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Welcome to our special three-part interview series with Burke Autrey, CEO of Fortium Partners, hosted by David Mansilla on his business and technology podcast. In this enlightening series, they delve into the strategic vision and innovative approaches that have propelled Fortium Partners to the forefront of the Technology Leadership-as-a-Service® industry. Join us as Burke shares insights on leadership, the evolving role of technology in business, and how to drive success in today’s digital world. Each episode will explore different facets of his journey and philosophy, providing valuable lessons for aspiring leaders and technology enthusiasts alike.
View the full video interview HERE with the host of Leaders in Tech, David Mansilla.
David: Hello, …I'm your host David Mansillo. Everybody knows that this podcast has been around for almost four years now and our only purpose is to shine the light in these dark times through people that are making this world a better place through their businesses and their leadership styles. Today we have with us a fantastic person,…welcome to the show.
Burke: Thank you, David. I appreciate it. I'm glad to be here.
David: Look, you know that a lot of podcasts start with a long list, and they almost read the resume of the guest, and I don't like doing that. I like it more from the heart. So please tell me your full name, where you live, and what you do for a living.
Burke: Oh, that's great. First name Burke, last name Autrey. I live in Dallas, Texas. And I run a company called Fortium Partners. Beyond that, I have four grown kids and six grandchildren, with one on the way, which makes for a very rich life. They all live very close to me. So we have lots of family around the house, lots of kids around, and just kind of the joy of my life. My job is at home, and I work from home. My job allows me to be around my family. But Fortium is a company I started a while back that does technology leadership. So we provide technology leadership to companies of all sizes in the form of a CIO, a Chief Information Officer, a Chief Technology Officer, and what's called a Chief Information Security Officer, or CISO. And we do that on an interim, virtual, and fractional basis for companies.
David: That is fantastic. You know, I've heard it before from fractional CFOs or CEOs, but never from the technology side. I thought it didn't exist until I met you.
Burke: That's unfortunate. We hope that everybody knows that, but you're right. The CFO position is probably the most commonly known fractional or interim role. I know that because I used to be with a firm called Tatum, which was the gold standard for fractional CFO business. They eventually sold while I was there. I helped a bunch of other people start the CIO practice there. So, we were the first sort of large version of the technology leadership version of that model. But the Tatum model is fantastic. That's how I learned the business.
David: That's fantastic. You know, most businesses don't get sold. We hear about all these companies doing mergers and acquisitions and buying and selling businesses, and we think it's very common, but statistics show otherwise, right? Very few businesses get to be sold.
Burke: That's right. Yeah, that's true. And it's, you know, as a CEO, as an owner, you get that question a lot. What's your exit? What is your plan? And you know, I suppose everybody wants an exit. You like to think that that's the case, but as you said, there's not always an exit, or at least there's not an obvious exit for some companies. It has to be the kind of company that someone else wants to run and has to meet their requirements.
This kind of business has sold already. There are other businesses like this that are selling, but it's a different financial sort of arrangement. Our business is really designed to allow our partners, who are the individuals who are doing the work, to monetize their careers as technology leaders in all kinds of companies. They're just…they have wonderful careers. They're rock stars in their own right in terms of what they do. But the business is here for them to take that experience and monetize it at a point in their career where they want to do life differently. They want to have more freedom and enjoy life. They want to travel. They want to do some things differently. So they're not looking for full-time employment.
David: That is so interesting. And, you know, launching a career like that must have been very hard for you. Number one, resourcing the technology leaders must have been very hard, and then finding the companies that are willing to take them in a fractional way makes sense. How many midsize or small businesses can’t afford a professional CIO or CTO, and how many of them are lacking because they cannot afford a person like that, and then you're filling the gap?
Burke: Yeah, it's really interesting, as you might expect. We spent a lot of time thinking about this. I do have some answers for you. As far as the people, we have been so blessed. We don't recruit. We don't do anything to try to recruit individuals. They come to us because Google, you know, they search for us. We get referrals all the time. If somebody says, "Hey, I want to do some interim CIO work, who should I talk to?" We're really fortunate to have a large enough brand where people will say, "Call Fortium," or "Reach out to Fortium, go to Fortium's website." At any one time, we probably have as many as 100 to 120 people to talk to, explain the model, and try to decide if now's the right time for them. Because it is a very…different model. It's fairly entrepreneurial - and not for everyone. You have to be at a certain point in your career where you can afford to take some risks and have some variability in your income. It's usually people who've reached a point where they've got some financial stability, but they're still wanting to spend some time doing what they do.
I'm really proud that we've got a model for people at a stage in their careers where they might not get to continue working, but they can. However, they can still do some of the best work of their entire careers because they're not under the typical pressure of a role with young families, and you know all of the things that come with it; they're often much more relaxed and able to give all of themselves to our clients. It really is a remarkable way to do it. It provides our partners a bit of a safety net to try things they wouldn't otherwise try, so a lot of times, it is a company that wouldn't otherwise be able to afford or attract that particular individual with that skill set, that experience, that geographic location, or just the experience that they have. And it's amazing to see our partners go into these roles with companies that they’re just very appreciative of the experience and very mindful of what they bring to the table.
David: That is so interesting. Tell me about the whole situation of working from home. How did that evolve because I know that your agency is fairly large, and you have a lot of people allocated to different locations, right?
Burke: Yeah, we do. I started in consulting and did some industry work as well. And so, I definitely have not always spent my career working from home. But when we started Fortium 10 years ago; we started it completely without assets, completely without location. We had no assets, no buildings, no offices, no office equipment. It's a completely virtual company. We used office suites like Regis to meet when we needed to meet, but we rarely needed to meet. We meet quarterly with the leadership team and use a hotel, or we'll use an office suite. But all of our partners, there's about 160 to 170 now, they work out of their homes. If they want to, they can get an office suite somewhere if they would rather do that. So they work from home, or they work from the client's location just, depending on the client.
Most clients since COVID are pretty comfortable with the remote situation. And if they're not, they usually let us know up front, and our partner can decide how much time they want to spend traveling and how much time they don't. Right. So it's a different world for sure since COVID in terms of the remote. But in terms of the company and me, we didn't skip a beat in COVID just because we were remote already. There was nothing to shut down. There was nothing to adjust to. It was simply sort of business as usual. The technology got better. People got more used to using technology like Zoom; conference calls went away. Zoom came in, and sort of took the world by storm, as did Teams and others. But I like working from home. It allows me to have a short commute, have a sort of continuous day, and be able to work in a lot of different time zones with a lot of different people and not have to shift around a lot.
David: You know, one of the motivations that I had open in my own business was that commute. I had about an hour and a half or two hours each way to go to or from the office. Yes. And if I wanted to grow my career, I needed to stay like that. I'm talking 2000 to 2005, right? Actually, it was more than it was about ten years that I had to commute. And then I said, I am a technologist. This is 2004, right? I'm a technologist. I know I can work remotely. The Internet wasn't that good back then, but we were writing code and submitting text to the Internet, not video or images, right? When I opened ISU, I said I would make it 100% virtual except for myself because I knew I needed to have a place that I could drive to, but it's still taking two hours. I was committing 50 minutes to an office place that I rented. I got it, and that grew. Fantastic. I mean, at the beginning, it was so hard for my clients even to trust that I would do the work remotely, right?
Then, I started hiring people in Argentina, the United States, and all over the country. It was hard at the beginning, but after three years in 2008 and 2009, people were a bit more used to it, but that wasn't the norm when COVID hit. Like you were ready. Everything was on the cloud already. The only thing that I had to rush was to move accounting. Accounting was still at the local office. So, I moved all the financials to the cloud. We did that in three days. It wasn't a big deal, and everybody started working from home.
So last year, I learned that I was cured of my corporate habit of having an office, a corporate office. So I gave up the head office last year in July, and now I’m working from home.
Burke: I mean, it's enabled completely different work styles and corporate structures. You can always get together if you need to. There's a lot of debate about whether we're going back to the office and whether you need it. I just personally feel like the companies that can adjust like this are going to be very successful. And if you can't, you can't. But I think there's a slight advantage to companies that can because you can be just as successful and be remote and then have times where you bring people together as necessary. I think workers love to be near their families. They don't want the commute either. They have to be jobs where you can ensure that the work gets done and the clients are served.
David: I have a good friend of mine who is high up in technology working for a government agency downtown Toronto, and everybody was working from home during those two years of COVID, and now they have the mandate to go back to the office, but he said that everybody gots so used to doing online meetings that he basically drives to the office to open his laptop and have Team meetings inside the office.
Burke: Yes. Crazy. Which just shows you can do it from anywhere. Exactly. We have people who travel, have other homes, and work from different places, and our model, in particular, creates a lot of flexibility for people. Our managing partners recruit and sell the work that our partners do; they can often work from home, take a vacation, work from Europe, or work from anywhere in the US. As long as they can meet the time zone requirements, they're there. Which I think is a great advancement in terms of building work into your life.
Summary: The first part of our podcast interview series with Burke Autrey, CEO of Fortium Partners, explores:
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Fractional and Interim Leadership: Burke Autrey highlights Fortium Partners' core service of providing fractional and interim technology leadership, including roles such as CIO, CTO, and CISO. This service is particularly valuable for companies that need strategic technology leadership but may not require or cannot afford a full-time executive. Fortium’s model allows businesses to access top-tier tech leadership expertise in a flexible and cost-effective manner.
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Remote Work Advantages: Fortium has fully embraced a virtual business model, which was a significant advantage during the COVID-19 pandemic and continues to benefit its operations. This approach supports a distributed workforce, enabling the provision of services across various locations without the constraints of physical offices. Businesses looking into Fortium’s services can expect robust support regardless of geographical barriers.
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Technology and Business Adaptation: Under Burke’s leadership, Fortium Partners has been adept at leveraging technology to enhance their operational efficiency and service delivery. The use of advanced communication and collaboration tools ensures that Fortium’s leaders are effective in their roles, irrespective of physical location. This focus on technology integration makes Fortium a strong partner for businesses aiming to navigate digital transformation challenges.
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Catering to Specific Career Stages: Fortium attracts experienced professionals who seek flexibility and the opportunity to continue impactful work without the traditional employment model. This aspect of Fortium’s offering ensures that businesses gain access to seasoned experts who bring a wealth of knowledge and a fresh perspective to tackle complex technological challenges.
Stay tuned for Part 2, where Burke discusses his motivations for starting Fortium Partners and the unique challenges and opportunities that shaped his entrepreneurial journey. He will also share strategic insights that led to the creation of Fortium Partners, a company that addresses a specific market need by offering flexible and experienced technology leadership (CIOs, CTOs, and CISOs) to organizations that otherwise might not have access to such resources.
