What happened inside Future Fractional?

In September, I quietly launched something I’d been thinking about for months.

No big splash. No dramatic countdown or “last chance!!” campaign. A couple of LinkedIn posts, a few emails, a Google Doc, and an idea: a beta coaching cohort for fractional folks.

The ones who were curious about fractional work but hadn’t quite leapt. The ones already doing fractional work but struggling. The ones unsure how to make fractional work… work well.

I wanted to address the exact pain points I’d run into in my own fractional career: the feast-or-famine cycles, not knowing how to build a healthy pipeline, relying on my network and word of mouth, settling for work that didn’t light me up, avoiding visibility, under-scoping projects, acting like an employee when I was actually a business owner, and undercharging. In short: I wanted to help people run their fractional business like a business.

So I put it out into the world.

Eight people raised their hand with a clear “hell yes.” Over the course of eight weeks, we met weekly with one intention: help smart operators stop treating their fractional work like a side quest and start running it like a real business so that they could earn more, do work they loved and live their own damn life.

That felt fitting, because that’s exactly the shift I’d made in my own career earlier this year.

For years, “fractional COO” was the label I used—but I didn’t own it. I didn’t put myself out there. I avoided visibility. I relied on my network. I took what came in. I undercharged. I slipped into roles that looked good on paper but didn’t actually fit. I over-delivered because I was grateful to be needed. I blurred every boundary because “being on the team” felt safer than owning that I was running a business.

My practice behaved exactly like what it was: a string of engagements I was reacting to, not a business I was intentionally building.

Midway through last year, I hit a wall. I could feel it in my energy, in my resentment levels, and in the glaring absence of a pipeline. I had turned one fractional engagement into an almost-full-time job—without the salary, the benefits, or the psychological safety that usually come with those things. My own business was a ghost.

So I did the thing everyone tells you not to do.

I stopped.

From January through April, I had zero paying clients. No retainer. No side project. Nothing.

Instead, I treated my business as my only client. I rebuilt everything: my offers, my pricing, my capacity, my positioning, how I showed up online, how I followed up with people, what I would and would not tolerate in a client relationship. I sat down and wrote what later became the cornerstone of Future Fractional: my own Fractional Manifesto.

That manifesto wasn’t a pretty brand exercise. It was a decision in writing.

This is not my backup plan.
I am not “killing time” until the perfect full-time role appears.
This is my first choice.

I want multiple clients. I want control over my time. I want to work where and when I want. I want to do work I care about, with people I respect, and I want to be paid well to do it. I do not want to work with jerks. I want a business that supports a full, human life—not a job that consumes it.

Once I wrote that down, I couldn’t unsee it. It became the lens for everything: my content, my offers, my discovery calls, my yeses and my nos. If something aligned, I moved toward it. If it didn’t, I let it go—even when that was scary.

Fast-forward: as I write this, I’m booked out through the first half of 2026 and on track to 3X my income through fractional engagements alone (excluding my coaching practice). But the deeper win is this: I like my clients. I like my work. I am not being chewed up and spit out by the thing I built.

Future Fractional, the group coaching program I launched in September, is essentially the distilled version of that entire reinvention—minus the part where you have to white-knuckle it alone for four months.

It’s the thing I wish I’d had.

Future Fractional | Beta Cohort

The beta ran for eight weeks. Everyone in the room was either already working fractionally or actively preparing to jump: fractional COOs, ops leaders, L&D folks, comms and strategy types. In other words, people who are very used to being the ones quietly holding everything together for other people.

Our live sessions were part teaching, part hot seat, part “group therapy for operators.”

People said things out loud they’d mostly been carrying alone. That visibility made them feel physically ill. That asking for higher rates made them feel greedy or delusional. That they’d let one client swallow their whole week because the idea of outbound felt unbearable. That they weren’t sure they were “allowed” to think of their work as a real business if it wasn’t at some arbitrary revenue number yet.

And then they started doing things differently.

They posted. They told their stories publicly instead of hoping people would magically infer their genius. They sent cold outreach. They followed up. They re-scoped engagements. They set clearer boundaries. They said no to “just one more little thing” when that little thing had quietly ballooned into unpaid work.

They raised their prices—and then actually quoted those prices to real humans. They got DMs from new prospects. They booked sales calls. They closed deals.

The tactics themselves were not exotic. But there was something about the container—about watching other operators be honest about fear, about seeing they weren’t the only ones procrastinating on the exact same things—that made it all feel more possible.

What became crystal clear to me is that information is not the problem. We are drowning in information. You could Google “how to start a fractional practice” right now and get more content than you could ever use. You could ask an AI to write you a launch plan in 1.5 seconds.

The real gap is between knowing what to do and actually doing it consistently, in a nervous-system-friendly way.

That gap is almost always mindset.

Inside this first cohort, once people had clarity on their positioning, offers, and pipeline strategy, what surfaced were the stories underneath: fear of rejection, fear of being seen, fear of being “annoying,” fear of not being ready. And then, under those, something deeper: a quiet fear that it might actually work. That the business could become real enough that they’d have to take their own desires seriously.

You can’t Notion-template your way out of that. You have to work through it—with support.

Future Fractional 1.0

Once the cohort wrapped, I exported 310 pages of transcripts, collected everyone’s feedback, and rebuilt the program from the inside out.

The first clear theme: the content was dense.

No one wanted less of it. But they needed more breathing room to absorb, reflect, and implement. So Future Fractional is now an 11-week program instead of eight, with six 75-minute live sessions and five asynchronous implementation weeks woven between them.

Those async weeks aren’t “time off.” They’re where the real building happens: writing and refining your manifesto, testing your positioning, mapping your pipeline, sending the actual messages, updating your pricing, drafting proposals. The live calls become a place to troubleshoot, get coached, and refine in real time, instead of racing through new content and hoping something sticks.

The second big shift was the order of the curriculum.

In the beta, we started with positioning. It made logical sense, but emotionally it was a jump cut. Most people needed to ground in who they are as fractional leaders before they could articulate what they do.

Now we begin with identity, boundaries, and the Fractional Manifesto. Week 1 is all about the deeper stories you carry about work, worth, rest, ambition, and capacity. What are you actually building? What are your non-negotiables? What are you unwilling to recreate from your last full-time job?

From there, we move through the full sequence your business actually needs: identity and boundaries, positioning foundations, offer creation, visibility and voice, confidence and fear of being seen, pipeline building, curiosity-led sales, pricing and proposals, delivery excellence, ROI and case studies, and finally integration and a 90-day plan that ties it all together.

Each week blends mindset, strategy, and action. No fluffy “inspiration only” weeks, and no firehose of tactics with nowhere to process the emotions that come with using them.

The third piece is what I’m most protective of: Future Fractional is designed as a working space, not a classroom.

Yes, there is a structured curriculum and a complete toolkit: frameworks, scripts, and templates for positioning, offers, visibility, outreach, pricing, proposals, onboarding, delivery, ROI, and planning. Yes, there is personalized coaching and feedback in Slack as you draft your assets, make decisions, and test new approaches. By the end, the essentials of your business are not just theoretically defined—they are built, tested, and ready to run.

And the community piece, which I underestimated at first, has become non-negotiable. Fractional work is uniquely lonely, even when you are “part of the team.” Our private Slack space turned into a place to share wins, name fears, and admit the very human parts of building a business. The fact that the beta group chose to keep meeting after the program ended told me more than any testimonial could.

Is this for me?

Even as I share all of this, I can hear the quiet voice some of you might have in your head:

Okay, but what if I’m not actually ready? What if I invest in a program like this and then discover I’m not cut out for fractional work?

Here’s how I think about readiness now, after watching this first cohort move through the work.

You do not need to have it all figured out. You don’t need a perfect niche, a polished offer, or a waitlist of clients. Half the point of a program like this is to help you stop guessing and start deciding.

What you do need is some real experience under your belt—running teams, leading ops, being the person people turn to when things get messy. AND you have to want to be self-employed more than you want to work full-time for a company. And this is key. The most successful fractionals are those who treat fractional as a strategy, NOT as a stopgap to full-time employment.

Future Fractional is built for COOs, operations leads, CFOs, finance directors, HR/People leaders, OBMs, strategic advisors, and other non-marketing fractional leaders who want to build an actual practice around the work they already know how to do. So if you’re great at your craft AND you want to be self-employed, you’re a fit.

You’re probably “ready” if you recognize yourself in any of these:

• You’re willing to look honestly at your patterns around money, work, visibility, and boundaries, even when it’s uncomfortable.

• You’re tired of relying on word of mouth and “hope” as your main pipeline strategy.

• You want this to be a long-term, sustainable career—not a six-month escape route from a miserable job.

• You’re open to trying new ways of working, even if your brain throws a tantrum about it at first.

You’re probably not ready if you’re hoping this will remove all risk, guarantee specific income without you changing your behavior, or let you stay permanently invisible while somehow filling your roster. I don’t have that program. No one does.

The fear doesn’t vanish, even when you are ready. It just moves out of the driver’s seat. You still feel it, but you’re not letting it dictate your rates, your pipeline, or your entire calendar.

One of my favorite things to watch in the beta cohort was the shift from “What if this doesn’t work?” to “What if this does?” Once that question landed, people started making different choices. Bolder ones. More aligned ones. They began treating their business like something they were allowed to invest in—not a side project they had to justify.

If reading this brings up a mix of butterflies and fear, what I call: scare-cited, that tension is usually the sign. Your nervous system is clocking both the risk and the possibility. And if you’re more inclined to believe in the possibility, this could be a good fit.

So what’s next?

The Winter 2026 cohort of Future Fractional starts on January 26 and runs for eleven weeks. We’ll meet every other Monday for 75 minutes—9am PT / 12pm ET / 6pm CET—with guided curriculum and implementation prompts in between. You’ll move through the full arc of your business: identity, positioning, offer, visibility, pipeline, sales, pricing, delivery, proof, and a grounded 90-day plan to carry you forward.

It’s application-only, not as a scarcity game, but because the magic of this kind of work depends on having the right mix of people in the room. I personally review every application. If it’s a fit, you’ll get an enrollment link and can choose between early-bird or standard pricing, with pay-in-full or payment plan options.

If 2026 is the year you want to stop dabbling in fractional work and start owning it as a real, sustainable business, this is the container I’ve built for exactly that.

👉 Full program details for the January 2026 cohort can be found here.

And if now isn’t your time, that’s okay. But if you recognize even a little of yourself in this story—underearning, overgiving, half-building a business in the margins—I hope you at least let this be the year you stop pretending it’s “fine.”

You deserve a fractional practice that is built for the long run, one that pays you well and leaves room for your actual life.

Whether you do that with me in Future Fractional or on your own, I’m rooting for that version of you.

Keep building the version of work that actually works for you. I’ll be here cheering (and occasionally nudging). See you next Monday.

Until next time,

Mary Alice