You can’t win a game you’re not keeping score in.
The financial engine that takes a founder-led business from $1M toward $5M. Without running out of cash or losing control.
The problem
Most businesses don’t stall at a million dollars because sales dry up. They stall because the systems that got them there can’t carry them further. Revenue outruns the books. Cash gets tight right when things are booming. Every decision runs through the owner.
That’s not a growth problem. That’s a plan problem.
Start here: the Nelson Profit Review
Before we talk retainer, I need to see the real numbers. You don’t need clean books or QuickBooks to start… that’s the point.
- Send 12 months of bank and card statements, however you currently invoice and get paid
- One short conversation with me
- Within 2 weeks, I walk you through exactly where the business stands
- You leave with a clear roadmap and a specific recommendation for what comes next
Three ways to work together
Pick the fit for where the business is today. You can move up a tier as you grow.
Financial Clarity
$2,000 – $3,000 / mo
For the owner who needs numbers they can trust and a thinking partner in the room… but isn’t in scaling chaos yet.
- Books maintained and kept clean
- Monthly close landed by the 10th, every month
- A KPI dashboard built around your business, not a generic template
- A monthly financial review meeting focused on decisions, not history
Growth CFO Most Common Fit
$4,000 – $6,000 / mo
The heart of the $1M to $5M work. For the owner ready to scale and unwilling to let cash flow be the thing that breaks it.
- Everything in Financial Clarity
- The 13-week cash flow forecast
- A rolling budget you actually understand and use
- Pricing and margin work
- Working capital management
- Quarterly strategy resets
Embedded CFO / COO
$7,000 – $10,000+ / mo
For the multi-entity operator who needs a finance function built and run. Priced by complexity and number of entities.
- Everything in Growth CFO
- Multi-entity consolidation
- Receipt-to-card validation and weekly P&L reporting
- Bookkeeper-to-controller build
- Financing strategy structured before it’s needed
- Hiring roadmap tied to revenue triggers
Limited availability. This is a deep operational engagement, and I only carry one or two at a time.
How the pricing works
- Every retainer relationship starts with the Nelson Profit Review. It’s how we both find out what we’re working with before either of us commits to more.
- All retainers are month to month. No long contracts. You stay because it’s working, not because you’re locked in.
- More entities, more payroll, and messier systems add a defined uplift, stated openly up front. No surprises.
- We revisit the retainer once a year. As the business scales toward $5M, the work grows and so does the value it creates.
The beliefs I operate from
- Cash flow is the game. Profit is the scoreboard.
- You manage what you measure, weekly.
- Arrange capital from strength, not desperation.
Proof
A field-service business, $1M in three states, building toward $5M in ten. A husband-and-wife-run field service company had a business that was profitable on paper and stretched thin in the bank account. Every job ran through the owner’s head, priced from memory, tracked in whatever system was closest at hand. The first move wasn’t more revenue. It was building a real financial spine keyed to every job, so the business could see its own cash and margin before the growth outran the systems again.