Kris Safarova  00:45

welcome to the strategy skills podcast. I’m your host, Kris Safarova, and our podcast sponsor today is strategytraining.com if you want to strengthen your strategy skills, you can get the overall approach used in well managed strategy studies. It’s a free download, and you can get it at firmsconsulting.com forward slash overall approach. And if you are currently updating your resume, which is something that is a great idea to do at any level within the organization, you can get McKinsey and BCG, meaning resume. It’s also a free download, and you can get it at firmsconsulting.com forward slash resume PDF. And today we have with us Sara Daw, who is an entrepreneur, researcher, writer, speaker and future of work expert listed in the 2024 E2E Female 100 Sara is passionate about designing the future of work for C level talent and organizations. Sara, welcome.

Sara Daw  01:39

Thanks very much for having me here today.

Kris Safarova  01:41

And the topic we’re going to discuss today will be very interesting for most of our listeners, and that is about, how do you become assist with executive and let’s dive in. So what would be your advice on how to develop, assist with career for someone listening right now, they’re already relatively senior within the organization, and this is where they are going.

Sara Daw  02:03

That’s a really good question. I think, to start with, I feel that it’s really important that organize that organizationally, you get yourself into the right sort of organization to take you forward into the C suite. So firstly, you need to find an organization where you know they there is you’re operating from within the business. So rather than consulting, you’re in an organization, and you’re looking towards the C suite and going that way. I think the key thing is to have an organization where they have career paths and they have development and my my best piece of advice for everyone is to get themselves a mentor now that doesn’t have to be someone within your organization, that could be someone external, that you really you know, you know you like and you trust, and also find yourself a sponsor from within your organization who’s going to help you open some doors, if you like, to realize your ambition of becoming a C suite individual and and I think a good route in actually to the C suite is to becoming, you know, a chief of staff, or perhaps, you Know, an assistant to the CEO, that sort of role where you’re shadowing, and you’re being very close to the C suite before you get there. So yeah, that those would be my first pieces of advice.

Kris Safarova  03:32

So finding a mentor? What is your advice on how to find the right mentor for yourself and how to build that relationship?

Sara Daw  03:40

Yeah, I think mentors are really interesting. They don’t have to come within, from within your organization. They may well, but they don’t have to. I actually found my first mentor on a on a plane journey. Can you believe it? So I was traveling with my young daughter, and no one wanted to sit next to me, because I was a a mum with a crying baby. Anyway, this lady offered her seat next to me. I sat down and got talking, and it turned out that she was a portfolio non exec director of large UK PLCs, and she opened my eyes to portfolio work, which is, you know what, what I ended up doing, and she became my mentor. So it can come. Mentors can come from all sorts of places. I think you have to be open and to see that they might work across different contexts. They may not necessarily be in your sector, they may not be in your industry, they may not be in your business, but they could still be a mentor, because their advice will travel across all those boundaries. I think the key thing when you’re looking to progress your career is to be really clear and deliberate about how you build your network, and I think that’s where. Where your mentor will come from. If you look into your network and ask your network, ask for help, say you’re looking for a mentor, you want to get to the C suite, and who would they recommend, and then start having conversations and be really interested in other people, and I think you’ll find that that you will find the right individual to work with.

Kris Safarova  05:24

Can you tell us a little bit more about how the relationship unfolded once you met on the plane that grew into this person becoming your mentor?

Sara Daw  05:34

Yes. So this individual had a portfolio career, and this was the first time that it sort of opened my eyes to the fact that I could have a portfolio career and I wasn’t going to be a non Exec. I wasn’t nearly as developed to my career at that point to be able to be a non exec, but I had held C suite roles, and I was thinking of building a fractional C suite career as a as a fractional CFO. So I literally just started meeting up with this individual, and she and we started having conversations. I started sharing being vulnerable around my issues, my concerns and how I wanted, and sharing how I wanted to progress my career. And we met frequently. And mentors are individuals who’ve done it before, so they share their experiences. And that’s exactly what she did. And she was able to also open doors and and that’s and that’s how it went, how it went forward. She was giving back. In a way, it was her turn to give back. People had helped her and and she was able to to help me. I also, I also had a mentor when I did my research into the psychological ownership of the access economy, which is what I’ve written about recently. And my mentor in that case, was a professor at Oxford University. They were running the program. And again, it was, it was the same sort of thing. It was having someone who you connect with, so someone you feel comfortable sharing with. You have to have that, and who’s willing to give the time. And I guess there has to be something in it for them as well. Some people are just looking to, you know, give back. Some people are looking to perhaps, you know, share in your network. But I think there has to be some sort of reciprocity in the relationship. And I think it’s really interesting to explore what that might be, so you make sure that both sides are getting value from it. Of course, you could also join in with mentoring programs that are more formal within your organization. And I know a lot of organizations do adopt those as ways of sort of older, more mature workers who’ve got the expert experience and expertise, bringing that down into younger generations. And I’m a real fan of formal mentoring programs as well. I think that’s a great way to retain knowledge and continuity within the business and make sure that you know the new and the fresh and the exciting ideas from the younger workers get combined with the experience and knowledge that individuals have gained over, you know, a 3040, year career.

Kris Safarova  08:32

Why did you decide to become specifically a fractional CFO versus a full time CFO?

Sara Daw  08:39

Now this, yeah, this is such a good question. So for me, it was necessity. And so if I take you back to that plane ride, I’d had my first daughter, I’d held corporate roles before. I’d done an MBA at London Business School, and the only people that wanted to recruit me at this point, because I was a CA, chartered accountant with an MBA, were the investment banks, and that was the last place I wanted to go, because I didn’t want to work, you know, 80 100 hour weeks because I had a young family. And I also felt there was an element of having a corporate mask. You know, I couldn’t be myself at work when we’re talking over 20 years ago now. So things may well have changed, but back then, you know, it was very difficult to even mention you had a family, because you were expected to give so much to your careers. So going back to corporate just wasn’t an option. And when I met that that my mentor on the plane and she talked to me about her portfolio career, I suddenly thought, actually, I can do that. I could be a portfolio CFO. That was my skill set, my training. I could work with SMEs who don’t want, don’t need, and can’t afford. My. Time, full time, but they need my skills. And actually, I could work two, three days a week, and have a career, which is what I wanted, and look after my family. So there was flexibility, variety, control, all built into my new way of working. I had agency. I was independent, yet I could work as much as I wanted, and I could give real value to these SME businesses who absolutely needed my skills but just couldn’t afford it all the time. So it was a perfect match. And, and that’s, you know, that’s what I ended up doing, and, but it was born out of the fact I had to find something to do to further my career that would give me that flexibility.

Kris Safarova  10:46

Could you talk us through finding those first few clients that allowed you to start that career?

Sara Daw  10:51

Yeah, so this is really interesting, and for anyone that wants to go into fractional working so I think the first thing is to realize it is a change in career. So yes, I’m a CFO, and I was going to be a CFO for multiple clients, a day a week here, two days a month there. And the CFO skills, if you like, were the same. But there’s also some further dimensions when you’re building a portfolio working with four clients, not one, four businesses, not one. And sometimes you’re remote. You’re not there all the time. So you have to learn how to find those businesses in the first place to work with. And you know, 20, over 20 years ago, this was not a common concept. So most people I talked to had no idea what I was talking about when I started, and they got me very much confused with interim work, whereas this is fractional, this is ongoing and sort of permanent, if you like. But I just, you know, it might be a day a week instead of five days a week with a business. So the first thing is, think of it as a change of career, and you have to learn new skills. So I had to learn how to market myself. I had to learn how to access my network to sell my skills. And here are some examples of the way I did it. So the first one was to I actually traded off the network of my husband, so he had already worked in the SME community and had some relationships. So I started talking to the bank managers of that he knew, and I explained my offering. Had coffee with them, invested. Got curious about them. I think that’s the key thing when you’re when you’re trying to find work and, you know, market yourself. I think the key thing is to be really curious about who you who you’re talking to, what would add value to them. And I got really curious about what they needed, what would what were the obstacles they were seeing in the businesses they were working with, which enabled me to talk about how I could, you know, help if ever they needed it. And I also asked them for help. I said to these people, how can you know this is what I want to do? If you if you see anything like this, how could you help me? And most people are open to helping, and I was trying to help them. So if I saw things in the market that I felt could help them, I would give them a call back. And so I started doing that, meeting lots of different people, asking what they wanted from the market. Give making connections for them. And after about, you know, a few months, my phone started ringing because people came across opportunities for me, and felt warm, if you like, towards me, because I’d help them. And so that was how my first client came along, through that, through one of those bank managers. And then the second client was interesting was it was a different scenario altogether. So there was an exhibition, and it was for SMEs. And in those days when, and I think still now, when SMEs exhibit often the business owner, because it’s quite a big investment for the to exhibit at an event, the business owners on stand. So you’ve got access to these people. I literally walked the floor of this business exposition. I had bags and bags of goodies by the end of it. But I spoke to probably about 50 entrepreneurs, and I’d ask them about their business, and I’d be really curious. And it was great way to learn about all these different offerings out there in the market. And human nature is they will then turn around and say, so. So who are you? What do you do? And then I could explain what I did and and one of those business owners said, I need one of you, and that was my second client. So building relationships, I think, and being really human, and just being curious and interested, if you’ve got all of those things, I think you can, you know, you can really strike up a conversation and. And share what you’ve got to offer, and potentially that’s a way into working with business owners.

Kris Safarova  15:07

Thank you so much for sharing all the details. This is incredibly helpful. And what I want to highlight for everyone listening right now or watching what you said, how you were interested in them, and only when they asked you. You said what you did, and that is a very, very powerful way to network.

Sara Daw  15:25

Yeah, it’s really important, because most people want to talk about themselves, and business owners are absolutely passionate about their business. And quite frankly, I don’t really think you can go into the fractional C suite world if you’re not interested in other people, and you know what makes them tick, and why are they building their business in that particular way with that particular product? I mean, if you can, if you can find businesses that you’re really interested in, and you’re interested in people and helping and giving back, and there’s a genuineness to that, then I think you’re in a really, really good space to be able to have a fractional career.

Kris Safarova  16:06

And another moment I wanted to highlight for everyone listening is how much you work, how long it took for you to get those first two clients and you did not give up.

Sara Daw  16:16

Yes. So I think this is a really big point around fractional working because you have to invest in setting yourself up as a fractional C suite, individual or fractional of any level, really, and connecting with your network. And I, my, my observation is that the community that you’re working in will test you. Are you there to stay? Are you really serious about this, or are you just, you know, going to give up and go back to employment, because it’s all a bit too difficult. And so I think if you’re going to embark on a fractional career, it’s really important that you thought about it long and hard, because there will be a period at the start where you don’t have any business, you don’t have any clients, and you’re trying to figure out how to find these clients. So you’re learning all these new skills. So I think you need to be up for that type of experience, and you need to be willing to do a test and measure approach. So try different approaches. Go to different events, try different networking avenues. Some will work for you. Some will won’t. You might want to work a lot on LinkedIn. You might not. You might want to be in person. Work it out for yourself what works for you, but there will be a period where you you’re not earning, and so you need to have a financial runway. And the other piece of advice, I would say, is make sure you have your nearest and dearest behind you and supporting you. So you know this needs to be a family affair. Really going changing your life and changing career. This is a change of career. And if you’ve got someone in your life who is your is very close to you, who’s just saying, When are you going to get a proper job that’s going to detract from your ability to really go full steam ahead in this way of working? You need someone who’s with you on the journey, and it will take time. And I think if you’re you’re open to that, and you’ve prepared for a year, I think it doesn’t mean you won’t earn for a year. Of course, you will earn, you’ll start working with some clients, but you won’t be fully optimized in a year. So you’ve got, I think, give yourself a year to get your portfolio up and running and and be able to fund that. And I also think, make sure that you take the time to onboard each client, because trying to do too many at once, it is quite hard, and when you’re doing it first time, you will, you know you don’t want to rush it. So you really want to take care of these businesses, because, you know, they could last a very, very long time for you. So they’re very valuable relationships.

Kris Safarova  19:09

How long does it, on average, last the relationship that you have with a particular client as a fractional executive?

Sara Daw  19:15

Yeah, I’m afraid I’m going to say it depends. I mean, typically, I think you could say, you know, three years will be a will be a sort of typical average, because it depends where you’re connecting with these organizations on their journey. So, for instance, you might be connecting when they’re gearing up to exit, in which case, you know, you might be a specialist at M and A, and they absolutely might need your skills to help get through the process of selling and exiting that business. So that might be a shorter engagement, because, you know, they’re they’re moving on others, you might be right at the start of their journey. So that that client of mine that I met at the exhibition. Was an agency that had been set up by a husband and wife team, and they had literally just started and so and I ended up working with them for about six years. So that was a very long engagement. Other and others have been of mine have been equally long. I know some that are over 20 years. So it really does depend on where you connect with each organization and how well I think you can adapt over the time to what they need. So it’s unlikely the relationship will be exactly the same for the whole duration. It will ebb and flow. It will go up in intensity and down in intensity. And the key thing is to make sure that we’re all always adding value along the way. The relationship will go on, but it might have different forms over different periods. So for example, one example would be, you go with a business you may be their CFO for, say, five or six years, they then get to a size where they absolutely need a full time CFO. However, what I’ve found is that business owners at that point then decide, well, yes, I do need a full time CFO, and that may not be you know what I want to do at that point. However, if you’ve been through thick and thin with an entrepreneur, they don’t want you going anywhere, because you know them inside out, and they really trust you, and you trust them, so actually, you stay on to bed in the new CFO and be more of a non exec type role going forward, and then, and then. So the relationship changes, the form changes, but it carries on.

Kris Safarova  21:48

During those few months when you were looking for your first client, Were there moments when you were thinking, maybe I should do something else? There are other options for me out there?

Sara Daw  21:56

Totally, yes, absolutely. And I think many people do that, and I think that’s normal, actually. So So what stopped me was having other people around me. So I when I first started, when I was, you know, deciding that this was going to be my career, I started looking around for others that were doing the same thing. And that’s when I bumped into Colin Mills, who who was who had already done this himself and was working with his first few clients, and has sat at the FD center, so I joined him, and it was having other people together doing the same thing that actually kept me going with it, and I’m sure I’ve done the same for others. So having someone else who’s almost come out the other side and has already got their portfolio, you can turn to them and say, you know, gosh, I’m really not sure this is going to work. And they will, they will offer advice and give you encouragement. And that’s certainly what happened to me, which enabled me to carry on and and just go with it. What’s interesting, I think, with this type of work, is, if you keep up your activity. So this is the key thing, whether you’re on your own or part of a group, you need to always be marketing. So you need to it’s it doesn’t work when you are pitfall is, if you you start with a job, an engagement, with a client, and another one and another one. You maybe have two or three. You’ve got a couple of days work a week, go all in on that, stop your marketing, and you can’t fill yourself up for the fourth or fifth day. I think that’s a real problem. So and then what I see people doing is they either then think, oh, gosh, it’s too difficult to do this marketing, so therefore it’s not going to work. I’ll go back to employment. Or what I see them doing is actually dumbing down their skills and doing lower level work in the clients that they’ve got. That means they have to change the price point because it’s lower value work, and then they end up doing things at a level that they hadn’t really that doesn’t really fit with their skill sets. It’s not so fulfilling. So those are the two traps that I see people fall into. So the key thing is to always be marketing and and then you can cons, you know, make sure you you fill your time up, and that then prevents you, sort of giving up, in a way,

Kris Safarova  24:27

if you like talking about marketing, anything else you would like to add in addition to what you already shared,

Sara Daw  24:32

I think, with the marketing approach, is making sure that you understand for yourself your best ways of marketing, and that will be different to everyone, for everyone, probably. So there are all sorts of ways you can use technology. You can use LinkedIn, you can go to in person events. You can do, you know, digital marketing have a web. Site, that sort of thing, you can partner with organizations. So banks, accountants, lawyers, they all have clients that need you know C suite skills. So getting to know individuals in those organizations, there’s lots and lots of different channels. What I would say is make sure that you don’t just rely on one channel. So for instance, in the global financial crisis, you know, if you were relying on bankers to give you business, well, they’re not going to be thinking about about you when there’s a crisis going on and that, that channel dries up in COVID, in person, events, obviously, again, weren’t happening. So that wasn’t going you had to go online. So I think the key thing is have a range of marketing channels, two or three, three or four that work for you, and keep those going. And be very, very disciplined about that. So, you know, setting aside time doing the activity. If you do the activity, you will get the results. You will develop the skill you have, the will because you’re doing the activity, and you’ll get a steady stream of business. And perhaps what I would say is perhaps formally or informally, work, work in teams with other organizations or other people doing this, so that if you get too much work or not enough, you can share it around,

Kris Safarova  26:22

Makes a lot of sense. So for someone listening to us right now, if they’re thinking this sounds so good, I want to consider doing this. How should they evaluate if they have the skill set the experiences that is required to be successful?

Sara Daw  26:37

Yes, so I mean at the C suite level, the way I look at it generally, is individuals who have some big company experience are really valuable to smaller SMEs who need that skill set, because all these SMEs want to get to big, and they may not have done it before. They don’t know how to do it. They haven’t got all these functional disciplines. They don’t know marketing or finance or tech. They’re probably good at the entrepreneurs, good at something else, and they need to supplement their skill sets for these professionals. So they want to know how to get to big. They want the processes, the rigor, the the insights, the strategy to navigate their way through. So that’s what they’ll be buying. So if you’ve got big company experience, it doesn’t, I don’t think it doesn’t have to be the complete set. Again, if you know you’ve got some gaps. So perhaps you’ve never as a CFO, you’ve never raised debt before, because you’ve been in a big company, and you’ve always just gone to the Treasury Department to get the debt, to get the funding. Well, that’s okay, because it’s not difficult to learn. Just just make sure you’ve got some other people that are also freelance that you can learn from, and you can you can give them some some skills that they need. So I think make sure you’ve got the big company experience that’s attractive. What’s also experienced attractive for SMEs are the fact that you can get on with an entrepreneur. So to have relational skills, this is, I can’t tell you how important it is to have the softer relational skills, around active listening, around empathy, around understanding, around how to build trust, because those are probably the key skills that will keep relationships going for the long term. If you if you think about it, a lot of people have the skills, the doing skills, the technical skills that’s quite easy to replicate, and with automation coming on that will be even more easy to replicate. The relational personal skills are harder. So I would cons. I would definitely develop myself going on coaching courses to learn how to have deep and meaningful conversations, because if you can get your clients to really confide in you and feel safe and be willing to share, you’re likely to add more value to them. So the relational skills, the softer skills, the harder skills. Working with SMEs and entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs quite savvy, commercial individuals, they want to see the angle they don’t want to get tied up too much in compliance. They want to obey the rules, but they don’t want it to hold them back. So you have to be more of a, yes, let’s explore how we can do that, rather than a Oh, the problem with doing that is this, so be a green lighter rather than a red lighter, if you like. Try and help them to see the way they can do things, as opposed to pointing out what they can’t do, that will just restrain them. And then I think another, another really good asset it doing this type of work is, if you’ve held, you know general management, you’ve had general management experience like a bread. Of experience, so you’ve held board level experience generally, or you’ve even run your own business, which means you’ve sat in their shoes, or you’ve had experience being close to individuals who run their own business, because that will give you a level of empathy and understanding that will really be valuable to these individuals, because they’ll feel like you, you understand what they’re going through. You don’t have to have all of that. But I think you know a good level, a dose of, dose of that will will stand you in good stead.

Kris Safarova  30:36

Could you give us a sense of what a week looks like, a typical week of an effective person in the States?

Sara Daw  30:43

Yes, it’s so this is interesting, because if you’d asked me that question before COVID, I would have said it would be compartmentalized into dates since COVID, where the lines have blurred and we’ve worked more virtually and remotely. I would say, yes, we still might work with you might work with a business on set days. Yet, I also think there’ll be days where you work with multiple businesses and dipping in and out of conversations and meetings appropriately with each one. I think there’ll be lots of variety. So you’ll have you know, you need to be able to pick up and be quite fleet of foot, really, around working with different businesses and picking up the issues that they’re grappling with, which might be completely different from the one that you did in the hour previously. So I think it’s worth building some headspace into your week, so not packing it so full with client work that you can’t have some time in between to reflect on what’s going on with each client. So I think you do need to build a bit of buffer into into the week. I think what’s also interesting is my advice is to be really organized. How you with, how you work with your set of clients. So it doesn’t really matter which option of the two I’m going to talk to you about, or maybe more ways of working. Doesn’t matter which one you choose. But I think you need to have all your clients work in the same way. So the beauty of fractional working is that, and this is really important, clients need to feel like you are full time for them, even though you are fractional and part time, they need to feel like and I know this from my research. They need to feel like you are. They are the only client and the center of your universe, and they need to feel that they’re you’re accessible to them, and that they can get hold of you anytime. So that that poses a problem, because if you’re in another client, how do you, how do you, you know, respond? So I think at the start of working with a client, you should talk to each of them and say, this is the way we work. I am going to take calls from other clients when I’m on your premises and working for you, but what that means is you can always get hold of me when I’m working for someone else, so I will always be able to respond. And I think if you get all your clients working in that way, then they all see the benefit of it. And another way, and I know other people do it is to is to literally say, This day is for this client, this day is for this client, etc, and they all respect those boundaries. And I think either way is good, as long as everyone knows that’s that’s the rules, and they feel that’s fair. So it’s a it’s a very you have to be quite agile. I think, I think that’s, that’s the way it works is, is it’s a there’s a lot of variety. You’re switching between life cycles, cultures, people, environments, and you have to be, you know, you have to like doing that. But I also think you can design your portfolio. So I think when you get to experience a few different clients, you’re, I think you’ll, you’ll get to understand which ones you really like working with. So do you like working, you know, really intensely, with a few clients, or would you like skimming across across the top with more? Do you want to work in certain industries? Or do you want that you know really well? Or do you or would you like to work in completely new environments? What sort of life cycle stage do you want to work the startups, the scale ups, the more mature businesses, family businesses, so I think designing your portfolio and then designing your marketing to attract those businesses means that you’re going to have the most fulfilling experience that suits suits you as an individual.

Kris Safarova  34:48

And time management, task management, probably a big thing as well for us. What will be your advice? What works for you?

Sara Daw  34:56

Yes, so my advice is to communicate. Kate Well and look ahead. So I’ve seen it before where individuals have have, you know, got into a little bit of trouble, perhaps when they are busy with a client, and they’ve got, say, three other clients, and they sort of just hope those other three clients aren’t going to get busy at the same time. And I, I just don’t think that’s the right strategy. I think the way to do it is to communicate, well, you know how available you are, and talk to the all your clients about what’s coming down the line, and start planning that in because it’s all too easy to just get caught out, because something will go on with another client, and you won’t be ready for it, and then you’re overwhelmed. The other side of it is, is, again, going back to that team aspect, the beauty of having a team, whether that’s a formal organization, like the one I run, or another one where or something informal, where you’ve just got an informal team around you, is that you can use that to soak up extra work and fill capacity gaps that you might have. So if all your clients get busy in a particular week or a month, you’ve got other people you can rely on to help you do that work. And I think that’s really important, because we’re not doing this way of working to, you know, to overwork and burn ourselves out. That is not the point of fractional working. Fractional working is around enjoyment, agency, fulfillment, flexibility. Of course, at times it’s going to be a bit more busy than others, but that carrying on for a long period of time is is not what this is about. So I think it’s really important to make sure that you you build and collaborate with others to help soak up some of the extra work that you might sometimes get.

Kris Safarova  37:02

Sara, this is incredibly helpful. Thank you so much for everything you are sharing. I want to wrap it up with two questions that not on this topic, but I think will be very helpful for everyone listening in or watching so. Question one, do you have any so to say success habits, certain things you do that really allows you to hold everything together and have balance and be healthy and have time for your family and for your work.

Sara Daw  37:26

Yes, so I think what I’ve learned over the years is that I need to be very present and be able to see perspective. And I mean, it’s hard sometimes, isn’t it? I mean, we all get caught up in things, but I found meditation actually really, really helpful for me. It meditation for me, is about letting go, not being too attached to things, and it becomes a habit, if practiced, and I found that really useful to be able to distance myself when things get, you know, get quite when, when it feels a bit overwhelming, to be able to distance myself from, from that, that thought process. And therefore basically see it in a way that I can deal with it, as opposed to just reacting, so responding more thoughtfully than reacting. So I definitely have found that very, very helpful. I’ve also found it helpful to build into my schedule, time for myself, downtime. So in my business, we often talk about the numbers that really matter for the business owners that we work with. Like, why did they get in business in the first place? What was it that you know that inspired them? Like, for example, we have one client that wants to eradicate single use plastic. So their number that really matters is the number one, you know, we want to, we want to get rid of that. And I think of it. I think all our fractional individuals as well, fractional C suite individuals should have a number that really matters to them. Mine is three. For me, I want to get out. I like horse riding, so I try and get out and ride my horse three times a week. And that gives me thinking time and space, and I literally plan that into my week. Now it doesn’t happen every week. I have to say, I’m not I’m not perfect, but, but it, but it definitely helps. So I would say, you know, it’s really important to be deliberate about how you want to design your life when you build FRAC. You know, build fractional into your career.

Kris Safarova  39:59

And this. Second question. Over the last few years, were there some aha moments, realizations that really changed the way you look at life or the way you look at business?

Sara Daw  40:09

Oh, gosh, that’s a really good question. I think yes. So I think when I first started as a business owner and wanting to build a business. It was very much around achievement and fast pace, getting there as quickly as possible, and achieving. And my aha moment, and I’m sure every, I’m sure there’s lots of people on this call have already got this, but my aha moment is that you don’t ever get there. And actually, it’s all about the process and the journey. And that’s far more enjoyable than you know, because it always illusion. Because as soon as I filled up, as soon as I achieved something, I just put something else there to achieve. So I never actually finished and and that’s, yeah, that’s how I feel. Now, yeah, I’m learning to appreciate that it isn’t about finishing, it’s about enjoying the ride. Now, you know that’s easy to say and hard to do, but generally, I’m much more enjoying it and I but I also feel that when you’re building a business, especially in the early days, when you’re not quite sure. I wasn’t quite sure how it’s going to go. I wasn’t quite you know is quite chaotic. I seem to be lurching from crisis to crisis. So I think as you get bigger in an organization, you you also get get a bit more breathing space, bit bit more resources to rely on. And that also brings, brings an element of being able to sort of calm down a bit and realize that if you can enjoy the journey, then and sort of give up the destination. In some ways, it’s far more rewarding.

Kris Safarova  42:05

Sara, thank you so much. Such a pleasure speaking with you. Where can our listeners learn more about you by your recent book and your first book as well. Anything you want to share?

Sara Daw  42:15

Yeah, absolutely. So you can find me on LinkedIn. Sara Daw, and you can, you can have a look at my book, which is on my website, saradore.com so my, my book, latest book, is strategy and leadership of service, how the access economy means C suite, and that’s also on Amazon and Routledge. And my book before that is executive freedom, that that will also be in those places. And yeah, the businesses that my businesses, the CFO center, is fractional CFOs, and the Liberty group is fractional C suite professionals.

Kris Safarova  42:52

So there you go, Sara. Thank you so much. Really appreciate you being here, and thank you for all the advice you shared.

Sara Daw  42:57

Thanks very much. It was great. Really enjoyed it.

Kris Safarova  43:00

Our guest today, again, has been Sara. Do check out your book. It’s called strategy and leadership as service. Your latest book, and our podcast sponsor today is strategy training.com and we have a gift for you. It’s a download. You can get overall approach used in well managed strategy studies, and you can get it at firmsconsulting.com forward slash overall approach. And firms consulting is F, I, R, M S, consulting.com forward slash overall approach. And then you can also get McKinsey and B, C, G, winning resume, which is also a free download, and you can get it at firms consulting.com forward slash resume PDF. Thank you so much everyone for tuning in, and I’m looking forward to connect with you all next time.

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