Melissa Franks is a seasoned business strategist, Fractional COO, podcast host and speaker, and transformation leader with a track record of scaling businesses and driving operational excellence with a people-first approach that mobilizes teams for unprecedented results. A former Fortune 500 executive and OnCon Icon “Top 100 COO” Winner (2022-2024), she has led billion-dollar IT transformations, M&A initiatives, and revenue growth strategies, blending corporate expertise with small business agility. 

As the founder of On Call COO, she empowers female entrepreneurs by optimizing operations and increasing profitability with her knack for helping business owners break through growth plateaus, implement scalable strategies, and build profitable, sustainable companies. Passionate about women in leadership and business innovation, Melissa is also an advocate for high-performing women, helping them design lives they love while achieving balance and success. She is a strong voice for domestic violence awareness and family court reform. When not strategizing, she enjoys running, traveling, and cheering on her three sons at their sporting events. 

In this episode, Melissa shares her journey from 25 years in corporate to entrepreneurship after a major life setback. She reveals how to maximize limited mentorship time, align career goals with personal priorities, and why the best mentors may be outside your organization. Plus, practical strategies for managing financial uncertainty and pivoting after setbacks.

What you will learn from this episode:

  • Discover how to maximize limited mentorship opportunities by being prepared with clear asks, specific examples, and alignment between professional and personal goals.
  • Learn strategies for pivoting after major setbacks, including managing financial uncertainty and making decisions without panic.
  • Understand why mentorship can come from outside your organization and how to seek experts who can help you develop specific skills you need to reach your goals.

“Mentorship doesn’t always need to come from your chain of command or inside of your business. Often the skills that you need to acquire and the modalities of thinking that you might need to develop in order to reach your goals can be taught and learned and coached outside of the four walls of the business that you work in.”

– Melissa Franks

Valuable Free Resource: 

  • Connect with Melissa at melissafranks.com for support in scaling your business and breaking through growth plateaus.

Topics Covered:

02:35 – What is a fractional COO: part-time executive support for seven and eight-figure businesses

03:50 – Becoming an accidental entrepreneur: pivoting after a domestic violence incident and job loss

05:00 – Shifting priorities: learning to say no after decades of saying yes to everything

08:50 – Building a business through intention: the first nine months of firefighting and steady growth

11:00 – Corporate career journey: from the Gap to financial services and climbing to global executive

12:00 – Learning without mentors: navigating a male-dominated environment through trial and error

14:00 – Dealing with failures: seeking education when hitting friction points

16:00 – How to take advantage of senior female executives: being prepared with clear asks and specific examples

19:00 – Aligning professional goals with personal life: understanding what your life really needs

21:00 – Managing financial uncertainty: worst-case scenario planning and avoiding panic decisions

23:00 – Having humility: taking advantage of available benefits and not keeping struggles secret

26:00 – Empowering female entrepreneurs: helping women build businesses that enable the lives they want

28:00 – Mentorship beyond the workplace: seeking experts outside your organization for specific skills

Key Takeaways:

“Every woman in corporate America that is at a very senior executive level wants to help as many women as possible, which means that she is dividing a piece of pizza, not the pie, but the actual piece, across as many hungry mouths as possible. So you may just get a bite.” – Melissa Franks

“If you’re looking for advice, come in with an actual example. Be specific. Have an ask, have an example if you’re looking for advice.” – Melissa Franks

“Make sure that you’re really clear on what your personal life really needs, how it needs to be structured, what your boundaries are. So that when you come forward and say, is this the next right step, you have additional context.” – Melissa Franks

Ways to Connect with Melissa Franks:

Ways to Connect with Sarah E. Brown:

 

Full Episode Transcript:

(AI helped us put this together, so if you see any weird grammar or missed words—just know we nailed it during the actual chat.)

Melissa Franks

Mentorship doesn’t always need to come from your chain of command or inside of your business. Often the skills that you need to acquire and the modalities of thinking that you might need to develop in order to reach your goals can be taught and learned and coached outside of the four walls of the business that you work in.

Sarah E. Brown

Hello everyone. Welcome to the KTS Success Factor Podcast for women where we talk about challenges senior female leaders face in being happy and successful at work. I’m your host, Dr. Sarah E. Brown.

My guest today is Melissa Franks. She is a seasoned business strategist, fractional COO, podcast host and speaker, and transformation leader with a track record of scaling businesses and driving operational excellence with a people first approach that mobilizes teams for unprecedented results. A former Fortune 500 executive and Oncon icon top 100 COO winner in 2022 through 2024, She has led billion dollar IT transformations, M&A initiatives and revenue growth strategies, blending corporate expertise with small business agility.

As the founder of On-Call COO, she empowers female entrepreneurs by optimizing operations and increasing profitability with her knack for helping business owners break through growth plateaus, implement scalable strategies, and build profitable, sustainable companies. Passionate about women in leadership and business innovation.

Melissa is also an advocate for high performing women, helping them design lives they love while achieving balance and success. She is a strong voice for domestic violence awareness and family court reform. When she’s not strategizing, she enjoys running, traveling, and cheering on her three sons at their sporting events.

Welcome, Melissa. Thank you. I am so glad to be here. Looking forward to our discussion today. I’m looking forward to it as well. So let’s start with defining what a fractional COO is.

Melissa Franks

That is a million dollar question. I think I get asked that probably most often. So a fractional COO is really just a part-time COO.

So small businesses don’t need a full fledged executive or the price tag that comes with it. What they do need is the strategy and the expertise and the implementation that comes along with that person. So I support businesses that are seven and eight figures, meet their goals, unlock plateaus, and I basically do everything except legal and finance, not a CPA.

Not a licensed attorney, so we get some support for that. But anything else is really the domain of a chief operating officer. 

Sarah E. Brown

And how did you get into that business? 

Melissa Franks: 

I got into that business. I refer to myself as an accidental entrepreneur, so I never intended to stop working for other people’s businesses.

I didn’t see myself as the owner of a business, but I had kind of a combination of events. In the fall of 2023, I was working, I had left corporate after 25 years and went to a startup, and that failed after 10 months. And I had had a domestic violence incident in July of that year that had left us living on a restraining order.

And I, I was a solo parent of three kids without a job and a lot of legal bills, and there wasn’t really a choice. To not do something, and I couldn’t go back to the corporate world because at my Level A, it takes about 18 months to find a role when you start looking, and B, it requires a lot of travel, which is just not something I could do.

So I monetize my expertise and that’s where we are today. 

Sarah E. Brown

That’s a really empowering story. So one of the things that I know that you are known for is how to pivot after a setback. Is that one of the setbacks you had to pivot from? 

Melissa Franks

Yeah, that was definitely probably the most grand, let’s say. Let’s use that word.

It was really a moment where I had to not only make a decision about. How to continue, literally to put food on the table. But I had to make a decision about prioritizing the needs of my personal life above professional aspirations. And so when that pivot happened, I had to get really clear on what was necessary and needed and where my focus needed to be.

And it was really different than where it had been for decades before that, and. Can you 

Sarah E. Brown

Give me a for example so that we’re clear about the shift in priorities?

Melissa Franks

Absolutely. So I was able to say yes to anything that was asked of me. When I worked in the corporate setting. There was another adult in the house, and it’s another podcast and another day on if it was wise that I left.

But anyway, I would leave and travel. Somebody called me on a Tuesday and said, can you be in Germany tomorrow? I’d say, sure. And I’d be at the airport in six hours. So any opportunity that came to me, and it’s how I built my career and my expertise was I said, yes to everything. And when I was staring down what to do in October of 2023, I had to start saying no to a lot of things.

I had job opportunities. I could have moved to Long Island. I could have taken a consulting role that was gonna have me on the road. Four days a week all of the time. And I couldn’t say yes to those because as much as they would’ve given me the stability and the money and all of the things that I really, really needed, it wasn’t going to allow me to keep my kids safe.

It wasn’t going to allow me to be a present and engaged parent. And that was dramatically different because I was present and engaged, but I was, I could kind of do professionally whatever I wanted to. Prior to that, and that was a really big shift. I had to get really clear on what I could and couldn’t do.

Sarah E. Brown: 

How did you find time to sleep? 

Melissa Franks: 

You know, it’s interesting because sleep is incredibly important to me. So I will talk to you for years about why sleep is so important and. My very first client was a friend, so she had casually mentioned to me a few weeks before the startup had failed that she needed some help with her small businesses.

She was just starting, and I called her five minutes after I found out I was no longer employed and said, Hey, do you still need help? And she did. And while it. Really not enough money to live on. It was money and it was the inkling of something. And so I was able to, you know, kind of regulate my nervous system and continue to move forward because at that very beginning.

There was a path, and I’m one of those people that really likes the plan. I’m in operations, that’s what we do. And I was able to say, well, if I can help her in this way, then I just needed to find another her. And so how do I find another her? And so I was able to get really intentional about the steps that I needed to take.

And I, this is not a Cinderella story, so the. The first nine months of me doing this were firefighting. You know, we eventually, she didn’t need me, which was the right choice, and I had no clients and then I had to figure out what to do. But steadily following that plan that I had set out has now put me into a position where 18 months or 20 months later, I have full plate and I have business coming in the door every day.

And it was really by being intentional. About where I put my energy and the actions I took so that I could get the results that I needed. 

Sarah E. Brown

Well, you mentioned that you left corporate for this startup. So tell me a little bit about your corporate career, because it sounds like you were at a pretty high level when you did leave.

Melissa Franks

Yes, so I really worked in two large multinational companies my whole career. So I was a lifer, as I like to say, was not somebody that hopped around. And I worked for the Gap for a decade. So I was in the retail sector and I, timing is everything. So I graduated from college right as the dot com boom happened.

And I was in San Francisco, so you can’t really avoid technology at that point. ’cause that’s where all the things were happening. And so I was able, within the construct of that corporation. To work all over the place. I worked in communications and operations and finance, and my curiosity ended up landing me in the technology department, which really laid the foundation for my career path.

And again, this gets a little bit back to, I never turned down an offer. I got to finance, for example, and was like, oh, no. We don’t belong here. So nine months later I was in technology because that just really wasn’t a good fit for my brain and my skillset. And after that decade, I had a choice to take a lateral move and do really boring things, just maintaining some old systems that just needed somebody to watch them, or I could leave and go to a financial services company.

I knew nothing about financial services and actually took a step back. So, you know, actually go from a manager to an individual contributor and try something new. And so I decided to take that opportunity. I knew where I was headed if I stayed at the Gap. And so I went to this financial services company and it was difficult.

I was the youngest one by. 20 years, 30 years almost everybody was ready for retirement. And here I was talking about getting engaged, like that was where we are from a life perspective. They threw me a baby shower and a hundred people were there. I mean, literally that was just the juxtaposition. The great thing was it was a multinational company and so I was able to say yes for the next 15 years to roles, and I went from.

A senior analyst to a chief operating officer of one of their technology divisions, and I was a global executive somewhere in between that as well. And that really was a combination of identifying where I could support and help offering, saying yes, even though I wasn’t quite sure what they wanted me to do, and building a really strong network.

To ensure that I was standing in front of the right person when the right opportunity would show up and it would, it would come to be. 

Sarah E. Brown

I’m just curious how you learned all of that. Did you have role models or mentors or along the way? 

Melissa Franks

I didn’t, and I think that that’s the most interesting thing. So when I left the Gap, that business at the time was 75% female.

And we were, everybody was young. Everybody was in their twenties and thirties. So I was with my people and there was all sorts of advice everywhere. And how women relate to each other is quite similar. And so when I left that environment that was very comfortable, I knew the rules of the road, you know, even though women can get a little catty or you know how that works because I’ve been a woman all my life.

And so when I went to the financial services company. Aside from everybody being significantly older than I was, they were also the different gender and they had been there forever, like high school interns, you know, they’ve been there like 40 years, and I had to figure everything out as I went, and I made.

A ton of mistakes. I mean, I, there was no roadmap. There wasn’t anybody for me to ask. There was interesting interpersonal dynamics, and there’s this whole, which I know now because I got all the way to the top. There’s this whole other business running below the business, which is. How they make decisions about who’s getting promoted and how they make decisions about which departments are gonna expand and contract, and how they make decisions about where they’re gonna invest.

And I didn’t understand that there was this inner working under the covers. And so it was a lot of trial and error, and I collected wisdom as I went. 

Sarah E. Brown

And when you had those failures, how did you deal with it?

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Hi, this is Sarah Brown again, the host of the KTS SuccessFactor Podcast for women. I hope you are enjoying this episode and gaining some tips and inspiration on how you can be happier, more successful, and experience less stress at work. 

If you would like to learn more about how you can empower the women in your organization to do the same, simply click on the show notes to see how you can connect with me as an added bonus for my podcast guest. You’ll see how you can book 30 minutes with me to explore how you can implement a scalable self-coaching program for the women in your organization. Simply visit bookachatwithsarahebrown.com. 

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Melissa Franks

Sometimes I was incredibly frustrated. I mean, to be honest, I think it’s. I from a very early age was always somebody that could see the big picture, you know, kind of see the forest through the trees. And one of the friction points that I would get a lot is we’re just telling you to do this. Don’t worry about that.

Don’t worry about the forest, just worry about the tree that we’re asking you to chop down. And I would continue to say, well, if I chop that tree down. It’s actually gonna knock 25 more trees down. We don’t want that. We just want the one. So maybe, you know, we would kind of go back and forth and what I realized was that it wasn’t that I was offering a different perspective.

It’s that I wasn’t inviting them to consider a different perspective, so I spent a whole bunch of time butting heads, literally and getting frustrated and then going back and chopping down the tree and watching it happen and wanting to say, I told you so, but couldn’t until I, myself. Went and paid for some communications courses.

I’m like, how I’m messaging isn’t working right. I went to the local university ’cause that’s what you did then. And I sat in weekend classes where I learned how to communicate in a corporate setting. This was before podcasts were prevalent in books and now there’s so many resources. It’s amazing. But I just started seeking out education opportunities when I would hit a friction point and say, okay, so I’ve done this twice.

Now it’s getting the same result. I don’t like the result. So what can I do? Let’s go try to solve this problem. And slowly over time, that process really started to yield results. 

Sarah E. Brown

Fascinating. Fascinating. So when you, as you got into more senior roles, I guess you had an opportunity to mentor other women.

Can you give any advice to women about how to take advantage of the few senior female executives that are available now in corporate America? 

Melissa Franks

You need to be  prepared. So every woman in corporate America that is at a very senior executive level wants to help as many women as possible, which means that she is dividing a piece of pizza, not the pie, but the actual piece, the one piece across as many hungry mouths as possible.

So you may just get a bite, and that might be all that you get. And the bite might be a 20 story elevator conversation. The bite might be a walk to the parking lot. A bite might be sharing an Uber from the airport to the office because you happen to see each other in baggage claim. And so one of the things that I always required of the women that I mentored was to be really clear on.

What they needed help with. Are you having a conflict and you need somebody to give you kind of advice on how to manage a difficult person? Great. Are you wanting to get promoted and hitting a brick wall? Then get really clear about what you wanna be promoted into, the feedback that you have been getting.

Then have an ask, and I think when you can be really clear on at least what the next right step you think is for you. Even if you go in and say, I wanna get promoted, and I think this is the next right step, you’re giving them something to respond to. The other piece of feedback I would give is if you’re looking for advice, come in with an actual example.

One of the things that was always really challenging is somebody would come in and say something like, my team hates me. And I’m like, okay, you know, they’re not willing to cooperate. They don’t wanna work with me. Give me an example. Explain to me what’s happening because it might be your approach, it might be your body language, it might be the medium.

In one case we kind of got to the bottom of it and the person just would interrupt people. They were in a physical office location and she would not ask, not schedule a meeting and just like show up at their desk and need something. And that was driving people crazy. You know, so be specific. Have an ask, have an example if you’re looking for advice.

Sarah E. Brown

That’s great. That’s great. And how important do you believe it is for women who are seeking mentorship to, well you, you gave the example about even if you go in and say, I think this is the next right. Move for me. How important do you think it is for women to know where they wanna be three to five years from now?

Melissa Franks

I think what’s really important is that you need to be clear on the life that you want, because often our professional goals can be misaligned to our personal goals. And what I mean by that is if you are looking to expand your family in the next three to five years, and the answer may not be gunning for an executive role at the same time.

Depending on the company that you’re in. And so I always really advise people to make sure that they’re really clear on. What their personal life really needs, how it needs to be structured, what their boundaries are. Can you travel? Can you not? Are you an eight to five person? Are you not? Do you need to be able to leave in the middle of the day to attend kid activities?

Like what? What’s happening in that personal life? So that when you come forward and you say, is this next right step, you have additional context? So not only let me tell you about my skills and my expertise and my desire to grow professionally and make more money, I want that to be conjoined with this personal life that I have over here.

And then the mentor will be able to tell you there’s some misalignment. For me, I missed a whole bunch of baseball games and school plays, and I’m not a field trip mom luckily. So I didn’t feel guilty about not doing that, but I, there’s always a trade off, and so if you’re going to invite a mentor to help you build a plan.

To in the next three to five years, achieve specific professional milestones. Make sure you’re providing the context about the personal, otherwise you’ll build a plan that you can’t execute. 

Sarah E. Brown: 

Okay. Say a bit about, I’m going back to your, the major setback you described when you found yourself A without a job, B, without a partner, and all of that.

I’m sure, and you alluded to the fact that there was financial uncertainty in that time. I want you to speak for a minute to the entrepreneurs that are listening around your advice for managing. Financial uncertainty in general, what tips would you have for them? 

Melissa Franks

One of them is, I always do a worst case scenario exercise in my head.

So what happens if you run out of money? What happens if you, you know, like I, and there were many times. When I would lay in bed at night trying to get myself to go to sleep, and I’d start worrying about how to pay for the kids’ activities or, you know, whatever it might be. Or I knew that the bank balance had gone down.

And you know, I would lay there and think, okay, so if I don’t get another client, then what happens? How long can I exist? And then what happens after, after that money runs out? And then what happens after that money? And I have found that just working your way through, the worst thing that can happen.

Brings a lot of context and peace of mind because now you know, fear comes from a place of unknown, and so when you can actually at least tell yourself you may not like the outcome. For me, the outcome was living with my parents, with three kids. Not ideal, not, no, they don’t want that either. Nobody wanted that, but there was always an outcome where I got to, and at least then I knew if all of the things fall, this is where we go.

I think that the other piece too was I tried to not. Panic ever because when you panic, you make bad decisions, you enter into an agreement that you probably shouldn’t have. You start bartering your services when you probably shouldn’t have you hire a coach or an expert in your business when you can’t really afford it.

So I also really sat with any sort of decisions that I had to make, whether it was bringing on a new client or or managing an expense and say, does this make sense? I know this seems like it’s going to solve an immediate problem. Am I going to feel good about this if this pressure point isn’t here?

And so I did that. And then the other thing is be willing to take advantage of what you have in front of you. I had negotiated a really large six figure severance package I never received.

Sarah E. Brown

From which entity? The corporation or the startup?

Melissa Franks

No, from the startups. They had some ways that that didn’t happen. I did end up getting a very small financial settlement six months after the business closed, and it was ridiculously small and so I, I very much had no cash coming in, and so by January of 2024, I had to do some things I never thought I would do.

I had to apply for Snap. And get money every month to buy groceries. And I had to put myself and my kids on Medicaid and you know, I had to ask the mortgage company to give me a forbearance, like things I would’ve never, you know, I was a, I was making a whole bunch of money and then all of a sudden, here we are six months later.

But it provides you peace of mind. And so I think sometimes a little bit too, having humility, taking advantage of the benefits that are out there, not keeping it a secret where you are. ’cause you’d be surprised at who wants to help you. Those were really important things during that period. But if 

Sarah E. Brown

I summarize what you said: take the fear, come up with the worst case scenario and put a plan in place to deal with it.

Melissa Franks

Absolutely. Yep. 

Sarah E. Brown

Okay. And I think that’s very good advice. Yeah. And even in the, like, I have a bit of suffering from the bad lady syndrome, which is unlikely to happen. It’s unlikely that I’m going to be destitute under a park bench. But if I think about that as the worst case scenario, I can actually wrap my head around.

Okay. It wouldn’t be the greatest thing, but I would survive it. Yep. At least until I could get something else going. 

Melissa Franks

A hundred percent. And it’s, there’s the difference between not wanting to do something, right? And really having your back up against the wall. And I guarantee you, ’cause my back was up against a wall, like I was ready to be a Starbucks barista.

That’s what I had to do. You know, like you really, when we’re in a place of comfort or discomfort, but it’s not like eminent that something really bad is gonna happen. We get a little bit picky and choosy about what we will and won’t do, but using your bag lady example, you would take anything that would make you a dollar. Anything.

Sarah E. Brown

And eventually I would get out of the park. 

Melissa Franks

Absolutely. Yeah. 

Sarah E. Brown

So one of the things that you say in your bio is that you are an advocate for women. And I can see with your story how you do that. But where do you find time to do that with this company that you’re running now and your kids?

Melissa Franks

So I have a very strong, nobody’s excluded from working with us, but I have a very strong passion for helping female entrepreneurs be successful. So the primary client basis that we have is female entrepreneurs, and part of that reason is because I had a lot of C-Suite friends leave during the pandemic and start their own things, and all of them failed.

And when they did, it came back to. The same thing, which one thing, was they got some bad advice from somebody they trusted and followed it to the ends of the earth and ultimately it didn’t pan out. And so I’m on a bit of a mission to take the credentials that I have and the expertise that I have, and help as many small business owners as I can.

Female, small business owners have the business that will enable the life that they want. And so I do a lot. I spend time on my work. Is actually a product of that mission and vision. And then I spend as much time as I can networking and you know, offering small slivers of time to anybody that is looking for some advice or some counsel and, and it’s difficult to manage.

But I will tell you that when people know what you do, they will sit down next to you at a sporting event and say, Hey, can I pick your brain for 20 minutes? And I’ve been able to touch a lot of women in my local community that way. 

Sarah E. Brown: 

And how does your  podcast fit into this? 

Melissa Franks: 

My podcast is a resource for just about anybody.

So whether you work inside of a business or you own one, and the goal of the podcast is to. Just shoot it straight and tell you like it is. There’s a lot of gatekeeping in business, a lot, and on the flip side, there’s a lot of business influencers out there that say like, do this and you’ll be, you know, sent a millionaire.

And that’s just not true. They have a whole backstory and a whole set of credentials that help them be successful. And so my podcast is designed to provide very specific executable actions so that you can achieve whatever goals that you want. You know, today I recorded a podcast about that. That will come out, I think next week, about the eight mistakes that business owners make when their business is growing rapidly.

And so it’s really targeted at giving the information that’s necessary. To be successful. 

Sarah E. Brown

Very cool. So Melissa, what question did I not ask you that would help my audience understand how you are empowering women? 

Melissa Franks:

That is  a good question. You know, I think that maybe one thing that you didn’t ask is, does mentorship always have to happen in the workplace?

And it does not, depending on where you are getting feedback. Professionally, you may want to seek out women in your community. Or women that your friends or family know that are excellent. For example, if you are struggling with communication or confidence in speaking to people and you happen to know through your parents, a woman that does a lot of public speaking, she’s not in your lane, she’s not in the business that you work for, but she’s got a lot of confidence in, has figured out how to speak.

So ask for an introduction. Mentorship doesn’t always need to come from your chain of command or inside of your business. Often the skills that you need to acquire and the modalities of thinking that you might need to develop in order to reach your goals can be taught and learned and coached outside of the four walls of the business that you work in.

Sarah E. Brown

Very good advice. And Melissa, where can the entrepreneurs who need more help find you? 

Melissa Franks

So you can come to my website, which is melissa franks.com. It’s about as easy as it gets. I’m also on LinkedIn and Instagram, so you can connect with me there. Send me a message and I would be happy to chat. 

Sarah E. Brown

Well, Melissa, thank you so much for being with us today.

Melissa Franks

Thank you. 

Sarah E. Brown

Thanks for listening to the KTS Success Factor Podcast for women. If you like what you are hearing, please go to iTunes to subscribe, rate us, and leave a review. And if you would like more information on how we can help women in your organization to thrive, then go to www.sarahebrown.com. You can sign up for our newsletter, reach show notes, and learn more about our podcast guests. Read my blog, browse through the books, or contact us for a chat. Goodbye for now.

Sarah E. Brown
Sarah E. Brown