Fractional Operations · Proposal

Effective operations management for the solo founder.

Prepared forSophie Helfend · The Art of Broth
Prepared byCesar Bustamante & Smit Shakya · VMS Creators
DateAugust 25, 2026
$2,000
per month, flat
30/60/90
check-in structure
Month-to-month
no long-term lock-in
Immediate
start date

Scope of work

Nothing fancy here — this is everything you told us on the call, written down so we're on the same page. You keep sales, marketing, and the brand. We take everything between the purchase order and the customer's door.

Orders & Invoicing

B2B order management

  • Purchase orders — everything coming in gets processed, and POs go out to suppliers and co-mans through QuickBooks
  • Invoicing — distributor and direct-sale invoices sent, tracked, and chased until paid
  • Samples — B2B samples out through ShipHero, with a real follow-up rhythm so no lead from your events goes cold
  • Regular check-ins with your B2B accounts: how's the product moving, any feedback, when's the reorder
Supply Chain & Production

Ingredients, suppliers & co-packers

  • Staying on your suppliers — we own those relationships day to day, so the next "no chicken bone broth until February" call is ours to fight, not yours
  • Inventory forecasting — watching sell-through against lead times so the 5,000-lb run gets ordered well before you run out
  • Day-to-day back-and-forth with your Texas co-packer while the current run wraps up — scheduling, spec confirmations, and holding everyone to their delivery dates
  • Tracking COGS on every run, with a plan for hitting the volume tiers as you go from 1,000 to 5,000 lbs
Logistics

Freight & shipping

  • First up: getting your finished run from the co-packer to the 3PL — that one's ready to hand off today
  • LTL quoting across your carrier list — we send the blast, compare the bids, and book the best one
  • Every freight leg — co-man to co-packer to 3PL — planned, booked, and tracked so nothing sits
Systems

Systems, SOPs & visibility

  • ClickUp workspace — every PO, follow-up, and shipment becomes a task with an owner, a status, and a deadline. Nothing lives in someone's inbox
  • Daily check-off dashboard — you open it, you see what got done today. No asking, no chasing
  • Written SOPs for everything we do repeatedly — so the whole operation is plug-and-play for whoever comes next
  • Automations where they actually earn their keep: email-to-task intake, ShipHero syncing, follow-up reminders

How we work

You were clear about what hasn't worked with ops people in the past. So here it is, in writing:

You hear about problems the minute they show up

No "we thought we could figure it out on our own." Something goes sideways, you get a Slack message that day — with what happened and what we think we should do about it.

We come to you first

Proactive updates on Slack, always. You should never have to wonder what's happening or feel like you need to check in on us.

Everything's visible, every day

The dashboard shows what got checked off today — chased the supplier, sent the invoices, booked the freight. You see it without asking. That's the whole point.

Take a look before you decide anything

We built a sample ClickUp workspace around your actual workflows — POs, B2B follow-ups, freight, the daily dashboard. Click around for five minutes and picture your Tuesday looking like this.

Tour the workspace

How the work unfolds

Three phases. First we take the weight off and learn your business from the inside. Then we make it run smoother. Then we make it make you money. Most people do it backwards — they start optimizing before they understand anything.

Phase 1 · Days 1–30

Understand the process, build the foundations

We take over the daily load right away — POs, invoicing, samples, freight, supplier chasing — and in doing the work, we learn how your business actually flows. Everything gets captured into the ClickUp workspace: every order a task, every workflow visible. The dashboard goes live in week one, and the first job on the board is getting your finished run over to the 3PL.

Phase 2 · Days 31–60

Optimize the process

Now that we know where the friction is, we sand it down. SOPs get written for everything repetitive. Automations go in where they save real time — email-to-task intake, follow-up reminders, ShipHero syncing. Inventory forecasting gets locked to the 5,000-lb run timeline. By the end of this phase, the operation runs on rails and anyone could be onboarded into it.

Phase 3 · Days 61–90

Add value

With the machine running, we point it at growth. Costs: COGS-per-stick roadmap against your volume tiers, freight benchmarked and renegotiated, supplier terms revisited with a track record behind us. Supply chain: lead times measured, the next run planned earlier and cheaper. Sales operations: the B2B follow-up engine designed so no lead from your events ever goes cold — ops working for the sales side, not just underneath it.

Investment

$2,000
per month, all-inclusive
  • Month-to-month. We sit down at 30, 60, and 90 days and you decide if we keep going. If it's not working, you tell us to get lost and we part as friends.
  • Billing your way. Bi-weekly or monthly, whichever is easiest on your cash flow — paid at the beginning of each cycle.
  • You get us, not a team of juniors. Cesar and Smit, directly. Nothing gets handed off or outsourced.
  • No nickel-and-diming. We're not going to count hours or fight you over scope. If something big comes up outside ops, we just talk about it like adults.

References

Founders and operators we've worked with across CPG, supplements, and manufacturing. Reach out to any of them — no scripts, no heads-up from us. They'll give you the honest version.

Andrea Ridout
Owner, White Rock Granola & Snackola — CPG food brand, Dallas, TX
LinkedIn
Andrew "Dru" Riess II
CEO — manufacturing & packaging, Frisco, TX
LinkedIn
P. Brandon Pogue
CEO, TruLabs — supplement brand, McKinney, TX
LinkedIn
Brian Hart
Owner, The Vitam — CPG beverage brand, Dallas–Fort Worth, TX
LinkedIn
Derek Ramos
Owner — ecommerce & Amazon growth consultancy, Dallas, TX
LinkedIn
Justin Earl
CEO, Tejas — flexible packaging for the nutraceutical industry, Dallas, TX
LinkedIn
Richard Riccardi
Advisor — CPG advocate & writer, 52 Steps Forward
LinkedIn
Tim Prager
Advisor — CPG operator, Sunday Wash, Dallas–Fort Worth, TX
LinkedIn
Trystin Nance
CEO, Ascentix Innovation Labs — supplement brand, Charlotte, NC
LinkedIn

Next steps

Chat with a reference or two, poke around the workspace, and if it feels right — say the word. We can start this week, and the first thing we'd grab is getting your finished run from the co-packer to the 3PL, so that's one thing off your plate before we've even settled in.

Cesar BustamanteVMS Creators · cesar@vmscreators.com
On the webvmscreators.com
ConnectLinkedIn