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.
CHIEF OUTSIDERS
27GROWTH PERCENTAGE:
191%
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