Keep Your Team.
Add the CFO.
Engage puts a fractional CFO alongside your existing finance team on a standing monthly cadence, with the intelligence engine briefing the room before each session. You own the books; we bring the judgment to the decisions that actually move the business. For owner-operated companies in ecommerce, wine, health and wellness, and elective medicine.
What Engage Looks Like in Practice
Not a project, not a takeover. A standing cadence built around the decisions on your calendar.
A CFO alongside your team
You keep your finance team. We bring the CFO and the intelligence engine to the decisions that actually move the business: pricing, hiring, capital, channel shifts, board prep. The engine briefs the room before each session, so the meeting starts at "here is what we are deciding" instead of "here is what is happening." For owner-operators who have execution covered and want senior judgment at the decision moments, not a CFO in the seat.
What's included
A standing monthly working session with the operator and finance lead. Monitor Plus running underneath. Decision support on the named moments between sessions: pricing reviews, hiring decisions, capital choices, board prep, growth planning. The engine is the briefing artifact; the CFO is the judgment. How we build a strong finance operation: the RAID principles →
Where it stops: we do not run your books. Your controller or finance lead keeps daily execution; we bring senior judgment at the decisions, not the bookkeeping. Capital raises, M&A, lender packages, and succession events sit outside scope.
Two Shapes of the Same Relationship
Advise is the deepest involvement the practice offers, and it comes in two shapes. Engage is this page; Manage has its own. Here is the pair side by side.
Engage
Senior CFO judgment on a standing cadence, with Monitor Plus running underneath. A monthly strategic-oversight session and a quarterly review with a refreshed roadmap. You keep your finance team and you own the books; we bring the judgment to pricing, hiring, capital, and channel decisions.
Manage
We run the finance function outright. The close, the cash, the books, the reporting, and the dashboard as recurring work, with the CFO embedded weekly. Everything in Engage sits inside it.
The line between them: who owns the books. Engage advises while your team executes; Manage takes the function. Both are scoped on an Intro Call rather than priced off a page, because the shape depends on what you already have in-house. Capital raises, M&A, lender packages, and succession events sit outside both, and neither replaces your CPA or provides legal, tax, or investment advice.
The Rung Where the CFO Enters the Room
The practice is a ladder, and each rung keeps everything below it. Engage sits above Monitor and Monitor Plus, the outside read it is built on. For the full picture, from the one-time reads to the retainers, see how the whole practice works.
Engage
Adds the CFO in the room: Monitor Plus runs underneath while we work the decisions with you. You keep your finance team and own the books.
Below it sits Monitor Plus, the cohort-aware report card. Above it sits Manage, where we take the whole finance function.
The Engine That Briefs the Room Is Published
The intelligence engine underneath every Engage session is not a black box. We built it in wine and put the measurement in public: the Wine Country Intelligence Report benchmarks every tracked winery in Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties on the WCIR's six ranking dimensions. The same measurement discipline runs underneath an Engage engagement.
That is what "the engine briefs the room" means in practice: the session starts from a measured read, not a hunch. Wine is the proof, not the limit.
The Same Judgment, Grounded in Your Market Segment
The decision moments differ by market segment. The cadence and the discipline do not.
DTC & Ecommerce
Channel-mix reallocation, SKU rationalization, 3PL renegotiation, and the ad-spend decisions where a wrong call compounds monthly. Engage brings CFO judgment to each one before you commit.
Health & wellness
Membership pricing, location expansion, provider economics, and the service-versus-product margin calls that shape the practice. Worked with you at the decision moment.
Elective medicine
Treatment-class profitability, capacity and provider decisions, and capital choices for equipment and buildout. High-stakes calls that deserve a CFO in the room before the signature.
Common Questions
A standing monthly cadence that puts a fractional CFO alongside your existing team. You get a monthly working session with the operator and finance lead, a quarterly review with a refreshed roadmap, and decision support on the named moments in between: pricing reviews, hiring decisions, capital choices, board prep. Capital raises, M&A, lender packages, and succession events sit outside scope. Monitor Plus runs underneath the whole engagement, so every session starts from a fresh outside read of the business.
Engage is scoped on an Intro Call rather than priced off a page, because the shape depends on what you already have in-house: the strength of your controller or finance lead, the decisions on your calendar, and the cadence that fits. We will give you the figure for your situation on the call, not a range off a list.
Who owns the books. In Engage, you do: your controller or finance lead runs daily execution, and we bring senior judgment to the decisions. In Manage, we do: we run the whole finance function, from daily bookkeeping through monthly close, with the CFO embedded weekly. Engage and Manage are built to hand off cleanly. If you decide you want one team running the whole thing, Manage picks up everything Engage covers.
No. Every Engage engagement includes Monitor Plus by default, so the outside read is part of the package from the first month. Starting with Monitor alone is a legitimate path too: watch the card for a few months and step up when the findings keep surfacing decisions you would rather work through with a CFO. Either path lands in the same place.
Owner-operators in ecommerce, wine, health and wellness, or elective medicine who have execution covered: a competent controller, bookkeeper, or finance lead already running the day-to-day. What is missing is senior judgment at the decision moments, and a consistent outside read to ground those decisions. If nobody is running your books reliably, the honest starting conversation is Manage, not Engage.