Fractionally Yours

Christopher Tompkins
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Fractionally Yours is the podcast for CEOs, founders and executive leaders who know their company is growing, but the way they manage growth is no longer keeping up. Hosted by Christopher Tompkins, founder and CEO of The Go! Agency, fractional CMO and executive advisor, the show explores the leadership problems that appear when marketing, sales, strategy and execution stop working as one system. With more than 20 years of experience supporting companies from startups to Fortune 500 brands, Christopher brings a practical executive perspective to the decisions that shape sustainable growth. Each episode examines real challenges such as stalled growth, unclear marketing ownership, weak sales and marketing alignment, underperforming agencies, disconnected go-to-market strategies and CEOs who are still carrying responsibilities their leadership structure should own. Through direct conversations, experienced perspectives and useful lessons, Fractionally Yours helps leaders identify what is breaking, understand why it is happening and build the leadership structure their next stage of growth requires.

Episodes

  1. Nov 4

    Episode 05:  Everyone Is Using AI. Why Aren't More Businesses Seeing Results?

    Almost every business is using artificial intelligence in some capacity. Marketing teams are generating content, sales teams are automating outreach, and employees are finding new ways to complete tasks faster. But here's the question that doesn't get asked nearly enough: Is any of this actually making the business more profitable? Companies are investing heavily in AI, yet many are struggling to connect that investment to meaningful improvements in revenue, margins, customer retention, or operational performance. And I think we're starting to see why. The problem isn't necessarily the technology. It's the strategy and leadership behind it. In this episode of Fractionally Yours, I get into the growing disconnect between AI adoption and actual business results. We're seeing organizations introduce new tools, automate existing processes, and celebrate productivity improvements without asking whether any of it is moving the business forward. Because giving everyone access to AI doesn't automatically make your organization more intelligent. Without the right direction, you might just be finding new ways to make the same mistakes faster. I break down why AI initiatives often fail to deliver measurable returns, how businesses end up automating processes that weren't working in the first place, and why saving employees time doesn't necessarily translate into greater profitability. More importantly, we explore what CEOs and leadership teams need to do differently to turn AI from another technology investment into a legitimate competitive advantage. What We're Getting Into: AI adoption vs. business impact: Why widespread AI usage doesn't automatically translate into stronger financial performance. The leadership problem behind AI: How a lack of strategic direction prevents organizations from realizing the technology's potential. Automating broken processes: Why introducing AI into an ineffective sales, marketing, or operational system can actually amplify existing problems. The productivity trap: Why saving hours of work means very little if that additional capacity isn't creating measurable business value. The wrong metrics: Why tracking AI usage, automation, and time savings isn't enough to determine whether your investment is paying off. The problem with doing too much: How launching multiple AI initiatives without clear priorities can spread resources thin and prevent meaningful progress. Building an AI strategy that delivers: How leadership teams can identify high-impact opportunities, establish measurable outcomes, and connect AI investments to actual business objectives. AI isn't going anywhere, and I'm certainly not suggesting businesses should stop investing in it. But there's a significant difference between having AI tools throughout your organization and having a business that's genuinely performing better because of them. And that difference comes down to leadership, strategic discipline, and a clear understanding of what you're trying to accomplish. Because at the end of the day, nobody cares how many AI tools you're using if your business isn't getting better. The goal was never to become a company that uses artificial intelligence. The goal is to become a better company because of it.   Episode Highlights: Introduction: Everyone Is Using AI. Why Aren't More Businesses Seeing Results? [00:00] AI Won't Fix Your Business. It Might Make Things Worse [01:00] Your Employees Use AI Every Day. So Where's the ROI? [06:47] You're Automating a Broken System. Here's the Problem. [11:09] AI Saves You 5 Hours a Week. Now What? [14:00] Stop Launching 10 AI Projects at Once. [33:00] Nobody Cares How Many AI Tools You're Using. [40:24] 🔗Resource Links Stay connected and dive deeper: Explore The Go! Agency Discover how we build bold marketing strategies that actually deliver. www.thegoagency.com Connect with Christopher Tompkins on LinkedIn Thought leadership, unfiltered opinions, and daily digital insights. https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisgomedia

  2. Oct 22

    Episode 04: When Leadership Becomes the Bottleneck to Growth

    Sometimes the biggest threat to your company's growth isn't the competition, your marketing strategy, or your sales performance. It's how long it takes your own organisation to make a decision. As businesses grow, their operations become more complex, but the leadership structures and decision-making processes that supported their early success often remain unchanged. What once made the company efficient can eventually become the very thing slowing it down. In this episode of Fractionally Yours, I break down why stalled revenue growth isn't always a performance or resource problem. Sometimes, it's a leadership and operating structure problem, and hiring more people, investing in technology, or scheduling another meeting won't solve it. We get into how excessive approval processes create bottlenecks, why accountability without authority undermines execution, and how CEOs and executive teams can unintentionally prevent their organisations from moving forward. More importantly, we explore what needs to change to create a business that can make decisions, take ownership, and execute without constant executive intervention. Inside this episode: Why the decision-making structure that built your business may be preventing it from scaling How excessive approvals and executive bottlenecks delay opportunities and impact revenue Why hiring more people or increasing budgets won't fix an inefficient operating structure The difference between a performance problem and an ownership problem Why accountability must come with the authority to make meaningful decisions How competing executive priorities create confusion and weaken execution Why leadership alignment means little without clear ownership and decisive action How CEOs can establish decision-making boundaries, empower their teams, and remove barriers to growth Because sustainable growth isn't just about having the right strategy, the right people, or more resources. It's about building an organisation where decisions are made with clarity, accountability drives action, and leadership creates the conditions for teams to execute effectively. The goal isn't to have executives involved in every decision. It's to build a business that can make the right decisions and keep moving forward without them.   Episode Highlights:       Introduction: The Hidden Barriers to Business Growth [00:00]       When Your Business Outgrows Its Decision-Making Structure [03:00]       The Cost of Too Many Approvals and Unclear Accountability [13:00]       Leadership Alignment, Decision-Making, and the CEO Bottleneck [23:00]       Closing Notes: Building a Business That Can Execute and Scale [44:00] 🔗Resource Links Stay connected and dive deeper: Explore The Go! Agency Discover how we build bold marketing strategies that actually deliver. www.thegoagency.com Connect with Christopher Tompkins on LinkedIn Thought leadership, unfiltered opinions, and daily digital insights. https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisgomedia

  3. Oct 7

    Episode 03: Sales and Marketing Alignment is Not a Meeting

    Sales and marketing alignment is one of those ideas every leadership team says it wants, yet very few actually build into the way the business operates. The problem usually isn’t that the teams refuse to communicate. It’s that they are working from different definitions of the customer, different measures of success, and sometimes completely different versions of how revenue is actually created. In this episode of Fractionally Yours, I break down why sales and marketing misalignment is not just a communication problem. It is an operating model problem, and another weekly meeting will not fix it. We get into what real alignment looks like, why the traditional marketing-to-sales handoff is increasingly outdated, and how customer intelligence should move continuously between both teams. Inside this episode: Why separate sales and marketing scoreboards can create disconnected growth How to uncover misalignment by mapping the customer journey from both sides Why your ICP and definition of a qualified opportunity need to be shared How sales conversations can become some of marketing’s most valuable customer intelligence Why attribution and technology cannot fix a broken operating model Where leadership, including fractional executives, can connect the pieces and create accountability Because the goal is not to make sales and marketing get along better. It is to build one growth system where both teams understand how the customer buys, what creates meaningful opportunities, and how their work connects to revenue.   Episode Highlights: Welcome to Fractionally Yours [00:00] Why Sales and Marketing Fall Out of Sync [02:30] The Handoff Model Is Broken [08:50] Aligning the Customer, ICP and Qualified Lead [14:00] Building a Shared Growth System [22:00] Start With the Customer Journey [39:00]   🔗 Resource Links Stay connected and dive deeper: Explore The Go! Agency Discover how we build bold marketing strategies that actually deliver. www.thegoagency.com Connect with Christopher Tompkins on LinkedIn Thought leadership, unfiltered opinions, and daily digital insights. https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisgomedia

  4. Sep 23

    Episode 02: What Breaks First When a Company Outgrows Its Growth Structure

    Growth is supposed to be the goal, more revenue, more customers, bigger teams, and more opportunities. But there’s a point where growth starts exposing the cracks in the very structure that helped you get there. In this episode of Fractionally Yours, Christopher Tompkins breaks down one of the biggest challenges scaling companies face: your business can outgrow the systems, ownership models, and operating structures that once made you successful. The problem is that these issues rarely show up as obvious failures. They show up as warning signs: Decisions taking longer than they should. Leadership getting pulled back into tactical work. Teams working harder but moving slower. Sales and marketing operating from different playbooks. More meetings, more tools, and more processes, but less clarity. Christopher explores why growing companies often mistake structural problems for performance problems, why hiring more people can sometimes make things worse, and why leaders need to redesign how work gets done before complexity becomes the thing slowing growth down. Because the goal isn’t simply to add more structure. The goal is building the right structure for the stage of business you’re actually in. If your company is growing but everything feels harder than it used to, this episode is for you. In This Episode, You’ll Learn: Why the systems that got you to your current level of success may prevent your next stage of growth. How to identify whether you’re dealing with a people problem or a structural problem. Why founders and executives often become the “operating system” of the company. The hidden cost of unclear ownership and decision-making. Why adding headcount, meetings, and technology won’t fix a broken growth model. How fractional leadership can help companies redesign their operating model during critical growth transitions. Key Question for Leaders: Is your company intentionally designed for the business you have today, or are you still running yesterday’s structure while trying to achieve tomorrow’s growth?   Episode Highlights: Welcome to Fractionally Yours [00:00] Performance Problem VS. Structural Problem [02:00] The Clarity Crisis [06:50] When Leaders Become the System [15:15] The Structure Trap [27:40] Scaling Without Breaking [40:23]   🔗 Resource Links Stay connected and dive deeper: Explore The Go! Agency Discover how we build bold marketing strategies that actually deliver. www.thegoagency.com Connect with Christopher Tompkins on LinkedIn Thought leadership, unfiltered opinions, and daily digital insights. https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisgomedia

  5. Sep 9

    Episode 01: Why Is Your CEO Still Running Marketing?

    Your CEO may not be writing the emails, building the campaigns, or scheduling the social posts anymore. But that does not mean they have stopped running marketing. In this episode of Fractionally Yours, Christopher Tompkins takes on a problem he sees repeatedly inside growing companies: marketing has been delegated, but marketing leadership has not. The team is busy. Agencies are involved. Content is going out. Budgets are being spent. Yet the biggest decisions—what matters, where to invest, what gets prioritized, and what gets cut—still find their way back to the CEO. And that is where a marketing problem can quickly become a growth problem. Chris breaks down how companies accidentally build marketing capacity without building marketing leadership, why talented marketing managers often end up carrying responsibilities they were never hired to own, and how constant CEO involvement can turn an otherwise capable team into an organization that waits for direction instead of responding to the market. He also tackles the other extreme: the checked-out CEO who delegates marketing without providing the business context, access, and strategic direction the function needs to succeed. The goal is not to remove the CEO from marketing. It is to build a marketing function that no longer depends on the CEO to keep it moving. What’s Inside: The difference between delegating marketing work and delegating marketing leadership Why growing companies often build marketing capacity instead of strategic leadership How CEOs unintentionally become the marketing “operating system” Why more campaigns, platforms, content, or hires will not solve a leadership gap The hidden cost of routing everyday marketing decisions through the CEO Why talented marketing managers are sometimes blamed for structural problems What strong executive-level marketing leadership should actually look like Where fractional marketing leadership can make sense The 30-day test CEOs can use to identify whether marketing genuinely operates without them Why owning growth and personally running marketing are two very different responsibilities Fractionally Yours is about the issues underneath the obvious issues—the leadership gaps, structural problems, strategic decisions, and uncomfortable realities that determine whether a growing company can actually scale. Subscribe to Fractionally Yours and join Christopher Tompkins for a direct look at what happens when your business outgrows the way you have always run it.   Episode Highlights: Welcome to Fractionally Yours [00:00] Marketing Activity vs. Marketing Leadership [05:00] When the CEO Becomes the Marketing Operating System [12:00] The Cost of CEO-Led Marketing [21:00] Building the Right Marketing Leadership Structure [29:00] Key Takeaways: Own Growth Without Running Marketing [29:00]   🔗 Resource Links Stay connected and dive deeper: Explore The Go! Agency Discover how we build bold marketing strategies that actually deliver. www.thegoagency.com Connect with Christopher Tompkins on LinkedIn Thought leadership, unfiltered opinions, and daily digital insights. https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisgomedia

  6. Sep 1

    Launch Episode: Welcome to Fractionally Yours: The Real Conversations Behind Business Growth

    Growth rarely breaks in just one place. What looks like a marketing problem may actually be a positioning problem. A sales issue may be a leadership issue. A hiring challenge may expose a deeper problem with accountability, structure, or strategy. That is the idea behind Fractionally Yours. In this introductory episode, Christopher Tompkins lays out what this podcast is really about: the realities of building, scaling, and transforming businesses when the answers are not obvious and the problems do not fit neatly into one department. This is not a show built around polished success stories or predictable business advice. It is about the decisions, mistakes, turning points, and hard-earned lessons that shape real growth. Throughout the season, Christopher will sit down with CEOs, founders, executives, advisors, and experts to explore what actually happens inside growing companies—from leadership and operations to marketing, sales, culture, technology, AI, hiring, M&A, and execution. The premise is simple: every conversation gives you a fraction of someone else’s experience. A fraction of what worked. A fraction of what failed. A fraction of what took years, money, and frustration to learn. And sometimes, one fraction is enough to change the way you see your own business. What’s Inside: Why growth problems are rarely as simple as they first appear How challenges in marketing, sales, leadership, and operations overlap Why Chris created Fractionally Yours What “fractional” really means in the context of the show Why the most valuable business lessons often come from mistakes The kinds of leaders, operators, and experts you will hear from this season Why strong strategies can still fail during execution How outside perspective can expose problems internal teams stop seeing What Christopher wants every listener to take away from each conversation Fractionally Yours is built for leaders who are not looking for easy answers. It is for people who want better questions, sharper perspective, and practical lessons from those who have already been through the hard parts. Subscribe to Fractionally Yours and join Christopher Tompkins for candid conversations about what it really takes to build, lead, and grow a business.   Episode Highlights: Welcome to Fractionally Yours [00:00] The Real Story Behind Growing Businesses [01:00] The Lessons Behind the Wins and Mistakes [02:00] Beyond Trends: The Business Issues That Actually Matter [03:00] What “Fractionally Yours” Really Means [04:00] Turning Experience Into Better Business Decisions [05:00] Growth, Chaos, and the Strategy–Execution Gap [06:00] Making Decisions When There Is No Perfect Answer [07:00] Why Outside Perspective Can Change Everything [08:00]   🔗 Resource Links Stay connected and dive deeper: Explore The Go! Agency Discover how we build bold marketing strategies that actually deliver. www.thegoagency.com Connect with Christopher Tompkins on LinkedIn Thought leadership, unfiltered opinions, and daily digital insights. https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisgomedia

  • 6 Episodes

About

Fractionally Yours is the podcast for CEOs, founders and executive leaders who know their company is growing, but the way they manage growth is no longer keeping up. Hosted by Christopher Tompkins, founder and CEO of The Go! Agency, fractional CMO and executive advisor, the show explores the leadership problems that appear when marketing, sales, strategy and execution stop working as one system. With more than 20 years of experience supporting companies from startups to Fortune 500 brands, Christopher brings a practical executive perspective to the decisions that shape sustainable growth. Each episode examines real challenges such as stalled growth, unclear marketing ownership, weak sales and marketing alignment, underperforming agencies, disconnected go-to-market strategies and CEOs who are still carrying responsibilities their leadership structure should own. Through direct conversations, experienced perspectives and useful lessons, Fractionally Yours helps leaders identify what is breaking, understand why it is happening and build the leadership structure their next stage of growth requires.

Information

  • Creator
    Christopher Tompkins
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    6
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2026 All rights reserved.
  • Show Website
    Fractionally Yours