CTOx - The Fractional Chief Technology Officer Company

When 7-figure organizations want to grow, they need the insight and direction of a CTO, but not the cost. Through CTOx, I train and coach senior technologists, agency owners, and tech consultants to become process-driven, highly paid fractional CTOs. A CTOx® is a part-time chief technology officer who translates the direction the CEO sets and provides clear technology roadmaps, KPIs, and management of technology vendors to get the goals met. To learn more and to schedule a time to talk with one of our CTOx’ers, go to: https://ctox.com

Head of Coaching

Ridiculously Efficient

Ridiculously Efficient is my think tank and personal holding company focused on the human side of artificial intelligence. I help entrepreneurs develop AI strategies that maintain integrity across their marketing, operations, and communications. 

I bring my multidisciplinary background everywhere: 

💫 15+ years orbiting around visionary tech entrepreneurs as COO, CMO, and operating CEO

👩🏽‍💻 20,000+ articles written and published the old-fashioned way (plus 2 ghostwritten bestselling books)

🚀 8.5 years building the Abundance 360 mastermind with Peter Diamandis, with DNA-level mastery of exponential thinking and transforming bold vision into strategic implementation

💪🏽 12+ years of productivity coaching for hundreds of leaders and high-performance teams in 13 countries

👩‍👦 Working mom adept at balancing ambition with a connected family life

I work with businesses and leaders in two ways:

1️⃣ SPEAKING & WORKSHOPS: I helps high-performance leaders and teams double down on their best skills and realize the time-saving benefits of partnering with AI without outsourcing their humanity. Perfect for team leaders, CXOs, and entrepreneurial teams who want to use AI to increase productivity, decrease overwhelm, and optimize work-life alignment.

2️⃣ STRATEGIC ADVISORY: I collaborate with visionary entrepreneurs as a trusted advisor, gyroscope, and extension of their leadership team, building teamwork and facilitating connections to execute key strategic initiatives. I help entrepreneurs stay ahead of the curve and make better decisions about AI that empower their team, clients, or community.

Founder & Future Strategy Advisor

Conscious Partners

Full-stack marketing agency focused on scaling mission-driven brands that measurably improve people’s mental, emotional, physical and spiritual well-being.

Chief Relationship Officer

Xploration Centre

Creating a new paradigm of education in Victoria, BC at the intersection of innovation, consciousness, nature and love.

Board Member

The Superpower Accelerator

In partnership with world-class brand advisor Mike Koenigs, I help entrepreneurs with service-based businesses reinvent so that they can simplify their lifestyles, charge 10x-100x higher prices, and make a bigger impact. 

Our signature experience is Vision Day. In 48 to 72 hours of dynamic, highly strategic and FUN brainstorming, we design a "Category of One" premium brand and the messaging, audience segmentation, and branding infrastructure needed to support it. 

I'm also the host of the Category of One podcast, where I interview exceptional, pioneering entrepreneurs on their superpowers and future vision.

Goddess of Synthesis & Integration

Xploration Centre Collective

The Xploration Centre Collective is a global community and digital mastermind focused on the future of education. We convene visionary educators, parents and leaders for insightful discussions on how to raise and empower the next generation of leaders.

Co-Founder

Abundance Group by Peter Diamandis

- Coordinate the millennial skunkworks that orbits around author, entrepreneur and visionary Peter H. Diamandis.
- Design communications, content and experiences for the Abundance 360 mastermind community and annual event. 
- Host live digital events, including our “Women of Abundance” webinar series, for Abundance 360 and Abundance Digital.
- Represent Peter and PHD Ventures at business masterminds, executive training sessions and in-person networking events; distill these experiences into actionable strategies for our core business.
- Curate and edit Abundance Insider, Peter’s weekly news digest of technology breakthroughs creating abundance. 
- Personally advise Peter on bandwidth management and work-life alignment.

Operations Goddess

CalorieLab

- Orchestrate editorial content: copy edit articles from expert columnists, compose a weekly newsletter, execute social media efforts.
- Conduct blogger outreach and link-building strategies.
- Advise on marketing and brand management.
- Write a regular column on health and fitness.

Senior Editor and Director of Social Media

aka m.

- Supercharge clients' websites by creating articles, blog posts, social media updates and other content.
- Copy edit clients' online content, observing AP and SEO style, coaching contributors as necessary.
- Manage social media accounts, drive reader engagement, grow fan base and augment community feel.
- Consult on productivity, lifestyle hacking, freelancing and work-life balance.

Freelance Content Producer

Foodista

- Created and implemented a comprehensive, growth-focused social media strategy.
- Grew Foodista's communities on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Pinterest.
- Developed Foodista's stable of professional category editors through weekly virtual training sessions and ongoing feedback.

Director of Content Strategy

- Wrote short, supercharged blog posts on celebrities and funny/weird news items as they pertained to food. 
- Fostered community by engaging with readers on Facebook and Twitter.
- Identified and covered emerging news stories, themes and key figures in the blogosphere.
- Assisted fellow category editors with SEO, social media and productivity.

Editor, Celebrity and Funny/Weird

Marissa Brassfield is Ridiculously Efficient®. She's a master of strategic communications, trusted by visionary entrepreneurs in 20+ countries to craft the optimal narratives to inspire and drive action. 

Since 2008, Marissa has helped mission-driven founders navigate the future with ease, efficiency, and effectiveness. As the key conduit between the "make it up" and the "make it real" stages, Marissa's leadership has produced over $250 million in attributable revenue, including ghostwriting multiple bestselling books, launching multimillion-dollar businesses and venture funds, leading eight-figure masterminds and digital platforms, and maintaining cultural integrity in dozens of high-stakes team pivots. As a content creator, she's authored over 20,000 unique articles the old-fashioned way, with over 12,000 articles specifically on futurism and the impact of emerging technology. 

Marissa's unique blend of strategic foresight, heart-centered integrity, and intuition enable her to provide in-the-know perspectives so that visionary leaders can drive economic and societal evolution.

🤍 What I Believe 🤍
A high-performance human augmented by AI tools is unstoppable. Technology isn't here to steal our purpose; like money, it's a tool we can use to free up time and unlock resources we want. 

If we free up enough time to remember what it's like to be human (connect, invent, imagine, try new experiences, be present), we may discover some better ways to solve age-old problems.

📈 How I Get Results 📈
1. STRATEGY: I help leaders make decisions about technology that align with their values and the business' mission. I routinely save my clients millions of dollars a year in R&D, technology, personnel, and marketing investments when I'm involved in resource planning cycles. 
2. ZERO TO ONE: I quickly co-develop new business concepts and ideas into inspiring messaging that activates early team members, investors, groups, and the public. Then I operationalize the core business with the right people in the right seats. 
3. CONNECTION: I build bridges between leaders and their perfect audiences by optimizing their communication and personal branding to accelerate rapport, increase relatability, and cultivate long-term trust with integrity. 
4. COACHING & ADVISORY: I'm best known as a strategic sounding board for big conversations, important decisions, and challenging interpersonal situations (personal or professional).

If I can be of service, reach out at marissa@ridiculouslyefficient.com or book a 1:1 advisor session here: https://calendly.com/efficient/advisor

The only thing that changed was I left.

Two and a half months after leaving a toxic work environment, after 11 years of marriage, I got pregnant.

Same body. Same husband. Same everything.

Except the cortisol. The always-on. The backpack by the door for same-day trips. The letting everybody get the leftovers because work paid our bills and had to come first.

While I was grinding, both of my parents died. I damn near lost my marriage too.

That's what happens when toxic work environments become corrosive... to our bodies, our relationships, and everything that makes life worth living.

My body and family had been voting no for years. I finally listened.

Here's what I've learned from sitting with technology leaders in the messy middle:

Workaholism remains the socially acceptable addiction. The one most workplaces give badges of honor for.

But your body keeps score.

(If you're reading this and your shoulders just tightened, that tension itself is data.)

And the humans building the algorithms, making the decisions about AI, about technology that will shape the next 100 years of society... many of them are burning out under industrial-era models of extractive labor. Choosing productivity over presence. Getting their best work when their kids don't know who they are.

What happens when those humans get their nervous systems regulated?
When they take three-week holidays for the first time in their careers?
When they're present enough that their daughter watches them rebuild and thinks, "Dad is unstoppable. Maybe I can be unstoppable, too."

And when these humans make technology decisions from abundance instead of scarcity, grounded in purpose...
The decisions change.
The algorithms change.
Our future changes.

That's why CTOx exists.
Because every business will be affected by technology, and every business deserves a technology leader at the helm who is making decisions with a regulated nervous system, connected to their purpose, connected to what actually makes human life worth living.

The future we're building in the next decade depends on it.
Your genius zone is sacred... but so is your presence.
What would become possible if your nervous system had room to breathe?

Marissa Brassfield

3x Founder | Co-Founder @ CTOx | Vision-Execution Strategy for Mission-Driven Entrepreneurs | 20 Years Turning Big Ideas Into Flourishing Ecosystems | Featured: Forbes, Entrepreneur

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No one is coming to grant you permission to work fewer hours.
And you were never meant to wait for it.

I meet so many leaders with luminous missions and expansive ambition… yet their calendars are packed edge to edge, their energy stretched thin.

If we're connected, you're likely a founder. An entrepreneur. A builder of what doesn't exist yet. So why are we still giving our power to workplace norms designed for factory floors in the Industrial Revolution?

The work "system" we keep following, the one that tells us to be constantly available, was never a real system at all. There's no committee updating the rules of modern work. No permission slips. No architect stewarding the redesign.

Just outdated patterns we internalized early, often from leaders who grew up at a time when "busy" FELT productive, and hours logged seemed to correlate with value created. We learned to override our body's alarm signals, mistake exhaustion for achievement, and call it "work ethic."

But the tools to redesign are already here.
AI that can return hours to your day.
Business models that didn't exist even a few years ago.
Partnership structures that expand your reach without expanding your hours.

You can reinvent how you sell, who you serve, and where in the process you express unique human value.

Technology now enables fractional leadership, asynchronous collaboration, and the concentration of intelligence instead of the extraction of time.

The five-day, 50+ hour workweek IS A TRAP. It's an artifact from another era, an outmoded blueprint misaligned with human creativity, modern leadership, and the flourishing that's possible right now.

(I go deeper in my latest Forbes Coaches Council article, The Three-Day Entrepreneur. Link in comments.)

Nearly every leader I coach carries the belief that constant availability is required.
But when I track patterns across the ones earning significantly more while working fewer hours, the truth is clear: They stopped optimizing time and started protecting the environments where their best intelligence naturally emerges.

Let's try a simple experiment.

Truth: Set a 20-minute timer and explore: When did you feel most alive this week? What activities depleted you, and which restored your system? Where in your physical environment does your clearest thinking actually happen?

Dare: Choose one micro-shift to test. A small structural change that honors your energy.

Stop waiting for permission.
Start developing a hypothesis you can test.

What might your work look like if you treated your energy as your most valuable resource... and used today's technology to protect it?

⚡ Drop your micro-shift below. Let's build a living catalog of what truly works.

Your impact grows when your approach evolves.

Building CTOx changed how I see growth.

I've watched 250+ tech leaders move from fixed job titles to flexible fractional models. They're doing this for their own reasons, but primarily it's to build lives that match their values and energy. The patterns are clear: fulfillment drives sustainability.

Every coaching session is a mirror. You can't guide someone through territory you're unwilling to walk yourself.

While I guide others to align work with life, mine has to feel aligned, too. 

The environment that shaped you might not support who you're becoming. Your body registers this before your on-paper strategies do. 

Many leaders I work with say, “I outgrew my job.” I know the feeling.

Like a plant whose roots have hit the edges, what grew you can't hold who you're evolving into.

Two things can be true: You can honor what built you AND recognize when it's time to design something new.

The changes you make for yourself echo through the people you guide and influence. Whether they're your clients, colleagues, or the little ones watching your every move.

Your evolution becomes permission for theirs. 

Try this: Set a 15-minute timer and review last week:
→ Where did your energy flow best?
→ What parts of your work felt true to your future self?
→ How are you modeling your values, and who is watching?

That pattern is showing you something worth following.

Every time you say 'yes' to something unimportant, you're saying 'no' to something that truly matters.

I learned this the hard way.

I burned out (more than once) by overcommitting, even to work I loved.

Each time, I thought I was moving closer to my goals.

But every yes to a misaligned project was a silent no to my own genius, peace, mission, or family.

Energy is your true company capital.

Protect it like you would your cash reserves.

Here’s how I filter every opportunity now:

– Audit your commitments: What drains you? What fuels you?
– Set boundaries: If it doesn’t light you up, say no.
– Use templates for saying no: “Thank you for thinking of me, but I can’t commit right now.”
– Create a filter: My top three non-negotiables must be met for a ‘yes’ to happen.
– Practice the pause: Give yourself space before responding to any request.

Every no is not a missed chance.

It’s a strategic decision to say yes to what matters most.

Your attention is sacred.

You are not here to prove your worth through exhaustion and overextension.

You are here to lead with intention, clarity, and heart.

What’s one small shift you can make to protect your energy before you say yes again?

(Photo from the beautiful Bryce Canyon, Utah - one of our favorite family road trips!)

Control suffocates creativity. Trust amplifies it.

I’ve walked into cultures where compliance ruled every move. People waited for permission. No one dared to push back, critique, or create beyond the checklist.

Innovation stalled. Energy faded. Teams stopped caring.

The tension in your throat or gut during certain meetings is data. Your body often registers mission violations (the gap between stated values and actual culture) long before your mind catches up.

I’ve helped rebuild teams burned by over-management. The transformation never came from new slogans or perks. It happened when we chose to honor people's natural instincts to solve problems creatively instead of forcing them into rigid compliance boxes.

Trust means:
→ Critique is safe
→ Creation is welcomed
→ Course corrections happen together (not through permission chains)

I get it. You want results and consistency, AND you also want capability, creativity, and sustainable energy from your team.

If you want to scale positive impact, the question isn't the false paradigm of control vs. chaos. It's whether you're building systems that amplify your team's best thinking or systems that require them to check boxes.

Try this 20-minute experiment:
1️⃣ Ask your team: "What's one thing you'd change if you had full permission?"
2️⃣ Notice their body language, and your body's response to their answers.
3️⃣ Pick one suggestion to test for one or two weeks.

Track what shifts in energy, output, and the quality of problems they bring you.

What's one place where you're defaulting to control because execution clarity feels safer than trusting your team's instincts?

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Marissa Brassfield's Linkedin Analytics

Marissa Brassfield

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Marissa Brassfield

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Marissa Brassfield's LinkedIn Performance

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Marissa Brassfield's Linkedin Analytics

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