Mistakes I learned as a new fractional CMO
My first fractional gigs turned into production work with unlimited scope. Guardrails and a shift to advisory kept the model from eating my business.
Kevin C. Whelan
My entry to marketing consulting work began with two fractional CMO gigs. I think I charged $3,500 and $4,000/month respectively.
My intent was to advise on and manage my clients’ marketing. The reality looked much more like actual production work.
I was an order-taker, not really a trusted advisor. There’s a big difference.
Instead of outsourcing everything and being a manager, I just outsourced the big stuff and did a lot of execution work myself. Things like setting up software, doing surveys, email campaigns, briefs, proofs-of-concept, website tweaks, reporting, and more.
Sound familiar?
On top of that, clients dumped every idea they had onto my plate because they saw me as an employee-shaped figure.
It was also a fixed-fee engagement with flexible scope—what did I expect?
And that’s all fine if you want to make a “quick” six figures but don’t care about things like key client risk, scaling, or enjoyment considerations.
These gigs consumed almost all of my time and mental bandwidth. I knew I had to change what I was doing and how I sold my services. It wasn’t a sustainable model.
That’s what led me to focus more on advisory work and accepting FCMO gigs for only very particular kinds of clients.
I also set specific guardrails to ensure my gigs didn’t take over my business. I learned how to manage scope to prevent things from going sideways on day one.