🌊 Deep Dive: The Side Hustle Safety Net: How to Structure Fractional Work While Building Your Business

Why doing fractional work doesn’t mean you’re failing as a founder—and how to build a consulting practice that funds your runway without killing your business

Note to readers: I’m back with the latest deep-dive! As I missed this newsletter last month, you’ll get a few extras in June to make up for it. Enjoy and feel free to message me with any questions you have.

Let me tell you something most founders won’t admit publicly: Running Mane Hook-Up is not the only thing I do.

One to two days a week, I work as a fractional CMO for other companies. I help start-ups solve marketing problems, build strategies, execute campaigns. I charge £600-750 per day, and this work brings me to about 60-70% of my previous salary when combined with what Mane Hook-Up generates.

The other part of the week, I work on building Mane Hook-Up.

By traditional start-up mythology, this means I’m not a “real” founder. I’m not sufficiently committed. I’m not willing to sacrifice everything for my vision. I should be eating ramen and sleeping four hours a night, pouring every waking moment into my business.

Here’s what I actually believe: that mythology is bullsh*t, and it’s keeping talented founders out of entrepreneurship.

The reality is that most founders - especially bootstrapped founders building Small Giants - need income while they build. Whether it’s fractional consulting work like mine, a part-time job, freelancing, or a working spouse carrying the financial load, very few people can afford to have zero income for the years it takes to build a sustainable business.

But nobody talks about this publicly. So founders doing side work feel like they’re failing, like they’re not “real” entrepreneurs, like they should be ashamed of needing to pay their bills.

I’m done with that narrative.

Here’s the honest truth about how I structure fractional CMO work alongside building Mane Hook-Up, why it doesn’t make me less of a founder, and how you can do something similar if you need to.

The Financial Reality: Why Fractional Work Isn’t Failing

Let me be very clear about something: I don’t do fractional work because I’m failing at building my business. I do it because I’m a human being with bills to pay, and Mane Hook-Up - while growing steadily - doesn’t yet generate enough consistent revenue to cover my living expenses.

This isn’t a failure of my business model. It’s not evidence that I should give up or that the business isn’t viable. It’s simply the reality of building something sustainable rather than raising venture capital to fund my salary.

Here’s the math: Without sharing exact numbers, I need a certain amount per month to cover my portion of household bills, business expenses, and maintain some financial stability. Fractional work brings in a predictable portion of that. Mane Hook-Up covers most of it’s running costs, though less predictably.

Together, they work.

Without fractional income, I’d have maybe one month of runway on a bad month, maybe six months on a good one. With fractional work, I can actually plan, invest in the business, and not panic every time an invoice gets delayed or an event doesn’t sell out as quickly as expected.

That financial breathing room is worth the time it takes.

What I Actually Do (The Specifics)

When I tell people I do fractional CMO work, they often ask what that actually means. Here’s the reality:

The work: I do marketing strategy and execution, largely for start-ups. A business comes to me with a problem - ”we need to increase our customers,” “our conversion rate is too low,” “we need to launch this new product” - and I put a plan in place to make it happen and execute some of the work as well.

I work with anywhere from 1-3 clients at a time, so I need to balance strategy with execution. They can’t afford two people (a strategist and an executor), so they need both in one person. That’s what I provide.

The time commitment: No more than three clients at once, and the work takes about 1-2.5 days per week on average (7 hours per day). Some weeks it’s less, some weeks it’s more, but that’s the sustainable average.

The money: I charge a day rate, typically based on a project. For example, it may take five days to complete a project, and I charge my day rate for each of those days. My current rate is £600-750 per day, depending on the client and project complexity.

When I started fractional work three years ago, my day rate was £500. Every January, I increase my pricing by £100-150, depending on what I’ve achieved and how I feel my skillset has grown.

Payment structure: For set projects, I typically go 50% upfront and 50% on delivery. For retainers (which are the best position to be in for predictable income), it’s 100% of the monthly bill upfront.

How I find clients: Largely through networking, referrals, and building my personal brand. My first client came via referral. Most of my best clients still come through my network rather than cold outreach.

The Evolution: From Websites to Strategy

I didn’t start doing high-level strategy work immediately. That’s not how this works.

When I first started consulting alongside building Mane Hook-Up, I focused on work that was easier to secure but had a lower price point: website building, brand messaging, tactical execution. These were skills I could deliver confidently, and start-ups needed them.

Over about 12 months, I evolved into more strategy-focused work. This happened organically, not as a deliberate strategy. I’d work with a client on their website, they’d ask for help with messaging, then they’d want marketing strategy, and suddenly I was doing the higher-level work I actually wanted to be doing.

The progression looked like this: