The seat, with the build included.
One to two days a week. I own the commercial side of the operating machine — acquisition, conversion, retention, unit economics — run the cadence, and take the escalations that currently reach you. Not advice about the operating system. The operating system.
What I take off you
The specific things that currently land on the founder and shouldn't.
The commercial operating machine. Qualification, routing, conversion, onboarding, retention, expansion and cost to serve — one owner for the whole lifecycle instead of three functions each holding a piece and nobody holding the join.
The operating cadence. The weekly rhythm, the numbers that get reviewed, the meetings that are worth having and the ones that quietly aren't. I've restructured meeting rhythms and experimentation frameworks specifically to cut waste and sharpen where leadership attention goes.
The escalations. The decisions that reach you because there's no one else senior enough to make them — and the process changes that stop them reaching anyone.
The build. When a problem needs software, it gets built rather than added to a roadmap. That's the part most fractional executives can't do, and it's why the seat moves faster than advice does.
The unfashionable half of the P&L. What each customer costs to serve, which segments are quietly unprofitable, and whether the pricing actually works. I've run a P&L, so I'll tell you when the problem isn't your funnel.
How it works in practice
I'm in your systems, not adjacent to them. Same tools, same channels, same access as anyone on the team. I'm reachable between the days I'm on, not only on them.
Reporting to you. The seat only works with a direct line to the founder or CEO — the decisions involved are the ones you'd otherwise be making.
Instrument first, then change. Early weeks go into making the lifecycle visible, because changing a stage nobody is measuring is how businesses lose six months and learn nothing.
Everything documented as it's built. The point of the seat is to become unnecessary in it. Every system, decision and process is written down so the eventual full-time hire inherits a working machine rather than a mystery.
The first ninety days
When to hire this seat
You're past product-market fit and the constraint has moved. The problem isn't finding demand any more; it's that the business can't convert, keep or profitably serve what it already gets.
You're the bottleneck and you know it. Still the best salesperson, still the final escalation, still in the CRM at 11pm — and every week you don't fix it costs more than the week before.
A full-time COO isn't right yet. Either the budget doesn't work or the scope doesn't justify it. One to two days a week from someone who has held the seat beats a full-time hire who hasn't.
You want the systems, not just the judgement. If you need advice, hire an advisor — they're cheaper. This seat is for when someone has to actually build and run the thing.
Well, ideally. The seat is designed to hand over: to a full-time COO when the business is big enough to warrant one, or to the team when the machine runs itself. Every system is documented as it's built, precisely so that leaving is a handover rather than a hole.
If you're the bottleneck, let's talk about the seat.
Thirty minutes. No brief required. We'll work out where your customer lifecycle is losing money and whether it's a problem I can fix — and if it isn't a fit, I'll tell you inside the first ten minutes.