150: Fractional is exploding. Here's what nobody's telling you

So that explosion I mentioned, the fractional explosion, it's not slowing down.

And if anything, I'm seeing it pick up more speed.

And I have a lot of women in my world who are either calling themselves fractional or seriously thinking about it, or adding fractional services to their suite of consulting services.

And what's funny is that we use the term consulting, which is sort of an umbrella term for us, which can mean anything from advisory to direct service work and like doing the work to fractional and everything in between.

So in this episode, I'm going to talk about it honestly.

You're going to hear what's good about the fractional model because there's real opportunity here and I'm not here to trash it.

And you're going to hear some honest truths, the things I would want you to watch out for before you put that label on yourself.

And you're going to hear how to avoid some traps, what to do instead, and how to make your business profitable and sustainable, whether you end up going fractional or not.

So before I even get into what's good about it, I have to sort of point something out.

From where I sit, there's not a lot of agreement on what fractional actually means.

I mean, ask a few people what a fractional CMO does, and you'll get like a handful of different answers.

For some people, fractional means advisory.

You know, you stay in this expert role offering guidance, right? You give your recommendations and then it's on the team or other people to execute those recommendations, right? For other people, fractional means you're basically embedded.

You've got a seat at the leadership table.

You're managing a team.

You're in the weekly meetings.

You're accountable for outcomes, just like a full-time executive would be.

And then for other people, fractional means something else entirely.

It means you're in the weeds.

You're actually doing the work.

You're like writing the campaigns or building the pipeline or whatever the deliverables are.

You're the one producing it either alone or with other internal team members.

Same title, you know, fractional CMO, three totally different roles.

And the same goes for fractional executives in any other role.

And that's a problem because a client hearing, you know, quote unquote, fractional CMO might be picturing the person who runs the team day to day.