The Model

You don't need a full-time executive.
You need executive thinking.

A fractional executive is a senior leader who works with your firm part-time — bringing the same expertise a full-time hire would, at a fraction of the cost, with none of the overhead.

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The Trap

Most firms are stuck between two bad options.

The owner is doing the work of an operations chief, a marketing chief, and an HR chief — on top of practicing law, accounting, or medicine. The work gets done late, or badly, because it's being done by someone whose expertise is somewhere else.

The obvious fix is to hire an executive. But that's a commitment most firms at this stage can't justify: a six-figure salary, a benefits load, recruiting fees, a long ramp, and real severance exposure if it doesn't work out.

So the firm does nothing — and the owner keeps absorbing the work. Fractional exists for exactly this gap.

Definition

What fractional actually means.

Five things that distinguish a fractional executive from a consultant, a contractor, or a full-time hire.

Part-time, not part-expertise

You engage a senior executive for a defined scope and a defined number of days per month — not for forty hours a week.

Senior by definition

You're hiring someone who has already held the role at scale. There's no learning curve on the function, only on your business.

Engaged, not employed

A flat monthly fee. No salary, no benefits load, no payroll tax, no equity, no severance exposure.

Scalable both directions

Scope expands when you're growing and contracts when you're not. A full-time hire can't flex.

Cross-pollinated

Fractional executives work across multiple organizations, bringing pattern recognition a single-company executive doesn't have.

Accountable to outcomes

Scope, deliverables, and success metrics are documented up front — and reported against on a set cadence.

The Real Math

Salary is only part of what a hire costs.

Most owners think in base salary. Employers pay loaded cost — and the gap is bigger than most people expect.

Three full-time executivesOperations · Marketing · Human Resources

$650,000+ loaded annual employer cost

One fractional engagementAll three functions, one partner

Illustrative

~30%

of total employer compensation cost goes to benefits alone — insurance, paid leave, Social Security, Medicare, unemployment, and workers' comp.
Recruiting fees, ramp time, and severance risk sit on top of that.

Estimate

What would your firm actually save?

Select the functions you need. This is an estimate, not a quote — see the methodology note below.

Which functions do you need?

Operations (COO)$185k base Marketing (CMO)$165k base Human Resources (CHRO)$155k base Finance (CFO)$175k base Technology (CTO)$170k base

Approximate firm size

Select at least one function to see an estimate.

Honest Assessment

When fractional works — and when it doesn't.

Fractional isn't right for everyone. Knowing the difference saves everyone time.

A good fit

You've outgrown doing everything yourself, but can't justify a full-time executive salary.
A specific function is visibly underperforming — intake is leaking, marketing has no strategy, HR compliance is a live risk.
You're preparing for growth, a transition, or a transaction and need executive structure in place first.
You need direction and systems built, then handed to your team to run.

Not a fit

You need someone in the building forty hours a week managing a large team day to day.
The need is execution rather than strategy — a fractional executive builds systems, but isn't a substitute for staff.
Your organization is large enough that a full-time executive is genuinely justified by scope and span of control.
You want someone to take the work off your plate without any involvement from you.

Methodology & Sources

Benefits burden: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, March 2026 — benefits accounted for approximately 30.1% of total employer compensation cost for private industry workers.

Salary ranges: Small and mid-market executive compensation benchmarks. Enterprise averages run substantially higher and are not used here.

Excluded from the comparison: executive search fees (commonly 20–30% of first-year salary), ramp-to-productivity cost, severance exposure, equipment, software licenses, and office overhead. Including these widens the gap.

Note: All figures are illustrative estimates for comparison purposes and will vary by role, market, scope, and firm size. This is not a quote. Placeholder — FirmIQ pricing to be finalized before publish. Figures last reviewed: [date].

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