The Future Is Fractional: What Contractors Can Learn From Big Tech

Walk into any tradeshow, conference, or Facebook contractor group right now, and you’ll hear the same conversations recycled on loop:

“How are you guys recruiting?”
“What FSM are you guys using?”
“Who does your marketing?”

But beneath all the usual chatter, there’s a quiet revolution happening. The best-run, fastest-growing home service companies in the country aren’t just solving problems better—they’re changing who they bring in to solve them.

They’re going fractional. And they’re doing it to scale faster, reduce overhead, and get results they couldn’t yet afford full-time.

According to McKinsey, companies using fractional or on-demand leadership in key roles saw 20–30% faster execution timelines compared to traditional hiring structures.

This model isn’t some Silicon Valley theory—it’s how most tech startups, VC-backed brands, and private equity rollups scale. They bring in fractional CMOs, CFOs, and CTOs to build out critical functions, drive outcomes, and move fast—without locking themselves into bloated overhead.

The tech giants you know today? They started with contracted experts and fractional leaders until the business justified full-time hires. And now the best contractors are flipping that same playbook on its head.

If the word “fractional” feels like corporate jargon or Silicon Valley fluff, stay with me—because it’s not. It’s actually the most blue-collar, boots-on-the-ground, common-sense strategy you’re probably not fully using yet. But you will. Or your competition will.

The World’s Smartest Companies Did It First

Still skeptical? Let’s zoom out.

Stripe—the company powering payments for Amazon, Shopify, and thousands of online businesses—ran its first five years without a full-time CFO. In 2015, they hired Will Gaybrick, a former VC, as their first finance lead—when they were already valued at $5 billion.

Let that sink in: the financial backbone of the internet scaled to a multi-billion-dollar valuation before it ever needed a traditional C-suite finance exec.

ServiceTitan, the platform now running thousands of home service businesses, followed a similar philosophy. Early on, they stayed lean—delaying full-time sales and marketing teams to focus on building product. But as they scaled, they didn’t turn everything internal. Instead, they doubled down on the power of fractional specialization by building an entire Partner Marketplace of vetted experts in operations, marketing, finance, and tech—so contractors could plug in elite execution without hiring departments.

They didn’t just modularize their platform—they modularized scale itself. From niche app integrations to certified implementation partners, they created an ecosystem that proves: the smartest systems aren’t built to do everything—they’re built to connect to the people who can.

So no, this isn’t some Silicon Valley trend.
It’s the default growth model for startups, private equity firms, and now—the best-run contractors in the country.

Because if you can borrow elite leadership, skip the overhead, and scale faster—why wouldn’t you?

Fractional Doesn’t Mean “Half-Assed”

Let’s clear something up right away. “Fractional” doesn’t mean part-time in the way most people think about part-time. This isn’t about hiring someone’s cousin to answer phones on Wednesdays and Fridays.

Fractional is just a smarter way of saying:
“I’m buying a slice of elite talent instead of the whole overpriced cake.”

It’s how you get the brain of a CMO, CFO, COO, CXO, or HR leader—without paying a six-figure salary, benefits, 401(k), drama, or giving them an office they’ll never use.

It’s how you plug in the exact expertise you need, when you need it, and only when you need it.

And here’s the kicker: most home service business owners are already doing it, just not deliberately.

• You’ve got a lawyer on retainer.
• You bring in a business coach a few times a year.
• You outsource payroll or HR when compliance gets messy.
• You hire someone to redo your website or film a new brand video.

All of that?
That’s fractional.

Now imagine doing it on purpose, at the executive level, across your entire org chart. That’s where this gets real.

How Fractional Fails (and How to Make It Work)

Let’s tell the truth: Fractional isn’t new.
It’s just never been done well in this space—until now.

We’ve seen contractors try it. Some even had the right idea. But most of them still flame out, and not because the concept is broken—because the execution is. They don’t hire the right people, or they don’t give them the right ownership, or they try to bolt on strategy to a fundamentally broken system and hope it magically works.

Here’s where most owners go wrong when they try to go fractional—and how to fix it.

❌ They Hire Help, Not Leadership

You don’t hire a fractional CMO so you can still manage the campaigns.
You don’t hire a fractional CFO to reformat your QuickBooks.
You don’t hire a fractional HR lead to rewrite a job ad.

You hire them to take the whole problem off your plate.

If the person you hired needs constant direction, they’re not fractional leadership—they’re a task-taker. That might be cheaper in the short term, but it costs you more when nothing improves. Real fractional operators come in and say,
“Here’s what we’re doing. Here’s how we’re doing it. Here’s what you’ll see.”

If you’re still steering, you didn’t hire the right person.

❌ They Wait Too Long to Bring in Help

You don’t wait until your house is on fire to install sprinklers. But in business? Most owners wait until the wheels are off to ask for help:

• Revenue plateaued

• Call center falling apart

• Burned through three recruiters

• Marketing agency not performing, again

• Cash flow suddenly tight and no one can say why

That’s when most people go looking.
But the companies scaling fastest aren’t waiting until it’s broken.
They’re bringing in fractional leaders before the chaos.
They’re skipping mistakes, not just cleaning them up after.

❌ They Fractionalize the Wrong Things

There’s a difference between delegation and abandonment.
Some roles should never be fractional—your general manager, your install team, your field ops lead. You need daily continuity and in-person leadership there.

But your:

• Financial architecture?

• CX systems?

• Marketing strategy?

• Tech stack integrations?

• HR compliance, comp plans, and SOPs?

These can all be fractionalized with zero drop in output—because they’re expertise plays, not warm-body plays. In fact, you’ll probably get a better outcome from 10 hours of elite focus than from 40 hours of average.

❌ They Confuse Cost-Cutting with Performance Investing

Hiring someone fractional isn’t about saving money.
It’s about buying more competence per dollar.

You could pay $60K/year for a full-time “marketing manager” who orders postcards, manages a Canva account, and checks in with your PPC agency… or pay $7,500/month for a Fractional CMO who actually drives revenue, holds vendors accountable, and rebuilds your funnel around what works.

That’s not a savings conversation. That’s a performance conversation.

The same is true with HR, finance, CX, tech, recruiting—when you get the right person, you don’t just get relief, you get results.

So How Do You Make It Work?

If you want fractional to actually move the needle, here’s how to do it right:

1. Hire for ownership, not support.
   Your fractional lead should be the boss of the function, not your assistant.

2. Buy outcomes, not hours.
   If you’re asking “how many hours will you work each week?” you’re already thinking too small. Ask instead: “What will this function look like 90 days from now if you own it?”

3. Don’t bargain hunt.
   This isn’t where you go cheap. You’re buying executive leadership at a fraction of the cost—not discount labor.

4. Get clear on what ‘better’ looks like.
   Are you trying to grow profitably? Improve margins? Reduce staff churn? Be specific. Let your fractional partner reverse-engineer from that goal.

5. Hold them accountable to results, not just effort.
   And the good ones will insist on this themselves. That’s how you know you’ve found the right fit.

How to Actually Hire Fractional Roles (And Who We Trust to Get It Done)

Fractional only works if you’re hiring people who are outcomes-first, not hours-first. You want high-level ownership, not “outsourced help” clocking in with templated ideas from other industries.

We’ve worked with, vetted, and watched dozens of providers across every operational function—and these are the ones we trust enough to stake our name on.

✅ Fractional CTO: Jenny & Pam at Powerhouse Consulting Group

If you want to scale your operations and ServiceTitan is either (A) underutilized or (B) hated by your team, Powerhouse Consulting is the upgrade button.

Jenny and Pam are Titanium-level ServiceTitan partners (we’re jealous, we’re gold), and they’ve built some of the most elegant and powerful CRM + Zapier automation systems in the home services ecosystem.

They specialize in:

• ServiceTitan optimization (from job booking to reporting)

• Automating redundant tasks across marketing, dispatch, CSR, and finance

• Reducing admin overhead by building “hands-off” workflows

• Cross-platform integrations with everything from QuickBooks to Podium to Hatch

If you’re manually pushing data between spreadsheets, rekeying customer info, or frustrated that your software stack doesn’t actually talk to each other, they will fix that—without needing to change your tools.

They’re not just consultants—they’re builders of intelligent ops infrastructure.
🔗 mypowerhouse.group

✅ Fractional CXO (Customer Experience Ops): Corey & Daniel at Sock Knocker

Most CX “consultants” focus on a few call scripts and leave. Corey & Daniel at Sock Knocker are the opposite. These two are ex-Apex private equity operators who’ve personally integrated over 100 day-one home service acquisitions—and what they do is nothing short of full-blown CX systems engineering.

They’ve led integrations of call centers, centralized VOIPs, CRM SOPs, team-sharing models across multi-brand portfolios, and built CX systems designed to scale post-acquisition. Translation: they’ve been under the hood of businesses way messier, more chaotic, and more complex than yours—and they’ve built systems that run flawlessly.

Now they do it on a fractional basis for independents and growth-stage groups.

What they bring:

• Call center structure and SOPs

• Dispatcher accountability and visibility

• Cross-company knowledge sharing

• Workflow design inside your CRM and VOIP stack

• Conversion-focused call scripting

• Culture, leadership, and accountability at the front lines

This isn’t “customer service” training. It’s CX infrastructure, built for businesses that don’t want to duct-tape growth anymore.
🔗 socksgone.com

✅ Fractional Call Center: Dylan August at DillyDilly.ai

Let’s be honest: most fractional call centers suck.
You get some round-robin pool of overseas reps reading off a generic script, filling out a form that gets emailed to you—or worse, doesn’t answer for 2-3 minutes. They don’t know your techs. They don’t understand your job types. They don’t care if the job gets booked or if the customer churns after the call.

DillyDilly is not that.

Founded by Dylan August, DillyDilly.ai is a managed answering service that gives you dedicated, trained, and integrated virtual CSRs—not shared agents. These are “Dillys” who are yours and yours alone, learning your service area, your team members, your exact ServiceTitan setup (business units, job types, pricing structure), and they don’t just answer the phone—they book directly into ServiceTitan, handle dispatch when needed, and communicate directly with your team in real time.

This is best-in-class for overnight and overflow before you ever consider handing over the reins to AI CSRs. But if you do want to scale with AI in parallel, Hatch is our favorite for AI CSR voice and SMS follow-up automation. (More on them another time.)

Bottom line: DillyDilly is the bridge between full-time in-house CSR staffing and scalable virtual ops, done right.
🔗 dillydilly.ai

✅ Fractional HR: Ian Schotanus at The Big Picture Consulting

Most contractors only call HR consultants when they’re in trouble. Ian helps you avoid the trouble altogether—and in the process, actually become a better employer.

At The Big Picture Consulting, Ian Schotanus brings deep expertise in employment law, compliance, and HR strategy, tailored specifically for home service businesses. He’s worked with contractors navigating:

• Wage & hour division audits

• OSHA investigations

• EEOC complaints

• Wrongful termination and harassment claims

• Multi-state compliance

• Performance pay and bonus structure design

He doesn’t just tell you what to avoid—he helps you structure compensation and policy in a way that drives better performance and protects you legally. He’ll also help you build or refine your employee handbooks, job descriptions, onboarding procedures, and job performance metrics.

If your business is growing and your HR processes still live in your head—or worse, a 2016 Google Doc—you need Ian before you scale dysfunction.
🔗 thebigpictureconsulting.com

 

✅ Fractional CMO (That’s Us, duh)

We’d be remiss—frankly bad marketers—if we didn’t take this moment to spell out exactly why Free Agency is leading the fractional future in the trades. Because while there are plenty of generalist agencies out there trying to rebrand as specialists so they can charge more for a narrower scope, what we offer isn’t trend-chasing—it’s a complete operational takeover of your marketing function with the scoreboard as our only contract, and even that is just a handshake on your part.

Let’s start here:
We’re not consultants.
We’re not “growth advisors.”
We’re not here to critique your agency’s media plans and CC you via email.

We own the marketing engine—end to end.

• Strategic planning across every channel, not just the ones you’re already running

• Budget deployment based on ROI, not gut feel

• Attribution modeling and CRM alignment

• Direct creative direction—ads, landing pages, content, everything

• Call tracking, pipeline reporting, revenue forecasting

• Partner alignment and internal marketing team oversight

• And most importantly: actual business outcomes, not marketing fluff metrics

We step in as the executive-level CMO your business may not be able to justify full-time—but desperately needs if you want to scale without setting your cash on fire.

And unlike most marketing “leaders” whose #1 strategy is to make everyone else look bad so they can stay necessary—we take the opposite approach.
Our retention strategy is results.
Our posture is ownership.
Our guarantee is 10x our fee. (You are literally guaranteed to increase your revenue by 10x what you pay us)

We don’t just tell your agencies why they suck. We tell them how to win.
We don’t drop a strategy deck and disappear. We build the machine, run the machine, and optimize the machine, every single week.
We don’t need your direction—we are the direction.

If your marketing feels like a black box, if you’ve been spraying and praying, if your agency only takes accountability for lead costs, if you’re given spreadsheets full of “leads” that never closed and no speed to lead solutions—we are the fix.

We’re not here to dip our toe in.
We’re here to own the number.
And the businesses we work with? They scale. Fast. In 2024 our average client AGR in revenue was 45% with an average of 10% marketing spend.

🔗 Our CMO Services

👀 Don’t Know Anyone Yet? Use Upwork, But Use It Right

If you’re starting from scratch and don’t have vetted referrals, Upwork can be a goldmine—or a complete disaster.

Tips for finding real talent on Upwork:

• Look for people who already specialize in trades or home services. Ask what CRMs they’ve worked in.

• Ignore portfolios—ask for results. What did they increase? What broke? What’d they fix?

• Run a test project first. Not “revamp my site.” Try: “Build a landing page for water heater installs with a compelling CTA.”

• Use job titles that reflect ownership: “Fractional Sales Leader” > “CSR Trainer.” “CX Specialist” > “Call Answering.”

• Set expectations clearly: “I want someone who can run this without babysitting, who has strong opinions, and will tell me if I’m doing it wrong.”

You can build a killer bench on Upwork—but only if you know how to scout like a pro.

Final Word: Hire Outcomes, Not Hours

If you take nothing else from this: stop hiring people and start hiring outcomes.
Fractional gives you a way to do exactly that.

You’re not paying for time. You’re paying for transformation.
And the truth is, the right operator can do more in 10 focused hours than a full-time hire can do in 40 distracted ones.

So whether you’re trying to fix a leaky call center, clean up your books, build a brand, or scale beyond your current org chart—do what you already know to do in every other area of your business:

Bring in the specialist.
Fix the problem.
Move forward.

This isn’t about cutting corners. It’s about borrowing the smartest plays from startup and private equity playbooks—before your competition does. It’s about skipping the bloated overhead, the trial-and-error hires, and the vendor finger-pointing that kills momentum.

Fractional isn’t just the future—it’s the fix.
And the best operators in the trades are already rewriting the rules.

Don’t wait to catch up.
Build the team. Skip the payroll. Scale like you mean it.