You know exactly what you should be doing

Hello,

You know precisely what you should be doing.

LinkedIn posts. A newsletter. Regular content that keeps your name circulating while you're deep in client delivery.

You've read the advice. You understand the logic. You know that fractionals who stay visible between contracts don't scramble for the next one.

But here you are, three months into a demanding engagement, and your LinkedIn has gone quiet. Your newsletter idea is still in drafts. Your pipeline building happens in the gaps between client crises.

Sound familiar?

The Real Problem Isn't Time

Most fractionals think this is a time management problem. "Once this project wraps up, I'll focus on marketing."

But that's not what's happening.

The real issue is that marketing never feels urgent until your contract is ending and you need leads tomorrow.

When you're billing £3K+ per week to solve operational problems, posting on LinkedIn feels trivial. When a client needs a board presentation by Friday, writing a newsletter feels indulgent.

Your marketing gets starved because urgent always beats important.

Why "I'll Do It Later" Doesn't Work

Every fractional executive lives this cycle:

Week 1-4 of new contract: "I should probably stay visible, but this client work is demanding."

Week 8-12: "I need to post something, but we're hitting critical deliverables."

Week 16-20: "This contract might not renew. I should probably start networking."

Week 24: Scrambling on LinkedIn, sending cold messages, hoping something lands before the money stops.

The problem compounds because inconsistent marketing sends the wrong signal. Prospects see sparse LinkedIn activity and assume you're either not busy (which means you're not in demand) or too busy (which means you're not available).

Neither builds confidence.

The Fractal Executive's Dilemma

Here's what makes this particularly brutal for fractionals:

You sell expertise and judgment to high-stakes environments. Your clients pay premium rates because you deliver results under pressure.

But the skills that make you excellent at delivery – focus, prioritisation, crisis management – work against marketing consistency.

Marketing requires sustained attention to what feels like non-urgent activities. It needs rhythm, not intensity. It builds trust through frequency, not perfection.

Everything that makes you a great fractional executive makes marketing harder.

What Actually Works

The fractional executives who never hit dry spells have something their peers don't: systems that run whether they're paying attention or not.

They've outsourced the consistency problem. While they're optimising client operations, their marketing operations are also being optimised.

Their newsletter is published every fortnight. Their LinkedIn content appears twice weekly. Their Email Executive Briefing warms new contacts automatically.

None of this requires their daily attention. All of it protects their pipeline.

The Pipeline Insurance Model

Think about it this way: you wouldn't run a client's operations without backup systems. You build redundancy into critical processes because single points of failure are too risky.

Your pipeline is a critical process. Relying on your availability to keep it healthy is a single point of failure.

Smart fractionals treat marketing like infrastructure, not a hobby. They invest in systems that work when they're too busy to work on them.

Because the cost of an empty pipeline – £120K+ in lost revenue while you rebuild – makes a content system look like a bargain.

What Happens Next

Most fractionals read this, nod along, then go back to client work. They'll bookmark the insight and add "sort out marketing" to their to-do list.

Six months later, they're having the same conversation about the same problem.

The ones who break the cycle make a different choice. They stop trying to solve the consistency problem with willpower and start solving it with systems.

P.S. If this pattern feels uncomfortably familiar, I've built something that might help. The TB5 Publishing system handles the pipeline protection part so that you can focus on the client delivery part. No daily time required. Just results that compound.

[Subscribe here] to see how it works.