Forthright Financial Services

04/08/2026

Lemonade day is coming!

Grateful for the opportunity to help young entrepreneurs learn and experience what its like to run their own business!

05/23/2025

Spent most of the week in Orlando, FL at the CFO Accelerator conference.

I’m a firm believer that we need to be “reminded” WAY more than we need to be “taught”. Luckily this conference has provided a great amount of both th e last few years!

05/09/2025

Most Profitable WINNERS 🍋💸 – Weatherford Lemonade Day 🍋
Hustle that paid off!
These stands managed their costs, boosted their sales, and made some serious lemonade money!

Congrats to our Most Profitable teams!

Thank you to Forthright Financial Services for cheering on young entrepreneurs with big financial goals.

💰🍋📈

Weatherford Chamber of Commerce

03/31/2025

08/02/2024

📉 Clients DON"T come to us for the fancy spreadsheets and graphs.

Clients come to us so they can:
✅ Spend time with their kids without feeling anxious over what's slipping through the cracks.
✅ Have someone shoot straight with them and give direct advice (even if it's uncomfortable.)
✅ Know what specific areas need improvement.
✅ Finally share the weight of the stress that they quietly carry.
✅ Be with their spouse and not tip-toe around the money talks.

You're not looking for another accountant/bookkeeper/financial planner.

You're looking for peace of mind.

We can help.

07/25/2024

"You "finance guys" only want to work with people with lots of money. You don't want to work with me and my husband."

A well-meaning lady told me this when she found out that I did financial planning.

But, (respectfully) she was wrong. 🤷‍♂️

When I started Forthright Financial Services:
🔐 This was the problem I set out to solve.
📇 These are the people I set out to help

📊 REAL Financial Planning (not a shallow "retirement calculator.")

🖼 Emphasize "Life Planning" as much as "Retirement Planning."

💸 No Investment requirements or minimums.

🤝 Get anybody the information I believe they need.

Simple.
Transparent.
Forthright.

Take the Guesswork Out of Your Finances As a Certified Financial Planner™ professional with 10+ years of experience in accounting and finance, I help uncomplicate finances and create a confident path forward with straightforward advice and strategy. Schedule a Call Take the Guesswork Out of Your F...

06/12/2024

🤷‍♂️ I don't like the way traditional "Profit & Loss" (P&L) reports are built.

Accounting Heresy!? Maybe.

🟩 P&L reports are built to help accountants.
🟥 Not necessarily business owners.

I like grouping overhead expenses into 5 or 6 categories to help owners quickly, and easily see what they ACTUALLY want to see.

These categories are usually a combination of:
✳️ Operational Expenses
✳️ Facilities
✳️ Auto Expenses (I only break this out for businesses with a fleet)
✳️ Payroll
✳️ Payroll Taxes & Employee Benefits
✳️ Other Business Expenses (A "junk drawer" of sorts)

You can still keep ALL your expense categories! They would just be "Sub-Categories" that you collapse for simplification, or expand to see more details.

❗This helps the profit projections look SO CLEAN! ✨

👉 THEN: You can make a Profit-First system even easier!

Example:
➡️ Your "Facilities" category is pretty consistently at 7.5% of your revenue.
➡️ Very easy to start putting 7.5% of every revenue $ into a "Facilities" account 🤔

I think it can be game changing for owners!

PS. This post is inspired by concepts from "Simple Numbers" by Greg Crabtree. Worth the read!

06/10/2024

❓ What business finance concept has captured my attention for the last few weeks?

✨ Using a "Salary Cap"

It's as simple as it sounds!:
➡️ Use best-practice ratios
➡️ Combine with industry specific needs
➡️ Back into your "salary cap" calculation
➡️ Easily understand how to grow that "salary cap"

Credit to "Simple Numbers" author Greg Crabtree for this concept.

The big concept that Crabtree advocates is his "Labor Efficiency Ratio" (LER)

👉 An efficient LER is where Total Labor is 50%, or less, of Gross Profit.
✳️ (Total Labor INCLUDES direct labor and OWNERS WAGES!)
✳️ (Crabtree's "Gross Profit" is BEFORE direct labor is subtracted)

🔎According to Crabtree, an efficient LER *should* create an easy route for businesses to reach a 15% profit margin (with all other items being reasonable)

This rule-of-thumb can be easily adjusted (and divided into roles/departments) to find the "Salary Cap" that works for specific businesses.

Now you can see where you can spend more/less, or you can focus on increasing your gross profit to raise your Cap.

PS: This is a watered down interpretation of Crabtree's LER. There are other important aspects not mentioned above.

06/07/2024

❗ NEW favorite description of how my CFO services help clients

[New client in recent meeting]: "Okay I get it now. We tell you what we want the business to do, and you help do the thinkin' for us"

🤔 At first, that description made me nervous.

But I understood what this specific client meant, and I loved it 💯

He meant that I:
✅ Ask the questions they don't think to ask.
✅ Help create a roadmap to get where they want.
✅ Brainstorm and get their complex ideas out onto the table.
✅ Plan so that cash doesn't run out along the way!

I also use industry best practices (i.e. "profit first", "simple numbers". etc.) to help them:
✅ Project out profits, taxes, and cash.
✅ Truly understand their numbers.
✅ See where they could/should make adjustments.

❓ The reason I liked this so much?

Describing EXACTLY how I help fractional CFO clients has been the bane of my existence. (Admittedly, most of that is on ME.)

So, hopefully this little quip will help in the future!🤷‍♂️

06/03/2024

Hypothetical Client: "I made $150,000 in profit last year"

Me: "Awesome, How much was your salary?"

Client: "I only took profit distributions of $150,000"

Me: "I hate to break this to you, but you made $0 in profit"

😬 😬 😬

I enjoy talking about all the fringe benefits of owning your own business and helping clients the way owners envision.

BUT

📈 I also HAVE TO talk about your business like an investment.

❓ How much is the actual return on your investment for owning your business?

If your business is making just enough "profit" for you to live off of, then I have bad news for you:

➡️ Your business is not making you any real investment returns. You are simply paying your salary through profit distributions

So:

✅ Pay yourself a living wage salary
✅ treat any profits ABOVE this amount as your return on investment.

If you don't have any profits above your salary, then its PAST time to start understanding your numbers better.

05/24/2024

❓ What is the most UNEXPECTED difference between Fractional CFO Services and Personal Financial Planning?

🤑 It is SIGNIFICANTLY more easy for people to talk about the messy parts of their personal finances

BUT

🗃️ It is surprisingly hard for business owners to reveal all the messy parts of their business finances.

🤔 My (non-researched) hypothesis?

🟩 People are more likely to accept that personal finances can be a mess. They've seen examples, heard plenty of anecdotes, and have come to terms with this fact.

BUT

🟥 Business owners struggle to understand how rare it is for business operations and finances to be "under control" FOR EVERYONE.

When you also add-in how much of an owner's personal identity is tied to their business success, then you can start to see the issues.

HOWEVER, even when I talk to successful 7+ figure business owners, they still share their struggles of how hard it is to keep up with everything.

⚠️ I'll be bold and say that NOBODY has their business completely under control! (and many of you reading this will struggle to accept that!)

We all need an extra hand, or another pair of eyes. That's what I strive to provide the business owners that use my services.

05/22/2024

"Embrace the imposter syndrome. It is reserved for those outside their comfort zone"

A question for business owners:

❓ When did the passion for your biz die?

Your business itself isn't dying. It's making money. But why don't you feel excited?

➡️ I have an educated guess:

You settled for the JOB you created for yourself.
You stopped pushing and growing the business & impact you dreamt of.

🚧 You decided to stay in your comfort zone.

When you stop focusing on your big goals & dreams, you will stop excitedly getting out of bed in the morning.

So:
🔨 Quit using your perfectionism as an excuse.
🔨 Stop thinking that you are so important that nobody else can do what you do
🔨 If your goal doesn't make you scared & excited, think of a bigger one
🔨 Don't be embarrassed of your big goals. Share them with those you trust

Finally, if you want a financial "right-hand man" to help you with your numbers, insights, and push you to grow into those big dreams, then reach out. As a fractional CFO, this is how I strive to help business owners stay passionate.