In our first-ever š¤© Expat Spotlight, weāre going to get an inside look into how David Fallarme went from a marketing leader to becoming an advisor to tech companies.
Today in 10 minutes or less, youāll learn:
- š¤ What is advising and why
- š¤ How David got his first clients
- š¼ Engagement models & pricing
- ā Davidās mistakes and advice
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š¤©Ā Expat Spotlight: David Fallarme, Interim VP Marketing at Spotdraft
David is an Interim VP Marketing at Spotdraft and marketing advisor to various companies.
He has led marketing teams at companies from small VC-backed startups to large public companies across Southeast Asia, China, and the US. Recently, he was a Marketing Director at On Deck and Head of Marketing for HubSpot APAC.
In this spotlight, weāre going to deep dive into all things advising with David: what advising is, why, and how it works.
You can find out more about David on his Linkedin.
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š¤ Tell us about your career journey before you started advising and why you started advising.
I have a weird career in marketing. Iāve jumped all over the place: B2B, B2C, gaming, SaaS, startups and public companies. My chaotic resume is partially due to deliberate choice. One of my core values is to pursue my curiosity. So a choice I made early on was to go after interesting opportunities versus climbing the job title ladder.
After I got laid off in 2022, I saw advising & fractional work as a natural next step. It meant I could work with several interesting opportunities at once.
The thing thatās surprising me about advising ā and something I wish I learned earlier ā is that advisors and consultants usually make more than what they did when they worked full time. The tradeoff, of course, is that youāre in charge of generating your own client pipeline.
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š¤ How did you find your first clients?
Like how most consultants find their first clients: from their network.
If youāre looking to start your own consulting practice: make it easy for former colleagues and supporters to refer you.Ā Be clear on what service youāre offering - then tell people.
Specifically, people with whom you already have some built-in credibility with. Tell your former managers, people who have tried to hire you before, people who youāve worked with (agencies, freelancers, event organizers, etc).
For me, I also used LinkedIn. When I did my āI got laid off!ā post, I was fortunate to have several inbound inquiries come in. Itās continued to be my main driver of pipeline.
David uses Linkedin to generate awareness and find clients
Anyone can do this. Itās a game of consistency: know who your target audience is, then post as often as you can about how you can help them. Practically speaking, I shoot for 3-5 posts per week. Donāt overthink it. Itāll be awkward at first, but just commit to posting 50 times before overanalyzing your posts. Eventually, youāll start seeing DMs like this show up in your inbox:
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š¼ What are your current engagement models and pricing? How did you arrive at these?
Iām still new to the consulting game - so itās part art, part science, part guessing šĀ
Some teams engage me as an advisor. This means unlimited async access to me and a few calls per month. This is in the low to mid 4 figures.
Some teams want me more embedded in their team, and those start at $10k/month but scale up depending on what they need and whether Iāll have direct reports.
Davidās engagement models
A quick and dirty way to figure out your pricing:
- Take your desired annual rate
- Chop off the last 3 zeros
- Use that as your āinternal hourly rateā (never share this with your client)
- Scope a project with a client and estimate the hours
- Take your hourly rate x hours, add 20% to account for scope creep and other surprises
This is one approach. I know other consultants who essentially experiment with random numbers during pricing conversations.
Your pricing power is largely determined by three variables: your credibility, track record ā and willingness to walk away.
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š ļø In your opinion, what are the differences between interim, fractional, advising, consulting, and coaching roles? Who is a good fit for each of these roles?
Here are my definitions:
- Interim and Fractional = youāre embedded in the team. Interim means you have an end point. Fractional means you donāt.
- Consulting = engagements with a specific deliverable within a defined time frame.
- Advising and coaching = youāre a sounding board, youāre available async and on calls, but not much more than that.
While anyone can do these, you should have some leadership experience when pursuing interim & fractional roles, since they typically require working with the C-team and across the heads of other departments.
For anyone looking to get started, I suggest usingĀ Consulting as your wedge to either go up (interim/fractional roles where you are more embedded) or down (advising). Consulting allows you to show value in a concrete way and earn the trust of your client.
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ā What mistakes did you make during this transition? What would you have done differently?
Fortunately I havenāt made any egregious mistakes (yet!). But there have been a number of things that surprised me, and things I wish I did better at the start. Two that stand out:
(1) You need to be hyper organized. When you have a full-time job, youāre waist-deep in one context, and so is everyone around you. When youāre working with clients, you have to hop in and out of different contexts and keeping it straight in your head is a challenge.
- Youāll end up coming with a system that works for you āĀ everyone has their productivity tools of choice (right now, Iām using Notion, but thereās no correct answer here.) The key for me was to set up a dedicated time every week to (1) clear up āadminā tasks like following on up invoices and (2) to think about the business on the whole.Ā The trap here is spending 100% of your time on client work.
(2) Putting together a Sales process. Looking back, I was basically winging the first few āsales callsā that I had. Eventually I realized that I could use some of the tools that sales reps use ā qualification tools like Budget Authority Need Timeline (BANT), nurture strategies, negotiation, etc.
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š«¶ What advice would you give to someone just starting out as an advisor?
Make your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) as small and defined as possible at the start. This is counter-intuitive since at the beginning you just want to get a win on the board, and you may be pulled into random projects just to get some revenue.
The way around this is to realize that your ICP will change and expand over time. So, start from where you have obvious, inherent credibility, where you can add value ā and then radiate outwards from there. Donāt take on non-ICP clients unless you really really have to. There are opportunity costs, like having a confused reputation in the market.
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Where can we go to learn more?
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š More resources
- David Fallarmeās website
- Advisor Template (Founderās Institute)
- Is Solopreneurship right for you?
- Interview with Elena Verna on Advising (s16vc)
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