Fractional CFO, Outsourced CFO, Virtual CFO Topics
Training an AI Agent Is Teaching You How to Manage: A reflection on patience, process, and the human skills hiding inside the machine
I’ve been spending a lot of time with Claude lately. Not because I want to but because AI agents are not a mindless effort if you want them to work correctly. Recently, I was at a networking event with other...
The Hidden Cost of the Pivot: Why Failing Fast May Be the Most Expensive Strategy in the AI Era
AI has flattened the innovation economy, making product replication faster and cheaper than ever. And in a market where product differentiation is temporary, customer acquisition and retention becomes the only durable competitive moat. Those two conclusions lead directly to a...
When Everyone Can Build, the Only Moat Is Who You Have and Why They Stay
In my last post, I explored how AI has flattened the innovation economy, making product replication faster and cheaper than at any point in history. If anyone anywhere can build what you built, the natural follow-on question is uncomfortable: what,...
Move Fast and Build Things: How AI Is Rewriting the Rules of Innovation
For a long time now, “move fast and break things” was the operating philosophy of the innovation economy. Ship quickly, learn from failure, outpace the known competitor. Venture capital funded the burn. Founders wore the chaos as a badge of...
Anthropic and Open AI: How Core Values May Be the Difference Maker in the Battle for #1
Focus comes from principles guiding to a vision. Success comes from execution guiding to an opportunity. This depends on teams aligned on core values. Exceptional success relies on focus to create remarkable outcomes. But it does not work the other...
The Fraud Triangle’s Achilles Heel – Engineering Trust Through Systematic Controls
Outright financial fraud in the form of stealing company funds is something that happens. In the news you can find a variety of examples of systemic cash fraud, and, all too often, this occurs in the accounting and finance areas...
When Every Dollar Has a Name on It: Mastering Third-Party Fund Accountability
Throughout my CFO consulting work, I’ve helped numerous owners restructure their financial approval processes to close a dangerous gap: when dividing responsibilities across a team, it’s surprisingly easy to create workflows that accidentally circumvent the controls designed to prevent fraud...
Strategic Forecasting Part 3: Modeling Staffing and Productivity Curves for Accurate Financial Planning
In part one of this series of articles, I discussed “Strategic Financial Forecasting: How Time Tracking Data Transforms Multi-Year Financial Models.” In part two, I focused on “Building a Calendar System that Anchors Multi-Year Models.” In this article, I will...
Why Tariff Increases Haven’t Shown Up in Inflation—Yet: A CFO’s Real-World Perspective on E-Commerce and Consumer Packaged Goods
Last year, when tariffs were introduced, I wrote a blog article about how they represented a critical kitchen table issue for many small American businesses that have built their business models around contract manufacturing in China and selling through U.S....
The Real Cost of DIY Financial Operations
I sat across from a business owner last week who proudly told me he’d saved $200,000 by handling his company’s finances himself rather than hiring professional help. His bookkeepers processed transactions. His CPA handled taxes. He managed everything else —...