Remote Work Life Podcast
At Remote Work Life, we spotlight successful location-independent entrepreneurs and established remote work professionals. Our interviews highlight their journeys and growth strategies, and their inspiring stories offer ideas for your entrepreneurial and professional ventures and reveal insights on thriving while working remotely.
Remote Work Life Podcast
The Fractional COO Model That Actually Works w/ Mary Alice Duff
What if your work actually gave you energy back? That’s the thread we follow with Mary Alice Duff, a fractional COO who left a decade in social work, built a clothing brand the hard way, and now runs a profitable, remote-first practice from the south of France—without burning herself or her clients out. We talk about the real operations work founders rarely admit: pricing that quietly destroys margins, teams without clarity, and systems that leak time and money. Mary Alice opens her playbook for turning that mess into momentum.
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Hey everybody's Alex again at the Remote Work Live Podcast. Today I've got with me uh Mary Alice Duff. She lives in the south of France with her husband, daughter, Dog Kat. A move that they made quite on scene four years ago and they've never looked back. If you're not traveling throughout Southern Europe for talking to a good book, you'll find in the kitchen cooking, baking, or entertaining. Work-wise as a portfolio careerist. He's a partner globally remote small businesses as a fractional COO and transformation partner. He runs a remote coaching program for new fractional operators and writes about the messy, joyful reality of self-employment and small business through a newsletter, op, and other opinions. These days he tries to approach both work and life with a spirit of joie de vive. Curious, playful, and full of possibility. Probably one of the best introductors I've ever heard on this podcast. If not the best. Very welcome, Mary Alice. Thank you for joining me today.
Mary Alice Duff:Thanks for having me.
Alex Wilson-Campbell:Pleasure, absolute pleasure. So as I always do, can you just begin by telling me? I know I've given a little bit of introduction there, but give me a bit about your background and what led you to this point.
Mary Alice Duff:Yeah, sure. So I have a pretty unconventional background. I actually started my career in social work and community organizing. I worked in the nonprofit sector, I don't know, 10 years. No, I actually started when I was 16 in the nonprofit sector. And I went to school for social work, and I thought that would be my career, you know, studying social change and law and social policy. And I did that for a while and I really enjoyed it. But along the way, I realized that wasn't the life I wanted. I wanted to carve out something for myself. So I made a very sharp right turn and started a clothing company. And I ran what was called a vertically integrated clothing company. So we designed, cut, sewed everything in-house in a studio in Philadelphia, and we shipped it to customers around the world. Um, and that was awesome, but also exhausting. And uh, if anybody listening works in fashion, it is absolutely brutal. It's hard to make money, margins are tight. Um, and then COVID happened and I started working remotely, and I got a taste of working remotely and fell in love with remote work and realized as someone who's quite introverted, remote work suits me because I don't have to do as much peopleing. So I don't get I don't get fried as quickly as in-person communication. Um, and so I closed my clothing business and I pivoted to helping other small business owners build globally remote businesses. Um I do that by partnering with them uh to increase their revenue, focusing on profitability, getting their team in alignment, uh, and basically running businesses that are joyful, um, that don't burn themselves out or their teams out or through piles of cash. Uh so that's what I do now. And then I coach other people who want to enter fractional work. Uh, there's definitely an explosion happening in the fractional space, and so I help people who are transitioning from full-time employment to working for themselves.
Alex Wilson-Campbell:Sounds good. Sounds great to me. Um, and I'm glad you're here today because there's a lot I can learn, there's a lot for people out there who need to learn and want to learn about this way of working. Um you've got different layers to your experience. You've got, you know, you've you've walked the walked the talk. Is that is that you've walked the talk, you've you know, you've had your business, you've set up it was an e-commerce business, I take it like was it Shopify, something like that?
Mary Alice Duff:Yep, yeah, something like that.
Alex Wilson-Campbell:And now you're uh as well as that, you're not just done done the sort of um you've had been in the trenches on that side, but also um in the operational side. So it's there's a lot to learn. But um what I'm intrigued to know is uh I want to dig a bit deeper into your business and tell me a bit more about the business.
Mary Alice Duff:Yeah, yeah. So uh I have a couple of different revenue streams. The primary one is I partner with these small businesses. So they operate, they've been remote since day one. Like they've never had an office, they often have team members in various countries, there's often multiple languages being spoken. Um, and we're working across borders, time zones, et cetera. Um, my bottom line for who I work with is they have to have a phenomenal product or service, but everything else is a bit of a mess. Um, so you know, people don't really know, uh, they don't have a clear job description, they don't know what they're responsible for, what they're being held accountable for. Delivery is kind of inconsistent, you know, they don't have standard operating procedures. Maybe their pricing is off. So um, you know, they might be doing really well, but they're not profitable. Revenue looks good, but they're actually bleeding money every month. Maybe they don't have marketing systems. Um, so bottom line is sub 5 million, 3 million in revenue, uh, as small as 500k in revenue. Um, they have a globally remote team. They they've never even considered an office. Uh, a lot of the companies I work with are what are called uh experiential. So they're offering an in-person product or service. It's very human-driven. Um, and I go in as their transformation partner, and my only objective is to make their business more profitable uh without burning through their team, right? I'm like anti-burnout, I'm people-centered, um, and doing it in a way that's super scrappy and sustainable. So I'm never gonna suggest a fix like spend 20 grand a month on Facebook ads, or you need to hire this shiny marketing consultant, because it's all about uh organic, working scrappily, uh working sustainably, things that these businesses can actually handle because they're bootstrapped, they don't have investment financing. Um so that's one part of the business. I can take three clients at a time. Uh, that would make me very, very busy. Uh, my sweet spot is two. And then in addition to that, I run this coaching program. So it's a six-week coaching program. Uh, it's people who are transitioning from full-time work and they want to set up a solo fractional uh business on their own. So they want to do the consulting work that I do, but on their own. But they've never been self-employed before. So, how do they define their offer, their positioning? Where do they find clients? How do they price? What kind of tools do they need in order to do this? How do they protect themselves? All those things. So, together over the course of six weeks, we go over that. At the end of the six weeks, they're ready to launch a fractional practice and start making money on their own, working from wherever they choose.
Alex Wilson-Campbell:That kind of uh prompts other questions that I probably didn't put on the the list of questions.
Speaker 3:That's okay.
Alex Wilson-Campbell:You know, I I I because I'm intrigued now because that you've talked you've spoken about the the theoretical things. Have you got like a the first the the um the sort of first side of your business? Have you got like a practical example of you don't necessarily have to name the client if you don't want to, but have you got a practical example of how you've how you've done done that?
Mary Alice Duff:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I have a client right now, they're in the retreat space, so they offer um retreats to individuals who want to escape to France. And uh one of the things I'm doing for them is the it's the first thing I do when working with a client. I do a comprehensive audit of their business. So I'm digging into all their financials, I'm digging into all their marketing brand and sales stuff, I'm digging into their people. Um so I'm meeting their people, I'm getting their job descriptions, I'm interviewing them, and then I'm looking at all their systems. So, how are things talking to each other? What kind of tech are they using? Do they have standard processes or do they keep repeating themselves? Um, so for example, first thing I notice in this audit is their pricing is too low. So every retreat they're actually selling is actually making the business worse. Um, and a lot of times, you know, especially new business owners, they don't come from a business background. They have a passion for the service that they're offering, right? So whether it's food tours or um, you know, some hospitality experience, or uh, you know, my husband does edtech, he does STEM activities with kids. They're coming at it from the background of they're providing an experience that they're excited about, that they want to get their clients excited about. And they just see, oh, okay, I've priced it. I, you know, I make I make more money than it costs. That's good, right? And it's like, you need to make way more money than it costs because you're talking about your operating expenses. What are operating expenses? Okay, that website you have, the marketing for the website, the accountant that you pay every month to make sure all your numbers look good, all those subscriptions you have, and then you have to pay yourself a salary, and then you still need to be profitable. And then after all that, maybe you have debt payments and you have to pay the ban, you know, you've got taxes. So, so often with these small business owners, one of the first things I come in is I look at their numbers first. Because if the numbers aren't right, nothing in the business is going to be right. No volume of uh great content or viral marketing or that super special hire is gonna fix the business if their numbers aren't right. And it's not like a software company where we just have to get to scale and then it's gonna sort all of our problems. No, because everything you add is another person who has to deliver the experience. Um, so that's just one way I work with my clients. I start with this audit and then I start identifying, okay, where are our quick wins here? We need to increase the price by 500, you know, per experience. There we go. We're gonna do that our next launch. We need to tighten up these job descriptions and make sure this person is doing that and this person is doing that, playing to their strengths. Great. We need to actually have a marketing system that is doable, repeatable, and consistent. None of this, oh, I'll just post to Instagram, whenever. No. You need to have consistency. And we need to make sure all of our operations are tight, our systems are talking to each other. If we have standard operating procedures, they're documented so people aren't making stuff up on the fly and wasting time. Um, so that's how I start with a client. Once we get through that audit, I see as a fractional COO where's the best places for me to plug in, where do I need to hire contractors? Um, they work with me on a monthly retainer, and then we work together from anywhere from three months to 24 months. And again, my only objective is to make their business more profitable. Um, that's it.
Alex Wilson-Campbell:Sounds good. And it in in a sense, I can see now why you you've got the other side to the business, which is the um helping people to understand how they can become fractionals themselves and all the different steps and all the different um aspects that they need to consider when setting up. So again, tell me um is is there an uh is there a case study or an example of that you can you can give? Because this side that's idea of business is focused on the experiential. Is the fractional coaching just experiential people or is it just anybody who wants to be a fractional?
Mary Alice Duff:It's anybody who wants to be a fractional, but I really do tend to attract people in operations, HR, basically non-marketing people. Marketing fractionals are pretty good at figuring out how to do this, right? They know how to sell. That's what they do, right? It's the people who are transitioning from a chief operating officer role at a company or a chief uh people officer or head of HR who could definitely monetize their skills as a self-employed person, but they just have no idea how to make that happen because they've probably one never even considered self-employment. Um, and if they've had, they just kind of feel overwhelmed about it. And lastly, they're just not natural marketers. They're the kind of people who just want to get on with the work. Like my client always says to me, I just want to do good work. That's it. And I'm like, yeah, but what's that mean?
Alex Wilson-Campbell:Yeah.
Mary Alice Duff:But like if nobody knows you're doing good work, yeah, you're not gonna get booked. Right? So you have to be able to figure out how to talk about your work in a way that gets you clients. Um, so I just had my first cohort, we actually finish on Monday, uh, really excited about it. And, you know, really the big takeaway for them is they all have ironed out their positioning. They know what their offer is, they know how they're pricing themselves. Every single one of them was underpriced by about 60% when they came into the program, which again, super duper normal. Like when I first took fractional clients, I was charging so it's an embarrassingly small amount. Um, and wondered why I was stuck in like never feeling like I had enough and working way too many hours. Now I know. Now I know what I need to charge for it to be a sustainable business and what is reflective of what I bring to the business, right? Um, but yeah, they all raise their prices, they have a positioning statement. We taught, uh, we taught them how to develop an actual pipeline. So these are the people you're reaching out to. This is why you're reaching out. How do you write cold emails that actually get opened? How do you have a discovery call? How do you write a proposal? How do you get paid for your work? So step by step by step, now every single one of them knows exactly how to launch and run their fractional business.
Alex Wilson-Campbell:It's amazing. And uh no, seriously, it's um because like you said, I think um it there's so many complexities and intricacies um to setting for business. I'm speaking like I'm not an expert myself, but you're the expert in terms of that. So uh, you know, I I know uh you know some people just actually fear doing it. So having someone who uh like you can be be there with them, especially working uh remotely. Yeah, um you when you're considering something like this, or if you're actually doing it and perhaps not doing it to the level that you want to do it, it can sometimes get quite it can get quite isolating, can't it? And you you you kind of uh as well as asking chat GPT, you're wondering else who else you can ask who knows what they're what they're doing. So somebody like you sort of you know gold. But um what what inspired you to to start this type of business in a location? I know you kind of hinted at it, but in a location-independent sort of way.
Mary Alice Duff:Yeah, so the coaching practice or the my fractional COO work or both?
Alex Wilson-Campbell:Oh both, really, yeah. Yeah, both.
Mary Alice Duff:Yeah, so um I got a taste of remote work during COVID and realized how much better it was for my brain. I was able to think clearer, I wasn't exhausted at the end of the day, I just felt energized. And um one night, and this was when I lived in the United States, um, one night um my husband and I were chatting and we just were kind of joking. If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you live? And we both said, the south of France, ha ha ha. And it was a joke. Like it wasn't a thing. And I was like, wait a minute, could we sell this? And so, you know, you give me a good idea, I'm gonna go chase it down. And so I started Googling, and lo and behold, you can, if you are a self-employed person, get a visa to come to France and start a business. So I knew that I was never gonna find my clients like physically in France. Like, I'm not gonna go walk into somebody's business in France. They they actually have kind of an old school traditional approach to employment, and so the whole fractional thing hasn't really landed here amongst French people. So I knew I needed to build a location-independent business. One, I knew I wanted to work remotely. I was never going into an office ever again. Um, and two, that it just wasn't a fit for the typical French company. But what I found was how many English speakers have businesses in Europe that are remote, whether they're in France or the UK or Spain or Portugal or wherever. Um, and that's how I was able to build. I was posting on LinkedIn, posting on socials, meeting people online, telling them about how I work, what I offer, and I got my first client that way. Uh, and then that snowballed into another, into another. Um, but honestly, uh building a location independent business was the best thing I ever did. Um, there's no amount of money you could pay me to get back into an office.
Alex Wilson-Campbell:I hear that a lot these days.
Mary Alice Duff:There's none. Like there's no number. Um, and I'm dead serious. Um, yeah, I just it's the best thing for my brain, it's the best thing for my health, it's the best thing for my family. Um I can travel when I want, I can work when I want. Um, it's absolutely the best choice for me. Uh, and it works for my clients too.
Alex Wilson-Campbell:Right, I love hearing this. And uh no, it's because like I said, uh I've kind of slowed down on doing the interview, so it's kind of uh gives me gives me energy hearing all of this. Um so another question I wanted to ask is um you talk about um your skills, um, e-commerce, um uh helping people with on the coaching side, the operational side, and the coach, you know, some people along the way, you uh if you're thinking about doing something like this, you're gonna have to do some sort of like self self-audit, you know, in terms of what what you're good at, you know, not just the soft but the hard skills.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah.
Alex Wilson-Campbell:You know, how did you go about that? Is that something that well, I'm assuming that's something that you did, but it's it was somebody did somebody say to you, Mary Allice, you know what, you should do this, or did you did you think let me do it?
Mary Alice Duff:So the last job I had before I became um an entrepreneur was I was a chief of staff. And so a chief of staff is a super cool job. It's the right hand of a CEO in a company, um, and they get to touch every part of the business. And it's really great for people whose brains get bored, who are very curious, who like to draw connections between things, um, who are good communicators, it can be very convincing. Um, and they just crack on, they just get shit done. That's just like that's a typical chief of staff, right? Um, and I realized how much I liked connecting the dots, building, and not doing the same thing every day. Um, and that's how I learned everything about operations, finance, fundraising, marketing, because I was in this position that forced me to work with everybody. I wasn't, I didn't get to be like just hide in my silo, right? I had to work with everybody, the HR department, the fine, the CFO, whomever. Um, so then when I went out and started my own company, um, you know, being the chief of staff at a nonprofit is wildly different than going out and starting your own clothing business, right? Um, but the beauty of starting something is you don't know what you don't know. So you go in thinking, all right, you know, I've got these skills, I've got that, and then you actually start doing it and you're like, shit, I don't know anything. Uh so I joke that everything I learned about small business finance, I learned by spending and losing my own money. Like every mistake I made, I learned the hard way, you know? And so when I have my clients and I'm looking at their financials, I'm like, I'm telling you you need to raise this price, not because like we just want to put more money in our pockets, because I want your business to survive because mine's in it, because I wouldn't raise my prices, right? Like I'm trying to save you from yourself. Let me help you. Um but yeah, I don't know if there's so much of self-audit. There's to get on with the work and you have to do things, and as you're doing them, you realize I'm really great at this, or I'm really struggling. Let me call in some help. Let me find somebody to consult, uh, somebody who can train me. Can I t teach myself this skill, whatever it is? But so much of business development and entrepreneurship is it's like this constant self-development loop, this constant personal development loop of trying, failing, learning, trying, failing, learning over and over and over again. Um yeah, it doesn't mean you're ever gonna be good at anything at everything, but you you do get to figure out, okay, where are my strengths, where should I be spending my time versus where do I need support, you know?
Alex Wilson-Campbell:Yes, uh uh, definitely. And um I think to do the kind of work that you're doing, um You have to have that entrepreneurial mindset, don't you? Um people say it it sounds a bit cliche like you shouldn't have a fear of failure, but I think that that that's something that I guess a lot of people will will have in the back end of the mind that nobody wants to fail, do they? They want they want people they want to be successful. Um that was actually leading me somewhere, but I can't remember what what line I was going down. But in terms of how did you sort of like then stack stack things up? From chief of you've gone from chief of staff, and now you've got you've got this uh this um stack of skills that you've that you've built up. Um how do you go from that to then business knowing that people need need you and then onto targeting those people and finding those clients?
Mary Alice Duff:So honestly, I I have found LinkedIn to be the most incredible resource uh for me and my small business. So I don't use any other social platforms anymore. Like I gave them all up maybe five years ago, four years ago. Uh was it three years ago? It's it's been liberating, to be quite honest. Um, and so I'm consistently posting useful content on LinkedIn, uh, you know, having a really tight LinkedIn profile that showcases what I do, who I work with, and all my past clients. Um I talk about how I can help other businesses, but more than anything, I'm just a human that people want to get to know. And I take their coffee chats, like I answer my DMs, I give my time when I'm not getting paid for it. Like I genuinely believe, like just keep talking to people. Um, and then I send really great cold emails, if I'm being honest. Um, I have multiple clients who have I booked who don't use LinkedIn because I sent a great cold email with a great subject line. Um, and so that's kind of how I start talking to clients. So I I I genuinely say, I think your business is awesome. Here's how I can help. I help such and such client do this thing, very similar space. Would you be up for a chat to see how I can lend a hand? And people genuinely like say yeah. And we have a conversation and I see if I can offer them my service. Sometimes it's not a good fit. Sometimes I'm like, hey, you can't afford me right now, but here's the five things I would do in your business tomorrow. I'd set up your, you know, your email capture and improve your email marketing so that you're actually building and nurturing your relationship, right? I'll offer them free advice or whatever. And then six months later, they might come back to me and say, hey, business is doing great. We could actually afford you now and we could use your help. Um, so that's been invaluable for me. Just relationships, talking to people online, connecting. LinkedIn is how I do that, LinkedIn and email. Um, yeah, and I'm just always open to a chat, genuinely.
Alex Wilson-Campbell:I think some people struggle with the idea that um, you know, you can use LinkedIn for that. So from crossing the the boundary or the bridge of sort of sending a message to then translating that message into a conversation, that conversation into uh you know uh into um sort of what you're doing in terms of business. Do you have a sort of like uh a system that you use to do that? Or is it is it is it just like you said, it's human connection.
Speaker 3:It's human connection.
Alex Wilson-Campbell:Yeah, yeah. Another question on top of that is obviously the like you said, LinkedIn is a great I you know, I spend most of my time on LinkedIn. There are so many businesses, so many people. You mentioned your sort of like um avatar, as it were, in terms of type of business that you've that you sort of um um approach, but how do you know that they need your help? For example.
Mary Alice Duff:So that's the tricky thing. So this is the tricky thing about operation. So if you are a fractional chief marketing officer, for example, you can go on their website, you can go on their social, you can sign up for their email marketing, and within an hour, you're like, this email sucks, your social sucks, your website isn't optimized, and you can genuinely offer suggestions.
Speaker 2:Right.
Mary Alice Duff:When you're doing the work I'm doing, it's the kind of work that founders don't talk about. They're embarrassed that their products aren't profitable, they're embarrassed that their team members aren't being paid properly or don't have job descriptions, or they, God forbid, but I hear this all the time, aren't really sure what their team is doing all day. I'm like, you're and it's not that the team is jerking them around. It's almost never that. It's just genuinely shitty communication, you know? Um, it's all the stuff they're embarrassed to admit is not working in their business, but also it's so normal. It's so normal. I have yet to meet a small business owner who has it all together. It's always a mess. My business was a mess. It's always a mess, right? And so that becomes the tricky bit is that I don't know what help they need. And that's why I don't have like a lot of uh consultants or fractional people have an offer. It's like a fixed offer. I do X, Y, and Z. Because the work I do is so customized, because every business is gonna have different issues. I don't have a fixed offer. I just want to get people on the phone or on a uh a Zoom or a Google Meet that I can talk to them and learn about their business. Um my best clients are the ones who just spill their guts in that first call. You know, and I I was just on a call the other day. She pulled up her QuickBooks and she was like, look at this, showing me her accounting. And I was like, All right, we got work to do. But like, that's the kind of founder I love who is just so self-aware that they don't know what they don't know and they've reached a point where they need help. Um, but the only way I know that is if I have real conversations because founders aren't just going to fork over that information. It's embarrassing, it's vulnerable. So they need to feel like they can trust me. And that is what my online persona, if you will, I think it engenders trust because I'm vulnerable, I tell it like it is, I'm very direct. So people feel that they can be that way with me. I hope.
Alex Wilson-Campbell:Yeah, and I I can just see why, you know, the charisma that you have as well is like once some somebody sort of gets talking to you, I'm sure that sort of that that messaging that you have, that that sort of natural net about yourself um comes across in not just in your sort of written messages, but then in your meetings, you know. Um not just that, but you I just feel that you have like um a real sort of this is this is who you are. It's like this is you, this is where you want to be, sort of thing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah.
Alex Wilson-Campbell:And that you've actually worked out what a lot of people are trying to do is you know, where where's where do I fit? You know, you know. But I mean, I'm sure you've had you mentioned some challenges that you mentioned the early on, and you mentioned the the money side of things. Um what uh were there any particular challenges that stand out for you when you're sort of in the early phases of setting up?
Mary Alice Duff:Yeah, so in the early stages of my fractional practice, uh I just wasn't charging enough. Um, I wasn't owning the engagement, I was treating those engagements as if it was some sort of pseudo-employee-employer relationship. And instead of me being the subject matter expert, coming in and providing a service to another business, right? Um, and so oftentimes it just set up like a weird power dynamic. I wasn't charging enough. Um, and then I would give up on my pipeline. So when I would be booked and busy, right, I would not be nurturing my pipeline. And so what that does is it prevents you from being able to walk away from a bad engagement because you don't have a potential client on the back burner. And I see this constantly with so like self-employed people, freelancers, fractionals, what have you, is they accept too low pay, bad relationships, poor treatment because they have stopped nurturing their business. They don't have a pipeline, they stopped posting on LinkedIn. Oh, I got really busy. Sure, but now you're stuck because you can't walk away, because you don't have a plan B. Um, and I that was my biggest trap. And I went six months without a client when I finally decided to walk away from a client engagement. I went six months. Thankfully, I had saved up enough money because I knew I was leaving, but my biggest regret was I took my foot off the gas in terms of pipeline development and nurturing my people. So now I'm booked and busy, but I am still posting on LinkedIn three, four times a week. I'm still in DMs, I still take coffee chats, I still talk to people because you never know. You never know when a client relationship just isn't working out anymore, or the business could decide to sell, or any number of things can happen. But as a self-employed person, you need to be prepared. And the first thing that you should always be working on is your own business, not your client work, your own work, your business. Um, so that way you protect yourself and you can stay in the game for the long haul. Um, so biggest mistake, lesson learned, never again.
Alex Wilson-Campbell:Yeah, I I've I've experienced that myself where I was probably on the other side, I was a bit more I was a bit too reliant on a particular client and perhaps took my my foot off the gas in terms of the the pipeline, and then I got stung myself because that client then started to freeze their hiring and slow it down, and then all of a sudden wasn't as much money coming in, and then the panic set in a little.
Mary Alice Duff:Yeah, it happens all the time. It happens all the time, all the time, constantly, you know.
Alex Wilson-Campbell:And when I look at look at your LinkedIn profile, because obviously the the the the S word that everybody sort of uh doesn't like when it comes to business sales. Um I think sales, business development, that's that's an integral integral part of setting up any business. Um and when I look at your profile, I don't really see obvious signs that you uh have done like marketing, obviously, and you're obviously a people's person, as much as you say, in fact, I'm an introvert myself, but you have a very sort of like um you're very much a people's person and somebody who can can connect with people very easily, I feel. Um what where does the sort of the because you're talking about pipelines as well, and that's a sales sort of keyword. Where did you learn all that? Where did all that come from?
Mary Alice Duff:Uh I again I think this is one of those instances of you don't know what you don't know. And I didn't learn about sales or pipeline development when I had my e-commerce business because there are no sales. It's marketing, it's a funnel, right? You have your top of funnel, middle funnel, bottom funnel, email marketing social. Like I learned that shit inside and out. So when I started my fractional practice, I was at a total deficit. I knew nothing about sales, nothing about pipeline development. And it really was just like a journey of teaching myself everything I could possibly learn. You know, and I tried all of the different tools, the CRMs and you know, some LinkedIn guy, you know, telling me buy this course. Like I tried. None of it worked for me. You know what works for me? A freaking Google Sheet. I have a Google sheet of all these super cool companies that I would just absolutely love to work with. I have their email address, I rate them on a scale of cold, warm, or hot. I reach out to them on LinkedIn, connect with them, send them an email. That's my CRM. It's you're not very sexy. I don't care, it works. Um, and that I learned everything about pipeline development and sales because I was so shit at it. And I realized like, I need to figure out because like what we're doing right now, I'm good at. I'm good at talking to people. Yeah, that isn't the issue. Having the sales call, closing the deal was never the issue because I come to a sales meeting and I put sales in air quotes because I don't even think of it as sales. How can I help? How can I help this person? Right? I'll help them right there in the call, right? But getting to that point felt so mysterious to me. So I just taught myself everything I possibly could about building a pipeline, getting people on the phone. Um, and also had a really great client who um, one of the co-founders is like a sales genius, and I would just ask him a million questions. So the really cool thing about my work is that I'm constantly learning from people smarter than me, like my own clients who have gotten really good at a specific thing. So I've just basically been picking his brain about like sales-related stuff, and then I'd apply them to my own little itty-bitty professional practice. Um, but yeah, I've gotten pretty good at it.
Alex Wilson-Campbell:Sounds that way. Yeah.
Mary Alice Duff:All way through trial and error.
Alex Wilson-Campbell:You're right though. I mean, sales is is is about like a a natural way of finding a natural way of connecting. I think it's changed quite a lot. The yeah, sales before used to, I think, used to be a bit more about the hard sell and sort of like hitting the phones and um you know going through, you know, um making 150 cold calls each day. Um whereas yeah, I you you remind me of somebody else, actually. Somebody my one of my former bosses actually, he um business owner, he has a very similar sort of principle to you in the sense that it's about uh connecting with people based on you know values, but you know, based on having an interest. You mentioned working with experiential businesses. That must be something that's come from uh you know your your your you know uh passion for one you know wanting to work for those sorts of businesses. So yeah, I I definitely like that sort of um that that that principle.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Alex Wilson-Campbell:Um one thing you were talking about, okay. So there's it sounds like you're you I don't know if I'm correct in saying this, but uh you you not systematic from a robotic point of view, but I get the feeling that you're very um sort of like organized in in what you do, um in the in the business sense. I mean like sort of you you you sort your pipeline out, you do yeah, I'm not saying necessarily in a methodical way, but you know what you have to do in order to sort of get from point A to point Z. Um and how do you then stay, how do you keep productive? Because there's so many for me, as especially as a parent, I've got three children, um work from home, you know, work from different, not just from home, but from different places, and there are a lot of distractions as well to that. And there's you know, how do you stay productive in your day?
Mary Alice Duff:Um, you know, I've never, I will say I'm quite a disciplined person. Um, I am extremely goal-oriented. If I want something, if it's a financial target or a personal goal, like I am just that kind of person who's just gonna go for it. Um, I'm annoying in that way, like 6 a.m. I'm up, I'm working out, like I'm taking kicking ass and taking names. I am just a bit wired like that. Um but I will say one thing that's been really helpful is taking that first part of my day, like when I do sit down to do work and focusing exclusively on my business. So I don't start my client work until about like 10, 10, 15, but I start my work day around 8, 8, 15. Um and so that ensures that my business is getting the attention it deserves every day. It's never like being pushed to the back burner. Um, also, quite frankly, I am a foreigner. I'm an immigrant living in a country who could decide at any time to say, no, thank you. You can go now. Um, and so the more successful my business is, the more likely they are to allow me to stay, and the more likely I could attain French citizenship, which then means I have freedom of mobility all throughout the European Union. That's a hell of a motivator. Yes, you are kicking me out. Like I'm staying here. Um then thirdly, thirdly, I love money. I mean, I'm just gonna be out with it. Like I I have a family to support. I don't come from wealth, I have I have no backup plan. There's nobody back in the United States who could send me a check if I was in a pinch. It is just me. Um, you know, I'm married, I've got an 11-year-old daughter, um, and I just am absolutely hellbent on helping her build generational wealth so she has access to the opportunities that I just didn't have. Um, so yeah, I guess those those three things keep me pretty uh on it, you know, I don't feel like sending that cold email today. And I'm like, do I hate cold emails more than I love money? Yeah. I'm sending the cold email.
Alex Wilson-Campbell:I hear you, I hear you. So you were taught, you you gave us quite a little bit of a sort of a hint in terms of your your calendar. So no, it's not your daily sort of uh schedule. Um you so do you you'll get you're working out at 6 a.m.? Is that and then you're sort of like you get into 8 a.m. You get into sort of your you mentioned your business work, and then how does that look? How does that day look for you?
Mary Alice Duff:So I'm up at 6, and then I take my daughter to school. Uh I ride her on my bike to school. I'm back at my desk by 8:15, I'm doing my own business work from like 8.15 to 10. And so that could be following up with my coaching clients, it could be business development, it could be writing LinkedIn content, it could be working on my newsletter, any of those things, right? Um, then on Mondays in particular, I like to stack up all my client meetings, my face-to-face time with all my my principals. So anybody I'm doing fractional COO work, I like to meet with the founder every Monday so that we can plot out the week together. Here's the things I'm working on, these are my priorities, do they align with your priorities? Here's how they tie to the bigger picture, et cetera. And then I'm off to the races for the rest of the week, um, prioritizing various client projects uh and just like getting shit done, basically. Um, but I really do try to break up my day so that that first part of the day is on my business, second part of the day is on the client. I like to take a uh, you know, a decent lunch, go for a walk, walk my dog, um, and then I wrap up. But I have been finding that I'm trying to lean more into like my natural energy and rhythms. And if I'm feeling particularly inspired to write something on a Sunday afternoon, like I do it, you know. Um, you know, I don't have three kids, just the one. And I am finding like, you know, I have more time now to kind of dedicate to just like writing and being creative. And so really trying to enjoy that. But my days are pretty structured. Uh, but then again, if like I'm feeling like shit and I just don't want to work that day, I'll close the laptop and go for a walk, go run errands, go find something to do. Um, because my work is asynchronous for the most part. People don't need immediate answers from me. I'm not working on things that are like urgent, they're more long-term and strategic. Um, I do have a virtual assistant who I can delegate tasks to. Um, and then with the clients I work with, I also have team members I can delegate things to. So um, yeah, I mean it's pretty structured, but I also have a lot of flexibility.
Alex Wilson-Campbell:That's pretty good. Right. Yeah. And that uh that acronym AI is sort of floating around a lot in different spheres of work. Yeah. Um is AI something or any sort of form of forms of automation? Are you using any of that to sort of put you in an advantage in terms that you uh asynchronous works brilliantly, you know, anything else?
Mary Alice Duff:Yeah, I mean, I definitely am a chat GPT power user for sure. Um, so like a lot of the things that I'll be doing um when I'm like developing the best process for doing something. So I go through the process a couple of times and then I make a voice note, I dump it into ChatGPT and into A template that I've created, and now we have a standard operating procedure for that thing that I can then share with the team. Um, you know, whether it's creating a content calendar or I'll have a team meeting with a bunch of people, and then we need to get what we talked about into an Asana project. So I'll dump the transcript into Chat GPT and I'll tell it, make it into an Asana project with all of my headers, who's doing what, suggested deadlines, and then we're just dropping that into Asana. So I definitely am using ChatGPT in my day-to-day work, and I'm starting to experiment with um some new tools like AI agents. So instead of just a single prompt, it's uh actual like AI-powered agents doing one prompt from the next to the next. So create a creative brief for this blog post. Great. Write the blog post, human reviews it, great. Post the blog post to the website, great. Go on to Canva and create a pin for the blog post. Okay. Go on to Pinterest and pin the pin linking back to the website. Do that 100 times. So that's what we're experimenting with right now. Um, the reality is like I wouldn't be able to manage the client load that I have plus my coaching program as a one-person business if I didn't have AI tools. It would it would just be impossible.
Alex Wilson-Campbell:Yeah, I I did think that. It's like a lot. Some people only some people just have a coaching business, and that's that sort of like so yeah, I have to take my hat off to you for that. But um so uh I know you you you've got the coaching side of your business, but but um for anybody listening, um what what advice would you give to you know anybody who was looking to start their own location independent freelance business or fra you know to become a fractional like yourself?
Mary Alice Duff:Yeah. Yeah. So one of the little hacks that um I've shared with people online, just to kind of get you thinking more like an entrepreneur and less like an employee. So to take your resume and beef it up with everything you've ever done. Don't worry, you know, if things are related, put all of your skills, all of your accomplishments, things that you've really loved, projects you've led, put it into Chat GPT and ask it the following. Um, if I were self-employed, if I was going to start a business of one, suggest some service offerings I could offer with my skills and interests and my accomplishments using that information. And then who would I sell those services to? And that will give you a chance for you to kind of zoom out and say, okay, I've been doing HR work. Oh, look, there's all this common denominator between all of these companies. They all, you know, are in the food industry. Okay, that's interesting. I could sell myself as an, you know, a fractional HR person for small businesses in the food space, something to that effect. But what this activity does is it gets you to start thinking as someone independent from a company, someone independent from relying on a paycheck from a single employer, and gets you to start thinking of how can you take your skills, your services, your experiences, your preferences, and craft them in a way that works for you, right? That aligns with your life and also is sellable and who it could be sellable to. Um and it's just a good way to kind of get thinking about how you could be self-employed. Um, I've done it and it always comes back, you know, you should be a fractional COL. I'm like, yeah, I know.
Alex Wilson-Campbell:I've never thought of actually doing doing it in that way, but yeah, it's it's it's definitely good advice and it's working for you. And um but what I want to know now as we begin to wrap up, yeah, what Mary are your goals? What what what's what's the future look like for you and your business? Um and also where can people find you online?
Mary Alice Duff:Yeah. So what's the future look like? You know, um, so one of the things um that I'm working on right now is thinking through how to scale what I do without having to work more or hire a bunch of people. Um, I've definitely gone down that road before. I had a company, I had a bunch of employees. It was exceptionally stressful worrying about payroll every two weeks. Um, and so one of the things I'm working on right now is productizing my intellectual property. So there's a very specific way I work with people. Um, it's extremely human-centered. I try, uh I do have a social work background, so I'm always trying to come uh at people to understand like where they are, where they come from, what motivates them, what makes them tick. And I think because I do that, it helps me work with people in a way uh that's successful because I'm actually meeting them where they are, right? So I'm thinking through how to productize my IP and what that might look like. So whether that's courses or a book or workshops or whatever, um, that's definitely something I'm thinking through. Um, but you know, the future for me is continuing delivering for my clients, uh, expanding my coaching program, um, and enjoying my life. I like my life. So, you know, improving my French, traveling, you know, having a good time.
Alex Wilson-Campbell:Sounds good. Sounds good. And where can anybody who's interested in either finding out more about your um COO practice or your coach practice, where's the best place to look? I think I'm I'm I think I know what you might say, but yeah, you tell me.
Mary Alice Duff:Definitely LinkedIn. That's the only place I hang out. LinkedIn and I have a newsletter. Um, but yeah, LinkedIn is definitely the first port of call.
Alex Wilson-Campbell:Excellent. Thank you. It's been enlightening, it's been entertaining, it's been, you know, um energizing. So thank you for joining me today.
Mary Alice Duff:Thanks for having me, Alex.
