Recon · Days 0 to 14
Establish the facts
Nothing gets built in the first two weeks. We find out what's true.
- Process mapping, as it actually runs
- Tool stack and integration audit
- Delivery and margin review
- Written diagnosis, ranked by value
Fractional COO · Founder-led companies
For when delivery is the constraint, not demand.
You could sell more. What you can't do is deliver more without the wheels coming off. I build the operating layer (process, tooling, reporting, people) so the business runs to a standard instead of running through you.
No pitch deck · 45 minutes · You leave with a plan
01 When this is the right call
The business runs on improvisation
Improvisation built the company. Past a certain size it starts quietly taxing every week, in margin, in rework, and in your evenings.
You'll recognise at least three of these
- 01
What gets sold isn't quite what gets delivered. The margin disappears in that gap.
- 02
Every process lives in someone's head. When they're off, it's off.
- 03
Client onboarding is a scramble that starts from scratch every single time.
- 04
You arbitrate every cross-team dispute, because there's no system to arbitrate instead.
- 05
Fourteen tools, four doing the same job, and nobody can say which is the source of truth.
- 06
Growth means more chaos, so part of you has quietly stopped wanting to grow.
What changes
- How work moves through the business is written down, trained, and owned by named people.
- Delivery has a standard. Margin stops leaking through improvisation.
- Onboarding runs the same way every time, for clients and for new hires.
- You read one operations report a month instead of settling forty disputes a week.
This works for agencies, professional services firms and product businesses where delivery quality is the brand, and where the founder is still the delivery standard in person.
02 The division of labour
What I own. What stays yours.
The boundary, in writing, before you've spent anything.
| Area | Mine | Yours |
|---|---|---|
| Process & SOPs | Mapped, written, trained | Your team runs them, by name |
| Delivery standard | Defined and measured | Enforced by your leads |
| Tool stack & automation | Audit, consolidation roadmap, build | Sign-off and access |
| Onboarding systems | Designed, built, documented | Run by the team |
| Ops hiring | Role definition, sourcing, first 90 days of KPIs | The employment relationship |
03 The work
Fixed scope. Fixed fee.
The operations engagements, with their actual prices. Each one ships a working system and the documentation to run it without me.
Client onboarding & offboarding systemProcess mapping, build, SOPs, training, 60-day review.
$3,500
Business technology integration & automationStack audit, roadmap, CRM and automation build, team training.
On scope
KPI dashboard setup & managementCustom dashboards, team trained on them, monthly review.
$2,000
Hiring & delegationRole definition, sourcing, interviews, first 90 days of KPI management: plus an internal training course so the role is repeatable.
$5,000per role
Quarterly business reviewPerformance review, strategy session, written actions, 1-month follow-up.
On scope
Founder's Advantage, 90-day planTwo hires, strategy, systems, dashboards and onboarding bundled into one engagement.
Bundle
If the constraint is demand rather than delivery, you want the fractional CMO engagement, and if you're not sure which, that's precisely what the discovery call establishes.
04 The arc
The first ninety days
The same arc as every engagement (recon, ascent, altitude), pointed at operations.
Ascent · Days 15 to 45
Ship the systems
The fixes that ranked highest, built in order.
- SOPs written and trained
- Stack consolidated and integrated
- Dashboards live and reporting
- Onboarding system built
Altitude · Days 46 to 90
Make it run without you
Every system gets a named owner who is not me, and is not you.
- Owners assigned and trained per system
- KPIs managed to the 90-day mark
- Monthly ops review installed
- Full documentation handover
Day 91
Delivery runs to a standard. You read the report, and we go after the next constraint.
05 Answers
Asked on almost every call
What does a fractional COO actually do?
A fractional COO owns how work moves through the business (process, delivery standards, tooling, reporting and the people who run them), part-time, instead of on a full-time executive salary. The job is to replace improvisation with an operating system: documented, trained, measured, and owned by your team rather than by your memory.
Here that runs on the same 90-day arc as everything else, recon, ascent, altitude.
Do I need a fractional CMO or a fractional COO?
Run the constraint test. If you could double leads tomorrow and the business would break, delivery is the constraint (that's COO work. If you could double capacity tomorrow and nothing would fill it, demand is the constraint), that's CMO work.
Most founder-led companies doing $100K to $2M+ a month actually have the problem on the seam between the two, which is why this practice spans both rather than sitting inside one title. The full explanation of the roles is here.
How much does a fractional COO cost?
Fixed builds are published: client onboarding and offboarding systems at $3,500, dashboards at $2,000, hiring at $5,000 per role. Technology integration and automation is scoped after recon, because its price depends on the state of the stack.
Why not just hire an operations manager?
An operations manager runs a system that exists. A fractional COO builds the system: then hires or trains the manager to run it. If your processes are already documented, measured and stable, hire the manager; it's cheaper and I'd tell you so on the call. If the system only exists in your head, there's nothing for a manager to run yet.
How disruptive is this to my team?
Less than the current chaos is. The first two weeks are pure recon, nothing changes while we establish what's true. After that, systems get built with the people who'll own them, not imposed on them: they're in the mapping sessions, they're trained on each SOP, and their names go on the ownership lines. The people closest to the work usually become the strongest advocates, because they've been living the improvisation.
The rest is on the full answers page.
Next step
Delivery that doesn't need you in the room.
Bring the process mess, the tool sprawl, the margin question. Forty-five minutes later you have a written read on what to fix first, whether or not you ever hire me.