of your shoulders. You and your team can do everything right, and if the wrong person comes in to support your organization, they can damage even the most pristine dynamics. On the flip side, the best fractional experts can bring their knowledge and experience to bear to help you make sure that you’re setting yourself and your team up for success. Because of the way they work, they will do more to allay concerns and fears about their work and their role in the organization than you could on your own.

As we prepare to transition into a new year, I wanted to take a moment to say a heartfelt thank you to each of you. 2024 was another wonderful year for Canopy, and our success is a direct result of the contributions of every member of this incredible community.

The work you do to guide organizations as fractional experts, as business owners and leaders bringing the agility and impact of a blended team to your companies, as members of our local community helping the city, state and its people thrive; it matters. Reflecting on Canopy’s first 15 years, one of the things that strikes me most is the power of being part of a movement. Together, we are building the future of work and ushering in a more effective way for organizations of all sizes and types to compete and win. That matters.

The post How to Preserve Team Dynamics When Working With Outside Experts appeared first on Canopy Advisory Group.

There are a wide range of factors that could be contributing to why a marketing program might be struggling to produce results. One of the challenges with modern marketing is that the discipline has become so complicated that you often have to dig through mountains of data to get to the core workings of the marketing engine. Because of this, my first inclination when I begin an evaluation is almost always to look to simplify.

In my eyes, assessing a marketing program can be consolidated down to three distinct areas: people, processes and platform. Sure, there are always nuances, and every program is fundamentally different in its own unique way. Still, the 3 Ps framework is almost always a good place to start in an objective assessment of a marketing program.

Goal Setting

Before we get into the framework itself, we need to start by setting goals for the evaluation process, including answering some form of the following questions:

• Why are we performing a thorough evaluation of the program in the first place? 
• What do we want and need to do with the findings after we’ve completed our assessment? 
• What business metrics need to be impacted by marketing and what expectations are we putting on marketing to achieve (as we make adjustments based on the evaluation)?
• What rubrics are we using to define what’s working and what’s not working?

Beyond allowing you to set parameters around the work and assisting you in measuring the results of the evaluation process and the work that comes after, goal setting can also help you with objectivity. There are areas of marketing that you and your team can measure down to the nth degree and there are others that will always be more ethereal and subjective. The most effective assessments will be those where you can remove as much of your own biases as possible. The decisions you make as a result of the evaluation will naturally include some subjectivity; you will almost always be better served by making those calls after looking at data gathered from a more objective evaluation.

Once you’ve identified your goals, you’re ready to dive into your assessment.

Step 1: People

Understanding the people behind your digital marketing program is the first step because, if you don’t have the right people, no amount of processes and platforms will make your program successful.

When assessing people, I’ve found it valuable to start with the positives. What are the key strengths of each person on the team and how do those strengths align with the goals of the marketing program and the organization as a whole? Beyond getting a solid picture of each person and their contributions, this also helps uncover a bigger picture of the areas of strength and skill gaps for the program as a whole. For example, you may find that you’re very strong in marketing operations but very light in content expertise.

As you dig deeper, shift your focus from the person to the role. What is the impact of each role and where are gaps and struggles relative to marketing and company goals? Taken together, insights into each person and the impact of their current roles can help you build a roadmap to get back to growth. I’ve often found that organizations have the right people, but that they’re in the wrong roles or don’t have the required training. It’s a lot easier to make these adjustments than to realize you have the wrong person and need to replace them, although that’s one possible outcome of the evaluation process.

I also recommend looking at the individual goals and incentive programs you have in place to see how these align with and motivate people. You may only require a few tweaks in these programs to make the entire team more effective.

One oft-overlooked element of the people evaluation process is a review of the external groups that are working with your marketing team. Take the time to understand what these groups – agencies, vendors, freelancers and other contractors – are being paid, what projects they are undertaking and roles they are filling, how they are incentivized, and their goals relative to the goals of the business. I’ve often found that these external partners bring more specialization and expertise at a more affordable cost, and that the work they are doing is critical work that the in-house team would not have access to otherwise. I’ve also found, in many cases, a lack of defined goals and metrics, a lack of alignment with the broader goals of the marketing team and organization, and a lack of clear communication between the partners and the team. 

If that’s the case in your organization, it’s vitally important to close those gaps and create crystal clear alignment to ensure every partnership is as effective as it can possibly be.

Step 2: Process

When created and implemented well, processes help give clear direction and structure, and allow for continual improvements. 

I’m a firm believer in avoiding over-processing marketing, and I’ve seen many organizations where this adds unnecessary complexity and slows work to a crawl. That said, it’s extremely important to implement a framework for certain processes to avoid massive inefficiencies in your marketing.

The first frameworks I recommend are often in the production of marketing content and collateral and on the handoff between marketing and sales in terms of how leads come into the system and how they’re managed by both teams. I won’t spend a lot of time there in this post, however, as I want to focus on one of the more technical process areas: campaign structure.

My rationale is that, if you’re running campaigns, you’re spending at least some money on advertising. Very few businesses can afford any level of waste within their advertising spend, and I’ve seen preventable inefficiencies in campaign structure far too often in my assessments.

When you’re setting up your campaigns, start with the intended goals and objectives of the campaign, and importantly, how each subset of the campaign ladders up to your business goals and objectives. It’s surprisingly easy to overcomplicate your campaign structure. That means having too many campaigns running at the same time, too many subsets within each campaign, and spreading yourself too thin so that your campaigns aren’t able to gather enough data or generate enough impact within the budget you’ve allocated. On the flip side, I’ve also seen a number of clients running too few campaigns, with not enough of the segmentation of audiences that’s required for truly targeted marketing. Structuring campaigns is a delicate balance that can benefit from an expert viewpoint.

Assessing campaign structure can be done by reviewing each element of your overall marketing approach: audience, geography, audience splits, time of day, day of week, device types, etc. Then, apply this data to campaigns and subsets of campaigns, including ad creative. It can be a tedious process and can also be extremely worth your time. I’ve seen clients save anywhere from 25 percent to 52 percent year-over-year in their campaigns based on these efficiencies alone.

Step 3: Technology

Anyone who has spent any time working in marketing knows that technology can be a blessing, a curse, and everything in between. And that’s precisely why technology is the third step in our assessment: it’s critical that marketing teams are only using technology in a way that’s making them more efficient and effective. 

This evaluation starts with a review of the key needs of the client, including those that may or may not be covered with technology. Once that list has been identified (or created if it didn’t exist before), you will map current technology to each need. In my experience, you’ll likely find at least some lack of alignment here, and potentially quite a few discrepancies between the problems you’re trying to solve and the technology you’ve purchased and put into place.

The most common situation I see is overbuying. Organizations have too many platforms, some of which have features and benefits that overlap, and they’re not using most of them effectively. With employee turnover and shifts in strategy over time, it’s remarkably easy to find yourself in this situation. I also see the other end of the spectrum: an incomplete tech stack. These organizations have so little from a technology perspective that most of the work in their businesses is completed manually, creating ongoing inefficiencies that could be eliminated with technology.

After identifying the gaps between what the organization has and what it needs, the next step is to create a strategic plan on how to refine and use the tech stack moving forward. I’ve found this is best done in a phased approach, starting with small achievable goals and working toward longer-term efficiency wins. If you have the right processes and people but not the right technology, you may 

After we access what is needed then we work to come up with a strategic plan on how to best utilize the technology stack. We start out with small, achievable goals and work towards longer-term efficiency wins. Making sure that the right technology is in place is critical, as is ensuring that each platform can communicate with the others, and that employees are trained on each platform and accountable for using each to its fullest extent.

Simplifying Your Evaluation to People, Processes and Platforms

If creating a marketing program that seamlessly runs on all cylinders and drives exceptional outcomes for the business was easy, everyone would already be doing it.

It’s natural to struggle with it and even to be overwhelmed by it. If it’s feeling like a gargantuan effort, try simplifying your approach to the 3 Ps. And if that doesn’t work, consider hiring an expert to help.

The post How to Evaluate Your Digital Marketing Program appeared first on Canopy Advisory Group.

On the surface, though, the concept can seem counterintuitive. Why wouldn’t an in-house team, made up of people who are often experts in their own right and who have a much stronger sense of the business and brand, be set up well for success without considering expert help? Taking the question further, couldn’t an outside expert actually have a detrimental effect on a project due to disruption of team dynamics and a lack of organizational knowledge?

And yet, it’s a fact that many of the projects in which organizations choose to hire an external expert are deemed successful, and especially relative to what in-house teams internally may have been able to achieve in the past. Why is this the case?

Organization-Wide Investment in Project Success

It’s an uncomfortable truth that, in many corporate environments, being on the same team doesn’t always mean being on the same team. Certain people in certain roles may stand to benefit if projects fail, and they often act accordingly. 

More often than not, projects are not killed in one fell swoop, although that does happen. Instead, failure comes from a thousand different cuts, including unnecessary bureaucracy, last-minute stalling on reviews, sidebar conversations and sudden shifts in prioritization. Regardless of the reasons a person may have for slowing down or upending a project, it can be an incredible source of frustration and affect even the most talented and high-powered in-house teams.

An engagement with an outside expert can eliminate a lot of that bureaucracy and politicking for a simple reason: the money for the engagement is coming from a line item and not from people costs. 

This may not seem like a big difference; in many companies, however, it means that the project receives far more scrutiny. And by extension, there are more internal team members who are invested in its success due to their responsibility for the budget, the referral or a variety of other factors. The organization is paying directly for a positive outcome on an important project, and that alone makes the project more likely to get the resources and support it needs from leadership.

For the fractional expert or freelancer, the investment in success is more obvious. The value of their work, what it’s like to do business with them and their overall reputation is on the line. It will either earn them more business and future clients or it won’t; even an engagement that is “fine” but not Earth-shattering is likely more of a negative than a positive.

And for the internal staff that’s not on the company’s leadership team, while they may truly be invested in the success of the company long-term, their surface-level investment in an outside engagement is more tactical. If a fractional or freelance project fails, it means more work on their plates, which, in the age of ever-leaner teams, is something most employees are desperate to avoid.

Access to (Real) Experience at an Affordable Rate

You can have the world’s most capable in-house team, and they will still struggle without the necessary resources, budget and support. Too often, leadership’s response when looking at an area that’s not performing as well as they had hoped is to assume they don’t have the right people or that their people aren’t working hard enough. While either could certainly be the case, it’s more often that the in-house teams don’t have what they need to be successful. As of August 2024, only 33 percent of U.S. workers in Gallup’s Engagement Survey strongly agreed that they have the opportunity to do what they do best every day, and only 46 percent strongly agreed that they knew what was expected of them at work.

Even if you’re the type of leader who understands your team needs help, you still face challenges. Most notably, adding headcount is one of the most difficult processes in any organization, and for good reason. According to the Paycor, labor costs can account for as much as 70 percent of total costs for a business. Thus, even if you are somehow able to get new headcount for your team approved, it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to free up enough budget to hire top talent.

Paradoxically, cost is an area where engaging an outside expert can be extremely attractive. Yes, these outside parties are paid at a higher rate that represents their experience and expertise. They are also paid on a time-bound basis, either by project or hourly, and are not paid benefits like insurance or bonuses. As a result, organizations can afford to bring in higher-level experts at a lower overall cost than a mid-range full-time hire. 

Importantly, if your company works with an organization like Canopy Advisory Group who heavily vets every fractional expert in its community, your company will be bringing on an expert with actual experience in the problems you’re trying to solve. If you choose to scroll through LinkedIn to try to find an “expert,” you risk ending up with a consultant who is good at selling themselves but who has never executed anything at the level you need. 

The best experts will provide value well above their overall cost, in both the work and in their impact longer-term, supporting your in-house team with the guidance and in-the-weeds help that they need to make real progress on key projects.

A Blend of Strategic and Tactical Support

Many in-house teams are composed of employees who are meant to play extremely specific roles. Leaders create strategy and manage large teams, specialists support platforms and operations, junior team members focus on blocking and tackling work – you get the idea.

Once again, there are a lot of reasons for this, and it’s not necessarily the wrong approach. It can, however, hamstring in-house teams when it comes to agility and execution. If, due to hierarchy, approval process and extreme specialization, a team takes three weeks to complete a project that should take one, you have a big problem.

Unlike traditional consultants, fractional experts bring a blend of strategic acumen and execution ability, meaning that they can become a contributing member of the team almost immediately. What often helps in-house teams most is working collaboratively with fractional experts and seeing the output, which then helps them adjust and improve their work. This is the longer-term value of fractional engagements that isn’t talked about enough; the impact of ideas, concepts put into practice and inspiration often lingers long after the fractional expert has completed their project.

Outside Support is Often Necessary Due to Barriers Facing In-House Teams

For the most part, organizations don’t need to bring in consultants because in-house teams are incompetent. They need to bring in outside experts because of how hard it can be for in-house teams to get things done.It’s not an indictment of organizational structures and processes as much as it is a fact of life within many companies. 

Organizations look at hundreds of different metrics to determine business health, prioritization, and the success or failure of projects. Smart business owners and leaders are greenlighting fractional engagements to help solve key business problems for a wide range of reasons. The one that will almost always matter most is better outcomes.

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Are you looking for a better way to get your projects across the finish line, on time, and under budget? Canopy can help you find the right fractional expert, onboard them quickly, and ensure a speedy and successful engagement. 

Tell us about your project today at canopyadvisory.com. 

The post Why Does Adding Outside Experts Help Teams Deliver Better Outcomes? appeared first on Canopy Advisory Group.

In business, however, and especially when it comes to different ways of working, myths can be more dangerous. They can set us down a certain path, false assumptions held tightly in our hands, without the benefit of real experience and knowledge.

The reason myths persist, however, is that there is some level of truth in them. If they were wholly unbelievable, they would slowly fade. Many of the myths about fractional work and consulting fall into this category. Someone, somewhere had an experience with fractional work or consulting that spawned the idea that “every fractional and consulting engagement is or will be just like this.”

In reality, these outlying experiences tend to be more exception than rule. To help us layer reality on top of some of the biggest myths about fractional work, we asked our Canopy expert advisors for help in identifying those they hear the most (and what the actual truth is in nearly every case).

MYTH #1: “Fractional hires are too expensive for non-profits and small businesses.”

THE REALITY: Interestingly enough, startups and early-stage companies were among the first to embrace fractional work. The reason? Because hiring fractional team members is often the more cost-effective option than bringing on full-time employees. In some cases, those savings could be significant, with Forbes estimating that the fractional model could cut employers’ payroll costs 30-40% vs. full-time employment. For organizations with tight budgets like many small businesses and early-stage companies, and those who need to keep overhead minimal like non-profits, fractional can be an extremely attractive option precisely because of its cost-effectiveness.

MYTH #2: “Fractional experts run up big bills and don’t deliver results.”

THE REALITY: This myth is derived, whether right or wrong, from a negative view of the value of consulting at a general level. While consulting and fractional work are similar, there are critical differences. Most notably, while all fractional work is consulting, not all consulting is fractional work. True fractional experts offer a “best of both worlds” approach between high-level consulting and freelancing in that they provide both strategy and tactical execution; consultants generally offer only strategy while freelancers generally offer only tactics.

Due to the nature of the work, both the perceived and actual value of fractional work is likely to be more in-line with expected outcomes and results. In terms of the “big bills” myth, while it is true that many fractional experts are paid at significantly higher hourly rates than freelancers, because fractional resources primarily work on a project basis, the costs for an organization remain far lower than other options, including hiring full-time staff members. Organizations hiring fractional resources get access to the very best in expert talent without paying benefits, longer-term salaries or bonuses, driving better results at a much more reasonable cost.

MYTH #3: “Fractional experts don’t care about the company they’re working with.”

THE REALITY: In a recent survey of our community of experienced Canopy fractional experts, this myth came up in many of the open-ended responses. Fractional experts want companies to know that, although they are often working for a limited time or in a limited capacity, this does not affect their interest in integrating themselves completely into organizations. Most take pride in learning company core values and becoming a true part of the team during their engagements. There may be isolated situations where a fractional resource remains detached from a team or organization throughout a relationship, but that would be the rare exception.

MYTH #4: ”This fractional resource will solve all of our problems.”

THE REALITY: The “fractional expert as business panacea” trap can be surprisingly easy to fall into. After all, you’ve chosen and vetted an elite expert to come into your organization and you want to believe that pulling the fractional lever is the one thing you need to do to get your business moving in the right direction or growing faster.

Make no mistake, if you bring in the right fractional expert and set the right expectations, a single project can have a tremendous impact on your business. That said, one of the things that makes fractional work so valuable is that a fractional resource is brought in to solve very specific problems based on their expertise. Imagine that it’s the heat of the summer and you’ve inflated and filled up a kiddie pool. Unfortunately, the pool is leaking. If you’ve identified a single hole in the fabric of the pool, there’s a good chance that you could stop the leak by plugging that hole. If there are multiple holes, plugging one might slow the leak, but will not solve the overarching problem.

The point being that it’s important to look at the value of fractional work for what it’s meant to do: solve specific problems with project-based work (not magically cure every organizational ill in a six-month timeframe).

MYTH #5: “They create a plan then leave chaos in their wake.”

THE REALITY: The “drop a 50-slide PowerPoint deck on the team and leave” myth about fractional work is another that is a result of poor consulting practices. As noted, the critical difference between consulting and fractional work is that most fractional resources participate in the execution of the strategy vs. providing only recommendations.

Beyond the fact that this provides better value for most organizations, the greatest benefit often comes in the positive impact of fractional engagements on internal company staff. Because fractional experts are both creating strategy and implementing it, most make a concerted effort to coach and train employees in their clients’ organizations to ensure that those employees can take the strategy and run with it when the engagement is complete. Watching how a fractional expert works in-real time can provide an incredible amount of value from a development perspective.

MYTH #6: “They use generic playbooks for every engagement.”

THE REALITY: There’s nothing inherently wrong with having a playbook. Every consultant, fractional expert and freelancer is likely to have one, as they need to have a framework or model to be able to articulate and sell their services. The issue arises when a consultant keeps the playbook at too high of a level, providing a generic framework that doesn’t customize to fit the true needs of a business.

That’s precisely how this myth was born, and it’s one of the most common complaints from clients of some of the large consulting shops. For fractional experts, it’s about providing a balance between having a strong framework to apply to organizations and ensuring that they’re providing differentiated value within that framework that the client couldn’t get anywhere else.

MYTH #7: “Being an outsider means they can’t understand our problems.”

THE REALITY: This extremely common myth is a function both of poor experiences with consultants and the resentment that can arise when an organization brings in an expert from the outside to look at any part of a business. Sure, there are likely situations where a consultant or a fractional expert doesn’t do the work to really get to know a business, and those relationships are doomed to fail from the very beginning. In most cases, however, understanding the root business problems, what’s been tried before and the overall dynamics of the business are all implied in the mandate of a fractional expert. It’s part of what they’re paid to do.

In our survey of Canopy expert advisors this year, our fractional experts told us that bringing an outside perspective is often precisely what does help solve problems that may have been difficult for internal teams to see or execute against given their other responsibilities. So this myth can be flipped on its head; an outside perspective can be the most valuable part of a fractional engagement.

MYTH #8: “They’ll just tell us what we already know.”

THE REALITY: Is there an outside chance this could happen? Sure. But the odds are extremely low. While every recommendation may not be brand new, the role of a fractional expert is to provide the right guidance needed to solve business problems. If they’re doing their jobs, known issues will certainly be a part of what a fractional expert uncovers. Fractional experts are paid what they’re paid for a reason, and as a result, what an organization gets back will go far deeper than a surface level.

If you’re interested in learning more about how to bring the right fractional experts into your organization, check out our guide, Making Fractional Work for You, or send us a note here.

The post Myths and Realities of Hiring Fractional Experts appeared first on Canopy Advisory Group.

Fractional experts can join organizations quickly, onboard at high speed due to expertise and experience, and start making an impact almost immediately. Fractional hiring is also more targeted than hiring for full-time employees, because you’re hiring on a project basis. That means you’re able to bring on the right expert to solve a specific problem or problems, as opposed to trying to overcome every business challenge all at once. Last but not least, you get the very best talent without having to foot the bill for benefits or being on the hook for a salary long-term, which can save you quite a bit of money.

Like any type of organizational decision, however, bringing in fractional experts is not the right move in every situation. We asked our community of expert advisors to identify specific scenarios when a full-time employee could make more sense than a fractional hire.

Scenario 1: Organization Needs Support Above and Beyond a Project Basis

As one of our expert advisors noted, one way to identify this scenario is when your fractional expert’s hours are closer to 35-40 for a period spanning around 6 months. Even if you don’t use those numbers, you will know when you’re starting to move from a fractional engagement to something that more closely remembers full-time. From the perspective of the fractional expert, reaching this type of milestone represents a positive longer-term outcome of fractional work, as it means that the expert has brought the organization to a place where it can now sustain the work on a longer-term basis.

Many fractional experts prefer to work with a variety of different clients and would be ready to move on to a new client in this scenario. Others may be open to considering a full-time engagement with your organization.

Scenario 2: Organization Has Reached a Growth Tipping Point

When an organization reaches a certain stage of growth, needs often arise that only full-time employees can fill. This isn’t to say that the organization shouldn’t hire on any fractional experts; far from it. It simply means that there are likely to be both tactical and executive-level roles that the organization may wish to bring on instead of using fractional talent to fill those needs. As mentioned above, hiring for executive-level full-time roles could be partially based on the sheer number of hours needed to get the work done in specific functional areas. It could also be driven by the number of projects necessary for the resources to manage. For more tactical or mid-level roles, it could be an increase in the number of tasks that require constant interaction with customers or suppliers, the need to be available and/or tied into communications during business hours, or the need to manage other staff.

Similar to Scenario 1, Scenario 2 could also be a situation where your organization has worked with a fractional expert and reached the point where a full-time hire simply made more sense. As noted, organizations don’t outgrow all fractional expertise. They reach a point where both full-time and fractional experts should work hand-in-hand.

Scenario 3: Organization Only Needs Tactical and Operational Support

The primary difference between consultants and fractional experts is that, while all fractional work is consulting, not all consulting is fractional work.

Fractional experts actually provide a best of both worlds between consulting and freelancing in that they offer both strategy and tactical execution. Consultants, for the most part, offer the strategy piece through expert advice and guidance, but not the implementation. That’s what makes fractional experts so valuable. They give you the roadmap and then drive you at least part of the way there.

For organizations that are not in need of the strategic or expert-level portion of the equation, hiring fractional doesn’t make business sense. These resources come at a higher cost due to their expertise and experience, and the fact that they provide both strategy and execution. Freelancers or junior full-time employees are often more cost-effective if an organization is looking only for tactical support.

If you’re interested in learning more about how to bring the right fractional experts into your organization, contact Canopy Advisory Group today.

The post When Does a Full-Time Employee Make More Sense Than a Fractional Hire? appeared first on Canopy Advisory Group.

Fractional work is defined as an arrangement in which an individual provides specialized skills or management services to multiple organizations on a part-time or project basis. An alternative form of work gaining some traction is one thing, but the fact that half of Americans are projected to be participating in this kind of work, and that soon? That qualifies as a seismic shift in the relationships between employers and employees.

So how did we get here? Since 2020, workplaces in the U.S. have been in a near-constant state of turmoil. A pandemic forcing workplaces into full-time remote work, widespread leaks of footage showing how disconnected executives are from their teams, The Great Resignation, return-to-office mandates, mass layoffs, lack of backfills for departed employees, economic uncertainty. It’s created what could be termed a perfect storm for hiring and retention across nearly every industry and vertical.

For businesses, tighter budgets, expanding growth targets, a focus on efficiency and high people costs are making fractional resources more and more attractive. For talented workers, stagnating corporate salaries, poor executive leadership and the constant drumbeat of draconian and impersonal layoffs are fueling a move away from full-time employment. As talented employees leave to pursue the freedom of fractional work, organizations that either do not support side hustles for their staff or exhibit the qualities that tend to push employees out are at the highest risk. And when those companies go to rehire, they will have access to fewer and fewer of the very best, as those experts are more likely to be pursuing alternative work options.

Fractional work is only a threat, however, for organizations who fail to embrace it. The organizations who win in this new world will be those who commit to understanding and embracing fractional work right now. Learning how fractional workers can integrate into their business model, learning which projects are best suited for fractional support, learning how to meld fractional resources with full-time staff. Because those companies will already be far ahead when other organizations are still scrambling to shift when they’re forced to change.

These organizations will understand that they need to change how they staff their companies and complete projects in a work world that’s already undergoing a transformation in how people work. Even more importantly, they will know that sticking with the status quo won’t allow them to achieve their most important goals. Organizations embracing fractional work will:

• Save Money: Hiring a fractional worker saves a company an average of 30-40% over a full-time worker due to a variety of factors, including a shorter, time-bound tenure and lack of benefit payments.
• Increase Agility and Speed: Not only can you hire fractional workers far more quickly than full-time employees, most come with reduced training time and expenses given their experience and high level of expertise. 
• Increase Effectiveness: Expert-led, project-based work will result in more projects being completed on time and at a high level of quality, as fractional resources are unlikely to be slowed down by traditional internal company challenges.
• Innovate With Purpose: Innovation is driven by creativity, knowledge, technique and motivation. The outcome-based nature of the engagements, the level of expertise of the individual consultants, and the limited time they have within organizations inherently makes innovation more of an imperative for fractional workers than their full-time counterparts.

There are, of course, cons of hiring fractional experts into your business instead of full-time staff. While fractional experts are cost-effective due to the fact the organizations don’t pay for benefits or other overhead and because their projects are time-bound, they are also paid as experts, and so become less cost-effective the longer they are under contract. There are also leaders who believe that, because fractional workers are hired on a project basis, they may be less committed to the organization they work for than a full-time employee. Finally, because they often exist outside of the traditional interviewing process for full-time hires, it can be more difficult for organizations to vet the experts effectively (without help).

So, while fractional hiring isn’t likely the hypothetical silver bullet to slay all of your organization’s werewolves, it very well may be the right munition for some of them. If you’re ready to learn more about why fractional work could be right for your business and how to find and hire the expert talent you need to move your most important projects forward right now, set a meeting with our team at Canopy Advisory Group.

The post Why Embracing Fractional Work Can Change Your Business for the Better appeared first on Canopy Advisory Group.

Fractional COOs and COSs have entered the gig economy and are solving many problems for businesses that have a gap in high-level capability. “Most fractional executives have worked for several years in multiple roles and industries—often in many companies. These deep levels of experience make them very adaptable to step in quickly to a senior role. Where it might take years to upskill a current employee, it normally takes 90 days for a fractional executive to be operating at 100%.” 

“So how can the influx of fractional executives be a solution to this significant business gap? The answers fall into three C’s: capability, customizable, and contract.” 

Read the complete Forbes article that dives into these benefits and note the last section on avoiding fractional pitfalls. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2024/03/12/business-succession-through-fractional-leadership/?sh=14495c846c5e

“When opting for a fractional executive, businesses might face challenges like aligning the executive’s availability with the company’s needs, ensuring a good fit with the company’s culture, and managing expectations around deliverables.” Canopy has extensive experience matching high-level professionals with companies to avoid these problems. Connect with our pool of talent and speak with us about what roles you need to fill.  

Contact us at (720) 989-1705 or email info@canopyadvisory.com.

The post Solving the C-Suite Hiring Gap appeared first on Canopy Advisory Group.

“Unlike established companies that often have a team of top senior executives, most SMEs and startups only have the business owner acting as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Yet, growth and scale are essential for small companies to survive and compete. A sign that your company may need the intervention of a fractional executive is that it is not attaining set organizational goals.”

The benefits of fractional executives are reiterated often: access to expertise, cost effectiveness, build a complete team, flexibility… Read the Yale Ledger article which expands more on each benefit and consider if your business might align well with additional high-level expertise while it grows. https://campuspress.yale.edu/ledger/fractional-executives-why-your-company-needs-them

“A fractional executive is a seasoned C-suite professional with at least twenty years of experience in their field of expertise. The majority of fractional executives boast an impressive career history with experience in various C-level roles across multiple industries.” Canopy’s talent pool includes a carefully selected group of executive-level experts. Let us help complete your team. 

Speak with us about what roles you need to fill.  

The post Fractional Executives for Startups and Smaller Businesses appeared first on Canopy Advisory Group.

With companies looking to hire more workers in 2024, the tight labor market can seem like a roadblock. While upskilling can solve some hiring difficulties, filling talent gaps might take a different type of workforce, not just increasing compensation and benefits — perhaps opening the doors for fractional workers to enter more companies. 

“Finding and recruiting talent remains a persistent challenge for small businesses, with 54% of employers identifying that as an operational challenge in a recent Small Business Credit Survey released by the 12 Federal Reserve banks.”

Read the BizWomen article: https://www.bizjournals.com/bizwomen/news/latest-news/2024/04/small-business-ceos-hiring-job-market-pay-2024.html?utm_source=st&utm_medium=en&utm_campaign=nch&ana=e_n_bizwomen_tease

Canopy has extensive expertise placing expert advisors within businesses of all sizes based on their needs. Speak with us about what roles you need to fill.  

Contact us at (720) 989-1705 or email info@canopyadvisory.com.

The post Solving Hiring Concerns with Fractional Employees appeared first on Canopy Advisory Group.

It’s helpful to hear the pitch for hiring high level fractional works from those in the field. A recent Forbes article includes a great interview with Abby Sugar, a CEO and consultant for mid-stage startups, that highlights her insight into fractional hiring in the startup world. 

“You get to have a high-level strategic executive thinker that you might not need on a daily basis,” Abby Sugar, fractional employee expert, shares during her interview. “You don’t need to be paying a super high monthly salary for somebody if you’re not that large enough yet. As a solo founder, or maybe in a startup, the founder and a technical cofounder are building the code, and you need support, vision, funding, or help. Maybe it’s your first company, maybe it’s your third company, but you know that there are 500 things to do all the time. And so you need a higher level person to help you strategically execute and bring on a fractional COO instead of a lower level person at a low hourly rate.”

Read the Forbes article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/cherylrobinson/2023/12/08/why-companies-should-embrace-the-fractional-employee-business-model/?sh=7d87e25a58b9 

With over 15 years in the executive on-demand talent industry, we have supported growth in some of the world’s biggest brands. We work to create strategic partnerships with growing companies and can curate a select advisory pool for your company’s needs.

Connect with our fractional pool of talent. Speak with us about what roles you need to fill.  

The post Fractional Workers at the C-Suite Level appeared first on Canopy Advisory Group.

Think about the people on your teams.  The individuals showing up or logging in every day, helping you and the business move into the future.  Chances are, you are their #1 source for information about where the business is heading and you are also the #1 conduit for the business to know who they are, what they do, and where they’re going.  Who else would be better equipped to inspire the work they’re doing in a meaningful way, and by meaningful, that includes both to the business AND to the employee? Here’s your chance to break the cycle of dull, impersonal, or foggy goals by incorporating aspects of the goal-setting process that will set you apart.

1. Goals need aspiration

Setting aspirational goals that align with a company’s mission, vision, and values fosters a sense of purpose and direction. Aspirational goals transcend mere tasks; they energize and motivate employees by connecting their daily efforts to a larger, meaningful context. When goals are fundamentally tied to a company’s mission, they become a driving force that brings that mission to life. Similarly, aligning goals with the company’s vision creates a roadmap to achieving overarching long-term objectives. Finally, grounding goals in the company’s values ensures that the pursuit of objectives is not only about achieving results but also about upholding principles integral to the organization’s identity. In this way, aspirational goals serve as a unifying force, rallying the collective efforts of the team toward a shared vision and reinforcing the organization’s commitment to its core values.

2. Goals require understanding

Clarity in goal setting is essential for effective communication, alignment, and successful execution within an organization. When goals are transparent and straightforward, individuals can align their efforts seamlessly, fostering a collective sense of purpose and direction. As the guide through this process, your ability to remove ambiguity enhances accountability and empowers team members to make informed decisions based on a shared understanding of the desired outcomes. The SMART framework does force a “clarity critique” of each goal, and if used consistently, can make goal definition efficient and effective.

3. Goals should be personal 

Professional goals that resonate on a personal level with people are more likely to evoke genuine motivation, dedication, and a sense of fulfillment. When employees see their unique talents and interests connected to their professional objectives, work becomes a meaningful journey aligned with individual growth and values. Personalized professional goals tap into intrinsic motivations, and the ability for a company to see, recognize, and value what motivates us as individuals optimizes the work we do as we achieve those goals. As a result, intertwining professional goals with personal dimensions enhances job satisfaction, engagement, and overall well-being, contributing to both individual success and organizational prosperity.

With these differentiators in mind, make setting goals memorable and meaningful with team members that will undoubtedly be leading their own teams someday.  Cheers to 2024!  Let’s get started!

The post Goal Setting That Inspires appeared first on Canopy Advisory Group.

During these life cycles, the quality of the financial decisions at crucial stages contributes to the company’s development. Most startups don’t launch with finance or accounting teams. Several times, one of the founders assumes the accounting or financial planning positions. However, as the company expands, the need for a specialized finance expert, a full-time CFO, or a team to oversee financial functions becomes increasingly crucial. Bringing in a CFO during the early stages can significantly influence a company’s initial profitability strategy. However, the feasibility of hiring one can be a challenging task for startups with limited financial resources. This is where the expertise of a fractional CFO can be engaged, and when supported by an accounting staff and a part-time finance controller, can provide adequate support for a business that cannot afford to build a full-time team but requires financial expertise.

If you are new to Fractional CFOs, our blog on How can a fractional CFO contribute to Business Growth and Profitability provides a background on the importance of a skilled fractional CFO and areas where your company can see a long-lasting value in growth and profitability.

When to Consider a Fractional CFO

Here are Ten signs that it is time to hire a fractional CFO.

Rapid business growth and expansion

As a startup, going through a phase of swift business growth and expansion brings excitement to the company, usually when revenues are high, net profits are positive, customer retention is impressive, and the business is gaining recognition in its respective industry. However, effectively managing business growth and the company’s finances can become increasingly intricate. Startups experiencing rapid growth and expansion can employ the services of a fractional CFO to navigate through the growth stage while ensuring that the cost and capital structure is optimized to support the business operations.

Raising capital

There is a sense of fulfillment and validation that comes from raising venture capital. Founders and business owners consider this phase a fulfilling one. However, the pitching and fundraising process can be tedious and sometimes unpredictable. The requirements of each funding round change, and a business can leverage the services of a Fractional CFO to manage the requirements of these rounds. In addition, not only can the Fractional CFO function in the fundraising process, but they can advise on the timing of the fundraising and the percentage of debt and equity that is best for the company at each round.

It is also important to note that in the series A or seed funding stages, what investors value most is the idea, management, and scalability of the business. When you are heading towards series B or later stages, the key value driver becomes the financial metrics, profitability, and revenues. Therefore, if you are in the series B or later rounds of your fundraising, this can be a perfect time to have a fractional CFO on your team.

Navigating an audit or transaction

Organizational audit periods can be one of the busiest periods in a company’s calendar year. While internal audits can help a company understand the status of its financial health, there are other cases where the government, investors, or shareholders demand an audit report before making relevant decisions. Audit requests may come last minute, and the complexity of this activity can seem difficult for first-time founders and entrepreneurs. Audit tasks can be contracted to fractional CFOs, who can ensure that the company’s financial statements are accurate against other financial documents and credit card statements.

When it’s time to scale

“Growth” and “Scale” are words often used interchangeably in business. However, growth involves increasing top-line revenues without significant concern for expenses, whereas scaling a business focuses on optimizing revenues while efficiently managing costs to improve profit margin. This concept is known as the “economies of scale.”

Popular approach companies adopt for scaling involves incorporating new software into their manual operational procedures. For instance, they might utilize Zuora for invoicing and Salesforce for managing customer relationships. When a company opts to scale, it can be a smart move to bring on board an experienced fractional CFO. This helps guarantee smooth and problem-free integrations, all while maintaining the company’s workflow undisturbed.

Cash flow issues

One specific challenge that startups encounter is dealing with cash flow issues. These issues can arise due to uneven cash inflows and outflows, unexpected expenses, or delays in receiving payments from customers. In some cases, startups may struggle to determine the average number of days it takes for customers to pay their invoices, which is known as the accounts receivable turnover. A lack of clarity regarding this metric can lead to uncertainty in predicting when cash will be available. A fractional CFO can play a crucial role in addressing cash flow challenges by devising a fresh billing strategy. This strategy may involve setting clear payment terms, offering incentives for early payments, or implementing efficient invoicing and collection processes. Furthermore, a fractional CFO can work with the startup’s management team to negotiate improved payment timelines with customers. This negotiation process may involve finding ways to align payment schedules with the company’s own cash needs, smoothing out the variability in cash inflows. By securing more favorable payment terms, the startup can enhance its ability to maintain a steady cash balance and navigate cash flow fluctuations more effectively.

Optimizing employee compensation and benefits

If you are considering improving your employees’ benefits, payroll, and workers’ compensation, outsourcing these tasks to a Fractional CFO can significantly help companies to reduce their non-operating expenses. For example, the cost of employee benefits, particularly in healthcare, is constantly increasing. In 2022, a McKinsey article reported that the average employer saw a 5% increase in cost of employee healthcare benefits, and will increase by an additional 10% throughout 2023 according to Willis Tower Watson. An experienced fractional CFO is always attuned to emerging economic alternatives and should be capable of suggesting strategies to reduce costs while upholding or elevating employee benefits.

Frequent industry regulatory changes

Some industries experience frequent regulatory changes. If you are a multinational company or have a diverse supply chain, you need to pay attention to the changes in relevant regulations in the countries you operate. These regulations could be reporting, disclosure obligations, or compliance, and therefore require individuals with related experience or professional skills, as the implications of misinterpreting regulations can be reputationally and financially disastrous.

Given that fractional CFOs often possess experience spanning multiple industries, their wide-ranging expertise and understanding of various regulatory demands can facilitate the transfer of knowledge within existing teams, as well as provide adequate insights to the CEO and management teams.

Management restructuring

Management structures often change, particularly after the completion of a merger and acquisition (M&A) or a leveraged buyout (LBO). If investors are not looking to appoint their CFO, some incumbent CFOs and staff resign at this stage, leaving the business without a financial decision-maker to implement new strategies. Moreso, it takes an average of 6 months to a year to hire a CFO, compared to the swift onboarding process of an experienced fractional CFO who can fit into the role on an interim basis.

Influencing the board of directors

Venture or private equity (PE) funded companies end up with diverse board members that hold significant influence over decisions and future trajectories of the company. Introducing a fractional CFO to participate in board meetings and contribute fresh perspectives to business decisions can be beneficial to the company.

In addition, larger companies typically have a more complex board of directors, including independent board members with no significant financial, business, or familial ties to the company and whose decisions should not be influenced by internal interests or conflicts of interest. Occasionally, specific corporate actions may place an independent board member in a potentially conflicted position. During such instances, a fractional CFO can step in as a temporary board member, ensuring unbiased oversight of the matter without any personal conflicts.

Decision-making on budget allocation

High-growth companies expand rapidly with increasing operational demand and often need to make decisions around the strategic allocation of funds. One notable aspect of their decision-making process is determining where to invest their financial resources to achieve high returns for their shareholders. For example, decisions made during Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) can significantly impact a company’s trajectory, market positioning, and competitive advantage. In the absence of a dedicated full-time CFO, which is not uncommon for many evolving companies, the option of engaging a fractional CFO becomes particularly valuable. In situations where complex and impactful decisions must be made swiftly, often referred to as intensive, time-sensitive sprints, the fractional CFO can step in to provide insightful project evaluation.

In the dynamic landscape of business growth and financial management, recognizing the pivotal moments to engage expertise is key. The ten signs elucidated here underscore the critical junctures when a fractional CFO can be your strategic partner. From steering through rapid growth and complex scaling transitions to deftly navigating audits, regulatory changes, and budget allocations, the insights and expertise of a skilled fractional CFO can guide your company to enhanced profitability and sustainable success. As you assess your company’s trajectory, remember that these pivotal moments are opportunities for transformation. To ensure that your financial decisions align with your growth ambitions, contact Canopy Advisory Group for Fractional CFOs today. Let our seasoned professionals empower your journey, ushering you through these crucial phases with expertise, insight, and a commitment to your company’s financial excellence.

The post The 10 Signs It’s Time to Hire a Fractional CFO appeared first on Canopy Advisory Group.

The main responsibility of a marketing consultant is to help a company develop its brand through various marketing services including website design, event planning, social media, graphic design, and creating an effective online presence. 

A marketing consultant is usually available as an individual consultant or part of a full marketing agency with several professional marketing specialists who can create and implement every part of a marketing plan.

What A Marketing Consultant Does

After implementing a new marketing strategy, a marketing consultant will analyze the results for effectiveness and present the results to the client. When it comes to implementing marketing strategies, a marketing consultant handles the task from start to finish. Presenting the results is vital to the reputation of a marketing consultant since it showcases the level of their work ethic.

The first thing a marketing consultant does is examine a company’s marketing to determine its strengths and weaknesses. This is being done to get a complete picture of which marketing platforms are working and which ones need improvement. 

Performing Market Research

The difference between a second-rate marketing consultant and an amazing one is that the latter goes the extra mile to come up with ways to reliably help your business develop. This entails performing market research to find new marketing trends, as well as coming up with ways to develop current strategies. 

Best Marketing Strategies 

Partnering with a marketing consultant who provides effective marketing strategies will be a huge benefit to your business, ensuring future success. Businesses must have successful marketing strategies so they can be competitive in their industries. 

Your marketing consultant should know valuable marketing tactics that will be helpful for your company, but also useful strategies to aid in your future business growth. 

Advantages of Hiring a Marketing Consultant

If your goal is business growth, it is crucial that you work with a marketing consultant.

A skilled marketing professional will possess the expertise and knowledge to assist your business in achieving its goals. 

How can you be sure you’re hiring the right person? When selecting a marketing consultant, some important questions must be asked before hiring. They include:

• Ask about any experience with similar projects
• Ask about marketing results with past clients
• Ask about references

Denver’s Top Marketing Consultants

With years of marketing experience, a marketing consultant’s services include creating new ideas for business growth. Since they know what marketing strategies work, partnering with a marketing consultant saves you time and money. Your business will benefit from effective email marketing, website designing, and copywriting.  

With so many marketing consultants in Denver competing for new business, why not reach out to Canopy Advisory Group today? We look forward to hearing from you.

The post What Services Do Marketing Consultants Provide? appeared first on Canopy Advisory Group.

These consultants bring an external and objective viewpoint to the challenges of the startup, allowing them to give unbiased advice, assess the startup’s strengths and weaknesses, as well as identifying areas of improvement. These valuable insights allow for the startups to install best practices and make more informed decisions. Finding an on-demand consultant that can help with everything from business strategy to marketing to human resources, and so much more. 

Benefits of On-Demand Consulting

One of the biggest advantages for startups using on-demand consulting is the cost-effectiveness. Adding a full-time consultant to your workforce can be expensive, and this allows for use of the consultant as you need it. A lot of the projects that require consulting aren’t long-term, and the flexibility of using on-demand consultants on a freelance or project-by-project basis can be much more cost effective. This allows you to drill down on the issue at hand for a more efficient outcome. 

Startups can tap into the specialized knowledge and expertise of the on-demand consultant to gain insights and guidance tailored to their specific challenges. Experienced on-demand consultants will also have access to extensive networks of investors, professionals, and other industry connections. By leveraging these networks, they can provide introductions and potential brand partnerships for startups. These connections can really expand a startup’s reach and open the door for valuable resources and partnerships. 

Get Down to Problem Solving

Startups can often face complex challenges, many that are time-sensitive. On-demand consultants bring their experience and expertise to efficiently analyze problems, develop strategic solutions, and guide startups through the decision-making process. T/heir ability to quickly understand the startup’s context enables them to offer actionable recommendations that help save time and get the problem solving done more quickly. 

Because most startups face such rapidly changing environments, they often have evolving needs at different stages of growth. The on-demand consultant is perfect in this role, as the flexibility allows for startups to engage with the consultant when necessary. This adaptability ensure that the startups have the best access to the right expertise at the right time. Not all problems arrive in a timely manner, and there’s no timetable to when they’ll show up. The flexibility of the on-demand consultant optimizes their chances for success.

Leveraging external expertise as you need it is a huge advantage in making informed decisions, and in overcoming challenges more quickly. When seeking on-demand services, startups should clearly define their budget, objectives, and timeline to ensure they find the right consultant to deliver desired results. For more information on how on-demand consulting can help your business or startup, reach out to the experts at Canopy Advisory Group today. 

The post Are There On-Demand Consulting Services for Startups? appeared first on Canopy Advisory Group.

If you can’t afford a full-time CFO, a fractional CFO delivers the same expertise at a fraction of the salary. 

A fractional CFO has an active management and leadership role in a company. They provide important information that comes from analyzing trends and helping to develop accurate plans for your business. Additionally, they can identify risks to your business and safeguard you against those risks.

Ways A Fractional CFO Helps Accelerate Your Growth

Top-level of Expertise 

As a seasoned financial expert, the skills and experience of a fractional CFO are tried and true. Engaging with a fractional CFO at the appropriate time brings substantial value to a company. Fractional CFOs are critical in financial problem-solving, complex financial analysis, capital raises, working with new investors, creating incentive plans, and more.

Accounting 

Even though most businesses already have an accounting department, a skilled fractional CFO will be able to effortlessly fit in with your existing accounting team. Partnering with the controller, a fractional CFO will assist with assembling reports and implementing new procedures. 

Being integrated into an organization’s accounting team helps the fractional CFO better understand how the department and company operate. The fractional CFO can use the acquired knowledge to develop new strategies, unique to that organization’s goals and objectives.

Financial Analyst

A fractional CFO will analyze and oversee your company’s financials, including ROI, liquidity, and other critical metrics on a monthly, quarterly, and yearly basis. As your company experiences growth, a fractional CFO will help your company modify its workflow and processes, managing your increased cash flow and new financial needs.

The Right Fractional CFO in Denver for Your Business

Canopy Advisory Group has the most experienced fractional CFOs in Denver. Schedule a consultation with us today.

The post How Can a Fractional CFO Contribute to Business Growth and Profitability appeared first on Canopy Advisory Group.

Fractional or part-time CFOs have extensive experience, but are generally brought in by startups to help on a temporary basis. A fractional CFO in Denver can deliver a range of financial services and strategic guidance for growing organizations through this part-time offering, helping businesses stay on track without breaking the bank.

Fit Your Strategy to Your Goals

Fractional CFOs offer a wide scope of financial expertise, and delivering the right financial strategy is one of their most important areas of knowledge. They can help develop and refine the financial strategies to fit with the organization’s goals through guidance on everything from budgeting, to forecasting and giving analysis to support decision-making. They can also ensure accurate and timely financial reporting by interpreting financial data to identify opportunities, risks, and trends for better insight into financial management. 

Creating a streamlined financial process is imperative for any business, and fractional CFOs can act as strategic partners – offering financial advice and guidance on an array of critical business decisions. Helping create and write business plans that fit in everything from financial risk assessment to creating the right funding strategy. Many business owners don’t start a business with these tools, and a fractional CFO can help bridge the gap to make sure that you’re on the right track. 

Tackle Today’s Shifting Market

Making sure your financial systems keep up with your particular market is critical – particularly in the growing stages of your business. Fractional CFOs can evaluate and enhance your financial systems and process to bolster accuracy, efficiency, and compliance. This can involve implementing the right accounting software, establishing policies and streamlining financial workflows. Some of this comes down to getting the right bookkeeping and accounting, but the fractional CFO can assist with all of that as well as delivering the right financial data analysis.

Analyzing costs and profitability to identify areas of for cost reduction or revenue enhancement is another area fractional CFOs can assist. Organizing cash-flow statements and conducting a cost-benefit analysis can help improve operational efficiency. They can also help assess the financial viability of potential mergers and acquisitions (M&A), as well as offering support in the negotiation and integration processes. Getting the correct business valuation in the current market is also something the fractional CFO will be able to assist with. 

It’s important to understand that the specific services provided by fractional CFOs may vary based on the needs and size of the organization. For more information on how a fractional CFO in Denver might be right in helping your business, reach out to the experts at Canopy Advisory Group today.

The post What Types of Services Do Fractional CFOs Provide? appeared first on Canopy Advisory Group.

Why On-Demand Consulting?

Customers can benefit from on-demand consulting through a wide range of services, including strategic decision making, leadership development, and refining workflows and processes, to name a few. Companies that use on-demand consultants typically already have several full-time staff members, but still require specialized solutions to complex problems, answers to executive-level questions or knowledge of best practices. Additionally, customers use on-demand consulting for complete end-to-end implementation of the identified solutions from your engagement. On-demand consultants are accessible anytime for one-on-one support, regardless of how small or big the challenge may be.

Client Services

On-demand consulting through Canopy Advisory Group provides the expertise, proven skills, and industry knowledge that fulfills our clients’ needs. Our client services include:

• Vetting top-tier consultants from a wide range of industries.
• Identifying what clients value and devising unique strategies to serve every client’s needs.
• Selecting the best consultants that fit each client’s company culture
• Offering access to our team of thought partners and experts
• Being proactive, pinpointing possible problems before they happen
• Developing a process to ensure that each engagement runs smoothly

Resource Support

With on-demand consulting, you’re leveraging the power of years of experience in multiple industries and situations. Every on-demand consultant has an unparalleled depth of expertise and knowledge in their field and is available to address your needs as they arise. Because we familiarize ourselves with your business model, any consultant assigned to you can quickly hit the ground running. We remain connected during the project to make sure the on-demand consultant is providing value and satisfying your expectations.

Top On-Demand Consulting in Denver, CO

Our on-demand consulting services focus on a clear-cut premise: to offer you skilled resources that are thoroughly vetted and selected to meet your timeframe and requirements. 

Hundreds of clients have relied on our on-demand consultants because our experts bring vast, deep knowledge to any situation. Contact us today if you’d like to learn more about us and our network of top-tier on-demand consultants.

The post What are the Benefits of On-Demand Consulting? appeared first on Canopy Advisory Group.

A marketing consultant can help bring your branding into focus, and help generate more solid and consistent leads for your business. By getting all of your messaging on the same page to target the right clients, they can help create a strategy to set your business apart from the competition. The right marketing can accelerate your business in a fast-paced market like Denver, and it can also establish your brand to keep you ahead of the competition in the long run. 

Getting Everything Together

One of the biggest issues many businesses face with their marketing is inconsistent messaging and honing the right value proposition. Trying to use one-size-fits-all campaigns will often deliver mediocre results. Making sure the messaging is consistent is the tip of the iceberg, as consultants can streamline this message by leveraging marketing research and data analytics along with customer insights. This will guide your message to personalized strategies that address the specific needs and preferences of your target audience.

To help reach the audience that needs your services, a marketing consultant will set up key performance indicators to track the success of your marketing initiatives. Analyzing this data will help provide actionable insights through continuous marketing of your campaigns. My monitoring these campaigns, it will ensure that you’re putting your resources into the most effective strategies and channels, getting you a higher return on your marketing investment.

Bring Everything Into Focus

Marketing consultants can help establish a strong brand identity, which is crucial for long-term success. By helping to develop a compelling story, the consultant will refine your brand positioning and create a consistent, identifiable message across all of your marketing channels. Because the consultant comes from outside your business, they can also bring in a fresh perspective and give you an objective evaluation. This experience and insight is invaluable, as a marketing consultant will bring a wealth of knowledge to the table. 

They’ll also be properly able to use metrics and analytics to help bring this into focus, which will allow for more directed targeted campaigns. Many marketing campaigns lack clear goals and objectives, and waste time and money targeting the wrong audience. Nearly as important as finding the right message, finding the right channels is also imperative. Marketing consultants can identify all of these things. By zeroing in on the right audience, you’ll be able to eliminate practices that aren’t profitable, allowing for your marketing dollars to be stretched further. 

Partnering with a marking consultant can positively alter the trajectory of your business. Their expertise, insights and fresh perspective can help you overcome marketing challenges and identify new growth opportunities. The feeling like your marketing isn’t doing anything is a common one amongst business owners, but it doesn’t have to be. For more information, reach out to the experts at Canopy Advisory Group today. 

The post How Can a Marketing Consultant Help My Business? appeared first on Canopy Advisory Group.

Fractional services can help organizations become more efficient, innovative, and profitable. Fractional CFOs provide essential financial assistance and guidance to companies during periods of growth and can help a business stay competitive in any market. 

This article will explore a fractional CFO’s role within an organization.

What Does a Fractional CFO Do?

Organizations may bring in a fractional CFO to manage financial challenges that exceed the expertise or ability of the in-house team to solve. A fractional CFO may partner with an existing CFO to address challenges or fill in for companies that do not have an in-house CFO.

Some of the specific financial challenges a fractional CFO may help with include the following:

• Low gross margins
• High expenses
• Outdated or insufficient systems
• Cutting costs
• Cash flow problems
• Audits

Fractional CFOs can also help organizations optimize and implement forward-facing financial visibility. They can often invest time and energy in the future while other financial professionals focus on day-to-day operations and accurate bookkeeping. They may develop economic forecasts, prepare budgets, and analyze potential markets, services, products, and customer segments.

Fractional CFOs help companies reach financial goals by navigating mergers and acquisitions, preparing for sales, and raising capital. They can assist with a variety of other tasks that lead to progress and growth, including:

• Producing financial forecasts
• Sitting in on board meetings
• Developing strategic relationships
• Analyzing term sheets and contracts
• Overseeing due diligence

A fractional CFO’s assistance may be especially helpful for small to medium-sized companies during periods of growth. A fractional CFO can help growing organizations in several ways, including:

• Implementing systems that encourage sustainable growth
• Improving visibility and analytical capability to create actionable information out of massive amounts of data
• Identify sources of revenue loss, cost overruns, and operational friction as the business grows
• Hire new employees and develop existing ones 

Most fractional CFOs have extensive experience helping organizations achieve financial goals and manage complex business deals. Many have helped companies raise millions of dollars of equity funding and managed numerous mergers and acquisitions. The expertise and experience a fractional CFO provides are valuable assets to companies of any size.

The Benefits of Hiring a Fractional CFO

Organizations of all types and sizes may benefit from outsourcing a CFO. Small businesses may find hiring a fractional CFO helpful as their company grows and changes over time.

Here are some of the potential benefits of hiring a fractional CFO.

Cost savings

Hiring and retaining an in-house CFO can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Many organizations simply cannot afford to do this. Hiring a fractional CFO may save companies a lot of money–as much as $100,000 in some cases. 

Financial leadership

Hiring a fractional CFO means you’ll have skill and experience when you need it most. A fractional CFO offers objective advice and leadership to help your business improve its bottom line and maintain growth.

Better profit margins

Expert guidance from a skilled CFO can lead to a healthier bottom line. A fractional CFO will work with senior leadership to develop a budget, identify areas of excessive spending, and analyze monthly data to identify the sources of profits. 

Find a Fractional CFO in Denver

Find a Fractional CFO Denver by reaching out to the Canopy Advisory Group today. Contact our team to learn more about our services.

The post What is a Fractional CFO and How Do They Differ From a Traditional CFO? appeared first on Canopy Advisory Group.

On-demand consulting refers to a type of consulting service where experts provide advice, guidance and solutions to clients as needed. This is generally on a per-project basis, which allows clients to access the expertise of consultants without the commitment of a long-term contract. Collaborating with on-demand consultants can deliver a multitude of benefits that are moving at the same pace as your business.

Advantages to On-Demand Consulting

Whether it’s business strategy, growing your team, or needing help with human resources of public relations, the right on-demand consultant can give you access to an array of professionals to get the answers for your business. Two of the biggest advantages to on-demand consulting is the flexibility and cost-effectiveness. This type of consulting allows clients access to expert advice and guidance whenever they need it. This offers flexibility in terms of project duration, scope, and specific type of expertise that’s required. 

Since services are paid for on an as-needed basis, clients can engage with consultants for short-term assignments or specific tasks – all while accessing the particular expert they need. The specialized network of knowledge and skills can be used to bring industry-specific insights, best practices to help the client solve complex problems or to make strategic decisions. Also, because these instances are as-needed, there is a quick response and turnaround time. The consultants are readily available to offer timely advice, address urgent needs, or provide quick solutions. That agility can be critical when launching a new product, addressing internal issues as they come up, or making the right hire in a short window. 

How Does it Work?

First and foremost, it’s important to identify the needs or requirements for what you’re searching for. Whether you’re looking for financial analysis, improvement of processes or market research, on-demand consultants use their network to get you in front of the right people to help your particular situation. This can include one or more consultants, and once engaged, they will collaborate and communicate closely throughout the project. 

Transparency is key to make sure things are aligned, and the consultant will analyze the situation, identify challenges, and come up with customized solutions. Once these findings are presented, the client delivers crucial feedback to allow fine-tuning of the solution. These consultants can be used to tackle individual issues, or multiple issues at once. The right on-demand consulting firm likely has a diverse network of consultants at their disposal, allowing for a versatile approach to solving many issues that arise in your business. 

A key advantage to on-demand consulting is that clients can gain quick access to experts for advice that’s tailored to their expertise without the long-term commitment. This flexibility and scalability is critical in today’s fast-moving business climate. For more information on how on-demand consulting could work for you, reach out to the experts at Canopy Advisory Group today.

On-demand consultants are here to help foster growth in businesses by allowing them to take on organizational challenges with the comfort of professional advice. 

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