How We Work
A fractional CFO practice with a built-in intelligence engine. The CFO sits in the room with you. The engine reads the market, the funnel, and the cohort, so the decisions in the room are grounded in what is actually happening.
What a Fractional CFO Actually Does
And what the intelligence engine has to do with it.
Main Street IQ is a fractional CFO practice. A senior finance leader, embedded in your business, accountable for the close, the cash, the margins, the reporting, the board conversation, the next decision. The kind of judgment a $50MM company eventually needs full-time, priced and paced for the company you have today.
What makes it different is the instrument set the CFO arrives with. Most fractional engagements ask the CFO to read your business using whatever data the operator already has, which is rarely enough. We bring an intelligence engine that does the reading: market signals, cohort patterns, AI visibility, competitive position, the gaps in the buyer journey. The engine surfaces what is actually happening; the CFO sits in the room with you and decides what to do about it.
Main Street IQ provides fractional CFO and advisory services. We are not a CPA firm and do not provide audit, attest, or tax-preparation services.
Four Readings, One Practice
Every engagement uses the same instruments. The depth and cadence change with the shape of how we work together.
Discover
What is happening in your market right now. Cohort dynamics, regional shifts, the buyer behavior that is actually in motion. Surfaced as market intelligence reports and vertical scans.
Diagnose
What is happening in your business. The Website Audit and Buyer Alignment work that names exactly where the funnel leaks, where the messaging misses, and what an AI engine answers when a buyer asks about you. Surfaced as written diagnostics, scored against the same dimensions every time.
Monitor
What changes over time. The cadence that catches drift before it becomes a problem: AI visibility moves, competitive shifts, cohort behavior, the metrics that matter to the next decision. Surfaced as monthly scorecards.
Advise
What to do about it. The standing decision cadence where the CFO sits in the room with you, reads the engine's findings against where the business is going, and helps you decide the next move. Surfaced as meeting cadence, decisions logged, follow-through tracked.
The Offerings Behind Each Reading
Three productized verbs. Each one steps up our involvement on a different axis: Discover widens the lens, Diagnose deepens the synthesis, Monitor lengthens the relationship.
What is happening in the market
We read the market, you read the report
The lightest engagement we offer. We do not look at your business; we look at the world your business sells into. You take what we surface and decide what to do with it. Wine-only as a productized deliverable today; the same verb describes the first weeks of any Engage or Manage onboarding.
Wine Discover | Single Issue
One regional scan. Cohort dynamics, AI-visibility patterns across the region, buyer-behavior shifts. One-time purchase, branded PDF.
Wine Discover | Annual Subscription
All issues in the current year plus access to the back catalog. Quarterly drop cadence; auto-delivered, cancel anytime.
What is happening in your business
A one-shot read, depth scales with the question
This is where our involvement steps up. We look at your funnel, your messaging, your AI surface, your competitive position. Four products at increasing scope, each a complete artifact in itself. Run any one of them standalone, or stack them.
Website Audit
Three-layer SEO / GEO / AEO read on a single URL. Where the funnel leaks, what AI engines say when buyers ask about you, where the messaging misses. Branded PDF with severity, evidence, recommendation, and expected outcome per finding.
Website Audit Pro
Adds the specialist interpretive layer on the operator's own surface: sequencing (which gate must be open before downstream fixes pay off), strategic positioning, operator-depth gotchas, vertical commentary on every finding. Where the base Audit is the punch list, Pro is the diagnosis. Includes the readout call by default.
Buyer Alignment Audit
Reverse-engineers the customer your public properties (web, social, ads, reviews, GBP, founder and team LinkedIn) imply you are attracting, then compares against the customer you say you want. Output is a three-mode failure classification (wrong person, right person wrong messaging, right person fragmented signal) plus unit-economics implications and a sequenced path forward.
Full Business Diagnostic (FBD)
Whole-business synthesis. Reads the Audit, the buyer-alignment work, and the monitor signals against your structured intake. Thirteen fully-formatted findings across eight dimensions of the business, opportunity sizing across five to seven levers, a 90-day roadmap, partner recommendations matched to specific findings. The deepest single artifact we sell outside a retainer. Available with a 90-minute strategy session.
What is changing over time
We keep watching, you get the scorecard
The recurring relationship. Same instruments as Diagnose, pointed at change over time rather than a single moment. This is where the practice becomes ongoing, and the structural bridge into the room.
Monitor
Monthly scorecard tracking your AI visibility, your competitive position, and the metrics tied to your next decision. Single-business view; the cadence catches drift before it becomes a problem.
Monitor Plus
Adds the cohort overlay. You against four named competitors, scored on the same dimensions you are scored on, every month. Plus specifically means cohort; additional named peers beyond the four are priced separately.
Advise is the fourth verb and the next step. When the Monitor cadence keeps surfacing decisions you do not want to make alone, that is when the CFO comes into the room. The shape of that work is described below.
Three Places You Can Be
Same practice, same instrument set. The right place depends on what you already have in-house: whether you only need the reading, you keep your finance team and want a CFO in the room, or you want us to be the finance department.
AI-Offering Client
In our data, not our room
You work with the intelligence engine. The artifacts land on your desk, a Website Audit, a Buyer Alignment, a Full Business Diagnostic, a monthly Monitor scorecard, or a Wine Discover report, and your team takes the actions. We are accountable for the reading. You are accountable for the room.
What's included
Choose any of the productized artifacts. Wine Discover annual or single-issue. Website Audit or Website Audit Pro. Buyer Alignment Audit. Full Business Diagnostic. Monitor or Monitor Plus subscription. Each artifact stands alone; no commitment to the others.
Engage
A CFO in your room
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 →
Manage
Your finance department, run by us
We are your finance function. We run the books: daily bookkeeping, monthly close, cash, cohorts, compliance, the whole stack, with the engine underneath and a named operator on your account. The CFO does the work a full-time CFO would do at a company twice your size. For owner-operators who would rather not build a finance team at all. We run this for a small number of clients at a time, because the CFO time it takes is real.
What's included
Embedded finance leadership covering close, cash, margin, investor and board reporting, KPI dashboards, cross-functional strategy, and finance team development. Monitor Plus running underneath. Capped at two to three active clients at any time; openings are rare and named. We build the function on the RAID principles → from the first close. See the full Manage page →
Most clients start as AI-offering clients. The findings prove the practice is reading the business the way the CFO would, and the question of whether to invite the CFO into the room writes itself over time. There is no upgrade pressure; staying in the AI-offering position is a real and good place to be, and the practice is built so that buyers there get the same engine the Engage and Manage clients get.
What You Get
These aren't aspirations. They're the standard we hold ourselves to in every engagement.
Real-Time Visibility
Real-time visibility into cash, margin, and KPIs: no more waiting weeks to understand your business.
Investor-Ready Finance Team
Finance team ready for investor scrutiny: clean reporting, clear metrics, confident answers.
No Knowledge Silos
Cross-trained teams with documented processes. No single points of failure.
Systems That Scale
Systems that scale without adding headcount. Automation handles the repetitive work.
Due Diligence Ready
Clean financials that survive due diligence, whether you're raising, selling, or just running a tight ship.