How Delegation Creates Freedom: Madeleine Niebauer’s Approach to Sustainable Growth

Anthony Codispoti (00:00)
Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast, where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Codaspote and today’s guest is Madeline Niebauer, founder and CEO of V-Cheap. Established in 2016, they provide flexible, on-demand executive staffing to help organizations fill critical leadership gaps.

They specialize in placing fractional executives, such as chiefs of staff, COOs, and CFOs, through a network of more than 400 experts who each average 18 years of experience. Their mission is to transform how organizations solve leadership challenges so they can focus on driving growth. With a 97 % client approval rating, V-Chiefs has become a trusted resource for businesses seeking both strategic and operational support.

Madeline brings two decades of experience spanning the private, public, and nonprofit sectors. Before founding V-Chefs, she served in key leadership roles at well-known organizations, particularly in education and nonprofit work. Now, before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Ad Back Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits that are both great for your team and fiscally optimized for your bottom line.

Maddy Niebauer (01:15)
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All right, back to our guest today, founder and CEO of VChief, Matty Niebauer. Thanks for making the time to share your story today.

Maddy Niebauer (02:02)
Thanks, Anthony, I’m so glad to be here.

Anthony Codispoti (02:04)
So Maddie, you have an interesting work background that seems a bit unconventional as a pathway to founding a, I don’t know if recruiting company is quite the right term, but you worked for the Peace Corps, some nonprofits. Things always look more clearer in the rear view mirror, but can you walk us through the path prior to founding your company and maybe a couple of the formidable stops for you along the way?

Maddy Niebauer (02:31)
Yeah, as you mentioned, I started my career in the Peace Corps in West Africa. ⁓ And then I ran a tutoring center, I went to business school. So that definitely helped with the business journey. And then I did strategy consulting with nonprofits at an organization called BridgeSpan that spun off from Bain. And that was definitely a place that ⁓ prepared me well, I think both to be a chief of staff and to lead the chief.

⁓ And then I was a chief of staff at Teach for America ⁓ and then I launched Be Chief. So that’s the quick and dirty journey.

Anthony Codispoti (03:09)
Okay, so where did the idea for VChief come from?

Maddy Niebauer (03:13)
Yeah, so I was ⁓ working as a chief of staff at Teach for America and the leader that I supported was starting a new nonprofit. And so while we were both still at Teach for America, we were both spending part of our time working on that new nonprofit. And then she left to lead it and I moved into a different role. And then she came back and said, I need you back in my life. ⁓ But she wasn’t ready to hire for a full time role. So she asked me to work for her five or 10 hours a week. So it became a side gig.

And I was, ⁓ it was essentially V-Chief’s first client was my side gig. And then about six months into it, I realized, you know what, I think there are other people who could use this need and I was ready to take a leap. And so I founded V-Chief and in the early days we were focused just on the chief of staff role and providing that on a part-time basis to clients who were looking for that type of capacity. so that was how the seed was planted for V-Chief.

Anthony Codispoti (04:13)
and explain what the role of Chief of Staff typically is.

Maddy Niebauer (04:17)
Yeah, there’s often confusion around this because people mostly only have heard of it in government and it looks a little different in the private sector. ⁓ So a chief of staff is really a leader’s right-hand partner. They’re someone who takes things off their plate and frees up their time so that they can stay focused where they can have the most impact. And what that looks like on a day-to-day basis varies a lot from chief of staff to chief of staff because it’s really focused on what the leader needs.

So some common themes that you will see, there’s often a lot of project management. Chiefs of staff will often quarterback different projects that don’t have a natural other leader. There’s often some component of directly supporting the leader that they work with, with things like communications, know, whether that’s drafting emails or building pitch decks or writing speeches. ⁓ It often, we help them think about

the ways that they spend their time and helping them set their own personal strategic priorities so that they know which things on their plate they can hand off to other people. And then often they play other roles through the organization. They’re often ⁓ culture keepers and people who sort of have an ear to the ground so that they can keep the leader up to date with things. They often support ⁓ the leaders direct reports in one way or another.

They often plan meetings and retreats and agendas. It’s kind of this jack-of-all-trades role, but the common theme is that ⁓ it is focused on both strategy and operations, and it’s all in the vein of helping a leader do their job better.

Anthony Codispoti (05:57)
I mean, what’s your sound, what you’re saying sounds like almost too good to be true. It’s somebody who can do everything and be everywhere kind of all the time. And I’m trying to wrap my head around like, is there another function or functions in most companies that this is sort of a combination of? mean, it, it almost sounds like, ⁓ like a secretary or an administrative assistant, like on massive steroids, it’s sort of somebody who sits right to the right of you and

Maddy Niebauer (06:16)
Yeah.

Yeah, some people

Anthony Codispoti (06:27)
I don’t know, it’s just helping you with everything.

Maddy Niebauer (06:29)
Yeah, yeah. ⁓ I’ve often heard of this sort of, ⁓ people think of executive assistance, which is more like logistical tactical support, like actively managing your calendar and things like that. And then there’s like the COO that is leading like the strategy and operations for an organization and thinking about like the systems and processes. And the chief of staff kind of sits between those things because like an EA, they’re directly supporting a leader.

but like a COO, they’re thinking about big picture operations and strategy questions. ⁓ And so what does it look like in other organizations? Sometimes people will call it like a director of operations or a director of special projects or things like that. And there’s certainly like some leaders who don’t have this type of capacity, right? ⁓ But I think most of the big ⁓ organizations have it. And I think a lot of… ⁓

smaller organizations are just realizing the value of it. But I think the challenge is sometimes you don’t need someone full time in the role and that’s how we were born, right? Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (07:38)
So, okay,

so the idea was kind of birthed because somebody you had worked with before said, hey, I need you back in my life, but only for a few hours a week. And as you did that for a while, you said, hey, there are probably other folks that need this kind of service. So I wanted to ask how you got your first client, but we already get that. How did you get your second client? Sort of the one that like sort of helped you start stacking clients on top of each other.

Maddy Niebauer (07:55)
Thank

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, it was one of two ways because the first handful of clients kind of came at the same time. So a couple of them were referred by the woman who I was supporting, right? Because she was like, I know lots of people who could use you. ⁓ So sort of a direct referral that way. And then another one came.

actually from LinkedIn and I posted this thing about this is what I’m doing and then other people posted that on my behalf and then one of their contacts or a friend of a friend ⁓ or an acquaintance of an acquaintance even reached out and was like this is exactly what I mean. So it just sort of spoke to him.

Anthony Codispoti (08:43)
So, okay, in the beginning, you were the one being placed in all these different positions.

Maddy Niebauer (08:50)
Only for my former boss. I decided very early on to not do the client work myself, which actually was one of the smartest things I did when I started this business. I didn’t realize it at the time and it felt kind of risky ⁓ because you know, someone else is doing the work, you’re paying them to do the work, right? Whereas if I did it, I would be making all of that money. ⁓ And you know, it’s scary when you’re an entrepreneur starting out and…

Anthony Codispoti (08:52)
Okay.

Maddy Niebauer (09:15)
you want to make sure that things work. But what it did was let me really focus on all the other things that it takes to start a business, right? So I wasn’t sucked in the weeds with client work. And in fact, after about a year of supporting my former boss, I had to give her a new consultant, which might have broken her heart, but we’re still good friends. I’m trying to catch up with her sometime soon. yeah, yeah. It was hard. It’s hard to do both.

Anthony Codispoti (09:40)
And so how are you finding people

to fill these roles, these fractional chief of staffs?

Maddy Niebauer (09:46)
Yeah, you know, that’s

an interesting question. ⁓ It’s always been incredibly easy. That’s the part of our business model that takes almost no time and effort. ⁓ It was all through my network. ⁓ think for our first few projects, I posted some things online that was like, I was looking for someone who has like a little bit of marketing experience and a little bit of this and a little bit of that.

Because as I said, like the Chief of Staff role looks different everywhere. Sometimes they need to do a bunch of hiring and sometimes they need to do some marketing work, whatever, right? ⁓ And so now we have a pool of talent that has all of these different things. But at the time it was like, I have this sort of specific need. Let me go like, meet, like hunt down through my network people who could do it. But what I will say is like, very, very quickly, we started to amass a pool of talent and

⁓ People would refer their friends and ⁓ it’s just never been the hard part for us. I think for a lot of reasons, you know, they’re, especially before COVID, because we started well before COVID, there just wasn’t that much out there that is remote and flexible and part-time and pays well and is interesting. ⁓ There’s just not that much out there. And so we have so many people who want to do that type of work.

Anthony Codispoti (11:00)
checks a lot of boxes. Yeah.

Maddy Niebauer (11:07)
who are seeking that flexibility. ⁓ And so it’s been great and very, very easy. And in fact, we’ve had to turn off our applications because we just have so much more supply of talent ⁓ than our current demand from clients, which is not insignificant either. But there’s just a lot of people who want to do that kind of work.

Anthony Codispoti (11:30)
And at what point did you decide, Hey, we’re going to branch out from just doing sort of the chief of staff role to other types of roles.

Maddy Niebauer (11:38)
Yeah. I would say that was probably four or five years ago. And what happened was our clients just kept coming to us for other things. And so, you know, they were like, Oh, do you have a COO or do you have a CFO or do you have this or do you have that? And so, you know, in the past, we sort of would just staff things with people who were in the chief of staff bucket. But like, I can’t staff a CFO role with the chief of staff, right? Like I need someone who’s been a CFO before.

so yeah, it was really in, in response to client needs. And, and I’m really glad we were so niche in the beginning because it allowed us to really like get a foothold and we were the first and only people in that business when we started, ⁓ for a long time. Now there are some other folks who do it. ⁓ but again, we’ve sort of broadened our scope and work in other positions.

Anthony Codispoti (12:29)
And so what are all the positions that you’re able to help fill?

Maddy Niebauer (12:32)
Yeah, so we do Chief of Staff, we do Associate Chief of Staff, which is, ⁓ I would say it sits somewhere between an EA and a Chief of Staff, like a little bit more of a project manager. We don’t do executive assistance, and that’s a deliberate decision, but we partner with a lot of agencies that do. So when people have that need, we have great resources to send them to. I just think it’s a real different profile of ⁓ candidate than the folks we have.

So Associate Chief of Staff, Chief of Staff, COO, CFO, ⁓ Integrator, if you know the EOS, it’s an entrepreneurial operating system. ⁓ It’s very similar to a Chief of Staff. They just use very specific framework and lingo and technology and whatnot. And HR Business Partner, ⁓ which is sort of just an HR generalist who can do any number of things that.

that people are looking for. So those are the roles that we place. We have in the past also done some interim executive directors at nonprofits and things like that. ⁓ So people can come to us with things that are outside the scope of that, but those are really the ones that we focus on.

Anthony Codispoti (13:44)
And when you’re placing somebody into a position, are they like a 1099 contractor for them or a W two for you and then you build a client? How does sort of the back office

Maddy Niebauer (13:50)
the

So the people who work with clients are 1099s for us. And then we are the 1099 that contracts with the company. the company works through VChief and then we contract out with, with our consultants. And then we also have like our central team is W2.

Anthony Codispoti (14:14)
Gotcha. So what industries do you serve? What’s the typical company profile look like? They’re between, I don’t know, X and Y headcount or N and Z in revenue. Like paint a picture for us. Who’s a good fit?

Maddy Niebauer (14:29)
Yeah.

Well, what’s interesting is there’s an enormously wide range in terms of size. Like we have worked with solopreneurs and we have worked with multinational corporations. I would say our typical client is on the smaller side. Often they will start at maybe a million in revenue, but into the hundreds of millions. And

The industries that we are in are pretty varied. Actually, we started very heavily in education and nonprofit. No surprise because those are the industries I was coming out of. ⁓ We started very quickly working with a lot of ⁓ service-based small businesses, things like ⁓ marketing businesses or executive search businesses or other things that were really founder driven. And the founder just got overwhelmed and needed a right-hand person.

we now do quite a lot in a wide variety of other industries. Healthcare is one we do a lot in. we’ve done some consumer packaged goods. I mean, you name it. It’s kind of across the board. My philosophy is like, it’s really a role that can be industry agnostic. Like you don’t always need a lot of, industry expertise to be able to jump in, in these like strategic and operational roles. I mean, sometimes you do. And sometimes people have come to us and been like,

We need someone who has been in biotech. ⁓ And sometimes we have that and sometimes we don’t, right? So we’re candid with clients about like, this is what we have in our pool and either it works or it doesn’t.

Anthony Codispoti (16:08)
So let’s talk a little bit more about that. I’m curious how you approach matching clients with the right executive talent, especially in what I understand is pretty short timeframe. A lot of times you’re able to turn this around in a week or so.

Maddy Niebauer (16:23)
Yeah, yeah. So the first thing we do, and that timeframe has decreased over time, I would say, but we’ve always been pretty quick. But we are leveraging a lot more technology to do it than we used to. So we start with an intake call with a client where they will share all of the things that are on their plate that they want our person to take over. And sometimes that’s just like one big project, and sometimes it’s 15 different little things, right? And so we think about…

And we talk with the client about like, are the most important functional expertise areas? So like, do you want someone who has HR background or finance or, know, whatever sort of ties in more with their functional needs? And, know, for some roles, it’s obvious, right? Like a CFO needs a financial background, but in the chief of staff or even in the COO role, like you’ll see a deeper need in one functional area or another.

So that’s one piece of the matching. The other piece of the matching is industry background. So where there is a match, we will make one. If they want someone who has a background in healthcare or in education or whatever it is, ⁓ we have people from a lot of different industries in our talent pool.

⁓ And then we also think about time zone, if that’s important to the client. Most of our clients and most of our consultants are based in the US, but occasionally there are exceptions to that rule. So we just try to be thoughtful about that because sometimes it matters. Rarely, once in a while, we’ll do some work in person. So if people are like, I need someone who can come into the office, like that will very much limit the pool of candidates they have because our people are all over, right? But. ⁓

And then ⁓ the other thing is really sort of personality and work style and how do we think these people will work together? And so, as I said, we have started leveraging a lot more technology in terms of, you know, using AI to observe the meetings, put together the scope of work with us, ⁓ for us. ⁓ And so that kind of thing, what used to take our, ⁓

our business development people, like a couple hours to pull together. Now a machine does it and it doesn’t take any time, right? And then we also have invested in systems ⁓ that we use Zoho, but it is both our CRM system and our applicant tracking system. And then we created a custom module that takes the information from the CRM and the information about our talent and says, okay, you’re looking for someone with an education background.

who has done a lot of hiring and who, know, like X, Y, Z, right? And then it’ll give you the list of people and how good of a match they are. So the machine comes up with, here’s your initial best set of people. And then the humans look through and say, okay, who do I think based on what I know about these people would be a good match? So there is still a human touch to it, ⁓ but.

⁓ It’s much more technology enabled. And I think the reason we can do it so fast is because we have the pool of talent already built. Like we’ve done the vetting. We don’t have to go search for Joe Schmoe who’s, you know, a healthcare consultant who has done whatever. Like we found Joe Schmoe a while ago. We just have to say, hey Joe, are you interested in this project?

Anthony Codispoti (19:45)
And what is Joe doing in the meantime when Joe Schmo doesn’t have a project? Is he retired, feet up on a beach chair?

Maddy Niebauer (19:52)
Yeah!

So what

I would say is our typical client profile or consultant profile is people who have come out of W2 work. So they used to work, you know, for businesses and they want to work for themselves. And so often they have their own consulting business. All of our consultants have LLCs and liability insurance. And so often they’re doing this type of work with other people already. And some of them work with us because they don’t.

love business development or they’re not good at it, they don’t want to do it. And so we take that piece of the equation for them. Sometimes they’re just starting out and so they just don’t have a network of clients yet. And we know that sometimes that means that over time we’ll lose them if they like go off and build their own practice and they don’t have time for V-cheap clients anymore. What’s interesting is people flow in and out of it, right? So sometimes because it’s the nature of consulting work, right? Like, I have a lot of time now. I don’t have a lot of time now. And

Now, before it used to be a lot of like, people reaching out like, I have some time or what, right. And now it’s all in the machines, right? And people fill out like, this is how much hours a month I have available right now, etc. So we can see immediately if Joe has, you know, 20 hours a week or five or none.

Anthony Codispoti (21:10)
So Joe is going and updating that on a somewhat regular basis. And you guys have built some layer of AI on top of all the data that you’re keeping track of inside of Zoho. And so you can use the AI component that you’ve built to query your systems. Like, we need somebody who’s got, you know, online marketing experience and, ⁓ you know, experience with this particular CRM, you know, check these boxes. And it’s like, here’s

Maddy Niebauer (21:13)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yes.

Anthony Codispoti (21:39)
seven people that meet that criteria, now a human can go through them and look and say, okay, these are the ones that I think are worth the conversation.

Maddy Niebauer (21:47)
Exactly. And then we send to our clients a handful of candidates because at the end of the day, I want the consultant, the client picking the consultant because then they have more buy-in like this is the person that I chose, this is who I want. ⁓ I just think there’s something to be said for that. Give them some options.

Anthony Codispoti (22:05)
Now,

yeah, say more about the importance of work-life balance as it pertains to what you guys are doing there.

Maddy Niebauer (22:16)
Yeah, well, I mean, here’s the thing. I think you and I both know lots of entrepreneurs who just work all of the time, right? And there’s some hustle culture where people think they’re like, they have to work 60 or 80 hours a week to get their thing going or to make it scale and thrive. ⁓ And

my thought and belief and philosophy is that that is is false and imaginary and that if we are spending our time well, we can stay focused where we can have the most impact and let other things go to other people, right? And so at what we do for clients is give them the person who they can give all of their other things to, right? When they look at their to-do list and they’re like,

this is not one of my priorities, this is not one of my priorities, but doesn’t mean it doesn’t need to happen, right? But that they can farm off to other people. And the nice thing I think about like work-life balance as it pertains to our consultants is our work is flexible and it’s part-time, right? And so the consultants can do the work when and how they want, right? If you have kids in school and you wanna be free every afternoon between 3 p.m. and 8 p.m.,

you can do that, you can do the work before that, you can do the work after that. And so I think it is one of the reasons that ⁓ we never have trouble finding clients, I mean, consultants, and it’s the reason that clients love us because we take things off their plate that they would otherwise be doing. And then they’re like, my God, I’ve seen the light, I don’t have to do it all. And so

everybody ends up with better work-life balance, right? And I think actually it’s very much the way that the workplace is going in general. Like there’s so much more of this, you know, like fractional was not a thing that people talked about. I mean, yes, there were consultants doing work, but there’s whole industry that’s been built up around it. And I think it’s a really, really beautiful thing because I think when people take a step back and spend less time working and more deliberate,

time that is thoughtful, that is not just like endless emails and endless meetings back to back all day every day. think they can really focus not only on like the things they’re good at at work, but the things that actually matter in life, which by and large is not work in my opinion. Not that work doesn’t matter, but you know what I mean?

Anthony Codispoti (24:53)
When you’re talking, yeah, Maddie, when you’re talking to a prospective

client, what’s the biggest objection or hurdle that you typically have to overcome?

Maddy Niebauer (25:04)
think they come in a couple different varieties. One is like, ⁓ it’s gonna take just as much time to teach someone else to do this as I do it, right? So it’s like a hesitation to delegate. And I would say it actually isn’t when you get to the root cause about like how much time it will take. It’s like, are they mentally willing to let go of things, right? There is some piece of us that is either sort of

feels a need to keep things because of a lack of trust or because like a little bit of a piece of ego that is like, this is me and this is my company and I need to hold all of the pieces, right? So there’s some people that struggle to delegate. ⁓ And then I think the other piece sometimes is financial, right? Especially if we’re working with small businesses, amusingly, as we look at ⁓ different industries, like the…

most sensitive are often the like scrappy startup businesses, right? I would have thought it might be nonprofits, but turns out that’s not the case.

Anthony Codispoti (26:09)
Small entrepreneurs, right? They’ve had to scrap, scrap, save for everything that they’ve got. And the idea of giving up a few of those dollars, they think, I’ll just continue working harder. I’ll just put in longer hours and save that money.

Maddy Niebauer (26:15)
Yeah.

Yeah, well that’s the thing, right?

And I think people don’t always prioritize themselves and like their own mental health and they’re like, I can just do more and more and more. But the reality is if you like do, you can still do more and more and more, but like, let’s have it focused where you, you are driving the business forward instead of just more junk work along the way. That’s not really moving the needle.

Anthony Codispoti (26:43)
Sometimes ⁓ specific stories can really help people wrap their brains around what you do and how effective it is. Can you think of one client’s story, a case study, where maybe without mentioning names, you can be like, here was the situation before, here’s what, you know, when we placed our executive, what we were able to help them do. And so here’s what it looks like kind of afterwards.

Maddy Niebauer (27:07)
Yeah, so we were working with a leader at a nonprofit organization. He was new to his role. He didn’t have a chief of staff assigned to him. But in his old role, he had had a chief of staff. So he knew the wonders of a chief of staff. But like it wasn’t in their budget cycle to get him a new chief of staff. But he’s like, I need something, right. And so he’s like, I’m just going to do this for like, six months until our next budget cycle. And then I’m going to hire a full time chief of staff.

We’re like, great, perfect. So we jump in, we’re doing a bunch of work for him. ⁓ Budget cycle comes around. They do get the budget for their chief of staff. They decide to hire our chief of staff. So we do have a like conversion program where they can pay us basically an executive search fee and they can keep their person. But what was interesting about it was he saw so much value in the program.

that they also had like a director of finance role that was open. So he’s like, I need one of those, please. And then like five different people in his organization were like, ⁓ I have this gap in talent. I have this gap in talent. And so they have been a client for years and years and years, but with so many different engagements because like they fill one need and then they’re like, I have another need and I have another need. And I think what’s nice about our model is that ⁓

we can be there for as short or as long as you need, right? Like we don’t lock people into any long-term contracts. It’s all month to month, but we have so many clients who sort of boomerang in that way. And what I love about that is like, you’re really meeting this immediate need that an organization has. And you might not be the long-term solution forever, right? Like fractional support or interim support is like by its nature, not necessarily a forever solution.

But like we can keep coming back and coming back and you know, then they tell their friends about us or other things like that because they’re having a great experience with their consultant.

Anthony Codispoti (29:11)
How often do you see clients sort of treat this as like a drive before you buy kind of a thing? let me take this fractional on for a few months and see how they work out. And then it’s like, we love this person. Or, OK, you have filled our need. Not quite the right person long term. We’re going to move on. How often do people sort of convert into that executive recruit?

Maddy Niebauer (29:18)
Yeah

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don’t have

the hard numbers in front of me. If I had to guess based on my experience, it’s probably somewhere between five and 10%. What I think it often happens and actually that was one of our like challenging points in the early days because we didn’t have a high enough conversion fee that made it feel worth it. Right? Like we were sad that that person left because they were like such a valuable part of our talent pool. And we’re like,

Maybe I would do that differently. Now we feel fine about it. Like it feels like it works out for everyone because it, you know, if you had to go pay an executive search fee, this is like that, but you also get to try your person first and make sure it’s a good fit. Right. ⁓ So in some ways I think that that it’s great for that. ⁓ And, sometimes they don’t hire our person and we take no offense to that. Sometimes our person doesn’t want to be hired, right? Like sometimes they are like, no, I want to do this consultant thing forever.

Anthony Codispoti (30:13)
Right.

Maddy Niebauer (30:28)
⁓ And so sometimes we play the role of helping them find that person, right? We’ll write the job description, we’ll do the interviews, whatever. We’re like preparing to replace ourselves. And we actually feel fine about that too, because ultimately we know like we want clients who are here because they need us in this moment. And if they don’t, they might need us later or they can tell other people about us.

Anthony Codispoti (30:51)
What growth strategy has been most effective for you, Matty?

Maddy Niebauer (30:55)
I think ⁓ the growth strategy that has stood with us through time is referrals. ⁓ I think that’s true for so many businesses, right? But I think the level of service that we provide often surprises people and they’re like, wow, I didn’t expect this person to be able to come in and like work so autonomously so quickly and add so much value immediately. And so what that does is

get people excited about what you offer and get them excited to talk to their friends about it. So we have had a lot of people who have referred a handful of people. We’ve had some champions who have referred us like nonstop all the time, which feels really great and amazing. ⁓ We have a partnership program that is sort of burgeoning with both clients of ours, but also other people who serve similar clients in different ways than we do.

⁓ And so we look to ways to ⁓ highlight each other’s work. I actually just did ⁓ a webinar with, we work with a bunch of charter schools and they provide insurance to charter schools. And so we did a webinar together because often like the chief of staff is the person who is like looking for insurance policies or helping with the renewal thing or whatever, right? So like, it doesn’t seem like a natural immediate like, why would you be partnering with them? But it turns out to be ⁓ a really good fit. ⁓

And you know, it’s interesting, we have in recent years, like really devoted more ⁓ resources towards marketing, right? Like before it was all organic, and now we’re more strategic. So we do more paid marketing and other things like that. And I will say, I think our marketing team is doing a really great job of figuring out how traditional SEO ⁓

does not apply in the same way to ending up in chat GPT and other AI searches. And so just constantly thinking about what that means in terms of putting ourselves out there in different media ways. Like they’re like, you need to be on video all the time, which I find a little bit cringey. I mean, I love going on podcasts, I’m happy to talk to people, but I’m not always the favorite of watching myself in these videos. And they’re like, make me more videos.

Anthony Codispoti (33:13)
Nobody is. Almost

nobody is. I’ll tell you a rare exception is my nine year old son who his favorite thing is to look at himself. We’ll be walking down the street. You’ll see his reflection in one of the store like windows and and he’ll run into people because he’s checking himself out. But by and large, and I’ve done hundreds of these interviews, I talked to almost everybody like, I don’t like to hear myself. I don’t like to see myself. So you’re not alone there. So it

Maddy Niebauer (33:19)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

I love it.

Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (33:41)
One of the interesting things you talked about is something I’ve actually been really curious about is this sort of switch from a traditional search engine optimization, right? Like lots of strategies that have existed for years about how to get yourself to the top of the Google ranking. So when somebody searches for, know, whatever the term is fractional CFO, like you’re coming up at the top of the, but now so many people are starting their searches in chat GPT or in Claude or, know, any of the Gemini, any of the other tools.

Maddy Niebauer (34:00)
Yeah, your keywords, yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (34:11)
And so how is it that you can show up inside of those resources? And this is something that you guys have been working on.

Maddy Niebauer (34:18)
Well, our marketing people have, I would not say like we’re the experts, but what I will say is what they have conveyed to me is that the more places that you are showing up external to your own website, right? Like before it was about like optimizing your headers and certain key phrases in your website, right? But now it’s like, where are you showing up that is not your website? Like what are the raw liable other sources? And how do you put more of that out there?

Anthony Codispoti (34:19)
Okay.

Maddy Niebauer (34:47)
⁓ and video especially, right? So you can’t just put up a bunch of videos on your YouTube. You have to like go on podcasts or like have your articles in Ink Magazine or whatever it is, right? ⁓ And so we’re trying to do more of that. Yeah, I’m sure there’s a lot more expertise behind it. This is like the dumbed down version.

Anthony Codispoti (35:03)
Okay, exciting stuff.

You’ve you’ve you understand

it at a high level. It’s like, okay, this is the path that we’re going. I’ll let the experts work on it. I’ve got other fish to fry. What’s been the biggest hurdle to your growth?

Maddy Niebauer (35:14)
Yeah.

Yeah, God bless.

biggest hurdle to our growth? mean, I think it’s always been finding clients, right? ⁓ Finding talent has never been a bottleneck for us. ⁓ And finding clients, ⁓ you know, I think we’ve done a good job at inbound leads, right? When people find us and we do a really good job of sort of converting them, our sales are good, right? Because we have a great product and it’s easy to sell. And I would say our marketing has become

much more sophisticated. Like we didn’t even have a marketing team for a long time. ⁓ But, you know, it’s like, it’s only so predictable, right? Like you’re putting stuff out there, you want people to come your way. ⁓ And sometimes you have to work a lot harder for a lot fewer leads. And we have gone through, you know, like we went on this really rapid growth trajectory.

And then things slowed down a little bit and then they picked up again and then they slowed down and like you sort of before you get into this entrepreneurial world, you just think you’re just kind of sort of consistently grow, right? And then I think you have to accept that sometimes market forces make everybody’s, you know, like budgets tighter. And so, you know,

you just had to fill the top of the pipeline a lot more to get the same number to come out the bottom, right? And ⁓ so that I think is the hardest thing, yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (36:55)
So what have been sort of the triggers for the down parts of your cycles as well as the up parts? Like I’m gonna guess, you know, I talked to a lot of people in kind of the staffing space and a lot of people are down, right? The economy is slowing down. We’ve got uncertainty with ⁓ tariffs. Government shut down just recently. A lot of uncertainty there. And so a lot of staffing companies are suffering. COVID, depending on the kind of staffing company you had, you went.

Maddy Niebauer (37:02)
EEEEH

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Anthony Codispoti (37:23)
one way or the other very quickly. What are you seeing? What are sort of the levers that have been moving for you?

Maddy Niebauer (37:27)
That was us.

Yeah,

I mean, our first big growth was right after COVID. So things went dead in like March through June of that year. And then it was like, ⁓ so that was both like a down and an up for us. ⁓ I would say we have generally followed the trend of staffing agencies just from what we’ve seen. ⁓

Like we were down in 2023 and then up in 2024 and then back down so far this year. Often, we, I think, are well positioned for when there is a lot of churn in the labor market, when companies are like, I’m not so sure about full-time hiring. I’ve let these people go, but this work still needs to get done. And so we are a good solution in those moments, in moments of economic uncertainty.

But you have to be enough, there can be some uncertainty, but there has to be some hope that you’re coming out of the uncertainty, right? Like if you’re in this uncertainty that people still think is gonna go down more, ⁓ we don’t do well in those moments. And I think that’s where we are right now. I think people are really worried that there is a deeper recession coming, whether it is or not. Like there’s just so much uncertainty. ⁓ And some industries are more immune to that than others, right? And some…

industries are less cost sensitive than others and things like that. And so we have had to think about diversifying the industries that we work with and have more like deliberate marketing campaigns to specific industries, right? Like we will always have a lot of education and nonprofit because we are so deep in that world that like the referrals will just keep coming forever. But ⁓ in places where we’re newer or we want

⁓ to build more of a reputation, it just takes a lot more ⁓ marketing dollars going that direction or people time building relationships in those spaces, et cetera. And so, you know, I think we have to be thoughtful about how we approach that and how we spend our limited marketing budget and people time budget.

Anthony Codispoti (39:43)
What are some industries that you’d like to grow into, that you’re exploring now?

Maddy Niebauer (39:47)
Yeah.

Well, I think we have gotten a decent foothold in healthcare and we are building our pool of talent in that space. So I would love to just go real much deeper in healthcare because I think ⁓ that is a space where there’s always more need and some interesting sort of industry changes there. think ⁓ we have

had some luck in certain parts of tech. So ed tech is a space that we’ve worked a decent amount in, but I would say like the broader tech sector, would love to, I think we have a lot of ways that we could support them in particular. ⁓ So those are just a couple of that come top of mind.

Anthony Codispoti (40:35)
Any thought to expand the services that you’re offering or does this kind of feel like you are where you want to be?

Maddy Niebauer (40:41)
Yeah

you know, it’s interesting and we always have this conversation, should we do this? Should we do that? And I was just having ⁓ a conversation with a friend of mine who was a lawyer and she is like, there are so many like new law firms, like these lawyers will come out of big firms. They’re like, I’m going to start my own thing by themselves or with one or two other people. And they don’t know anything about running a business. They’re great lawyers and they don’t know about like,

insurance or office space or this or that or like a CRM system or a billing system and so like she’s like you could do some really amazing work with lawyers who are coming out of that space right and we’ve worked with a handful of lawyers whatever but and then I was like you know what I think there are other industries where that is also true so for example there’s this growth in the concierge medicine ⁓ field so there’s all these doctors who are like I’m gonna go out on my own

and do my own thing because I’m sick of the healthcare system and I just want to charge my clients some like flat monthly fee, but they’re good at being doctors. They’re not good at running a business. And so, and I have a friend who is a doctor who is thinking about launching a concierge thing. And I was like, do we have any people who know how to do this? Cause I don’t know always what our talent pool is full of. And my team is like, yes, we absolutely have people who do that. So ⁓ I just think ⁓ as it relates to like what new roles we will offer,

think that will evolve over time, right? Like we’ve had conversations about all sorts of things, like should we go into marketing or sales or what’s it called? More deliberately into fundraising, we do a little bit of fundraising now. So I mean, I think it will probably be a little bit driven by what clients are asking us for. I also just think our wheelhouse is very much in strategy and operations, which is not to say like,

I was real gun shy about the CFO before we started. was like, guys, I don’t know. Like that feels risky because they’re running money. You want them to like know what they’re doing. But it turns out we’re just real good at finding great talent, right? And great CFOs also want flexibility. So, you know, there will be people who are great fits on the talent side. And when you have the talent, it’s not that hard to find the clients. you know, yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (43:04)
Let’s shift gears, Matty. ⁓ Whether it’s personal or professional, I would like for you to pick a big serious challenge that you’ve overcome in your life. Well, walk us through that. How did you get through it and what did you learn?

Maddy Niebauer (43:17)
Yeah. I think the most recent one comes to mind a couple years ago. I was going through a lot of personal challenge and change I separated from my husband. And it was also at a moment that business was struggling. And so in one week, I had to like,

have really, really hard conversations with my husband at the time and also had to lay people off at work. ⁓ And I was like, does it get any worse than this? ⁓ And ⁓ I suddenly became a single parent. I mean, thank goodness my kids are old enough, they’re teenagers now, ⁓ that it wasn’t, you know, like.

as hard as it could have been. ⁓ But it’s incredibly difficult to all of a sudden be the only one who is supporting your children both financially but also with their emotional health on a day-to-day basis when they are also experiencing the loss of having a parent on a regular basis, right? And… ⁓

It was a moment that I really had to reflect and step back. And I actually took a step away from VChief and I decided to take a leave of absence. And I was really fortunate that we had built up our bench of internal talent running the organization that I had. ⁓ A president of our organization that I could just say, I need you to run this thing. I got to just step away. I got to focus on my kids and ⁓

I thought it would just be for the summer. ⁓ And then I decided not to step back in in the same way that I was before. And ⁓ that lasted a long time. And in fact, I still haven’t quite stepped back in the way that I was leading the organization before. still in a leadership role. I’m still doing work, obviously. I’m still doing podcasts. ⁓

but I’m not managing the day to day of the business. And in some ways, like I think it was a great opportunity to give my co-CEO a chance to shine, right? A chance to lean in and step up. And she has historically been an incredible leader and she took the reins and she ran with it. And she has succeeded all of my expectations. ⁓ But it’s hard to do that.

in a moment that business is struggling, right? I think it would have been easier to say, I’m going to take a step back when like business is growing and booming and great, right? I have to lay people off and then I’m like, NPS, I’m out of here for a little minute. And I think like the benefit of having a really great team culture where people really care about each other as humans first ⁓ and as team members second.

meant that everybody understood, everybody was great about it. Did it make things hard? Yes, yes it did. And I think I also spent some time thinking about what do I wanna do? What is my next chapter? Am I gonna keep running Beachy forever? Do I have all these other dreams and ideas? And once you do the entrepreneurial thing, once you get the bug and then you have other ideas and you’re like, ooh, shiny thing, maybe I’ll go to that.

I became a yoga teacher, I started playing hockey, I’ve learned the banjo, like I have a serious pottery habit, right? So like, was having, I was finding ⁓ joy and satisfaction in places outside of work, in addition to just all of the heavy, heavy lifting and difficult times with the parenting. And now I think we’ve come back to a happy medium where I am leaning in ways that are both beneficial for

you know, keeping the business moving forward, gaining awareness and building relationships and things like that. And I’m still not running like the day to day of the meat and potatoes of the business because we’ve built up an amazing, amazing team and we have all the right people in all the right seats and it feels really good. And yeah, they are working harder than ever. And you know, it’s hard when

you’re still not growing. You know, like you grow, grow, grow, and then you think you’re going to grow forever and then you don’t. But you weather the storm and then you’ll be ready to grow on the other side when things ease up.

Anthony Codispoti (48:09)
So what you described

there, Maddie, is like a pretty powerful one-two punch. Like either one of those things, right, separating from your spouse or business struggling is enough to bring a mere mortal to their knees. And you had them happen simultaneous. You know, in my experience, if there’s a tornado in one aspect of your life, but you have some peace, stability and predictability in another aspect,

There’s at least a place for you to go to feel safer, right? To feel like I’ve got it over here. Right? Like I, I matter over here. I got my arms around this. Your whole world was chaos at this time. Who were you going to? Who supported you? How did you get through this time?

Maddy Niebauer (48:42)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Literally. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, I think a few different people one is my therapist, God bless the therapist. I can’t say enough about therapy. I’ve also throughout my entire journey of V-Chief had an incredible executive coach who I just happened to fall into through a relationship at Teach for America and she was ⁓ doing this like outplacement consulting for

TFA did a round of layoffs and she was working with my team and I was like, well, I’m just going to meet with her and maybe she’ll have ideas for how to like market my new business on LinkedIn or whatever. And she just ended up being an amazing resource, both to just like build up my self-confidence as I was starting this business, but also like practical tactical things ⁓ that were really helpful along the way. And she has been a cheerleader for me ever since then, including when I was going through some really

really hard times. And then I would just say like certain members of my team I’ve been really close with and also I have an incredible chosen family. ⁓ My mom’s amazing. She just moved to Madison. She’s not in great health, but it’s been amazing having her closer.

Anthony Codispoti (50:17)
And so you gave voice to a couple of things here, which I’m really grateful that you did. You know, one is kind of admitting the struggles of the business cycles, right? Up, down, up, down. And right now you’re in a down cycle. You know, I, get the chance to talk to a lot of folks and a lot of times we’re really highlighting all the good stuff. Right. And so people hear stories and they’re like, I’m the only one struggling. Everybody, you know, that’s out there talking is talking about how great things are going. And you guys do have a lot of wonderful things going. Right. And

Maddy Niebauer (50:32)
Alright.

Anthony Codispoti (50:47)
You’ve got such a great base of business and such a great internal team. It’s just things aren’t where you thought they would be right now. And, and I think it’s important that people hear that life has these cycles to it, right?

Maddy Niebauer (50:50)
Thank

Yeah.

Yeah, it’s real weird to be like posting, we just got in the Inc 5000 list for the fifth time. I’m like, but yeah, based on three years of growth, I’m like, that’s, we’re probably not gonna hit that list for a couple more years, but it just feels, yeah, I think it’s helpful to remind people that it’s not a straight line.

Anthony Codispoti (51:22)
Yeah. And the other thing that you gave voice to and thank you is the importance of therapy, right? When you’re going through something difficult, it’s so important to raise your hand and ask for help, whether that’s a professional therapist, whether it’s a close friend, a trusted family member, some combination of all the above. When we hold that stuff inside, it just turns into poison. It’s toxic. eats us. It eats us from the inside out.

And so when you find somebody that you can connect with, that you can talk to, that you can unload and put this out of your, speak it out of your mind, speak it out of your mouth into the world, it lifts a weight off your shoulders.

Maddy Niebauer (52:04)
Yeah, yeah, it does. I ⁓ think it’s, it’s incredible. I’m also really lucky to have a couple of my best friends are also therapists. So feel like I have a lot of therapy swirling around me. But there’s also just tools that like, you realize are applicable to all sorts of relationships, right? Like if you look at attachment theory, and if you’re like anxiously attached or avoidantly attached, you’re like, ⁓

I see that dynamic not only in my personal life, but also in this business relationship I have or whatever else, right? Like the lessons trends on.

Anthony Codispoti (52:38)
So where do you think the overall industry of fractional executive placement is heading? mean, things are in a downturn right now, but in general things are in a downturn. But what do you think the overall future curve looks like?

Maddy Niebauer (52:47)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, you know, I think it’s really interesting, right? ⁓ Fractional is kind of a new word, right? Like think this thing has existed often in some form or another. I think it has grown a lot lately for a few different reasons, because I think people are looking for a lot more flexibility in their work, right? There’s so many more people who are going out and becoming consultants and other things like that.

And people often ask like, who’s your biggest competitor? And we do have competitors in specific niches that we’re in, but I think our biggest competitor is like just other independent consultants, right? And so it’s like, what benefit do you bring as a company that someone doesn’t have as an independent contractor, right? Because otherwise everybody just goes to their friend down the street who they know who is doing the same thing, right? And so I think you have to build this brand awareness that people know and trust what they’re going to get.

when they come to VChief, right? ⁓ Or to any agency in particular. ⁓ So as I think about what that means for the industry, I think there will continue and probably have a growing amount of people doing this on an individual basis, right? ⁓ And I think that will put pressure on the agencies like ours to really have ⁓ some proof points and some cases to show.

why it makes more sense to go with us than go with someone independent. I think that’s one piece of it. I also think it’s, I think it’s not going to go away, no matter what happens in sort of like the market and there being a market downturn or this or that. ⁓ You know, I think probably things will go a little bit lower before they get better, right? And then I think before the economy fully turns around,

I think the staffing industry and in particular fractional staffing will ramp up before you see the full. But I think once people see that we’re going to get on that upward trajectory, ⁓ then they start to think about staffing up for it. They feel confident enough to spend the resources to bring the people in. ⁓ But again, I just think we’ll continue to be here because there will continue to be needs.

the talent market is just never perfectly alive. Like you’re never gonna lose someone and get someone new in the same day. There will always be gaps. And so there will always be gap fillers like us. And it’s not necessarily like people leaving their roles. It might be maternity leaves or it might be like, I just need a low level of this forever. But I just don’t think those things are fundamentally gonna change. And I do think there’s a question about like, how does AI change things? That’s probably the biggest question mark, right? But… ⁓

I think what we see is like, yeah, there is, there is, well, who knows where the future is going, but I can speak from like our business perspective. Like we are using AI in really powerful ways. That means art, takes less time for our people to do things. Right. But.

Anthony Codispoti (55:43)
What’s the answer to that question?

Maddy Niebauer (56:05)
then they are freed up to do things that maybe the machine can’t do. There will always be things that the machines can’t do. And yeah, they might get better at it and other things like that. And I think it’s crazy to ignore AI. mean, there’s so many people who are like, AI is ruining the world. And yes, I think there are many ways that AI is ruining the world that I’m scared about and I don’t like. But I tell people I think is like saying, I don’t like automobiles because they pollute. Well, yeah, but where would we be without automobile? Like it’s happening.

whether you want it to or not. So either you can embrace it and use it for good or ignore it and be left in the dust riding your horse and buggy.

Anthony Codispoti (56:42)
Yeah, sticking your head in the sand doesn’t really help anything. What’s your personal superpower?

Maddy Niebauer (56:46)
Yeah. ⁓

You know, I think the thing that people consistently say about me is I’m incredibly authentic. What you see is what you get. And I’m really open, as you saw, just sharing my own personal challenges. And I think people really relate to that. So I think I do a really good job of seeing other people and of being willing to be seen in ways that might not align with like…

⁓ Maddie’s this like big Inc 5000 business leader, whatever, but I’m also like just super real and I really just love people and I love getting to know people. And so I think a combination of my authenticity and relationship.

Anthony Codispoti (57:35)
Favorite book or podcast that you might recommend to our listeners?

Maddy Niebauer (57:40)
⁓ I think, you know, I think traction is a really great one, like not to get on the EOS train because I see pluses and minuses of it. But I think ⁓ one thing that’s great about it is it helps people have a really ⁓ deliberate framework for how they approach their business in a strategic way and setting goals and working towards them and holding people accountable. ⁓

I think it can be overly prescribed, right? Like I think there’s lots of other frameworks that can work well. I’m not like such an EOS person that I think it’s the only solution, but I have talked to enough leaders who have said that has been transformational for their business. And that’s why I was like, all right, great. Let’s have some integrators because that feels like something that that’s a need out there. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (58:30)
How about some daily practices or habits that either help you get your day started or keep you on track?

Maddy Niebauer (58:37)
Yeah, ⁓ I work out every single day. ⁓ I was just sick for a few days and it killed me not to move my body. ⁓ And for me, it’s not just like the physical benefits of it. It’s very much the mental. I just feel like I thrive when I have, ⁓ you know, the endorphins from moving my body. And I also feel like health is the most important thing we have. Like if you don’t have that, like…

everything else is for naught, right? And that doesn’t mean that like, just because you’re in shape or you work out a lot, like you’re going to be healthy, you’re not going to die tomorrow, right? But you know, if you want to live a long time, it’s probably your best bet to get out and work out. And I am a yoga teacher and so I teach a few classes a week and it’s been really beautiful to sort of build a practice with.

class members who I see every week, my gym talked me into doing chair yoga, which I was not into, because I was like, I want to do the hardcore, like vinyasa flow, get a really hard workout. I was like, all right, but I love that class so much, my sweet little old people, and they come in and they tell me all these stories. And it’s just like, it just warms my heart in so many ways. So exercise is the biggest thing. The other thing I will say, and this is like so random, but I bought an electric

flosser recently, it’s called the slate. And this is the one habit, I swear I’ve never been good at flossing. I’ll floss a lot right before and right after I go to the dentist, and then I’ll go like a month without flossing, unless I eat a mango or something. But now, I floss like twice a day. I freaking love this thing. I feel like I should start an MLM for like, selling this flosser. It has these things that like, like rub into your gums. It like actually feels good to floss.

Anthony Codispoti (1:00:25)
We’ll put your affiliate

link in the show notes for everybody.

Maddy Niebauer (1:00:27)
It’s, I know, I need to get

one. I’m like, guys, tell me. like, I will, I have given them to my children, to my mother-in-law, my partner, you name it, like all of it. It’s hilarious. ⁓

Anthony Codispoti (1:00:37)
Wow, that’s impressive. All right. Well, it’s, don’t know. And right now

as we’re talking, it’s like Amazon Prime Day in the fall. So maybe that that’ll be the thing I go and search for as soon as we’re done here. You know, and as you’re talking about, you know, the the yoga classes that you get to teach, I kind of remind you of you were saying before, like, you still haven’t fully stepped back into the role that you had before. And it sounds like maybe you won’t, like maybe this is a better place for you and

Maddy Niebauer (1:00:46)
There you go.

Anthony Codispoti (1:01:06)
and for the business as well.

Maddy Niebauer (1:01:08)
Yeah, I mean, I think it’s hard not to step back in when things feel like, you know, like when you’re in a down cycle. But I think stepping back in in a meaningful way that is not all consuming feels like the right call for me. And I just am really grateful for my team who is just like next level that I feel like I don’t have to, right? It feels good to feel like it’s in good hands.

Anthony Codispoti (1:01:34)
I’ve just got one more question for you today, Maddie. But before I ask it, I want to do three things. First of all, everybody who wants to get in touch with Maddie or her business, here’s a few ways. V Chiefs with an S, vchiefs.com is their website. You can connect with Madeline Niebauer on LinkedIn. We’ll have a link to that in the show notes. And you can find them on a lot of the other socials with the hashtag V Chiefs, again with the S on the end of it. And

For folks as a reminder, if you want to get your employees more access to benefits that won’t hurt them financially and carries financial upside for the company, reach out to addbackbenefits.com. Finally, if you’ll take just a moment to leave us a comment or review on your favorite podcast app, you’ll hold a special place in our hearts forever. So Maddie, last question for you. We reconnect one year from today and you’re celebrating something big. You’re super happy.

What’s that big thing you hope to be celebrating one year from now?

Maddy Niebauer (1:02:35)
That’s such a good question. ⁓ I’m going to go on the personal side for this one, if that’s okay. I have a senior this year and she will be leaving for college. So she will have been just settled into college for a month or two at this point. And I hope that I will be celebrating that she feels like she made the right choice and that she’s really happy and that our little family still feels complete and happy even with her potentially far away.

Anthony Codispoti (1:03:05)
that. Madeline Niebauer from VChief. I want to be the first to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate it.

Maddy Niebauer (1:03:15)
Thanks so much, Anthony.

Anthony Codispoti (1:03:17)
Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.