In this episode of The CFO Story, host Jason Lee and co-host Sami Abboud welcomed Brandon Buteaux from the Baker Group to discuss innovative approaches to improving company cash flow and bottom-line performance (Brandon Buteaux The CFO Story). Brandon shared his compelling journey from owning a concrete company (BAR - Brandon, Allie, and Ricky) to founding the Baker Group. His transition was sparked by personal experience with cash flow challenges when his concrete business was owed over a milli...
May 23, 2025•33 min
In this episode of The CFO Story Catarina Serra, a former CFO with 24 years of experience in corporate America at companies including Microsoft, GE, Aramco, and Honeywell (Catarina serra The CFO Story Podcast).Catarina shares her remarkable journey from being a high-level CFO to becoming an entrepreneur in the health and wellness space. She discusses her long-standing passion for alternative healing, becoming a Reiki Master in 2013, and her discovery of frequency technology in 2022 that led her ...
May 23, 2025•33 min
Doug Dillard, COO and former CFO, discusses his diverse career journey, emphasizing the importance of collaboration between operations and finance. He highlights his experience at Cosentino, a large surfacing company, and his transition to real estate development, where he helped grow a mortgage bank's monthly originations from $5 million to $150 million. Doug stresses the significance of having the right people in the right positions, maintaining liquidity, and understanding the numbers to make...
Jan 26, 2025•39 min
Robson Baker, founder of Fiduciary Benefits Advisors, discusses the complexities and fiduciary responsibilities of healthcare benefits for CFOs. He highlights the increasing lawsuits and financial risks associated with inadequate health plan management. Robson emphasizes the importance of understanding compensation disclosures and the role of specialty insurance to mitigate risks. He shares his personal adoption journey, stressing the importance of family and legacy. Robson's company offers educ...
Jan 26, 2025•37 min
Managing Director at VCFO, discusses his extensive background in international tax, venture capital, and valuation. He highlights VCFO's unique approach to business valuation, focusing on risk factors and strategies to improve company value. He emphasizes the importance of a CFO's role in driving business value, identifying red flags such as lack of KPIs and financial transparency. He also stresses the critical role of character and ethics in the CFO position, underscoring the need for consisten...
Jan 26, 2025•23 min
Katie Doan, a CFO for a private equity group, shares her journey from Vietnam to the US, where she rebuilt her career after starting over in accounting. Despite challenges like cultural differences and balancing work, school, and family, she pursued advanced degrees and certifications. Katie emphasizes the importance of strategic thinking, flexibility, and effective communication in the CFO role. She highlighted the complexities of M&A, particularly system migrations, and the need for accura...
Nov 01, 2024•29 min
Steve Cote, a partner at Brady Chapman Holland insurance, discusses the importance of selecting the right insurance broker and the difference between reactive and proactive risk management. He emphasized that CFOs should focus on finding a trusted advisor rather than a commodity broker, who understands their industry and conducts thorough risk assessments. Steve highlights the need for a comprehensive risk reduction plan that includes prevention, mitigation, and transfer of risk. He also stresse...
Nov 01, 2024•33 min
Devin Harris, CFO and manager director of Brazos River South Devon, discusses his extensive experience at GE and his transition to founding Brazos, a firm focusing on early-stage to Series C companies. He emphasizes the importance of product-market fit and sustainable growth, cautioning against rapid expansion without solid fundamentals. Harris highlighted the role of fractional CFOs in providing strategic support and the necessity for CFOs to be versatile and operationally educated. He also str...
Nov 01, 2024•30 min
CFOs have a diverse set of skills within an organization, who often bring previous experience in other industries and from various roles. We get to hear from Dan on how he leveraged his previous experience into his first role as CFO, now with a growing company in wholesale building materials. Dan shares what is important to him, and where to start in a new environment that will ensure success, and how he sharpens his leadership skills. From supply chain experience, to challenges from Covid, to b...
Jul 28, 2024•32 min
Stephen shares how he grew his career into becoming a CFO in the natural gas compression industry. While Stephen has plenty of experience in this industry, he is fairly new in the CFO role. Stephen shares some of the contributing factors that have led to his professional success. We hear from Stephen how to manage challenges that sometimes require moving out of our comfort zone, and not being afraid to fail when striving to achieve our goals and recognizing that our roles as leaders are bigger t...
Jul 28, 2024•31 min
We want to help CFOs find efficiencies to make their lives easier. Jesse has first-hand knowledge of the things that bog down the CFO Role. In this episode, he shares how he built software on the job that would save time on data entry and month-end journal entries, along with other tools he has created to get more done in less time.
Jul 28, 2024•27 min
CFOs are always tasked with driving the bottom line, and having the right tech stack can do that. Travis talks about how the ever-changing business landscape requires effective integration and deployment of software and AI Technologies to maximize efficiency and effectiveness. He shares some best practices and how his team plays a role in supporting business owners and their finance leaders.
Jul 28, 2024•30 min
Bob’s extensive history as an entrepreneur, business banker, and CFO has prepared him to provide truly valuable insights into strategic financial planning for business owners. He has experienced everything from growth to economic crisis to transition and helped navigate business owners through those experiences. Bob shares a bit about his journey.
Jul 28, 2024•37 min
In today’s episode, we will hear from Jeff Dupree, financial advisor turned CFO. Jeff shares his journey as his career has transformed, including acquiring his CPA license. Jeff shares some of his wisdom and experience with the things he values in his career, and why they are important to him. Through Jeff’s humility, we discover some of the “intangibles” that are critical to consider when defining where value comes from amongst teams in the office, and how culture speaks loudly.
Jul 28, 2024•25 min
Sarah has learned through trial and fire in her experiences, having been an entrepreneur and then coming to work for corporations. She went through a transaction as the company's CFO and talked about her experience, succession planning, and team building.
Jul 28, 2024•38 min
Rob is a CPA, turned business owner who has a wealth of experience spanning from public accounting through corporate roles in industry handling FP and A, forecasting and modeling. Rob started his own business, and has grown the firm, which provides fractional and transactional services, both at the Controller and CFO levels, including forecasting, mergers and acquisition space and financing and lending services. You’ll hear from Rob about some of the challenges his firm faces in their small to m...
Jul 28, 2024•32 min
