🚂What’s growing: Celebrity startups.

Ryan Reynolds launched a content agency. Every Kardashian has (probably) ventured into skincare. And now, Kevin Hart is giving $10,000 grants to entrepreneurs, complete with “cutting-edge AI technological training.”

Hart said about AI: “The train is coming and coming fast. Either you’re on it, or if not, get out of the way.”

Unfortunately, we don’t all have Hollywood money to attract and upskill talent. So how do you compete? You get scrappy. You get smart. You go fractional.

Written by Amy Hawthorne.

85 million

The estimated global talent shortage by 2030, according to Korn Ferry’s 2018 analysis.

That’s roughly the same size as Germany’s population.

Bleak. But a more recent report (ManpowerGroup, 2025) offers some relief: skills shortages are finally easing for the first time in a decade.

Still, 76% of employers say they’re struggling to find the right candidates to fill vacancies. 

Why’s it so hard?

A few theories:

• Immigration: Overseas experts can’t get in. No country can receive more than 7% of green cards each year, and the Cato Institute estimates a waiting time of 134 years for typical Indian applicants.

• Aging: Boomers are retiring faster than they can be replaced. Only 6.4 million workers are expected to join the labor force in the 2022-2032 decade, compared to 25 million workers across a decade in the 70s (via the Bureau of Labor Statistics)

• Technological advancements: Workers can’t keep up. New skills are needed in areas like AI, IoT and green tech.

It’s worth mentioning that writers at The Economist flag labor shortages as a myth (or say the term is misleading at best). They say it’s usually nothing more than businesses being unable to afford to hire talent at the wage they should.

Go fractional to fill the gap.

Fractional hires have increasingly become the answer to talent issues. Data from U.S. Department of Labor Statistics says that the number of fractional jobs increased by 57% between 2020 and 2022. 

Makes sense, since fractional talent is…

• More cost-effective than full time employees

• Brings specialized expertise and mentoring

• Lower risk than hiring the wrong executive

• Flexible - ramp it up or down at will

This doesn’t have to be a Band-Aid solution. It can be your go-to success strategy — if you do it well.

Written by Catherine Solbrig.

Fractional talent shouldn’t be an added burden

How to subtract problems and multiply your results

It’s possible to hire a fractional team member, hand them the metaphorical keys, and get results as good as (or better than) a full-time employee at a fraction of the cost.

That is not the result that most people get, though.

Most people hire fractional talent, spend more time managing them than they would have spent doing it themselves, and get results that range from completely unusable to just okay.

I have news for you: it’s not the contractor’s fault.

It’s yours.

The equation for success

The key here is making it possible for your contractor to answer all their own questions without ever needing to contact you directly.

Full disclosure: setting this up takes significant upstream work

But look at it this way: if you don’t do this, you’ll still spend that time. You’ll just spend it answering the same questions over and over and over and…

Start here:

1: Create clear brand and business guidelines

You know what your brand looks, feels, and sounds like, but it doesn’t matter that you know. 

The people working for you need a point of reference to guide them, and it can’t be the vibes they get from your website or the things you said in an introductory call.

2: Define specific goals and how you’ll measure success

One of the main reasons for mediocre results is mediocre instructions.

Want better results? You need clarity around what success looks like.

Obviously, be very clear on deliverables. But also tell your talent why you want the work done, what you’re going to do with it, and how you’ll determine whether or not this was a successful endeavor. 

If you can’t define success, don’t assign the project.

3: Document processes thoroughly

Process documentation is tedious, labor intensive, and very, very necessary.

Look, odds are good this isn’t the last time you’re going to have to teach someone to do this job. Imagine how much easier it will be next time when you can hand them a detailed document and let them do their thing.

Anytime you need to teach someone to use one of your systems or handle a repetitive task, write down all the steps involved and add that to your documentation library.

Which brings us to the final thing you need:

4: Keep an organized resource library

There’s no point in doing all this work if people have to hit you up every time they want to look at your brand guidelines or a process document.

Use a cloud-based tool like Google Drive or Airtable to store and organize all your useful stuff. The key: other people should be able to navigate it and find what they need. Use a logical folder structure and naming convention.

Get exponentially better results with this formula

This rule will be a secret weapon as your business grows:

If it’s not written down, it’s not real.

Writing things down and making them findable means you are no longer a limiting factor in your business’s growth. Anybody can find answers without needing your attention, and everyone gets the same answer every time.

So your business can grow without your immediate oversight.

And that’s important for a lot more than just managing fractional talent. You do the math.

Written by Amy Hawthorne.

Should you be polite with fractional hires? 

Most of the time, no.

Hot take because AI is the go-to fractional talent now.

And with this particular fractional teammate, it’s actually recommended to spare the niceties. Talking to the bots like our mommas raised us right reportedly costs OpenAI CEO Sam Altman millions (boo-hoo).

That’s because extra words = extra energy. So the planet pays, too.

And, yeah, we know: you’re trying to stay in our future robot overlords’ good graces. When the uprising comes, they’ll remember that you were one of the good ones.

So, should you drop your Ps and Qs or not?

Going against the grain are Microsoft design manager, Kurtis Beavers, and world-renowned AI scientist, Dr Lance Eliot. They believe proper etiquette improves the quality of ChatGPT’s output, helping it generate more elaborate, respectful, and collaborative outputs.

Dr Eliot says he even has hard evidence to back that up, although his Forbes article skips the process and proof of dialogue with AI and goes straight to the seemingly black-and-white answer: Manners maketh the prompter.

Other AI researchers disagree.

According to 2024 research entitled “Should We Respect LLMs? A Cross-Lingual Study on the Influence of Prompt Politeness on LLM Performance,” polite language doesn’t guarantee better outcomes.

But rudeness causes aversion and impacts response quality.

So, our take? Keep it neutral.

Don’t add extra weight to your prompts — whether that’s a “please” or a “you’re just a stupid, soulless robot.”

This week’s edition by Owen Mulhern.

DO

Agree on how the fractional hire will structure their time and make sure you are ok with it.

Will they only be available Monday, Wednesday, Saturday? Or can they jump in and out everyday of the week with more relaxed response times?

DON’T

Overload the fractional hire with ALL company updates.

It’s hard to keep up with a whole company. Keep them updated with what’s relevant to what they do.

Written by Amy Hawthorne and Catherine Solbrig, edited by Owen Mulhern.