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 lower middle market companies in ecommerce, wine, health and wellness, and elective medicine.
The Questions Already on Your Desk
Engage is built around the decisions you are already turning over. If these sound familiar, this is the shape that fits.
Can we afford the next hire, and when?
Your finance lead can tell you what payroll costs today. The harder question is what the hire does to cash and margin six months out, and that is the conversation we bring to the monthly session.
Will this price change hold?
A pricing move touches margin, volume, and the customers you most want to keep. We work it through with you before it goes live, not after the first month of results.
Which channels and product lines are actually making money?
Revenue by line is easy to report. Contribution by line, after the costs that belong to it, is where the decision lives.
Do we fund this from cash, or borrow for it?
Equipment, inventory, a new location. We put the cash picture next to the choice, so the decision is made on the numbers you will be living with.
What should next year's plan commit to?
Annual planning that starts from a measured read of where the business stands, so the plan is one your team can run against.
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, annual planning. 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 founders and CEOs 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, with Monitor Plus underneath for wineries. Decision support on the named moments between sessions: pricing reviews, hiring decisions, capital choices, annual and 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 sit outside scope; we work alongside your bankers and advisors and refer that work to our referral network.
Two Shapes of the Same Relationship
Engage and Manage are the two ways into our Fractional CFO work. Engage is this page; Manage has its own. Here is the pair side by side.
Engage
The CFO alongside your team, described above. You keep your finance team and you own the books.
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 sit outside both: we work alongside your bankers and advisors and refer that work out. Neither replaces your CPA or provides legal, tax, or investment advice.
The First 30 Days, Then the Cadence
First 30 Days: Onboarding
Kickoff, intake, baseline, first-month plan
A kickoff call and a structured intake. A baseline diagnostic of where the business stands today. Introductions to specialist partners from our bench, engaged and paid by you directly, who handle execution alongside your team. The KPIs we will measure against, defined together. A plan for the first month of sessions.
Every Month After: The Cadence
Monthly session, quarterly review
A standing monthly working session with you and your finance lead, with Monitor Plus underneath for wineries. Support between sessions on the decisions that come up. A quarterly strategic review with a refreshed roadmap.
Your Books Stay Yours
Your ledger stays in your own accounting system, run by your team, and we work only with the data you grant us access to. How we handle your data →
For your security team, compliance officer, or legal counsel. The Main Street IQ Trust Center documents our controls and where each one stands.
Judgment Built Inside a Growing Company
The CFO in your Engage sessions has done this work from the inside. Scott Hess joined Watch Gang, a subscription DTC brand at $18M in revenue running on founder instinct and a bookkeeper, as its first finance hire, and helped build the finance function as the business grew past $40M.
The finance function did not drive that growth; the product and the team did. What it did was make the growth fundable: which subscription tiers were profitable, how cohorts were behaving, and how much cash the next push would consume. Those are the questions an Engage session is built to answer before you commit.
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.
Wineries
Club and DTC economics, pricing across tasting room, club, and wholesale, and the cash gap between harvest and release. Worked through with you before the commitment, not after the vintage.
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, annual planning. Capital raises, M&A, lender packages, and succession sit outside scope; we work alongside your bankers and advisors and refer that work to our referral network. For wineries, 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. What does not vary is the billing shape: Engage is a monthly retainer, three-month minimum, month-to-month after that with 30-day notice, billed monthly, with an annual option.
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. For wineries, Engage includes Monitor Plus by default, so the outside read is part of the package from the first month, and 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.
Founders and CEOs of lower middle market companies, deepest in ecommerce and wine and also serving health and wellness and 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.