The Day Another Founder Changed Everything And why it became the reason I built FFS!

Written by Natalie Thumwood — Founder, FFS! Fractional Founder Support

I was seven years into building my business when things started to quietly unravel

Not dramatically. Not all at once. Just the slow accumulation of too many decisions, too many plates, and not enough of me to go around.

The business was still moving. From the outside it probably looked fine. But I was running on something thinner than energy. I was running on momentum alone, and I could feel it starting to give.

I had tried the usual kinds of help. People who were capable and well-meaning but who needed context I didn't have time to give. Who completed tasks but didn't understand the weight behind them. Who I had to manage on top of everything else I was already managing.

It helped at the edges. It didn't touch the middle.

Then another founder stepped in.

She was a neighbour. Also a founder, in a quieter period with her own business. She didn't need a brief. She didn't need three weeks of onboarding or a long explanation of the stakes. She already understood them.

She simply looked at what I was carrying and said: I'll take that.

And she did. With the same level of ownership I would have brought to it myself. The same speed.

The same standards. The same instinct for what mattered and what didn't.

For the first time in years, I put something down.

What struck me wasn't just that the work got done. It was how it felt to hand it to someone who understood the pressure behind it without me having to explain. There was no translation required. No careful briefing. No managing expectations.

She just knew. Because she had carried the same things herself.

That three months changed my business. But more than that, it changed how I thought about what founders actually need.

Not more advice. Not more tools. Not more hustle content.

Another founder beside them. Someone wired the same way. Someone who takes real ownership and delivers without being led by the hand.

I started reading the research afterwards, trying to understand why that experience had felt so different. What I found was that the cognitive profile of a founder — the way we process uncertainty, ownership, risk, complexity — is genuinely distinct. When two people share that orientation, something shifts. Decisions land faster. The load feels different. Work accelerates in a way that's hard to explain until you've felt it.

That is the idea behind FFS!

Not a consultancy. Not an agency. Not a VA service.

A fractional co-founder. Someone who steps into your business with the same ownership and urgency you bring to it yourself. Who holds the strategic and the practical at the same time. Who understands what you're carrying without needing it explained.

I built FFS! because I experienced firsthand what changes when a founder finally gets the right kind of help.

I know how rare it is. I know how much it matters.

And I know it shouldn't be as hard to find as it was for me.

If any of this sounds familiar, I'd love to talk.

https:www/ffs-help.uk