How to get started as an interim CMO - Part III
The good, bad, and ugly of doing interim and fractional work
Happy New Year everyone! ✨🥂
This is my final post on the interim CMO series. My last two posts were about when founders should opt for an interim CMO and how to choose an interim CMO for your startup.
If you are a marketer exploring this path, temporarily or permanently, this post is for you. I cover how I got started, lessons learned, mistakes made, tips for getting started, risks of fractional work, and how to think about pricing.
Start from purpose 💓
I became an interim CMO in 2015 after eight years in marketing leadership and fifteen years of marketing in tech. In multiple startups, I noticed a recurring pattern:
Even as they scaled, their marketing function remained at an early stage.
They lacked a solid marketing strategy, including positioning, branding, and go-to-market plans.
They often had the wrong people in the wrong roles.
Their product, marketing, and sales teams were misaligned.
I found myself spending the first few months putting a lot of these foundational blocks in place before I could do the job I was hired for — growing and scaling the business.
I thought if I could work with early-stage startup founders to help lay down a strong marketing foundation, I would not only be doing my craft and profession justice, I’d be helping founders understand what good marketing looks like, and I’ll also be paying it forward to the future VPs and CMOs of that startup.
This was my primary motivation to go out on my own. Not freedom. Not flexibility, Not optionality.
Don’t get me wrong, I have all three, but those are simply byproducts, not the catalyst for what I do.
A tiny word of advice: If you choose to go down this path, take a long, hard look at your motivations. Is it shiny objects like independence, money, freedom, and flexibility, or something deeper, like a true purpose? Something you passionately believe in and care about? If you stay anchored in that belief, you’ll stick with it, no matter the ups or downs.
Find your fit 🫱🏾🫲🏽
You are no different than any other early-stage startup venture. You’re not taking capital, and maybe you don’t have employees on payroll, but other than that, everything else is the same!
It took me two years to find my fit. I created hypotheses and experimented with:
Size and stage of startups
Categories - B2B, B2C, and marketplaces
Technical and non-technical products
Growth vs. brand vs. operations
I sucked at some things, and I was very good at others. I honed in on what I did best and what gave me the most satisfaction. I created hypotheses, and every interim gig helped me prove or disprove a hypothesis.
Start small, under-promise and over-deliver 🎉
The first few startups I worked with, I was 100% dedicated to them. I did not juggle two or three startups as I can easily do now, only because I’ve built the muscle for it over the years and I have a set of methodologies, frameworks, and best practices I can apply across different startups.
Before I got here, I slogged it out one startup at a time. I learned a lot about where I add the most value, when I was better off delegating to other experts, and how to manage founders’ expectations.
Word of mouth matters 🗣️
I have only one main goal with my practice — 100% reference from founders and VCs of startups I’ve supported. My practice depends entirely on WOM and the relationships I’ve built in the tech community. Besides this newsletter and occasional LinkedIn posts, I don’t do any “marketing” of my services. The tech community is small. Founders and VCs know one another. If you do good work, your founders and VCs will think of you when they come across a startup that could use your expertise.
Feast, famine, and everything in between 🍛
When you start out as a solopreneur, you must be prepared for periods of abundance and scarcity. When it rains, it pours is true when you’re self-employed. When things are slow, and tech goes through a period of turmoil, like now, many people want to do interim work. Competition increases, and startups tighten their purse strings. That’s part of the cycle. Be prepared to weather the storms after days of endless sunshine, but also remember the sun will shine again. 🌞
Building any business takes time. I’m a big believer in the axiom, “Go slow to go fast.” Start small and slow. Make mistakes, learn, revise, repeat.
Plan ahead and always be in biz-dev mode 🗓️
This was something I failed to do early. When I started working with a startup, I was too focused on the work and did not think ahead of my pipeline. This created unwanted gaps in my pipeline. Now, I plan a quarter ahead and book my engagements a month or two ahead of time.
I must remind myself to keep putting myself out there, talking to founders and VCs, attending events, and networking. Being an introvert, this is not my favorite part of the job, and I’m still working on getting better at this.
Think about scale early 🧗🏽♂️
Every startup you’ll work with is unique. I’m not a playbook marketer. I don’t believe in it. Not everything that works for startup A works for startup B. However, there are sound principles that apply across the board. After every interim project, I do a retrospective. Often, I think of a different way of framing an idea or a principle. Over time, I codify these as frameworks, methodologies, templates, and cheat sheets. This helps me onboard myself quickly, add value fast, and deliver outcomes without reinventing the wheel every time.