The Fractional CFO Show with Adam Cooper

This week I’m joined by Michael Henderson, Founder of RiskBox Ltd, a man on a mission to help creative businesses understand what insurance they really need.Michael brings a refreshingly honest take on one of the more confusing of running a businesses. He shares real stories, practical guidance, and insights that could save your business time, money and headaches when things go wrong.🌟 Some of my favourite parts of our conversation include:✅ Legal must-haves vs. nice-to-haves: What’s actually required when starting out.✅ Overinsured or underinsured? Why many founders get this balance wrong.✅ Contracts and cover: How to handle insurance clauses in big client agreements.✅ Cyber and ransomware: What protection looks like in a digital-first world.✅ “Mitigation of loss”: The little-known insurance clause that could save you thousands.

On this week’s episode, I had a brilliant conversation with Harv Nagra, Head of Brand Communications at Scoro and host of The Handbook: The Operations Podcast. Harv brings a unique mix of insight from marketing, operations, and systems design, particularly for growing agencies and professional service firms.If you’ve ever felt like your business is spinning too many plates, this one’s for you.🌟 Some of the highlights we dig into:✅ Collaborating with finance: How operations + CFOs can lead smarter system rollouts.✅ The Business Maturity Model: 5 stages of growth from “chaotic era” to “innovation era.”✅ Burnout warning signs: Why broken internal systems silently sabotage leadership teams.✅ The reality of accidental founders: Growing beyond creative chaos without losing identity.✅ Infrastructure for scale: Getting the right tech, people and processes in place to grow cleanly.

This week, I’m joined by Oliver Tuffney, Founder & Head Coach at Sales Velocity, a framework designed to bring discipline, structure, and predictability to SME sales teams.Some of my favourite takeaways from our conversation: ✅ How to avoid sales teams getting stuck in boom and bust cycles; ✅ How EOS can guide sales, but why Ollie feels it still needs a deeper “sales layer”; ✅ What great compensation plans actually look like, and how to build them without risking your cashflow; ✅ Why sales and finance leaders must collaborate on modelling if growth is going to be sustainable; ✅ And, the Charlie Munger quote that Ollie swears by when building out sales compensation structures. 

This week, I sat down with @Kat Wellum-Kent, Founder & CEO of @The Fractionals Group who left Practice to launch her business with just one client and a plan.Some of my favourite takeaways from our conversation were:✅ Recruiting “on the curve” vs hiring ahead of the work✅ Building something that’s more than just you as a solo operator✅ Making use of EOS and managing her own utilisation as a founder✅ Why not every startup needs a full-time CFO, and how to spot when they do ✅ And growing a team without losing sight of what made the work fun in the first placeKat’s honest about the challenges as well as the opportunities that she faced and is still facing, and I think anyone building a business, or just trying to shift towards having a more entrepreneurial mindset in business, will get something from this.

This week, I caught up with Paul Bevington, Partner & General Counsel at EMW Law LLP | B Corp. He's been helping clients buy and sell companies since joining the firm back in the 90s and has seen just about everything when it comes to business sales.Some of my favourite moments from the chat:✅ Why sellers underestimate just how long (and emotional) the legal process really is;✅ What “buyer verification” actually means and why it can feel like Groundhog Day;✅ Why shareholder alignment is essential before you go to market;✅ The legal housekeeping you’ll wish you’d done earlier;✅ And how a 40-year old cricket book can teach you a thing or two about leadership!

This week, I sat down with Stephen Knight, Founder and CEO of Pimento, to unpack how business can turn marketing from a cost into a profit driver.Some of my favourite takeaways from our conversation:✅ The #1 mistake SMEs make when hiring marketing help, and how to avoid it.✅ Why cutting brand spend in a downturn is often a strategic mistake.✅ How to find the right marketing partner in a sea of thousands of agencies.✅ How PE-backed businesses can still build brand equity without losing performance focus.✅ And, what happened when a FTSE30 firm spent just 17p per customer per year on marketing.

This week, I sat down with the brilliant @Sarah Lamontagne, Founder of @Montagne Motion Consulting, to dive into what really matters when founders make those all-important first hires.Sarah’s seen it all, from prisons to AI scaleups, and brings some refreshing honesty, and tonnes of experience to bear hiring, culture, and building the foundations for a people-first business.Some personal highlights from our conversation: ✅ Why founders waste time (and budget) trying to DIY their early hires. ✅ The real cost of a 5-stage interview process (and why it needs to die). ✅ How finance and HR should actually collaborate (hint: start with muffins). ✅ What culture really is, and why Slack emojis don’t count. ✅ Why every founder needs to think about succession planning before they think they’re ready.

In this conversation with Peter Charalambides, CEO of The Upper Room and former Property CEO, he dives into applying a business mindset to charity leadership. He shares insights on the importance of diversifying income streams and fostering community impact. Peter discusses vital financial lessons from the business world, including cash flow and salary benchmarking. He also emphasizes engaging younger donors through innovative partnerships and maintains a unique balance between tradition and modern technology in his charitable work.

In this engaging talk, Dan DeGolier, CEO of Ascent CFO Solutions, sheds light on the critical role of KPIs for small businesses. He discusses why 'cash is king' remains essential at any growth stage. Listeners learn about common dashboard pitfalls, the importance of linking KPIs to team bonuses, and how to distinguish between tracking leads and tracking the right ones. Dan also evaluates the use of Power BI versus Excel, providing actionable insights for those feeling overwhelmed by their financial metrics.

This week, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Mark Jenkins, CEO of The Gap, a platform to help accountants, CFOs, and advisors turn their expertise into scalable value-driven services.Some of my personal highlights from the conversation include:✅ Why clients struggle to see your worth.✅ The sweet spot between “art and science” when selling services.✅ The importance of systemising delivery with repeatable frameworks.✅ Tools to turn advisory chats into valuable and commercial outcomes.✅ And why “efficiency ≠ profit”—unless you reinvest that time intentionally.This one's packed with insights for anyone selling services, especially if you’ve ever found yourself thinking, “I know I added value... but did I explain it well enough?”Business Book Bonus Section:The Grapes of Wrath: https://amzn.eu/d/4SCeJHpWhat Got You Here Won't Get You There: https://amzn.eu/d/3n48q3K