What Does a Fractional COO Do? The Irreplaceable Advantage of Having a C-Suite Executive in Your Small Business

Everyone talks about being a CEO. Hardly anyone talks about how important the COO is in a small business. Most owners don't really know what a fractional COO is.

When I was first building my brand up, someone opted in for my pricing guide and never got it. I'd tested that form, and the guide landed in MY inbox.

Checks are sooo important, and checking has to be a dedicated thing you do yourself, several times, from different angles: the front end, the back end, on mobile, on someone else's internet. That's a big part of what a fractional COO does.

From OBM to fractional COO

I started as an online business manager, living inside other people's business backends and solving the problems in them. I learned fast that most problems weren't people problems. They were information problems.

Then AI showed up in every one of those workflows at once. I watched it take the repeatable work, and I watched founders lose track of what was really happening in their own businesses.

Today I'm a fractional COO for service-based businesses from 7 figures to 8 figures. I build the systems, SOPs and automations they actually run on.

What does a COO bring to a business?

Harvard Business Review once called the COO "the misunderstood role".

I've always told clients that the CEO is the architect and the COO is the engineer. The CEO comes up with the audacious, lofty ideas. It's the COO's job to turn them into real structures that are durable and make sense within the physics (constraints) of the real world. I wrote more about that in why I'm reclaiming the word optimized.

In a small business, one person holds the whole map. The COO owns how the work runs, checks it before it ships, and is the name you call when it breaks. Their job is making sure every process has a name next to it. If a process has no name next to it, nobody owns it. And the AI will just apologize.

Why a small business needs a C-suite executive

Look at a business in the nine figures. It has a full C-suite, and that's what lets the CEO actually be the CEO.

In a service-based business, you should be looking at the data and talking through internal operations with a centralized figure, and still have enough time for good judgment, clear vision, and getting into the weeds of creativity in the middle of client delivery. When you're scaling, it's hard to balance both sides.

A fractional COO is that centralized figure. For me, my strategy and my judgment come down to understanding what processes to build, as quickly as possible, and which processes would waste your time.

What a fractional COO's real week looks like

The data. The data, the data.

I'm watching where a lead is going, where they're dropping off, and where the leak is, because that's what scaling a small business depends on.

I'm also talking with team members alll the time, because we build the SOPs together. I want a culture where everyone references sources of truth, like the SOP, as the heartbeat of your business. That's what preps a team for automation in their own work.

And no, that doesn't mean people get dropped left and right. It's about increasing your output so you can scale. But in my clients' businesses, I WILL be savage about getting rid of the stupid friction: I audit the actual work, remove redundant steps, and clarify ownership.

Why CEOs lose perspective

Running a business, it's really easy to get into your own head. Your friends don't necessarily know what you're doing. Your partner can't know what you're doing. Your team is doing something completely different from operations. So it's literally just you.

Then you start to get into your ego, because you're human. You get stressed. And it's so easy to lose perspective. I think it's natural. But add an AI that agrees with everything you say, and nobody in the room has said "no" in weeks.

Even I've fallen victim to thinking an IDEA was genius, using AI to supercharge it, and realizing it made no sense. Nobody decides to hand over their judgment. It goes one reasonable shortcut at a time, and the smarter you are, the faster it happens. Perspective is a role. Give it to someone and hold them to it.

Why AI can't replace a COO

CEOs need a COO whether they realize it or not. But there's a BIG problem with trust. This is somebody who is going to be super close to your business. Will they understand your vision? Will you be able to trust them when they push back? I meann... will you even get along?

But nevertheless, you need a throat to throttle: someone you trust who owns the operations and tells you no.

AI can't be held accountable. Someone has to be. In a high-automation environment, the relationship between the CEO and COO becomes even more important, because someone has to stay close to the messy last mile. Nothing client-facing, financial or legal should leave without a named person approving it. That person is the A in your RACI, and it's never the model.

Fractional COO vs OBM

An OBM (online business manager) keeps the systems you already have running well, and is usually the right fit for a six-figure business. A fractional COO owns operations as a partnership and builds what the business runs on, for service businesses in the seven and eight figures.

How to start working with a fractional COO

Working with a COO comes down to getting your time back, and trust. That's what the smaller projects are for. A Strategy Session, a VIP Day or a one-month System Build lets you date me, in a business manner, before you commit.

Tell me in the comments: when's the last time you filled out your own opt-in form, on your phone, like a stranger would?

And if you're wondering what a fractional COO costs, every offer and price is in my free pricing guide.