I’m turning my fractional work into a business. Here’s why

So as you guys know, I’ve been consulting for about a month now. Full time.

And on Monday I wrote about building Secret Menu, the company I just started. The naming, the site, the whole process. A lot of you read it.

But I kind of skipped over the part that actually matters. Which is why I did any of it.

Because I could have just kept going as Justin Taylor. That was working. I have clients. I’m paying my bills. Nobody was asking me to go start a company.

Here’s what changed my mind.

This is the real one.

I’ve been struggling on what, to call myself a little bit. I wrote a whole article about how I don’t like being called a fractional CMO, whether you like that or not.

And look, I am a CMO. I’ve been a CMO. I can do fractional CMO work. But by just branding myself as a fractional CMO, I think that’s closing me off to a lot of types of opportunities.

Whether that’s for the positive or the negative, fractional CMO jobs are not the types of jobs and work I’m getting right now.

And that’s okay. I’m okay with that.

But then I went and looked at my own website. And I’m offering 8 different services on there

.

Eight.

And my LinkedIn profile? What does it say? It just says Justin Taylor. Justin Taylor Consulting.

So somebody lands on my stuff and they have no idea what I actually do. I’m just a guy with a list.

And I think by creating a company for myself, I can kind of focus my offering a little bit. Force myself to be really sharp about it.

This is the one I didn’t expect. and I know it doesn’t mean EVERY company wants to.

But from conversations with other people I know who are doing this, and have been doing it successfully, and growing, there’s businesses and clients that are much more keen on hiring a company rather than a person for some things.

And some of those things are things I want to do.

So just, here’s some examples. I want to continue to do marketing campaign work. And with production style work, you don’t want to just hire a person. You want to hire an agency.

Now I have lots of freelancer people I can pull in to do all the work. Same people either way. But you’re going to feel more confident hiring a company than just a guy.

That’s just how it works. I don’t think anything is going to stop me from still attracting clients as me, Justin, for the type of work I’ve been getting. But there’s a whole category of work that only really comes to a company.

And I think it’ll really help me with AI search results, Google search results, etc.

As an example. I have a friend, she has an agency that she started, it was just her. Very specialized area, and I won’t out her for what it is, but she has a lot of expertise in one specific industry.

Here’s the part that got me. She’d never actually worked in that area before.

She set up her agency specializing in that area anyway. And she’s gotten a lot of work that’s come in just from people even just finding her website.

That’s it. That’s the whole story. And I think by me really focusing like that, and setting myself up as, I don’t want to say agency, but a consultancy, I think that’s a big opportunity.

I just like building brands. That’s the job.

So building my own is something that’s exciting to me. It’s interesting. It’s something I’m keen on doing.

And the last thing is I think I do want to grow this.

I don’t know. This part is complicated. Like I said, right now I’m just, so early, and I’m just thankful I have clients that are paying me and that I can sustain this as a business for now. But long term I do want this to be a business.

I don’t ever want to be a company of 10 people or 20 people. That’s not the goal at all.

But, I like the idea of this maybe growing to a couple people. Or maybe 3 people. Or something like that.

Or maybe my daughter works for me when she graduates college.

I don’t know. But I think by setting this up appropriately now, it’s going to help me in those ways later.

This is where it got hard.

I don’t want to be an ad agency. I definitely don’t want to be an agency, I’ve got to stop saying agency. I don’t want to just do creative campaigns and execution. And I’m not a production company for sure.

I definitely, like consulting. Justin Taylor Consultant is definitely more the way I’m leaning in. The types of work I’m getting is more consulting work. Marketing consulting work, obviously.

What I landed on is a brand and creator consultancy.

And the creator part is the piece I want to explain, because I think there’s something real there.

Creator marketing has become much more of a thing. There’s a lot of influencer agencies, affiliate agencies, there’s tons of that work out there.

But if I think about the people who know how to actually launch brands for creators, I think there’s a lot fewer.

Or how to work with large creators when you’re a brand. Sure, there’s a lot of people who can go sign a deal. But actually managing those creators? Thinking about how they organically fit into your brand? How to get the most out of a relationship, connect you with the right people, all those types of things?

I think there’s a lot less of that.

And then on the other side, I think there’s a lot of work I can do for creators directly. Big creators. Helping them identify and work on brand deals, making sure they’re positioned appropriately, helping them get the most out of their big partnerships and grow.

I spent a lot of time on narratives and brand and storytelling with athletes at Nike. With wrestlers at WWE. And with launching TONE, using AMP and Kai Cenat, and how that works when you’re actually launching a brand.

So I’ve seen it from both sides a little bit.

And I think it’s a really interesting space to be in right now. And since I’m decently connected in that space, I think it’s a really interesting way to go.

That’s the other takeaway I got from that same friend, the one who really went at her specialty. This could be it’s own article.

I think really trying to find white spaces and driving towards them is really important for me right now.

And I think there’s a white space here.

If I keep sprinting at it, who knows what’ll happen.

Is that the right answer long term? I don’t know. There’s definitely some problems with it. There’s issues. But for now I think it’s an interesting way to go.

So that’s why I stopped using my own name. Secret Menu. Brand and creator consultancy. secretmenu.xyz.

Work in progress with you guys, like always. Open to thoughts, concerns, all the help I can get.