Bookkeepers record. CPAs file. Neither one has sat in the chair where the decision actually gets made. I spent years running operations and finance inside other people's companies before I built my own firm the same way. So the deliverable isn't a tax return. It's a system you can run the business on, and someone who has built it before reading it with you every month.

Every engagement starts with The Blueprint — $3,500. A deep dive into the books as they actually are: what's wrong, what it's costing you, and a plan for fixing it. You keep it whether you hire me after or not. Nobody builds without one. And if the Blueprint turns out to be a simple job, I'll credit part of the $3,500 against the build — I'd rather do that than hold money I didn't have to earn.

Past that I don't publish a price list, because the number depends on how heavy your books are and nobody can tell that from a website. What I can give you is the shape of it.

Tax planning and return preparation are priced separately and open up once you're a client. Returns start at $850 for a personal return (1040) and $1,850 for an S corp or partnership return (1120-S, 1065). Those are starting prices — a complicated return costs more, and I'll tell you the number before I start it.

If the numbers don't fit your business yet, I'd rather say so on the call than after.

I don't know yet. And neither does anyone who quotes you before they've seen your books.

The cleanup, the tech stack, the SOPs, the people — what that takes depends entirely on what we find. Pricing it sight unseen would mean guessing with your money, and I'd rather not start that way.

That's what the Blueprint is for, and it's why $3,500 is the only number on this page. Investment and timeline are two of the six things the Blueprint delivers, so you get the figure in writing before anyone touches anything — and you keep it whether you hire me afterward or not.

A controller makes the numbers right. A CFO uses them to make the call.

Controller work looks backward and has to be airtight — reconciliations, a close that actually closes, reports that hold up when you lean on them. CFO work looks forward — forecasting, scenarios, pricing, what a hire or a piece of equipment does to cash twelve months out — and a seat at the table while the decision is still open, not a report after it's already made.

Most owners need the controller layer first, because you can't forecast off numbers you don't trust. You can move up later, and plenty do.

Eight to ten owner-operators — none in your industry, none with a stake in your answer. The board meets once a month for three to four hours on real decisions, not a webinar, and you get a private one-on-one with me each month on top of it.

The point is plain enough: most owners make the biggest calls in the business alone, with nobody to check the thinking. This is the room where you don't. Seats are capped at ten and the next board launches July 1, 2027.

No. It's the normal starting condition, and the repair and rebuild assumes it. What we don't do is clean it up once and hand it back — if the books need serious work first that pushes the build toward the long end of that range, and we'll tell you that before we start rather than halfway through.

No, and that's intentional. We niche by operational profile: $500K–$5M owner-operated businesses with real complexity — employees, payroll, multiple revenue streams. The system is the same regardless of what you sell.

The Blueprint takes about two weeks. Laying the foundation runs another two to six weeks, depending on how heavy the books are. You'll have a working cash model and profit-by-segment view inside the first month. After that we move to the monthly cadence — and that part doesn't end.

Yes — for clients we already work with. Your books are kept tax-ready year round and we flag exposure as we see it, so April is never news. Tax planning and return preparation are priced separately and open up once you're a client — returns start at $850 for a personal return and $1,850 for an S corp or partnership return. The return is a downstream artifact of clean operations, not the product itself.

Yes. The work is operational — financial system repair and rebuild, cash modeling, profit clarity, monthly CFO cadence — and isn't bound by state lines. We work with owner-operators across the country.