Trends for CFOs 4-16-26

This is Scott Becker with the Becker Business and the Becker Private Equity podcast. Today's discussion is a section from a webinar on CFO leadership and different trends and issues that people are watching in the CFO world and that CFOs are watching. This panel features four panelists, Joe Calvinico from J2C Evaluation, Chris Lacey from Priority Search Group, Craig Levy, Comm Advisors, and Nathan Fraistetter of GOFIG. We're very thankful to the three sponsors of this webinar. Those include Panther Capital, GOFIG, and Comm Advisors. Thank you for listening. We hope you enjoy this session on CFO leadership. Nathan, could you take a second to introduce yourself and tell us what you do and what GOFIG is doing? Hello. Nice to be here, Scott. Thank you for the invite. I am a financial analyst and data scientist and have been working in Fortune 500 for most of my career up until 12 months ago where I went into consulting on my own for data and analytics as well as AI engineering specifically for CFOs and financial leaders. Over the last 12 months, I have had the privilege to talk to dozens and dozens of financial leaders in mid-market and SMB space. I'm excited to share some of the things that we are seeing and the trends we're seeing over the last 12 months, which has changed a lot. I'm excited to go into that. No, congratulations. We'll start to talk in a second. We'll come to you first in a moment about the top issues you hear CFOs talking about and the excitement of founding your own business. Congratulations. Just fantastic. Chris, I'll go around the horn here. Chris Lacey, can you take a moment and tell us what you do? I've been in executive search for the last 20 years. The last eight years, I've owned my own organization. I would say the majority of those 20 years has been executive search and private equity across a few different sectors. That could be in industrial, consumer products, and healthcare. Over the last few years, what we've done is these, the leaders that we would place would come to us and have us start to fill in roles for their teams. So the last couple of years has been a big push in really just focusing on that missing middle. So the leadership layers below the C-suite, building out the teams that are driving the execution and the strategy, so that is all we're doing and really putting a big emphasis. Even its private equity, we still have a few other sectors we focus in. It's really been driving more in healthcare. And it went around the controller, that area, that level of person? Correct. So it could be like within the finance function, it could be controller. We could even do accounting managers, but it goes to revenue cycle, compliance, operations, quality, all of that, all of those functions, but really just focused on the missing middle. Thank you so much. And Craig, you've had this phenomenal career as an interim CFO, and you started doing this a long time ago, and it just had this incredible track record. Tell us about yourself and about common advisors, and also about the new firm that you've founded or co-founded. Thank you, Scott. So yeah, I've got 35 plus years in finance and operational experience. 12 years ago, I started KOM advisors as a guy hanging out a shingle doing interim CFO work for middle, lower middle market private equity companies through all stages of the hold from acquire, professionalize, grow, restructure, and exit. And one of the things I saw in a lot of these cases where there were a lot of independent sponsor back deals, and a lot of independent sponsors are showing up saying we're operators, and really they're showing up with really smart folks who can operate a spreadsheet and financial engineering tools. And I had an exit with a group of guys, and we said we think we have a better mousetrap. We're actually operators. We've actually sat in the seat and faced down challenging clients or lenders or vendors. And so that's going to be our value proposition. So we started 3BG strategic partners looking for businesses in the two to $10 million EBITDA range not only to invest in, but potentially to fine-tune along the way. So now I sit on both sides of the table. Scott is a financial operator and somebody that's making investments and capital allocation decisions. Well, congratulations and how exciting. And I've watched your career and just fantastic. Joe, let me ask you to take a second founder of J2C valuation to introduce yourself. Thank you very much, Scott. Thanks for having me here today. I have a full service valuation practice. I spent most of my career public accounting. I was a partner at KPMG. So many years of business valuation, real estate valuation, and machinery equipment and other assorted personal property for variety purposes, financing, trust in the states, bankruptcy, you name it. We've done a property tax appeals and we've run the gamut on those kind of things. Fantastic. Joe, there you go. We see your video now. You look fantastic. Thank you so much. Nathan, let me teed up to you. You've had this incredible last 12 months of talking every day to CFOs. What are you hearing most from CFOs? What are the big issues they're talking about? And what are you hearing in your conversations? What we've seen in the last five years is this increasing trend in the velocity of instability. Things are changing so fast. And I'm not just talking about AI. I'm talking about for a lot of companies who make physical products, especially like manufacturing, industrials, the cost of goods and supply chains have have been so volatile for the last five years since COVID, even recently with tariffs and with supply chain interruptions with the global war. Now we have oil and energy going up. Stock market is driving everyone on the edge of their seat. And so there's just a lot of volatility and a lot of uncertainty. And because of that volatility, there is a greater need to understand what is the current state of the business. And a lot of how a lot of finance teams operate is on a monthly cadence where their analysis and reporting happens after the end of the month. And in order, part of the month end process, close the books and see the P&L and look at the numbers and financials. But the problem is that you have this, now you have this four to five week lag before you're seeing how you performed in a month. You might not know how you did in March until April 21st. And to be able to react to that in this high-paced world where things are changing so fast, it causes problems. Thank you. And that lag in financial reporting is a disaster for companies, isn't it? Particularly in the time of volatility. Talk about that. If you can't get your numbers quickly and know your business well, it's very hard to operate in a rapid environment. Nathan, any thoughts there? Yeah, exactly. So the biggest thing is when costs are going up and you don't really understand what your margins are until five weeks later. And for that five week period, you're making decisions on continuing to increase production without accounting for the higher costs. So you might be budgeting that your cash flows for the next three months might be at a certain level. And then when you get there, and by the time you react to the higher costs, your cash flows are lower. So any investment plans or hiring plans, decisions you made to grow the company now has to be modified to account for the things that are driving margin compression, that are driving down your profitability in your cash flows. And Craig, let me ask you to comment on the top issues that you're hearing about from CFOs currently. And as you look at investing in companies, what are the top issues you're thinking about? Sure. So three things, Scott. And some of these we've talked about before, cash management, now followed by capital allocation. And then as we were talking about earlier, AI adoption. So in cash management, we're still in uncertain times between tariffs, inflation, etc. And so we need to be running tighter cash models than we have in years. A five day swing in DSO, Day Sales Outstanding, or DPO can unlock more liquidity than a 2% cost cut. But you really got to monitor that and keep your finger on that. The second is capital allocation discipline. My job, as I tell my CEOs and boards, is to find a way to get to yes. But a lot of cases, the business propositions that land on my desk aren't fully formed. The risks aren't assessed, the growth assumptions are way too optimistic. And so my initial response is often no. But let's look at these things first. And so we really got to do a better job at understanding sort of the risks, opportunities that are being put in front of us, because capital is finite. And then lastly, in that capital allocation area is in M&A. And I'm already getting a lot of sims and a lot of looks at companies and companies that look attractive on the surface, but can't grow their business past the transaction costs once you dig in. Companies that are run like hobbies, businesses that are boxed in by their own ceilings, unless they have some real growth potential or costs that can be taken out beyond the owner, segueing out, those get filtered out. And so you got to be able to say no before you can say yes. And then lastly is AI adoption. And we've talked about that with Amanda and Brett, and especially outside of Tech and SaaS. There's no universal playbook for how this is going to work out. And companies are still sort of figuring it out as they go. I've sat in board processes just recently for 2026, and the boards are always asking, so how much AI savings is baked into the number? And I've yet to figure out a good way to answer that question and be confident about it. So I too am learning about what the upsides and the risks are. Thank you. When you see a company that's sort of stuck in their growth, and doesn't show real, yeah, or you're laying to sort of move to a bigger level, what is usually the challenge? Is it motivation? Is it limited markets? Is not enough talent on the team? Where do you see some of that, those companies being boxed in? Certainly. So there's a couple of different ways to attack that. One is the desire for growth. We're looking at a lot of companies that, quite frankly, and these are million dollar companies, they're quite big, that our run as lifestyle businesses, a founder became an owner operator and is taking out enough cash to pay for what they need to pay for. And so now it's creating the confidence that we can actually go build something else. Now in the area where I want to grow, but I'm stuck, I think we heard a little earlier on what is your go-to-market strategy, and that really requires understanding who you're calling, what your value proposition is, how your value proposition is being received. And quite frankly, if you're going to develop a new product, I'm sure my other CFOs on their call can, this resonates with them. They've never had an engineer that couldn't build something better. Well, can I get paid to build something better? Is really the question that needs to be asked first. And that's really so, so true. It's that Venn diagram of what you're great at doing, plus what the market will pay for. You've got to really get the Venn diagram. Chris, you're working in this world of changing artificial intelligence world, you're in the hiring world, the filling out lots of positions world. Where are you seeing, are CFOs starting to think about, do they need just as large a team as they used to have, or are they starting to think, will AI take over some of those roles? Or is it still that the fact that there's just so much need for, and there's such a shortage of controllers, CPAs, and all these people that you don't really have AI changing that business very much yet? Where do you see some of that? Yeah, I think going back to Brett's comment from the first panel, is there still learning how to implement it. So they're not just bringing it in and deploying it enterprise-wide, they're still trying to figure out, and it's not one size fits all, each organization is trying to figure out which AI model and how to use that model to best help them make decisions. It's over the last 20 years, the CFO role has gone from scorekeeper to strategist, and they're being, they are more involved, I think in all of the functions than other functions are, because the numbers are the language of the business, but it's not replacing their team at this point, it's helping them make better decisions, and then going back to Craig and Nathan's point, is they're trying to make their businesses more durable. They don't just want to grow, they don't want to implement processes, they won't want to throw things against the wall and see if they stick, they really want to try to create enterprise, value, and make those businesses durable as they grow and sustainable. And how important is it that hiring role and trying to fit the right people in to a system, but having the right people to do that, Chris, because you live in that world, talk about that, because being durable means consistent good people, doesn't it? I mean, that's part of it. Yeah, absolutely. We've talked about this before, and this is another thing that I'm seeing with CFOs that we're working with is they're very interested, not just in the finance numbers, but just numbers across the board. So in a lot of our partners where we are doing a lot of work every month for the same company across all functions, they want to know what those numbers are producing. So they don't care necessarily about the volume, let's call it of candidates, but they do want to know of what we're presenting, what is that quality of hire, do they stick, and then what is that, how is that helping us carry our strategy forward, and then going back to the point of building a durable business, is that somebody who's going to grow deep roots and help us grow the organization? So it's critically important to put, I mean, Jim Collins said this 25 years ago, but not just to have the right people on the bus, but in the right seats. And I think CFOs are also helping with that. No, Chris, I think that's right on. And Joe, let me turn to you. You've seen so much in your business career, real estate businesses sort of across the board. What do you see right now when you look at the financial managers, the CFOs, the people that you work with, you work with a lot of banks as well? What are sort of the top pieces that you're watching currently and you're interacting with people on? So the biggest things that I'm seeing right now is that certainly is the availability and source that cost the money. And that's driving a lot of decisions these days. And one of the clients I'm working with right now is that all of a sudden, they're able to pull together a deal which they hadn't been able to pull together for quite a long time because they found a good source of money through a private source that hadn't been available before. So things in terms of the traditional sources of money are as available as now basically singular sources of money that I'm finding. And they're being very creative about what they're putting together in the term sheet. Let me ask you a question about that because the whole world of private credit grew exponentially the last decade plus. And a lot of it grew out of the Great Recession, different regulations and so forth. Now private credits starting to have its first sort of hiccup. What do you sort of sing in the finance market? As you see some of the private credit starts to really struggle right now, what do you sing in the finance market long term and capital availability? For a while, there was so much money chasing deals, there was so much availability. What do you sing in terms of banks and capital availability for companies that are looking to grow? Yeah, I think Craig talked about the best in terms of that kind of thing is that but overall is that in terms of growth to be sustainable with that kind of thing, is that overall is you have to have a solid, you really have to have a solid pipeline as far as that kind of thing goes. Otherwise you're absolutely not going to be able to get done or you have to get done. In your prior section before us that David said, hey, what is slowing you down? And I think you're starting to see that that use of AI in that area is probably going to help us out quite a bit too. Thank you very, very much. And Nathan, let me come back to you. What are you seeing in terms of deals, capital availability, and the place where CFOs need your guidance the most? Where are you working? The closest with CFOs and where are you able to expedite what they're doing or help them the most? The biggest thing where I'm expediting them is on some of the data work that the CFO is doing to Chris's point where a CFO is a scorekeeper instead of strategist, where they're spending four to 60 hours manually updating a spreadsheet to get the numbers right. And companies that are backed by private equity, private equities is demanding more financial growth than they've ever had before. And they want more frequent updates, they want more granular reporting and being able to explain why things are happening the way they are at a granular level, that takes a level of acumen on the data and reporting side that was something that was not really available to middle market companies in the past. And now with implementing AI and building AI data systems, we can literally hand off the financial agent that a CFO can use to automate all those data systems and then ask the questions that they need to to be that strategist. Ask questions like how can we improve our margins? How can we improve profitability? What are the opportunities here? And that's where AI really starts to open the door to start doing things that they would have to wait historically a week or two weeks for an FPNA analyst to do the deep dive for them. And let me ask this question about the CFO as strategist. In my career, many of us want to think as the CFO as a strategist. And what I've seen over the course of my career is there's some percentage of CFOs that are really strategists beyond scorekeepers. And I've always looked at that number as, and this is not to insult my CFO colleagues, as 25 to 30 percent are really deeply involved as leaders of the C-suite, others are deeply involved as scorekeepers, but very, very important scorekeepers not to understate that. Is that going to have to change in the world going forward? And do you disagree with that assessment? And I'll just give you my own perspective working with a CFO over the years. Some are really, really numbers great, so important to the executive team. Some are truly strategists, but they're often very distinct. Any thoughts on the evolution of the CFO over the next decade in our CFOs going to have to change if they haven't already? Nathan? I'd say yes. I'd say yes. So first of all, this might be a hot take, but CFOs who are only scorekeepers are not CFOs. They are the controller. And what the CFO role, what it really has always been and what will continue to be true is that the CFO is the strategist because they are proving the budgets. They are saying what investments we make and don't make. And so by default, they have to be looking forward to be able to have the confidence to make those decisions. And you can't be looking forward if you're only looking at the past. You're only looking at reports. No, thank you so much. And Craig, what do you see out there in terms of the evolution of CFOs? How do they have to evolve? And you've made a living, quite frankly, for the last decade plus 12, 15 years of stepping into the shoes of the CFO that either had left for whatever reason, advanced for whatever reason, or accompanied to the growth-oriented CFO. How do you see that evolution of CFOs out there? That's right, Scott. My career for the past decade and a half has been filling in where a CFO either thought the curve they were on wasn't the right curve or they weren't successful. And in every case where they weren't successful, they couldn't tell a story. They may have been a scorekeeper, but the CFO has to be the chief architect and storyteller. The CEO is the visionary, and the CFO is coming right back behind that CEO to get all of the stakeholders, whether that be capital, lenders, employees, behind the vision to create followership. That's done through a lot of, how shall we say, battles, but it can be done now much easier, as Amanda had said, through the use of tools to literally start with your ERP system, go to Insight and from Insight to DECK, whether that's BORED DECK or the all-employee quarterly update DECK. It is fascinating to watch this evolution, and let me ask Chris and Joe, if you're advising CFOs today, where's the focus of the advice and what CFOs should be looking at in terms of opportunities and what priorities do you think about when you talk to CFOs today, Chris? And then, Joe, I'll ask you the same question. Sure. I'm a fundamentals guy, so I'm not going to have any hot takes here. I think that deals don't create value on their own. It's really all the work that goes into it, just appearance-wise. We would all love to have six-pack abs, but that's not the workout. That's an outcome, but that starts in the kitchen. Better nutrition, water, sleep, same thing goes for CFOs and just businesses in general, that growth is really exciting, but it's the integration work. It's the deep work that makes it real and keeps those companies durable. I'll just end it with this phrase, as I think they should continue to focus on those fundamentals. I think that they can help lead strategy. They can help deploy AI. Not everybody has a CFO in their organization. They can be the leaders of that. I just think it's a long obedience in the same direction. Just keep being an integral part of that leadership team, being a consistent part, and being a strategist. Thank you very, very much. Joe, let me turn to you. Biggest priority for CFOs going forward the next several months. Exactly what Chris said. I agree. Everything that he had to say in terms of the overall fundamentals. Interestingly enough, you alluded to this earlier, Scott. You talked a little bit about in-person, a lot more events and things like that becoming in-person. I see that as actually the next step in getting back into the real world is that the CFOs are spending more time going out networking and finding out either deals or they're finding people just out in the open and talking to people live. We can't underestimate the power of actually being together in a room and talking, going to seminars and that type of thing. Of course, like yourself, there are great podcasts that are out there that are great business intelligence, even competitor intelligence that are out there. I think that those are things that are important for CFOs as well. I think the point, somebody had mentioned earlier, I'm not sure if it was Nathan or Craig that mentioned, or maybe it was Chris that mentioned that the CFOs also got to be the chief storyteller. In this world of artificial intelligence, I'm going to ask Nathan and Craig this question, the ability to communicate what somebody's doing and communicate with the C-suite team and with the sales team and with the product team and with the chief operating officer. How important is that today, Nathan, as a CFO, this ability to communicate with your team? Yes, crunching numbers and get everything together, but then being able to explain where it meets and how it impacts things. How important are those analytical and communication skills, Nathan? The answer is in the question. Of course, it's very important. Being on the same page, that's ultimately what is the requirement for people in the same organization, different departments, to be on the same page in order to be aligned on the same strategy. The only way you get there is having the foundational infrastructure where all the data you're getting from sales and operations is aligned with the CFO's data sets. Instead of having different spreadsheets where numbers are people pulling reports and getting different numbers and nothing's validating, this creates a lot of frustration and friction inside an organization. They start to create distrust and then it becomes hard for the CFO to mobilize their teams to move towards the vision that the CEO set out for the company. It all starts with the fundamentals to what Chris is saying of, let's create that single source of truth first and get all the teams on the same page and now guide and steer the organization towards the CEO's vision. That ability to communicate all this, even when you work with your CFO clients and the finance teams you're working with, if everybody's just throwing data at each other, nobody really gets any place. There's still this need to really communicate and work with each other. You've got to make sure the data is right, but then communicating with it and work with each other to align people and teams is really critical, isn't it? Yeah, that's why we have so many board meetings and monthly meetings to get people in the same room and align in those things. I think to your point, by being able to streamline the data wrangling side, you give yourself more time to be able to put the message together and communicate with your team on why this matters, why does this meeting matter, why does this report matter, why are these numbers what do they represent from a how it impacts the organization, what we need to do about it? Thank you. And Craig, let me ask you a similar question. The biggest priority for CFOs currently and what do you see as the biggest priorities? Because we're in a world of information overload, it seems like, and I think to Nathan's point, getting that data right, Chris has talked a lot about having the right team. Joe does this tremendous job of sort of this mix of making sure that CFOs have the right analytical skills to go with communication skills. But where do you see the biggest priority for CFOs today in this incredibly information overload world? Sure. So right now in my career, we're probably in some of the most turbulent business economic conditions that I've ever been in. There's a lot of reasons for it. We won't go into that. And so in order to be able to win, you have to be able to do robust scenario planning quickly. And that means you have to understand your business. But then as the CFO and in private equity, in almost all the cases, it's the CFO and the CEO that are running the company. Why? Because those are going to be the two that are going to have the lead to exit the company and get the returns that the investors are looking for. And so whether the CEO delegates it or not, the CFO is usually the provocative thought leader to push the, well, what happens if discussions with the rest of the executive leadership team, and you need to have those discussions so that you can do the scenario planning to say, here's what we would do if we have a 5% or 10% EBITDA miss. And just as important, here's what we would invest in if we had a 5% or 10% EBITDA gain. And then to tie that in with your last question on communications, you have to get to what I'll call the so what quickly. Why is the CEO and the board caring about this? What is the so what about what you just did? And that's so important, isn't it, that people actually know what they're trying to accomplish in that you've got, you could have all the information you want, but you better have a team that can go after it with that information and implement what you're trying to do, right? I mean, because everybody's going to be information overloaded and a big difference is going to be those that can understand what they're trying to do, align their teams and actually get it done. Absolutely, Scott. I learned quickly, I could bury a leader, whether they're in sales or tech with data. And I had a CEO challenge me, Craig, develop the vision for your process. And I'd be interested to hear if the other folks on their call are thinking the same way. But I thought about it for a few days. And I said, the vision for my team, and this was 25 years ago, and it's still true today, to provide timely, accurate, relevant, actionable business intelligence. Because without all those legs and the multi-legged stool, it's useless. One of the things that I'll comment on very quickly is that in Chris's world, which is search and helping to fill out teams for CFOs and teams, this ability to sort of condense down so they're not seeing 100 different candidates and seeing five that might be the right fit is so important. Because everybody's, they don't even want to talk to you as a search firm if you're sending them 50 different candidates, they can do that themselves on the site. So you've got to be really good at ferreting out the right people for people. I mean, that's that mix of judgment and really taking what you do seriously, which I know you really do. It's fantastic to watch. And Joe, I think it's the same thing. I mean, what you bring to this more than anything else, a lot of valuation firms, what you bring to it is that mix of really personal touch and judgment and understanding what the customer's looking for fair statement. And Nathan, the same thing, you've got this incredibly sharp mind and that ability to work closely with organizations to get them what they need so they could do their job better is so, so important. And just fantastic. And Craig, the same with you. It's incredible. The career event is an interim CFO and now as an investor too. Fantastic. I want to thank all four of you. I want to particularly thank all of you for your support. And particularly on this webinar, thank Craig and Nathan and your companies for being sponsors today. Thank you so much. We greatly appreciate it. So it keeps the lights on. So thank you very, very much all for you for joining us. Just fantastic. We'll move to the final session of this webinar again. Thank you to Chris Lacey, Priority Services Group, Joe Calvonico, J2C Evaluation, Nathan Freistetter, GoFig and Craig Gleavy, who's now wearing a couple of different hats, Com Advisors in 3BG. 3BG Strategic Partners. Thank you so much for listening to the Becker Business and the Becker Private Equity Podcast. We hope you enjoyed this.