FRACTIONAL COO

When a project is not enough

Some businesses need a trusted operational partner, not a project. A permanent part of your team, without the permanent overhead.

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WHAT IS A FRACTIONAL COO?

Executive leadership without the full-time commitment

A Chief Operating Officer takes the vision of a business and turns it into execution. In a large company that means owning the day to day, building the systems, managing the people, and freeing the owner to focus on where the business is going instead of how it runs today.

Most small and mid-sized businesses need that execution layer. Very few are big enough to justify a full-time COO, and most do not yet have a team large enough to need one managing people directly.

That is where a fractional COO fits. Direct people leadership takes full-time presence, so that responsibility stays with the owner and their managers. The rest of the seat is what carries over: owning defined projects and vendor relationships, running the operating rhythm, and serving as the accountability partner on the leadership team. It keeps the owner and the business moving on the work that is hard to reach while they are still working in it.

THE PHILOSOPHY

A partner who is invested in your outcome, not prolonging the engagement.

My background is in industrial engineering, where the job was always to work myself out of a job. Build the systems, create the efficiency, leave things better than you found them. That is how I approach the operational side of this work. When the acute phase is done and things are running, you should not need me in the room every week.

But the strategic side is different. Having a trusted partner who knows your business, challenges your thinking, and helps you see around corners does not have a natural expiration date. The best version of that relationship gets more valuable over time, not less.

The engagement scales to the reality of the business, not to an arbitrary timeline.

That is why I offer both. Operational support that ends when it should. Strategic partnership that lasts as long as it creates value.

WHO THIS IS FOR

You have outgrown doing everything yourself

Most small and mid-sized businesses reach a point where you cannot do everything alone but you are not ready to hire a full time executive. The need is real but the scope is still taking shape. Hiring too fast means hiring wrong. Hiring wrong means starting over.

This is especially true during periods of transition. New ownership. Rapid growth. A key departure. In those moments, bringing in experienced, flexible support makes more sense than committing to a permanent hire before you know exactly what you need.

I am not here to make myself indispensable. I am here to leave your business better than I found it.

WHAT I BRING

Scale of large organizations. Reality of small business.

Two decades of experience across General Motors and Henry Ford Health building systems, leading teams, and solving complex operational problems inside large organizations. From the operating rooms of a major health system where the stakes were life and death, to building future vehicle technologies at a Fortune 50 company, I have operated at scale in high pressure, high complexity environments.

Through Radio Chatter, the outdoor adventure game company my wife and I built from scratch, I know what it actually feels like to build something from the ground up with your own hands and your own money. Product development, marketing, Meta advertising, wholesale partnerships, mobile app development, fulfillment, and customer support. I have worn every hat a small business owner wears.

And I have put this thinking into practice with real clients. Through my consulting work I have helped a commercial cleaning company reposition around its real competitive edge and implement a complete new marketing strategy live on their website. I have helped an entrepreneurship educator restructure her business model so she was no longer the bottleneck in every engagement. My engagements are hands on where I roll up my sleeves to get it done.

SYSTEMS THINKING

Established GM's first centralized vehicle software portfolio. Led Henry Ford Health's largest IT implementation in 100 years.

ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Co-founded and operate Radio Chatter, e-commerce and guide service company. Know what it feels like to build something with your own hands and money.

OPERATIONS & PROCESS

Industrial engineering background. Lean Manufacturing, process improvement, and root cause thinking applied at every scale.

AI INTEGRATION

Build custom AI agents and tools for small businesses. 2nd place at an OpenAI hackathon building a custom GPT for a local business.

SMALL BUSINESS CONSULTING

Real engagements with real business owners. Strategy, operations, messaging, and AI integration. Hands on work that ends with something real.

HOW WE WORK TOGETHER

Two tiers. One goal.

The right level of involvement depends on what your business actually needs right now. Both tiers start with a free strategy call to make sure we are aligned before anything is starts.

Tier 1: CEO Thinking Partner $3,000 / month

~5 hours per week on average

You still run the company day to day. This tier is about reducing the mental burden of doing it alone. You have someone to think out loud with, pressure test decisions, work through problems before they become crises, and take on independent projects that would otherwise sit on your plate indefinitely.

Your team and vendors may not even see this relationship. It lives between you and me. You still manage everyone, but you manage better because you are not carrying everything alone.

What gets done at this tier: strategic thinking, policy and process development, independent research and analysis, decision support, and ongoing advisory. Projects get handed off, completed independently, and handed back ready to implement.

This tier has no finish line. A growing business always has new decisions to make and new challenges to navigate. The relationship compounds over time because context accumulates and the thinking gets sharper the longer we work together. And when the business reaches a point where a full time operational leader makes more sense, I will help you find and hire the right person.

Tier 2: Operational Extension $6,000 / month

~10 hours per week on average

Same advisory relationship as Tier 1, with more time in the business and more hands-on involvement in how it runs. This tier moves from thinking partner to operational extension: I take real ownership of specific projects and the work that surrounds them, including the people executing it, whether that is a vendor, a contractor, or an internal project team. You stop being the default point of contact on the things I own.

This scope is enough to own those relationships fully, run a weekly operational rhythm, attend key internal touchpoints, and handle the communication overhead those interactions generate. The work happens through a mix of scheduled calls, phone, text, and occasional in person depending on how your team operates.

This tier works when the problem is specific. You have one or two things you should not be spending time on anymore. I take those off your plate entirely.

This tier does have a natural arc. The goal is to stabilize what is broken, build what is missing, and hand it back running. For some companies that takes months. For others it takes years. The engagement scales to the reality of your business, not to an arbitrary timeline. When the Tier 2 work is done, you may find that that Tier 1 is exactly what you need going forward.

And when a full time operational leader makes more sense, I will help you find and hire that person. Either way, the goal is the same.

FINDING YOUR LEVEL

The first month is always heavier.

The first few weeks are always more active than the ongoing rhythm. There is a business to learn, systems to map, relationships to establish, and immediate priorities to identify. Expect the first month to feel more intensive than what either tier describes as its steady state.

After that the work finds its natural rhythm.

Ready to stop carrying it alone?

Every engagement starts with a free 45-minute strategy call. No pitch, no pressure. Just a conversation to see if your challenges and my experience are the right fit.

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