Fractional CFO Services in
Los Angeles County
Main Street IQ is a fractional CFO practice for owner-operated businesses under $50MM, with a built-in intelligence engine. The engine reads your market, your funnel, your cohorts, and what AI search says about you; the CFO sits in the room while you decide. For owner-operated DTC ecommerce brands, wineries, health and wellness practices, and elective medicine practices across Los Angeles County, that means senior finance leadership without the cost of a full-time hire. Founder Scott Hess is a U.S. Navy veteran with 20-plus years of CFO experience.
Veteran-owned and operated.
Why LA Owner-Operators Hire a Fractional CFO
Los Angeles is the country's densest DTC ecommerce cluster and one of its deepest markets for wellness and elective medicine. It is also a market where owner-operated brands compete every day against venture-funded rivals who can afford to lose money longer than you can. That fight is won on economics, and these are the four verticals where we know the economics deepest.
Ecommerce & DTC Contribution Math
MER is holding. Revenue is up. Profit is down. Every DTC founder hits this point, usually between $5M and $20M, when ad costs, inventory working capital, and fulfillment complexity start eating the margin that used to be obvious. In LA the squeeze is sharper because the brand next door is venture-funded and pricing for growth, not profit. A fractional CFO builds the contribution margin model by SKU and channel, the inventory cash lock-up analysis, and the spend-to-cash bridge that tells you what is actually funding growth and what is just financing the next ad buy.
Wine & DTC Club Economics
Los Angeles is not wine country, but wine business runs through it: urban wineries and tasting rooms inside the county, and wine brands whose club members and DTC buyers are concentrated here. Club tiers, shipping and compliance costs, and tasting-room overhead each carry their own margin story, and most P&Ls blur them together. A fractional CFO builds the per-tier club unit economics and the cash conversion picture that tell you which tier actually makes money and which one is quietly subsidized.
Health & Wellness Unit Economics
Longevity, IV therapy, hormone optimization, recovery, functional medicine. From Santa Monica down through Manhattan Beach and the South Bay, the LA wellness practice usually runs several modalities under one roof, each with its own acquisition cost, retention curve, and margin, all commingled in one P&L. A fractional CFO separates the lines, tells you which modality actually carries the practice and which one is quietly subsidized, and builds the membership and package economics that hold up as you add chairs and locations.
Elective Medicine & the Consult Lever
Cosmetic surgery, dermatology, MedSpa, injectables, cosmetic dental. The Beverly Hills and West Hollywood corridor is one of the most competitive elective medicine markets anywhere, and the whole business turns on the consultation-to-procedure conversion and the mix of procedures you book. Most practices track production but never model the lever. A fractional CFO builds the per-procedure contribution math, the provider and room utilization read, and the marketing payback by service line so you grow the procedures that pay and stop subsidizing the ones that do not.
Four readings, one practice
Every Los Angeles County engagement runs on the same instrument set. The depth and the cadence change with how close you want the CFO to the work.
Discover
A one-time read on the market your business sells into. Cohort dynamics, regional shifts, and the buyer behavior actually in motion.
Diagnose
A one-time read on your business. The Website Audit and Buyer Alignment work that names where the funnel leaks, where the messaging misses, and what AI engines say when a buyer asks about you.
Monitor
A continuous read. Monthly scorecards on AI-search visibility, competitive position, and the metrics tied to your next decision, so drift gets caught before it becomes a problem.
Advise
The CFO in the room. The standing decision cadence where we read the engine's findings against where the business is going and help you decide the next move.
Two ways that work
The difference is not the size of the number. It is who owns the books.
Engage
A CFO in your room
You keep your finance team. We bring senior judgment and the intelligence engine to the decisions that actually move the business: pricing, hiring, capital, channel shifts, board prep. For Los Angeles County owner-operators who have execution covered and want a CFO at the decision moments.
Manage
Your finance department, run by us
We are the finance function. Close, cash, books, investor reporting, and the CEO dashboard, run by the CFO with an embedded team and the engine underneath. For owner-operators who would rather not build a finance team at all. Run for a small number of clients at a time. See the full Manage page →
Not sure which one is you? That is the Intro Call. Both are scoped there, against your actual situation, not off a price card.
CFO Services Across Los Angeles County
Main Street IQ is based on California's Central Coast, and Los Angeles County is one of the six coastal counties we serve. The work runs remotely by default, with on-site presence for the moments that deserve it. These are the corridors where our four verticals concentrate.
Santa Monica, Venice & the Westside
The Westside carries one of the heaviest concentrations of DTC and consumer-product brands in the country, owner-operated companies selling through their own site, Amazon, wholesale, and retail at the same time. For these brands we build the contribution margin read by SKU and channel, the inventory working-capital plan, and the ad-spend payback math that keeps growth funded by the business rather than by the next round someone else raised.
Beverly Hills & West Hollywood
The county's signature elective medicine corridor: cosmetic surgery, cosmetic dermatology, MedSpa, injectables, cosmetic dentistry, and adult cosmetic orthodontics. Competition here is intense and marketing costs reflect it. We build the per-procedure contribution model, the consult-to-procedure conversion read, and the marketing payback by service line that separate the practices compounding from the practices churning.
Manhattan Beach & the South Bay
The South Bay pairs a dense wellness economy, longevity, recovery, IV therapy, functional medicine, with ecommerce operators who live close to the port and their own inventory. For wellness practices we separate modality-level margins and build membership economics that scale; for the DTC operators we model inventory cash lock-up and fulfillment cost per order before those numbers quietly decide the year.
Pasadena, the Valley & Greater LA
Owner-operated businesses run deep across Pasadena, Burbank, Glendale, Long Beach, and the San Fernando Valley: family-owned brands, practices, and urban wineries and tasting rooms among them. Wherever in the county you operate, the fit question is the same one we ask everywhere: an owner-operated company under $50MM where the founder feels the weight of the next decision and wants a CFO in the room for it.
Whether you need a part-time CFO for ongoing financial leadership, an interim CFO to bridge a transition, or a fractional finance partner to prepare for a major growth initiative or transaction, Main Street IQ brings 20+ years of CFO experience to Los Angeles County owner-operators. We serve companies across Orange County too →
Naming the SKU that was quietly losing money
Illustrative engagement
A DTC brand comes to us with revenue climbing and cash tightening every quarter. The blended ROAS looks fine, so everyone keeps spending. The read: one hero SKU is carrying the whole catalog, and the ad budget is spread across products that lose money on every order after freight, fees, and returns. We build the contribution margin model by SKU and channel, reallocate spend to the products that actually pay, and the cash stops leaking without revenue giving anything back.
That is the difference between a bookkeeper who records what happened and a CFO who reads what it means while you can still do something about it. See what your numbers are telling you →
Frequently Asked Questions
Main Street IQ is a fractional and interim CFO practice founded by Scott Hess, a U.S. Navy veteran with 20-plus years of CFO experience. It serves owner-operated companies in Los Angeles County across four verticals: DTC ecommerce, wineries, health and wellness, and elective medicine. The practice pairs a named CFO with a built-in intelligence engine that reads the market, the funnel, and the cohort before the decision. The starting point is a free 30-minute Intro Call.
A fractional CFO in Los Angeles costs a fraction of the total compensation a full-time CFO commands in this market. Senior finance talent in Los Angeles is expensive, and a fractional model lets owner-operated companies under $50MM access CFO-level leadership without the full-time salary. Pricing depends on your vertical and your situation, so it is scoped on a free 30-minute Intro Call rather than printed on a tier card. You only pay for the work that pays you back.
We go deepest in four verticals: DTC ecommerce brands, which sit at the center of the country's densest ecommerce cluster; wineries and DTC wine brands; health and wellness practices; and elective medicine practices, from cosmetic surgery and dermatology to MedSpa and cosmetic dentistry. The common thread is the owner-operated company under $50MM that has outgrown its finance function. If your business sits outside those four verticals, the Intro Call is still the fastest way to find out whether we can help or who we would point you to instead.
No. Our client fit profile is owner-operated: the founder is the decision-maker. Companies controlled by venture capital or private equity firms have different reporting demands, different incentives, and usually a sponsor-designated finance path; they are better served by firms built for that world. If you are an owner-operated brand competing against venture-funded rivals, that is exactly who we build for: the intelligence engine and the contribution-margin discipline that let you win on economics rather than on burn.
Both. Main Street IQ is based on California's Central Coast, and Los Angeles County is one of the six coastal counties we serve. Most of the ongoing work, financial management, dashboards, reporting, and decision support, runs remotely; for the moments that benefit from being in the room, board meetings, team working sessions, lender conversations, we come to you. We work with companies across the county, from Santa Monica and the Westside to Beverly Hills, Manhattan Beach, Pasadena, Long Beach, and the Valley.
Related Guides for LA Operators
CFO, Finance Director, or Controller: Which Do You Actually Need?
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The Marketing Team That Didn't Know It Was Destroying Margin
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Interim Finance Leadership
Your CFO just left, or is about to. Interim finance leadership that embeds in days, stabilizes the function, and sets up your next permanent hire.