The boom years built the cost base. Now it has to be reshaped.
Austin companies hired fast and committed to space and spend when funding was easy. When growth slows or a lender tightens, cash and credibility go first, and the founder needs a steady hand beside them.
How a good company ends up in trouble
It rarely happens all at once:
Costs built for a growth that stalled
Headcount, leases and contracts were sized for next year's plan, and next year did not arrive.
The lender is asking questions
Covenants, forecasts and a credit committee that wants answers the finance team cannot yet give.
The founder made the bets
The people who made the hard bets are not always the right ones to unwind them.
The team is watching
Staff read every signal, and the best are already taking calls from recruiters.
A fractional turnaround executive brings calm and method. They build the rolling cash forecast, speak to the lender, sequence the cuts and stabilise the team. They are in the building long enough to get you through the worst of it, and not a day longer than they are needed.
Who this is for, and who it is not
Best for
- A cash crisis that needs visibility and control now
- A business in operational or financial distress
- Lender or investor pressure that needs a credible plan
- A leadership vacuum that has stalled key decisions
- Stabilising the business before planning recovery
Not for
- A business that only needs advice or a written report
- A situation whose primary need is a formal insolvency practitioner
- A stable business planning improvements at its own pace
- A one-off review with no mandate to act
Help that holds steady
A curated collective behind the executive and our governance beside them throughout.
A steady review rhythm
Governance runs the length of the engagement, and problems are named while they are small.
Another view when it counts
Cash and operations problems tangle together, and the executive can pull in a colleague who has untangled them.
A ready brief, not a standby
There is no understudy waiting. We keep your brief current, so a fresh search can start quickly if needed.
Matched for pressure
Pressure tests anyone. We match for how an operator behaves with a lender and a tired team, not only the CV.
The turnaround engagement
Each engagement moves from crisis to recovery with structured urgency.
Rapid assessment (week 1)
Financial position, operational status, commercial pipeline and team capability, mapped with a structured diagnostic framework.
Priority triage (week 2)
The 3–5 interventions that will have the most impact on stabilisation are identified and begun. Ruthless prioritisation.
Stabilisation (weeks 3–8)
Cash flow is visible and managed. Acute operational failures resolved. Lenders or investors briefed with a credible recovery narrative.
Recovery (month 2 onwards)
Processes rebuilt. Commercial momentum recovered. Financial infrastructure strengthened. Business guided from crisis to sustainable operation.
Turnaround triage
The leadership a situation calls for depends on where the business is breaking.
The roles a turnaround usually calls for.
For a complex turnaround, we can deploy more than one operator at once and layer in further specialists as recovery progresses.
Restructuring experience from
The questions buyers ask first
Fractional Austin provides operational and executive leadership support. Where a situation requires insolvency, legal, restructuring or regulated financial advice, we work alongside the appropriate specialist advisers.
