How We Built a Fractional Business (And Why We're Teaching You to Do the Same)
A story about expertise, titles, and permission you didn't need to ask for.
The Moment Everything Changed
Kellie was in yet another conference room with a group of senior nonprofit leaders who were grounded in their mission, yet exhausted by reality and deeply tangled in operational chaos. They were juggling public funding requirements, data systems that didn’t speak to each other, under-supported managers, and the everyday pressure to deliver impact with too few resources.
After the meeting, one leader came up to her and asked: “How are you seeing the connections the rest of us aren’t?”
Her answer surprised even her: “Because I’ve sat at tables across every part of an organization: strategy, operations, HR, revenue, data, governance. When you’ve lived the whole system, the patterns become hard to miss.”
And suddenly, something she had always felt but never fully named came into focus.
For a time, Kellie had worried that her career path, which didn’t quite follow a traditional linear leadership to CEO trajectory, might look messy from the outside, since it wasn’t the neatly packaged trajectory LinkedIn likes to reward. She’d quietly wondered whether that breadth was a liability.
It wasn’t.
This was actually the source of her clarity. Sitting in rooms with different leaders, different pressures, different systems, and different definitions of “impact” sharpened her ability to see the throughline others miss when they’re buried inside it.
That breadth is the vantage point most executive teams desperately need but rarely have when they’ve built depth of expertise without breadth of understanding.
It’s the reason she can walk into an organization, listen for 30 minutes, and name the actual problem rather than the symptom everyone’s been fighting. That’s her superpower.
For Cléa, the realization came differently but arrived at the same place.
She'd been helping entrepreneurs and executives claim their voice and authority for years. But she kept diminishing it: "I'm a brand strategist, not a coach." "I help with messaging, not leadership." These little caveats that made the work smaller, safer, less threatening.
Then a client, someone she'd worked with on positioning and brand strategy, got a major leadership role. And this client came back to her with a direct ask: "Will you help me step into this as myself? Not as a corporate version of myself. As me."
That's when Cléa understood: she wasn't coaching on brand strategy. She was coaching people to claim their authority and lead from their authentic selves.
The work was powerful. It didn't need caveats or smaller framing.
She'd been qualifying her expertise instead of owning it.
The Pattern We Keep Seeing
Both of us had reached the same conclusion independently, but around the same time: our backgrounds weren't disqualifying. They were differentiating.
The mess of our career paths - the "non-traditional" choices, the sector-hopping, the pivots, the entrepreneurial attempts - wasn't a liability, it was evidence of exactly the kind of leadership organizations desperately needed.
And we realized we weren't alone in this struggle.
We started working with other professionals trying to make the transition into fractional work. And we kept hearing the same refrain:
"I've never held a Chief Strategy Officer title, so I can't position myself as one."
"I don't have the corporate C-suite background, so I'm probably not 'qualified' for fractional work."
"Everyone else doing this seems to have come from bigger companies. Maybe I'm not ready."
These weren't uninformed doubts. They were specific, powerful limiting beliefs based on a very particular definition of what "counts" as leadership.
And that definition was wrong.
Redefining Expertise
Here's what we learned: expertise doesn't announce itself through a resume. Instead, it actually announces itself through outcomes, through the problems you've solved, through the perspectives you bring from having worked across different contexts.
A nonprofit operations director who's rebuilt systems at three different organizations? That's not "jumping around," that's field expertise.
A brand strategist who's helped twenty different leaders claim their authority? That's not "just messaging," that's leadership coaching.
A fractional leader who's worked shoulder-to-shoulder with leadership teams across nonprofits, startups, and established companies? That's not lacking a C-title, it’s having a perspective most C-suite leaders don't have.
The problem wasn't that these people weren't qualified. The problem was that they weren't claiming their qualification.
And the organizations searching for them couldn't find them, because these talented people were convinced they weren't "enough."
What We Figured Out (The Hard Way)
It took us years to navigate this ourselves. We made expensive mistakes We overcomplicated things. We positioned ourselves wrong. We charged too little. We said yes to clients we should have said no to. We built systems that didn't work and had to rebuild them.
But we eventually figured out what actually matters:
Clarity beats credentials.
You don't need someone to validate your expertise. You need to be crystal clear about what you do, who you do it for, and what changes as a result.
Positioning is more powerful than titles.
The fractional revolution isn't reserved for former executives. It's available to anyone who can articulate their expertise in a way that resonates with people who need it.
Systems are everything.
You can have all the expertise in the world, but if you don't have systems for managing clients, setting boundaries, pricing your work, and delivering consistently, you'll burn out or fail. We learned this painfully.
Community is non-negotiable.
Fractional work is isolating. You're working alone a lot of the time. Having peers doing the same thing - people who understand the uncertainty, the imposter syndrome, the weird mix of autonomy and isolation - isn’t a nice-to-have, it’s essential.
You don't need permission.
This is the one we wish someone had told us: you don't need permission from a title or a credential or someone else's validation to step into your authority. You need expertise. The good news is, you already have it.
Why We Built Fractional Foundry
We built this program because we wish we'd had it for ourselves.
We had to piece together advice, find mentors, figure out pricing, navigate client conversations, and overcome our own imposter syndrome largely on our own. We learned through trial and error what works, what doesn't, and what the real requirements are for fractional success.
Now we want to compress that timeline for others.
The Fractional Foundry Launch Intensive isn't designed for people seeking guaranteed stable income or a shortcut. It's designed for people with real expertise who are ready to step into their authority, build a sustainable business around it, and do that work with frameworks, systems, and community.
We intentionally keep cohorts small because this work requires honesty, personalization, and real connection. We show up as practitioners, not just teachers, and we share our own uncertainties and lessons learned. We give tough love and support from voices who've weathered the same decisions and doubts you face.
And we genuinely believe that anyone with real expertise can build a thriving fractional career: even if they've never held a traditional C-suite title.
In fact, sometimes especially then.
The Permission You Didn’t Need
The truth is, if you hold deep expertise in your field, you're already a leader.
Your background doesn't disqualify you. It qualifies you.
That messy career path? It's your perspective.
That expertise you've been diminishing? It's your differentiation.
That doubt you're sitting with? That's often a sign you're about to step into something real.
You don't need someone else to give you permission to claim your authority. You need frameworks, clarity, and community.
And that's what we built Fractional Foundry to provide.
Ready to step into your fractional practice? The Fractional Foundry Launch Intensive is now accepting our inaugural cohort. Learn more and apply.