A fractional COO for growing businesses
Senior operations leadership, one or two days a week: the steady hand that holds your day-to-day together, without the salary, the commitment, or the wait of a full-time hire.
What a fractional COO actually does
A fractional COO is an experienced Chief Operating Officer who works with your business part-time rather than as a full-time executive. You get the operational judgement of someone who has run things before, applied directly to your business, for a fraction of the cost and commitment.
In practice, that means taking ownership of the parts of the business that keep everything moving: the processes, the tools, the finances behind the scenes, and the day-to-day decisions that pile up faster than a founder can clear them. The goal is simple: turn a business that runs on your time into one that runs on systems.
Typically that covers:
- Designing and tightening the processes the business runs on.
- Choosing, setting up and rolling out the right tools: workspace, project management, finance, AI.
- Bringing order to operations so nothing falls through the cracks.
- Giving the founder a senior person to think through decisions with.
When it's time to bring one in
Most founders reach for a fractional COO at the same moment: when they have become the bottleneck. The business depends on them for everything operational, but it isn't yet big enough to justify a full-time operations executive on six figures.
- You're working in the business so much you can't work on it.
- Things slip because there's no one owning the operational detail.
- You've bought tools nobody set up properly, or processes live only in your head.
- You know you need senior operational help, but not a permanent hire just yet.
If two or more of those sound familiar, a fractional COO is usually the right next step. Read the full guide on when to hire one →
Senior help, scaled to what you need
A 30-minute conversation about your setup and where things feel broken. No pitch, no obligation.
I map your tools, finances and processes and pinpoint what's actually holding the business back.
We agree the days per week that fit the work (typically one or two) on a simple monthly retainer.
I work as part of your team, owning the operational detail so you can get back to the work only you can do.
See if a fractional COO fits
Book a free 30-minute call. You'll leave with a clear sense of what's slowing the business down, and what it would take to fix it.