Adam Torres and Lior Weinstein discuss CTOx.
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Show Notes:
CTOx addresses the challenges faced by technology leaders wanting to transition into fractional roles. In this episode, Adam Torres and Lior Weinstein, Fractional CTO and Founder of CTOx, explore Lior’s background and what inspired him to start CTOx.
About Lior Weinstein
Serial entrepreneur specializing in digital transformation – mobile, web and desktop. Founded his first company at 14, Lior had built over three technology companies and exited two of them while still in his 20’s. He’s worked on anything from promoting DIY Chicken Coups to very large scale marketing automation systems.
Lior’s specialty is in simplifying complex concepts into actionable steps that drive effective results in the form of digital products, traffic generation, conversion and software engineering solutions.
About CTOx
CTO Exponential (CTOx™) is an innovative organization composed of highly skilled, location-independent tech leaders who provide exceptional technology leadership for mission-critical business operations. CTOx™ leaders are not only talented technologists but also effective communicators who genuinely care about the businesses they serve. More than just “tech people,” CTOx™ hires passionate and purpose-driven leaders committed to making a positive impact in the world.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to mission matters.com and click on Be Our Guest to Apply. All right, today I have Lior Weinstein on the line. He’s a fractional CTO and founder of CTOX.
Lior , welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. All rightly so. I’m a big fan of the fractional model in general. I mean, I’ve seen fractional CTOs, I’ve seen fractional CFOs. I just like that concept of fractional. I think there’s , a ton of benefits. And one of the things that was an interesting thought process for me in terms of having you on the show was I’m like, oh, wow.
CTOX is teaching other people how to get into this fractional business and niche. And I’m like, wow, what, an amazing venture and what a great service. So it’s great to have you on and to get this kicked off here. I’m just curious, how did you get the idea in the beginning to even launch CTOX?
Like, where’d that start? I’ve been a fractional CTO for a few years, and I’m a bit of a oddball in the industry because I also do fractional chief growth Officer, so I have background in marketing and sales as well as technology. And I realized, man, for technology professionals, yep. For technology professionals, they don’t have the marketing and sales skills.
They don’t know how to self promote. They don’t know how to build marketing systems and grow systems. And this could be highly valuable if I teach other tech guys like me on that side, how to grow a business, how to get clients, how to serve it. Plus, I realized for me, as a technology guy on that C-Suite, I love variety.
I. One of the hardest things for me is watching paint dry. Right? You set the strategy, you get the plan in, and then you’re really waiting for execution. Yeah, so the fractional opportunity creates both the business side. You have like multiple streams of income. You can make way more than a single salary, and you also get the variety and you kind of get to choose different projects you’re working on as opposed to kind of getting stuck in a single organization and really as a leader.
Mostly waiting for your managers and you know, people under them to make the dream happen. Make the things real. Yeah. And I feel like it also gives you a little bit of variety of projects too, right? So you’re not kind of like, you learn more faster and also you have a lot of variety there. My off. That’s right.
So variety of projects, variety of relationship, variety of income. You know, what’s nice about technology, it’s very common to have upside, right? Mm-hmm. Like if a project is successful. If you are managing to launch a product, make more revenue, make more profit. So it’s also just a variety of how you get compensated.
Hmm. Yeah. A bunch of wins there. So as we look at this space in general, like how many CTLs have you been working with , or how many have been through the program? I’m just curious about that. As long as you’ve been doing it. Absolutely. So we launched almost a year ago about like our first member.
We worked on it for the first quarter, creating everything about it. Actually a couple of quarters before the first one joined, but the first one joined about mid-April, and we’ve had about a hundred fifty, a hundred fifty five people run through the programs so far. And I hope by the end of this year that’s significant, by the way, that, that’s pretty significant.
That’s a lot. Congrats in when a year you’ve been doing this. That’s that’s a lot. Amazing goal. We expect, we hope by the end of this year we’ll be, we’ll kind of touch the 500 mark if everything goes well. Wow. And, and it’s pretty, you know, it’s pretty high qualification because our program doesn’t teach people how to be a CTO.
You need to be able to lead technology for a business. Now, the CTO of Microsoft is not the CTO of a dental service organization, right? So mm-hmm. We have different levels of proficiency, but all of them relative to their target market are highly proficient to be the technology lead. And we tell them we’re, we’re teaching you how to build a business as a fractional CTO, how to do marketing, how to do sales, how to do operations so you don’t end up working a hundred hours a week.
But we don’t teach you the actual skills of, of leading if you hadn’t done the past. We do some continuing education, some professional training, so most people, by and large have 15 years of experience and above, and I would say the average is probably 2025. And then we have some people that have been A CTO for 40 years.
It also joined the program because they want to build this as a practice. Can you share? Maybe, I don’t know. You had a lot of students, maybe a success story of somebody that’s been through the program and has been able to, you know, achieve something. Yeah. And you know what’s interesting? Some people join the program and they want to use this as side income, right?
They wanna make another like 50 grand a year, a hundred grand a year, and keep their job or keep whatever else they’re doing. And some people are coming in and I just want a full-time salary equivalent, like make 300, a 500, a thousand dollars cash, like 40 grand a month. And then some people come in and they wanna, you know, make seven figures a year, maybe even sell it for eight figures a few years later.
So that context what, and I’m gonna give a shout out, didn’t you know, think about it until you asked it. So, Sanjay Aku joined one of the early people that joined the program. He like quit his job after a week and a bit within three weeks of joining. He already got his first few clients. And started making like 20 grand a month.
Within eight weeks he quit his job. That’s amazing. What an amazing story. Shout out, right? He quit his job and he was such a, you know, he was the CTO. So his niche, and this is a big thing we talk about in the program, like how to position his niche, is immigration law firms, and he was the CTO of a super high-end immigration law firm.
before he decided to do this, so that was definitely one. And, now he has a full-blown like practice and clients and he is also selling application development. So he is not closing, you know, 10, $12,000 a monthly retainers. He’s closing $60,000 projects, $500,000 projects. Yeah, that’s real money.
Like that’s real money and that’s real project. And also interesting, right? like we were talking about variety of work and things like that. Like that’s, that’s meaningful to the organizations that he’s bringing on, right? Like , that’s different. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Talk to me maybe about some of speaking of these bigger, clients and things, what are some of the strategies that you teach at CTOX for like attracting and retaining these type of high value clients?
I. Yeah, and we, and you know, we put out a lot of free content about this because, you know, my general philosophy is sharing and, I wish everybody doesn’t, and CTOs is also just a global thing. Like you can be a CTO from, I’m originally from Israel. I live in the States now, but you can be an Israel CTO for an American company, a German CTO for an argentian company.
It’s such a global position and it’s very unique as opposed to like a chief marketing officer, for example. Mm-hmm. And so we teach some of the methods are easy and essential. Like we, we do a free webinar almost once a month. And this is one of the attract methods we talk about, which is activating your network.
Now it’s a very basic concept. Basically, hey, reach out to your network, and then we teach people how to think about the network. Some people actually cultivate and kind of maintain one, but a lot of people don’t. So then I ask them like, I joke, Hey, my hairdresser is the most connected person I know. I.
Right? Mm-hmm. And so your network is really anything. It’s your family, your neighbors, certainly former colleagues, former bosses, service providers you worked with in the past, right? Maybe you have an account manager that you’d led a million dollar implementation. That account manager obviously knows people like you.
that do the same work in other organizations. So there’s a lot of kind of hidden networks and once you have that list that you organize, you basically reach out to and say, Hey, can we do a 15 minute catch up? Just kind of to see, I’d love to hear what you’re up to. I wouldn’t share what I’m up to.
And in that conversation, we actually give scripts, but one of my favorite directives is ask for. Money. You get advice, ask for advice, you get money. What that means is people have a tendency to say hold one no. When you ask them for something, say that one more time, slower because I love that and I haven’t heard it that way and like that succinctly before.
Say that one more time please. So if you ask for money, you get advice. And if you ask for advice, you get money. And that’s something I learned as a startup entrepreneur fundraising It’s much easier for me to unlock investor conversations and venture capital conversations. If I came in and said, Hey, this is what I’m trying to do.
What do you think? Versus, this is what I’m trying to do. Can you give me money? And that’s the same thing with personal relationships. If you talk to somebody and you are like, do you know anybody that could use a fractional CTO, right? Mm-hmm. You’re mostly gonna get a no because no is a safe answer with people that like you and no, like an automatic ’cause.
They don’t wanna hurt the relationship. That’s it. But here’s what they love to say yes to. They love to say yes to a mission. So if you come in and you say, Hey, here’s what I’m thinking about doing. I’m thinking about being a fractional CTO for chicken growers under a billion birds a year, real niche. And, and you ask them, Hey, what do you think?
Do you have any advice for me? Now, if they happen to be a relevant prospect, they’re probably gonna raise your hand and say, oh, I think I can actually use you. And if they happen to have a friend and they’re gonna, they’re gonna say, oh, you know, yeah, Mike, Mike, you still talk to Mike. But if you come in and say.
Do you know anyone or do you need happen to need to use one? You’re probably gonna get a no. So we kind of teach, activate your network, make a list of people, you know, ask for advice, don’t ask for money. Very simple call. And then we have other tricks. Like for example, at the end of each one of those calls, just say, who else should I talk to?
Not, do you know anybody else? Like who else did I talk to? Just adding that one liner at the end of a 15 minute call for every 10 calls you’re gonna get two, three more meetings. I’m gonna end this now. That’s a great strategy. And it sounds like, it sounds pretty straightforward, but I feel like it’s all in the execution on that one.
Huh? Like if you execute that and if you do those things over and over and over again, you can’t help but pick up clients assuming that you have the skills to carry out the work. Right. Assuming that, of course, that’s a given. Yeah, that’s a working assumption of the world, like you need to do. You need to know how to deliver the value.
We’ll just teach you how to get in front of people that want the value. Amazing. Well, Lior, I have to say. It’s been great having you on today, man, and learning more about what you’re doing, how you’re doing it. One, one of the things I want to do is how do people, like, how do they know if they’re a good fit to work with you and your team?
Like I do wanna get into that a little bit. Like how do they know? ’cause like you said, the assumption is they, they can actually deliver. How do they know if they’re a good fit? So I think, you know, here’s what I say in the program to people, you entrepreneurs that happen to be CTOs. Hmm. I think if somebody’s thinking about this as a way, like they’re having a hard time finding a job and they’re like, maybe I’ll do this instead of a job, and it’s probably not a good fit.
People need to want to do this. They need to want to have this kind of lifestyle. The freedom of choice, the freedom of relationship of who they get to work with, the freedom of purpose, freedom of projects they wanna work on. They’re willing to understand you’re investing in a business, in a business.
Unlike a job has uncapped revenue, uncapped opportunity, and with that has a little bit of a slower burn, right? Because if you’ve never done it before, you’re not gonna, you know, build a $40,000 a month business in three weeks. But we’ve seen people do that in six months, and we’ve certainly seen people do that within a year.
But once they hit that, there’s also a clear pathway to making 70 grand a month, a hundred grand a month. And you know, we teach across the board whatever goals you are. So having the entrepreneur mindset, super important, wanting the freedom I. All the freedom. Freedom of money, time, purpose, relationship, wanting the freedom, and then willing to have a beginner mindset if you are a beginner, because you’re gonna be humbled in the process if you’ve never done this before, like putting yourself out there and trying to talk to clients and learning new skills.
You know, technologists are very good at technology, but they’ve never done, they need to go back to school to do marketing and sales. Right. Nothing, I cannot say a marketing and sales. It’s not rocket science, but it is science. So we teach, we coach, you know, the people that are most successful in the program are contributing.
You know, they’re adding to the conversations, they’re asking questions, they get on calls. So if that’s the mindset and that’s your purpose, I think you’ll be a great fit. Mm-hmm. Last thing, Lior . How do people follow up? How do they learn more? You know, the best way is our website, cto x.com. There’s free resources.
You can sign up to webinars, you can download eBooks. We can, you can get on a call with the team to see if it’s a good fit, learn about the programs and all the options we have. And also on LinkedIn follow our page because we put out free content and different courses to help you. So even if you are not ready for the program you’re probably gonna learn a lot and maybe it’ll help you.
And you know, my ideal. Scenarios that you learn something from us, actually get a client and then say, okay, I want 50 more, so I’m gonna join the program. Amazing. And for everybody listening, just so you know, we’ll definitely put the links in the show notes so you can just click on the link and head right on over.
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So again, hit that subscribe or follow button and New York. Thanks again for coming on the show. Thank you so much for having me.
Let’s chat.