Strong Revenue Growth Can Hide Serious Problems. Here’s How to See Through It.
The numbers look great. Revenue is up. You’re beating budget. Leadership feels good walking into the quarterly review. But here’s the thing about overperformance: it can smooth over potential risks lurking in your business. When the headline number is positive, financial reviews get shorter. Questions get softer. The assumption is that if overall revenue growth […]
Your CFO Should Be Reading Your Contracts — Not Just Your Lawyer
There’s a common assumption in business: contracts are a legal matter, so you hand them to your attorney and move on. Your lawyer reviews the language, protects you from liability, and signs off. Done. But if your CFO isn’t also reviewing your contracts, you may be walking into financial commitments that are perfectly legal but […]
Is Your Sales Commission Structure Working For Your Business – Or Against It?
If you have a sales team, you almost certainly have a sales commission structure. What you may not have is confidence that it’s still the right one. Most business owners I talk to built their commission plan when the business was smaller. It made sense then. It was simple, it motivated the team, and it […]
Every $1M+ Business Should Be Using Accrual Accounting – Here’s Why
Business owners actively recoil when I mention terms like “cash vs. accrual accounting.” I get it – it’s not sexy, and it’s terminology that few understand or want to spend time thinking about. But if you want to truly understand your business and have the financial visibility to make better decisions – decisions that support […]
Why $10M–$50M Companies Are the Most Financially Vulnerable (And Don’t Know It)
There’s a particular stage of business growth that looks like success from the outside—and feels like barely keeping up on the inside. Revenue is solid. You’ve got a team. You’re winning customers and closing deals. But somewhere between $10M and $50M in annual revenue, a lot of privately held companies hit a wall they didn’t […]
Stop Fighting Fires. Start Leading Forward.
How a Fractional CFO Moves You from Crisis Mode to Confident Strategy My parents flew in from the UK for a long-awaited visit. We had plans — an island trip, good food, time to reconnect. Within hours of landing, my mum mentioned her tooth was bothering her. Nothing serious, she said. We’ll keep an eye […]
Stop Guessing, Start Testing: Why Every $5M+ Business Needs a Scientist in the C-Suite
Last week, I was sitting with a client, walking through a strategic reboot and repositioning, when I caught myself repeating the same word for the third time in ten minutes: hypothesis. The client paused, laughed, and said, “You really love that word, don’t you? It sounds like we’re back in high school chemistry class.” We […]
The Empty Seat: Why the CFO is the Last to Arrive (And Why That’s a Mistake)
In the high-stakes world of Fortune 500 companies, the hierarchy is clear: the CEO sets the vision, and the CFO builds the engine to get there. In these massive organizations, the CFO is undisputed as the second most important person in the room. Why? Because they are the stewards of capital, the mitigators of risk, and […]
What Small Business Owners Need to Know About the Current M&A Market
If you’re a small business owner who has ever thought, “Maybe I’ll sell one day,” the current state of the M&A market offers some important lessons, even if a sale isn’t imminent. I recently attended an event focused on the state of the M&A market, and while much of the media coverage centers on billion-dollar headline […]
Why Sensitivity Analysis Makes Your Budget Stronger
One of the toughest parts of building a business budget is predicting revenue. Expenses, while not always fixed, tend to be more predictable – you know your rent, payroll, software subscriptions, and baseline operating costs. But revenue? That’s where uncertainty creeps in. Sales cycles shift, customer demand fluctuates, markets change, and sometimes your “best guess” […]
Five Surprising Things That Might Be Hurting Your B2B Company’s Cash Flow
When most business owners think about cash flow, they focus on big-ticket items: sales volume, pricing strategy, or accounts receivable. While those are important, cash flow is often impacted by small, easily overlooked issues that quietly drain your bank balance or delay money coming in. In B2B environments, where projects span months and payment terms […]
How to Prepare Your Business Financially for a Major Growth Leap
Growth is exciting—but if your financial foundation isn’t ready, it can also be risky. Too often businesses hit a growth spurt without the right infrastructure in place. Sales climb, opportunities pour in, and suddenly everything feels urgent. But here’s the hard truth: growth doesn’t automatically make a business stronger. In fact, it often exposes weaknesses. […]