Frequently asked questions
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The questions owners ask on calls, answered the same way I answer them live. If yours isn't here, ask it directly.
A fractional COO is a senior operator who works inside your business part-time, running operations, building the management layer, and driving revenue systems, without the cost of a full-time executive. They carry real accountability, not advisory hours.
An Operating Partner is a senior operator who takes a seat inside your business and carries a number. The difference from a fractional COO: the fractional COO builds the system, the Operating Partner runs the play. I sit in your ops meeting, carry a revenue target, run the conversations you have been putting off, and hire the person who takes the seat from me.
A consultant diagnoses and recommends. An Operating Partner gets inside the business and executes, sitting in your ops meetings, carrying a revenue target, and running the conversations you have been putting off. The work is measured in outcomes, not deliverables.
I am in your ops meeting every week. Your team reports on a scorecard with me in the room. Between meetings I run the work: the hiring calls, the pricing conversations, the underperformer decisions. You get the decisions surfaced and the moves made, not a report about them.
You're ready when the business has revenue and customers but every decision still waits on you, when you're the bottleneck on decisions, hiring, and growth. If you're pre-revenue, it's too early.
Two tests. The vacation test: can you take two weeks off without the business calling you? The decision test: in the last week, how many decisions waited for you that did not need to? If either answer stings, the business depends on you and the valuation will say so.
Founder dependency is when the revenue, the relationships, or the decisions only work because you are in them. Buyers price it. A business that runs without the owner trades at a meaningfully higher multiple than one where the owner is the system, because the buyer is buying cash flow, not a job.
That's the most common starting point. The first step is a short application, followed by a 30-minute call if it's a fit. On the call, you describe what's not working, and I'll tell you what I'd look at first and whether the problem is a fit for what I do.
It's a 4-minute diagnostic that identifies which of six operator patterns is running your business right now, and what it's costing you. Most owners recognize themselves immediately. Take it at /pattern.
The structural fixes, hiring, cadence, accountability, typically start showing up in the numbers within 90 days. The first step is a short application, followed by a 30-minute call if it's a fit.
Three-month minimum, then month to month. The structural work lands inside the first 90 days. After that the seat exists to run the play until the person I hire and train is ready to take it from me.
The first step is a short application, followed by a 30-minute call if it's a fit. Paid work is scoped to team size and markets. Three-month minimum, then month to month. The pricing page lays out the two ways to work together.
I was one of 15 people on the Go-To-Market team that brought Zillow Flex, now Zillow Preferred, to market in 2019. That business line went from zero to $300M in three years. I led a team of Zillow Growth Advisors, built the in-person partner training in Atlanta, and scaled it nationally when COVID hit. I also went through Zillow's leadership development program.
Same program, new name. Zillow Flex launched in 2019 and was later rebranded to Zillow Preferred. Owners searching either term are looking for the same thing: how to make the program's unit economics work inside their team.
Yes. The clearest example is ChuckTown Homes, a Charleston brokerage and Zillow Preferred team that grew from 10 producers to 90 across five markets and three states in 15 months. I advised from my Zillow seat as their Zillow Growth Advisor. The full record is on the ChuckTown case study page.
The named record: ChuckTown Homes (10 to 90 producers in 15 months), Dwelli (Michael was their first Growth Advisor in the Flex program; owners Jake and Kelly Mullins grew the team to 180), Amy Ladd Miller's team in Orlando (four agents to seventeen in under five months), Zillow (zero to $300M on the Flex business line), and PLACE as National Director of Sales Operations. Thirty-eight written recommendations are on the recommendations page.
Real estate team owners and brokers who want the business to run without them, including brokerage-owned title and mortgage operations. Atlanta-based, working with owners across the United States. Most clients are not in real estate.
Yes, most of the work is outside real estate. The real estate receipts are the most public because the programs and the numbers are public, but the same operating work applies in any business where the owner is the ceiling. The lens is the P&L, not the industry.
Thirty minutes. Bring the situation, leave with a read.
Run a real estate team? Here’s how I work with team owners.
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