Nobody Wakes Up Wanting A Fractional CFO (Josh Notes)

Description

Josh Notes is the founder and CEO of Sustain CFO, a fractional CFO firm that works with founders and owner-operators.

Josh has been an entrepreneur for 25 years. He started in real estate and moved into energy. The first scaled startup he was part of was greeNEWit, an energy efficiency business in the mid-Atlantic that launched about twenty years ago. Looking back, he calls it a flawed business model: it funded energy efficiency projects through the utility, and it took about nine months to get paid, which is hard for a small business with no outside capital. At Sustain CFO he helps other founders manage their finances looking forward instead of in the rear view mirror. Clients start with a 90-day engagement, and most engagements last years and move toward a fixed fee.

Expect to learn why Sustain CFO starts with 90 days instead of a retainer, the three things that usually happen when a small business brings in a CFO, why your financials show what you really value, how the money psychology you grew up with follows you into business, what buyers care about when you sell (value, customer concentration and people), why clients who replaced their CFO team with an AI agent are missing the human in the loop, and why Josh stopped thinking in quarters and started thinking in seasons, and much more…

0:00 Intro

0:32 From real estate to energy

1:22 Why 90 days instead of a retainer

3:26 Three things a CFO changes

5:53 Numbers are human psychology

8:12 Who Sustain CFO works with

9:13 Lessons from greeNEWit

10:51 What buyers care about when you sell

12:33 AI and the human in the loop

16:27 Seasons, not quarters

19:34 Where to find Josh

🔗 Guest & Resources