Everything You Need To Know Before Working With Us

A fractional executive is an ongoing, part-time leader embedded in your company who owns outcomes. Unlike consultants who only give advice, or contractors who execute specific tasks, a fractional executive actively builds systems and leads your team.

Here is how they differ:

• Consultant: Gives you a playbook, delivers a project, and leaves. You handle the execution.
• Contractor: Executes a specific scope of work based exactly on what you tell them to do.
• Fractional Executive: Tells you what needs to be done, runs the play, and trains your team.
• Interim Executive: Fills a temporary, full-time seat during a major company transition.

The process is three steps, everything up to the match is free, and a fractional executive can be working in your business in as fast as two weeks.

• Day 1: Scalability Audit. 30 minutes. Free. Tell us what's slowing your growth, with no prep and no pressure. We pinpoint the biggest constraint holding your growth back and show you how fractional leadership can fix it. You decide whether you want to see a draft Statement of Work.
• Day 3-7: SOW Alignment Meeting. 30 minutes. Free. We review your draft Statement of Work live on screen, adding, cutting, and adjusting in real time to fit your needs. You walk away with a clear scope, timeline, and investment range, and you keep the SOW to review with your team before anything is signed.
• Day 7-14: Interview 2 Vetted Fractional Executives. 2 hours. Free. You meet operators one and two before you commit to anything, with no obligation to hire either one. Your Client Service Manager facilitates, so it's your interview to run while she keeps the conversation on track. You debrief with her right after and either schedule the kickoff or ask to see who's behind door number three, on a 4k to 15k per month engagement with a flat 4.5k one-time success fee.

Express Match is our default and fastest path, built for the CEO who can name the role they need, understands how fractional executives work, and is ready to move.

• We introduce you to a hand-selected fractional executive.
• Someone can be working in your business in as fast as two weeks.

The best part: we introduce you to candidates and add value before you pay a dime.

We match on three things:

• Skills: What the role needs, not just the job description.
• Working style: Kolbe A assessments and stakeholder alignment, so the person fits how you operate.
• Cultural fit: How your team works. If your space is niche, that is part of the brief.

Most fractional executives run between 4k and 15k per month, depending on seniority, scope, and how much of their time you need. That is the blended monthly investment, and it is the number you plan around.

• Full-time executive: 150k to 300k in salary, plus 25k to 60k in overhead, plus 30k to 90k in recruiter fees. 205k to 450k total, with no guarantee and 17 weeks to hire on average.
• Fractional engagement: Your monthly investment plus a flat 4.5k one-time success fee, backed by our Lifetime Second Match Free Guarantee. Live in as fast as two weeks, and you can increase, decrease, or cancel anytime.

The 4.5k success fee is a one-time fee per fractional executive placement, and you only pay it when we successfully match you and you decide to move forward.

Traditional executive search firms charge 20%-35% of the first year's total compensation. That's $30k-$90k. Instead, we simply ask for a one-time $4,500 success fee.

This fee pays Malloy Industries for:

• Matchmaking infrastructure: Sourcing, screening, vetting, and interviewing.
• Lifetime Second Match Free Guarantee™: Ongoing protection on every placement.
• Weekly TPS Reports™: Trust-building Progress Snapshot reports, every week.
• Monthly check-ins: With your Client Service Manager.
• Quarterly Strategic Business Reviews: With our CEO.

It is the price of your leadership safety net. We stay in the trenches with you for the life of the engagement.

Yes. Fractional engagements are month-to-month with no multi-year contracts, so you can increase hours during a growth sprint, decrease when things stabilize, or cancel entirely.

Yes. Our Full-Time Recruiter runs the entire search for a full-time hire, start to finish, for CEOs who need a seat filled fast and don't have a recruiter on staff.

Full-Time Recruiter: 5k per month per role while the search runs. We run all 7 stages, source from every possible channel including our 750+ executive network, and put finalists on your calendar in 3 weeks, with most seats filled in 4 to 8. If you hire a candidate we sourced, the placement fee is 22.5% of first-year compensation, less the first month you already paid. Hire from your own network or another firm's candidate and you owe nothing beyond the monthly. Every hire carries our 90-Day Rerun Guarantee: if it doesn't stick in 90 days, we rerun the entire search at no cost.

The free Scalability Audit hands you a clear scope, timeline, and investment range for the specific role you need.

• Monthly investment: Most fractional engagements land between 4k and 15k per month, depending on seniority and how much of the person's time you use.
• One-time fee: A flat 4.5k success fee when you decide to move forward.

We have 150+ clients who trust us with their businesses, and we're happy to connect you directly with CEOs we've helped. Just book a discovery call and ask.

If you've hired a consultant who delivered a beautiful deck and disappeared, or a "fractional CMO" who talked a big game and produced nothing, your guard should be up.

• My name is on the door: I'm Mike Malloy, the CEO. The buck stops with me. If something isn't working, you talk directly to me, and I make it right.
• We prove our value first: Throughout our process, especially Express Match™, we introduce you to candidates and provide strategic recommendations before you invest a dollar.
• Lifetime Second Match Free Guarantee™: For as long as you're an active client, if your fractional executive isn't the right fit, we find a better one at no additional fee.
• We never disappear: Weekly TPS Reports™, monthly check-ins, and quarterly Strategic Business Reviews with me.

We activate the Lifetime Second Match Free Guarantee™. Our Client Service team and CEO step in first to understand what's not working, because sometimes the issue is fixable through coaching or a scope adjustment.

If a replacement is the right call:

• New match: We replace your fractional executive from our network of 750+ at no additional matchmaking cost.
• Interim coverage: Provided if needed.
• Timeline: A replacement is typically ready within 1-4 weeks.

If your fractional executive isn't the right fit for any reason, we replace them with another of our 750+ relentlessly generous experts at no additional matchmaking cost.

The guarantee also funds our ongoing support, all designed to catch issues early, long before they become replacement situations:

• Weekly TPS Reports™: A progress snapshot from your fractional executive every week.
• Monthly alignment check-ins: A regular pulse-check on how the engagement is going.
• Quarterly Strategic Business Reviews: A deeper review of goals, impact, and next steps.

We stay for the life of the engagement: weekly TPS Reports™, monthly alignment check-ins, and quarterly Strategic Business Reviews led personally by Mike Malloy.

• Weekly TPS Reports™: Your fractional executive submits a Trust-building Progress Snapshot every week highlighting what was accomplished, what's planned, and where they're stuck. They submit by Friday COB, we review Mondays, and you get them by Tuesday COB. Clarity without micromanagement. You also get to laugh at our Office Space reference.
• Monthly Alignment Check-ins: Your Client Service Manager meets 1:1 with both you and your fractional executive to ensure alignment and surface concerns early.
• Quarterly Strategic Business Reviews: Mike Malloy personally leads a deeper review to align on goals, measure impact, and plan the next phase of growth.

If you convert your Malloy fractional to full-time, the fee is 22.5% of first-year compensation, the same rate as our full-time recruiter service. The difference is what that fee buys you: an executive who has already been working inside your business for 3 to 12+ months.

• Traditional search firm: 20 to 35% of first-year total comp for a stranger you met in a few interviews. The fit risk is entirely yours.
• Converting your Malloy fractional: 22.5% of first-year compensation for a leader you have watched perform, lead your team, and fit your culture for months. No ramp-up, no onboarding gamble, no guessing.

Think of the engagement as the longest working interview you will ever run. By the time you convert, the hire is already de-risked, and you pay the same rate we charge to recruit a full-time executive from scratch.

About 10% of our 150+ fractional placements have evolved into full-time hires.

Every executive in our network is vetted on three things: track record, working style, and execution.

• Track record: Proven results in the function they'll own.
• Working style: Matched on skills, culture, and cognitive fit using Kolbe A assessments and stakeholder alignment.
• Execution: These are operators, not consultants. They build the systems and run the play with your team. They do not present a deck and leave.

A fractional executive makes more sense when you need the expertise now, but not 40 hours a week and not as a $300k+ bet on one person.

• Immediate coverage: A key team member quit and you need someone now.
• Stuck in the weeds: You're wearing too many hats.
• Raising capital: You need to look investor-ready fast.
• Underperforming department: A function needs an expert turnaround.
• Budget reality: You can't afford a full-time executive but need the expertise.

Most growth-stage companies aren't ready for a full C-suite. Paying $300k+ to one person is a huge bet you're not ready for yet.

Fractional is the bridge that gets you enterprise-level leadership without enterprise-level risk.

Yes, our network of 750+ vetted fractional executives spans nearly every B2B vertical, including SaaS, healthcare, FinTech, EdTech, and government contracting. It also covers professional services, life sciences, logistics, manufacturing, retail, and more.

The best fractional executives bring cross-industry pattern recognition that is often more valuable than narrow vertical experience. Part of the Scalability Audit is determining exactly how much industry-specific expertise your role requires versus how much functional excellence matters.

Yes, the free Scalability Audit pinpoints where the gaps are, how severe they are, and what to fix first.

You will know:

• The role you need to fill first.
• The scope of work that role will own.
• The working-style fits your team needs.
• Your Prioritized Action Plan for the next 12 months.

No, at your stage you probably already have a CEO bottleneck, and the problem is far cheaper to fix now than after it compounds.

the sweet spot is usually above 3 million, but the decision sums up to:

• Your margins: Whether the investment pencils out for your business.
• The time you need: How much of an executive's week your constraint requires.

Yes, we design the onboarding and introduction process to set your fractional executive up for credibility from day one.

In our experience, teams respect competence, clarity, and follow-through, and they will be relieved. They've been waiting for someone to bring structure, accountability, and expertise to a function that's been held together with duct tape.

A fractional executive owns a function end to end, turning what lives in your head into systems your team can run, so you stop being the single point of failure.

• They take what lives in your head and turn it into systems your team can run.
• They train the team to own it.
• They report back so you keep visibility without doing the work yourself.

The goal is to remove you as the single point of failure in the part of the business that is eating your time, so you get back to the work only you can do.

Sometimes that is the right call, and we will tell you when it is. Many CEOs run all three, with the fractional orchestrating it.

• Junior hire: Cheaper but needs direction you may not have time to give.
• Agency: Executes tactics but rarely owns strategy or outcomes, so you still need someone to decide what the agency should do.
• Fractional executive: Sits above both. They set the direction, decide what to build in-house versus outsource, and can hire and manage the junior person or the agency for you.

Yes, a fractional sales executive builds the pipeline, the process, the playbook, the cadence, and the coaching, so your team can close without you in every deal.

A fractional sales executive can help you if you have:

• No defined pipeline: Deals live in inboxes and memory, not stages.
• No consistent process: Every deal is run differently.
• Haphazard outreach: Materials and messaging that are haphazard.
• CEO-dependent deals: Opportunities hover for months by CEO bottleneck.

Fractional sales executives have seven distinct types: Leader, Manager, Recruiter, Trainer, Individual Contributor, End-to-End, and Coach, each solving a different sales problem.

• Leader: Sets sales strategy, builds repeatable systems, owns the big picture.
• Manager: Runs pipeline meetings, manages AEs and SDRs, provides 1:1 coaching.
• Recruiter: Sources, interviews, vets, and onboards sales talent.
• Trainer: Trains team members on process, playbooks, and skills.
• Individual Contributor: Sells, closes, and hits or beats quota.
• End-to-End: Owns the full cycle from prospecting to signed contracts.
• Coach: Coaches CEOs or sales leaders to level up their performance.

A fractional CMO sits above the agencies and vendors as the strategic leader and becomes the primary point of contact for every marketing service provider, ensuring everything is directed, measured, and aligned with revenue goals.

A fractional CMO must define:

• Who is our ideal customer?
• Which channels drive revenue?
• How do we measure what's working?

Our recommendation: buy marketing services à la carte. No single agency excels at every channel, so you want niche experts for SEO, paid media, content, social, and email, with a fractional CMO orchestrating all of it.

In the first 30 days, a fractional COO audits your current state, identifies the highest-leverage bottlenecks, builds your first SOPs, and implements meeting and accountability cadences.

A fractional COO takes what's been manual, in the CEO's head, or done differently every time, and turns it into scalable systems and processes your team can execute without handholding.

• Audit the current state: Map workflows, meetings, tools, and communication patterns.
• Identify bottlenecks: Find the highest-leverage places where you're losing time and money.
• Build the first SOPs: Using our Shift-Left Framework and Do and Document Method™.
• Implement cadences: Meeting and accountability rhythms so meetings produce decisions, not just discussion.

Yes. A fractional HR executive handles the full spectrum: performance review systems, structured hiring, employee relations, culture, compensation frameworks, compliance, and terminations.

A great fractional HR leader builds the systems so your company can attract, develop, and retain the right people at scale, without the CEO personally managing every hire, review, and resignation.

We start with a diagnostic instead of a resume pile, back every match with a lifetime warranty, and never disappear after placement.

• Diagnostic first: We take the time to ask "what's your biggest business constraint?" and do the work to find the right answer.
• Lifetime warranty: Our Lifetime Second Match Free Guarantee™ means if your fractional executive isn't the right fit for any reason, we replace them at no additional cost for the life of the engagement.
• We never disappear: Weekly TPS Reports™, monthly check-ins, quarterly Strategic Business Reviews.
• Scientific matching: Kolbe A assessments and stakeholder alignment calls to match on skills, culture, working style, and cognitive fit.
• Enterprise-level service: We serve growth-stage companies with the same treatment we give enterprise-level clients.
• Relentlessly generous: Our #1 core value. Free strategic recommendations, complimentary expert consultations, DIY templates, handwritten notes, and a referral program where every referral earns a Hawaiian shirt.
• Enthusiastically fun: Dad jokes are part of almost every meeting. We give you energy and confidence to keep building.

No, we start before there is a role to fill and stay long after the match, with weekly progress reports, monthly check-ins, and quarterly reviews for the life of the engagement.

A recruiter's job ends the moment you sign the hire, while ours starts before there is a role to fill.

• A contingency recruiter: Sources resumes, sells you a candidate, collects a fee, and moves on. And when the right answer is a full-time hire, our Full-Time Recruiter runs the whole search, start to finish, with a 90-Day Rerun Guarantee.
• Malloy Industries: Gives you a diagnosis of what your business needs, a match built on how your team works, a lifetime guarantee on that match, and a partner you can call for the next constraint and the one after that.