Collaborated on by: Susan Boles, Meredith Fennessy Witts, Caitlynn Eldridge, Carla Titus and Natalie Cook

Setting the foundation for a profitable and sustainable business starts at the onset.
It is crucial to have a clear understanding of your financial goals and the key metrics that drive your success. Work to define specific goals such as revenue targets, profit margins, and what you want to pay yourself. Often, getting super clear on what your baseline expenses are can help you define these goals in a clear & sustainable way. -Meredith, Le Chéile
Carve a niche for your business.
Do it gradually. You can’t provide everything to everyone – start by weeding out the types of businesses you do not like to work with and begin narrowing your client base to then define the clear offers that niche needs. By doing this, you get far more specialized & can craft offers at varying price points to cater to different needs. -Meredith, Le Chéile
As CFOs, we’re not here to judge you or your financial situation.
We’re not going to get mad at you, tell you that you’re doing the wrong thing, or “should” all over you. We’re here to give you ideas and strategies, based on our experience and expertise, and for you to take what works for you and leave what doesn’t. We’re here to support you in building the business YOU want to build, in the way that you want to do it. -Susan, Beyond Margins
YOU are the expert in your business.
You know your customers, your team, and your goals better than anyone else ever could. So let us in on the messy, the ugly, the stuff behind the scenes that is less than ideal. We can’t help solve problems if we don’t know they exist. And understanding what’s going on in other areas of your business, besides just your finances, can help us ultimately be better advisors to you. -Susan, Beyond Margins
Don’t go overboard in the good times and spend all the cash-down times will come.
We’ve seen a lot- including a lot of businesses going from making 1-3M a year down to half a million a year because the market shifted. Those who held on to cash were able to pivot and grow. Those who upgraded their lifestyle and the business too far, too fast- ended up closing doors. - Caitlynn, Eldridge CPA LLC
Echoing Susan- this is your business you have to be invested in it.
You cannot hire a CFO/Bookkeeper/CPA and then put your head in the sand around the numbers and tell yourself you “hired it out”. You need to continue to be an active participant for the best results (and to prevent any fraud from happening under your nose). -Caitlynn, Eldridge CPA LLC
Working with a CFO is a partnership that requires active participation, working through problem-solving, helping make decisions based on data, and supporting the CEO in considering all alternatives, risks, opportunities for the business to grow and become more profitable. The CFO has the same goal as the owner, to ensure the business succeeds in the long-term, meet all financial goals, balance investing for the short term while keeping the long-term in mind, and be profitable so the owner gets a great compensation to build wealth outside of the business. Hiring a CFO doesn’t mean you delegate and abdicate your decision-making, instead, you are enhancing your ability to make decisions by partnering with a thought leader who knows and brings the financial perspective. A good CFO should also help brainstorm ways to make ideas financially viable instead of just saying “no”. We are more than just a gatekeeper and more of a Chief Future Officer. - Carla, Wealth & Worth Within
CFOs with the right financial background live and breathe uncertainty and know how to best manage a range of possibilities with a touch of realism. We are trained to predict the future and the more we have done this work, the better we are at predicting patterns, trends, and areas of risk to watch out for. While the goals of forecasting or projecting are not going to be 100% accurate, we want to set the right direction for the business, so we can get everyone aligned going the same direction. Also, having a goal identified allows us to monitor and measure progress towards the goal, indicating it is time to pivot or adjust if it is not performing as expected. - Carla, Wealth & Worth Within
Your CFO is not your bookkeeper or your CPA.
There are 3 finance areas your business needs and they are all slightly different and necessary. Bookkeeping and CPA (Tax accounting) look backward and there to record what has happened. A CFO focuses on financial strategy and forward-looking business plans, they help manage cash and help with strategic decision-making. - Natalie, Copper8 Strategies
A CFO isn’t just for $100M businesses.
Virtual/ Fractional/Part-time CFOs are becoming more and more common and there is one to support YOUR business at any stage. The core of the virtual CFOs support businesses between $300k- $25M in annual revenue, but more and more are finding ways to support earlier businesses with less revenue (including all the lovely CFOs that are contributing to this post) Please make sure you have someone to chat about financial strategy with at every stage of your business journey. A CFO is a necessity, not a luxury! - Natalie, Copper8 Strategies