Consulting Magazine - November 2017

Chief Outsiders is a nation- wide Executives-as-a-Ser- vice firm comprised of more than 55 fractional Chief Marketing Officers engaged from coast-to-coast. Chief Outsiders has served on the executive team of more than 500 client companies to drive growth strategy and execution plans for a fraction of the cost of a full-time executive. CEO Art Saxby sat down with Consulting to discuss the firm’s performance.

Consulting: What were the main factors that contributed to your firm’s exceptional growth?

Saxby: We have seen increasing demand for the services of fractional Chief Marketing Officers within private equity, which has fueled rapid expansion in this segment. We recently have doubled the number of PE-owned businesses that we have served, making this the fastest-growing segment of our client base. We currently have more than 55 CMOs traveling the country, dispensing market-oriented insights and leading growth implementation plans with small- and mid-market companies—a more than 20 percent increase from two years ago.

Consulting: How is this year shaping up for your firm?

Saxby: 2017 has been a bellwether
year for Chief Outsiders—in addi-
tion to the growth in the PE segment
highlighted above, we recently cel-
ebrated the company’s 500th cli-
ent—no small feat for a company
that launched less than a decade ago,
in the shadows of the recession. We
also attained a spot in the Inc. 5000
list of fastest-growing U.S. business-
es for the fourth consecutive year.

Consulting: How would you describe your firm’s outlook for 2018? Where do you see the most opportunities? Saxby: Private Equity portfolio clients remain atop our opportunity list for the coming year. Private Equity firms are more focused than ever at driving top-line growth as the core strategy to increasing company valuations. Combined with an increasing climate of securing fractional or contracted resources—including at the executive level (some refer to it as the gig economy)—puts Chief Outsiders in an excellent position to further ramp its growth trajectory.

Consulting: What would you say are your firm’s biggest challenges in 2018?

Saxby: Among our biggest chal-
lenges is to continue to keep grow-
ing our firm’s roster of qualified
CMOs. Our CMOS work full-time
exclusively as part of Chief Out-
siders. We only hire fractional
CMOs that have risen to the lev-
el of VP of Marketing or above in
their careers, at billion dollar com-
panies – so this means that we are
extremely selective. It also assures
our clients that they will always
benefit from industry leaders when
working with a Chief Outsider.

Consulting: What does being named one of Consulting’s Fastest Growing Firms mean to your firm, your employees and your clients?

Saxby: It’s simply an affirmation of our hard work, and the belief that our model—the “ Execu-tives-as-a-Service” approach—is the right one for the times. We have only achieved our success because our clients, too, have succeeded from our partnership. It is extremely gratifying to look back at the hundreds of companies, products and services that are thriving as a result of work with Chief Outsiders and our fractional CMOs.