A structured way to develop, retain, and align the CFOs across your portfolio — without building an in-house training function.
The Problem
You already know the story, because I've watched it play out across portfolio companies for years: a strong CFO is one of the hardest hires to find, and one of the easiest to lose. They get poached. They burn out reacting to fires nobody prepared them for. Or they simply plateau — competent at the job they were hired for, never quite growing into the strategic partner the business needs post-close.
Every time that happens, it costs you more than a search fee. It costs you continuity, institutional knowledge, and momentum on the value-creation plan you built the deal around.
Why I Built This for PE Firms Specifically
I've spent forty years on the finance and operating side of highly acquisitive companies — I've negotiated, closed, or participated in over 150 acquisitions myself, and I've been the CFO a PE firm was counting on. I built this program because I kept seeing the same gap: talented CFOs who were never taught the disciplines that separate a functional finance leader from a true strategic operator — what I call becoming a COFO, a Chief Operating Financial Officer.
This isn't generic executive coaching. It's built specifically around what a CFO actually faces inside a PE-backed company.
What This Gives You
Scale. One CFO at a time is slow. This program is built to bring in CFOs across your entire portfolio at once — the same disciplines, the same standards, applied consistently company to company.
A retention signal, not just a training exercise. When a PE firm invests in a CFO's development, that CFO notices. This becomes a visible way to show your portfolio company leaders you're invested in their growth, not just their output — often the difference between a CFO who stays and one who takes the next call from a recruiter.
A common language across your portfolio. When every CFO in your portfolio has gone through the same four-phase framework, your portfolio company leadership conversations get easier — you're not translating between different CFOs' different mental models, you're speaking the same one.
Judgment, not just knowledge. In the age of AI, knowledge is cheap. What's not cheap is judgment — and that's what four decades of hands-on experience actually transfers.