re: What do you look for in a CFO, if hiring

never give up equity, ever. For any reason. Ever.

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Y’all can’t really just ask AI everything and think that’s the real world. There are things like industries, geography etc. to take into consideration. The fact it says “strongly recommended” to give equity to a CFO at this range is ridiculous. Yeah, just give up the equity to some CFO that hasn’t help build anything.

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I definitely realize that. I did put in that its a construction staffing firm in Texas handling projects all over the US.

Honesty number 1 by far. A little OCD. Frugal financially.

Fully depends on what your goals are for the company. Is your ideal exit timeframe 3 years? 5? 10? Death?

Do you intend to become acquired by PE? Or sell the company to your employees? Leave it to children upon dirt nap? Other?

Without a lot more info, we can only provide responses that are going to be biased with assumptions and personal experience which may not be good advice for your specific goals.

Start with the end in mind…so you can build the vehicle one part at a time to get you there.

For now we say we want to keep this rolling and no real exit plan. We have had PE ask if we are interested in exploring a purchase or merger with a different kind of staffing firm and we have been in such a build, build, build phase, we haven’t entertained the conversation.

Big things that slow us down—
State filings in all the different states.
Month end close outs and accurate P&L review.
Devoting a balanced amount of time for future growth and strategic planning, sales and recruiting planning and development, and diversification.

We’ve got a seven man sales team, five recruiters, an office manager/accounting admin, and ops director who runs payroll and workers comp (for now), and a recruiting manager, myself CEO and my partner, COO.

I’ve been in the business for 15 years. Last company I was with, I was a franchisee of sorts and we had a very forward thinking CFO. He understood employee law, workers comp, finance, taxes… he was kind of like a general
Manager. I don’t know if we need that position as much as we need a controller.

We currently have 700 employees working for us across the country.

This is a perfect thing to put into ChatGPT or Claude

I found you guys online. Last two digits of your biz phone number is 90?

I own a government contracting company and we do a lot of MEP stuff. Need supervisors more than anything.

I'll email you this week.

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What do you look for in a CFO, if hiring

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Have you defined the scope of the role and drafted a JD? Make sure you know what you are looking for going in and limit scope creep bc you'll get every dick and harry coming in claiming they can do all the things, but a true c-suite candidate is going to know to stay in their lane.

I'd imagine you want an experienced CFO and not to take a chance with a first timer, so you're going to need to be prepared to pay for that person to step away or find someone out of work.

What about comp package? STI/LTI? Done your dilligence there?

Yall sound really light for $65mm but looks like you just made a massive jump from the 20’s. Congrats on the growth! There’s a big difference in making a large jump temporarily and making a big jump and continuing that growth. The fact that you just got a LOC to support the biz says a lot about how much you need some leadership on that front. It’s great to achieve success without financial depth bc it promotes conservative behaviors but at a certain point it’s a requirement.

I’m in the construction space with a few different companies and we hired a CFO 2.5 yrs ago. Prior to that we had a pretty sophisticated controller. The CFO we picked up when we were in the $60mm range and this year we’ll be in the $140-$150mm range. It’s pretty unbelievable how much he has helped our businesses. He came from a commercial HVAC biz where he was CFO/COO…they sold to PE and he worked for the PE firm for a couple of years. He’s a younger guy that has CFO chops but is an operator at heart. It’s important you find someone with higher level experience like this with strong relationships with banks, CPA’s, etc. Construction accounting experience is required with a strong desire to grow and scale businesses. Look for this demonstrated success with scaling a company(s). I know you have a different biz but we probably have 8 people in our accounting group including CFO and controller. We have a shared services agreement to pay for this group as they work on both companies.


Lastly, you’re going to need more than just a CFO if you want to stay at this current level and then grow more. As you know, the business changes a lot as you reach higher and higher milestones. Always stay lean and nimble but don’t let that keep you from working on the structure of your business to continue positioning yourself for future growth. Congrats on your success!