Quick Hit 🎯

Still think fractional is just a 'side hustle'? yeah nah, guess again. First Round Capital (yeah, that First Round—the $1B+ fund behind Uber and Airbnb) just told their portfolio to go fractional. The big guns are validating our playground.

🎢 The Reality:

Let’s start with an uncomfortable truth: fractional work is inherently cyclical. It’s temporary, trust-based, and uneven. Most assignments last between three to six months. Some finish sooner, others never even kick off. Even the most successful fractionals experience quiet periods. This isn’t a personal failure—it’s simply the nature of the work.

Why Fractional Work Is Naturally Cyclical:

• No Continuous Marketing Funnel: Fractionals typically don't have an ongoing, automatic client pipeline.

• High Trust, Low Volume: You’re often selling yourself, which demands significant trust but results in fewer overall engagements.

• Delivery vs. Sales: When you’re deeply involved in delivering client outcomes, your sales efforts naturally slow down.

• Client Unpredictability: Even your best clients might unexpectedly drop off—and that’s just part of the game.

Diversifying Your Income Streams

To smooth out these peaks and troughs, many fractionals diversify their revenue streams. Alternative income strategies could include:

• Adjacent consulting opportunities

• Productized services tailored to your expertise

• Completely different ventures, like a niche product business (e.g., water business), cohort-based courses, or community memberships (which, admittedly, I'm partial to myself!)

While not mandatory, these supplemental strategies can seriously smooth out the ride, especially when you time them smart around your core fractional gigs. Think of it as your financial shock absorber.

Embracing the Magic

Despite these challenges, fractional work holds unique appeal. The flexibility, autonomy, and project diversity are unmatched. You just need a system that rides the wave without wrecking your headspace. Success in fractional work means creating systems and mindsets that let you ride the inevitable waves without disrupting your equilibrium.

🔧 What Actually Works -How to Build Resilience in Fractional Work

1. Minimum Visibility Plan

Even when you’re slammed, you need to stay visible. That doesn’t mean daily posts. It means:

• 1 LinkedIn post per week

• 1 coffee catch-up or voice note DM

• Light-touch follow-ups with past leads

2. Build a Rolling Waitlist

You don’t need a giant funnel. You need a few warm conversations at any given time. Every time you:

• Deliver a win

• Finish a workshop

• Say no to a lead You should also ask: "Do you know someone else I should talk to?"

3. Track Your Feast Data

Go back and look at your last 3 client surges:

• What were you doing 2–4 weeks earlier?

• What channel did they come from?

• What was the trigger?

Now bake that into your weekly routine.

4. Batch and Protect

You can’t scale hours, but you can design time:

• Set 1 day a week for internal work / pipeline

• Use calendar blocks for prospecting and prep

• Don’t let delivery time cannibalise growth time

❌ What Not to Do

Even seasoned fractionals fall into these traps (yes, me included):

• Ghosting your network when you’re busy, then resurfacing only when you need work

• Panic-rebranding your entire offer after two quiet weeks

• Stopping outbound entirely when one deal looks likely (and then it ghosts)

• Waiting until you're desperate to update your LinkedIn, website, or pitch deck

These are predictable mistakes — which means they’re preventable. Have a plan, work the plan, even when things are humming.

📆 The 3-Level System

Depending on where you're at, here’s what your motion should look like:

Booked Out:

• Keep your content drip going

• Log referrals + light nurture

• Update your LinkedIn headline ("Waitlist open for Sept")

Half Full:

• 3 outbound DMs per week

• 1 referral ask

• 1 offer (paid audit, mini-workshop)

Crickets:

• 5–10 outbound DMs per week

• Reconnect with all past leads

• Run a short campaign around a pain point (e.g. workshop on pricing, hiring, pipeline)

🫹 Final Word

You’re not building a funnel. You’re building momentum. You can’t eliminate the dips entirely, but you can stop them from turning into droughts.

This is very much a do as I say, not as I do moment — I have absolutely made every one of the mistakes I just listed. (And probably will again.) But every time I remember to keep the basics rolling, the rollercoaster feels a little less wild.

Stay consistent. Stay visible. And when the rollercoaster dips? Raise your hands and ride it out. You've got this.

Community News 🗞️: 🚨Workshop Alert 🚨 

Mark your calendars, folks! Our awesome partners, Design Bees (the subscription design legends), are buzzing in for a workshop you won't want to miss on tuesday. Their founder, Liz Lord, is spilling the tea on how fractionals are leveraging the Bees to seriously boost revenue and how you can best tap into their magic. If you're in #marketing, #GTM, #sales, or honestly, anyone looking to grab a bigger slice of the value chain, this session is for you!

Members only soz.

Want to check the community out? Watch a quick platform walkthrough here

Join FEC 2.0 now and get:

• Access to masterclasses

• AI-powered member matching

• The complete Fractional Playbook

• Netwwork with a highly vetted community of peers

Not ready to join yet? Follow us on LinkedIn to stay in the loop.

Member Spotlight 👋 Jack Rigor

"Tell us about your pivot to fractional work - what sparked the change?":Purely by accident. I was made redundant, and going back to corporate does not excite me. A friend recommended looking into doing fractional work.

"What's your superpower as a fractional leader?": Productizing the sales and GTM initiatives for subscription startups and scale-ups

"Describe your ideal client in one sentence": SaaS and subscription business startups and scale-ups with revenues between 50K-15M

"Share one unexpected joy of fractional work": Freedom to choose clients that align with your vibe, energy

"What's your #1 tip for new fractional executives?" Find and focus on what you feel is your value proposition to the market

"What should founders know before hiring their first fractional?" Fractional are Doers that roll up their sleeves to get down and dirty (not just advisors)

"Where can people connect with you?" Please come and say hi on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackrigor3512/

"Share a recent win or learning moment": Started working with an AI-driven B2B solution and service that delivers outcome, knowledge and action-based executable plans for fast-growing businesses

"What's one tool/resource you can't live without?": MS365

"Describe your fractional work style in three words": Outcome-based, results-focused and persistent

"What's the most common challenge your clients face?": Healthy pipeline and revenue

"Share your favorite time management hack": The 2-minute Rule - If something takes less than two minutes, I do it immediately. This clears the mental clutter and paves the way for bigger things!

🛠️ Tactical Gold: The Post Engagement Huddle

What it is: A brief, structured conversation with a client after a successful engagement to not just collect feedback, but to proactively unearth new opportunities and warm referrals.

Why it works: Your client is at peak happiness and trust right after you've delivered a win. It's the absolute best time to leverage that goodwill into future pipeline, often skipping the cold outreach entirely.

How to use it: "Hey [Client Name], now that we have wrapped, I'd love to grab 15-20 minutes to chat about the impact this had for you, get your final thoughts, and discuss how we can continue to build on this momentum for your team. When's good next week?"

Final word: referrals are the number one channel for fractionals, so be intentional about them.

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 🤖 AI Tip of the Month: ChatGPT drops a context building supercharger

What it is: Connectors enable you to link your organization's internal knowledge sources directly to ChatGPT. This integrates your unique work context into the AI , pulling from apps like GitHub, Gmail, HubSpot, Outlook, SharePoint, and Teams. Other sources include Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, and custom databases via MCP custom connectors.

Why it works: It allows you to find the most relevant information precisely when needed. The system keeps your data private and secure within team and enterprise workspaces (allegedly 😁). Queries that would typically take hours or days to manually comb through various internal systems can be completed in minutes , extending your team's capabilities.

How to use it: ChatGPT is designed to automatically trigger searches of internal knowledge when a query requires it. You can also manually select and toggle on specific sources you want ChatGPT to search. For custom databases, administrators in enterprise or team workspaces can connect and publish custom MCP connectors for their organization, and pro users can connect custom sources for their personal ChatGPT.

This one step closer to the Vibe Sales Future that I am living for!!

Want to nerd out about AI workflows? Hit reply - I love talking about this stuff.

Cool Stuff Worth Checking Out 👀 

Should you Rent An Executive? - Tier 1 VC First Round off the long run off with a comprehensive guide to getting a Fractional onboard. Spoiler Alert: the answer is YES!

The State of Fractional Leadership NZ and Sinagpore , Industry Report - incredible resource with lots of interesting stats on the state of fractional from the legends at The Fractional Directory

The Gentle Singularity - Sama drops some thoughts on where he thinks the AI future (present?) is headed.