The Future of Work Requires a Fractional Talent Strategy with Lara Vandenberg

About This Episode 

In this episode of The Future of Work® Podcast, Frank Cottle speaks with Lara Vandenberg, Founder and CEO of Assemble, about the structural changes redefining how modern teams are built. Drawing from her work with chief marketing officers and enterprise leaders, Lara explains why traditional headcount models are breaking down and why companies are moving toward capability-based ecosystems that combine full-time employees, freelance specialists, AI, and operational strategy. 

The conversation explores the future of work through one of its most urgent questions: how should companies design teams when speed, uncertainty, and technology are changing faster than org charts can keep up? Together, Frank and Lara unpack the rise of fractional talent, the growing importance of internal culture, the role of AI in reducing but not eliminating jobs, and why businesses must rethink talent systems from the customer backward. For leaders navigating workforce design, marketing operations, and long-term organizational resilience, this episode offers a sharp and practical look at where work is heading next. 

About Lara Vandenberg 

Lara Vandenberg is the Founder and CEO of Assemble, a managed workforce platform redefining how modern marketing teams are built. She works with CMOs and marketing leaders navigating increasing output demands, tighter budgets, and constrained headcount, helping them transition from traditional hiring models to flexible, capability-based team design. Through Assemble, Lara enables organizations to access and deploy senior freelance talent at scale, integrating specialized expertise directly into internal workflows without the friction of hiring, compliance, or management overhead. Her work sits at the intersection of marketing, operations, and workforce strategy, supporting a structural shift toward modular, expertise-led teams built for speed, precision, and impact. 

What You’ll Learn 

• Why headcount is no longer the organizing principle for many modern teams.  
• How leading companies are transitioning from fixed roles to capability-based workforce design.  
• Why AI may not eliminate most jobs entirely, but instead reduce them to a fraction of their former scope.  
• How full-time employees, freelance specialists, agencies, and AI can work together in one ecosystem.  
• Why culture becomes more important, not less, in distributed and fractional work environments.  
• How marketing teams are restructuring around operations, systems thinking, and executional agility.  
• Why companies that fail to re-architect how work gets done are already falling behind.  
• How leaders can start with the customer and work backward to build smarter talent systems.  
• Why the future of work is a systems challenge, not just a hiring or technology challenge.  
• What companies must do now to prepare for a more flexible, uncertain, and capability-driven future.  

---

Transcript 

Lara Lara Vandenberg

[ 00:00:00,000 ]What are these macro pressures? And then, what are actually the constraints that are happening on a day-to-day basis? How are we protecting our teams? How do we do more with less? And it’s interesting, I don’t think those two altitudes are kind of flying in parallel anymore.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:00:13,870 ] Laura. Welcome to the Future of Work podcast. Really excited to have you here today. Gosh, what an amazing background you’ve got! What fun all the things you’ve done around remote work, additions of technology to the workplace, breaking people out of the workplace. You’ve been at this for a lot of years.

Lara Lara Vandenberg

[ 00:00:34,990 ] Frank, thank you so much for having me. I’m really excited for the conversation. And I have been at it. Assemble is six years old in May. So it was really— born at the beginning of the pandemic and a lot of planning for a few years before that. But it is really getting fun now because I feel like the first four years of the company, it was us.

Lara Lara Vandenberg

[ 00:00:58,870 ] telling people that the future of work is here and what the beauty of freelance is. And I think the last two years.

Lara Lara Vandenberg

[ 00:01:05,940 ] the industry is listening. So we are having fun. It’s a great time.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:01:11,070 ] Well, we see it everywhere. We see it everywhere now. And I think one of the things that you’ve done, your positioning, if you will, is having people understand how to uncouple place and also uncouple structure.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:01:28,440 ] Uh, in the the job management process, uh, and by uncoupled structure, I mean the utilization of um the utilization of 1099, basically people that are contractors. And to do that effectively as a part of a business plan, not a— basically a temp structure like a lot of people historically have done. How do you see that changing? What major trends do you see going on there?

Lara Lara Vandenberg

[ 00:02:00,690 ] Yeah, look, it’s a great question. And I think that one of the big things we’re seeing right now, historically, headcount is no longer the organizing principle. And that is how the world has worked. You know, historically, capability is now the organizing principle. And back to your question around uncoupling, whether it’s jobs from work or full-time from contingent. You know, full-time from contingent. I think what has happened is in the last two years, the smartest executives I know, we mostly work with chief marketing officers, but this is not just siloed to chief marketing officers. They have had to rethink everything when it comes to their ecosystem and their capability. And so what I think that really means as we talk about uncoupling is: Long gone are the days where headcount is guaranteed. It’s not like you enter a new fiscal year and you’re guaranteed an additional 3% headcount, where you’re just repeating the same full-time jobs. Everyone has had to take a step back and understand what is the work that I’m actually trying to achieve and what needs to happen.

Lara Lara Vandenberg

[ 00:03:06,380 ] And then they look at, ‘Okay, great. I don’t have the resources that I used to. Budgets are no longer guaranteed. I have to do more with less. And so, what is the best type of work? To get the work done. And so, that may be, and we’ll get into it. But what is my full-time strategy? And what are those roles? What is the freelance strategy? What is the genetic strategy? You know, where do I best bring in an agency? And so that’s really what we mean around decoupling work from jobs and understanding what is the right tactic. To get it done.

Lara Lara Vandenberg

[ 00:03:41,410 ] And it’s forced everyone to rethink everything when it comes to work.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:03:46,170 ] Well, you know, I think you’re right, by the way. I really think you’re right. This is a trending issue. But you see, companies that are still stuck in the remote work versus everybody back to the office. They haven’t even gone through the decoupling process yet? And these are massive, massive companies. And you just said, what is the angentic process?

Frank Cottle

[ 00:04:10,030 ] Okay, what’s the role of AI in decoupled work? Do you believe, overall?

Frank Cottle

[ 00:04:20,410 ] How do you create a culture? I’m asking four or five questions here. I’m going to overwhelm you. But how do you create a culture?

Frank Cottle

[ 00:04:29,420 ] When you have a fractional, uncoupled, half your team are fractional and uncoupled. And totally remote.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:04:41,330 ] And a big part of their work is driven by AI. Is culture even important anymore in that regard, or is it just productivity?

Lara Lara Vandenberg

[ 00:04:51,270 ] Culture is critical. And it will be forever. And I think that’s why, you know, as we talk about agentic and the rise of AI, humans. You know what AI can’t replace is taste and tenacity and human intuition and so you know, to add to the first question. Humans and culture are not going to go away. If anything, it becomes more important.

Lara Lara Vandenberg

[ 00:05:15,070 ] How that relates back to what we’re talking about is. From a full-time standpoint, and you need phenomenal full-time. Where they are the best generalists you can find. So I think full-time workers almost need to act as the best project managers. You can find. When it comes to the fractional talent, I really believe that the fractional, or freelance, or contractors, we’re going to use those words very interchangeably today, they need to be the best hyper-specialists you can find. Where I see agentic playing into this, and, you know, I can kind of give a couple of examples. When I started the company six years ago, there were a bunch of freelance roles that we never saw, you know, as a, you know. To give a marketing example, we never saw a media buyer or a media planner or a media strategist. And fast forward to today, we see a lot of them. And the reason that that has happened is. A machine or technology can do some of the work, but it can’t do all of the work.

Lara Lara Vandenberg

[ 00:06:18,420 ] And it is always going to require a human’s decision.

Lara Lara Vandenberg

[ 00:06:23,680 ] What that has looked like is I don’t believe AI takes many jobs to zero. I think it takes a lot of jobs. To 75 or to 50 or to 25. And so, you know, talking about that full-time to freelance ratio.

Lara Lara Vandenberg

[ 00:06:40,810 ] I do think that AI makes a lot of full-time roles freelance because a machine can do some of the work, but not all of the work.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:06:48,200 ] So strategically, I would agree with you, by the way.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:06:51,580 ] In our own company, which has been around for a while. We are, or we have, I should say, supported every role with an AI agent as opposed to reducing.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:07:09,280 ] rolls.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:07:10,789 ] replacing them with AI. We’ve decided that. Um, The people we have are great.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:07:17,530 ] And we want to make them. We want them to do twice or three times as much production. But. Um, only with their knowledge combined with AI will that happen. AI itself cannot replace them. So we think that. AI is a way to give, create, more value from each individual and therefore actually pay them more than try and get rid of people by using AI. So you know, we have a backwards process that we see on a lot of larger companies overall. And it’s working quite well. It’s honestly where everybody’s embracing it instead of fighting it. So I know we’re a little off topic here overall, but it ties in with the freelance issue of do we support people internally and give them stronger, better, better tools so they can do that and don’t have to go outside of the company? Or do we go outside of the company for growth, we’ll say?

Frank Cottle

[ 00:08:20,410 ] And specialization. Overall. How do you— You have what your experience is. I have mine. But how does a company, someone else’s company, strategically position themselves?

Frank Cottle

[ 00:08:34,600 ] In this regard. Not for yesterday or today, but for the next three, four years, five years. What’s the strategic position?

Lara Lara Vandenberg

[ 00:08:43,320 ] I think the strategic, I mean, the very actionable step that we are seeing with our, again, my experience is mainly in marketing.

Lara Lara Vandenberg

[ 00:08:52,860 ] CMOs, chief marketing officers, are hiring the best.

Lara Lara Vandenberg

[ 00:08:57,010 ] COOs, if you will, within an organization, chief of staff, you know, it’s an interchangeable title, head of marketing operations. And why we are seeing this role be so important to an organization is they are architecting ecosystems and the processes for how AI is not just you know, it’s not just a productivity initiative, if you will. It is how are we designing systems around this being a better way to work. And so I believe that companies aren’t cutting full-time roles because demand has dropped. They’re cutting because the fixed cost into an uncertain system, it’s a structural risk right now. You know, executives are hearing from boards that everything we just said, you know, you need to do more with less. You have no headcount. It’s forcing these executives and their chief of staffs, or head of marketing operations, to rethink how you work as an agile team and how can you do more with less?

Lara Lara Vandenberg

[ 00:10:01,520 ] So I think it’s exciting.

Lara Lara Vandenberg

[ 00:10:03,950 ] It’s an exciting time right now.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:10:06,210 ] Well, there’s no question about that. A very exciting time. I’m going to go contrarian on you a little bit and say, um— I think that the, and you mentioned culture, I think that a team pulling together, and understanding how to use these tools, oftentimes can produce more than a non-team member who’s not part of the culture with maybe the same motivations, maybe working in a fractional position for two or three organizations.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:10:38,390 ] Um, the giving your internal team the tools first.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:10:45,920 ] To see how far they can push the envelope.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:10:49,820 ] And helping them. And it’s not a matter of doing more with less. I say do more with more.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:10:58,510 ] And I might naturally have confused everybody with that statement, but that we see increasing the cost of the individual.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:11:10,150 ] Rewarding the individual.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:11:12,620 ] For being more productive through the use of AI agents that we put in in processes, and it’s our responsibility to give them the tools. Our responsibility to create the processes, etc. But we think that the individual then has more value and deserves more compensation as a result of that, rather than try to cut back. And I think you weaken your culture and you weaken your overall structure by cutting back honestly.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:11:43,400 ] I want.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:11:45,300 ] Somebody does twice the production.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:11:47,680 ] I want to give them a 50% raise.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:11:52,620 ] It’s different than what we see, but I’ve been at this a long time and I’ve seen a lot of different structural changes. I almost go back to the buggy whip and you know era.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:12:04,420 ] Way pre-internet. Uh, Oh wait. Way pre-word processors. I’ve come from the old typewriter and carbon paper era.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:12:13,300 ] Handwritten letters. Um uh.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:12:16,740 ] And I just see this value in people is so strong. And that’s where you build an organization that matters.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:12:25,800 ] So I’m not arguing with you. I’m trying to express that.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:12:31,290 ] The importance of building that into your strategy and not just having a one-dimensional external strategy.

Lara Lara Vandenberg

[ 00:12:40,430 ] I completely agree with you. If my team can 2x or 10x themselves, then Fantastic. I was reading earlier today a case study that IKEA has just done and last year they they didn’t need a lot of their customer support staff who knew, you know, the catalog and the, you know, the SKUs so well within the organization. And then what they’ve done is they’ve been able to reallocate a lot of those roles and move them into other departments like they’re building interior. design studios that these people are being reallocated. And so I do believe that the legacy knowledge that a full-time employee has that comes with, you know, they know so much about the brand. They are the It is so important that these people are the face of the customer. I’m all for reallocating that work, not getting rid of it. But it’s very interesting how we’re re-optimizing, reallocating skill sets, upskilling workers, because that’s where the full-time employees kind of.

Lara Lara Vandenberg

[ 00:13:48,830 ] That’s where they need to lie.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:13:50,620 ] Yeah, I completely agree with that. Our process and the process we’ve seen work. We don’t consider that a person has a well-established corporate knowledge of our own company, unless they’ve been in three different departments.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:14:08,500 ] We actually move people around consciously from one department to the next so that they have greater corporate knowledge because ultimately it comes down to servicing the customer. And it doesn’t matter who your customer or what your business is. And only people who really have that understanding— multidimensional understanding—can understand the real needs of the customer. If you work in the sales department, not in the service department, you don’t understand it. You know, and maybe if you work in the service department, but not in the finance department, seeing all the issues over there. Then you really don’t understand the customer.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:14:46,140 ] So I think that’s important.

Lara Lara Vandenberg

[ 00:14:49,760 ] I agree. And along that, I think that what you’re describing is with humans, we live in the gray. There is so much nuance that I don’t think machines have. I don’t think they really understand that it’s a binary black and white objective outcome that they spit out. But why humans are so important is because we live in the gray and we potentially, you know, can pick up things that the customer may want.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:15:15,940 ] Well, the interesting thing is I live in the gray, and I don’t live anywhere else but the gray. Uh, right now I wish I had a little bit of brown and black light. But no, I think that human beings have a capacity. But you know, AI is interesting. We could talk about the advances in AI.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:15:39,270 ] They’re coming so fast.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:15:41,760 ] We looked back at um anthropic and we’re tied into some of their systems, some of our people are. And we calculated yesterday that in the last 60 days, we’d had 53 dates.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:15:58,710 ] In 60 days.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:16:00,910 ] Yeah. The speed that we’re moving at right now is beyond what the human race has ever dealt with before.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:16:13,620 ] How we react to that, with structure, strategy, and not forgetting who we are. Hopefully, not forgetting who we are. Um, and whether my friends are— and genetic friends are real friends. Uh, That’s going to be critically important to the way we structure our lives and work, and work represents.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:16:36,310 ] Our capacity to survive in many cases. We have to feed ourselves, our families, etc., and progress as a civilization.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:16:46,210 ] But we’ve never looked at this speed before.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:16:49,040 ] And I’m wondering.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:16:51,700 ] Are the people moving at the speed of technology?

Frank Cottle

[ 00:16:56,780 ] And there are some of us doing that. Are the people moving at the speed of technology going to end up being very, very different than the people who aren’t? And I’m not saying that.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:17:10,500 ] industrialist versus luddites issue I’m just saying, some people will move at a speed of technology, and some people move at half the speed, and some people will move at a quarter of the speed. We can’t ignore it. Um, And how is that going to structure our worldview? Overall, in the workplace, which is where you’re focused, and how it’s going to change.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:17:34,400 ] Work structure.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:17:36,830 ] If you’ve got these. Multi-generations, five generations in the workplace right now. And multi-adapters where everything we do is technology dependent.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:17:51,960 ] Is there going to be a breakout? What do you how do you think that’s gonna work?

Lara Lara Vandenberg

[ 00:18:00,100 ] I have no idea.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:18:01,890 ] Good. I have no idea. Bye. Because I don’t either. It’s a real question that I shouldn’t say is plaguing me or should plague us, but it’s something we should be considering and planning when we talk about fractions. We talk about decoupled things, we talk about everything that you do.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:18:21,510 ] Which is Thank you. elemental to these changes. What you do is a big part of how you see a big part of these changes. But we have to think about that.

Lara Lara Vandenberg

[ 00:18:33,090 ] Look, you bring up some really good points and some really good questions. And I think, obviously, if you are not using AI, you will absolutely be left behind. That’s anyone protecting the status quo is not building or will be a part of the future of work. You talk about generations. And I think that it’s a scary place for people entering the workforce right now, even though they’re probably the most adept at technology.

Lara Lara Vandenberg

[ 00:19:00,100 ] I think the, the interesting thing that I think, again, that AI cannot replace is we are all in the industry of humans. And, you know, people talk about B2B or human to human, but that is something that technology will never be able to replace, period. We’ve spoken that it can 2x or 5x or 10x productivity. And I worry about the junior and mid-level employees, you know, we’ve just spoken about customer service jobs or yesterday my head of product was showing me an integration that he built. I worry about the future of almost like a RevOps person. Because the integrations that we’ve built with, you know, co-work, are phenomenal and it’s possibly better than what a human can do. So I think it goes back to— you need to make yourself indefensible. You need to double down on human relationships.

Lara Lara Vandenberg

[ 00:20:04,620 ] And I think that’s something that Gen Z is entering the workforce. It really worries me because we grew up in a time where water cooler chat is how you progressed in a full-time role.

Lara Lara Vandenberg

[ 00:20:17,260 ] That has changed completely. You mentioned earlier in the conversation about you know, hybrid. In office, remote.

Lara Lara Vandenberg

[ 00:20:25,320 ] A lot of the people entering the workforce, they will never have an office job.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:20:29,100 ] Yeah, I agree. I agree completely. And that takes us kind of full circle back to the 1099 Club if you will. All those people that are fractional, all those people that are contractors, all those people that are working outside of a structured workplace.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:20:51,340 ] The importance of understanding how to pull them in.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:20:57,420 ] Not just have them.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:21:00,640 ] I don’t want to say disassociated. That’s way too strong a structure. Not how to pull them into the corporate culture.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:21:08,400 ] and still take advantage of the flexibility that that No.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:21:13,940 ] way of working will provide.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:21:18,750 ] So I think that’s a major challenge we’ll have to face. Have you seen that? A lot of the work that you do has been with chief marketing officers.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:21:29,060 ] And the marketing department inside of major, major companies all over the world. Um, Within those departments, how do you see those departments restructuring? Because they’re the business drivers of companies.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:21:42,750 ] How do you see those departments restructuring to take advantage of all this?

Lara Lara Vandenberg

[ 00:21:46,910 ] The way that we’re seeing CMOs really leverage the best talent at the moment is. And, you know, we work with a lot of the Fortune 500 chief marketing officers and similar titles, chief customer officer. Um. The. The people that they’re hiring are seven to 12 years of experience right now. Or if I was to kind of zoom out, it’s five to 15 years of experience and really why that is.

Lara Lara Vandenberg

[ 00:22:11,550 ] These people have experience. They have a portfolio, they have references. They are senior enough to execute, but they are junior enough to take direction. And so I would say. 80% of the work being placed is within that 5 to 15 years of experience. This category of those 5 to 15 years of experience, these professionals, they are using these company systems, the internal GPTs. All of the design softwares that they have. So these are the, you know, we keep on saying, like the two Xs or the five Xs. We aren’t. We aren’t seeing junior level talent get placed. And at Assemble, we don’t place; we place after kind of two and three years of experience. And our rationale has always been: it’s premium talent. You need to have a portfolio to be defined as premium. But we still aren’t seeing a lot of very. three to five years of experience because.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:23:11,790 ] Well, you’re going to.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:23:13,480 ] We’re going to run out of those people.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:23:16,890 ] I know. And I think that’s a major dilemma that we all face in business right now. um uh is If you only hire with experience.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:23:30,460 ] You’re not incubating your own talent pool.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:23:33,610 ] And that may be what you need today. But again, I’ll use our own company. About 10% of all of the. uh team members on our own company which about 120 or 30 strong our interns.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:23:46,840 ] We hire it. They’re still in college. They’re still in college and Every one of our department managers that all have 10 to 12 years of experience.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:23:58,930 ] Started as an intern.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:24:02,100 ] We didn’t do this by intent.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:24:04,870 ] But they grew.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:24:06,890 ] because we created an environment for growth. not just environment for production.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:24:15,430 ] and you i think you have to understand if you’re an employer in a company that if you don’t grow your own talent. from the bottom up somebody else is going to get that talent.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:24:29,390 ] and ultimately you’ll lose a competitive. war. Fortale. You have to have them. process internally.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:24:37,420 ] The. brings people in and they may be They might not have the highest grade point average.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:24:46,560 ] but they have the desire to learn. They have the desire to. to produce themselves. They are your basic entrepreneurial spirits.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:24:57,960 ] that also need a hand up. And if you give them that hand up, They’ll stay with you even with that entrepreneurial spirit.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:25:06,140 ] If you don’t, you will run out of.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:25:09,430 ] people to hire. Or. it won’t be cost effective for you to hire them. So.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:25:17,460 ] Homegrown talent is much more cost-effective than stealing somebody away from another company who’s not even sure they want the job, but the salary is so big they can’t resist it.

Lara Lara Vandenberg

[ 00:25:28,920 ] So I have a question for you.

Lara Lara Vandenberg

[ 00:25:31,320 ] And.

Lara Lara Vandenberg

[ 00:25:32,850 ] I have a thought on this as well, but During the pandemic, we saw a lot of over-hiring. Tech companies paying $200,000 for an entry-level role. And we’re still seeing a lot of that being undone right now. The square layoffs, the Meta layoffs. A lot of that isn’t AI. They are still undoing what’s happened over the last six years. So my question to you is: The last, call it five to 10 years, we have seen a lot of my generation, the millennials, move after two or three years because they want to keep on earning and they want to get promoted faster. And that is proven—what is a faster way, you know, to get to the top.

Lara Lara Vandenberg

[ 00:26:16,120 ] Do you think that the pendulum is swinging back in the direction of what you’ve spoken about, that now there is so much uncertainty with jobs and you know, people just, do we think people are going to hold on to their jobs and in turn the tenure game and conversation?

Lara Lara Vandenberg

[ 00:26:33,920 ] Changes back to what you’re talking about— that you know, people are going to sit still and work for a company for the next 20 years. Where do you think that? That lasts.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:26:44,370 ] Yes, I do. If. If. that company stays a leader itself.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:26:51,540 ] If that company creates an environment that is worth staying at.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:26:58,730 ] And if that company succeeds at its own business model, so it can provide the security and combination of security and growth. then yes. And when you look at what you just said, let’s look at different phases. I’m in college and I need to have a major so I can get a good job. What do I choose? Well, I was an English literature major of all things with a philosophy minor, so I’m not qualified to do anything. Um, but the [you] you you [you] you start that’s where you start establishing your career in your higher education and then you get your first job and your second job by the time you’re Thank you. 26 to 30.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:27:43,330 ] There’s a high probability you’re married and have one kid.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:27:47,620 ] All of your needs change at that point.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:27:51,140 ] The risk of changing jobs, the risk of a career move, etc. if it’s not assured somehow you risk your family not just yourself—and so I think as people mature, Overall, their needs change and that first need is security and the second need is upward mobility.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:28:15,530 ] You might want both, but when you look at your family, you say, ‘I need to protect my family.’ That should be your first stop. In my opinion. So it’s up to the companies.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:28:26,830 ] To provide an environment of growth and opportunity, otherwise the companies will have drain on the brain, the brain people will leave them for a better place.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:28:42,140 ] Or what they hope is a better place. But as times are uncertain, that will slow down because people will not leave them as quickly for a maybe opportunity, but it’s going to have to be a sure thing. It’s coming. Very much a sure thing because otherwise they’re not protecting their family.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:29:01,560 ] I hope in society we continue to have that value. Over. You know, caring for those that are close to us and those that we’re responsible for.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:29:13,190 ] As an employer, I was going to say, well, I’ll add one thing. As an employer, We feel that our first obligation when we offer someone a job That our obligation is to care for their family. that we have a responsibility to make sure that we’re doing right things when we run the company. that they will have the security.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:29:38,100 ] and the opportunity together.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:29:40,510 ] And that’s not a shareholder driven company. That’s a family-driven company. in our case, and there are differences. There are differences.

Lara Lara Vandenberg

[ 00:29:50,720 ] Absolutely. I think that’s an amazing value system to have. And I’m sure that’s why you have so much loyalty within the company. This.

Lara Lara Vandenberg

[ 00:30:01,300 ] The thing that I would push back on is that demographics are changing so drastically, and, you know. One small example is women are choosing to marry later. Having children later or choosing to opt out entirely.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:30:19,260 ] Right.

Lara Lara Vandenberg

[ 00:30:20,739 ] Exactly, opting out entirely. And so I do think that all of these things, you know, from a macro level, if we look at, you know, an altitude of 30,000 feet, I think geopolitical uncertainty. I think that economic volatility, it’s not cyclical, it’s becoming a constant. All of these things, that fundamentally changes work. And so I think that they’re probably conversations that a lot of people aren’t having, but that is what— Bored, you know, that’s the environment that are bored. is reading about, and that is what a CMO is hearing— so it’s almost like they’re dealing with these two altitudes at once. What are these macro pressures, and then what are actually the constraints that are happening on a day-to-day basis? How are we protecting our teams? How do we do more with less? And it’s interesting— I don’t think those two altitudes are kind of flying in parallel anymore.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:31:12,720 ] No, I would agree with you. I would agree with you.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:31:15,960 ] The differences that we’re seeing overall in generational But I’ll also bring something up that.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:31:23,770 ] That you haven’t brought up. We’re having population decline.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:31:28,400 ] Simultaneously with that, okay, so what population decline into your— why can’t Gen Z get employed?

Frank Cottle

[ 00:31:39,210 ] when we have a declining population. We’re going to run out of people. that have those skill sets, those five, seven, 12-year experiences, those portfolios you’re talking about in marketing companies.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:31:55,380 ] as fast or faster than we need.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:32:01,590 ] new people to join a firm, new people to join the workforce in general. and in certain cultures, it’s more extreme than others, as we know. Um, so how do we offset those things in the process as well, so that we all end up supporting each other, supporting our families, creating the corporate cultures we want? Meeting the shareholder demands that are necessary or expectations.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:32:30,660 ] Uh, so you know, it’s hard to hire good people without capital. Hard to get capital unless you can meet the expectations of financial resources, et cetera, et cetera. It’s a circular issue. Mm-hmm. Do that.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:32:46,510 ] I’m going to roll back to one of your main thesis.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:32:50,620 ] Is that fractional? Flexibility.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:32:55,180 ] Contractors. Are all contributors to that process. I’ll come back to the one sort of closing line that I’d like to hear. How does a company strategically prepare for that? What one thing when everybody listens to this podcast and says, ‘I’m waiting, I’m waiting.’ What’s the one thing? That can be done strategically.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:33:19,230 ] That will. Advance things, maybe not solve all the problems, but advance things forward.

Lara Lara Vandenberg

[ 00:33:26,940 ] The magic question. I think that is no longer an efficiency or a cost savings opportunity.

Lara Lara Vandenberg

[ 00:33:37,060 ] It is an. It is an opportunity to optimize your ecosystem, but talent needs to be at the forefront. And I think that it’s not.

Lara Lara Vandenberg

[ 00:33:47,810 ] It’s not a tech problem. It’s not. A talent problem. It’s not an agency problem. It’s a systems problem. And so back to me talking about the importance of hire the best CEO. Even like within departments that you can find, because if you are not re-architecting how work works right now, you are already behind. So. That would be my big takeaway.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:34:13,940 ] That’s the warning. And so the solution is re-architecting from the top down or the middle out. The structure of the company consider.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:34:25,500 ] These new structures, employment talent structures combined with technology, overall. Am I getting that right?

Lara Lara Vandenberg

[ 00:34:34,409 ] Exactly. Stop with the customer. I start with the customer, understand what the problem is and then work back. What work needs to be done.

Lara Lara Vandenberg

[ 00:34:44,670 ] And who or how is the best way to complete the job?

Frank Cottle

[ 00:34:50,170 ] I agree. Start always with the customer. Perfect. Thank you.

Frank Cottle

[ 00:34:55,360 ] That works.

Lara Lara Vandenberg

[ 00:34:56,310 ] Thanks, Frank.