Going fractional: the first 90 days

Somewhere around half the people who currently identify as “aspiring fractional” have not signed a client yet. If that is you, the good news is that the operating model is not a mystery. The people already doing this work have converged on a fairly consistent set of habits, and most of the mistakes in the first 90 days are the same handful of mistakes, made in the same order.

This is what to actually set up, roughly in the sequence you’ll need it.

Weeks 1-2: decide what you’re selling before you decide what to charge

The single most common early mistake is pricing before scoping. “What should I charge?” is the wrong first question. The right first question is “what am I actually selling, and how much of my week does it take?”

Fractional work is almost never sold by the hour, even when the underlying work is hours-based. It’s sold as a slice of capacity: one day a week, two days a month, “CMO coverage” for a set retainer. Before you talk price with anyone, decide how many days a month you are prepared to sell in total, and how many of those a single client can reasonably take. If you sell all your capacity to one client in month one, you have recreated the job you just left, with worse job security.

A common rule of thumb: don’t let any single client exceed 40-50% of your available capacity until you have at least three active relationships. It is uncomfortable advice when you need the income, and it is still correct.

Weeks 2-4: get the paperwork boring, fast

You need, at minimum: a way to send a contract, a way to invoice, and a way to get paid. None of these need to be sophisticated. They need to exist before the first client is signed, because negotiating your own admin setup while also negotiating a client relationship is how good terms get lost.

Decide your billing model per client, not once for your whole practice. A pay-for-access retainer (a flat fee for availability, common for ongoing exec coverage) and a pay-for-work arrangement (billed against hours or milestones, common for a defined project) are both normal, and different clients often want different shapes. What matters is deciding upfront which one a given engagement is, because it changes how you track your time against it and what “going over” even means.

Weeks 4-8: start tracking time, even on flat-fee work

This is the part almost everyone skips, and the part that matters most six months in. If you’re on a flat monthly retainer, tracking your hours feels pointless, you’re getting paid the same either way. It isn’t pointless. It’s the only way you’ll know, three months from now, whether that retainer is still worth what you quoted.

Fractional engagements creep the same way full-time jobs creep, just faster, because there’s no manager between you and the client asking for “just one more thing.” Without a record, you won’t notice until the arrangement is quietly unprofitable. With one, you have the leverage to renegotiate before it gets there. See tracking time when you don’t bill by the hour for the case in full.

Weeks 8-12: work out what to set aside

By the second or third invoice, you’ll have real income data instead of a guess. This is when to stop estimating your tax set-aside and start calculating it from what’s actually landing. Nobody enjoys this step, which is exactly why it gets left until the number is already a problem. Do it while the numbers are still small and the fix is still easy.

You do not need to become your own accountant to do this. You need a running figure for what a portion of each payment should not be treated as spendable income, based on your actual marginal rate. Whether you still need a dedicated tool like Xero for the rest is a separate, later question. This part, just knowing what to set aside as you go, is worth doing from invoice one.

What to ignore for now

You do not need a company website, a logo, a newsletter, or a personal brand strategy in the first 90 days. 94% of fractional work is won through existing network, not inbound marketing, so the highest-leverage activity in your first quarter is telling people you know what you’re now doing, not building a funnel for people you don’t.

You also don’t need software that does everything. You need something that gets contracts, time, invoicing and a clear read on your numbers working together, so none of it falls on a spreadsheet you have to remember to update. That’s the whole reason Quivva exists: not to replace your judgement about pricing or clients, but to make sure the operational side stays out of your way while you build the part of the practice that actually took you 90 days to get right.