This week, I wanted to share more with you about who I am, what I care about, and how I got to where I am today.

So let’s get into it.

I’ve always been a finance junkie.

For the past 11 years since starting college, I’ve read Barrons, the Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg every morning without fail.

Every book I read or podcast I listen to is finance related.

Safe to say, it’s all I’ve ever wanted to do with my life.

When I started, I focused relentlessly on where I could learn the quickest, make my way into rooms I wasn’t supposed to be in, and “do finance.”

But I hadn’t found my niche yet.

I read thousands of 10-ks and annual reports thinking I’d make my career as an investor. Now I focus on SMBs as a Fractional CFO and acquirer.

And my one-person business is now a 9-person team.

Here’s how it all started for me.

How It Started

In my sophomore year of college, I interned at an investment firm.

During Christmas Break of the following year, I didn’t have any family obligations, so I asked if I could come back to work for them during those 20 days. To my surprise, they said yes.

The investment firm was a small, 15-person team. And as luck would have it, 2 analysts quit on the last day of my Christmas Break.

Because I’d been there, they called and asked me to work full-time.

Because the purpose of college for me was to land a good finance job, I shifted my focus. From that point forward, my priority was the work.

I went to school on Mondays and then worked 10 hour days at the firm Tuesday-Friday.

One day I was sitting in lectures and the next I was presenting to a $70B company's CFO and advising on his billion-dollar corporate asset.

Crazy!

The lesson?

Do more than people ask of you.

Of the 4 partners at that firm, 2 reached out to me after I left to work with them personally. And I wasn’t any better than the other analysts. I just worked harder.

Failing Forward

When I left the investment firm a few years later, I started a business to help companies raise capital.

It failed. More on what I learned from that one in a minute.

From there, I joined a small business doing $5M in revenue that didn’t have any financial infrastructure. I put their bookkeeping in place, created financial controls, and helped them become a data-driven organization.

In 18 months, the business went from $5M to $15M.

It was there that I learned the power of good finance to transform SMBs.

That’s when Scalable CFO was born. 

The Lessons That Made All the Difference

My failed business taught me to build demand, make sure it was consistent, and ensure I had product-market fit—BEFORE going all in.

Once I had all three, I went all in. And it’s felt like a rocket ship ever since.

I went from 0 to 7 figures in a year, $50M to $600M in revenues managed over 18 months, and from just me to a team of 9 all stars.

Over the next decade, I want to build a financial services empire.

And I plan to get there by doing the obvious things exceptionally well.

Hungry for More?

1. Follow me on Twitter and LinkedIn for daily content to take your business to the next level.

2. Shoot me an email with your questions or requests for what you’d like me to write about next.

‘Til Next Time,

Connor