Be the strategic partner your leadership team leans on—not just the scorekeeper.
Finance used to mean keeping score: close the books, build the model, report what happened. The job has since evolved.
Modern CFOs are systems thinkers. They get their hands dirty, designing systems for scale in support of strategic decision making. Where perfection is the enemy of good, time is finite, and information is at your fingertips.
This site is where I share what building that's taught me, plus the CFO Toolbox and Digital Library I built along the way.
I am currently wrapping up my time at Mux and actively exploring what's next—early stage, growth stage, or something I haven't done yet.
If you're building something and think I could help, let's talk.
What I write about
Frameworks, playbooks, and real opinions on building finance functions that scale—collected across writing, speaking, podcasts, and press.
- •AI in finance—separating signal from noise, tracking what’s changing.
- •Frameworks myself and others have built, real opinions, and stories from the trenches.
- •How to move from scorekeeper to strategic partner: stop reporting what happened, start shaping what’s next.
- •Showing up for the finance community—hosting my own podcast, speaking on panels, co-chairing demo days and events.
The Growth Engine Ratio
A metric for how R&D and GTM investments work together to drive growth—with an interactive calculator.
Read the framework →PlaybookSail, Don't Row
How to run an AI hackathon with your finance team—the full format, facilitation mechanics, and how to make it stick.
Read the playbook →Setup GuideConnecting Claude to NetSuite
End-to-end setup for the two-role OAuth architecture—what it is, why it’s secure, and how to use it.
Read the guide →Co-authored with Mux CFO Jaime Ortiz on why the old revenue-banded hiring ladder for finance teams breaks down, and the three principles that replace it: prioritize whichever leg of the stool—accounting, FP&A, or business ops—is weakest, default to generalists over narrow specialists, and scale through systems and data before headcount.
A panel with CJ Gustafson (Mostly Metrics) and Danny Prohaska (EPM Solutions) on why spreadsheets still run FP&A despite years of planning-software investment, and where AI creates real value for finance teams versus where it's just noise.
Brian's own interview series, hosted via OnlyCFO—operators on how their companies make money, in their own words. Full episode archive.
Numeric’s Finance Engineer newsletter profiled Brian on build-vs-maintain: when a spilled water bottle killed his team’s homegrown procurement tool, and the four practices—modular builds, project-based context, portable Skills, release notes—that keep a tool alive after the builder moves on.