What a fractional CMO told us about AI and the capacity it frees up

The hours AI frees up inside a firm's jobs only become fee income when there is chargeable work to put them into, so a firm that plans where the time will come from also has to plan where it will go. Patrick Lynch, the founder of broden.ai, works on that second half, the marketing that wins the work, and what Patrick told us last month matches what we see in firms bringing AI in.

Patrick works as a fractional chief marketing officer for professional services firms, giving them senior marketing leadership without a full-time hire, with AI doing more of the work. Behind that are more than 20 years leading marketing teams and large budgets in ecommerce, fintech, SaaS and telecoms.

Every AI solution has to answer to a goal

Much of Patrick's work is sorting what is "window dressing" from what is "delivering results". It is a job "which sounds the simplest thing," Patrick said, "but so many times you go in and they're doing stuff and you go, 'So why are you doing that? How does that help with what you're trying to achieve?'"

AI needs the same question. Some firms have AI tools in use that nobody can tie to a goal, so the time spent on them never shows up in anything the partners measure. We start with where the firm wants to be in the next year, how it measures success and where leadership wants AI to help, so every solution on the roadmap answers to something the firm is trying to do. For most firms the first goal is more capacity, which only means something once the hours are counted.

Freed hours show up first in the recovery rate

For Patrick, "all of this new AI stuff is like manna from heaven," because it "allows you to do a lot more, a lot quicker." In a firm, that shows up first in the recovery rate. Every job has a time budget, and the fee is set from it. When a job runs over, the extra time is written off, so the firm bills less of the time it recorded. When AI brings jobs in inside their budget, less is written off, the recovery rate and gross profit rise, and the hours saved are free for more chargeable work, so the same team can take on more without adding headcount.

Each solution on the roadmap is fully costed from the time the team told us they spend on that task, so the partners see the case for it before anything is spent.

Spare hours only become fee income when there is work to fill them

Many of the firms we meet have been at capacity for a couple of years. They are very good at the work, and they stopped looking hard for new clients because there was no room to take them on. When AI frees those hours, the clients to fill them have to be won. "It's really cutthroat at the moment. There's a lot of companies out there," Patrick said. "But there's opportunities for organisations who get them set up right to make a real difference."

An hour that is freed and left empty still costs the firm a salary and brings in no fees. So we ask leadership what more capacity would mean for the firm before the roadmap is settled. If the answer is more clients, the firm needs a plan to win them alongside the solutions that free the time. If it is fewer jobs going over budget on the clients it already has, that changes which solutions come first.

To know how much capacity AI could free up in your firm, and where those hours would come from first, take the quiz below. It takes a few minutes.

A firm's own people are its best source of new work

Patrick thinks the firms doing well now turn their own people into ambassadors instead of buying media, and that it reaches existing clients too, because "their existing customers start going, 'Oh, okay, they could do that for us as well.'"

That takes time from the people who know the work best, whose weeks are usually full of chargeable work already. When a solution takes routine work off a senior person, some of those hours can go into the writing and the conversations that bring in new work. As more of the team uses AI for it, the question of which AI comes up quickly.

A firm's know-how should outlast any one AI tool

Patrick asked what we recommend when a team uses a mix of ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and others, because "you want some sort of consistency across what people are using". We put it in the solutions themselves, each written as instructions any AI agent can follow, so the firm owns that knowledge and a solution can run in Claude or as a Microsoft Copilot agent. Patrick agreed, because "nobody knows which horse is going to win the race." If a provider raises its prices or withdraws a model, the firm points a different AI at the same instructions, and the capacity it planned its growth around stays in place.

What firm leaders should do now

Put together, these points set out the order a firm needs to follow, whoever does the work.

Start with the firm's goals and its own work, broken down into the individual tasks and processes that create value for its clients: who does each one, how long it takes, what data it uses and who signs it off.

Before any solution, check the layers those tasks sit on: the business and each department, the tech stack, the quality, completeness and security of the data, compliance and governance, and the people who will work alongside the AI. Where a layer isn't ready, fixing it comes first.

Then set out a roadmap of solutions, each fully costed with the hours it frees up, what it costs to implement, its first-year return and what it does to the recovery rate on the jobs it touches, along with leadership's answer on where the freed hours will go.

Implement the solutions one by one, in the roadmap's order. Each runs where its data allows: on the AI provider's own cloud only when nothing sensitive is involved, on the firm's own server, where the provider never trains on what it sends, or on a machine in the office. Each has its risks designed out, is covered by the AI policy and has a named owner who checks its output before it reaches a client, so the standard of work stays where it was or rises. Once they are live, keep managing them as the models change, with the firm owning its knowledge and renting the AI.

Done in that order, the firm frees up capacity from the same team, puts it into chargeable work, hits its chargeable time targets and lifts its recovery rate and fee income, in a way that is compliant and keeps client data secure.

If you want us to do it for you, book a free call and we'll find you at least $50,000 a year in new business that AI can unlock. It's compliant, data-secure and has governance built in.

Know exactly how much capacity AI could give your team

Our quiz asks where your team's hours go, how often jobs run over their budgeted hours, where client data ends up and how you would know whether AI paid off. Your report shows where AI would free up your team's time first, the capacity it could give your firm in hours, and a 30-day plan for what to do.

We'll find you $50,000 a year in new business AI can unlock in 72 hours, or you don't pay.