Advertise on podcast: Create The Next From ProCFO Partners

Marc Kurowski, President & CEO of K&W Engineers, built a site design firm that handles athletic complexes, higher education campuses, and institutional projects across eastern Pennsylvania. He knows engineering. He knows how to run a business. But finance was never his lane, and he knew it. In this Client Story Marc talks about a CEO peer group presentation from ProCFO Partners that landed right when he was, in his words, pulling his hair out over financials. He walks through why fractional made more sense than full-time for his business, what it was like managing an increasingly complex business without a clear financial picture, and the specific mess of untangling work-in-process accounting that had gone unexamined for years. ProCFO Art Troccoli describes what he found when he started digging into K&W's numbers, why gross margin and billable-hour utilization became the metrics that mattered most, and how a firm that was already profitable still had some blind spots. Plus Marc gets into how forecasting changed once it started running on actual data and trends instead of a formula and familiarity, and what it means to walk into a CEO meeting speaking the language of his own financial statements. Create The Next is delivered to you from ProCFO Partners. Every week, we explore strategies and ideas for financial management and growth to help today’s businesses put their financial picture in context. ProCFO Partners are expert financial officers networked across industries, verticals, specializations and situations. Fulfilling the role of a part-time CFO with all-time commitment, ProCFO Partners utilizes the innovative and exclusive FGC Financial Flywheel as a framework that creates momentum to drive your financial functions for sustainable success. Visit procfopartners.com to explore how we can implement a systematic and scalable financial system to help you achieve your goal.

Ashly Miller owns Abbottstown Industries, an original equipment manufacturing company in Pennsylvania she bought six years ago. The financials had bothered her for years: swings in profitability that were considered business as usual She wasn't willing to accept that answer. A conversation inside her Vistage group put her on the phone with Nelson Tepfer, co-founder and CEO of ProCFO Partners, and from there with her ProCFO Joe Shake. In this Client Story, Ashly talks about what made her choose ProCFO Partners over other options she'd researched, why she pushed back three months into the engagement, and the positive direction once she and Joe reset expectations together. Joe walks through the transformation Abbottstown has made since he came on site to a company with no cash forecast, no formal budget, but a leadership team ready to be challenged with new tools and ideas. He talks about how a shaky, week-to-week picture became steady enough to plan around, and how that steadiness has given Abbottstown room to pay down debt and reinvest in the business at the same time instead of choosing between the two. Create The Next is delivered to you from ProCFO Partners. Every week, we explore strategies and ideas for financial management and growth to help today’s businesses put their financial picture in context. ProCFO Partners are expert financial officers networked across industries, verticals, specializations and situations. Fulfilling the role of a part-time CFO with all-time commitment, ProCFO Partners utilizes the innovative and exclusive FGC Financial Flywheel as a framework that creates momentum to drive your financial functions for sustainable success. Visit procfopartners.com to explore how we can implement a systematic and scalable financial system to help you achieve your goal.

In this client story we're sitting down with Nicole Dottoli, Director of Finance at BNO. BNO is an independent marketing agency in New Jersey in business since 1981. By late 2024, the agency had grown past what cash-balance reviews and the standard P&L could tell its leadership. Collections were slipping, the rate card had become an unwieldy list of role-specific entries, and working capital wasn't part of the monthly conversation. Nicole talks with her ProCFO Philippe Touzout about what changed when ProCFO Partners came in. They cover how a weekly AR meeting that included the partners and head of client service turned collections around, what it took to compress a dozens-deep rate card into a six-band tiered structure, and why the bottom-up plus benchmarked approach to rate-setting yielded as much insight as it did a new number - work that touches most of the FGC Financial Flywheel™, ProCFO's framework where collections, reporting, pricing, and planning operate as one connected system. They also get into how AI is reshaping the volume and economics of creative work in real time, what that demands of a finance function, and why Nicole describes the ProCFO Partners relationship as a network rather than a single person. Create The Next is delivered to you from ProCFO Partners. Every week, we explore strategies and ideas for financial management and growth to help today’s businesses put their financial picture in context. ProCFO Partners are expert financial officers networked across industries, verticals, specializations and situations. Fulfilling the role of a part-time CFO with all-time commitment, ProCFO Partners utilizes the innovative and exclusive FGC Financial Flywheel as a framework that creates momentum to drive your financial functions for sustainable success. Visit procfopartners.com to explore how we can implement a systematic and scalable financial system to help you achieve your goal.

Brian Atkin, President and CEO of Frank Lowe, runs a profitable, well-managed custom die-cut manufacturer that has been serving the fenestration, automotive, and industrial markets since 1955. He called ProCFO Partners during a plateau, with foreign competition moving into his niche markets and a senior team of three that had been together for 20-plus years and were comfortable but not always challenging. Brian and his ProCFO John Martin talk through what it looks like to bring CFO-level thinking into a company that already has clean books, why one strategic initiative at a time was holding the business back, how lease negotiations and AI investments and acquisition modeling started landing on John's desk instead of Brian's, and what changes when a CEO finally has the room to do the job a CEO is supposed to do. Create The Next is delivered to you from ProCFO Partners. Every week, we explore strategies and ideas for financial management and growth to help today’s businesses put their financial picture in context. ProCFO Partners are expert financial officers networked across industries, verticals, specializations and situations. Fulfilling the role of a part-time CFO with all-time commitment, ProCFO Partners utilizes the innovative and exclusive FGC Financial Flywheel as a framework that creates momentum to drive your financial functions for sustainable success. Visit procfopartners.com to explore how we can implement a systematic and scalable financial system to help you achieve your goal.

Ryan Teicher, CEO of REDCOM Design & Construction, runs a design-build firm that takes clients from raw land to finished building - architecture, engineering, and construction under one roof. The financial complexity that comes with that model had outpaced the infrastructure running it. WIP reports three months behind. No departmental P&Ls. A finance function that produced data nobody could fully trust.  In this conversation, Ryan talks about what changed when ProCFO Partners came in with an Interim CFO engagement - how a construction-fluent Interim CFO rebuilt the reporting foundation, what it meant when month-end close went from three months to one, and why the goals he thought would take two years arrived in six. He also gets into what reliable financial data actually does to how a CEO leads - and why the word he'd use to describe the whole engagement is reliability. Create The Next is delivered to you from ProCFO Partners. Every week, we explore strategies and ideas for financial management and growth to help today’s businesses put their financial picture in context. ProCFO Partners are expert financial officers networked across industries, verticals, specializations and situations. Fulfilling the role of a part-time CFO with all-time commitment, ProCFO Partners utilizes the innovative and exclusive FGC Financial Flywheel as a framework that creates momentum to drive your financial functions for sustainable success. Visit procfopartners.com to explore how we can implement a systematic and scalable financial system to help you achieve your goal.

When Middle East Broadcasting Network needed sharper financial insight, President & CEO Jeff Gedmin turned to ProCFO Partners. In this episode, we talk with Jeff and ProCFO Raji Kalra about how ProCFO Partners helped MBN shift from gut-check decision-making to intentional, forward-looking strategy. You’ll hear how stronger forecasting, more collaborative reporting, and clearer leadership conversations are helping MBN navigate change with confidence, and why having the right financial partner can reframe how organizations plan, lead, and grow. Create The Next is delivered to you from ProCFO Partners. Every week, we explore strategies and ideas for financial management and growth to help today’s businesses put their financial picture in context. ProCFO Partners are expert financial officers networked across industries, verticals, specializations and situations. Fulfilling the role of a part-time CFO with all-time commitment, ProCFO Partners utilizes the innovative and exclusive FGC Financial Flywheel as a framework that creates momentum to drive your financial functions for sustainable success. Visit procfopartners.com to explore how we can implement a systematic and scalable financial system to help you achieve your goal.

Volatility has a way of stripping a business back to its fundamentals. When markets shift, costs rise, and uncertainty becomes the norm, we often stop thinking about what worked before and start asking what will hold up next. In this episode, ProCFO Partners CEO Nelson Tepfer joins us to look back at a year of constant change and shares what he’s seen endure inside companies that stayed viable through that change rather than reacting to every disruption. Nelson walks through the patterns that separate resilient businesses from those constantly playing defense. We talk about where leaders tend to overcorrect, which inputs to trust when circumstances change quickly, and why steady decision-making often outperforms bold moves made under pressure. Our conversation focuses less on predicting what’s coming and more on building operating discipline that works across cycles. We also explore the financial behaviors that hold up over time. Cash awareness, realistic planning, fewer but better metrics, and leadership teams that stay aligned when conditions tighten. Nelson explains how strong CFO leadership helps organizations stay grounded, even when external factors are anything but stable. For business owners and executives, this episode is a practical look at what endures when everything changes, and how to move from volatility to viability with intention rather than reaction. Create The Next is delivered to you from ProCFO Partners. Every week, we explore strategies and ideas for financial management and growth to help today’s businesses put their financial picture in context. ProCFO Partners are expert financial officers networked across industries, verticals, specializations and situations. Fulfilling the role of a part-time CFO with all-time commitment, ProCFO Partners utilizes the innovative and exclusive FGC Financial Flywheel as a framework that creates momentum to drive your financial functions for sustainable success. Visit procfopartners.com to explore how we can implement a systematic and scalable financial system to help you achieve your goal.

Expanding internationally can open new markets, create efficiencies, and strengthen your business. It also introduces unfamiliar risks and complexities. In this episode, ProCFO Mauricio Davila shares insights from years of guiding companies through global growth and explains why international expansion demands more than just financial readiness. Mauricio discusses the CFO’s unique role in identifying what others miss: navigating local laws, understanding regulatory systems, and recognizing how cultural differences affect everything from hiring to negotiations. He explains how experience in international finance helps turn potential risks into opportunities and how overlooking small cultural details can create major obstacles. We also explore how to balance short-term execution with long-term vision. Political changes, market volatility, and local norms can make global growth unpredictable, but the CFO’s job is to keep the organization focused on why the expansion matters in the first place. For business owners and executives, this conversation is a practical look at what it takes to succeed across borders, from understanding culture to building the right team and making sure your strategy reflects both opportunity and reality. Featuring Mauricio Davila. Create The Next is delivered to you from ProCFO Partners. Every week, we explore strategies and ideas for financial management and growth to help today’s businesses put their financial picture in context. ProCFO Partners are expert financial officers networked across industries, verticals, specializations and situations. Fulfilling the role of a part-time CFO with all-time commitment, ProCFO Partners utilizes the innovative and exclusive FGC Financial Flywheel as a framework that creates momentum to drive your financial functions for sustainable success. Visit procfopartners.com to explore how we can implement a systematic and scalable financial system to help you achieve your goal.

Looking backward can have some value because your numbers show patterns and provide a baseline for performance. But history alone won’t tell you where your business is headed. That’s the role of projections. In this episode, ProCFO Marty Weinberg explains why projections are living tools that connect your numbers to your strategy. Marty explores how projections, when tied to real operational levers like pricing, staffing, and customer acquisition costs, give leaders a roadmap for growth. He shares examples of how scenario planning - modeling “what if” situations such as new tariffs or shifting costs - helps businesses prepare for uncertainty instead of reacting to it. Projections aren’t a series of spreadsheets and reports. They’re the outcomes of the potential story inside your numbers. We also dig into the connection between projections and strategy. Are you starting with your goals and using projections to measure progress, or are you reverse-engineering strategy from your numbers? Marty outlines how to balance both approaches and why revenue models and cash flow should always be central to the conversation. For executives and business owners, this episode makes clear that projections aren’t academic exercises or one-off planning documents. When done right, they’re dynamic, strategic, and essential to aligning your team and your decisions with the future you want to create. Featuring Marty Weinberg Create The Next is delivered to you from ProCFO Partners. Every week, we explore strategies and ideas for financial management and growth to help today’s businesses put their financial picture in context. ProCFO Partners are expert financial officers networked across industries, verticals, specializations and situations. Fulfilling the role of a part-time CFO with all-time commitment, ProCFO Partners utilizes the innovative and exclusive FGC Financial Flywheel as a framework that creates momentum to drive your financial functions for sustainable success. Visit procfopartners.com to explore how we can implement a systematic and scalable financial system to help you achieve your goal.

Change can be incremental, like with a new tool or a small process shift. Or change can be transformational, when the entire direction of the business needs to adjust. In this episode, ProCFO Vijay Singh joins us to talk about the difference, and what happens when organizations fail to recognize the signals that change is coming. Vijay shares real-world examples of what happens when growth outpaces profitability, or when sales drive deals without operations at the table. In one situation, mispriced services and overlapping processes created more waste than margin. His takeaway: slowing down growth, revising incentives, and connecting departments can turn what feels like disruption into measurable strength. Along the way, we explore why the CFO must be more than a number-cruncher. Seeing what the numbers mean and not just what they say gives leaders the ability to anticipate problems before they become crises. Vijay underscores the importance of communication, alignment, and cultural readiness for change: the bigger the change, the wider the communication net. This conversation is packed with practical insights for any business navigating growth, transformation, or turbulence (spoiler alert - that's you, right now, whether you know it or not). Vijay’s perspective makes clear that managing change is responding with strategy, transparency, and foresight. Create The Next is delivered to you from ProCFO Partners. Every week, we explore strategies and ideas for financial management and growth to help today’s businesses put their financial picture in context. ProCFO Partners are expert financial officers networked across industries, verticals, specializations and situations. Fulfilling the role of a part-time CFO with all-time commitment, ProCFO Partners utilizes the innovative and exclusive FGC Financial Flywheel as a framework that creates momentum to drive your financial functions for sustainable success. Visit procfopartners.com to explore how we can implement a systematic and scalable financial system to help you achieve your goal.

We love to share stories of our clients, and in our new episode of Create The Next, ProCFO Kristy Barthelemy sits down with Alan Alan Akira, MD, founder and CEO of Mugen Psychiatry, about developing the business of better. Alan didn’t set out to build a business that just paid well - he wanted one that worked well. That means overcoming growing pains like financial blind spots, unclear metrics, and the creeping feeling that key pieces to success might be slipping through the cracks. With fractional CFO support from ProCFO Partners, Alan and his team have achieved better control, more structure, and more ways to align financial health with clinical care. He didn’t lose touch with the mission of care balanced with business. He’s building something sustainable. “I care about my patients,” Alan says. “I care about the people I work with. I’m still a doctor first. That hasn’t changed. But now I have more tools. Better information. I’m not guessing. And we’re not just putting out fires anymore. I can actually plan.” Create The Next is delivered to you from ProCFO Partners. Every week, we explore strategies and ideas for financial management and growth to help today’s businesses put their financial picture in context. ProCFO Partners are expert financial officers networked across industries, verticals, specializations and situations. Fulfilling the role of a part-time CFO with all-time commitment, ProCFO Partners utilizes the innovative and exclusive FGC Financial Flywheel as a framework that creates momentum to drive your financial functions for sustainable success. Visit procfopartners.com to explore how we can implement a systematic and scalable financial system to help you achieve your goal.

Raising capital looks different depending on if you're sitting at the head of the company, behind a bank’s desk, or across the table structuring deals. Joe Briner has sat in all three seats. As a former bank CEO, investment banker, and now CFO, he offers a rare perspective on what capital providers expect, how they evaluate opportunities, and how business leaders can be better prepared. In this episode, Joe breaks down what matters most to each stakeholder: why banks prioritize repayment over risk, why investment bankers focus on valuation and market fit, and why CFOs must balance vision with structure. We talk about what makes a company bankable, what investors listen for but rarely say out loud, and how leaders can package their story to match the needs of the people holding the capital. You’ll also hear hard-won lessons about character, transparency, and timing, and how the wrong approach (or wrong CFO) can derail momentum just as easily as the right one can accelerate it. If you’re preparing to raise capital or want to better understand the situation you’re in or considering, this behind-the-scenes view of how capital decisions really get made, told by someone who’s made them all, is like a cheat-sheet for what to expect and how to show up ready. Create The Next is delivered to you from ProCFO Partners. Every week, we explore strategies and ideas for financial management and growth to help today’s businesses put their financial picture in context. ProCFO Partners are expert financial officers networked across industries, verticals, specializations and situations. Fulfilling the role of a part-time CFO with all-time commitment, ProCFO Partners utilizes the innovative and exclusive FGC Financial Flywheel as a framework that creates momentum to drive your financial functions for sustainable success. Visit procfopartners.com to explore how we can implement a systematic and scalable financial system to help you achieve your goal.

AI is everywhere, but for many business leaders, it’s still unclear where it fits in. In this episode, Nelson Tepfer, CEO of ProCFO Partners, shares how CFOs and other organization leaders can approach AI as a practical tool for driving productivity and solving real business problems. From scenario planning to process optimization, Nelson explains how organizations can start small by identifying specific internal challenges and exploring how AI might enhance or streamline existing workflows. He discusses how ProCFO Partners uses AI internally, the mindset shifts needed to lead with curiosity, and how to embed AI exploration into company culture. One key insight: the best way to start isn’t with the right tool, it’s with the right question. By focusing on business issues you're facing and experimenting with AI as a collaborator, you can initiate progress without waiting for perfect answers or expertise. Maybe you’re new to AI, experimenting already, or consider yourself a power-user; in any case, this conversation offers a practical guide for making AI work for your business, not just as a technology, but as a thought partner. Create The Next is delivered to you from ProCFO Partners. Every week, we explore strategies and ideas for financial management and growth to help today’s businesses put their financial picture in context. ProCFO Partners are expert financial officers networked across industries, verticals, specializations and situations. Fulfilling the role of a part-time CFO with all-time commitment, ProCFO Partners utilizes the innovative and exclusive FGC Financial Flywheel as a framework that creates momentum to drive your financial functions for sustainable success. Visit procfopartners.com to explore how we can implement a systematic and scalable financial system to help you achieve your goal.

In this episode, we sit down with Alexia Jones, Managing Director of U.S. Immigration Law Counsel, and Jean Evans, her fractional CFO from ProCFO Partners. Together, they share the story of how a growing legal practice became a more strategically led business with stronger systems, better financial discipline, and a clearer leadership structure. Alexia reflects on the early days of the engagement, when growth was moving quickly and the firm needed better clarity and structure. With Jean’s guidance, they implemented budgeting practices, built operational dashboards, and introduced KPI tracking that aligned every leader to shared goals. The changes improved planning, supported better decision-making, and helped the business scale with more confidence. This is the story of a leader gaining command of a fast-moving business, with the right CFO partner helping to make it happen. Create The Next is delivered to you from ProCFO Partners. Every week, we explore strategies and ideas for financial management and growth to help today’s businesses put their financial picture in context. ProCFO Partners are expert financial officers networked across industries, verticals, specializations and situations. Fulfilling the role of a part-time CFO with all-time commitment, ProCFO Partners utilizes the innovative and exclusive FGC Financial Flywheel as a framework that creates momentum to drive your financial functions for sustainable success. Visit procfopartners.com to explore how we can implement a systematic and scalable financial system to help you achieve your goal.

When revenue surged at Paragon, profitability didn’t follow. In fact, it shrank. For President and CEO Bruce Card, that was the wake-up call: growth alone wasn’t enough. Without visibility into what was driving margins—or where money was going—the company risked scaling into chaos. In this episode, Bruce joins ProCFO Vaughn Henson to unpack how a new approach to finance helped Paragon regain control. They talk candidly about late budgets, unpredictable cash flow, and the moment Bruce realized he was running the business by looking six months into the past. Together, they share how daily forecasting, smarter invoicing, and role-level financial focus changed everything. You’ll hear how trust, transparency, and teamwork turned a fractional CFO into a strategic ally, and why Bruce now says he’s sleeping better, planning farther ahead, and is more confident about hitting the numbers. This is a story about moving from instinct to insight, and from reaction to readiness. Create The Next is delivered to you from ProCFO Partners. Every week, we explore strategies and ideas for financial management and growth to help today’s businesses put their financial picture in context. ProCFO Partners are expert financial officers networked across industries, verticals, specializations and situations. Fulfilling the role of a part-time CFO with all-time commitment, ProCFO Partners utilizes the innovative and exclusive FGC Financial Flywheel as a framework that creates momentum to drive your financial functions for sustainable success. Visit procfopartners.com to explore how we can implement a systematic and scalable financial system to help you achieve your goal.