Mini Episode: My Profitable Cash Rich Brand Doesn’t Need a CFO Right? Wrong
Episode Summary
In this mini-episode of The Free to Grow CFO Podcast, Jon Blair challenges a common misconception among DTC brand founders: that a profitable, cash-rich brand doesn’t need a CFO. Jon breaks down why these types of brands often need even more strategic financial support—especially if the goal is to build long-term wealth. It’s not just about managing ad spend and inventory. It’s about turning profits into smart capital allocation and sustainable wealth creation—both inside and outside the business.
Key Takeaways:
Just because your brand is profitable and sitting on cash doesn’t mean you’re set. It may actually mean you’re flying blind without strategic guidance.
Wealth doesn’t just come from exits. It’s about using your brand’s cash to buy assets—stocks, real estate, maybe even other brands.
Profit is only powerful when it’s used well. A CFO helps you determine how much to reinvest in the business vs. how much to pull out to diversify your wealth.
Episode Links
Jon Blair - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathon-albert-blair/
Free to Grow CFO - https://freetogrowcfo.com/
Transcript
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Jon Blair (00:00)
Hey everyone, welcome back to another mini episode of the Free to Grow CFO podcast. I'm your host, Jon Blair, founder of Free to Grow CFO. So your brand is super profitable, you have a ton of cash on the balance sheet, that must mean you don't need a CFO, right? Wrong. I keep hearing this from super profitable cash rich brands, and I gotta be honest with you, it's just a lie.
If you are super profitable and have tons of cash, you actually need a CFO even more. Why? Because you need guidance on how to strategically allocate that capital. So I think oftentimes, especially in the DTC world with how challenging it is to grow profitably, brand founders think of a CFO as someone to just help manage the P&L or just help me decide how much inventory to buy or decide how much ad dollars we can spend, very tactical operational finance type decisions. CFO's 100% needed for all of those things. So do not discount that. That's a core thing that I do as a fractional CFO and that our DTC expert CFOs do at Free to Grow CFO. But if your brand is super profitable and super cash rich, you actually stand to lose even more money over time if you don't have a strategic finance executive like a CFO in your business.
Here's why, because you need to actually perform even more complicated analyses to understand where should you allocate that capital. Should you allocate that capital back into the business? Should you take it out of the business and use it or wealth How are you grooming your P&L and your balance sheet to ultimately be able to sell the business for the ultimate payout one day? The more and more brands that I encounter as I do sales for Free To Grow CFO, and as Free To Grow continues to serve more and more fast-growing DTC brands, the more I do that, the more I realize that a CFO is key to help brand founders who have super profitable cash-rich businesses build wealth. I think a lot of brand founders think about using their brand to build wealth basically one way, and that's an exit, selling the business, the ultimate payout.
Is that something that you should execute towards, that you should build your business towards? Sure, but what if it doesn't happen? There's so many different things that could happen in the market that you have no control over, no matter financially viable and healthy your business is. So you never know when, how, or for how much you might sell your business one day. So what you do is build a cash generating machine in your brand and you work with a CFO to decide how much cash should be allocated internally for additional growth versus taken out of the business so that you can build wealth outside of your business. How do you build wealth outside of your business? You buy assets. It's the classic Robert Kiyosaki, Rich Dad Poor Dad. You buy assets. So you buy things like stocks, real estate, maybe you invest in startups, maybe you acquire other brands.
And so, what do I want you to take away from all of this? What I want you to take away is that one, you don't hire a CFO for your DTC brand just because it's struggling or you're experiencing challenges and you need help with tactical day-to-day financial decisions. That's important and it's a key reason to hire a CFO, but it's not the only reason. Another, possibly even more important reason is that if you are already profitable and cash rich, you need someone to help you allocate capital. Why? For the purpose of building wealth. Building wealth is the ultimate game, right, when it comes to building a DTC brand. We're playing a money game as we build a business. And so we wanna make sure we're building wealth. And who is honestly your key partner in your business who can help you build wealth? A CFO.
