Fractional Leadership and Scaling Smarter with Nish Sampath | Sell Me This Podcast

[0:00] How do we level up our teams and ourselves to take advantage of some of this — not just for writing a poem, but for actually creating positive impact on our workday and creating some efficiency.

[0:24] Welcome to another episode of Sell Me This Podcast. Today we have an exciting conversation with Nish Sampath from Switch Advisory Group where we dive into everything fractional — from why it's important, how it got started, and what makes a good fractional consultant. This conversation's for you.

[0:42] Welcome to another episode of Sell Me This Podcast. Today we are incredibly excited to have with us Nish Sampath, the CEO of Switch Advisory. We're going to dive right into things. Nish, why don't you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about who you are?

[0:54] Thanks for having me, Keith. It's a pleasure to be here. So yeah, I'm the CEO of Switch Advisory. It's a fractional chief operating officer agency. Started it about three years ago. I decided I had enough of the corporate world and wanted to make a little bit of a switch — no pun intended, Keith. And here I am today, kind of three years later, gone down this journey and frankly still figuring it out as we go.

[1:18] Well, I feel like whenever you and I get together for coffee, I always enjoy our chats because I'd say you're probably about a year in front of us in terms of your career or kind of business maturity, and I think we go through a lot of the same challenges. It seems like we're figuring things out together at some point.

[1:35] Absolutely. And yeah, super excited to have you on the show. Before we dive into the very serious content — as you know, we have a tradition on the show where the guests get to pick their artwork. I know you did a lot of prep for this and I'd love to hear your story around the piece you selected.

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Chapter 1: Starry Night and the Art of Perspective

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[1:53] Yeah. So this is Starry Night by Van Gogh. We had a family trip maybe three years ago now out to St. Rémy in France where Van Gogh actually — the mental asylum where he stayed is in St. Rémy. And about 45 minutes outside of St. Rémy, there's a town called Les Baux-de-Provence, and it is this really tiny little cool town. But they have these giant limestone quarries. And within the quarry, there's this art exhibit called Carrières de Lumières. They project all this impressionist painting on all of the surfaces of this giant quarry — the floors, the ceilings, the walls — and they make it move and make it interactive and it flows to classical music. It's just an absolutely incredible experience. So if you're ever in France, you've got to go see it. And apparently there are other similar exhibits across Europe as well.

[3:05] Very cool. I'm going to have to add it to the bucket list. Are you a big traveler?

[3:13] You know, I was before kids. My guy is turning nine this year, so we'll probably be back on the travel kick again. He's at that age where they're old enough to kind of remember now.

[3:26] Anywhere on the first list that you want to go?

[3:28] Portugal. Yeah.

[3:30] I've heard that from a lot of people. Portugal is a hot spot right now.

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Chapter 2: The Career Journey That Led to Switch

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[3:35] So Switch Advisory — I want to dive before we talk about Switch too much into your experience that kind of led you here. If you were to summarize your career and the steps that you took to get to a spot where you're launching Switch, what does that journey look like?

[3:53] Yeah, great question. My experience is primarily in healthcare and product. So I spent a lot of time in the healthcare space trying to save the world — not from the doctor side but from the technology side. And I learned to operate in giant systems with a lot of constraints. At some point I came to the conclusion that your ability to make an impact in some of these giant corporations is limited. And you know, as I came into my midlife crisis, I decided: hey, I need to go have some more fun. I need to make a bigger impact with my career. Where do I go? And I decided to join a startup in town.

[4:39] And that was a pretty incredible experience, right? You move from this giant organization where you're constrained from a speed perspective — there's zero risk tolerance in organizations like that — and you move to an environment where you have massive financial constraints. There's no bureaucracy, but everything's a massive risk at the same time. And you have competitors knocking at your door every day. You've got to figure out how do you move faster and quicker and more aggressively and how do you make more intelligent decisions every day. Throw a little bit of caution to the wind but in a smart way and go fast.

[5:19] And so I really loved that journey. I joined that organization as a COO. There were three founders and just helping to align the troops and get everybody fighting in the same direction — I found my calling, I think. And decided it would be really cool to do that across different organizations at the same time. And it was kind of when fractionals started to actually be a thing all of a sudden.

[5:50] Well, pioneer is probably a generous word, but I think you were on the front end of that fractional movement where you're starting to see people that are wanting to show up for work differently. You're starting to see organizations that maybe don't have the bandwidth to consume that caliber of people in the same way. How did you make that shift to say: if I can work for three or four organizations at the same time, do this really meaningful work, I can make something of it. Was it a hard thing to wrap your head around or did it happen organically?

[6:24] You know, for me it was fairly organic. After working at the startup, I found that there is an ability to make a pretty significant impact within an organization even if you're time-constrained — even if you're splitting your time across different organizations. If you have a method and you actually know what you're doing and you're able to focus on the most important of the most important activities, you can make a pretty significant dent in a reasonable period of time. Whereas traditionally we go into companies and frankly we fill our days with some bogus work just because that's what happens.

[7:07] And I followed a little bit of the leadership from other fractionals in the space. Obviously CFO has been a fractional thing for some time. They probably changed the term from more of a consultative CFO to a fractional CFO. And there were some leaders in Calgary who were doing it around fractional marketing executives. But I thought I was very clever — I thought I was first to come out with this concept until I started looking around and figured, oh, there are a lot of people actually doing this. And it is a model that makes sense.

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Chapter 3: Fractional vs. Consultant vs. Contractor

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[7:41] I'm going to hit you with it — hopefully this isn't a hardball — but there's so much talk around fractional, contractors, consulting. Is it something that's the same thing with different vernacular around it, or is there in your mind a different set of responsibilities or expectations across those three different terms?

[8:07] Yeah. Traditionally I see consultant as more of an adviser — you're most often on the outside providing direction and saying here's the things you should do. Fractional is kind of taking the leap where you're not just providing the advice but you're adding bandwidth within the organization. So you become an active member of that company. You're part of their leadership team. You are hiring, you're negotiating, you're restructuring the organization from the inside out. And so it does come with a little bit of a different responsibility. You're more — I would like to think we take more ownership than traditionally the consulting model has been.

[8:47] But having said that, I think a lot of consultants are moving in that direction anyways. And I think technology is some of what's driving this — less of the person sitting on the sidelines pointing at all the things you need to fix and saying, "Good luck, here's your playbook." And more of: how do you roll up your sleeves, how do you get in there, and actively drive the change versus just being a cheerleader off to the side.

[9:12] That's exactly it. I mean, the traditional consulting model was: we're going to give you a lot of advice and you're going to take it from us because frankly, you can blame it on us. We're kind of the insurance policy. But for organizations within the size that we try to work with — companies between $2 and $50 million most often than not — they don't have the luxury of paying for high-priced advice. They need somebody to go and do the work with them. They don't have enough people. They don't have enough resources. They don't have enough time. Frankly, they're often founder-CEO organizations where that individual is already kind of bleeding themselves dry and they need an extra set of hands to get in there and do the work.

[9:53] That makes complete sense. And as you're talking about that being done on an operations standpoint — operations can often become a catch-all for the problems they're not quite sure how to solve. IT and digital problems pop into operations, finance often jumps in there. How are you shaping those engagements so it doesn't just become this enormous body of work and can stay really focused?

[10:25] Yeah, that's still an ongoing learning adventure if we're honest. I think we come into the organization and we look across the value chain and say: okay, what are those significant opportunities for improvement across people, strategy, execution, and cash? And then we say within those opportunities, what's actually going to move the needle? If we're in a given company for either two to three days per week, that's not a lot of time. So we're fairly constrained. We need to focus again on the most important of the most important of the most important activities.

[11:01] And for the large part, those activities have to impact revenue, COGS, or operating cost. And unless there's a visible and clear alignment with an impact to one of those three indicators, we probably shouldn't do it — we simply don't have enough time.

[11:19] I think the other part is recognizing that we shouldn't do everything and there are probably other people better served in our ecosystem to take on those responsibilities. So if it's a deep financial challenge where we need to get our forward projections up to speed for a capital raise — should we do it? No. Should we be creating your marketing strategy and executing that new ad campaign? No. Should we be looking at your HR? I mean, we can look at your people challenges, but when it comes to building out the discrete HR processes within the organization — should we do it? No. We have to rely on our ecosystem of partners to make sure we're bringing in the right human with the right skill set and better serving our clients.

[12:16] So would it be too simplistic to say that a lot of the heavy lift is actually helping with that prioritization and making sure that people are focused on the right things?

[12:24] I think that's the best way to say it. I wish I said it that way.

[12:30] Well, and I also love what you said about constraints. I've always lived by the adage that work fills all available time. And I think there's a tendency — especially when you think about traditional employment models — to say, "Okay, I show up for my 40, 60, 80 hours a week and I need to make sure I'm doing stuff and I'm visibly busy versus visibly productive." And I think that challenge of compressing things into a shorter time period gets you out of the weird all-hands meeting, gets you out of the things that aren't actually driving those levers forward. Do the constraints become really powerful in terms of your ability to actually affect change?

[13:25] I think constraints in general are very powerful. I think creativity thrives with constraints — if you just have no constraining forces on either side, you just make stuff up randomly as you go. And you see that both in a creative sense and from an execution sense. And so absolutely it is very imperative that we kind of hold ourselves accountable to those constraints. And frankly from a client's perspective, they really don't care about how much time you put into it. They're focused on outcomes. Time is our constraint. Outcome is the only thing they actually are interested in.

[14:06] And is that universal? Because I think even some leaders that I've talked to — there's a comfort in someone that's full-time, in a more traditional employment relationship, where it's like: I know they're going to be there when I ask them for something. How do you navigate organizations that make that transition from having someone available to having someone that's delivering?

[14:41] Yeah, that's something we still face. I think organizations that have had some experience with fractional already are obviously more amenable to it. If they've had a fractional CFO, they're more willing to bring in a fractional COO, for example. If on the other hand they've never had any experience with it, they are likely to question how much impact you can have within that period of time. So our challenge is to create referenceable impact statements from other clients that we can say: hey, listen, here's what we've done — actually go talk to our client and they'll tell you that was the best decision we've ever made. We really didn't need them full-time. We just needed someone with the right level of experience to come in to help guide that conversation during that short period of time.

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Chapter 4: The Ideal Fractional Client

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[15:33] That makes sense. And so is there a DNA of a type of organization or stage of organization that's best suited to fractional? If you waved your magic wand and the ideal customer kind of popped in front of you — without being too limiting — what is the DNA that makes someone a good consumer of fractional services?

[15:54] It's a great question. I think, at least from Switch's perspective — and I think it differs based on the fractional models out there — one is there's a revenue level for us because it determines if you're generally between $2 and $50 million. But that's generally where you have product-market fit. If you're pre-product-market fit, we're not the right solution for you — there are other resources probably better suited at that point in time. If you're a hyperscaler and you're growing too quickly, you probably need full-time support. And likewise, if you're over $50 to $75 million, you often need full-time support — you're growing very quickly, your headcount is too large from a COO perspective. But within that $2 to $50 million space, we find we can make a pretty significant impact.

[16:52] Organizations within that revenue size are generally founder-CEO led — occasionally we're brought in through the board, but most often than not it's a founder-CEO and they've hit an inflection point. They've grown and they've outgrown the founder-CEO's ability to operate the company, and they recognize that. And it generally shows up as a revenue plateau and oftentimes some founder frustration where they're even thinking about exiting. And they're saying, "Listen, we've built a good company — this is as far as we can potentially take it on our own. Either we get support to remove that founder dependency so we can actually sell the company" — which is a huge part of what we do — "or we remove founder dependency to help us continue to scale up."

[17:48] From what I'm hearing, a lot of the work is around those CEOs or founders that are right in the thick of things — regardless of whether or not they want to scale or exit, they need to get their house in order.

[17:59] Yeah. I mean, they founded a company and then they found themselves in a job. I think that's the biggest challenge. They find themselves back in a job and they're like, "Oh, this is not what I signed up for. I thought I was an entrepreneur, founded a company, was hoping to get that freedom — that entrepreneurial experience should eventually help me pursue — but they're back and just employed by their own company."

[18:24] Well, and you know, it's a very different job. That phase from zero to two, the phase from two to 50, the phase from 50 plus — they're functionally different jobs. And there's not a lot of people that actually fit the DNA that they are great at each of them, or even love doing each of those things.

[18:41] Yeah. I mean, there are a lot of folks that love to get in the weeds and actually do the work — and that makes sense for fractional. There are some that are more board-level advisers that like to provide strategy. And there's a completely different space for that type of consultant to come in.

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Chapter 5: How to Pick the Right Fractional Leader

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[18:58] So how do you pick the right fit for your organization? How, if I'm a business leader trying to pick the right fractional leader to sit shotgun with me as we're making some of these really fundamental evolutions to our business — how do I know I'm picking the right one? What should I be looking for?

[19:28] That's a great question. I think first — and you probably see this as well — you've got to have that values and cultural alignment. You've got to be able to see that person as your right hand and be able to take their advice. You have to be willing to actually spend some time with that individual because you're going to spend a lot of time with that person. So if you can't get along, if you don't have that alignment from a values perspective, it's never going to work.

[19:52] We want to make sure when we're doing that matchmaking that the CEO and the COO really jive well together. The CEO can see the COO as both the little devil and the little angel on their shoulder, depending on what needs to be done.

[20:09] And we're not as concerned about let's call it industry-related experience, but we are certainly concerned about: do you have the right problem-solution experience? Have you solved the types of problems that this company is going through — whether it's human problems, whether it's supply chain problems, technology implementation problems, or frankly just account management and project management problems? You have to have solved the right type of problems that the specific organization is actually going through to make sure you're the right fit.

[20:50] Do you think most people are aware of what the problem they're trying to solve is, or is that part of your initial conversations with them — really defining what the roadblock or barrier is?

[21:00] Oh, yeah. I mean, nine times out of 10 they're just feeling the symptoms of it. They don't actually know the causality — what's actually causing the pain. And so we go in again, do that value chain analysis to make sure we're actually diving into it and figuring out what really needs to be fixed. And oftentimes — at least with the founders we're going to work with — they know that they're the problem most often than not, which is a very good place to start.

[21:34] I guess if you're being brought in by the board when they don't know they're the problem, that's a more challenging discussion.

[21:42] Very much so. But oftentimes when we're lucky enough to work with the right clients, they know that they're core to the problem and that they need to get out of their own way, frankly.

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Chapter 6: The Evolution of Fractional — CFO to CTO and Beyond

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[21:53] Yeah, that makes sense. And so you alluded earlier to this evolution of fractional. You have the CFO, CMO progression, CMOs coming in. We're starting to see tech come in as well — the fractional CTO, CIO, whatever label we want to put on it. What do you think is causing that cascade? Is it just familiarity? Is it the type of work the executives are connected to?

[22:24] Yeah. I mean, I think it's familiarity. I think it's the snowball effect. It started with a couple of executives on the finance and marketing side. Most often the founder-CEO is like, "Yeah, I don't know finance or I don't know marketing — definitely let's bring in some external expertise for that." And as things progress, you also see more and more people jumping into the fractional space. So just the visibility of fractional executives that are capable of providing CTO, CIO, or CISO-related skills is starting to grow. And it's just creating that broader awareness — which is very powerful because a lot of organizations don't need the full-time level resource. They just need the right guidance with some additional support in other areas. They could probably hire juniors instead of the senior executive and just bring in the senior executive part-time.

[23:24] And I guess if you're bringing in the right people, then you can lever up and down the effort as required. You might not need someone to drive down the highway at 120 miles an hour the entire time — you might need some side roads. And I feel like this is a weird analogy I've chosen, but I can see the ability to pick it up, speed it up, slow it down as being a huge advantage for different stages and milestones of a company.

[23:51] Absolutely. And frankly, that's kind of our model. We're not meant to be a permanent long-term solution in the organization. We're generally in a company for six to 18 months. And our analogy is: we're here to build the operating machine. Once we've built that operating system, someone else can drive the car.

[24:10] Back to your analogy. You don't need to be the engineer to construct it — you just have to drive the car after the fact. And we want to make sure we do train those individuals coming in so that there's resilience in the organization after we leave. But it does take a different skill set to build that operating infrastructure in the first place.

[24:35] And so I was having lunch with someone today and we were having this exact conversation — because even us, we've been stuck in the trap before where you become a safety blanket almost. And it's not getting started that's the hard part — it's actually detangling that's the hard part. So what advice would you have for people that are setting things up and maybe they're in the middle of that engagement, but making sure there are those mile markers so it's not an infinity project and there actually is a legitimate offboarding plan?

[25:05] Yeah. I mean, first of all, you have to go in with the very intention to make sure you are going to offboard — which makes the requirement to say: I have to level up the next layer of leadership. A lot of my time towards the end of the engagement needs to be mentally focused on who's next, who's coming up, how am I coaching and training them, how am I making them more resilient from both an individual and an organizational perspective so that they're capable of taking this on. Because frankly, if everything falls apart after we leave — well, that's egg on our face. And we have to be very intentional about that and make sure we're building that process and the systems, and either hiring into that seat or leveling up individuals within the organization to take over that role after we leave.

[26:01] I like it. And so that becomes a success criteria as well — as much about those initial wins as the exit win that the world continues without you.

[26:07] Absolutely. Yeah. And that's what we've tried to accomplish with our clients. We'll always maintain relationships. I still have calls and coaching conversations with our previous clients on a monthly basis — just to keep them accountable and make sure they know they have someone to lean on when they need to. But we shouldn't be doing the same work over that extended period of time.

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Chapter 7: Tech, AI, and Operations

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[26:31] So I'm going to switch gears a tiny bit. You have a little bit of a superpower right now in the fact that you also have some tech background. How are you seeing that infiltrate the work you're doing from an operations standpoint?

[26:50] That's a big question. I think when we're thinking about the companies at that $2 to $50 million range, there are probably two challenges they're facing. Challenge one is they're trying to figure out what to do with the tech they've already bought. And that's a big one because they've spent a lot of money and they keep spending a lot of money, but they're not doing anything with it. How is it actually incorporated within their processes and systems? Is any of the information integrated across different applications? Are we using any of it appropriately?

[27:28] You know, you sign up for all these subscriptions — Netflix, Crave, Apple TV as an analogy — and then you go down and you're like, "Geez, that's a lot of money every month we're burning on this stuff. What are we doing with it?" And so a lot of it is consolidation. It's creating alignment between processes and technology to make sure it is fit for purpose and actually makes sense.

[28:00] And exactly what we would bring somebody like you in for is: bigger company, help us make sense out of this tech strategy. So that's probably let's say 50%. The other 50% is AI — like okay, we have to keep up with the Joneses. We need to figure out how to create more efficiency with less, and unfortunately today that means with less human manpower. And so how do we level up our teams and ourselves to take advantage of some of this — not just for writing a poem, but for actually creating positive impact on our workday and creating some efficiency? So it is understanding what's available, because there's an AI tool for everything today. Even helping to navigate that landscape and figuring out what is the most important tool to use, how do we introduce some early-stage tests to see if they're viable within the organization, and just start exploring AI a little bit.

[29:00] And I'm really glad you said that. The dangerous part sometimes in some of the work that we see is on that AI front where you're starting to lead with the tool. But it's on the tip of everyone's tongue — whether it's their desire, whether it's their boards, whether it's different members of the leadership team — it's something that has to be part of their conversation. And I just feel like there's such a connection between operations and technology simply because you can't just buy AI tool number three, plug it in, and say, "Okay, now the world's a better place." You really need to have your house in order in order for that technology to work properly. Like we've always said: it's a great amplifier. If you have really good process, if you have a really strong operational backbone, it can amplify the things that are working really well.

[29:51] Yeah. And inversely, if you have shitty processes, if you have things that are broken, if you have things that have a whole bunch of human intervention — AI and technology are actually going to make that way worse if you don't sort those things out first.

[30:05] Yeah. I mean, it's a little bit of a red flag when I hear founders saying, "Hey, we need you to help come in and turn this into an AI-first company." And you're thinking: well, you should be people-first, and then we build some strong processes around those people, and then we make them more effective and efficient using AI. I think that's the right path. But just thinking that AI is going to solve all our problems — at least today, certainly not. So it's figuring out: do we have the right people? Are those people completely aligned? Do we have clarity in our strategy? Do we have actual processes that are mapped, managed, monitored? Do we have the underlying technology to support that? And is our cash aligned with the organizational strategy?

[30:54] And so we don't lead with tech ever. We lead with the overarching principles of: how are your processes being executed today? Where are those opportunities to inject the technology? Does it make sense from a human perspective? How do you go through that change management and that training that's required?

[31:11] You're music to my ears right here. I just feel like sometimes it's easy to chase that shiny object and it can lead you down some pretty significant rabbit holes.

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Chapter 8: The FOCers — Fractional Officers of Calgary

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[31:28] You've been a big advocate on the fractional ecosystem side of things. And you've done a really incredible job of bringing together a community of fractional people. What inspired you to do that, and I'd love to give you a little bit of air time to share what you've built.

[31:57] Yeah, thank you. I appreciate it. Well, it's called the FOCers — which is the Fractional Officers of Calgary. And you know, it kind of was rooted in the idea that fractional is lonely. You're trying to figure it out. Nobody really knows how to execute the model, but people are interested in it and they're trying to get into the space. And so how do you offer an opportunity to that growing community of people who want to learn about it to come and learn from their peers? That was initially how it started — I got into fractional and said, who else is doing this that I can learn from? And so we just brought some folks together.

[32:35] And now it's evolved a little bit. It is really trying to create that strong community, give that peer group an opportunity to share their knowledge, share opportunities across the network, and share their network frankly. And then we like to make sure we give back to charity as well. So all the proceeds from the tickets go to charity — and that's very important to us because we should be doing something bigger than ourselves. It shouldn't just be about making money, although that's great, but how do we help society at large and support our peer group?

[33:07] And I think the fractional community is definitely getting larger. And it's important because there are a lot of people that are thinking about it. How do we help them down that path? Even if it's maybe not the right path for them, at least help educate them to say: here's what the challenges are, here's where the opportunities lie. If it makes sense for you, yeah, come join the fun.

[33:33] Well, each time I go to one of your events, the room's a little bit fuller. Why are there so many people interested in that fractional lifestyle right now?

[33:44] No, I mean, I'll tell you why I was. I just wanted the varied experience. We get the opportunity to work across industries, across different geographies, across different creative founders that are doing really cool interesting things. And frankly, I'm not that creative myself. So I like to work with really smart, interesting founders. And it's given me and others the opportunity to be a part of that journey — that entrepreneurial journey with these other organizations. And it's not as constraining as being in that little corporate box. That's appealing for a lot of people. You can do it remotely for the most part, you can have a lot of fun, and you can make a significant impact doing it.

[34:32] Now, back to the point where I left my corporate job — because of all the constraints and let's call it the risk adversity of the corporate environment — you simply can't make that much impact in a way that you can as a fractional executive in the SMB space.

[34:48] Well, and there are so many people that I've talked to that have ascended to these roles in large organizations and they arrive at this point and they realize that a) it's not all it's cracked up to be and b) a lot of the calories being burned are being burned on navigating the organization rather than on the actual work.

[35:11] Political maneuvering. Well, yeah — you've got to work the system. But there are so many people I talk to that just love the work. They just want to do the amazing work and they don't want to worry about all the other stuff over here. And the ability to go in, go out, show up in really meaningful ways — sounds incredible.

[35:34] And I think that's exactly it. People once they get into it, they really enjoy it. The challenge of course is how do you manage your time, how do you actually split your energy between multiple clients. It is not as easy as it may seem. The client has — you're putting in part-time inputs, but they have full-time outcome expectations. They still think you're going to deliver what a full-time resource would. So it's just being able to manage some of those expectations across clients, do the work, and enjoy yourself with the community while you're doing it.

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Chapter 9: Advice for Launching a Fractional Practice

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[36:12] So if you were to give advice to someone that was on the front end of that journey — they're launching their fractional practice, maybe they have their first customer, maybe they don't — how would you give them a blueprint in terms of the steps to take to get started, to maintain some of that balance, to maintain some sanity? Because it is a departure from the safety blanket of big corporate.

[36:37] Um, I mean, I think to be successful you have to create your methodology for how you execute. Like: how do you go into a client, understand the client landscape, execute, and make a really significant impact in a really short period of time? You need your blueprint for that. And it probably starts out with similar to myself — just doing it at one client part-time within a startup, for example, understanding how you're going to execute, and then scaling that model across multiple clients. So first and foremost: don't take too many clients at once. I did that, made that mistake. It was very painful. And now I coach my COOs to not make a similar mistake.

[37:23] Context switching is very difficult. And when you start to try to context switch across too many different clients, it can become very hairy and frankly more stressful than just having a job. So you have to get used to that.

[37:39] And the other part is: you have to get used to some level of pipeline ambiguity. With a job, you just have a job — and it's less safe than it used to be as we all know. But it appears that way on the surface. A fractional has to sell. You have to create a sales pipeline for yourself and make sure that as you roll off one client you can start to roll into another client. That's challenging.

[38:12] Well, and I think you bring up a really interesting point around certainty. You've seen the layoffs — they're not just in Calgary, it's across the globe that traditional working is being disrupted. And I've even coached some of our consultants that the only difference is you know when the contract ends and you have exact line of sight into when that is. And maybe it'll extend or maybe it won't, but at least you just have a date.

[38:38] Yeah. And sometimes the devil you know is better than the one you don't. And I think there's this illusion of security sometimes in full-time gigs. Before, when I had the illusion of security in the corporate world, I didn't go and do any networking. I didn't go meet people and create that broad relationship base. And I would say that's more valuable than even your experience today. So go out there, make some friends, understand what the business landscape looks like. Continue to strengthen your ecosystem of partners and your ecosystem of relationships so that when opportunities do arise, they're thinking about you.

[39:22] Yeah. And even whether or not you're thinking of making the move — they kind of reach this point where all of a sudden they're pushed off a cliff and they frantically try to rekindle all these relationships from the past 20 years. Whereas if you're a little more curious, a little more engaged, it definitely pays long-term dividends regardless.

[39:46] 100%. And that's advice I should have given myself as well. Hence the advice I give other people today.

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Chapter 10: What Makes Switch Special

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[40:02] So in terms of Switch — I don't want to put you on the spot — but what makes you special in terms of the work that you're doing? Why are people choosing to work with you?

[40:13] Well, I think from a client perspective, our COOs are unicorns — I like to think of them as unicorns. They have the corporate experience, so they have the executive-level seat. They've also had the actual blood, sweat, and tears of working in a startup or a small-medium business where you have massive financial constraints — you can't just throw money at a problem, you have to roll up your sleeves and do the work. And then they're also executive coaches, so they have a lot of coaching background. And so those three pillars of experience are pretty significant and very, very difficult to find.

[40:57] And on top of that, I think our methodology is strong. We're not winging it when we go into a client — which unfortunately you see a lot of fractionals today doing. They're going in and trying to wing it, and it's hard to make an impact if you have no game plan going in.

[41:14] Yeah. Fail to plan, you plan to fail.

[41:18] Yeah. I love it. And I think the framework is really important. So are you able to share kind of what your framework is or is that the secret sauce?

[41:26] It's not a secret sauce. I mean, we build operational clarity within the organization — looking across the value chain, understanding those opportunities for improvement. That's really our stage one. We then roll out an operating system — best-in-class methodologies incorporating tools from EOS, Scaling Up, and Rockefeller habits in general. We help to implement that and just make sure there's rhythm, there's accountability, and there's structure within the organization. And then we create a more sustainable organization — so it's all about building resilience within the team, coaching those leaders up, and making sure that we're leaving that organization stronger than we did before.

[42:07] I feel like you've said that one before.

[42:08] It's been an absolute pleasure to have you today. This has been an amazing conversation. I feel like I have a thousand more questions for you, but I want to stick to the time we have allotted. If someone wanted to find you, hopefully in a good way — hopefully you haven't made any mortal enemies on the podcast today — what's the best way to get in touch with you?

[42:30] Best way is just hit up our website, switchadvisory.com, or hit me up directly at info@switchadvisory.com.

[42:38] Amazing. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show today. This has been a blast and I look forward to keeping chatting.

[42:44] Thanks so much, Keith. Appreciate it.

[42:46] If you've made it this far, like and subscribe on YouTube or follow and leave a review on your favorite podcasting platform so you don't miss any future episodes.

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