Case Study: How a Fractional Head of Growth Helped Henry Find Its Growth Engine

Taylor Crane is the founder of Fractional Jobs, a matching service for fractional executive talent. In this case study, Taylor sat down with Aaron Montgomery, co-founder and CEO of Henry, a home-services startup in Richmond, Virginia, to learn how working with a fractional Head of Growth changed the trajectory of his business.

Aaron Montgomery is the co-founder and CEO of Henry - a home-services startup that takes on the big, messy middle between hiring a general contractor and doing the work yourself. Customers hand over their list of household tasks, and Henry quotes it, schedules it, and knocks it out, bringing in vetted partners for anything its own team doesn’t cover.

Henry operates with a lean internal team supported by trusted contractors and fractional specialists. Aaron’s leadership team includes a Head of Product, a Lead Engineer, a Head of Field Operations, and, since last fall, Emily Hollender as the company’s fractional Head of Growth.

When Aaron set out to make that hire, though, Henry hadn’t found its growth engine yet, and he wasn’t even sure what would get the business moving.

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Stuck in First Gear

Henry was working on a different version of the product then, one Aaron knew was exploratory. Getting it in front of people would take real marketing momentum, with deliberate consideration of positioning and messaging.

“Like most startup teams, we had bright generalists who could reason through what they’d do, but we just couldn’t get the right momentum,” Aaron said. The team could debate copy and tactics endlessly, but nothing held. “It just kept fragmenting, and we couldn’t hold up anything to get any momentum.”

What he was missing wasn’t hands or ideas. It was a voice of authority. “We just didn’t have anybody who could say, ‘I know this sounds weird, but I’ve been in startups forever with growth and marketing, so let’s try this,’” Aaron said. “The real problem I was trying to solve was having somebody at the table that the team could respect and rally around, and really suspend disbelief to try some things and give it real effort.”

The pain quickly sharpened. “It went from being a chafe to, we’re not going to get out of first gear if we can’t do this,” he said.

Aaron couldn’t tell whether the problem was the positioning, the product, or the marketing, and the uncertainty was paralyzing. “Can I at least remove one of those variables and say, it’s not the marketing?” he said. 

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The Goldilocks Hire

Aaron had looked at agencies and always came away unconvinced. Every conversation followed the same script.

“It was always, this is my hammer, I see your nail,” he said. “I’d have 10 of those conversations and get 10 different flavors of the same thing. ‘You guys are home services? I work with a refrigeration company, here’s what you do.’ But that’s not what we’re doing.”

“What I actually felt like I needed was a thought partner to say, I don’t know exactly what your thing is, but we’ll figure it out,” Aaron said. “And I never heard that from the agencies.”

A full-time hire carried the opposite risk. Without having discovered that growth engine, Aaron didn’t want to invest in a single expensive bet. “If I don’t know what I need even at this level, then over-indexing with a full-time hire feels even riskier,” he said. “I run the risk of fracturing what I’d built with the leadership team and going too far down a path when I wasn’t sure what we needed to do.”

Fractional was the middle path. “It felt like the right Goldilocks solution,” he said. “More thoughtful than an agency, with enough ownership that they’ll stake their reputation on the work, but without the expectation of being so embedded that you have to figure out from day zero how to make room for them.”

His one real concern was about attention. “If I met a fractional, how would I know I got the best of that person?” Aaron said. “I’d want them to be as excited as the folks who are here full-time, with skin in the game.”

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Why Fractional Jobs

Henry’s head of engineering, Nik, had pointed Aaron to Fractional Jobs, and in the process corrected an out-of-date assumption.

“Early in my career, fractional was code for burnt-out mid-level executives waiting for their next gig,” Aaron said. “Nik hipped me to how the whole space had evolved, into people building real practices with real expertise. I just had an outmoded definition of it.”

His own network kept dead-ending. Fractional Jobs opened up a different pool.

The level of curation Fractional Jobs provided stood out to Aaron. “It’s pretty turnkey: here’s what I want, and there’s a concierge layer,” Aaron said. “Rather than scanning the universe of profiles, I got to look at four or six selected for me. You need that layer, otherwise it’s the same as scrolling LinkedIn.”

He started the search around 50/50 on whether it would work, but seeing the candidates flipped it entirely. “It went from managing a downside risk to, what’s the absolute best? It felt more like draft day. This is a great draft class, we’ll be a winner with any of these folks. I wished I had five spots. It was massively de-risked from what I’d expected.”

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A First-Principles Match

Every candidate was talented, but Emily’s approach mirrored how Aaron’s team actually worked.

“She’d be able to compel our team on our own terms,” he said. “Whether something worked or didn’t, there’d be no second-guessing, because we all agreed it made sense and we were all in. It was pretty clear from day one.”

The interview process leaned old-school. Aaron ran intro interviews, brought finalists in for a problem-solving session with his co-founder, and asked each for a written brief on what they’d do. “Those three inputs gave us a sense of how they think, how they’d arrive at conclusions, and whether the problem was exciting for them,” he said. “It really was more dating than interviewing, and we got to meet some genuinely talented people.”

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A Scope That Grew on Its Own

Emily came on part-time, though as Aaron put it, “we never feel it.”

Her scope widened as fast as she could close problems. “It started with top-of-funnel acquisition,” Aaron said. “Once that got cracked, it shifted to repeat and referral and retention. Then it morphed into overall brand development, and there’s been partner and affiliate work. It’s organically grown into what I’d call a traditional growth marketing role.”

None of that expansion required renegotiating a statement of work. “She’s just not a consultant who says, well, that’s outside the scope of what we talked about,” Aaron said. “It’s, yeah, that makes sense, this is what I’d do next to grow the business.”

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Cracking the Growth Engine

At the start, no one knew which channels would actually drive demand, so the work was disciplined experimentation.

“In about four months, we ran deep tests in radio and direct mail, she found us great partners on digital, and we brought on social and influencers,” Aaron said. “Very disciplined. One thing at a time.”

Social emerged as the clear winner, but only a specific kind. “It wasn’t go pay Kim Kardashian for a mention,” Aaron said. “It was nano and micro influencers who had depth and the kind of problems Henry could help with.” Emily partnered with these authentic, local creators, which became an effective growth channel for Henry.

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Finding Real Traction

The results followed quickly. Henry soft-relaunched in November, made the full switch in January, and never looked back.

“January alone had more traction than the previous six months with the old model,” Aaron said. The business grew sharply in January, then sustained strong double-digit growth for the rest of the quarter. “The business we had on April 1st is miles from the one we had at Thanksgiving.”

Some of that came from organic reach that outpaced far better-funded competitors. “We literally picked our social handle in December,” Aaron said. “Closing in on 2,000 followers, thousands of likes, for a local business that came up out of the mud. There are venture-backed startups like us that have invested a lot and aren’t getting that kind of organic reach.”

That growth was in users and revenue grew even faster, as customers moved to bigger bundles and higher order values. For Aaron, the deeper win was that the engine freed the rest of the team. “I credit her so much with what we found in this Q1 growth,” he said. “She made it so the team could go make the experience great and delight customers, and trust that the phone would ring. We’ve got a capable pilot at the wheel.”

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Part of the Leadership Team

What surprised Aaron most was how little Emily felt like an outside contractor, despite working part-time across other clients.

“She just doesn’t have any air of mercenary about her,” he said. “That’s our head of growth, and she brings everything. I know that when we get off a call she’s got to go see her other clients, and that’s fine, but it doesn’t feel like that to me.”

That’s why Aaron counts Emily on the leadership team alongside his Head of Product, Engineering, and Field Operations.

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Aaron’s Advice for Other Founders

Aaron sees the model as a structural shift, not a stopgap. “The last time I built from zero to one was 2011, and the world is just so different now,” Aaron said. “This feels like the no-brainer option. It’s the same thing engineers are wrestling with around whether to start with vibe coding. There are ways to build leverage quickly that your old mental model was justifiably resistant to.”

He’d use Fractional Jobs again, and would go further next time. “I could almost make a case for building an entire early team around this to figure things out,” he said.

‍If this case study resonates with you, and you want to bring in a fractional Head of Growth like Emily, or any other kind of fractional leader, learn more about how Fractional Jobs can help connect you to the right person for the job. You'll be working with Taylor directly.

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Frequently Asked Questions

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Q: What is Henry?

A: Henry is a home-services company in the Richmond, Virginia area. It handles the range of household tasks that sit between hiring a general contractor and doing the work yourself: customers send their list, and Henry quotes, schedules, and completes the work, bringing in vetted partners for anything outside its own crew. Henry operates with a lean internal team supported by trusted contractors and fractional specialists.

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Q: How did Henry find the right fractional Head of Growth?

A: Henry worked with Fractional Jobs, a white-glove search service for fractional and contract hiring. After a thorough intake, Fractional Jobs presented a curated shortlist of candidates that the founder described as feeling “more like draft day” than a risky search, one of whom was hired as the company’s fractional Head of Growth.

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Q: What does a fractional Head of Growth do for a startup?

A: In this case, Emily Hollender owns growth on a part-time basis. She started with top-of-funnel acquisition, ran disciplined channel tests across radio, direct mail, digital, and social, then expanded into retention, referral, brand development, and partnerships. The role grew organically into a full growth-marketing function as she closed each problem.

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Q: What was the biggest result?

A: In January alone, Henry outgrew the previous six months combined, and that strong double-digit growth carried through Q1. User growth held that pace month over month, and revenue grew even faster. The founder credits the work with helping the company find its growth engine and freeing the rest of the team to focus on the customer experience.

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Q: Why hire fractionally instead of an agency or a full-time executive?

A: The founder wanted a thought partner, not an agency applying a standard playbook. At the same time, to discover a repeatable go-to-market motion, a full-time executive hire felt too risky and could have fractured the existing leadership team. A fractional hire provided senior judgment and real ownership, without over-committing before he knew exactly what the business needed.

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Q: How can I hire a fractional Head of Growth?

A: If you want to bring someone like Emily in to lead growth at your company, learn more here about how Fractional Jobs can help.