Your Virtual CFO

I spent 10 years in investment banking, M&A, and PE-backed businesses. One thing became obvious: Growing businesses often outgrow their financial infrastructure long before they realize it. The books get done. But nobody is answering questions like: → Why does cash feel tight? → What's actually driving profit? → Can we afford to hire? → Which parts of the business deserve more investment? That's where I help. I provide bookkeeping, outsourced accounting, and fractional CFO services to business owners that need more than a CPA but aren't ready for a full finance team. My job is simple: Turn financials into a tool for making decisions. If you're a business owner looking for more clarity around your numbers, book a free 30-minute consultation through my website. I'll help you identify where the biggest opportunities and bottlenecks are in your business.

I see this all the time with companies I work with. And what Stripe holds back is just one piece of it. The other cash traps that catch operators off guard: → Inventory bought upfront, sold on terms - cash goes out months before it comes back → Growth itself. The bigger the order, the more cash you front before you collect → Net-60 receivables while you’re paying vendors net-15 → Prepaid annual software, insurance, rent - all hitting at once → Estimated tax payments on profit you haven’t actually collected yet → Seasonal swings where you fund the slow months out of pocket Every one of these looks fine on the P&L. None of them show up until the bank account is empty and you can’t figure out why.

Raise your hand if your business has ever been profitable and cash-poor at the same time. Because that's a real thing. And almost no one talks about it. Revenue ≠ cash. Profit ≠ cash. Growth ≠ cash. The one that gets most operators: payment processor rolling reserves. Stripe and Shopify Payments hold 25% of your revenue for up to 90 days. At $100K/month that's $25K sitting somewhere you can't touch. At $500K/month it's $125K. Has this hit you? Drop it below.

@Tyler_Caboodle What do you mean by flipping it?

Been focused on putting the systems in place to hire and integrate a GM to lead our 4 ops brands. But the more we dig into the numbers, job requirement, and goals of the company, we’re considering a flip of the business and hiring model. Feels too important to get wrong.

@FrontierBDesign This is SO important I’m sure it can be a daunting task for most owners to undertake, which is probably why it gets kicked down the road

I always push job costing in almost every engagement because it's not typically prioritized. 39% est. gross margin ends up being 32%. No big deal. On a 10k job, that's $700 you're leaving out there. Let's say you have 20 jobs like that over the course of a year. $14,000. Fix the middle and recover your margin.

@goodhandscap This looks awesome!

You can’t see your own business from the inside. I spent years on senior leadership teams, owning the P&L, sitting in every strategy meeting, and building the dashboards myself. And the uncomfortable truth is that the inside view always lies a little. Prices that never get reset. Big customers nobody dares re-price. Comp plans quietly paying the team to chase the wrong revenue. Accepting growth at the pace of the market. It all starts to feel normal. What I always craved was a cold, outside set of eyes. No politics. No story telling or sacred cows. Just: here’s what a clear eyed stranger sees in your pricing, customers, and growth. So I built it. A free Outside-In Value Scan - two pages built entirely from your public footprint: • Your Big 3 profit opportunities • A competitive price benchmark • A Repeat & Refer Index™ on how likely your customers are to buy again and bring others Here’s a real (anonymized) sample 👇 The first time we ran the full version, it surfaced $1.7M in EBITDA opportunities. Free this week. Only 10 slots. No systems access, no obligation. If you’re a $5-100M business operator or owner, comment “SCAN” or head to goodhandscap.com Let’s find the money you’ve been leaving behind.

@FrontierBDesign Necessity is the mother of all invention!

Mine was neither nature nor nurture if I’m being honest. It was survival. I was forced into it after a 46 minute conversation. Fam of 6. $150k income down zero over night. Fortunately, a few small businesses I had built over the previous decade have assisted the past 6 months. I didn’t have irrational optimism at the time. It came when I realized the previous 15 years were all prologue for this next adventure. Sometimes people like me have to be forced to take risks. 🤷‍♂️

When I was about 10, my buddy and I started a snow shoveling business. We’d wait for a big storm, grab our shovels, and go door to door before anyone else was even awake. By lunchtime we’d each have around $500 in cash. At that age, that was all the money in the world. I was hooked. Even then, I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur. Then life happened. I went the safe route - corporate, finance, the path that made sense on paper. Good career, stable income. But somewhere along the way I told myself I’d missed my window. That the entrepreneur thing was a childhood dream, not an adult reality. Turns out I was wrong. A year ago I finally bet on myself and started building my own thing. And it made me think about a question I still don’t have a clean answer to: Is being an entrepreneur nature or nurture? Honestly, I think it’s both. There’s a spark some people are born with — two 10-year-olds dragging shovels through the snow at 6am didn’t learn that from anyone. But that spark dies if it never gets nurtured. Environment, experiences, the people around you either feed it or bury it. But here’s the part nobody says out loud: you also need a certain irrational optimism to actually do it. A confidence that borders on delusional. Because on paper, leaving the safe path to build something from scratch is a little crazy. The math doesn’t always work. The certainty isn’t there. You have to believe it’ll work out before you have any real proof that it will. Maybe that’s the real answer. Entrepreneurs aren’t just born or made. They’re the ones a little too optimistic to talk themselves out of it. Curious where others land - nature, nurture, or something else?

@goodhandscap I think that’s right! Do you think you’d try to push your kids one one direction or the other?

I was rooted for a good snowstorm myself, $500 is a great haul! I lean towards those having irrational confidence and optimism about the future as being key input to want to be entrepreneur. Can be both nature and nurture… example if we both go full entrepreneur and our kids see the joy this brings us then I think they are more likely to want to start their own thing some day.

@vrexec Time to upgrade your wardrobe to Kirkland signature

I’ve been wearing the same three pairs of shorts (red, white, and blue) from the J.Crew outlet store in Jackson, NJ for over six years now… they’re the only casual shorts I own. I’m about to lose one of them.

@tablerockadv Totally! Was there a moment where that clicked for you?

@YourVirtualCFO This is awesome. I think people often think that others have it all figured out. Once you realize that everyone is in their own path and everyone is trying to figure it out, mentally things get easier.

“Nobody knows what they’re doing before they do it.” — Will Guidara, Unreasonable Hospitality This line stopped me cold. I’ve worked across a dozen industries in accounting, finance, and M&A. I’ve seen a lot. But here’s the honest truth: that doesn’t mean I always walk into a client problem knowing the exact right answer. What it does mean is I have the skills, the knowledge, and the network to figure it out. That’s the actual value. Not having every answer memorized - but knowing how to find the right one, fast, for a problem I’ve never seen in that exact form before. And honestly, that’s never been more true than it is today. Between Google, YouTube, and AI, there is almost nothing you can’t figure out in a matter of hours anymore, no matter how complex. The advantage isn’t knowing everything. It’s being resourceful enough to solve anything. This mindset showed up somewhere I didn’t expect: becoming a dad. Our first is due in October, and for a while I was nervous. I didn’t know how to do any of it. But this same lesson applies. You will never have all the answers up front. What you can do is stay flexible, be honest about what you don’t know, and go figure it out. That’s the whole game. In business and in life. Once you realize you don’t need to know everything, only how to figure things out, the fear starts to fade. And you realize you can take on just about anything. And honestly? It’s the most freeing feeling in the world. When you stop waiting to feel ready and realize you can just do things, everything changes. Suddenly anything feels possible - because it is.

@goodhandscap So interesting- I wonder if it’s always been this way, or for some reason there’s been a shift and more people are getting into entrepreneurship now

Last night was a buddy’s 40th. A bunch of us who scattered all over the country got back together, and by midnight half of us were in the hot tub talking business. One guy is productizing his service company. Another is rolling up home services the right way, real software, real customer experience. A third is building something brand new in his space. Every one of them was lit up talking about the rabbit holes they are going down. Nobody complaining about work. Everybody chasing something. Funny thing is most of us are deep in the young kids stage, where the old advice says slow down and play it safe. Instead everyone is using it as fuel to build something that is theirs. This is a fun time to be alive if you have some skills and a little creativity. Haven’t felt that kind of energy from a group of friends in years. Still buzzing this morning. What are you building right now?

@mountainwesttax @shawngorham We haven’t interacted much but I really enjoy the content you put out and you seem like an awesome person. I’m so sorry people can be so terrible on this website!! Stay strong and sending good vibes your way!!

@shawngorham it’s brutal. This website has never made me cry until this

you can look like this for 35 years but struggle to lose the last eight pounds of baby weight, and suddenly you’re the main person on Twitter for being fat 😭

@ryanraysr You gotta tell this story!

I see your random 3 meetings and raise you the president of Mozambique

@YourVirtualCFO If you don't drink any water you can't sweat, right?

Headed to a wedding in Denver this weekend. Pumped for it. Less pumped about the 100 degree forecast. Suit and tie in that heat is going to be a character-building experience.

@psungwoo24 Stay strong man, entrepreneurship is a long and winding road Wishing you all the best

@FrontierBDesign Sounds like a good opportunity to add on a new engagement & expand the scope once phase 1 is done 😎😎

One of my favorite (and least margin effective) moments is when a current client calls me randomly during the day to discuss something that's not part of our scope. Some would probably say I shouldn't take the call because it's not paid time. Others would say be a human. Either way, when someone is in a pickle, help.

@FrontierBDesign 100% Cash is oxygen for your business, gotta keep it flowing to stay alive

@YourVirtualCFO This is such a simple checklist anyone should be doing quarterly.

5 things you can do in an hour today to get a grip on your business finances: → Pull your A/R aging. Chase anything past 60 days. → List every recurring subscription. Cancel what you haven’t used in 90 days. → Check your cash balance against next month’s fixed costs. Know your runway. → Review your pricing. If you haven’t raised prices in 12 months, you’re overdue. → Call your two biggest vendors. Ask for longer payment terms. Most say yes. Do these in an hour today. Execute Monday first thing to get the second half of the year off to a strong start.

@SellersCounsel @writeclimbrun Got to make hay while the sun is shining!

Currently have a hand in 9 different deals plus a handful of GC matters Deals range from $400k to $95 million Im literally billing every minute I’m not asleep or with family Feeling like @writeclimbrun (RIP JH)

@1dannymc You mean that 1 liquid Iv I packed isn’t gonna save me from the 12 beers?!?

@YourVirtualCFO The character building experience is the hangover someone coming from sea level and enjoys a few too many Coors Lights will have, with that combo of altitude and temp