Fractionals United Blog

There is one major advantage to being full-time: you get paid time off, and when your employer is closed, like on Memorial Day, it's easy to take advantage of the time off and rest. This is not that easy as a fractional. If you're getting paid on retainer, you may or may not have the luxury of taking time off, depending on your arrangement with your employer, but for those getting paid by the hour, if you don't work, you don't get paid (and yes, that's another reason not to charge hourly, but that's another topic and post). Add to that the potential feast and famine nature of working for yourself,  and is it any wonder many of us don't take the time off? I've been there so can totally relate, and it's something I still struggle with. It's one of the major reasons I had gone full-time with one of my fractional clients. But if you think about it objectively: You should be charging enough, whether hourly or retainer, to be able to afford some downti...

Growing a business is an exciting journey, but it can also be a challenging and intimidating process for smaller companies. With limited financial resources and networks, smaller companies struggle to keep up with larger firms in attracting top talent, offering competitive salaries, and not having to compromise on expertise. However, the emergence of Fractional Executives has changed the game for smaller enterprises, enabling them to hire part-time C-suite executives who can help drive growth and profitability. In this blog, we will explore how Fractional Executives can benefit small businesses and how you can take advantage of this lesser-known talent pool. Trying to Afford to Hire Full-Time Executives Smaller companies are often faced with budget constraints that limit their ability to hire experienced talent on a full-time basis. These companies must be strategic in their hiring process and allocate financial resources to other necessities, such as marketing, sales, and product deve...

Working as a fractional executive isn’t for the faint of heart (if you’re considering this path, check out this post to see if fractional is right for you ). There are the obvious prerequisites: years of experience, proven expertise, and executive presence. However, having skills and time in the seat isn’t enough to thrive due to the fact that a fractional executive, by definition, operates differently than someone in a full-time position. A great fractional executive must have a strong operational foundation and thoughtful toolkit to be most effective in their engagements and maintain their work/life sanity. While there is a healthy dose of personal preference in how each fractional executive operates, there are two primary areas to consider regardless of specialty: Personal Operations—Keeping yourself organized Client Operations—Integrating quickly and effectively in your engagements Personal Operations Toolkit A primary factor that defines a fractional executive’s experience is...

Fractionals United has turned four months old today and we have over 1750 members. Below is a chart showing our growth month over month. This is the first time I've shared our growth metric on social media since we hit 1000 members, since it's no longer my primary goal and focus. As other founders with limited resources have discovered before me, and many will discover after me, it is best to focus on one major goal. If you try to focus on more than one at a time, you risk not accomplishing any well. My first focus had been to get us to 1k members, which I was told was when we'd become attractive to sponsors. My current focus is getting sponsors to support the community. Many from within and without have told me to just charge a small membership fee, and although in principle that is not wrong, given that it is so hard for fractionals to find work, it is wrong in this instance for me and this community. I do fortunately have volunteer leaders and other fractional community ...

Behind the scenes of small businesses all over the world, is a movement that is changing the face of executive leadership. Fractional C-Level management is here to stay and is growing at an accelerated pace.   What does this mean for small businesses? For the first time, small businesses can hire a C-Suite leader without the revenue to carry a full-time salary.  Let’s peek at the numbers.   I’m a Fractional Chief Operating Officer. A full-time Chief Operating Officer can cost a company around $350k per year or more depending on experience and industry. A Fractional Chief Operating Officer will cost roughly 1/4 of that (not to mention the cost savings of benefits). The benefit a small business, especially a startup, reaps from the rewards of having a Fractional Chief Operating Officer on staff is innumerable and vastly outweighs that cost. You’re bringing top-notch leadership and strategy into your business—the same leadership and strategy that a company with 10x...

As a small business owner or startup founder, you understand the importance of hiring the right people for your organization. It’s what enables you to grow, succeed, and ultimately achieve your goals. Yet, hiring can also be a challenging and costly process, particularly when it comes to hiring executives. Hiring your leadership team is a crucial decision that can catapult your organization's success, but can also burn through your runway. The impact provided by these executives can also start to diminish over time, making it difficult to determine whether hiring them long-term is worth the investment (salary, benefits, equity, bonus). In this post, we’ll explore what diminishing marginal utility is, how it applies to hiring executives, and alternative ways to consider executive hiring. What is Diminishing Marginal Utility? Understanding the concept of diminishing marginal utility is necessary to evaluate the long-term value of hiring new executives. At its most basic level, it...

"The most difficult thing is the decision to act. The rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process, is its own reward." - Amelia Earhart Taking action is often the hardest part of any endeavor, but it's an essential ingredient for success. However, it takes more than just making a decision to act. It requires personal discipline, which is the ability to control your thoughts, actions, and behaviors to achieve your goals. Jocko Willink, a retired Navy SEAL and best-selling author, emphasizes the importance of personal discipline in his work. His mantra is effectively, "Discipline equals freedom." This seemingly paradoxical statement suggests that by exercising discipline in our lives, we gain the freedom to achieve our goals and fulfill our potential. This idea applies to the decision to hire a fractional leader as well. Waiting for the perfec...

The future of work is here, and it's called Expertise as a Service (EaaS). EaaS is the latest form of digital collaboration that allows companies to outsource their expertise needs to an external service provider. This means that companies no longer need to hire full-time employees for every role; instead, they can access deep expertise when needed from an on-demand pool of experts. Let's take a look at what EaaS is, how it works, and how it can help companies. How Does EaaS Work? Expertise as a Service (EaaS) is a business model in which professionals sell their knowledge and skills by offering their services to clients on a project basis, interim, advisory, or fractional basis. In today's constantly evolving workplace, the concept of expertise as a service has become increasingly popular. So, who are the types of workers that offer their expertise in this way? Generally speaking, these professionals are individuals who possess specialized knowledge and skills that can be ...

If you've read any of my previous posts either here or on LinkedIn, you know that I believe fractional is a win-win: employers get leaders who can help them scale and optimize, despite not being able to afford that level of talent full-time and leaders can get more flexibility and control over their time and careers, as well as diversify and keep themselves challenged and growing But does that mean that every leader should quit their full-time job and go fractional? No. Like everything in life, there are downsides to going fractional, and I thought it only fair to spell out the three main challenges so that anyone considering going fractional understands both the pros and cons before making that decision. Leads As someone who was a fractional COO for years before "fractional" was a thing, and is newly back to this world, the biggest challenge of being fractional is finding the work. This is a challenge I face and that 98% of the fractionals I speak with—both inside and ou...

Most organizations understand the value of having a leader in an executive role to guide their business, but it's not always financially feasible, there may not always be a full time need, or some struggle to find the right person. As a result, fractional leadership has become increasingly popular as an alternative means to leveraging executive level talent.  As a reminder from our last  post , the benefits of hiring a fractional are the flexibility it offers in terms of time commitment and the ability to access talented leaders at a fraction of the cost. Additionally, working with fractionals does not require businesses to make significant investments in infrastructure or resources—the professional provides all necessary tools and resources themselves. Since this is an emerging and growing concept, I was eager to explore the cost of a FTE (full-time employee) compensation plan, in comparisons to fractional monthly retainers. The data is eye opening to say the least!  Accor...

With the current economic climate, many businesses are struggling to maintain their operations and stay afloat. For small businesses and startups, this is especially true as they often don’t have the resources or flexible workforce to quickly pivot to meet new challenges. However, there is an option that many companies may not be aware of—hiring fractional leaders. What is a Fractional Leader?  A fractional leader, also known as a “part-time C-suite executive” is an embedded senior leader who works part-time for your business on an open ended basis. A fractional leader can provide experienced guidance in times of difficulty and help you navigate through economic hard times better than ever before. Learn more about what defines a Fractional in our prior post ! Some of the most common Fractional Leaders include: Chief Marketing Officers Chief People and Talent Officers Chief Operations Officers Chief Finance Officers Chief Strategy Officers Chief Sales and Business Development Office...

Now that "fractional" is more popular and in the news, it is important to understand what the difference between that and consulting is. I was recently part of an Operator's Guild panel on just this topic, and as part of our presentation deck, created the below table to highlight the differences between all the types of non-traditional leadership roles: To put it simply, there is no difference between a fractional CXO and their full-time counterpart except that the fractional will be part-time and therefore have other work, whether other fractional or consulting work. I personally do a combination of fractional COO work and workflow consulting. And fractional is always a leadership role, although not necessarily executive level, and needs to be synonymous with that.  Another way to look at the difference between fractionals and consultants is through two more lenses: what are they hired for and what their focus has to be. Consultants are hired for their skills; they may ...

Fractionals United turned a month old this past week, and broke 200 members that day.  And tomorrow we launch on Product Hunt , so please check us out and share. We also had our first meetup this past week and it was really great connecting with some of the members beyond slack. We realized collectively that we're actually pioneers revolutionizing the future of work since we strongly believe that fractional work is  the future. And here's why (or at least one of the many reasons why). I started reading Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter  by Liz Wiseman . If you haven't read it and you're a leader, I highly recommend it.  The premise of the book is that there are "leaders" who need to be the smartest in the room and diminish those around them, and there are others—the "multipliers"—who bring out the best in everyone they work with. (There's a lot more to it, but I'm summarizing and keeping it high level.) Multipliers are e...

I was doing fractional COO work before it was called that, went full-time briefly with one of my previous fractional clients, and returned to a very different fractional market. On the one hand, it's now popular and in the news, and there are also many more fractional leaders out there. On the other hand, my previous major source of fractional leads was no longer viable, so I had to figure out how to do this in the new paradigm. So I went looking for a community.  I had discovered the benefits of online communities over the last several years and wanted to find one for fractionals, so that I could learn from others and perhaps collaborate with them. I found a few fractional-related organizations and programs, but not one that was a community first and foremost. As many other founders before me, I decided to build the thing I needed. I posted the idea in several communities to see if there was interest, and when I realized there was, quickly started a free slack and within a day, a ...