FullSpeed Automotive

Chief Financial Officer

Interim Chief Financial Officer

VP of Finance

Streamline Brands 

In this role, I serve as a strategic business partner to the senior executive team regarding all financial operations for franchise locations across the USA. I assess and evaluate the financial performance of the organization concerning long-term operational goals, budgets, and forecasts. I identify, acquire, and implement systems and software to provide critical financial and operational information, evaluate departmental performance, and make suggestions for automating processes to increasing working efficiency. I create and establish yearly financial objectives that align with the company’s plan for growth and expansion, and regularly communicate with the Board of Directors, CEO, COO, and executive team on financial positioning.

Key Accomplishments:

• Migrated company's Enterprise Resource Planning system (ERP) to Oracle NetSuite within three months of hire.
• Led successful integration of two accounting groups resulting from $20MM acquisition.
• Collaborated with business owners and their counsel to conduct all financial due diligence for several target companies within the industry.
• Created company's first cash flow forecast and maintained high-level of forecast accuracy, allowing firm to navigate COVID-19.
• Consolidated two payroll systems, reducing expenses to realize post-acquisition synergies and annual savings of over 20% in payroll cost.
• Created and implemented Standardized P&L for franchisees and system of benchmarking to drive unit-level profitability.
• Installed Monday.com to increase oversight and accountability for month-end close and subsequently manage other projects and tasks.

Marco's Pizza (Marco's Franchising, LLC)

For this position, I led a cross-functional finance team serving over 950 stores in 34 states, with locations in Puerto Rico and the Bahamas. I provided oversight of functions surrounding all aspects of financial, accounting, and audit management, including the implementation of general accounting principles, regulatory and financial reporting, budgeting, forecast preparation, accounts payable/receivables, and payroll. I also served as a financial consultant for many key projects, providing information on the financial impact of business decisions for all segments of management.

Key Accomplishments:

• Led accounting department of six finance and business development direct reports in achieving 5-day close by reengineering financial processes for efficiency gains.
• Designed FP&A and marketing analysis functions, including hiring and technology selection, providing business leaders actionable financial information in two key company functions.
• Successfully tested and analyzed company rebranding efforts, leading to launch of National Advertising Fund providing the marketing team with millions more in funding to drive growth.
• Improved daily reporting using automated, interactive self-service tools by designing dashboards and user-friendly data mining tools leveraging our business intelligence system.

Vice President of Finance

Here, I partnered with strategic finance leaders and accounting teams o deliver FP&A processes, including annual budget preparation and ongoing business forecasting, and monthly business performance updates. I drove discussions around business trends, developed relevant KPIs and metrics, and dynamic modeling to deliver data-driven information to business leaders to assist with both short- and long-term profitability goals.

Key Accomplishments:

• Developed driver-based revenue and earnings models from the ground up in 2013, identifying key trends driving negative and positive variances, and generating planning and facilitation recommendations with stakeholders.
• Implemented new budget process including calendar, kick-off meeting, and budgeting templates for departmental use which dramatically improved the speed and efficiency of the annual practice.
• Recommended and implemented development and deployment of Business Intelligence and Data warehousing project utilizing MicroStrategy (MSTR) software, serving as business lead supervising end-to-end project lifecycle management.
• Operated as business lead on organization-wide IT programs, documenting $75K cost savings within first year in position.
• Integrated multiple POS systems and deployed accounting software realizing $2K in annual savings for franchisees, with program savings assessed at nearly $100K.

Sr. Director of Finance

Director, Financial Planning & Analysis

Darden Restaurants

At Darden, I played a key role in managing the company’s budgeting and forecasting processes by performing financial analysis, developing management reporting, and conducting variance analysis for a company with brands including Olive Garden, LongHorn Steakhouse, Yard House, and The Capital Grille, employing 185K team members in over 1.7K restaurants with annual revenues exceeding $8 billion. I collaborated with department leaders to build their annual budgets and forecasts, and produced models to project long term growth and determine the impacting business factors.

Key Accomplishments:

• Strategically developed financial models and conducted analyses to support strategic initiatives, forecasting COGS impacts for over 1.8K restaurants.
• Supported over $10M in annual contract savings via financial analysis and modeling.
• Revitalized inventory reporting processes and recommended measures, managing inventory risks and identifying opportunity purchases.
• Served as lead analyst for $10M sustainability operations project, overseeing creation of $400M annual labor budget.
• Built Balanced Scorecard model, reducing time from production to distribution by 2 days.
• Completed financial modeling and analysis on $10M labor project, improving labor standards and saving substantial costs.
• Structured reporting measures and processes to improve analysis and reporting, leading to early identification of unfavorable operating variance of actual vs. forecast and budget.

Sr. Financial Analyst – Corporate Planning & Analysis

Sr. Financial Analyst – Purchasing Analysis

Sr. Financial Analyst – Operations Analysis

Chrysler Financial

Credit Analyst

Wholesale Inventory Auditor

Collections Specialist Team Leader

Customer Service / Collections Representative

It is well known that the best team wins, and my aim in life is to be on the best team. 

Throughout my career, I have built a strong reputation as a finance leader overseeing the planning, implementation, management, and operation of all finance activities for franchises with numerous locations across the nation. I work hard to provide strategic leadership and direction to my teams. It is when you look across the room and trust everyone sitting at the table, that you know you are in the right place. By building top-class finance and accounting teams, I have been able to deliver significant results and provide the groundwork for the greater financial strength of an organization.

We finance leaders keep business speeding along by looking around corners and seeing things others do not through creative and innovative approaches to solving problems and resolving issues. This is what I strive to be each day.

Reach out and connect with me here on LinkedIn! I would love to discuss financial and team challenges and see how I might lend my expertise to help solve them.

Jim Boswell

This week reminded me how much the people around me matter. I’m grateful for the support I have in my network. You all help make tough weeks easier, and I appreciate you more than you know. 🙏🏻

I’m also thankful for some new relationships that have started to take shape, and for a few long time colleagues and friends who called to wish me well over the holiday. All of these connections mean a lot.

Business and personal life overlap quite a bit more than we admit, and I’m thankful for the people who make both sides of life better.

Hope everyone had a great holiday!

Brian Hall, CPA, CMA, MBA, Blake Scroggins, CPA, Scott Henry, Rod Taylor, Nolan Lacy, Jacqui Long, Celeste Castillo, Christy Boswell

Chief Financial Officer | Private Equity | Transformational Leader | Methodical Team Builder

It was outstanding to catch up with so many colleagues in Cherry Hills last night. The conversation was, as usual, very informative and we had a fantastic hosts. It was a pleasure to be an active part of this always-engaging event.

Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) | Strategic Communications Counsel, Marketing

Colorado's finest CFOs and GCs gathered for an amazing off the record fireside chat led by Jane Wells in a beautiful Denver mansion 

reminiscent of Dynasty days.  No Crystal, Alexis or Blake but we did have Jim Boswell, CFO of FullSpeed Automotive, Steve Fether, CFO of Bobo's and Megan (Albert) Szabo, GC at AgentSync

Shout out to Jewel Brown for finding us our home and Co Producers 
Ryan Beiser, Regional President and Head of Commercial Banking, PNC
Scott Fowle, CPA,  Partner, Colorado Practice Manager, CFO Selections
Tom Lee, Executive Managing Director, Newmark
John Lockhart, Chief Marketing Officer, People Media Worldwide
Aaron Marsden, Producer,Lockton
Mason Matthies,  Managing Director, Donnelley Financial Solutions (DFIN)
Rebekah Schaapveld, Producer, Lockton
Jeffrey Sherman, Partner, Faegre Drinker
Cory Vann, Partner, Deloitte

Join us again in 2026!  Stay tuned to www.cfofocus.org 
#CFO #GC #Colorado #Denver

Having one of those "I know this guy!" moments. Really proud of Brian. I know a lot of nights and weekends went into this labor of love. Hearty congrats! I look forward to diving in ASAP.

VP of Finance at FullSpeed Automotive | Private Equity

View Brian Hall, CPA, CMA, MBA’s profile

I’m excited to share something I have been working on since late last year.

I just finished writing my book: Busting the AI Bubble. It ties together financial and economic theory with the fundamentals of how AI works and how it is transforming our lives, both inside and outside of work.

If you seek to understand whether AI is overblown, or actually worth what equity markets say it is worth, I encourage you to check it out here.

https://amzn.in/d/4d419jN

Also, if you host a podcast, radio show, or discussion series where this could be relevant, I would be grateful for the opportunity to discuss the ideas from the book.

taplio