A Virtual CFO is a perfect happy medium between a Fractional CFO and a full-time, in-house CFO. Typically, a Fractional CFO is called in for a period of time, often in a turnaround situation where a company needs financial help, fast and furious, and they help make hard decisions to keep the company afloat and eventually to thrive. Or, they may be called in to fill in for someone on a leave of absence or while the CEO regroups after the CFO’s departure and considers next steps.

A full-time CFO is an employee of your organization and is appropriate for larger companies, but generally unaffordable for small businesses. Which brings us to a Virtual CFO: At Red Bike Advisors, we believe that every small business should have access to financial and tax insights that create exponential value for their companies, customers, employees, and families. Our Virtual CFOs are long-term partners that work with you and  your management team to create and execute on your business and tax strategy. We combine a deep understanding of how finance plays a role in business growth combined with a deep understanding of your specific business, industry, and strategy to help you achieve your growth goals.

A Virtual CFO is like an extension of your leadership team that takes your strategic business goals and translates them into financial drivers that will help you meet those goals. Common goals we tackle from the financial perspective are revenue growth, profit growth, determining and saving the right amount of working capital, fostering a customer-centric culture, attracting, recruiting, and retaining top talent, and creating transferable business value for when you’re ready to exit.

If we were to draw a Venn diagram, there would be an overlap in the two circles of “Virtual CFO” and “CPA” because sometimes they are both, and sometimes not. A CPA is a good professional license to have for our Virtual CFO and Tax Strategy services, but it’s not required. What is required of our VCFOs is business finance experience as a CFO, CPA, senior financial analyst or controller, plus soft skills around strategic, “analytically creative” thinking, the ability to analyze data, form insights, and recommend courses of action, and excellent communication. 

We typically start working with growing companies once they’ve passed $2M in annual revenue or are a funded startup. This is where you need to make critical decisions around hiring, forecasting, and budgeting that could make or break your cash flow situation and therefore your business.

Prior to that, we offer monthly and quarterly Financial Fitness Checkups to review your Management Reports and make recommendations.

Often when companies hit around the $20M mark, they “graduate” from our Virtual CFO services to their own full-time staff.

P.S. You can also take our 5-minute Financial Fitness Checkup and see whether you’re ready for your own VCFO.

First of all, we think of our services as an investment rather than a cost center. What’s the difference? A cost is something you put money into but don’t get a ton of exponential value from. With an investment, you put money in and get more money back! An investment in strategic finance and tax planning will help you grow your business, bring clarity to your finances, and help you answer big questions like when to hire and how to position for exit.

That said, see our average pricing above. We’ll do a free Strategy Session with you to understand your business and growth goals, then proposed a customized but fixed price for everything you need to achieve those goals. Why don’t you go ahead and get your session booked now?

We start with a free strategy session in which we get to know you, your business, and your growth goals. Then we put together a flat-fee services proposal that is designed to help you meet (and exceed) those goals. When you accept the proposal, we schedule a formal kickoff and onboarding period in which we create your 3-year strategic plan, annual operating plan, and cash flow plan, and build out the processes and dashboards to operationalize those plans, execute on them, and analyze performance. For more information on the process, see our Virtual CFO Services page.

We work with small but growing businesses in all industries that are earning between $2M and $20M in revenue. While there are certainly industry-specific nuances, drivers, and KPIs, every small business is focused on one or more of these key drivers: Revenue growth, profit growth, determining and saving the right amount of working capital, fostering a customer-centric culture, attracting, recruiting, and retaining top talent, and creating transferable business value for when you’re ready to exit.

Within those goals we can generally break down into service businesses or lines of business and product businesses or lines of businesses. That changes the key drivers of each goal; for example, if your goal is growing profit margin from 5% to 20%, if you’re a service-based business we’re going to look closely at your headcount and utilization; if you’re a product-based business we’re going to look closely at COGS and CapEx.

Finally, we do have a particular focus on dentists & medical professionals as well as B2B services and professional services.

Our mission at Red Bike Advisors is to equip our clients with financial and tax insights that create exponential value for their companies, customers, employees, and families—and ultimately create generational wealth. Like you, our CEO Gretchen Roberts is a small business owner who has always craved a strategic relationship with her finance, tax and accounting partner, but many accounting and tax firms reactively call once a year for tax papers and don’t truly advise unless you ask them a direct question. (Which means you already have to know what to ask instead of relying on them to analyze your situation and make proactive recommendations!)

We set out to create the kind of services that we’d want as a business owner that will help her answer big questions like “how many people do I need to hire this year to meet my growth goals?” and “how much cash should I keep in the bank?” and “which marketing tactics and channels should I double down on?”

If you crave that kind of relationship with your finance & tax strategy advisor, then give us a shout.

Not that we love losing clients, but we LOVE losing clients because we’ve helped them grow to the point that they have actually outgrown us! We are thrilled to work with you in any capacity to ensure a successful transition, including participating in your interview panels, helping to onboard your new CFO, and ensuring a smooth transition between us and them.