MBA1562 When to Hire a CFO + Free Right Friday
2 Feb 2026 · 14 min
Omar Zenhom explains when to hire a CFO and how to find the right fit. Most companies should consider one around $500k to $1M in revenue. Look for someone with industry experience and strong communication skills, or start with a part-time or retainer arrangement.
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Hey, today is Free Ride Friday so make sure you hang on to the end of the episode to hear who won this week's Free Ride. Every Friday we give away a lifetime membership to one of our programs. We're giving away easy course, our 30 day course on how to build your own online course. It retails for $500 over at EasyCourse co. Or you can win it for free. Just leave us an iTunes rating and review and you enter our weekly random draw. Just listen in on Friday to see if you won. It's that simple. It's our way to say thanks for showing us love on itunes. All right, let's jump into today's episode. Heyo. Welcome to the $100 show. Because business is never as usual. That's why we got your back every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar mba, a complete business training and community online. And in today's episode you will learn how to hire a cfo. A Chief Financial Officer is someone on your team that's going to give you the leadership you need in your business when it comes to your finances. We touched on this in yesterday's episode why your finances are Important how if they're not in order, they can cause a lot of stress. But more importantly, having a CFO is going to allow you to plan for the future and grow and become the business you need. There are four major parts to any business. There's the product. There's the sales and marketing of the product. There's. There's the service of the product, meaning customer service. And then there's the finances of that product, the finance of actually making this business happen. In the beginning, when you start your business, you're doing all four. But that's not sustainable. So in today's episode, we'll talk about when you should start hiring a cfo. How to find one, how to make sure they're the right fit for your business and how they can benefit your business. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. For quite some time in our business, we did not have a cfo, we had an accountant. We had somebody taking care of our books, but we didn't have somebody who was really responsible for the finances of the business. That really just fell on my shoulders. As you grow your business, as you start to scale, as you start to expand, you're going to need somebody who's going to allow you to grow even more. Somebody who can say, hey, we can save money here, we can make money here, we can make sure the value of your company continues to increase. We can protect you from any kind of risk, we can protect you from any kind of financial risks. That's what a CFO does. They're a high level thinker, strategic planner and somebody who's going to make sure you survive financially. Doesn't that sound great? Now you might be thinking, hey, this sounds expensive. Well, you don't have to hire a full time CFO. CFOs can be part time, they could be on retainer, they could be $500 a month. And as you grow, they can grow with you and you can then pay some more. But the point here is it's money well spent. Because a CFO can allow you to save a ton of money, see where your gaps are, see where your blind spots are so you don't get caught with any kind of liabilities or issues. But more importantly, flat footed when it comes to your finances. You want to make sure that you have a lot of oxygen in your business. And oxygen equals money. Okay? It's the lifeline of your business. Cash flow, credit, whatever it is. A CFO can plan that all out for you. A lot of us find money Daunting as entrepreneurs. It doesn't have to be daunting. Let somebody solve that equation for you. CFOs can also help you with financial partnerships. Whether that it's with banks or with funding or. Or VCs, they can really help level up your business. Now, what I recommend is you try to find somebody who has similar experience in the same business as yours. So, for example, if you're a software business, then find a CFO that has worked with other software companies. If you are in the beauty industry, say, for example, you sell, like, beauty products. Find somebody who understands that has at least been in that business, familiar with that business. If you're in retail, you get the point. They're gonna understand, you know, the business side of things and be able to say, hey, you know what? I have some experience where you can save money, make money, get funding in your market. You don't want somebody who's out of their wheelhouse when it comes to your business. But the most important thing I believe in a CFO is somebody who is a great communicator, someone who can speak plain English that can really say, hey, this is where you're at. This is where you gotta go. This is how we're gonna get there. This is the difference between maybe somebody who's really good at numbers, like a bookkeeper or an accountant, and a c. A CFO can communicate ideas clearly, can lay out a game plan for you, and allow you to kind of execute along with them. So clear communication is key when it comes to your cfo. Also, you want to find somebody who has a good network, meaning they have connections with other people that can help your business, not only in terms of financial institutions, but also somebody who can help you with legal. Maybe somebody who's well connected with marketing, somebody who's well connected with. With maybe some suppliers in your industry. These are the things you need to really look out for. Now, my recommendation is, because the CFO job is so critical, you may want to do a trial run for a month or two or three before you commit to them in an ongoing basis. So you can, you know, write up a contract and say, hey, let's trial this for three months at this rate. And if it's a mutually beneficial relationship, we feel like we're getting something out of the situation and we're getting an ROI for our business, then let's do it. This allows you to kind of date before you get married. It gives you a chance to really understand the benefit of a cfo, even just from a conceptual Point of view To a practical point of view, one of the biggest benefits of having a CFO is obviously they have a bird's eye view of your profits and losses, your cash flow. They can instantly tell you, hey, by the way, in the next three months you can make these three hires. You have this budget and it allows you to start planning ahead and start putting job posts out and start really aggressively trying to find great talent or the opposite. Hey, you can't make any hires for the next three months because you need to make sure that you're paying off these next expenses that are coming up. Having somebody tell you these things in advance is really a huge stress reliever. It allows you to focus on the product and your customers and not all the nitty grittiness of how to finance and budget for the growth of your business. A CFO can also allow you to plan for the long term future, whether you're looking to sell your company at some point, how to make sure your business is valuable and there's assets in those business that can be sold off with those types of things. A CFO can also make sure that you are financially stable as the founder while the business grows. And also how you can benefit from some government incentives, grants, tax incentives. Maybe you're paying yourself a little bit too little, a little bit too much. You can save some money there. When it comes to taxes, it could even come down to simple wording of your terms or maybe the way you have contracts with your suppliers that can actually help you make more money. Whether it's through a grant or through a loan or whatever it is. This is a specialized industry and if you don't know you're around it as much as a cfo, you're not going to be able to do as good of a job. They're going to be able to find some great opportunities for your business. So you're making more money than you're spending. So where do you find one? Well, most accountants that are senior that have been around for a while become CFOs or financial planners. But one of the places you really should look is any kind of coworking space or startup hub in your local area. Why? Because many CFOs will actually give their services part time to many startups knowing that they need help. They can't hire a full time cfo, but they can hire somebody who's on retainer for a few hours a week. So I recommend checking out your local, you know, startup community co working spaces. You can take a look at the membership you know, portal, find out who is. You know, usually there's like a the Rolodex or a kind of a directory of everybody who's in that community. And look for financial advisors, financial advice, senior accountants, those types of people.
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To wrap up today's lesson, I want to touch on when when you should hire a cfo. It's going to vary from business to business, but usually when you start hitting the million dollars in revenue mark, this is where things are starting to get really expensive because you're, you're growing and you're making money but your expenses. Well, it also means you can afford a little bit more financial advice than just an account or a bookkeeper. Now some companies, including myself, wait too long before that point and could benefit from that. If you can afford it, even a part time one, I would recommend even looking into this. When you're at the half million mark of revenue, they can help you take it to the next level where you're making 10 million a year and 30 and 40 million dollars a year. You can't do everything so leave room for the experts to do it for you. Thank you so much for listening to the 100 MBA Show. Today's episode's not over though because it's Free Ride Friday. Let's see who won this week's Free Ride to easy course, a 30 day course on how to build your own online course over at easycourse Co. And the winner is. Thrival Sound. Thrival Sound says awesome and valuable. Five stars. Just what you need when you have a few minutes to spare. Something new and valuable for your business. Great information, well articulated within a short time frame. Keep up the good work. Thank you. Thrivalsound all the way from Sweden with that review. You are our Free Eye Friday winner. All you need to do is email me at omar00mba.net so I can hook you up with the lifetime membership to EZ course. If you want to win a free course. If you want to win a free ride, go ahead and leave us an iTunes rating and review and you enter our weekly random draw we call Free Ride Friday. It's that simple guys. Go ahead and do that right now. And while you're there, hit that subscribe button so you don't miss a beat by hitting subscribe on whatever you use to listen to podcasts. Whether it's podcasts with Apple Podcasts or Stitcher Radio or Spotify or Himalaya. By hitting subscribe you get access to all our archive episodes. It's the only way to get access over 1500 business lessons, but it also gives you the latest episode as soon as it's published so you don't have to search for it. It's right there on your device. Thank you so much for listening to the Hunter lmba Show. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. If you're still in the beginning stages of first year or two of your business and you're not ready to hire a cfo, that's okay. But knowing this information in advance will keep you prepared, will make you ready when it's time to make that hire. You understand the benefits, understand what you can get out of it. In the meantime, keep your expenses low and your profits high so you can get there faster. That wraps up today's episode. Thank you so much for listening. I'll check you in Monday's episode. I'll see you then.
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