#73 Clarity under pressure: Fractional leadership & scaling South African mid-market businesses with Grant Webster

TRANSCRIPT: THE bizval PODCAST
Guest: Grant Webster, Founder — Gralen Consulting and FractionationSouth Africa
Host: Graham Stephen, CEO and Co-Founder, bizval

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[00:00:29] Graham Stephen: Welcome to the bizval Podcast. At bizval, we’re passionate about helping entrepreneurs understand and unlock the value in their business.

[00:00:38] Graham Stephen: We believe that, you know, building a business of value is not an accident. It’s an intentional process built through clarity, discipline, governance, and execution.

[00:00:48] Graham Stephen: And today, I’m delighted to be joined by somebody who’s, you know, done all those things. He’s operated across retail, high-growth e-commerce, board leadership, and now fractional executive leadership space. Grant Webster is a legend in his own time.

[00:01:04] Graham Stephen: But we’ve got to know each other over the last few years, and he’s the founder of Graylin Consulting, the founder of Fractionation South Africa, former executive at one of South Africa’s largest online platforms, and someone who spent decades working in the intersection of strategy, and importantly, execution in South Africa and abroad. So, Grant, welcome to the podcast.

[00:01:29] Grant Webster: Thanks, Grammar, and I appreciate you having me.

[00:01:33] Graham Stephen: Fantastic. So, Grant, we’re gonna… we’re gonna talk a little bit about your background, and early influences, then a little bit about your, sort of, retail career foundations, and I think

[00:01:43] Graham Stephen: you know, that’s not what the podcast is about, but I think there’s some, you know, great learnings out of that. And then the move back into consulting, the birth of Graylen, and now the sort of fractional leadership space. So, let’s start right at the… the beginning, okay? Tell us a little bit about your…

[00:02:01] Graham Stephen: Your upbringing, where you grew up, and maybe some of those early influences that started to shape the grant that we see today.

[00:02:12] Grant Webster: Yeah, sure. So, I’m originally a Maritsubic boy, so born and raised in KZN.

[00:02:18] Grant Webster: child of the 80s, which can be argued the best generation that was out there. Born and schooled in Maritsburg, only child, so, divorced parents, young, 5, 6, 7, somewhere around there, so raised by my mom. And,

[00:02:38] Grant Webster: Yeah, I think, I mean, some of the early influences that I have, I mean, certainly my grandparents helped me. I had two most amazing grandmothers.

[00:02:45] Grant Webster: who lived on my doorstep, and of course, I was the favorite, as you are, and I think in time I found a couple of other grandmothers, some of my mates’ grandmothers also loved me. And but yeah, I lived in flats my whole life, and so it’s probably now why I battle to exist in anything that falls. I enjoy the outdoors, you know, strolls on the beaches and in the mountains.

[00:03:10] Grant Webster: market just raising up with walls around you. I was a pretty balanced kid, so well done to my… my influences at that stage. I was super independent.

[00:03:22] Grant Webster: I drank from rivers when you could. We rode our BMXs in the street. We came home when the street lights came on, or when somebody shouted across the park to say it was time for dinner.

[00:03:38] Grant Webster: absolute bookworm. You wouldn’t think so today. I can’t find the time or energy to read books at any length. I think I got 6 or 7 that I’m trying to find my way through. You wouldn’t think I was reading in one a day. And…

[00:03:51] Grant Webster: I wrote a post a little while ago about being curious. Curiosity was the main… I just asked questions all day and every day, and it kind of gave my… a little bit of passion for learning.

[00:04:03] Grant Webster: Fantastic. Yeah, Kiara.

[00:04:08] Graham Stephen: No, go for it here.

[00:04:09] Grant Webster: Yeah, so they’re… they’re oft… and they’re after, I think as I just evolved, from being this

[00:04:20] Grant Webster: kid in this community of blocks of flats, set about realizing that I didn’t want to be part of the masses, I just wanted to be somebody different, and uniquely me. I think, Pierre Duplicy and I had a conversation the other day about being you, and you is enough, and that’s…

[00:04:38] Grant Webster: kind of cemented the way I wanted to live, and… Grow up.

[00:04:44] Graham Stephen: Yeah, I think, you know, there’s a lot in that, you know, as I say, being raised by a single mom, and, you know, I can see, you know, the empathy you have for single moms and that, and… but equally, as a young boy in that environment, you have to probably grow up pretty quickly, and, you know, take on responsibility at a very young age.

[00:05:03] Graham Stephen: And I guess that’s something that never leaves you. Once you’ve been through that, you have to, you know, you take on that role of provider and protector and that at a very early age. Do you think that’s had an influence on looking back now, on your…

[00:05:20] Graham Stephen: You know, your work ethic, your sense of responsibility, do you think those early days shaped that?

[00:05:26] Grant Webster: Yeah, for sure, you know, when you’re… When your parent leaves first thing in the morning before sunup and comes back Sunday afternoon, the… the…

[00:05:36] Grant Webster: the chores are needed to still get done, and all of that needs to happen, and so certainly that discipline and structure was there, outside of just trying to grow up and just be a boy, right? I mean, that’s also that. I think, I mean, my entrepreneurial exposure was mainly…

[00:05:53] Grant Webster: vending for myself, I suppose. So, at school, I went and manned the tuck shop queue, and worked in the tuck shop so that I could… so I could get Coke and chips, and… and hot dogs, and burgers, and pies, and all of that junk food, and now I used to sell that to the boarders.

[00:06:11] Grant Webster: As well as the lunch my mom used to make for me, and make some cash. And then I took that cash, and I spent the cash on

[00:06:17] Grant Webster: my BMX, and… stuff that I wanted, and I think that’s how it went, and along with that, I…

[00:06:24] Grant Webster: In order to find the spending money to go to movies and… take somebody on a date, or just actually just go out with mates. I ended up early, early stages, my first blood into retail was working in a spa. And there, I packed shelves, and I counted stock, and…

[00:06:43] Grant Webster: yeah, stood me in good… in good stance now, later on in life, when I…

[00:06:49] Grant Webster: help somebody balance a stock take. It was officially the first job that I ever did. There’s not much you can teach me about counting stock.

[00:06:58] Graham Stephen: But you know what, I mean, I just want to just touch on a few things here. I mean, even though you had that responsibility, you were also allowed… I mean, your mom sounds like an amazing woman, but you were allowed to, and your grandparents, to also just be a kid, I guess, growing up in the 80s. And, you know, I also have memories of, you know, collecting

[00:07:14] Graham Stephen: the glass Coke bottles, so that you could take the deposit in and get your 20 cents to go play the arcade game, or whatever.

[00:07:21] Grant Webster: It’s a true, true story. Yeah, so I mean, I mean, remember that in those days.

[00:07:28] Grant Webster: there was no… there was no… and it’s a bit… it’s a bit… gotta reminisce back, but, you know, we didn’t have…

[00:07:35] Grant Webster: We didn’t have petrol stations that had shops. So let’s start there. And the Corner Cafe, if you think, I mean, in my world, I talk a little bit about disruption and the like, and who would have thought that the disruption of the Corner Cafe

[00:07:47] Grant Webster: in most of the cities would be disrupted by the petrol station. It was completely left at center, it’s just nobody ever thought about that that would happen.

[00:07:56] Grant Webster: And so, yeah, we, I mean, we had no shopping centers in those days. Stores were departmental stores. Going to an Edgar’s was a big thing, because it had everything for you, multi-level, and, you know, Stata Fits, when it was still around, were all aspirational, aspirational areas.

[00:08:16] Graham Stephen: Yeah. And I think, yeah, I mean, it’s interesting you touched about that corner cafe. It’s something you almost forget about. I remember, as I say, growing up at a similar time, is that was…

[00:08:25] Graham Stephen: it was a part of the community, you know, they were usually owned by immigrants, you know, whether it was Portuguese, or Greek, or Chinese, or whatever, and that’s where people congregated, you know, you’d go and play in the arcade machine, or you would meet your mates there after school. And I think something’s been lost a little bit as we’ve kind of moved to a much more sort of insular world. Everything’s been…

[00:08:48] Graham Stephen: corporatized, but I think there’s a lot of learnings from, you know, how those businesses used to operate, you know, around that sense of community and the humanness of it, which… which, you know, I guess in our desire to kind of improve and automate and process sometimes gets lost. So, I want to move a little bit. So, so you… you then moved into your early career, you know, you touched on it, yeah, but you were in the sort of retail space, let’s call it that.

[00:09:16] Graham Stephen: you know, you worked at the likes of Macro, LookenList, and various shops, but let’s just talk a little bit about…

[00:09:23] Graham Stephen: you know, retail. And I always say retail is detailed. It’s not just… it’s not just strategy on paper, you’re actually trading, you’re actually buying, you… what… what were… what were the, sort of, key things about starting your career in the retail space that, thinking back now, that you learned?

[00:09:43] Grant Webster: Yeah, look, outside of retail being detail. also… there’s a saying that says you’re born into retail, and not everybody’s cut out to doing the hours and the luck. I have a few principles when I look to hire, one of which is that if you want somebody to run your business and

[00:10:06] Grant Webster: treat it as its own, and to be able to work independently, go find yourself a great store manager from

[00:10:12] Grant Webster: can all work, because they’ve dealt with customer issues, they know about long hours, they have climbed ladders up and down and done fit-outs and got their hands dirty, but then they also know how to do a disciplinary, and they understand how to do revenue and margin management. They know how to deal with seagull manager bosses, which is, regional manager arrives.

[00:10:35] Grant Webster: does his thing, and then leaves, and then they gotta, you know, clean up… clean up the mess. That, and then certainly… yeah, that’s true. I think that is certainly, someone from hospitality, because,

[00:10:48] Grant Webster: that is front and center of the customer that’s out there. And if you find the right person, through the levels of the organization, those learnings from, you know, packing shelves to sitting around a boardroom table.

[00:11:04] Grant Webster: on, on, on, unvaluable. I find now…

[00:11:11] Grant Webster: where we picked it as a career, now it’s more about doing a job. And I think a lot of the career guys haven’t got their managed a lot by the numbers, whereas we had the ability to trade. We didn’t have, you know, 5, 6, 700 store

[00:11:27] Grant Webster: retail chains en masse that owned half a shopping center. It was a lot more owner… owner-run, as opposed to corporate-run in those days.

[00:11:38] Graham Stephen: Yeah, I think… I think thinking back there as well, it was the same as the old bank managers, right? If you were ahead of a… even in the big chains that existed, the store manager or the regional manager could make decisions. And I guess what’s happened over time is

[00:11:52] Graham Stephen: those have been devolved to a KPI that just gets managed through… through a process, right? But, you know, we, and you, I guess, grow up in that unique area where a lot of that

[00:12:03] Graham Stephen: You know, let’s call it, decentralized chain of command still existed, and it was a wonderful and rich environment, I guess, to learn the mechanics of running a business. You know, when we think retail now, we think it’s, yeah, it’s just a job, as you say, so…

[00:12:19] Graham Stephen: Unfortunately, a lot of the sort of newer generation will never be able to go back in time and have that kind of…

[00:12:27] Graham Stephen: upbringing and experience and the learnings, I guess, that come with it,

[00:12:33] Grant Webster: Yeah, but there’s other learnings that they can teach those people who come from that generation. I think as the world has evolved, there’s… I talk about being relevant, and I think we make some mistakes in leadership, one of which is

[00:12:46] Grant Webster: we have this when we philosophy, you know, when we were back in the 80s, or when we were this, or when we had shops, you know. And I don’t think… and I think there are learnings at every stage.

[00:12:57] Grant Webster: And I was very grateful to work with a couple of leaders who taught me the principles, as opposed to the, you know, giving me the fish I got taught to be… I got taught to fish. And that part for me…

[00:13:11] Grant Webster: it is then interchangeable. In my current world, where I work with so many different clients and engage with so many business people like yourself and the like, it allows you just to almost be a chameleon, or I use a word called… something I came across recently about being an introvert.

[00:13:26] Grant Webster: which is not an introvert, but an extrovert, but somebody who evolves between various, various things. And you learn that, and you just take your learnings. And there is a lesson in…

[00:13:34] Grant Webster: Looking back in life and finding the things That you don’t want to be.

[00:13:41] Grant Webster: and dealing with that. You don’t want to work for that kind of leader, or don’t want to be that kind of boss. But then there’s a bunch of learnings about, you know, work ethic, arriving on time, stuff that doesn’t get taught, that we got taught in the olden days, that is incumbent on us as leaders to

[00:13:56] Grant Webster: help the new guys coming through. And when I say new guys, new guys not in age, just new guys who are, I don’t know, somebody who’s working in a bank, he opened a… you decided to open a restaurant.

[00:14:06] Grant Webster: what does he… what does he know about hospitality, other than he’s now… he’s forced into that situation? So, there are learnings at all stages, and to be open to the learnings, I think, is also super important.

[00:14:18] Graham Stephen: Yeah, I think… I think you’re right. It’s like, nobody likes that, guys. Like, back in the old days when things were, like, utopia, it’s never like that, but it’s, as you say, learning those principles and being able to adapt and apply them to the world we live in now. I mean, that’s super important, and… I mean, if we move on a little bit, I guess you did that, right? So you grew up in the sort of old…

[00:14:36] Graham Stephen: old school, let’s call it retail. And, you know, one of the next steps in your career, and I’m, like, fast-forwarding a few years, but you were part of, the early team at Takeaway, and we’re not going to dwell too much on that, but

[00:14:50] Graham Stephen: moving into the world of e-commerce, which, you know, 10, 15 years ago in South Africa was very much new ground.

[00:14:57] Graham Stephen: So let’s go back to those, sort of, early days, you know, a lot of my kids know nothing other than e-commerce. You know, Dad, I’m hungry, can you take me to the shop? It doesn’t happen anymore, it’s just, oh, I’ve ordered on, you know, Uber Eats or whatever, and the food’s going to be delivered at the door. So, let’s go back to those early days when we think about e-commerce.

[00:15:16] Graham Stephen: What is it like then, and how were you able to sort of apply what you had learned in that, you know, more traditional retail world into that early days of e-commerce in South Africa?

[00:15:29] Grant Webster: You know, I get pictures every now and again, so if my head goes, it’s, it goes carnage. I mean, I go back even before my… before my take-a-lot days, and, for… I mean, for the story, I joined a business called Take-Two, and there were myself and the leadership, and we then rebranded.

[00:15:48] Graham Stephen: Take-Two wasn’t the chocolate bar, I think there was a chocolate bar called Take Two.

[00:15:54] Grant Webster: Rubbish chocolate flake is always better. And, yeah, so before that, but even before that, as it started to happen, I mean, I was involved in the, we launched the first music download site in the country, so you’ve got to go back, like, before e-commerce was starting, everybody saw this massive

[00:16:12] Grant Webster: Swing overseas, and there was this fear in the early days of the unknown, and to get a supplier to list online was just not an option, because everybody said we were going to steal sales and sell at whatever price we want, which, truthfully ended they were right, and it did happen like that over time. But it needed to be part of

[00:16:35] Grant Webster: the evolution of your business to be able to serve your customer in any specific space. So if they wanted to shop online or in-store, the whole omni-channel evolvement is how it needed to become, and there were some early adopters and some slow guys. And to this day, actually, I’m…

[00:16:54] Grant Webster: Amazed at how many… Big corporates. Have not… have made the jump, but…

[00:17:02] Grant Webster: Are so protective of it, that as the e-commerce market now grows. their market share of that’s gonna go a little bit more, and there will be pressure. And fortunately, in the online world.

[00:17:14] Grant Webster: we’re a bit of a lag country, so we can actually see whatever’s going to come. Yeah, the early days, it was relentless. It was, and I speak specifically

[00:17:24] Grant Webster: with our team at Takeout, and then passed after that. Was relentless about execution, relentless about the customer, relentless about measuring, relentless about hiring the right people. I mean, to this day, they are unbelievable folk that

[00:17:38] Grant Webster: we onboarded in that early days of Take-A-Lot, who are there today working with the team.

[00:17:46] Grant Webster: proper, proper, proper, proper people. I think, I mean… There’s always been these playbooks that have been floating around, certainly now, and in those days, You know…

[00:17:59] Grant Webster: they were there, they were just in a person’s head, and what I’ve found more recently is when I work with founders.

[00:18:04] Graham Stephen: Hmm.

[00:18:05] Grant Webster: is you’ve got to get it out, and that’s a… that’s a… that’s a learning from those days. I have to sit with somebody and say, right, just what’s in your brain? Let’s write it down, and let’s get that into something. Because generally, I’ve found is…

[00:18:17] Grant Webster: All-knowing, all-seeing. Look at your business. You know everything that’s happened in your business. But at some point, if you start to step away, you’re not all-knowing, all-seeing. Now we have to document that in some form. It has to

[00:18:29] Grant Webster: Get it to a piece of paper, or it has to get to other people who can then… who can then help you. So certainly the key to learning how to extrapolate that and then put it into some sort of actionable roadmap is definitely something that helped in those days.

[00:18:46] Graham Stephen: I want to just dive into that a little bit, and it’s fascinating because I think I worked for a big bank as well. I remember one of the guys who had worked for me, they had been with the bank for 40 years, and he remembered the days of, like, manual ledges in the branches and adding up, and talking about how then they had to develop the sort of bank systems that could do that. And what was fascinating as you were chatting there, Grant, is that

[00:19:10] Graham Stephen: The evolution of e-commerce in the early days. actually forced that documentation process. You know, you had to go in, what’s in somebody’s head, document it, record it, code it, design it. You know, looking from today’s lens, you know, and you go write a prompt into

[00:19:26] Graham Stephen: you know, ChatGBT or whatever, and it can have an e-commerce website spun up in 15 seconds, if you believe some of these… some of the sort of, evangelists. But back then.

[00:19:38] Graham Stephen: It was an actual thought process, you know, I guess you had to question… you had to document everything, question everything.

[00:19:44] Graham Stephen: And the technology at that stage wasn’t at the stage now where it’s so easy to do, right? You were probably coding in COBOL and all of that, and… and I think there’s a lost art in that, which you’re touching on.

[00:19:59] Grant Webster: It was very… it was very… it was very manual, Graham, and I think in today’s world, what we’re starting to see is we had nothing, and we wrote a… we wrote a brief of sorts. Now what we’re seeing is somebody’s taking a brief

[00:20:14] Grant Webster: and writing on a summary of a brief that they’ve pulled out of some sort of AI or something. So actually, the research in the early days, if you… I mean, you get your delivery.

[00:20:22] Grant Webster: Same day, next day, because we went and looked at flight schedules, physical flight schedules, and when it had to be there, and traffic movement, and so that it could get to the plane on time in order for it to get from Cape Town to Joburg.

[00:20:34] Grant Webster: Nowadays we would just show it at JR and go, what time should we be there? So the research and the learning and that logical step of how we did things.

[00:20:45] Grant Webster: I think today is a bit of a shortcut, and I… and I definitely see it being a crux, but having said that, in those days… in those days, we also tried more, and we were happy to fail more.

[00:20:55] Grant Webster: You know, we were, we were… we were, you know… less about the controls, and we just… just wait.

[00:21:04] Graham Stephen: And we broke things…

[00:21:06] Grant Webster: all the time. all the time. We built while we were flying, I mean, I still… I still get challenged over time about, you know, the website crashing on Black Friday. It was one of the things that we brought to the country at that time. And

[00:21:25] Grant Webster: Nowadays, it’s… Not likely. That’s a good thing and a bad thing.

[00:21:33] Graham Stephen: Absolutely. I don’t want to spend too much time on this segment, but, you know, just what were some of the biggest lessons for you? You’ve touched on one of them, you know, obviously.

[00:21:43] Graham Stephen: owners documenting processes and all that, but what were some of the other big lessons you learned from scaling a startup, and things that today, Grant, you see that most entrepreneurs still get wrong? What are some of those things?

[00:21:57] Grant Webster: yeah, there’s a couple. We hire for today.

[00:22:03] Grant Webster: One of my biggest lessons I’ve learned is to look forward as to what does your business need to. I work for an unbelievable GM at Macro. We spoke about if you want to be the best, be better than the best.

[00:22:16] Grant Webster: So you need to look forward as to what your competitor’s working on, and you need to strive for that. And then more recently, I came across a quote that said,

[00:22:24] Grant Webster: Your reach should always exceed your grasp. And I think as a founder, we’re not doing it. We’re focusing on today. We’re not building for scale. Doesn’t matter what it is. We implement the system, but we don’t know if that

[00:22:36] Grant Webster: doing payroll on Excel, is that the right thing, or should it be one of the software pieces? And if it’s one of those software interfaces, does it talk to your, you know, your counting package? And either way, it’s the cost of implementation. I’ve still got to implement it, I might as well just implement it onto something that

[00:22:53] Grant Webster: you know, will help us scale. The other thing that I find is that the guys are super distracted on other ventures.

[00:22:59] Grant Webster: We tend to go in and out. I worked in a business where We were in the device repair space, and then we decided we wanted to be in the drone repair space. But in order to do the drone repair space, we had to go and secure the distribution of that drone in the country.

[00:23:14] Grant Webster: and now I suddenly got to buy that drone, and that took a whole bunch of cash at 7% margin, whereas over here, we were making 60s and 70s. So that… that distraction and focusing on… on… on other pieces, and I think probably my last point, which is…

[00:23:29] Grant Webster: very common, and I work… I’m coaching one founder in particular at the moment, she is…

[00:23:38] Grant Webster: asks me for homework after every single one of our sessions. And that’s because the culture there is I allocate some of my own time within my workday, or my work… my week… my week.

[00:23:54] Grant Webster: To work on myself. So that… and you need to do that as a founder. We spend so much time working in, we’ve heard that analogy, work in versus on, but you must work on yourself also.

[00:24:06] Grant Webster: And I think that’s a massive, massive mistake. And then you go and you bring in a person to your level that you are today, but it shouldn’t be. It should be the person that you think you’re going to be later. No different, no different to your business. Yeah.

[00:24:20] Grant Webster: the one…

[00:24:23] Graham Stephen: Fair enough.

[00:24:24] Grant Webster: So that’s the… so that’s the… so that’s the one key piece that, if I had to leave a little nugget, is to…

[00:24:32] Grant Webster: Is to ask yourself your question, would you work for yourself? And if not, why not?

[00:24:38] Grant Webster: And you’ll have those… those answers will be, oh, well, he’s not as smart as what he should be, or she’s this, or so-and-so’s that, or you’ve got a tempo. Go and learn that. You don’t have to learn, you know, macro and microeconomics. Go learn to be a better leader.

[00:24:54] Grant Webster: go read Crucial Conversations and learn how to have a proper conversation with somebody. Just go and technically get yourself

[00:25:03] Grant Webster: To be a little bit better than what you are. And then, once you lead better, your results will follow.

[00:25:09] Graham Stephen: Yeah, I think it also links to, you know, that stepping away as the owner or founder of a business out of the sort of tactical day-to-day stuff around thinking, how do you build… how do you create an environment where you can do that? You can step aside, you can think more about yourself, and actually have the confidence to bring in

[00:25:27] Graham Stephen: I said, people learn better than you, right? Yeah.

[00:25:30] Grant Webster: It’s very hard, it’s very hard, very, very hard to do that, and for all the reasons, there’s cash constraints, bandwidth, you… it’s… as an earlier, I mentioned, relentless, it’s just go, go, go, and you don’t actually have the time,

[00:25:46] Grant Webster: Yeah, it’s…

[00:25:47] Graham Stephen: It’s easy to write a LinkedIn post with a glossy picture, you know, like, step out of the business rather than in the business, but it’s actually in going through that process. It’s hard, right? I mean, it’s not as easy as it’s made out to be.

[00:26:00] Grant Webster: It’s really hard. I’ll give you… I’ll give you a test from my side. I work with a lot of founders and have for, I don’t know, it’s been 10 or 12 years now that I’ve been working in Ghrelin, and now more recently having fractionation.

[00:26:13] Grant Webster: When a person says. I recognize I need help in order for… it’s at that point. It’s almost like if you’re addicted to drugs, when somebody goes, I’m ready.

[00:26:22] Grant Webster: then they can help. Up till then, they’re not receptive. I had a call with… I had a call last week, with somebody with an exact same thing. I’ve been talking to you for a couple of years, I wasn’t ready, I’m ready.

[00:26:35] Grant Webster: I can’t keep on going at this pace. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. What I need is, I need help.

[00:26:41] Grant Webster: And as long as people recognize that they’re not alone, and help doesn’t have to cost money.

[00:26:47] Grant Webster: Help is just about making sure that you are ready for it, and if you’re ready for it, and open to it. It comes in all shapes and forms. It’ll come from your parents, it’ll come from your mates, it’ll come from the walk on the beach, it’ll come from you helping yourself.

[00:27:01] Graham Stephen: Yeah. Absolutely. And I guess that moves us into the next sort of part of the discussion, is, you know, you’re moving now from retail into the birth of consulting and the birth of Grayland, which, yeah, Grant, that takes us back, what, 10, 12 years? And I want to touch on two things, and then we’ll move on to fractionation, but…

[00:27:20] Graham Stephen: you know, what… what is that point when you say, listen, I want to step out of, you know, building a big e-commerce business, if you want to call it that, into the consulting space? And I guess the second question, if you can address, is, like, when do businesses typically

[00:27:37] Graham Stephen: Call you, you know, to come in and help them out.

[00:27:41] Grant Webster: Yeah, I think the, the e-commerce one was, this was a victim of my own circumstances. It was…

[00:27:50] Grant Webster: 20 hours a day, 7 days a week. And when you’re in that space where you have no money shortage, but you’re building this unbelievable business.

[00:27:59] Grant Webster: If you don’t recognize that you’re at your end, you will be a casualty. Whether that’s your health, or your relationships, or whatever that is.

[00:28:10] Grant Webster: I also had a passion for working with founders and entrepreneurs at the same time, going back into my background. So it was a natural transition for me to exit out of Take a Lot and to move into that, and that’s what I did. I worked in the omnichannel space, and I helped, you know.

[00:28:24] Grant Webster: people understand that e-commerce is a great thing, it’s not a bad thing, and how do you evolve in that? And that evolved into being the right or left hand, of, of, of founders, and,

[00:28:40] Grant Webster: what I found that… that helping them be better, do better, was my… my purpose, and… and what I did also find is that

[00:28:50] Grant Webster: Generally, we… We need a little bit of a jack-of-all-trades. Because there is just a founder and a somebody else, or the team is part, or the team is looking to expand, and you need somebody to be able to touch in all of that. So, having,

[00:29:05] Grant Webster: having folk in the passageways who can specialize, but also can not specialize, and be a generalist, I mean, does… does help.

[00:29:18] Graham Stephen: And… let’s just talk a little bit about that. So you, you know, with Graydon, you work with founders, you support them, you, you know, you’d been there, done that, got the t-shirt, got the scars and all of that, so you weren’t just bringing theoretical advice to founders.

[00:29:32] Graham Stephen: You had practical advice as well. But with that in mind, is… when… when would a business typically call you? Like, when would a founder reach out to you? What’s your experience been there?

[00:29:46] Grant Webster: Yeah, I think it varies, first of all, they need help, and… and often, if it’s not a… if it’s not me, it’s Amy, so let me just say that I’m, you know, representative of a bunch of folk. There are a few… if… I have an analogy that I talk about if your business is not healthy.

[00:30:05] Grant Webster: and you end up having to go, and I’ve shared this with you before, you end up having to go to casualty. And you arrive in casualty, and you call us, and we help you put some stuff on you and check and monitor your vitals.

[00:30:18] Grant Webster: If you don’t listen, or we can’t do stuff, you go to theater. When you come out of theater, you then call us again, and we’re those people who help you recover. If you take your medicine.

[00:30:30] Grant Webster: you listen to what the doctors need to say, you go to General Ward, and then there’s home. If you don’t do that stuff, you go back to casualty, and the cycle perpetuates and just carries on. So, that’s the one piece when a business is battling. I really find often

[00:30:47] Grant Webster: People call you too late. So, we’re kind of being wheeled down the passageways to theater, and somebody goes, do me a favor, can you vote Graham? I want to value my business. You know, it’s that, it’s too late. At that stage, it is what it is. And yeah, so I do find that. I also found when

[00:31:09] Grant Webster: folk recognize that that business is 50 million, 50 people, they don’t know everybody’s name, it’s now too big. The founder is battling to move into that transition of, I’m no longer a scale-up.

[00:31:27] Grant Webster: I’m into a grow-up stage, and there are some things that need to happen. What authority should you give your finance guy to release payments?

[00:31:37] Grant Webster: Can he release payments? Is he allowed to release payments? But I will release all my payments. I have a particular founder who I work… who I work with who…

[00:31:46] Grant Webster: is making the payments and sending, and I don’t understand how it’s possible we’ve got a CFO in the corner.

[00:31:52] Grant Webster: Like, that’s… that’s their job, but we’re… This year will be the year that will let that… that.

[00:31:59] Graham Stephen: We’re not gonna chat.

[00:32:00] Grant Webster: That little bit… that little bit of change, hopefully. Because we’ve got to focus on other stuff, and often, often we forget

[00:32:08] Grant Webster: That while we’re… doing stuff where not being productive. Being productive is getting stuff done, and

[00:32:16] Grant Webster: Founders forget that piece of paper in the top drawer of why they started a business, and they’re the best. of doing that thing. They’re not necessarily the best person at hiring. I work with a founder who’s not allowed to hire anybody in their team. They’re not great at spotting talent. They’re great at when the person’s in the team, evolving, but to find the right person is not their… is not their skill. They’re not necessarily the best accountants.

[00:32:40] Grant Webster: out there either, and missed stuff. We have a… in one of our clients, we’ve just pulled in a fractional CFO, who, in the space of two or three weeks, is already starting to revolutionize what we’ve been working on.

[00:32:52] Grant Webster: For about 6 months. It’s putting the right hands in the right place.

[00:32:58] Grant Webster: To be able to… Yeah, I want to just touch in on something and…

[00:33:02] Graham Stephen: Sorry to interrupt your flow there, Grant, but, you know, what you touch on is so interesting, because we also see it in our business, is

[00:33:10] Graham Stephen: if anyone knows the Eisenhower matrix, you know, importance versus urgency, and a lot of the work you do, and I suppose the work we do too, it’s important, but not always urgent.

[00:33:22] Graham Stephen: And in theory, it’s easy to say, like, when’s best to start designing your business to have processes and systems and all of that? In theory, it’s like, when you start your business, you should think this way, and you can get a textbook to do that, but the reality is…

[00:33:34] Graham Stephen: It’s only, as you say, when you have a shock to the system, when there’s an event. when you go to the ER room, or when, you know, your business partner wants to go off and do their own thing, or you have a health event, or

[00:33:47] Graham Stephen: you know, your partner or your spouse says, listen, you’re spending too much time, I don’t recognize you anymore. There’s almost a trigger. And it’s sad, because in many ways, if business owners could realize this earlier on in the journey.

[00:34:00] Graham Stephen: It’s like your kids, you know, when they’re growing up, you say, don’t put your finger in the plug. I mean, that’s logical, right? But it’s only when they put their finger in the plug that they realize not to do that, and I think that’s one of the critical things in this space, is how do we get business owners to…

[00:34:17] Graham Stephen: come for help sooner. I mean, that’s such a challenge, right?

[00:34:22] Grant Webster: Yeah, I mean, look, for everyone that does come for health, that’s one less, that’s not, I suppose. Those who have had health successfully are telling others to please, this is what you need to do. Those of us who are

[00:34:39] Grant Webster: preaching the gospel here, I think hopefully it lands, and, you know, this sort of conversation, if there’s one founder that comes out of it, who goes, okay, I get it, I need some help, let’s go and find some help. I’m not saying they must come to you or me, I’m just saying that it’s important, first of all, to recognize that you need it, and the reasons why you need it.

[00:34:57] Grant Webster: Maybe you just want to spend more time with your family. Now, one of the key things that happened with myself when I left Take-A-Lot

[00:35:03] Grant Webster: was that I was able to spend more time with my kid. And my wife. That was… 20 hours a day is not productive, just as a fa… in a family… in family environment. And those who didn’t, in other… or don’t in other businesses,

[00:35:18] Grant Webster: Their family suffers, and that’s their choice. You know, they’ve chosen to drive a particular thing. My choice was…

[00:35:25] Grant Webster: I wanted to have capacity for myself and myself personally, but I also wanted to have the correct headroom in order to help others to be able to have the same thing.

[00:35:36] Graham Stephen: Absolutely, yeah, and as I say, that wasn’t a business problem, that was a… that was a personal philosophy, you know, that… that drove that change, right?

[00:35:43] Graham Stephen: Yeah. Cool.

[00:35:45] Grant Webster: It’s the piece of paper in the drawgram, why you decided to do this thing in the first place. I decided to do this because I wanted to hire 20 people.

[00:35:51] Grant Webster: Did you want to hire 100? No, I only want to hire… well, then why have you got 100? Is that a good thing, or is that a bad thing? Is it what you need? If you’re not capable of leading 100 people, then let’s build the capability in, and go and do the thing that you had on this piece of paper in your top drawer.

[00:36:09] Graham Stephen: Yeah. Grant, I mean, let’s move on a bit. So, you know, you’ve gone into the consulting space, you’re working with owners and founders, and, you know, it’s fast forward a few more years, let’s call it the rise of fractionation. So, fractionation, a global, let’s call it.

[00:36:25] Graham Stephen: franchise, where you built off that. But, you know, fractional leadership over the last 3 to 4 years has started to become a real thing. It’s growing globally.

[00:36:36] Graham Stephen: Why… why do you think it… it makes sense? You know, what’s… what’s the drive behind this? It’s not just a question of…

[00:36:46] Graham Stephen: you know, CFOs and marketing officers getting, you know, tired of their corporate role and going on their own. There’s something else behind this. What do you think is driving the whole fractional discussion, and people really adopting this and taking it on?

[00:37:02] Grant Webster: So, I mean, COVID changed a few things in life, one of which is people work from home and go into office. quality of standard connectivity online, as opposed to having to go into a store, which meant that you could, you know, utilize those hours a little bit better.

[00:37:18] Graham Stephen: Yep.

[00:37:18] Grant Webster: It’s a little bit… I mean, let me go back a bit as to what is fractional leadership. So… and I’ll go back to…

[00:37:25] Grant Webster: 10 years of doing this. before it was even called fractional.

[00:37:30] Graham Stephen: The key part about.

[00:37:32] Grant Webster: a fractional executive in your business. It’s somebody who comes in, who’s part of your team. They’re not a consultant. They are accountable. They are generally C-suite. They generally, come with

[00:37:47] Grant Webster: a bunch of knowledge that they can execute at pace as quick as possible. There’s no time to warm up. They’re in the passageways, and they do what they… and they do what they need to do. They come in to bolster, to support, not to replace. The goal here is not to be…

[00:38:04] Grant Webster: Not to hire your marketing full-time person in your business. The goal is to bring in somebody who knows more than that marketing person at a lesser value.

[00:38:14] Grant Webster: In terms of cost, or to guard, or to stay, or still to sit around the table, or maybe just to be sitting on the board, and to help with strategy only, and the execution gets done by the… gets done by the team. I have a general litmus test that says if you give

[00:38:29] Grant Webster: a person who comes into your business, an email address and a parking spot, and they’re on the WhatsApp group, and they work for you one or two or three days a week, or a couple of hours a week, or a couple of hours a month. They’re fractional.

[00:38:41] Grant Webster: Anybody else than that, they are a consultant. Somebody who’s not accountable, who helps get you through a process, that’s a consultant. Fractional people have accountabilities. You sit on the EXCO table, you sit around the manco, you sit in board, and your job is to deliver on what it is that you need to deliver on.

[00:38:59] Grant Webster: But you’re only there one day a week. Which also allows A company who wants to scale.

[00:39:06] Grant Webster: to say, well, I can bring in a CFO and a CMO, all fractional, and for the cost of one person while I build my business, and then eventually we’ll take on a full-time CFO, and that fractional will either remain or move, you know, whatever that piece is. It has, if I think in fractionation’s world.

[00:39:30] Grant Webster: Fractionation started on the back of Fractionals United, which was the global guys out of the US, and…

[00:39:37] Grant Webster: We recognized that in South Africa, we had some really great humans, and we had some really great opportunities.

[00:39:43] Grant Webster: And the initial thing was just to create a community. So we have a Fractionals SO community group, we’re the only one in the country currently. We are mapping currently good opportunities to good people, as well as the fact that we’ve now got varying pods. There’s now one that’s open in Cotton, we’ve got something here in the Western Cape and the Wynelands. So those C-suite leaders themselves are recognizing that within their

[00:40:07] Grant Webster: regions, they need to know who those other fractionals are, so that when they go into clients as a fractional CMO, there is an opportunity to open the door for an FC CTO.

[00:40:20] Grant Webster: I.O, or whatever. So, there’s definitely this undercurrent moving. We currently had… I did a check a couple of weeks ago, we have about a thousand fractionals on LinkedIn in South Africa. I can remember when there was, you know.

[00:40:32] Grant Webster: one or two of us. So it is there. For a lot of reasons.

[00:40:39] Grant Webster: Quality of life can’t be in corporate. we have unemployment in the country at a ridiculous number. Guys are unemployed or unable to find employment. This now at least helps them

[00:40:51] Grant Webster: With a skill, help those who need the skill.

[00:40:57] Grant Webster: And our primary function in fractionation is mapping those opportunities. What we have is A bunch of great fractionals.

[00:41:06] Grant Webster: what we’re busy with currently is helping businesses understand the importance of having a fractional in your passageway, and what value that adds. This piece here is lagging currently in South Africa. That’ll get there quicker, and I’m seeing it now, where it’s almost a bomb squad model.

[00:41:22] Grant Webster: You want a business, you think you have an idea, you have no idea how to execute it, you want to be the founder, front and center, to your story, but all the engine room you just want to run with, then let somebody else run with it.

[00:41:34] Grant Webster: And fractional leadership is coming in. The second part about fractional, which is not spoken about much, is that we have access to the next level down in gig economy. So if you need a website built tomorrow for 10 grand, we know people. We know people who can do

[00:41:47] Grant Webster: CR changes, and social media, and anything to do with Google, and anything to do with programming. We have that next layer of all these other gig people who are also not working full-time, that it’s almost this forgotten workforce that’s swallowed up by the agencies, or the odd marketing manager, or the odd CTO. So it’s not just

[00:42:10] Grant Webster: how do we do fractional? How does that fractional catalyst go into businesses and unlock that next level of unemployed or…

[00:42:18] Graham Stephen: unemployed employable, or employable with time in the next level.

[00:42:23] Grant Webster: And so it runs, and we all know, education and employment in this country, if we can get those two things right.

[00:42:30] Grant Webster: We’re on a… we’re gonna be on a… we’re gonna be on a good wicket.

[00:42:34] Graham Stephen: Yeah, I mean, just a few things I want to touch on there is one is, I think the biggest difference with a fractional executive as opposed to a consultant is that accountability and being

[00:42:42] Graham Stephen: part of the team. I mean, I love that. The second thing you touch on is actually

[00:42:48] Graham Stephen: you know, forward thinking as opposed to just doing. You’re not just hiring a resource to do your bank recon. You’re actually building somebody to help you think about what does your finance strategy need to look like. I’m using an example of a fractional.

[00:42:59] Grant Webster: Agreed.

[00:42:59] Graham Stephen: CFO. And then the third thing, importantly, is recognizing that this is part of a broader ecosystem, and for a lot of SMEs and SMBs and, yeah, I mean, I know you even work with mid-market businesses, is that doesn’t always exist, you know? So bringing in that next layer, as you said, the gig economy, I think that that’s actually…

[00:43:16] Graham Stephen: fundamental. I want to, you know, just end with a couple of questions, and I’ve got half an hour on the time, but, you know.

[00:43:24] Graham Stephen: A specific question is, when is a fractional exec better than a full-time hire? You’ve touched on that, but I mean, if I’m sitting here as a business owner, listening in, when should I consider a fractional executive?

[00:43:40] Grant Webster: Yeah, it’s not one or the other. the problem is, is that we see it as… we see it as that, and it isn’t, and I think fractionals themselves see it as that, and I think people in the passageways

[00:43:55] Grant Webster: see it as, oh, shucks, this fractional person’s gonna arrive, and they’re gonna take my job. And I have definitely had to deal with

[00:44:01] Grant Webster: the EQ moments of me going into a passageway, and up front, sitting with the MD, or the CEO, or the, you know, whoever in the team said, my job’s not… I work part-time. My job… I don’t want to be full-time.

[00:44:16] Grant Webster: I’m quite happy to help and guide and work with you, but my job is to make you better so that when I leave, you’re okay.

[00:44:24] Grant Webster: And I’m… and I have an island analogy which is worth sharing, where I talk about founders and entrepreneurs being on the island. Let’s use bizval. You are all knowing, all-seeing. You know the weather, you know the pathways, you know where the best place to fish and not in your environment. I don’t know that, but I come from the mainland.

[00:44:42] Grant Webster: And I’ll bring with a whole bunch of other skills and initiatives and tech that

[00:44:48] Grant Webster: you don’t have, but my job is to work with your knowledge and my knowledge and put them together, and we become better islanders. I may stay on your island.

[00:44:58] Grant Webster: one week a month, one day a month, one day a week. I might live on your island for six months, just in the good times, and in the bad times, I might leave. That also happens. You also have fair weather, fair weather

[00:45:07] Grant Webster: the fractionals. It happens. But… so there isn’t really that specific. What I did… I mean, my main highlight is if you don’t have the skills in the passageways.

[00:45:18] Grant Webster: Your job as a leader is to find them, to bolster, to support. If you don’t have the team, and you need to fill the gaps, fill the gaps. If you can’t find a full-time hire, find a part-time something.

[00:45:29] Grant Webster: If it’s on C-suite. fractionals are there. If you get the right fractional in the right business, he comes with a… he or she comes with a whole bunch of other stuff behind them, and that includes

[00:45:40] Grant Webster: access to connections, opportunities, connecting to AbysVal is a great example, or to, you know, a legal something, or an accounting something, so… and that you don’t have. There’s that,

[00:45:53] Grant Webster: Saying you don’t know what you don’t know, but you also need to know what you don’t know. And, and… That’s not gonna happen.

[00:46:00] Grant Webster: when you… when you are working in your business, and you have this outsourced person arrive whose job it is now to work on the business. I think if you can get that right, we embed in the organization, and I suppose

[00:46:15] Grant Webster: I suppose that’s the key, and we also come with experience. Of things that we have forgotten, That you haven’t learned yet.

[00:46:26] Graham Stephen: Hmm.

[00:46:26] Grant Webster: Or time on our hands, let me say this differently, some fractionals only work. Three days a week. What do you think they do with the other two days? If they’re not hustling, they’re learning about new tech.

[00:46:38] Grant Webster: So they’re arriving in your business, having spent a couple of days a week, or a couple of days a month, having learned something new, that you don’t have that opportunity because you’re working 7 days a week in your business.

[00:46:48] Graham Stephen: Yeah, and I think… I think it’s interesting, because I think, as you say, a lot of people have this mindset is hire a fractional when you can’t afford a full-time person. That’s… that’s the wrong departure point. The departure point is always from.

[00:46:59] Graham Stephen: Hire a fractional when you as the founder or the owner, has got to the point where you realize you need support, it’s a transition phase, it’s a scaling inflection point, perhaps, or, you know, a strategic reset. That’s the basis for thinking about a fractional. Sometimes, even if you can afford a full-time CMO or a CFO, you might be better off

[00:47:20] Graham Stephen: but you don’t know what that looks like, get a fractional in for 6 months and 12 months, and help… they will help you craft the job for the full-time person down the line. So it’s more, as you say, more of a mindset than a… than a cost discussion, and I think… I just wanted to highlight that point, Grant, because I think a lot of people get that wrong, and… and…

[00:47:38] Graham Stephen: And they don’t get the benefit that they could, because they’re thinking of it as a cost saving rather than a aspiring partner or a bomb squad that can come in and help get them to the next level.

[00:47:50] Grant Webster: They had also bandwidth. So your leadership bandwidth is often not there, where the founder is just on their own, or they have an investor in their business who they don’t get the chance to talk to. So, you know, having someone in your corner, somebody who’s at your table, somebody who’s in your passageways, is a massive relief for… and I talk about founder, but founder, CEO,

[00:48:10] Grant Webster: SME, SMB, you really, really don’t have to go alone. There are people out there who, when I work in a business.

[00:48:19] Grant Webster: I’m upfront, upfront. My only job is to work with that person. everybody else doesn’t mean anything. Like, as genuinely as what that is, I have everybody’s interests at heart.

[00:48:29] Grant Webster: But… We’re trying to do and make the founder be better. And so that their company is a lot more sustainable, and they’re able to do what it is that they need to do in terms of their vision.

[00:48:42] Graham Stephen: Fantastic. Grant, I mean, I can see we’re going to need to have a follow-up podcast, because we’ve probably just scratched on the surface, and even in terms of my prep, we haven’t got through probably 50% of what we wanted to, but I think to close off today’s episode,

[00:48:58] Graham Stephen: is… what is one message, if you can leave South African founders with, and even global founders, what would it be?

[00:49:09] Grant Webster: Yeah, thanks, Graham. There’s a couple, actually. To pick one is hard,

[00:49:17] Grant Webster: But if I’d had to, I would probably say, use your time wisely. It’s all you have. You only got so many hours in the day. I speak about, don’t spend time with anybody, or on anything, invest your time. And…

[00:49:31] Graham Stephen: Hmm.

[00:49:31] Grant Webster: You know, your meetings don’t have to be an hour. You don’t need to be copied in on every single email. You need to focus on stuff that moves the needle. So, have you got the right reporting? Do you understand what the metrics are? Do you, like…

[00:49:46] Grant Webster: Do you know how many customers walked in your store today versus yesterday, versus this week, versus last week, versus next year? Do you even know what… if you have a retail store and a shopping center, do you even know how much traffic that shopping center gets? And if you know how much of that traffic that you get.

[00:50:02] Grant Webster: How much comes through the door by your shop? Spend time there. Talk to those people that are walking into your shopping center. You don’t have to increase your marketing budget. Close those people, they’re already coming. Everything else for me is noise.

[00:50:15] Grant Webster: If you can… Be better with your term. I talk in lists. You’re to stop lists, what not to do. Talk about Eisenhower Matrix. chuck it lists.

[00:50:29] Grant Webster: Your bankers are not supporting you the way they need to do, chuck it. It’s not about the warehouse boxes that have been piling up in the corner. There are things in life that you have to declutter. Sometimes it is your banker. Sometimes… sometimes it is your system that you need to chuck.

[00:50:45] Graham Stephen: Yeah.

[00:50:45] Grant Webster: But you’ve only got so much time, just invest it in the basis that you need to.

[00:50:51] Graham Stephen: I love that, yeah, as I say, so often, you know, founders want to just do everything themselves, you know, and their ego gets in the way, and I think that’s such an important recognition for anybody building a business, is that you can’t do it all on your own.

[00:51:05] Graham Stephen: Protect your time, focus on what you do well. And there are people that want to help, and that can help, and that can guide you along that journey. So, Grant, it’s been an absolute pleasure having you on the show today. I mean, you know, like, we probably need a week of podcasts just to tap into all that wisdom and experience, and I know that the clients that you work with, and we worked on jointly really, really value

[00:51:27] Graham Stephen: what you bring to the table. How can anybody listening in today get hold of you? What’s the best way to reach out?

[00:51:34] Grant Webster: Quickest is on LinkedIn. If you need to know a little bit about me, go play in my featured articles. I write a couple of times a week, but that’s the easiest. In my LinkedIn is a Calendly link, you’re welcome, book some time,

[00:51:50] Grant Webster: Yeah, I’m very ex- I’m very accessible.

[00:51:53] Graham Stephen: Fantastic. Well, listen, I think… I think some gems today. I think what stands out for me the most is, yeah, as I said, is that as a founder, don’t do it all yourself. There’s guys like Grant out there that if they can’t help you, they’ll know somebody that can. So, to all our listeners, thanks for listening in today, and we hope to see you on a future episode of the Bismal Podcast.

[00:52:22] Grant Webster: Thanks, Dash.

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