When To Hire A Fractional CFO? | Ep 8

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🔍 Why Every 7-Figure Business Needs a Fractional CFO | Full Send CFO

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📢 Think a CFO is “too much” for your business? Think again. If you’re doing over 7 figures in revenue, a fractional CFO isn’t a luxury—it’s a growth multiplier. In this episode, we break down:

✔️ Why every $1M+ business needs financial leadership

✔️ Common myths holding founders back

✔️ Tangible benefits of bringing on a strategic finance partner

✔️ When a bookkeeper just isn’t enough

✔️ How a CFO helps you prepare for funding, scale, and profits

⏱️ Chapters

00:00 – Why 7-Figure Businesses Need a CFO

01:00 – “We’re Not Big Enough” — The Real Excuse

01:54 – “It’s Too Expensive” vs. Cost of Bad Decisions

02:55 – Why a Bookkeeper Is Not Enough

03:47 – Accelerating Strategic Decisions with Data

04:44 – Invisible ROI: Freeing Up Founder Brain Space

05:00 – Financial Discipline: Building Scalable Systems

05:49 – Margin Growth: Why Scaling Should Improve Profitability

06:32 – Preparing for Funding, Loans & Investors

07:42 – What Ready Looks Like: Clean Financials on Demand

08:00 – Who Shouldn’t Hire a CFO Yet? (Under 500K Revenue)

09:16 – Final Thoughts: Is Your Control Slowing Growth?

✅ Key Takeaways:

✔️ A fractional CFO accelerates better decision-making—especially around pricing, margins, and reinvestment.

✔️ A bookkeeper gives you the what, but a CFO gives you the why and what next.

✔️ Strategic finance partners build reporting rhythms, accountability, and growth infrastructure.

✔️ Clean, accurate, and timely financials = readiness for loans, fundraising, and smart scaling.

✔️ If you’re under $500K, focus on product-market fit—but be ready to level up fast.

📢 Are you holding onto too much financial control? Drop your thoughts below!

🔔 Subscribe & turn on notifications to stay sharp on all things growth, finance, and strategy.

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Full Send | Accounting & Data

LinkedIn: Roman Villard, CPA
X: @FullSendCPA
YouTube: Full Send - Accounting & Data
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Transcript

[00:00:00] Most small businesses think about a fractional CFO or a finance team as maybe being a little bit overkill or being too expensive. But I can tell you if you are making over seven figures in revenue, you need this role. We're gonna talk about how and why it makes sense to start a valuing, bringing on a high level finance partner, a fractional CFO, A quality accounting team.

[00:00:23] As you continue to move up the spectrum of growth in your small business, there's a lot of reasons why people tell themselves that they [00:00:30] don't need this or they don't want this. However, when you start to unpack how they can help you, you really start to get a better picture of how you can run your business more effectively, more efficiently, and more profitably.

[00:00:41] So today we're gonna dive into a few ways that you can start to think about this through the lens of continuing to build your business alongside of a partner that is equipping you. With the right information, data, and financials to help you continue to grow.

[00:00:55] So why aren't most small businesses thinking about hiring this type of role [00:01:00] or bringing in this role fractionally? You've seen the market trend go more towards fractional for these types of roles where. In reality, you don't need a full-time hire. You don't need to pay $300,000 for a CFO to come in and sit at your business for 40 hours a week.

[00:01:15] There are instances where that could be appropriate if you're navigating something highly strategic, and IPO really moving up the scale of growth and complexity. In your business. However, for most small businesses doing 1, 2, 5, [00:01:30] 6, $7 million in revenue, not necessary full time, but businesses sit there and they tell themselves we're not big enough, which really just means I am not really ready to be accountable for my numbers. That's what I hear when somebody says, we're not big enough. Well, maybe you have a little bit too tight of control over something that maybe you shouldn't be. Your time should be leveraged elsewhere so that somebody with a high level of expertise can support you in that rhythm.

[00:01:54] The other thing you hear people talk about is, ah, well, it's just too expensive. Oh, that $3,000 a month, that [00:02:00] $5,000 a month, it's just, it's just too much.

[00:02:02] But what they're not considering is the opportunity cost of the poor decision making, the poor margins, the cash flow issues. These are all things that a great accounting and finance partner should be leaning into to help you improve. So that $5,000 a month that you're spending on a financial team.

[00:02:21] You're probably gonna make that up via being able to make better decisions because you have a better control over your financials. You've got consistent, you've got quality [00:02:30] reporting that now you can rely on to be able to more confidently make decisions moving forward. It's not too expensive when you've got somebody displacing the work that you've been spending time on maybe kind of struggling with and not yielding the best possible output that you could relative to a partner handling that work.

[00:02:48] The other thing we see a lot is people saying, ah, well, I've already got a bookkeeper. You know, my aunt has been doing this for 26 years. I'm, I'm well set up.

[00:02:55] Here's the problem with that. Bookkeeping does not equate strategy. It [00:03:00] does not equate, systemization does not equate to scalability. When we think about bookkeeping, we're really thinking about it predominantly through the lens of compliance, like it is a necessary part of the financial planning process and getting to more strategic outputs.

[00:03:15] However, The bookkeeping in and of itself is not gonna be what allows you to make better decisions. Now the reliance upon the bookkeeping is so important that it has to be done well. It has to be done right. You need that [00:03:30] consistency and that comparability at the bookkeeping level to be able to even have quality outputs for the fractional CFO or the finance team.

[00:03:39] So make sure that those elements are working in tandem, but just by nature of having a bookkeeper does not mean that you have an integrated strategic financial partner.

[00:03:47] So one of the primary benefits of looking at somebody in this space, looking at a firm in this space, is you want to get to the point where you can accelerate your decision making. Maybe it took you a few weeks, a few months, to waffle [00:04:00] on pricing strategy to understand where your pricing really should be relative to where the market's at or maybe where your costs are, and they're changing.

[00:04:08] So. You can accelerate the decision making process across elements of your business because you have a financial partner that's telling you, Hey, uh, of your four categories of revenue, your margins are actually the highest here and they're the lowest here. Do we wanna focus our sales and marketing efforts on the highest margin product, or do we need to make a pricing change on the lowest margin?

[00:04:28] There's a lot of [00:04:30] variability and factors that go into that decision making, and so when you're aligned with a financial partner that's helping you there. Then you can accelerate that decision making and pull the future forward. That's what a good partner should be doing is ideating with you on these types of things.

[00:04:44] By nature of doing that, we're freeing up the brain space that was spent in planning cycles and decision making cycles to focus more on growth initiatives. That is a great outcome and an an invisible ROI that really comes out of working with a great partner.

[00:04:58] Another benefit just simply comes through [00:05:00] the realm of financial discipline and accountability. A good team, a good fractional CFO should be building systems and cadences that support the rhythm of the business, that equip the leadership team with information to make decisions if they're not building a foundation for you to be able to scale and achieve the outcomes that you've communicated to them.

[00:05:19] They might not be the right partner. Again, that's what a bookkeeper is not gonna be doing for your business, is looking at your business through the lens of scale to implement the type of systems, processes, and tools to [00:05:30] help you get to that next level. What we're looking for here is just a sense of rhythm.

[00:05:34] Do you have the right reporting rhythms, the right reconciliation rhythms to be able to equip you with better data?

[00:05:39] I already mentioned the decision making framework. We're trying to pull the future forward. One of the elements here that that we often see focus around in the fractional CFO space is profitability.

[00:05:49] CFOs aren't just trying to help you survive and get past the next inflection point. They're trying to help you grow. They're trying to help you achieve outcomes. And a big way of doing that is by generating greater [00:06:00] amounts of profitability to reinvest in your business for growth. So identifying areas of your business where you have margin opportunity is a great area for a fractional CFO to focus on.

[00:06:10] The desired outcome here is that scaling shouldn't be killing your margins. It should actually be amplifying them because you're reinvesting in areas of the business that are driving that margin. That is a phenomenal benefit of working with a partner that is a little bit more difficult to achieve yourself if you don't have a background in the space.

[00:06:26] And honestly, again, your time is probably [00:06:30] better. Placed somewhere else in the business.

[00:06:32] The last benefit I want to hit on here is we want to be ready for the future. We wanna be ready for funding. We wanna be ready for, uh, bank compliance. We wanna be ready for what happens next in your business. If you're not financially capable and ready to be able to step into that next phase of growth that may require some outside capital may require outside stakeholders or in more intense scrutiny on your business.

[00:06:54] It's gonna be really difficult to take that next step. You're gonna have to walk through. Probably massive amounts of [00:07:00] cleanup work to your financials to get to the point where you can actually confidently deliver something to that partner that you can stand behind and explain. So when you're working alongside of a partner that's managing your accounting rhythms, managing your reporting rhythms, now you have effectively a data room ready for that SBA loan for that fundraise, for that new investor that's coming on board that wants to take a look at your.

[00:07:24] Last 36 months of performance as well as what the next three years of forecasts look like. [00:07:30] Your partner should be able to help you architect that, and quite honestly, it should be ready at almost all times if your current accountant and or finance partner can't send you the most recent set of financials within.

[00:07:42] A day, there's probably something wrong, meaning that they're not up to date on a regular basis. You do not want to be in a position where you're going to that bank, they're requesting financials and you don't have them. That creates a lot of risk perception through the eyes of the bank, and that is just starting you off on a bad foot when you're starting to go that [00:08:00] direction.

[00:08:00] So here's the last thing I would hit on. You may not be ready for a fractional CFO partner or a higher level accounting and finance partner. If you're doing, you know, about 500 K or less in revenue, you know, you can get by. Pretty well with like pretty typical software or bookkeeping rhythms and focus on that because if you spend the money, if you spend the capital on a CFO partner, there's really not quite enough to work with yet at that point in time.

[00:08:26] Now, that changes if you've raised a large amount of outside capital and [00:08:30] you're needing to put that to work. But for most businesses doing 500,000 or less In revenue a year, you're still working through trying to find product market fit. You're trying to, to walk through figuring out who your, your target market is, and so a good CFO will be the one to tell you, you shouldn't be paying me right now with the dollars that you have, you should be reinvesting in your product.

[00:08:52] You should be reinvesting in your sales rhythm to continue to get down the path on the next rhythm. That's still an early enough inflection point to where you can't [00:09:00] mess it up too bad. You wanna just have enough to be able to manage your compliance at that stage. Now, as you start to mature up the growth ladder, then you wanna start to explore what that looks like to get your financials and books in order to be able to be prepared for that next step and to improve those planning cycles.

[00:09:16] So I hope that's an helpful overview on like how to think about bringing on a financial partner as CFO into your business. Because ultimately it is really easy to make an excuse to say, uh, we're not ready. Uh, we don't need that. Oh, it's too [00:09:30] expensive. And really, that could be one of the biggest hindrances to you and your business if you're trying to retain too tight of control over something that you do not have domain expertise in.

[00:09:39] The goal is to grow, to build a more sustainable and profitable business.

[00:09:43] Good luck.