Ep. 440 - Pay As You Go COO Founder and Fractional COO, Milly Barker

Summary

Second in Command: The Chief Behind the Chief – Episode 440 Guest: Milly Barker, Founder of Pay As You Go COO and Fractional COO
Release Date: January 14, 2025
Host: Cameron Herold

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Introduction

In Episode 440 of the Second in Command podcast, host Cameron Herold welcomes Milly Barker, the founder of Pay As You Go COO and a seasoned fractional COO. This episode delves into Milly's journey in the operations world, her unique approach to fractional COO services, and her insights on effective business operations for early to mid-stage companies.

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Guest Introduction

[02:17]
Cameron introduces Milly Barker, highlighting her two decades of experience as a COO across various industries. Milly is an accomplished author of four books and is recognized for her ability to transform visionary ideas into actionable strategies. With a stable of COOs primarily placed throughout Europe, Milly is set to lecture at prestigious institutions like the London School of Economics and Imperial College London.

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Journey to Fractional COO

[00:44]
Milly discusses her transition to a fractional COO model via Pay As You Go COO, emphasizing her desire to work with a diverse range of businesses beyond what full-time or interim COO roles typically offer. She notes:

"I want to work with more diverse founders who cannot afford a full-time COO. By offering part-time services, I can provide valuable operational support without the hefty cost of a full-time position."
— Milly Barker [00:44]

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Defining Fractional COO vs. Full-Time COO

[00:44]
Milly explains that being a fractional COO mirrors the responsibilities of a full-time COO but on a part-time basis. This model allows businesses, especially those in early stages, to access high-level operational expertise without the financial burden of a full-time executive.

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Productizing Unique COO Skills

[05:03]
The conversation shifts to Milly's approach to identifying and productizing her unique abilities. She emphasizes the importance of passion in defining her service offerings:

"It's something that I'm passionate enough about to not feel awkward about promoting."
— Milly Barker [05:37]

Milly highlights the process of pinpointing her strengths and translating them into clear, marketable services that resonate with founders.

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Supporting Early-Stage Companies

[11:46]
Milly outlines the ideal clients for fractional COO services—typically early to mid-stage companies that haven't yet secured substantial funding or aren't suited for traditional funding routes. She identifies key signs that a company might benefit from her services:

• Feeling of Inefficiency: "We're not getting enough stuff done. I feel like I'm just time is passing and I haven't hit my goal."
  — Milly Barker [11:46]

• Lack of Prioritization: Companies struggling to prioritize tasks and objectives effectively.

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Prioritization and ROI in Operations

[14:03]
Milly discusses the critical role of prioritization in business operations and how she assists clients in managing their time and resources efficiently. She introduces her method of illustrating ROI by calculating cost savings and emphasizing both quantitative and qualitative benefits:

"Sometimes when I go into an engagement with a client, I'll say, you will feel at the end of this more calm. You will feel more organized."
— Milly Barker [17:37]

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Managing Client Relationships and Service Offerings

[19:10]
The discussion covers how Milly balances providing high-quality services without undercutting her role. She ensures that her engagements add substantial value by offering strategic insights rather than just delegating tasks:

"I am very uncomfortable about taking your money for something that you don't need. Let me find a way for you to feel like this is right."
— Millie Barker [22:04]

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Matching Fractional COOs to Clients

[23:21]
Milly explains her criteria for pairing the right fractional COO with a client, focusing on both experience and personality fit. She prioritizes finding a balance where the COO can bring structure without stifling innovation:

"Finding a fractional COO that can help you bring structure to that chaos, but not so much structure that you're trapped into a box."
— Millie Barker [23:36]

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Methodologies and Systems in Operations

[24:41]
Milly differentiates her approach from systems like EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System), emphasizing her bespoke six-stage framework for strategy design. She believes that every organizational element should align with the overarching strategy:

"Everything in your organization should hook into your strategy, right? If it's not, why are you doing it?"
— Millie Barker [25:45]

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Adapting to Changes and Leveraging Technology

[34:39]
When addressing the rapid changes in business environments, especially with AI advancements, Milly underscores the importance of robust internal communication. She asserts that timeless principles in communication and strategy are essential for adapting to external changes:

"The fundamental issue in a lot of businesses is an issue of communication."
— Millie Barker [34:39]

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Personal Reflections and Advice

[37:00]
Reflecting on her early career, Milly advises her younger self not to worry about the direct economic application of her philosophical studies. She recognizes the intrinsic value of understanding human motivations and communication in business success:

"If you don't understand the motivations behind your customers, you're not going to achieve success there."
— Millie Barker [37:00]

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Book Recommendation

[39:06]
Milly recommends her best-selling book, How to Write Your Strategy, which outlines her six-stage framework for creating a simple yet effective business strategy:

"It teaches you prioritization. It's basically my brain, but it's £9.99 rather than whatever you pay for my hourly rate."
— Millie Barker [39:06]

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Conclusion

Cameron wraps up the episode by thanking Milly Barker for her valuable insights into the fractional COO role and effective business operations. Milly's blend of strategic thinking, operational expertise, and passion for empowering diverse founders offers listeners a comprehensive understanding of how fractional COOs can drive business success.

"You've been listening to Second in Command, brought to you by COO Alliance Founder Cameron Herold."
— Millie Barker [39:52]

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Key Takeaways

• Fractional COO Model: Provides high-level operational support to early to mid-stage companies without the cost of a full-time executive.
• Prioritization is Crucial: Effective prioritization helps businesses manage time and resources efficiently, leading to better outcomes.
• Strategic Alignment: Ensuring all operations align with the company's overarching strategy is vital for sustainable growth.
• Importance of Communication: Robust internal communication is the backbone of efficient operations and adapting to external changes.
• Balancing Structure and Innovation: A successful COO must bring structure to a business while fostering an environment that encourages innovation.

For more insights and best practices from industry-leading COOs, visit COOAlliance.com.

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This summary is based on Episode 440 of the Second in Command podcast. For the full conversation, listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or the Second Command podcast YouTube channel.

Transcript

[Cameron Herold]

Hey, it's Cameron Herald, the host of the Second in Command podcast. Before we dive in, there's something you need to know. If you're a coo, VP Operations, or you're in any role where you're the second in command to the CEO, the COO alliance is the place for you. If you're the integrator to the visionary, you're going to want to join us. The COO alliance is the world's leading community for the second in command. We've had over 500 members like you join from 17 countries to grow their skills, connections and confidence. You'll get the tools, friendships and a 10x guarantee to ensure that you get your money's worth. Go to cooalliance.com to learn more and see if you qualify. You can even book a free call with our team to ask questions. Now, let's jump into this week's episode.

[Millie Barker]

So, fractional COO for me via pay as you go COO was an opportunity to work with a different range of businesses than I had been working with when I was working, either as a full time or an interim coo. I feel like if you are, and you know, my experience is very much in the in the uk. Uk, so this is where my bias comes from. But I feel like in my experience, if you're able to raise enough money to be able to afford an early stage COO at the earliest stage of your company growth and I'm very passionate about that pre seed through to maybe the end of series A stage. If you've raised enough money to be able to afford a full time coo, you probably have quite a narrow set of demographics. In the uk, a lot of funding goes to a set group of people, but then also, you know, a lot of businesses aren't suitable for funding. A lot of businesses, service businesses, for example, are better being bootstrapped than they ever are for funding. But for me, wanting to work with a more diverse range of founders was what drove me to want to set up this business. So I see being a fractional COO is really no different to being a full time coo. It's just that you're doing it part time. I'm doing all the same things. I'm just doing them for fewer hours a week. Welcome to the Second in Command podcast, produced by the COO alliance and brought to you by its founder, Cameron Herold. In the second in command podcast, we talk to top COOs who share the insights, strategies and tactics that made them the chief behind the chief. And now here's your host, Cameron Herold.

[Cameron Herold]

All right. Our guest today is Pay as you go COO's founder and fractional COO, Millie Barker. Millie is sharp, she's fast paced. You're going to love the experience share and the wisdom that she brings in today. Since 2018, Millie has served as a COO drawing on two decades of experience refining businesses across industries. She specializes in transforming ambitious visions into actionable strategies. She's an author of four books. She excels at designing clear and efficient processes and translating abstract goals into measurable KPIs that compete with actionable roadmaps. She has a stable of coos that they place largely throughout Europe. She's a quick learner, has a knack for understanding of companies value propositions. She's an industry and sector agnostic, which is quite interesting. You'll hear her talk about that. And she seamlessly works with B2B and B2C brands spanning product and service based businesses as well as physical and digital author or offerings. She's also going to be lecturing at the London School of Economics this year and another university in the UK as well. You'll love this episode. You can also watch this episode on our Second Command podcast YouTube channel. We'll see you on the inside. So Millie, welcome to the Second in Command podcast.

[Millie Barker]

Hi. Thank you so much for having me.

[Cameron Herold]

Yeah, I'm looking forward to this. You and I got to catch up about a month ago and I got to learn a little bit about your experience and the areas that you kind of focus on. And then now, just before we went live, you told me that you're going to be a guest lecturer at the London School of Economics and I think another university that I didn't quite grab the name of. But maybe before you even dive in and talk about the business that you're running in the fractional COO space that you're in, why don't you talk about what lsu, what London School of Economics has seen in you and why they're going to bring you in?

[Millie Barker]

Yeah, so it's both LSE and Imperial College London, which is very much a STEM university here in London. It's a big focus on entrepreneurship, so on commercializing IP that comes out of universities and helping people to transition from more of an academic space into more of an entrepreneurial space. So I'll be talking to them a lot about what I do is the core of my COO work, which is organizing strategies. So helping people to communicate the mission of the business, helping them to set really clear objectives, helping Them to set paths to achieving those objectives in a way that is just very quantitative, but has a very clear customer focus. Because I think a lot of the IP and innovation that comes from universities is very much research focused rather than commercial, so helping them to make that leap. So I think it's going to be really interesting.

[Cameron Herold]

I love it. I love the niche that you're working in, and I love the fact you talked about even productizing some of your IP. That's something that I know that you do with COOs, and the fractional COOs is getting them to understand some of their, I guess, unique abilities or unique systems. Can you speak to that a little bit?

[Millie Barker]

Yeah. It's been a real journey for me thinking about my. My own IP and my own skills as something that is commercial, like something that I can productize and something that I can sell, like building a brand for my business and building the idea of a CEO as a brand. But I think, yeah, I mean, my dream for the future is that everybody feels like they can do that, that everybody has the niche that they fit into and they can commercialize that specific niche and work in a way that is very flexible and very re and fulfilling, and they're not tied into one specific company. So it's something that I'm really passionate about.

[Cameron Herold]

How does somebody find the areas that they are really kind of so good at and their unique abilities that they can then productize? I don't want to lead you with what I think it is, but can you talk to us about that?

[Millie Barker]

Yeah, it's such a good question. And I really struggled with this when I first got started because I think the nature of being a COO is that you're a little bit good at a lot of things. So I didn't want to come with an offering that said I can do a bit of your marketing, a bit of your product, a bit of your finance. Wanted to find something that was very easy for founders to understand when buying my services, because it's exactly what I'd say to a founder when selling to their customers is make it really clear the problem that you're solving. And so I worked with. I have a wonderful woman called Caroline who helps me with my marketing. And I sat down with her and she said, like, what do you care about? What are you passionate about? What if I gave you a soapbox? Would you stand on it and rant about? And we came up with these four pillars of things that I, I will just give forth on any time anyone gives me an opportunity to speak and so, for me, being able to sell my skills in relation to those niches is not just finding something that I have a particular expertise in, but it's something that I'm passionate enough about to get myself posting things on LinkedIn and building a website for it. So I think for me, it was a combination of finding the things that I'm. I excel in, but I'm also passionate enough about to not feel awkward about promoting.

[Cameron Herold]

It's interesting. Like, I think one of the things that I noticed about unique ability, at least for me, is the stuff that I'm really, really good at, is the stuff that I almost dismiss and go, oh, yeah, but it's easy. And the reason it's so easy is it is my unique ability. Like, I'm. I. I would say it's easy to hop up on a stage and talk about what you're good at for an hour.

[Millie Barker]

Yeah.

[Cameron Herold]

People like, no, it's not. I'm like, oh, you totally just get up and start talking like, you know your content. Like, no, that's horrifying to people. So is. Is that kind of a starting point that you work with these fractional CEOs on, as well as the stuff that you take for granted? Is the stuff that your clients don't know yet?

[Millie Barker]

Yeah, absolutely. I think it's particularly of interest in the CEO space because I feel like good operations is sometimes invisible. You only really see it when things start to go wrong. And we become very used to the idea as CEOs of being invisible and so having no metrics to shout out about ourselves. And so the natural tendency to think, oh, that's easy, because I'm good at it, and I'm used to being in the background. The combination of those things makes it harder, I think, to product. Productize the unique offering that you have. For me, it's communicating and carrying a lot of information in my brain at the same time. So I work with many, many different clients at the same time. So both as a fractional coo, but also as a business coach, also all the strategy workshops that I do. And for me, it seems natural to be able to see the macro of all these businesses, the micro of their individual departments, how that ties into what's happening in the wider economy and all of the competitive positioning. To me, I'm just like, everybody thinks in a mind map. Everybody's brain is a series of interconnecting circles. It turns out it's not. And I think, yeah, like, pulling that into the fore for me, I think was a very Interesting step to be able to start to think about the things where I add unique value, but not everybody can do.

[Cameron Herold]

That's funny. I was coaching a client in Atlanta, Seth Bader from a company called Bader Scott. And I was getting frustrated when I was coaching him around some stuff, around interviewing, and he stopped me and he's like, cameron, don't get frustrated. He said, you're good at this, that's why you're coaching me. He goes, I don't know this. I'm like, oh, shit, you're right. Like I was, I was like, why can't you keep up? Talk to us about your business. Pay as you go is a fractional COO suite. And in fact, when I even started coaching 17 years ago, I called myself the back pocket coo because I was like this fractional COO that people could pull out. Can you speak to your business, your space and how you got started?

[Millie Barker]

Yeah, absolutely. It's such a fascinating space for me, which is good because it's really hard work to build a business. So it's really good that I'm interested and passionate about it. So fractional COO for me via pay as you go coo was an opportunity to work with a different range of businesses than I had been working with when I was working either as a full time or an interim coo. I feel like if you are, and you know, my experience is very much in the, in the uk, so this is where my bias comes from. But I feel like in my experience, if you're able to raise enough money to be able to afford an early stage COO at the earliest stage of your company growth, and I'm very passionate about that, precede through to maybe the end of series A stage. If you've raised enough money to be able to afford a full time coo, you probably have quite a narrow set of demographics. In the uk, a lot of funding goes to a set group of people. But then also, you know, a lot of businesses aren't suitable for funding. A lot of businesses, service businesses, for example, are better being bootstrapped than they ever are for funding. But for me, wanting to work with a more diverse range of founders was what drove me to want to set up this business. So I see being a fractional COO is really no different to being a full time coo. It's just that you're doing it part time. I'm doing all the same things, I'm just doing them for fewer hours a week. And so for me, that was really where the genesis of the idea was I want to work with other founders. Those founders cannot afford me. What if I just gave them a little bit of me? What if they just paid for a day, a week, or in my business coaching, an hour a month? If that's all you can afford, an hour a month, great. I can still give you great value and help you to set up the operations of your company in a way that's really efficient and kind of provides the foundation for growth, but it's not costing you 150k a year.

[Cameron Herold]

Well, it's interesting, you even spoke to these early, early stage companies that if they could afford to hire a COO often because they maybe they brought in funding more often than not. They're not even ready for that true coo. They really, they really need some great project managers, some good operations people, some good kind of jack of all trades, master of none. You don't need the really strong, seasoned, strategic, autonomous, you know, pure leaders because there's not enough to do. Like you actually need people to roll up their sleeves and get dirty. So walk us through, I guess how does a client or how does a company start to realize that they could use a fractional coo? And what does the typical company maybe look like when they're starting to recognize that fractional COO is something they could bring in?

[Millie Barker]

It's such a good question. I think you touched on something really interesting there, that you don't need a full time COO at this stage. And I think I would drive people absolutely bananas if I was working for them full time. Because there's only so much structure and process you need in an early stage business before you start thinking, am I actually killing the innovation here? And I think the paradox for me is that you need someone in operations, right? You need someone if you're this skill set and the strengths that you need to be able to a visionary founder come up with this crazy, life changing, world changing idea are not the same strengths that you need to then organize and operationalize that idea. They're two very different people. So say you're an early stage founder, you know that you need someone to help organize you. You can't afford a senior person and that senior person isn't right for you. So you end up hiring like a junior ops manager or a founder's associate or a VA or something like that. But you don't know, especially if you're a first time founder, you don't know what to ask them for and they don't know what to tell you. What you and I feel like a fractional COO is a good gap between the two of those. So I often will work with operations team inside the company that I support and say I'll be your manager, I'll be your supporter because your CEO, your founder doesn't know what to tell you. I can help you organize the different things that you need to do. I'll just dip in and out, give you some things to work on and then you come back. And I think that's a place where a real value comes for a fractional CEO in an early stage business. And in terms of the kinds of clients and the kinds of moments when I think it's relevant to work with someone like me. I'm industry agnostic. I have an accidental speciality in med tech because I did my MBA at a very medicine forward university, but I am very deliberately industry agnostic. I'd say if you're on a VC track, it's generally precede to series A that I will work with those companies. If you're talking a service business, it's maybe low seven figures. And bear in mind this is uk. I know revenue is very different in different parts of the world, but for me the moment is we're not getting enough stuff done. People will come to me and they will say, I'm getting to the end of the week and I don't know what I've achieved. I feel like I'm just time is passing and I haven't hit my goal. The team isn't productive enough, we're not achieving what we need to. So it's kind of that. That pain point is the moment that people need me rather than necessarily a different stage of business. Because that pain point comes at all different times and all different moments for different kinds of founders.

[Cameron Herold]

Yeah, it's interesting. You talk to the fact that like it's a feeling that they have where they're noticing stuff. It's kind of like that gut of like I wish we could. Right. Versus it's not so much a skill deficiency that they have or is it?

[Millie Barker]

I think it is a skill and a time deficiency. I think there's never enough hours in a day and you never run out of things that you need to do. So one of the things that I bring I think is a benefit to a lot of the founders I work with is prioritization. So I really love branding for my business. I didn't think that I was very good at branding and marketing until I set up my company, but I make these holographic stickers that that are carrying my branding. And one of them says, is it really a priority? And I give those out to my clients and they stick them on the trackpad of their laptops so that you can look at it and you think, yeah, it sounds really fun. It's a really interesting thing to do. Is it really a priority? And I think the skill gap is in prioritisation. You're not failing because you aren't able to figure out what comes next. You're full of these ideas, you're full of this creativity. You're an incredible founder. Being able to prioritize is a very different skill set. And I think that that is a gap. And then, you know, you want to do all of those things. Even if you're prioritizing, you still want to finish the long list, right? Because it's something that you're super passionate about. So I think it's the combination of those. I can bring you prioritization, but I can also bring you more hours because I work very efficiently and you can buy extra hours effectively.

[Cameron Herold]

It's interesting that you're talking about the prioritization part. One of the things that I think CEOs have to be really good at is the ability to say no artfully and at the right time, in the right way to see or to say not now. How do you say no or not now to a CEO when you are in that fractional COO role?

[Millie Barker]

It's such a difficult thing to do. And I think, especially when you're in a role that doesn't have a huge amount of stability or security, if you're constantly looking for new clients, and especially the stages of businesses that I'm working with, my minimum, that I'll work with someone is a day, a week for a minimum of three months. I've got three months to prove my work with these people. And they either extend or they don't. I'm constantly thinking for new clients. So it can feel sometimes if I say no, are you going to go away and take the money away? You have to find that balance. But for me, part of the structure that I set up was that I do say, right, I work a day a week for you. You can have me do that thing. But this is, if you think about it, what it's going to cost you in an hourly rate to have me do that thing, or I could do this other thing that actually drives that goal that we've agreed is what you need to do. And whenever I work with any company, whether it's as a Coach in my strategy workshops as a CEO, I use my strategy framework, which is six stages that takes you from mission statement, objectives, key results, projects, tasks and performance management. So that I've got this visualization and I can say to them, show me on this grid why this thing that you think is a priority for me to do is more important than that other thing that we're going to do. And I will give that hour to it and you can pay for that hour to be it. But I want you to understand where the flow of this work pushes towards your mission statement and doesn't. So for me it's about visualization, but also being really transparent and honest. That, like, this going to cost you.

[Cameron Herold]

How do you show them the ROI for what that expense is going to be? It's very easy to show them the cost. Right. It's easy to show them the hourly rate that it's going to be to do something. How do you then show them either the cost of inaction like this, the, the cost of not working on it, or the ROI that you're going to get if you actually spend that time and energy and money and, and, and, and they get you to do something. How do you show them what the ROI is going to be from that?

[Millie Barker]

Yeah, a couple of different ways. So one is often in a cost saving. So I'll calculate the hours of time that they spe in doing something. Like for example, I had a slightly later stage company that I was working with who had way too many objectives. Everything was a priority. I think they had 90 different objectives when I started working with them. I'm like, you don't have 90 things in your business that they're this important. And I calculated with all the time that they spent talking to each other about these different objectives, if they could implement the process that I showed them. I calculated the hourly rate of everybody from a salaried perspective. Even like, what's an hour of your time worth? I could save them £500,000 a year just in reducing one set of meetings that they had. So I'll show them. This is the cost of your time. The time. Your time is money. Here you are burning this cash. This is how much it costs you. Or it's a difficult one because I'm an incredibly quantitative person. Two of my parents were mathematicians. One of the things that I put on my shiny stickers is something that says quantitative as communicative. So I'm always saying that your objectives need to be objective. Speak in numbers, that's a lingua franca. But often, as you say, it is a bit of a feeling. So my proposal, sometimes when I go into an engagement with a client, I'll say, you will feel at the end of this more calm. You will feel more organized. I'm very quantitative. But also it's a little bit of a feeling how you feel at the end of it. So partly it's showing them the figures and partly it's just interrogating them. How do you feel now? Do you feel better? Do you feel more organized? If not, how can we change that?

[Cameron Herold]

Interesting. All right, so on, on the, the fractional role, when the client is paying you to do stuff, there has to be a natural inclination at times for you to, to realize that they could be hiring some cheaper offshore labor to do things, but then you're kind of putting yourself out of a job. How do you balance that where you know you're helping them and you're getting rid of stuff off your plate? Or, or is it because you're able to do that, they trust you more and they're even going to give you more stuff to do? Is that kind of the balancing act you play there?

[Millie Barker]

Yeah. Most of my fractional COO engagements will start with a finite amount of time and then end up in just a never ending retainer because people get so used to working with me and the systems that we put in place. But I'd never want someone to pay for something that could be done in a more cost effective way if the quality of what came out of that was equal. I'm not going to say to somebody.

[Cameron Herold]

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[Millie Barker]

Like you should offshore this or you should get A junior person. Because to go back to that paradox, the junior person can do the doing, but they can't necessarily do the thinking. They can't do the strategic side of things. So if there's a balance to be found between saying, right, we can, you know, offshore the implementation of this, but I'll design the project for you, we can find a balance there. But, you know, I could never. I was a salesperson for a while, so I led business development for two categories at Amazon earlier in my career. And a lot of my clients used to say to me, you're the least salesy salesperson I've ever met with. You seem to not want our money. I was like, no, I genuinely don't. I'm very uncomfortable about taking your money for something that you don't need. Let me find a way for you to feel like this is right, because in order for me to do that, I have to feel like this is right. And if I can't justify asking you for the money, you shouldn't be paying me for it. So always making sure that I know that I'm delivering value because I found other alternatives and I've either explored or discredited them as options.

[Cameron Herold]

Interesting. Are you working on all of these accounts yourself or do you have a stable of other fractional coos that you place?

[Millie Barker]

Yeah, so we subcontract for other people as well. So we found that a lot of fractionals were coming to me. So I get maybe four or five messages from people every week saying, hey, I really want to be a fractional coo. I've seen you at this conference or I read this chapter of your book or this thing that you did, and I really want to be a fractional coo, but I really hate sales and marketing. And I say, sure, me too. I really hate sales and marketing. But you know what? You can't build a business without sales and marketing. But then equally, why force yourself to do something that you hate if you can't bring yourself to do it? So why don't I do it for us? So we bring other, other fractional COOs that don't want to build a website. They don't want to build a LinkedIn. They just want to deliver great work. They don't want to care about invoicing, about pitching and pricing, all of different things. We can place those people into other roles. At the moment, all of the workshops and coaching are delivered by me because I feel like it's harder to subcontract those services, especially the workshops, because I'm delivering my ip, delivering my frameworks and I haven't yet let go of that. But in the future, ideally we'd be able to have other people deliver those as well.

[Cameron Herold]

How do you know how to balance which fractional person to put into which account? How do you figure out which great fractional COO matches the needs or the client type or the, you know, the, the behavioral traits of the CEO? What do you look at?

[Millie Barker]

Yeah, it's a good question. I think it has to be a balance between experience and also personality. You know, if I can find who is going to be the person that is going to gel best with that founder. Because being, being a founder, being an early stage coo, a CEO is, it's so much of yourself. You know, it's your baby, it's your thing that you've come up with and you're putting that out into the world. You have to handle in sensitive way explaining to somebody that there's something wrong with their baby, like their baby is not performing as they wanted it to. And I think finding the right personality to be able to sensitively handle it. Some people prefer people who are more blunt, some people prefer people who speak around the subject a little bit more. So finding that personality match of like, I think you'll gel with this but I tend to suggest like these are three people that I think could work well with you and you know, have a little bit of a personality fit there. But you don't have to go through a whole recruitment process because you're not, you're not hiring a full time person. You shouldn't be going through like a five stage task based interview. It should just be, I've done the work for you and I figured these people out. These three people could work with you.

[Cameron Herold]

I love that. Now the methodologies that you have or the approach that you have in kind of working with these clients, does it differ from things like the EOS type systems and, or is it complementary to those systems? Can you speak to that?

[Millie Barker]

So I'm not a huge, I don't have a huge amount of understanding about eos. I hear about it a lot. But it seems to me to be something that includes, exists more in North America than I've seen it in the uk. It's not something that I've really come across here. Generally I implement my own system which is that six stage framework for strategy design. Because truly everything in your organization should hook into your strategy, right? If it's not, I hate the differentiation between strategic work and business as usual. If it's not driving your strategy, why are you doing it? Usually you shouldn't be. It should all be even, you know, your employee engagements, like getting a good office space, cleaning the office. Those are cost drivers because the more you engage your employees, the less likely they are to leave. The less you spend on recruitment, the better your profits. Like you can chart that journey. So if that, I don't know, does the EOS framework they do.

[Cameron Herold]

EOS is built on a book called Traction by Gina Wickman. It is massive in the US and Canada for sure. It's big in Australia now. A lot of it came out of the entrepreneurs organization, kind of of tribe of members. So there's kind of a really big broad reach into those two communities. I think the difference from what a fractional COO does versus an EOS integrator is these integrators will go in and run the annual and quarterly meetings only and then they disappear and they show up again next quarter. They're not there during the week, they're not there during the day, they're not running meetings. They're just more, you know, kind of implementing the systems and making sure the company is implementing the systems, which you do. But then there's also the day to day stuff that a fractional can do. Can you speak a little bit to that?

[Millie Barker]

Yeah, I think my equivalent there would probably be my strategy workshops. So you do either a half day or a full day once a month, once a quarter to just kind of recommit to the mission and the objectives and the key results of the business and start to think about the pieces of work for that time period that fit for delivering those goals. I guess that would be my equivalent. But for me, I think think, you know, a lot of people talk about strategy as being OKRs. You know, I say, I talk to founders that tell me about your strategy when I first start working with them and they say we've got our strategy. And I say respectfully, you've got a bunch of goals. Your strategy is the plan for hitting those goals. Your strategy is the steps that you're taking every single hour, every single day to hit those goals. And that's not something that you can dip into once a quarter. That's a daily thing. Even in my own business, which is comparatively small to the the ones that I support every single day. I'm looking at my to do list and redefining it and saying what today is the prior. If I did that once a quarter, I, I would have absolutely no connection to the things that were actually Powering the results that I wanted.

[Cameron Herold]

It's interesting. I. I've often felt that the phrase or the, the term strategic planning should not exist because strategy and planning are two different things. It's like sales and marketing should not be in the same area. They're two different things. Strategy is thinking. It's the what if? It's the scenario planning, it's the, the SWOT analysis. It's looking at the competition. It's. It's thinking and leaning out years into the future. And the planning is how do you make that happen? And I think so often companies think they have strategy when really they have a bunch of planning in place. Or as you mentioned, they don't even necessarily have planning. They've just got a bunch of goals, which are great.

[Millie Barker]

Yeah.

[Cameron Herold]

But in and of themselves, one of my favorite stories is the two leaders that were told to clear cut forests. And you know, the one guy is clear cutting the forest. His whole team is clear cutting the forest. Everything in the forest is falling perfectly, lined up, making money. It's great. The other leader climbs up the tallest tree and looks around and says, holy shit, we're in the wrong forest. Execution without strategy is as bad as vision without execution. You have to have both. Can you speak to how a CEO or a company, if they're thinking of going down the path of looking for a fractional coo, how do they find one? What do they look for? What mistakes do they make in selecting one?

[Millie Barker]

It is an endless question for myself and my marketing team. How do we be there when people are looking for fractional coos? I've seen when I first started putting the marketing plan together for my business, I remember saying to Caroline, I need an SEO strategy. And she said, in the nicest possible way, no, you don't. Because no one's searching for a fractional coo. So you don't need that now. You do now that the industry has grown in the last couple of years, I think just by starting to search for those people on LinkedIn and using Google or whatever your search engine of choice is, I think you can start to find the people who are committing to getting their content out there and explaining themselves. But I think I would say find someone who can be both understanding of the flexibility that's inherent to the role and also aware of the deliverables. And this is again specifically for the stage of business that I work with, which is early to mid stage, where resources are very limited. You want someone who isn't going to be too rigid. I don't think you want someone who necessarily comes from a very, very process heavy background that will kill innovation in your. But you also don't want someone who is going to be so weird and wild and creative that you can't bring structure in. So I think that balance is very important, like understanding the inherent flexibility to an early stage strategy. When especially, you know, if you're, I always say to my clients, if you know what you're doing every day, you're probably not building anything new. You have to have a certain level of uncertainty. You have to feel like I don't know what comes next until I take this little bit of a step and then the second like the path slowly illuminates as I go. So I think finding a fractional COO that can help you bring structure to that chaos, but not so much structure that you're trapped into a box.

[Cameron Herold]

Yeah. You know what else I think is interesting around that is the, the companies that don't want to have strategy brought to them, they're not ready for a fractional coo. If they're looking to just delegate a bunch of stuff to. They're really looking for an operations person or a fractional manager, an ops. Right. So would that kind of be fair?

[Millie Barker]

Yeah, I'd agree that and I'd say to them like, it's insane to be paying my hourly daily rate for me to be just ticking things off a list for you. That's a waste of your money and it's also a waste of my brain. I would be very unhappy if that was all the stuff that I was doing. I need some of that more creative lateral thinking. I need to be thinking about, you know, the macro applications of the things that you're choosing to do every day. So yeah, I would absolutely agree with you there.

[Cameron Herold]

Yeah. And I think when any company is looking to even hire a full time coo, you have to look at the level of autonomy the person can come in with, the amount of P and L responsibility, you'll give them the amount of strategic insight that they can bring, the amount of people and process that they can bring to your company and then really what the, the core metrics are that they're going to be responsible for and what you're willing to pay. Right. If you're only going to pay somebody $100,000 a year, they're not a COO. And I think companies are giving away fancy titles too early. So it's important that they realize that just in even looking for a fractional one. Can you speak to when it is the right time for you to get yourself kind of out of a company. Like how do you realize that the honeymoon, not the honeymoon's over, but it's time for them to hire a real one, a full time one. How does that discussion go and how do you know that starts to happen?

[Millie Barker]

Yeah, I'd say roughly, if we're thinking about from an investable business perspective, maybe it's series A. Series A, you're probably pushing towards a little bit more product market fit. You've done a lot more of the exploration, you've laid some of that groundwork. That's where you need someone who's there day to day, day to be able to help manage that stuff. And I don't have capacity to be there five days a week for any clients because I work with so many different businesses. Then I'd say for, for a business in general, not necessarily, you know, if you're thinking about an investable business or a particular stage, I'd say when you feel like you've got enough clarity that you can go on to the next thing. If the next thing is like let's enter this new market or let's develop this new product, let's build this new element of the business. Something that is, is more significant than just a lot of the stuff that I do is tidying things up, like messy processes that have been created early on. Once we've got those tidy or you know, we've grown too quickly and we need to figure out this mess from a personal perspective. That's the bit that I'm interested in. Like my favourite game as a kid, this is quite possibly the saddest thing that I've ever said. But my favorite game as a kid was to go over to the neighbor's house and tidy up their Barbie dream house. Because I didn't want to play with the Barbies, I just wanted to fold Barbie's clothes and give Barbie a good start. Like Barbie needs a clear calend and she needs to know what's going on in her day. So I like to comment on the mess and I like to tidy the mess and then I like to bounce and find the next mess. And so I think the bias that I'm answering this question with is my interest level in day to day running of a business. But I think, you know, if you're thinking about something that's a really significant change for your business, having someone with you day to day to help you manage the complexities of that would be really beneficial. So, you know, if I can Help you get to a place where you feel like you can do that rather than your business failing like in the UK, UK, 62% of businesses won't make it to their fifth year. My mission is to make more businesses make it to that fifth year. Then I can hand you on to someone who can take you on 5 to 10, 10 to 20.

[Cameron Herold]

I love it. One of the things that I've been kind of thinking about a lot recently is that if the rate of change outside your business is greater than the rate of change inside your business, you're out of business. And I think business is rapidly changing right now, especially with AI coming in, it's just happening even faster. How do you, as a fractional coo, how does your stable of fractional CO stay ahead of the curve or stay up with the curve of change, especially when it comes to AI, but just even speak to, you know, leveraging technology and, and the, the way that business is becoming more global and faster and outsourcing and then leveraging a. How do you, how did you as a company stay on that and ahead of those curves?

[Millie Barker]

I love that question because I think that the universal truths to business strategy, to good operations are timely, timeless. I think that, you know, if I think about the, the principles I love things like, you know, Potter's concepts of change or you know, five forces, those kind of things, these are written decades ago. I, I think the, the fundamental issue in a lot of businesses is an issue of communication. It's explaining to people what is expected of them and how they're doing against those expectations. So when a company comes to me and says things aren't getting done in the organization, I will often have to say to the founder, founder, it's not your team. It's not that your team aren't using the right tools. It's not that your team are lazy or that they are unfocused. It's that you aren't telling them what you need, you aren't communicating effectively. So I think where, you know, my approach is very industry agnostic because to a certain extent, doesn't really matter to me what your product is. Whether you're delivering a product or a service. What matters is how the inside of an organization works. And that is universal and that is timeless. That people need to know what they are meant to be doing and they need to know how they're doing against those expectations. Until we replace every individual with an, that doesn't have personal feelings about it, which please, please, let's never let that happen until we do that. You always have to have the interpersonal dynamics and those are the things that can slow your business down. So the noise of all these different tools of AI doing this, and that is irrelevant if you haven't fixed the people problems that exist inside your company first. And because of the stage that I work at, you have to fix a lot of those people problems. Like you're a first time founder, you came into this business thinking, I'm going to be the best boss ever. I don't think many people start a business thinking, how much of an awful human can I be to my employees? But you don't know what you're doing, you don't know how to manage people, you don't know how to communicate. Fix that and then start to think about how you can make things more efficient and effective for people by bringing in some AI, by automating. I love to automate and replicate processes as much as possible, but without fixing how your company, how your team feels on the inside. First. Culture for me comes from a good strategy and that is just people knowing what's expected of, of them.

[Cameron Herold]

I love that. If you were to go back and give yourself some advice when you were 21, 22 years old, other than it's time to stop playing with the neighbor's Barbie dollhouses, what advice would you give to the younger Millie that you know to be true today?

[Millie Barker]

Do you know, it's really fascinating. So I did my undergrad when I was 21, so I was classed technically in the UK as a mature student. I took three years out before I did my undergrad and my undergrad was philosophy and English. And halfway through my course I remember thinking to myself, I'm seeing these people. I almost did law, had a place to do law at university called Warwick and I didn't take it, did philosophy in English and I remember thinking to myself, I have completely wasted this opportunity. Like, why am I not doing something that has more of a direct economic focus? Like why am I not doing economics? Why am I not studying a trade? Why am I not learning to be a doctor or a lawyer or something like that? Where am I going to be generating revenue from with a philosophy and English degree? Then When I was 30, I did my MBA at Imperial and suddenly the two started to make sense together when I became a CEO and I understood that, that the philosophical and communication skills that I learned in my undergrad have such a massive application in the way that I run companies, that that was actually the best thing that I could have done for myself at 21 was to faff around for three years reading a lot of Cartesian philosophy and thinking about Peter Singer's concept of modern applications of ethics because it's so much about the people. Not to hammer this point too much, but if you don't understand the motivations behind your customers, like, well, philosophically, what is driving us? You don't understand how to communicate with them. Same for your customer, same for your employees. As for your customers, if you don't understand what's driving someone and how to communicate with them, you're not going to achieve success there. So I think my 21 year old self needs to not beat herself up for choosing something that she was interested in that doesn't have a direct economic link. Because a we are not our economic output, we are more than capitalism would have us believe, but b actually there is an economic application for that knowledge. Now I've written four books about business using those principles that I developed losing my, you know, my capacity to write and my capacity to communicate. So in short, give yourself a break. 21 year old Millie it's all going to be okay.

[Cameron Herold]

I love it. 21 year old Millie, the author of four books. What's the number one book that we should go and check out of yours?

[Millie Barker]

How to Write youe Strategy is the best selling of my books. It is my six stage framework for the most simple design you can possibly imagine for a strategy no more than two objectives. I will die on the hill of the fact that you you don't need any more than two objectives in an organization. One is financial and one is how you're delivering that financial objective in a way that's in line with the mission of your business. It teaches you how to be communicative in a quantitative way. It teaches you prioritization. It's basically my brain, but it's 9.99 rather than whatever you pay for my hourly rate. If you book me as a fractional coo, I love it.

[Cameron Herold]

Millie Barker, the founder of Pay as you Go coos. Thank you so much for sharing with us on the Second in Command podcast.

[Millie Barker]

Thank you so much for having me.

[Cameron Herold]

Appreciate it.

[Millie Barker]

You've been listening to Second in Command, brought to you by COO Alliance Founder Cameron Herold. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to like, share and subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and our other podcast streaming platforms. For more best practices from industry leading COOs, visit COOAlliance.com.