We flew San Diego to Dallas to Madrid to Barcelona to Florence. Two young boys who now consider themselves seasoned travelers. Bags that were somehow both overpacked and missing the thing we needed. And a work schedule that somehow had to survive all of it. This is what the fractional executive life looks like when you take it on the road.
The Time Zone Equation
Running client engagements across time zones has a rhythm to it. Italy is nine hours ahead of California. That means my mornings, before the kids needed anything, were for deep work: strategy documents, client prep, project output that needed focus. By afternoon, my American clients were starting their days and the calls began.
It also means I was on a client call while my boys were arguing, loudly, about whose turn it was to throw a small soccer ball into a trash can. Professional boundaries are a flexible concept when you're working from a living room in Tuscany.
What Actually Makes This Work
The fractional model is genuinely built for this kind of flexibility. You're not clocking in. You're accountable to outcomes: the strategy gets built, the sales process gets designed, the team gets coached. Whether that happens at 7 AM before your kids wake up or 8 PM after they're asleep is between you and your calendar.
The key is structure. Without it, the flexibility becomes noise. With it, you can take a day trip to work out of a cafe in Florence while the kids are in school, and still deliver everything your clients need. I front-loaded the mornings. I protected family time in the afternoons when possible. I let evenings run for client calls because that's when they needed me. It worked because the clients knew the boundaries and respected them, and because the structure was clear.
What Living Abroad Teaches You About Working
Communication is harder than you think. When you can't rely on shared language, you pay much more attention to how you're conveying something. You slow down, you watch for comprehension, you check in. That skill translates directly to client work.
Adaptability is a daily practice. Things don't work the way you expect: the pharmacy gives you lactation medication, the internet drops during a call, the school schedule shifts without warning. You adjust and keep moving. That's also what fractional leadership requires: comfort in uncertainty and the ability to pivot without losing momentum.
Presence is a choice. When your office is also your kitchen and your kids are ten feet away, you have to be intentional about when you're working and when you're not. The alternative is being half-present for both, which serves no one.
The Honest Tradeoff
It's not always smooth. There are days where the time zones stack badly, a client needs something urgent, and the kids also need something urgent at the same time. You make it work, but it takes energy.
What makes it worth it is the model itself. The fractional structure creates flexibility that a traditional executive role never would. You're building something, delivering outcomes, staying sharp, and doing it from a place where gelato is considered a daily essential and Serie A soccer matches are a reasonable Tuesday evening activity.
I'd do it again. Already planning it. Ciao for now.
Matt Greene is a fractional CRO and revenue strategist at Camden Jackson. He works with growth-stage companies on GTM, RevOps, and AI-powered revenue strategy. Get in touch.