People sometimes ask why someone with 35-plus years as a controller, CFO and CEO would start a firm instead of slowing down. The honest answer fits in three words I keep coming back to: passion, balance and purpose.
Passion
I have spent my career inside agriculture, food and beverage companies: raisins, almonds, fresh produce and premium beverages. I still love this industry. There is something about a business that starts with a seed, a tree or a spring and ends up on someone’s table that never gets old.
That passion matters in finance more than people expect. When you care about the business, you dig into the details that move the numbers: yield, grower settlements, co-packer costs, a seasonal cash crunch. You don’t settle for a report that looks fine. You want to know what is really happening in the field, the plant and the warehouse.
Balance
Most of the financial decisions I help owners make are really questions of balance:
- Growth and liquidity: how fast you can expand without running out of cash.
- Reinvestment and distributions: what the business needs versus what the family needs.
- Ambition and risk: which opportunities are worth the debt.
- Work and the rest of life: whether the business serves the owner, or the other way around.
Good numbers make those trade-offs visible. In Hawaiʻi, where we also have clients, the word for that kind of balance and rightness is pono. It is one of the values my team and I try to bring to every engagement, and something I try to practice myself, splitting my time between Fresno and Kailua-Kona.
Purpose
Many of the companies I work with are family businesses, some in their third or fourth generation. Their finances are tied to land, employees and communities that depend on them. Helping a family through a refinancing, a turnaround or a succession plan, and seeing the business come out stronger, is the most meaningful work I know.
That purpose is why we price our work as a fixed fee, quoted up front, and why we would rather tell an owner a hard truth early than a comfortable one too late. The goal is not a better-looking report. It is a business that lasts.
A little magic
After all these years, I still find something close to magic in this work: the first harvest after a hard year, a lender saying yes, a team that finally trusts its numbers, a turnaround that works. Those moments are why I am still at it.
So my wish for every owner I work with, and for everyone reading this, is simple. May there always be magic in your life.
The adventure awaits; go out and find yours. And if your business is headed somewhere new, I’d be glad to help you get there.
Read more about the values behind our work on our values page.
Where is your business headed?
CFO, controllership, FP&A, bookkeeping and tax for agriculture, food and beverage, hospitality, real estate and retail businesses in California, Texas and Hawaiʻi. Start with a 30-minute call.
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