For senior professionals with a pension worth keeping
Before you trade the pension for Tuesdays.
The Unfiltered Guide to Fractional Work for Senior Professionals. Four contributor voices, twenty-four sourced references, and not one of us with a course to sell you at the end.
The part the terrace photograph leaves out
Your salary was never the whole package.
The dream, as sold, is your current job on fewer days. The spreadsheet says otherwise.
Plus20 to 25%
Employer pension and National Insurance, on top of the pay you see each month. Gone the day you leave.
Plus a further15 to 20%
The true value of a typical benefits package. Your employer buys it at scale. You will buy it at retail.
Nearly47%
Of fractional executives earn under about £75,000 a year. If your base is £100k to £200k, that is not an adjustment. It is a different life.
Around90%
Of fractional leaders name finding clients as their biggest challenge. The figure barely moves with experience.
Benefits maths from Tony Bainbridge, thirty years leading HR in international businesses. Survey figures sourced line by line in the guide's notes.
What it answers
The four questions you run at 2am, answered with evidence.
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What happens to my income, actually?
Real day rates, the income distribution, and what a household has to absorb for eighteen months while a pipeline builds.
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Where would the clients come from?
84% of first clients come from an existing network. If yours is in the wrong sector, that is your first project, not your announcement post.
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Fractional, interim, NED, advisory, trustee or freelance?
Six flavours of part-time seniority on one page: realistic time, realistic money, and how each one is actually landed.
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If it fails, can I get back in?
A climate recruiter's own checklist for how a fractional stint reads when you want a permanent seat again. Spoiler: the way back is built during the stint, not at the end.
Inside the guide
A thinking guide, not another playbook.
Built so a senior professional can make a clear-eyed decision in either direction. Relieved and staying is a good outcome too.
The security-net maths
Pension, National Insurance, benefits and IR35, itemised the way your payslip never did.
The six flavours, mapped
One table. What each is, the real time commitment, the money, and how it is found.
Three questions to answer out loud
Would you enjoy selling yourself to strangers? Can the household absorb the drop? Is this a pull, or a bad Tuesday?
Where demand actually sits
Seed to Series B, commercial, finance and ops first. Why stage beats sector for almost every role outside the lab.
The way back
A recruiter's checklist for returning to permanent work, and the fear-setting exercise that makes the step reversible.
Routes in, with no affiliations
Communities, platforms, board networks and the reading list. No kickbacks, and the one first move that costs nothing.
Who wrote it
Written with people who see the demand side.
Cherry Swayne
Founder, Above and Beyond Recruitment. Places senior leaders into climate tech.
Wrote the demand side: what buyers pay, why fractional hires fail, and how the stint reads if you want back in.
Tony Bainbridge
Thirty years leading HR in international businesses. Advisor to Chapter Zero.
Wrote what candidates never see: the benefits maths your employer never itemised, and what first-timers underestimate.
Casey Rieder
Fractional CFO, investor and advisor, Magic 8 Group.
On scope creep, boundaries, and the freedom that did arrive.
Yanir Seroussi
Independent consultant to climate tech founders on AI and machine learning.
On discovering that fractional is a consulting business, and what that means for how you spend your week.
Compiled by Andy Nelson, The Positive Career Coach
Two decades in consulting, corporate leadership and scaling startups, sixteen of them as what LinkedIn would now call a fractional business leader. He made his own move into climate work and now helps senior professionals do the same without torching what they built to get there. People pay him for career strategy, so he is aware of the glass house. The guide is written accordingly.
Read it if
- Your base sits somewhere between £100k and £200k, and the pension is real.
- You have said "my current job, more time with the kids" out loud, and only half meant it as a joke.
- You would rather make this call with a spreadsheet than a LinkedIn carousel.
- You want to know the cost of stepping back before you step out.
Skip it if
- You want a five-step playbook and a Buy Now button.
- You are looking for permission rather than information.
- You already know, in which case one trustee application this quarter will test the whole thing for free. The guide covers that too.
Get the guide
Make this call with your eyes open.
Or close the tab, relieved, and keep the pension. Both are good outcomes.
Enter your details and the guide arrives by email within a few minutes. After that, the occasional note on senior career moves, written for people who read board packs. Unsubscribe whenever.
None of us has a fractional course to sell you. None of us earns a penny from which way you decide.