Why Some Fractional Sink While Others Surf

Surfing the Waves of Disruption

Most people in business are like swimmers bobbing in the ocean. As the swells roll under them, they rise and fall.

When the water drops and they slide downward, it feels like momentum. “Business is good. Things are moving.”

But then the swell lifts again. Progress slows, opportunities feel like they’re drying up, and panic sets in. “What went wrong? What do I need to fix?”

They scramble to adjust, often in ways that pull them out of position altogether. Then another swell comes, and the cycle repeats. Up and down. Hope and fear. Motion without much net gain.

Surfers move differently. They aren’t fooled by the bobbing. They’re scanning the horizon, paddling to meet a crest, positioning themselves so they can catch the front and ride the forward thrust of momentum. When they stand up, the wave itself carries them—farther than paddling ever could.

That’s the difference between getting tossed around by the market and letting the waves that emanate from disruption propel you forward.

How Waves Form

Every rideable wave starts with an impact—something striking the water, shifting the surface, stirring energy below. In business, those impacts are disruptions: new technologies, cultural shifts, radical policy shifts, shocks that leave entire sectors uneasy.

But here’s the key: the opportunity isn’t in the disruption itself—it’s in the waves that ripple outward from it.

• AI is the impact. The real wave is the flood of fear, uncertainty, and new needs it’s created—leaders searching for clarity, teams unsure how to adapt, companies desperate for guidance.

• Radical policy shifts are the impact. The wave is the disorientation they leave behind: organizations scrambling after sudden funding cuts, deregulation, or withdrawn support. Those reactions are where opportunity sits.

• Airbnb was an impact. It bypassed hotels by connecting travelers directly with people who had unused space—couches, spare rooms, backyard sheds. The wave was the model itself: using apps to connect customers with personal assets. That wave carried others forward—Uber in rides, Turo in cars, countless more.

If you stare only at the disruption, all you see is chaos and threat. If you look for the waves, you see the opportunities they generate.

Why Adaptive Leaders Catch Waves

What separates those who get tossed around from those who ride forward isn’t raw effort. And it isn’t the special attributes we project onto people who seem to succeed with ease.

From the outside, it looks like they know a secret, or they’re smarter, or they have some edge you don’t. But the real difference is simpler: they identified a wave and got in front of it.

That wave is the unmet need that rises from the impact of disruption. Adaptive leaders are tuned to those first ripples. When they see the swell, they start talking about it in the same way their customers and buyers are talking about it—naming the fear, the concern, the shift exactly as it’s being felt.

That’s what draws people in. The positioning to catch the wave isn’t only in your strategy, it’s in your language—in your conversations, in how you frame the current problem. It resonates as if you’re already inside the head of the person you’re selling to, even though you’re not in the same room.

That resonance is what lifts you. The wave provides the propulsion.

Closing Thought

You can drown most easily by bobbing up and down in place, mistaking motion for progress. Fractionals who learn to identify the waves of opportunity emanating from disruption don’t just survive—they thrive, wave after wave.

But here’s the trap: if you’re looking for the one fixed place for your business—the single problem that will always be your sweet spot, the one approach that will always work—you will eventually be left behind, wondering where all the business went. And that cycle is accelerating.

The good news is you don’t have to be left behind. Disruptions are coming faster, which means the waves they create are coming faster too. If you learn to spot them, there’s less time between rides, more chances to catch momentum.

Success isn’t about clinging to a permanent formula. It’s about learning to see the swells forming, positioning early, and letting the wave do the lifting. That’s how you keep moving forward while others are still bobbing in place.