Keep Calm and Call John McCarthy, Tech's Mr. Wolf

How to Keep Calm When the Money’s Running Out — with John McCarthy

Fractional CFO John McCarthy shares how he helps CEOs face their most critical moments.

When a CEO calls John McCarthy, it’s usually because something’s gone wrong—very wrong.

As a fractional CFO, John specializes in showing up during financial emergencies, calming down panicked CEOs, and figuring out what’s really happening with the cash.

In this episode of Critical Moments, we talk about those moments when payroll’s at risk, the Excel model’s broken, and trust in the numbers has disappeared.

John shares how he works through these situations step-by-step, what typically goes wrong, and why most financial crises aren’t as bad as CEOs think—if you know how to approach them.

Timestamps:

00:00 – Intro: Born to talk about this

03:45 – “The job is not to run out of cash.”

07:20 – The first thing John does when the CEO panics

12:50 – Common breakdowns between finance and the CEO

17:10 – The forensic approach to fixing a broken model

24:30 – Why trust between the CEO and CFO matters most