The Un-Bottleneck Playbook: Hiring “Help” Versus Hiring Leverage
Fractional, high-caliber talent is a modern lever you should pull
About three years ago, I hired Untangled’s first employee. Let’s call her Jane (always my go-to when playing “pretend” as a kid).
Jane was going to work 20 hours a week behind the scenes to develop content for clients’ playbooks. Give me some breathing room, and ideally, increase capacity so we could serve more clients.
She was smart, great people skills, always dependable. The kind of person you feel lucky to find. But just a couple of months in, I realized I’d been dead wrong about two kinda important things:
What I actually needed help with
The steadiness of my new business funnel
At the time, the business felt ready. Leads were coming in, proposals were going out, and my days were full. But the type and timing of the work I needed help with changed constantly. The 6 months after hiring Jane simply did not look like the 6 months before I hired her, which was what my decision had been based on.
I’d hired her for one very specific thing—and she was excellent at that thing—but I didn’t consistently need 20 hours of it every single week. And I didn’t have time to come with more work for her to do. That was the essence of the problem I found myself facing.
Ouch, with zeroes.
So when she found her dream job, I was quietly relieved. We parted on positive terms just six months in—a gift if you can get it. It was never about her performance; it was always about my preparedness.
Flash forward 3 years.
After Jane left, I went back to being a solo consultant who relied on a team of project-based freelancers for short-term capacity boosts. It worked well enough, I was profitable again, enjoying my work, and moving at a decent clip.
But that changed early this year when I looked at the ambitious goals I’d set, the corresponding cascading to do lists, and thought, “Most of this will never happen if I continue on my own. But I’m not making the same mistake twice.”
That’s when I looked into fractional talent, the modern twist on part-time help—and everything changed.
Take Two: Fractional Talent, not Part-Time Help
This time, instead of hiring someone directly, I went through a company that specializes in fractional support (no, that’s not an affiliate link—I’m just a happy customer). They handled the backend logistics: payroll taxes, compliance, contracts, even finding a replacement if the first match didn’t work out.
And the best part? I could commit to as little as 5 hours a week! It was a no-brainer, exactly what I needed. My gut told me those 5 hours a week would catapult me into a new era, and it has. Leverage.
Just like in my first business, what I was looking for was a few hours of my life back, without the pressure of inventing busywork or the risk to my bottom line. What I got, though, was more than just time.
Stevie is not just in my inbox and calendar; she’s my thought partner, problem solver, and all around operational right hand. In just 5 hours a week. And I never had to slow down to train someone who was trying to catch up. I stayed in motion while she did what she does best. That’s real leverage.
This time, I wasn’t hiring help. I was pulling a lever.
The thing is, this idea of high-caliber fractional talent wasn’t exactly possible even 10 years ago. For most of history, small business owners have hired part-timers from their local networks and sifted through application after application to find someone whose skills match a fixed set of hours.
Maybe you found a local contractor or bartered hours with a friend. Maybe you hired your kid.
But finding a high-caliber person who wanted to work just 5–10 hours a week, in a role where they were an expert? That was extremely rare, a hidden gem. And if you did find someone, they probably weren’t priced for a small business.
Today, that’s changed. We have the tools to make remote work work really well. So it’s no longer a decision between settling for what you can afford or tanking your bottom line.
There’s also a growing number of professionals leaving corporate to do their own thing. They have expertise, they’re motivated—but they want clients, not bosses.
This is the future of talent.
It’s also a new lever business owners can pull to un-bottleneck themselves. Fractional expertise—whether it’s admin, ops, finance, or something else entirely—is one of the most founder-friendly moves out there. Especially for entrepreneurs stuck in that in-between stage of “I’m drowning and I need help…” and “...but the business can’t pay for it.”
That’s not just talent. That’s leverage.
In my next email newsletter, I’ll be sharing the company I used as well as a glimpse into the playbook Stevie and I have come up with together to run Untangled—what she does, what I still do, how we communicate, etc. Sign up here.
