48+
Businesses advised
14
Active advisory clients
$3B+
Prior transaction management
93%
Client retention
Sound Familiar?
You check your bank balance before making every business decision.
No cash flow forecast. No 13-week visibility. Every spending decision is based on what you see in the account at 9 AM, not what's actually available after obligations.
You have no idea what you should be paying yourself.
Random draws from the checking account. No salary structure. No distribution strategy. Your accountant files the return but nobody has told you the optimal number.
Revenue is growing but profit is flat or shrinking.
More sales, same margin problems. You're busy but not richer. Pricing hasn't been reviewed, product mix hasn't been analyzed, and nobody is measuring which parts of the business actually make money.
You can't tell me the cost to acquire a customer.
Marketing spend goes out every month with no payback measurement. You know "marketing is important" but you don't know if it's working or which channels are carrying the business.
Your last hire was a gut decision.
No contribution margin analysis. No cash runway threshold. No model for what that person needs to produce in 90 days to justify their cost. One bad hire at this stage costs $50K to $150K.
Your accountant filed your taxes but you still don't know what to do next.
Clean books are not the same as an optimized business. Your CPA looks backward. Nobody is looking forward at hiring, capital, pricing, or growth decisions.
One client is 20%+ of your revenue.
Customer concentration is the silent killer. If that client leaves, how many months of burn before recovery? Have you calculated your dead zone?
You've thought about buying a business but don't know how to evaluate the deal.
You can read a P&L. But do you know the cash conversion cycle, the revenue quality breakdown, the customer concentration risk, and the real contribution margins by product?
What Doing Nothing Costs You
Unmeasured marketing spend
A client was spending $40K/month on marketing with no ROI tracking. Two of three channels were producing nothing. We cut spend to $15K. Deal flow stayed the same. That's $300K/year in savings from measuring something nobody measured.
Uncollected receivables
A seven-figure business couldn't make payroll on Friday. Not because revenue was bad. Because $73K was sitting in unpaid invoices that nobody was following up on. We collected it in one week. The engagement paid for itself before onboarding started.
Bad compensation plans
A salesperson closing $190K/month was destroying the culture. Turnover costs, damaged client relationships, and fulfillment cleanup were a $500K problem hiding behind a good dashboard number. Commission tied to revenue instead of gross profit incentivizes the wrong behavior.
No cash flow forecast
A founder with $187K in the bank approved a new hire, a vendor deal, and doubled ad spend. Two weeks later he couldn't make payroll. $65K in payables, $40K in taxes, and a $90K invoice that wouldn't clear for 3 weeks. He was making $187K decisions on $12K of real money.
Zombie zone paralysis
3 to 6 months of cash. Not enough to invest. Not broke enough to decide. Revenue drifts. Decisions stall. It takes 23 months to close a fundraise. If you have 4 months of cash, that's not a plan.
Wrong entity structure and missed tax strategies
Businesses at $2M to $6M typically leave $75K to $210K in annual tax savings on the table. No S-Corp election. No R&D credits claimed. No QBI optimization. No retirement plan strategy.
What Most Founders Try
Hire a full-time CFO
$150K to $250K+ salary plus benefits
Why it falls short: At $2M to $6M, you don't need a full-time CFO. You need CFO-level thinking applied to the 3 to 5 decisions a month that actually move the needle. A full-time hire at this stage is overpaying for capacity you won't use, and most candidates at this salary range want a bigger company anyway.
Lean on your accountant or bookkeeper
$2K to $5K/month
Why it falls short: Your accountant records history. They close the books, reconcile accounts, and file taxes. They are not built to answer "should I hire next quarter," "which product line should I kill," or "can I afford to double ad spend this month." Compliance and strategy are two different jobs.
DIY with dashboards and software
$500 to $2K/month in tools
Why it falls short: Software gives you data. It doesn't give you decisions. A dashboard can show you that revenue went up 40% and profit went down. It can't tell you why, or what to do about it. Financial architecture requires someone who knows what to look for and how to fix the plumbing.
Hire a controller or "Head of Finance"
$80K to $120K salary
Why it falls short: Controllers look backward. They manage the close process, produce reports, and keep the books clean. They don't build 13-week cash flow forecasts, restructure compensation plans, evaluate acquisition targets, or sit in hiring meetings to model contribution margin.
Hire a traditional fractional CFO firm
$3K to $10K/month
Why it falls short: Most fractional CFO firms sell hours and reports. They show up for monthly calls, review the numbers, and tell you what happened. They don't fly to your office for two days, walk your P&L line by line, find $150K to $300K in profit improvements, and stay as the financial operating system for every major decision.
What Makes Green Mountain Different?
We don't sell hours. We don't sell reports. We sell a financial operating system that produces measurable profit improvements and stays to protect them.
Phase 1: Discovery
The engagement starts with a 2-day onsite at your business. Not a Zoom call. We fly to you and spend 48 hours inside your operation.
Day 1: Walk the P&L line by line with the founder. Review the balance sheet. Audit how cash actually flows through the business. Interview the sales lead, the bookkeeper, and key team members. Identify red flags.
Day 2: Put dollar signs on everything from day 1. Contract gaps. Pricing that hasn't been updated. Team costs that don't match what they produce. Marketing spend with no ROI. Cash sitting in one account with no plan.
Within 1 to 2 weeks after the onsite, we deliver a 13-week cash flow forecast, a 12-month financial plan, a dollar-denominated findings report showing every profit improvement identified, and a prioritized action plan ranked by impact.
Phase 2: Monthly Operating System
This is where we stay. We become the financial operating system for the business. Monthly performance calls reviewing P&L, cash position, and forecast updates. Quarterly strategic reviews going deeper on business model, product mix, and competitive positioning. Involvement in every hiring decision, every capital and financing decision, and every strategic shift in the business.
What that means in practice: Before you post a job listing, we model the contribution margin. Before you take on debt, we run the capital stack. Before you change your pricing, we analyze the product mix. Before you double ad spend, we verify the payback period.
The difference: most financial professionals tell you what happened. We tell you what to do next.
Phase 3: Inorganic Growth and Tax Strategy
Once the financial operating system is in place and the business is running on real data, we shift to offense.
Acquisition targeting: We identify bolt-on acquisitions, partnership opportunities, and new revenue lines that fit the financial model. Every deal runs through the same stress-test framework we use during onboarding. Cash conversion cycle, revenue quality, customer concentration, contribution margins by product. If the numbers don't hold, we walk.
Tax architecture: We build proactive tax strategies around the business structure. S-Corp optimization, R&D credits, QBI positioning, retirement plan design, and year-end planning that reduces liability before the bill shows up. Businesses at this stage typically leave $75K to $210K per year on the table in tax savings alone.
Capital access: We help you access capital you didn't know was available. Structured credit, SBA financing, banking relationships, and strategic debt. All sequenced in the right order so you get the best terms at the lowest cost, without giving up equity you don't need to give up.
We make tough calls.
Hiring decisions, capital allocation, firing toxic producers, cutting unmeasured spend. If it's a financial decision, we're in the room. Not advising from the sideline. In the room.
Profit first approach.
Onboarding is designed to find at least one thing that pays for the engagement 10x over. We don't bill for months before producing value. We produce value before the monthly retainer starts.
Industry-specific pattern recognition.
We've built financial operating systems for businesses across multiple industries. We know where the money hides at $2M to $6M because we've found it before. The same eight value levers show up in every business: contracts, pricing, contribution margin, cash conversion, waste, financing, tax, and treasury.
Results
Revenue Collapse Turnaround
Baseline:
Sales team walked out overnight. Revenue collapsed from $100K/month to $20K. Six months of consecutive losses totaling $48K. No pipeline. No infrastructure.
Intervention:
Stopped all discretionary spend within days. Restructured team compensation. Brought in performance-based salespeople. Secured bridge financing. Built internal sales team from scratch. Fired $190K/month producer who was destroying culture.
Outcome:
- Revenue recovered to $150 to $200K/month (+775%)
- Six consecutive profitable months after six consecutive losing months
- $177K in net income generated
- Sustainable sales team rebuilt with aligned management
- Equity position secured in the business
From $30K Projected to $370K Actual
Baseline:
$3M+ in debt across entities. No cash flow forecasting. $40K/month in uncontrolled marketing spend. All cash in one account. Projected $30K profit for the entire year. Founder considering shutting down.
Intervention:
Built 13-week cash flow forecast. Restructured business model around faster cash conversion deals. Cut marketing from $40K to $15K/month while maintaining deal flow. Designed 4-account treasury system. Eliminated $3M+ in total debt. Reduced tax liability to zero.
Outcome:
- $370K in actual NOI delivered (12x projection)
- $3M+ in debt eliminated
- Tax liability reduced to zero
- Marketing spend cut 60% with no drop in results
- Founder went from planning exit to planning expansion
Nightlife Venue FP&A
Baseline:
$993K in revenue across 28 operating nights. $9,807 retained. 1.0% net margin against 15 to 20% benchmark. Labor at 62.8% of revenue. Voids and comps erasing 23% of gross sales.
Intervention:
Built full financial assessment with industry benchmarks. Identified $2.7 to $2.8M in annualized controllable losses. Created operational KPIs. Built bottle-level profit analysis.
Outcome:
- Base case recovery of $1.38M at $58K implementation cost (23.8x ROI)
- Full visibility into product-level profitability
- Void/comp approval workflows designed
- Treasury and collection systems recommended
$13M DTC Company
Baseline:
$13M in revenue with $100 to $150K in cash (one month of payroll). $500K in inventory nearly depleted. Over $1M in MCA interest paid the prior year. No margin visibility by product or channel. 40 employees with no labor efficiency data.
Intervention:
Proposed 90-day build of complete financial operating system. Chart of accounts recast, 13-week cash flow forecast, unit economics by product and channel, cash conversion cycle analysis, inventory reorder model, treasury plan, labor efficiency analysis, and KPI dashboard.
Outcome:
- Conservative estimated annual impact: $750K/year
- Aggressive estimated annual impact: $1.99M/year
- Engagement cost: $60K to $80K (9 to 13x return)
- Additional tax optimization upside: $75K to $210K/year
Take The Assessment
Find out if your business qualifies for our process. Answer a few questions about your revenue, team, and financial infrastructure. If there's a fit, we'll schedule a discovery call to walk through what we're seeing and where the opportunities are.
Green Mountain Advisers works with owner-operated businesses doing $2M to $6M in annual revenue. If that's you, this assessment is worth 5 minutes of your time.
We work with a limited number of clients at any given time to maintain the depth each engagement requires. New clients are accepted on a rolling basis and may be placed on a waitlist depending on current capacity.
Every engagement starts with a 2-day onsite discovery designed to pay for itself before monthly services begin. If the numbers don't support working together, we'll tell you.