Client Results: 5x Revenue, 4x Profit — A Construction Client's Climb

Snapshot

• Client Profile: Construction company, 3 years in business, looking to build a lasting company with a people-first mission
• Starting Point: Stuck around $1M revenue, in constant "reacting to fires" mode
• Results: Grown past $5M+ revenue, 4x net profit to owners, $2M+ in assets added to business, 8 employees added
• Engagement: Fractional CFO, Jan 2024- Present

Where they started

The owners had a big vision for the company- to provide quality services to customers and create great jobs for its employees with an added emphasis on work-life balance and a sustainable culture (which is rare compared to their peers). They had their What and Why figured out, but they were struggling with the How. They wanted to grow the company, but they couldn't maintain visibility into their overall cost and cashflow structure. They were often reacting to fires (how are we going to make payroll this week, we need a new truck yesterday, we can't miss that monthly loan payment, let's just finance that piece of equipment and hope it works out, etc. They also had no clue on where their bidding and pricing needed to be for new jobs in order to achieve their goals. Lastly, they could not get a confident line-of-sight into when they should hire, what they could afford, and how it would change the company's overall trajectory. These challenges were directly obstructing their ability to grow into the people-first, mission-oriented company that they wanted to become.

What we built together

By leveraging our CFO Toolkit, we quickly gained real-time insights into the financial performance of the business, in a way that the owners could understand. By establishing our goals and direction, we were able to map our financial targets and KPIs to tangible outcomes.

From there, three things changed the trajectory of the business.

We got ahead of cash instead of reacting to it. Once we could future-cast the financials and cash flow, the conversation shifted. We weren't asking "can we make payroll this week?" — we were asking questions like "based on where we're headed, when can we afford to bring on the next guy, and what does that do to the next six months?"

We financed growth on purpose. Over the engagement we purchased 8 new pieces of equipment totaling over $2M in value, most of it through complex, yet beneficial, debt financing. The old way was to finance a piece of equipment and hope it worked out. Instead, we structured the debt intentionally — matched to the cash the equipment would actually generate — and used the Playbook to keep it manageable on an ongoing basis rather than something that disrupts the company growth trajectory down the line.

We connected sales to the financials in real time. This is one I rarely see businesses implementing, and it's arguably the highest ROI you can make. We built visibility all the way back up to the top of the funnel, so the owner could finally see:

- when they needed to be selling hard

- when they could pull back and focus on building the business instead

- which types of jobs and customers were actually driving profitability

This was one of the biggest "clicks" I saw for the owners- now they had clarity on their own energy management. And finally the sales goals were broken down into achievable steps and best of all it connected directly to their desired outcomes, so finding motivation was way easier.

Along the way we also worked through hiring strategy and org structure, bidding and pricing, and the hundreds of quick questions that come up when you're aggressively building a business and the bullets are flying. The owners weren't spending their nights on accounting and finance anymore. They had a trusted partner to call, and they got to go back to running their company.

Where they are now

Two years in, the company has grown past $5M in revenue, 4x'd net profit to the owners, added over $2M in assets, and created great jobs for 8 new employees. The owners were recently able to buy new houses and grow their own families. They're building the company they described to me at the beginning — quality work, great jobs for their people, real work-life balance, and a sustainable culture. They had the What and the Why from day one, they just needed a little How to help along the way.

In their words

"Bringing on Kevin to help us take the emotion out of decisions and knowing where we stand was the most efficient use of our resources. He's helped us grow together, and we are happy to have him by our side."

"Kevin has been very knowledgeable about all things accounting and financial forecasting. He helped us get our finances in order in a quick turnaround. He has helped us make several data driven decisions that would have otherwise been made by uneducated guesses."