Fractional Head of Content and fractional COO for creator and founder-led businesses

What does a fractional head of content or COO do?

A senior person inside your business on a fixed rhythm, accountable for the content function end to end, for a fraction of the cost of a full time hire. I own five things:

• The plan. The content strategy, the formats and what to stop making, written down as a 14 day plan every 14 days.
• The cadence. A rhythm the team can hold, run through a 90 minute sprint every fortnight with your team and a 30 minute check-in every week.
• The team. I build it inside your business. I move the people you have into the jobs their skills fit before I hire anyone, then hire into the gaps.
• The tooling. The boards, the approvals and the tools the pipeline runs on, with an owner and a name against every step.
• The reporting. The numbers on every video, and five numbers to the founders every Friday, so you see what worked and what to kill.

What does it cost, and what does the price depend on?

£4,500 to £7,500 a month, with a 6 month minimum, then monthly. Where a role sits in that range is set by the size of the role, and we agree it before we start. Fractional or COO, it is the same range.

For a wider view of what content help costs, from a single session to a full time hire, read What content help costs in the UK.

Fractional COO for a creator business: what is different

As fractional COO the brief widens from the content to the business around it. In a creator business the content is usually the business, so the operation is the same thing seen from higher up. What changes:

• Operations. I run the day to day, so the founder or creator spends little of their own time on it. At Heath Media I ran day to day operations, working directly with Ben Heath.
• Team. Who does what across the business, who approves what, and who is still to hire, with a target date against every gap.
• Systems. A pipeline that runs without me in it every day: an owner, a board and a tool for each stage. At Heath Media that was the short form pipeline in Asana, ideas from Slack turned into tickets, and a publishing dashboard.
• Cadence. The same fortnightly sprint and weekly check-in, set for the business and not just the channel.
• Reporting. A monthly numbers review with revenue by line, the commercial pack your partners sell from, and new revenue lines. At Heath Media I owned sponsorships and revenue and launched the Skool community. At Secret Leaders I built the studio from scratch and closed Wise, Vanta, Hewlett Packard and Dubai Tourism as sponsors.

Head of content or COO: which title fits you?

Use head of content when the job is the content function: the plan, the formats, the team and the numbers. Use COO when the content is the business, as it is for most creators, and the job takes in operations, revenue lines and reporting across the business. The ideas and the final creative say stay with you. If your problem is that content is not shipping, the team is not working or the brand has stalled, that is mine to fix under either title.

How the collaboration works

It is a joint collaboration. The goal is to build the team inside your business, not to manage it off-site.

If you have an in-house team, I work very closely with them, as if I'm part of the furniture. Where there are gaps, I bring in producers, editors and designers from my network. They are hired on a freelance basis, I work closely with them, and they work inside your team, on your boards.

I sit at strategy level and can exec produce. I set the plan, the formats and the standard, I am in the meetings and the reviews, and I hold the editorial gate until someone on your team can take it.

Where I have done it

I have built content functions from zero at Heath Media, Stoffel Media Group, Secret Leaders, Angels Management, Campus Society and Tyro Magazine, over 12 years behind the scenes in the creator economy.

• Stoffel Media Group. Head of Content, June 2025 to May 2026. I rebuilt the team, found three formats and built a system that posted three times a day. Sam Stoffel went from 0 to 500,000 followers in 10 months. See the Sam Stoffel case study.
• Heath Media. Head of Personal Brand and Content, May to September 2026. I moved the three people I inherited into new roles before one new hire, the team grew to 14, and the Skool community I launched became the number one trending money community on Skool. See the Ben Heath case study.
• Secret Leaders. Head of Content, July 2024 to May 2025. A video-first relaunch with a studio built from scratch. It reached number 2 in the UK Business podcast charts, behind The Diary of a CEO. See the Secret Leaders case study.
• Angels Management, Campus Society and Tyro Magazine. A creator management company I co-founded, and a student magazine I launched that reached 40 percent of UK students a month. See Angels Management and Tyro Magazine.

A typical first 90 days

• Day one. I write the plan the night you sign: one goal for 90 days, one job, one number and one named owner per platform, and a baseline for every number. I ask for access to everything and get involved.
• Weeks one to three. An audit of the team, the costs, the tools, the output and what has been tried, then a written diagnosis: what is broken, what it costs and what to do in the first 90 days. The first test is live by the end of week two.
• Day 30. The people already there have moved into the right seats before anyone new is hired, every approval has a name, and my editorial gate has a named successor.
• Months two and three. Month one challenges assumptions. Months two and three build the function: who does what, what gets made and what gets killed, and the reporting that shows it working. The 60 and 90 day checkpoints land on your midweek meeting day.

Who I turn down

Anyone unclear about their commitment. A founder does not need to be full time. They do need to accept that this is work with a purpose, and that it takes time, patience and their input.

And anyone who needs videos made at volume on formats that already work, with someone in-house who owns the strategy. A production agency is the better answer there.

Fractional or full time?

Go fractional to build the function and hire the team. Hire full time once the system runs and the work fills a week. The full comparison is Fractional Head of Content vs full-time hire, and for founders, In-house content hire vs fractional head of content.

To start, use the fractional application on the consulting page. If you want to test the fit first, book a Power hour, £600.