Less chaos.
More clarity.
Built to last.

Fractional COO support for founders who are great at building product and ready to stop holding everything else together with duct tape.

Let's talk
Katie Barnes

Who this is for

You're running a real business.
It just wasn't built for this size.

01

Everything runs through you.

Every decision, every fire, every question your team can't answer without checking in first. You're the single point of failure — and you know it.

02

The revenue is real. The systems aren't.

You've grown past the duct-tape phase but the structure hasn't caught up. Things fall through the cracks. You're rebuilding the plane while flying it.

03

You're great at the work. Not great at this.

Operations, process, org design — none of it is why you started this company. And yet here you are, spending half your week on it.

"You didn't break it. You just outgrew the way you built it."

I'm a fractional COO.
Here's what that ACTUALLY means.

I come in, assess what's actually broken (not just what feels broken), and build the operations, systems, and team structures that let your business run without you in every room. It's not consulting. I'm not handing you a report. I'm doing the work with you.

01

Fractional COO

Ongoing, embedded ops leadership. I become part of your team without the full-time cost. We build the systems your company needs to grow without you as the bottleneck.

02

Advisory

You've got a leadership team but you need a thinking partner. Someone who asks the hard questions, spots what you're too close to see, and helps you prioritize what actually matters.

03

Project-Based

One thing is breaking everything else. We find it, fix it, and document it so it doesn't break again. SOPs, org design, hiring processes, team rhythms. We finish it.


How it works.

Step 01

We talk first.

A real conversation — not a sales call. Tell me what's going on. I'll ask questions. We figure out together if this is the right fit.

Step 02

I look at everything.

Not just the obvious stuff. How decisions get made, where things slow down, what your team is missing, and what you're doing that someone else should be doing.

Step 03

We build the fix.

Not a deck. Not a framework. An actual solution — systems, processes, and rhythms that work for your specific business and team.

Step 04

I hand it back.

The goal is always your independence. I train your team, test the handoffs, and make sure it runs without me in the room. That's how I know it worked.

Katie Barnes
About Katie

I'm not a consultant.
I'm the person who fixes it.

I've spent 15 years inside companies that were growing faster than their operations could handle. I've been the one untangling the org chart, rewriting the onboarding process, and figuring out why the same problems kept coming back.

Here's what I know for sure: most founders are genuinely excellent at what they do. They're just not supposed to be running operations, managing people, and building systems on top of everything else.

That's where I come in.

I take the ops off your plate, the stuff that's quietly holding you back, and build something that actually works. I care a lot about doing it right. And even more about making sure you don't need me forever.

When I'm not embedded in someone's chaos, you'll find me at a live show, trying a new restaurant, or wrangling a toddler and a dog with my husband in St. Louis. (The dog is easier.)


From the newsletter

Real talk about running a business.

No content calendar. No hot takes. Just honest writing about operations, leadership, and what it actually looks like to build something durable — from someone who's in the weeds with founders every week.

Read on Substack →
Let's talk

Tell me
what's going on.

No pressure, no pitch. Just a conversation about where things are and whether I can help.

Got it. I'll be in touch soon.

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