Business CFO for Hire Podcast
Real conversations with founders, operators, and industry experts on the financial decisions that actually move a business, before, during, and after the numbers show it.
Episodes
Charlotte Merritt
Charlotte, founder of OPPs Now, got her start organizing businesses the same way she once organized chaos as a kid, and now maps end to end operations for small firms, especially law firms, from client intake through production handoffs to the financials that eventually land on a CFO’s desk. She is not HR certified but knows enough to catch a firm out of compliance and bring in the right specialist, whether that is an HR partner, a marketing consultant, or a sales professional. Her ideal client sits in the five to twenty person range, right at the point where a business needs real process instead of everyone wearing every hat.
Karena Bell
Karena is the founder and CEO of ProfitLinz, a profit optimization and business advisory firm working mostly with privately held manufacturing, industrial, distribution, and logistics companies between 10 million and 300 million in revenue. Before ProfitLinz she spent years inside the auto industry, managing a data center for Volkswagen North America, running dealer technical operations at Chrysler, and leading an effort at Daimler that cut vehicle development time from seven and a half years down to two and a half. Her work now centers on forensic, line item level financial analysis that surfaces hidden loss leaders in pricing, operations, and labor, even inside companies that already consider themselves profitable, along with tariff recovery audits that have returned 15 to 40 percent of five years of client tariff payments, often in the seven figures.
Charles Hughes
Charles is a former Army first sergeant who spent 25 years running delivery operations, from field service supervisor up through COO roles at a technology company and a law firm. At Walgreens he led a 750-person field service organization supporting more than 8,000 stores, trimming an $90 million operating budget down to $50 million through attrition management and efficiency gains rather than layoffs. He now runs Aligned Growth Solutions, where his Cultivate Operating System, a nine-step framework across four phases, helps founder-led field services, MSP, and infrastructure companies in the 15 to 75 million dollar revenue range scale without losing operational control.
Podcasts I’ve Been On
| Date | Show | Focus of discussion | |
|---|---|---|---|
| March 2025 | North Fulton Business Radio | Stan is interviewed about the role and impact of a fractional CFO, including strategic financial leadership, risk management, communication, business turnarounds, and successful exits. | Listen → |
| April 2023 | Simon Says 2.0 | Stan discusses business financial management, profitability, sustainability, and how a fractional CFO provides executive-level financial guidance without the cost of a full-time CFO. | Listen → |
Have a story worth going beyond the balance sheet?
If you’ve navigated a real financial turning point in your business, we’d love to have you on.
Pitch yourself as a guest
