Fixing business operations starts with mapping the exact path a customer takes from first contact to final review, then assigning two or three measurable metrics to each stage of that path. That is the core lesson from Kati Peterman, founder of Your FRX, who has guided over 1,200 businesses through the kind of structural cleanup that turns chaotic growth into predictable revenue. In this episode of DissedMedia: A Startup Story, Kati sits down with Ben Olmos to break down the framework her team uses with every client and the mistakes that keep otherwise successful companies stuck.
Kati did not start in operations. She spent years in high pressure live event sales, including a stretch with Fortune Builders in real estate education, before a manager introduced her to KPI tracking. She expected to resent the scrutiny. Instead she found something else in it: safety. In a commission driven sales role where income swings from high to low, having a repeatable system to follow gave her a sense of control that most of her peers never found. That single insight became the foundation for how Your FRX approaches every client engagement today.
What a Fractional Executive Fixes First
Most founders do not need a full time COO. What they need is a right hand who can sit in any open seat, spot the gaps, and point the business toward the next hire it actually needs rather than the one it thinks it needs. Kati describes a true executive as someone who can step into marketing, sales, operations, or finance and provide strategy without pretending to be a specialist in all four. A fractional partner brings that judgment on a month to month basis, with no long term contract, because business priorities shift constantly and a founder’s vision changes just as often.
This is where business operations problems usually start. A company hires a marketing generalist and asks them to also handle payroll. A salesperson gets pulled into web development conversations because nobody stopped the meeting from drifting. None of this looks like a crisis in the moment. It looks like flexibility. Kati argues the opposite is true. Letting people operate outside their lane on the company’s dime is one of the most expensive habits a growing business can develop. Anyone building a business that can eventually run without the founder in every seat has to start by fixing this exact pattern.
The SIPOC Framework for Diagnosing Business Operations
Your FRX runs every new client through a framework called SIPOC: suppliers, input, process, output, and customer journey. It is not proprietary. Anyone who studied business will recognize it. But Kati’s team applies it with a level of rigor most companies skip.
Suppliers means every source that brings in a lead, from paid ads to referrals to organic search, assessed honestly rather than assumed. Input covers what happens the moment a lead arrives: how it is captured, how fast the business responds, and whether it enters a structured follow up sequence. Process is the actual selling motion, from first contact to signed deal. Output is fulfillment, the delivery of whatever was promised. Customer journey covers everything after the sale, including how and when the business asks for a review.
For each of those five stages, Kati’s team identifies two to three KPIs and asks the client to track them for 90 days before making major changes. She recommends assigning ownership by department rather than handing the whole framework to one overwhelmed person. Suppliers sit with marketing. Input sits with customer service. Process sits with sales. Output and customer journey sit with fulfillment. Splitting the responsibility keeps the data honest and keeps any one person from resenting the tracking.
Why Response Time Is the Silent Killer of Business Operations
Across every industry Your FRX has worked in, from B2B services to wedding videography, one pattern shows up more than any other: slow response time. Kati describes running informal secret shopper tests on prospective clients before signing them, and finding response times of a week or longer on demo requests. A buyer who is ready to purchase right now will not wait that long. The tire kickers can wait. The people ready to spend money cannot, and a slow response hands that sale to a competitor who answered faster.
The same pattern shows up on the delivery side. Kati points to wedding photographers and videographers as a clear example. A couple pays a premium price, has an unforgettable experience, and then waits weeks for their photos and video while friends and family keep asking where the content is. That delay quietly kills referrals, because people do not recommend a business that made them wait through an anxious, drawn out delivery process.
Getting Buy-In When a Team Resists New Structure
Not every employee welcomes new systems, and Kati is direct about why. Defensiveness almost always comes from an unspoken safety concern. Someone who pushes back hard on new metrics may have survived a department with brutal turnover, or been promised a bonus structure that never materialized. Understanding that history before introducing change matters more than the change itself.
Her approach to a rigid, my way or the highway manager starts with a short one on one conversation rather than a directive. Ask what experiences shaped their approach. Ask what they are protecting. Most resistance softens once someone feels heard instead of overridden, and even when it does not, the attempt itself preserves trust across the rest of the team.
Stay In Your Lane: The Simple Rule That Protects Business Operations
Kati’s most repeated principle on the episode is simple: stay in your lane. People take on responsibilities outside their expertise constantly, usually out of fear of looking uncooperative rather than genuine capability. A marketing hire ends up processing payroll. A web developer starts weighing in on sales strategy in a meeting that has nothing to do with their role.
She is careful to separate this from stifling collaboration. Great ideas often come from people outside the department discussing them, including frontline staff in customer service who see problems executives never encounter. The fix is structural: a dedicated brainstorming session, on a set schedule, where anyone can contribute ideas without derailing the meeting where actual decisions get made. Staying in your lane applies to deliverables and accountability, and it leaves plenty of room for input from anyone with a good idea. Founders working through the same kind of messy growth that comes with scaling a business tend to run into this exact tension between structure and collaboration.
Real Results: Cutting Collections From Millions to Manageable
Two client stories stand out from the conversation. A multi location commercial cleaning company had built up 800,000 dollars in outstanding collections because their team delivered service first and billed afterward, hoping to avoid seeming pushy. Clients took advantage of that goodwill and delayed payment indefinitely. Fixing the billing sequence and the collections process brought that number down to roughly 210,000.
A construction company specializing in awnings and porch installations had an even larger problem: up to 4 million dollars in open collections at one point, driven by jobs marked complete before they actually were, which meant paying two crews to finish one job that still had not been paid for. Cleaning up job completion verification and the billing process cut that number to 1.2 million, a reasonable balance for their job volume and typical 40 to 60 day payment cycle. Both cases show the same underlying truth: fixing business operations is often a revenue project disguised as an efficiency project.
Fractional Executive vs Traditional Consultant
Kati draws a clear distinction between fractional support and traditional consulting, even though she describes them as functionally similar. The word fractional signals something specific: this person is not exclusively yours. For business owners who are used to possessive control over their resources, that framing takes some adjustment, but it also sets honest expectations from day one rather than implying a level of exclusivity that was never really on the table.
Your FRX operates on transparent, published pricing with no long term contracts and no upsell games. Clients can see the terms before ever booking a call. That transparency, paired with a team of specialists rather than one generalist trying to be everything, is what Kati believes separates a fractional executive relationship from the traditional consulting model many founders have grown wary of.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a fractional COO?
A fractional COO is an experienced operations executive who works with a business on a part time or contract basis rather than as a full time hire. They bring the same strategic judgment as a full time COO, applied across multiple clients, at a fraction of the cost of a dedicated executive salary.
What does a fractional COO actually do?
A fractional COO diagnoses where business operations break down, from lead intake through fulfillment and collections, and builds the systems and KPIs needed to fix those gaps. They also help leadership decide which roles genuinely need to be hired next rather than guessing.
How is a fractional COO different from a consultant?
The two roles overlap heavily in practice. Kati Peterman describes the difference as mostly branding: fractional signals upfront that the client is not the only one being served, while consultant carries an older reputation shaped by decades of inconsistent quality across the industry.
When should a business hire a fractional COO?
The clearest signal is a growing gap between the founder’s vision and the company’s actual capacity to execute on it, often showing up as slow response times, messy collections, or a team that has quietly taken on responsibilities outside their expertise.
Kati Peterman’s approach to business operations is built on the belief that structure creates safety, and safety is what allows a team to actually perform. For business owners who feel like every day is another fire to put out, that reframe alone is worth the conversation.
Connect with Kati Peterman and learn more about Your FRX at yourfrx.com, or reach out to her directly on LinkedIn.
To hear the full breakdown of the SIPOC framework, the collections turnarounds, and Kati’s advice for dealing with a my way or the highway manager, watch the full episode below.
