Fractionally Femme Subscribe (opens in a new tab)

For ex-corporate girlies turned VAs, OBMs, and/or fractional agency owners

From running the work to leading it.

For the women doing the work behind other people's businesses. The ones who keep everything running, including the parts nobody talks about.

Read our first letter

About one letter a week. Unsubscribe anytime.

Sallie standing behind McKenzie, who sits on a leather sofa, both smiling
McKenzie and Sallie clinking latte cups at a wooden table

sleep · clients · kids · sourdough · faith · retainers · school pickup · rest ·

Why Fractionally

Fractional, in both senses.

Two lattes passed across a wooden table

There's fractional work, and there are the fractions of a life: the sleep, the clients, the kids, the sourdough, the faith, the rest. We write about all of it, because in our businesses none of it stays in its lane.

Fractionally Femme is a Substack from McKenzie Jevnikar and Sallie Micula. We both left corporate and built our own businesses, and still caught ourselves saying yes to too much at a rate we'd outgrown, which is why we started writing this.

You might be one of us if...

  1. You'd call yourself a VA, an OBM, or "honestly, I just kind of run everything." The work is starting to look a lot like fractional, even if you haven't called it that yet.
  2. You do everyone's marketing but your own.
  3. Your clients want the whole system, and they don't want to pay for the hours it takes to build it.
  4. You raised your rates and somehow you're working more than before.
  5. You have two openings next month and no idea how to say so without sounding desperate.
  6. You're building your own business in the gaps between client work.
  7. You want steady retainers and your evenings back.

If you just said "ugh, me" out loud, hi. You're in the right inbox.

What we write about

Say the thing nobody posts

The month the inbox went quiet. Why billing by the hour rewards you for taking longer. We'll get into client breakups too, including the ones we handled badly, and the stuff everyone hints at in the Facebook group and nobody says.

Trust the nudge

Human design and gut checks, right next to the spreadsheet. Faith too. We trust intuition and we still check the numbers.

Life sets the shape

We didn't leave corporate to build another corporation. This is where we write about building a business around kids and a cross-country move, plus the math on fractional versus full-time when a salary starts looking good. The espresso machine stays.

We tried it so you don't have to

Every AI tool and trend gets tested on our own businesses first. If it's ChatGPT cosplaying a brand, we'll tell you. If it actually gave us our Fridays back, we'll show you how.

Hi, we're McKenzie and Sallie.

McKenzie Jevnikar smiling on a leather sofa in a brown cape blazer

McKenzie Jevnikar

the community builder

I started freelancing in 2016 and founded Covalent Creative in 2021 as a VA and OBM agency. Today it's an operations and marketing firm for healthcare and service businesses, and in 2025 I went fractional COO myself. I've made most of the pricing mistakes already, so I know which ones hurt. And I'll keep telling you that getting paid for your brain beats adding ten more clients or a team.

I'm a Generator and a Cancer sun, and I talk fast. I sleep on every big decision for 48 hours, unless I've just found a new AI tool, in which case I'm up all night with it. I'm a mom of two in North Carolina. I love a launch the way other people love rollercoasters, and I hate rollercoasters.

Sallie Micula smiling in a cream blazer in front of a bookshelf

Sallie Micula

the marketer

I became a VA so I could work from home, then realized my skill set was way higher. I went fractional through contract work, running marketing as a fractional CMO. Then I took a full-time role again, on my own terms, and kept my agency running alongside it. Almost nobody in this space admits to doing that.

I build funnels and teach, and I'm done being treated like I should be cheaper. Manifesting Generator, Scorpio sun. I usually know my answer in about two seconds, so I'll spot the problem in your offer before you've finished explaining it. I live in Arizona now, and somehow I still cook a real dinner.

McKenzie taking a selfie with Sallie at a blue cafe table on a patio

We met in 2024, when McKenzie hired Sallie as a VA to cover her maternity leave. We clicked right away and lost hours on every call. Now we mostly talk each other out of bad decisions and into raises.

The room opens in January.

Reading is free, and so is Coffee + Connection, our monthly call. In January we're opening a paid room where we review real client work together and hand over the pricing and scope templates we use ourselves.

You're probably overcoached already, so there's no hard sell coming. We'll tell you when the door opens, and you can decide if you want in.

Support for the support doers

Let your life set the shape.

We each made the leap a different way, and we write about what it took, including the parts that didn't go well.

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