Fractional Hustle

Welcome back to Fractional Hustle. My guest today is Chris Belly. I'm very excited to talk to Chris. Chris hails from Melbourne, Australia. He is currently out of Indianapolis.

Chris is the founder of Crew. He's a marketing growth consultant specializing in brand experience, brand strategy, executive design, and visual and interactive design. He's a rock climber. He's a supporter of the reboot project, empowering veterans and force responders to undertake personal and physical transformation to thrive as civilians. Chris, thanks so much for being a guest today for me.

Something I kinda wanna touch upon, right, is the culture shock. Right? You know, you came over from from Australia to to to America and, you know, kinda started up your career over here. How was that transition like? What were any difficulties you faced?

You know, I I know that's probably an adjustment. Right? Yeah. Thank you for having me. Yeah.

The culture shock, America and Australia have a lot of similarities. So when I first arrived over here nearly nine years ago now, I thought it'd be relatively easy to transition into a career, transition into the workforce and just kind of pick up where I left off from, from back home. What I wasn't really prepared for was the, the differences in just even, relationships, the network that I had, and I guess historical context of, employers and places that you went to school and things like that. So even though I had, you know, fifteen to twenty years of pretty good experience, within, you know, some kind of leading really well recognized brands in Australia, some of those companies most of those companies weren't known to the people that I was talking to here in America. In addition to that, I didn't go to college over here.

I wasn't in an alumni network. I wasn't part of a fraternity. So there was a lot really, really difficult for people to vouch for you or even, you know, do reference checks for you and things like that. So that was a pretty tough transition of trying to reestablish a network and and get in front of the right people, and then have people vouch for you and, and provide recommendation for you to to get the foot in the door on that first job. Yeah.

Yeah. So you literally had to have your work speak for itself. You know what I mean? You definitely had to get some some good work behind you. And so speaking of good work, you know, you are now the founder of Crew.

Can you tell us a little bit about that journey? I know that's, you know, relatively recent, right, within the past two years, you know, starting that off. How was that journey from, you know, going from your previous work to launching your own business? Yeah. So for the first six or seven years while I was over here, I ran sales and marketing for a much larger design agency here in Indianapolis that I was actually part of a management buyout of.

But through through the pandemic, what we started to notice was that businesses needed to shift, I guess, their their mentality or their attitude to what the modern economy was throwing at them, and that was, you know, more constraints around budgets and spending and things like that. So I saw a gap in the market for an agency to help CMOs to do more with less, help CEOs to help their teams work smarter. So crew is essentially a collection of like minded individuals delivering the same brand design, web design, web development work that a large agency would, but through that open talent model where everybody's a a contractor or a freelancer, that have the freedom and flexibility to to pick and choose the work that they wanna do, which inevitably, results in much better work with a more engaged workforce. And what do you think the pros and the cons are for that open talent model? From an agency perspective or from my business perspective, we can deliver the same level of talent at a fraction of the price.

We don't have the overheads that traditional businesses or agencies have. We're a fully remote workforce. But having the contractor talent, the pros of that is you get a very engaged worker. If a worker wants to do the work and they're not they're not constrained by a large organization and the headaches that go along with that such as, you know, burnout and having to trek into an office and things like that. They're more engaged, and they do better work.

And in the design industry, you know, that's critical. The output is critical. The the pros for the for the worker is that, you know, like all contractors or freelancers or, fractionals as we're calling them these days, they have the freedom and flexibility to do that work from wherever they wanna work. They get to spend more time with their family. They don't have the commutes going to work.

Traditionally, the per hour rate is stronger than it would be working for a business. The cons, they need to find their own work oftentimes. They have to manage their own taxes and accounting. They have to provide their own health care, but there's allowances for those things. That's why you do attract a a higher dollar rate.

So it's it's kind of you have to have the stomach for it if you're going to venture into the fractional world because it can be a little bit uncertain. Yeah. Yeah. And something I've noticed, and I I believe we spoke spoke about it in our email exchange was it's much more easy for people to push a brand or to push something that isn't themselves. Right?

And when it when they're putting their themselves, their reputation on the line as the brand when they're selling themselves, people get a little, you know, the imposter syndrome, you know, whatever you wanna call it. You know? And and so do you have any advice for people on the best ways to put themselves out there? Yeah. So being fractional has become a very kinda trendy term.

It's like I said, it's it's not for the faint of heart. You have to have a stomach for it because there is a lot of inconsistency day to day. I think what I see particularly with the fractional marketing leaders is I think they fail to understand that the pipeline if they had worked for a much larger organization, there is always a stacked pipeline, and there's always something to do. When you're working for yourself, you have to create your own pipeline. You have to market yourself, and you have to do the selling.

So what happens is, traditionally, when they've marketed a strong brand, they've had the the the positioning, and they've had the messaging, and they they understand how to articulate the value and things like that. When they're representing themselves, it's almost all the same marketing principles that they were applying within their within their field of work go out the window. And it's, for me, it's it's much of the same. You have to be articulating what value you bring to an organization. You have to be providing, I guess, the experiences across the the human interactions, the brand, and you have to have a digital presence to attract the eyeballs to to take prospective buyers or clients through a journey to to to want to engage with you.

And I understand why it's so hard to be it's easy to be objective about a branch. But when when it's yourself, it's hard to look yourself in the mirror and be objective of, you know, what are my strengths? What are my weaknesses? It's almost too too real for for people to to be honest. Right?

To be honest with their strengths and, you know, where they're at. But you mentioned also that, you know, just being remote can be a huge advantage, you know, spending more time with family, spending more time, you know, doing whatever they need to do in their personal lives. But how would you recommend someone still build a strong network as everyone, you know, spread out all over the country, all over the world? You know, what what advice would you give people to still build up a network in, a strong community of other fractional workers or, you know, other people that you can do that you can loop in to get a project done? Yeah.

I think that the what's critical or what's important when you're venturing into the into the fractional space is to make sure that you not only have a pipeline of work, but you're continuing to maintain relationships and build relationships when the next round of work is coming in. If you're a fractional worker that delivers work as well, you can sometimes get comfortable with 1 or 2 clients and then take your eye off the, you take your eye off the ball in the sense that you need to be constantly generating more pipeline for when those, you know, clients maybe end a contract or or the work just happens to finish if it's project to project. So getting out and networking, a lot of these network events or conferences, there's a number of communities that have sprung up over the past few years that not only are a valuable source of knowledge sharing amongst peers, but also have kinda Slack communities where, you know, people bounce ideas off each other, people get connected. So even though you are remote and in different areas, you're still able to have interactions with like minded peers, prospective contracts, or prospective prospective partners and prospective clients.

And so when it comes to, you know, kind of building out the other parts of this of this, right, we know we talked about taxes. We talked about retirement, health care. You know? How would you go about giving someone who might be interested in fractional work just to go about that? You know?

Right? I know for especially for health care, it varies state to state. Right? There's, like, some some you know? Depending on what state you're in, there might be options for you on to get, you know, state sponsored health care.

I know for where I am at, right, you can form a collective with other entrepreneurs to kind of go to the insurance companies as, you know, this group of people that are leveraging that that number to, you know, get a better rate. What would you advise people to do just to kind of get those those things under control? Because I do think it leads to just this freedom. Right? This freedom of choice to be able to, you know, kind of live your life how you want.

I think what I've noticed about America is a lot of people are very conditioned into thinking that you have to work for an organization. There's natural stages that you go through in life. And 1 of them is you, you go to college and you get a job and you get a job because the job has security, not only in the paycheck that it delivers, but contributes to your future retirement and healthcare benefits and things like that. 1 of the first questions that people ask when someone is laid off or someone moves jobs or someone decides to go out on their own is, did you lose your benefits? And it's almost like these handcuffs that keep you tied to an organization, but you're right.

There are options for people. The grass is, I wouldn't say necessarily greener for everybody on the other side, but you don't need to be so restricted by, I guess, corporate America. When you're fractional or a freelancer or a contractor, you're essentially your own business. So whether you're ten ninety nine or you've set up an LLC or you've got an S corp or something like that, you're now not only the person that delivers work, but you're a business owner and you have to think like a business owner as well. So little things like ensuring that you're charging enough of an hourly rate to not only cover your wages and what you take home, but in order to cover your taxes, in order to cover a contribution to some type of retirement, to cover some healthcare benefits, but also to, to cover some PTO.

You know, if you were, if you had two or four weeks of PTO at your previous job, you need to kind of factor that in so that you have a gap at the end of the year where you can take some time off when When it comes to health care, I mean, you're right. There's a number of co ops that are out there that exist, for organisations. And, you know, whether it's the marketplace or whether it's a private insurer, it's just doing research. So for our team and anybody that's thinking of joining our team, we like to provide support. And whether that's support that we're providing for them as far as making introductions to accountants or introductions to health care providers and things like that, or even if it's just speaking to the people that are already working with us about what they're doing, how they've set up their kind of their their new life or their new career as a as a consultant or a fractional.

Switching gears a little bit, Chris, you know, we you're branding expert. Right? You know? Can you just tell me a little bit about your philosophy when it comes to branding? You know?

Say you get a new prospective client coming in and, you know, they they wanna they wanna pick your brain. You know? What are you looking for when you're trying to just make a brand more more efficient, you know, more more impactful? Yeah. Well, very kind of you to say branding expert.

I think when it comes to brands, we work a lot in b to b software. In b to b software, a lot of the companies that we work with sell a very similar product. And the only true differentiator between those products is the brand experience that they can provide. So a lot of people come to us and think that brand is just the visual aesthetics of the organization, the logo, the colors and things like that. Or even the website experience is just an isolated digital product.

What we think about when we think of brand is we think about a more holistic experience. Your brand is the true differentiator between what you're doing and what your competition is doing. But that experience is kind of threefold. It's the in person experience, how you or your team, represent the organisation and how quickly you can articulate value that you can provide. The second part is the the human experience, and that is the brand.

That is the visual aesthetics of the brand and what type of emotion does it does it cause within people to compel them to act. And finally is the digital experience that when people come to your website, they need to understand what it is that you do very quickly. They have a very short consideration span and they need to be guided through a natural, you know, user journey to click to the next part. So if you've got the if you think about the brand in 3 parts, all of those things have to provide a consistent experience from end to end. Yeah.

And so I feel like that's that's probably tricky to to make sure that all those those 3 parts are coherent. You know? So how would you go about just advising someone to you know, if you see something is out of sorts between 1 of those 3 parts, how do you get it all into lockstep, you know, and and to and to be this unified front to move forward and hopefully, you know, generate a better experience on the digital side in person, you know, when you're working on the with with people in person. Yeah. I mean, a lot of it starts at the top.

A lot of it starts as a an executive level down initiative. You know, that misaligned experience between brand and web, particularly, A lot of people will come to us and say, we need a website redesign. It doesn't say anything. Oftentimes, it's got nothing to do with the design of the website. Visually, the website is fine.

Aesthetically, it's fine, but it's the words on the page that don't mean anything to anybody. So I mentioned consideration span earlier. I don't say people have a short attention span because people don't have a short attention span. If you can sit through a a three and a half hour game of professional football or you can binge watch 7 TV shows back to back, your attention span's pretty good. It's a consideration span.

So people have an expectation that things get delivered much more quickly to them, and they have an expectation when they arrive at your website that they're going to be they're going to quickly understand what it is that you do. And if they can't do that quickly, they bounce off that page. So that inconsistent experience is something that the, senior executives need to kinda push down on the on the rest of the organization to make sure that every touch point with a customer every touch point is with a customer is considered and worked on simultaneously, not in silos. Yeah. And so when I think of bad brands or good brands, you know, when I'm when I'm thinking of just, like, what would you consider a good brand?

You know, like, what what would a good brand be doing well? I always go to the example of an airline, and Southwest airline is both good and bad from an aligned brand experience and a misaligned brand experience. You have, you have the human experience, which is the brand, which is the very iconic and well recognized colors of Southwest Airlines. You have the in person experience, which is differentiated and unique where everybody lines up by boarding number and things like that. There's no assigned seats.

The staff are a bit quirky and whimsical and a bit playful and things like that. So that's a differentiated experience. Then you have an incredible digital experience, which is I think the mobile app that Southwest provide is by far and away 1 of the most user friendly digital experiences. So all of those things combined create a memorable brand experience. There is kind of this part though of Southwest airlines.

And I was caught up in it a few years ago where their computer systems went down and I had 3 young kids at an airport getting ready to go for break. We had a 6AM flight. We didn't depart until 12:00. Now you can have the best brand in the world. You can have the most playful air hostess in the world and you can have the best booking system in the world.

But all of a sudden, now I have an opportunity to not like Southwest airlines because they've got me on a six hour delay because their technology didn't support that experience. In the same way that when you fly somewhere, you can, you, you, you love the airline. They got you there on time, but the in person experience with the hostess, they were rude or they didn't help you or they, you know, all those types of things can then completely sour the relationship or the experience that you had. An airline is there to get you from a to b safely and on time. They drop you off there ten minutes earlier, and you still had a poor experience because of the way that person interacted with you or the way that your boarding pass didn't print out when it needed to print out.

So there's all these little touch points along the way that create a brand experience. Yeah. And then 1 mishap can completely derail derail that. Right? So it's like so say, you know, maybe that's a reason why a brand is bringing you on.

Right? You have, you know, a mishap. How do you kind of claw your way back? And I know it probably takes time, right, to to rebuild that reputation, but how would you go about doing that from from the from a poor brand perspective? Well, I mean, the the your reputation is is everything.

And I had a I had a boss who became a business partner who continues to be a mentor to this day, who used to have a saying in the design world as at a profit if we can, at a loss if we must. Now Now it's not his quote. It was a quote actually originated from, way back in the day of, shipmakers, and I can't remember the guy's name, but it was also stolen by a bourbon company. At a profit if we can, at a loss if we must, but we will always do good work. I think when you're trying to preserve your reputation when when there is a mishap or there is a misalignment in the experience, even if the project or the experience or what you're providing starts to tip into the negative or into the red and you start to be less profitable on something, At a profit if we can.

Yes. At a loss if we must. At a loss if we must, we must rectify this. We must do good work, and we must leave the customer with a smile on their face. Yeah.

And I'm noticing, you know, kind of that trend just overall where, you know, to go back to the airport analogy. Right? You know, it's just like if I've had a bad experience on the air on an airline, it's almost as if they don't care. Right? So it's like, I don't want to ever use that airline again just out of spite, you know, or just you know?

And so if someone, especially in today's day and world, does go the extra mile to, you know, if if I had a poor experience, but then they try to rectify it, that does go a long way with me personally because I've been a part of so many brand experiences where there's been no effort or no accountability, I guess, is the word I'm looking for, right, amongst brands today. Yeah. I mean, the the that's that that same Southwest Airline. That same Southwest Airline experience, I should say, ended up with, refunded tickets and I think refunded points from memory, which enabled me to take the kids on the following year spring break free of charge. Yeah.

You know? So, you know, they they can, they can rectify ugly situations, and it's kind of incumbent on an organization to rectify those those situations. Yeah. So we were talking a little bit about music before this podcast. Right?

And then I know, you know, you take care of your body as well. You know? How important you know? And I'm a musician too. You know?

When I'm when I'm not, when I don't have the work hat on, you know, I flip on the other the music hat. And, so, you know, how important is it for you just to have those other things, you know, to have the rock climbing, to have, you know, the the music side of things just to keep you just to keep you balanced, just to keep you, you know, sharp between the ears? Yeah. I think balance is balance is the, the, the most beautiful word for it. You've got to have an outlet.

I think we get so caught up in work that, you know, these sixty hour weeks are not uncommon and you you lose yourself in in in your work. So, you know, music's funny. I play in an acoustic duo with a good friend of mine, and we have a great time doing it. Don't get me wrong. We make no money.

We make a little bit of money. Yeah. But we we're not, you know, we're not retiring from our jobs to pursue music. What it does for me, though, it gives me if I'm performing, it gives me three hours to sit up there, smile, play music, and it's the only thing that I'm thinking about. You know, as opposed to if I go to the movies with my kids or something like that, I do have the distraction of my mobile phone.

I do have the distraction of thinking about what's going on with work. But for those three hours when I'm sitting up there with a guitar, sitting there with my with a good friend of mine and we're just playing music for people, that's the only thing I think about. And it's a it's a massive distraction that just makes me so happy. I think on the physical side, I think your physical fitness is a has a direct correlation to your mental health as well. I've been reading fascinating articles on the correlation between, mortality and, leg strength, which sounds really weird.

Everybody used to talk about the core, but now they're talking about leg strength. And not only as you get older to have strong lower body that enables you to continue to work on your cardiovascular system and things like that, but so for the for the actual physical health benefits, but being being active and able to move around keeps your mind active as well because it keeps you in social circles. And so as you get to, you know, as you get over a certain age, and I don't know I don't even know what elderly is anymore as I start to start to push past my mid forties. That is fascinating that, lower body strength has a direct correlation to, I guess, life expectancy. So for all those people skipping leg day, you're doing yourself a huge disservice is what I'm hearing.

Do not do not skip leg day. Yeah. I mean, it makes sense. You know? I mean, how often, you know, older folks falling.

Right? You know what I mean? I feel like you hear that all the time. So it kinda it makes sense to me. I have not heard that, but that makes a ton of sense where it's like, you know, yeah.

Make sure, you know, your legs my my grandparents, you know, still thankfully, they're 89, you know, sixty five years of marriage and, you know, I they're going up and down the stairs of their house. They're still in their home that they've had for, you know, decades. And so it's like, you know, there's definitely something to that. Just the fact that they're going up and downstairs all day is they're, you know, they're maintaining it. So no.

No. I really I really, appreciate that. Something else I really like about your story too, Chris, is that, you know, you give back as well with, the reboot project. You know? Can you tell me a little bit more about that where you're just, you know, giving back?

Right? You know, you're you're obviously, you know, smart a smart guy and, you know, doing well. And so how is that important to to keep in mind with this, you know, the mind, the body, right, you know, the work doing keeping all these plates spinning, you know, how does that piece fit into it as well? Yeah. I think for for personal reasons, it's I've had a pretty challenging kind of two years.

And then I've always been kind of asked to go and you sit on boards or you kinda help with volunteer organizations, but none of them that really kinda captured my attention or or my imagination. We built a brand. This guy, Brian Bush, who's become a very good friend of mine, We built a brand for his not for profit a few he's a veteran, and he came to me with an idea for, the reboot project, which is essentially a twelve month nutrition, fitness, and and mental training program helping veterans and first responders prepare for the next challenge in their life. And some of it is reintegrating into society. Other other times, it's just to be the best version of themselves.

And I was just kind of caught up in his his mission and his vision. Brian has been a successful businessman in other areas, but this was his kind of opportunity to give back. And I think he wanted to do that because he was so frustrated and upset with the not the lack of support that's out there, but he that he could make a difference with it. Fortunately, now we built a great brand, and we've got a great website for him and, collecting donations and putting these people through the program. Brian invited me out to Colorado for the first graduate program, and we climbed, two fourteen is out in Colorado back to back, just to kind of see the impact that it had on the people that were going through the program.

I wrote in my blog that as we were climbing this mountain, you know, I thought to myself, the guy that was in front of me was, was 1 of the veterans. And I doubt in the previous ten years, he had had such clarity in his mind about what his future might hold. And that was just very impactful on me. So when we got back from that trip, I said to Brian, look, I'm I'm in on this. Of course, I'm gonna help advise on the brand and things like that, but whatever this program needs, I'm here to support it.

And I think what that does is we talk about balance, but we talk about also being well rounded as well. Yeah. And I think that's critically important. It's also important to set an example if you've got young kids on the health side, you know, keeping, keeping healthy is critically important for young people these days. Music for me, I've got 2 very musical and artistic daughters, showing them, you know, what it what it takes to work at something that may not be your career is important, but also helping people that are less fortunate than us as well.

Yeah. And clarity in a world of uncertainty is a beautiful gift to give someone. So that's that's really huge. You know, if someone gave me you know, just taught me a little bit more about myself, you know, like, that I'll be I'll be very grateful. So, no, that's that's very cool.

You know? I've, yeah, some organizations that I like to, you know, keep up with and just help out if I can. Just, so no. That's that's really, really cool. And so, Chris, if someone wanted to keep up with you or reach out and learn more, where would be the best place to do that?

How can someone, you know, just contact you if they wish to do so? Yeah. So I'm I'm very active on LinkedIn. So I'm always always checking LinkedIn and and staying on top of that. You can catch us at the, at the company website, which is thecrew, t h e c r u e, Co.

If someone would sellme the Com, I'd be I'd appreciate that. But it's the crew, c r u e, dot co. Yeah. You can get get me LinkedIn or the website. Yeah.

And I'm I'm always willing to meet people and and chat through kinda challenging problems with them. Awesome. Well, Chris, thank you so much for being a guest on Fractional Hustle. I really appreciate it. You know, I I had a great time with this conversation.

Thank you for having me.