Jonathon Blair

DTC Brand Fractional CFO | Follower of Jesus | Husband | Father of 3 | Fractional CFO | Leadership, Strategy & Productivity Nerd

www.FreeToGrowCFO.com

👇 GET ACCESS TO OUR FREE CASH FLOW 101 COURSE
https://mailchi.mp/freetogrowcfo.com/ftg-cash-flow-course-sign-up

👇 GET A FREE CFO ANALYSIS
https://freetogrowcfo.com/free-cfo-analysis

📧 JOIN OUR WEEKLY FREE TO GROW CFO NEWSLETTER
https://freetogrowcfo.com/newsletter

🧔‍♂️ WHO IS FREE TO GROW CFO 
Outsourced CFO and Bookkeeping services for profit-focused DTC brands.   

Scaling a DTC brand is stressful. 

With messy books and no CFO on your team you run the risk of…  
-Hiring too quickly  
-Buying too much inventory 
-Scaling ad spend unprofitably 
-Running out of cash  

And that leads to stressful, sleepless nights. We don’t want that for you.  

Free to Grow CFO has given hundreds of DTC brands a plan for scaling alongside healthy profit and cash flow. Our plan will work for you too.

Fast, Insightful Reporting.  Proactive Strategic Advice.  From DTC Finance Experts.  
-M&A -Debt & Equity Funding 
-Accurate Financials by the 15th 
-Planning, Forecasting, Budgeting 
-Financial Dashboards and KPI Tracking   

All delivered through our proven, ready-to-implement “Free to Grow CFO Process”.

📈 WANT TO INCREASE PROFIT AND CASH FLOW AS YOU SCALE?
Book a Call Now → https://freetogrowcfo.com/book-a-call

🤝 CONNECT WITH JON BLAIR ON LINKEDIN
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathon-albert-blair/

🎥 FOLLOW FREE TO GROW CFO ON YOUTUBE
https://www.youtube.com/@FreetoGrowCFO

Founder | Fractional CFO

www.freetogrowcfo.com

Fractional CFOs for High Growth Direct-to-Consumer Brands

Outsourced, part-time CFO services for high growth D2C brands, designed to help you scale your business with confidence.

You don't have to suffer through another sleepless night worrying about making difficult business decisions alone.  Hire a Free to Grow CFO and get the financial insights you need to make fast, effective business decisions with confidence.

Get access to the CFO you need to scale your business without the full-time salary:
-Strategic Planning
-Forecasting & Projections
-Cash Strategy & Fundraising
-Financial Statement Analysis

Jon Blair

Your books don’t fail quietly—they fail when you need them most.
 
A lender says no.  
Cash gets tight out of nowhere.  
Margins suddenly “don’t make sense.”

The problem usually isn’t revenue.  
It’s a handful of balance sheet blind spots no one taught them to watch for.

Here are the places we see books break most often in growing DTC brands:
• Cash that doesn’t actually tie  
• Inventory that’s missing, frozen, or wildly wrong  
• Merchant clearing accounts that don’t exist  
• AP at zero, so working capital is unknowable 
  
If you’ve ever said, “The P&L looks fine, but I still feel uneasy,” this is why.
 
None of this shows up clearly on a surface-level P&L.  
All of it lives on the balance sheet.

In this week’s episode of the Free to Grow CFO Podcast, AJ Stockwell, founder of Climb CFO, and I walk through exactly where books break as brands scale—and how to fix the right things without overpaying for cleanup.

If you’re growing and your numbers don’t fully make sense, this episode will help you figure out why.

🎧 Episode is live.

Building a profitable, cash-rich brand at scale doesn’t happen by accident.

It happens through intentional planning and improvement over a long period of time.

One of the many reasons why fast growing, cash flowing brands all have a badass CFO.

Do you have one?

No alternative text description for this image

Why "hope for an exit" is not a strategy" 👇
  
Building a brand solely to exit is speculation.  

Building a brand that throws off cash, compounds profit, and strengthens over time is strategic investing.
  
Ironically, the second approach is far more attractive to buyers—but that’s not the point.
  
The point is control.
  
Control over your cash.  
Control over your risk.  
Control over your timeline.  
Control over your personal wealth creation.
Control over your destiny.

Want more control?

Hiring an expert DTC CFO may be just the thing you need to take back control of your destiny.

Why so many DTC brands struggled in 2025  👇
  
Many brands didn’t fail because they were bad operators.  

They failed because they optimized for the wrong scoreboard.
  
When capital was cheap during the COVID-era brands could:  
• Lose money on new customer acquisition    
• Over-invest in inventory    
• Ignore cash flow timing    
• Assume future scale would fix today’s losses  
  
That only works when someone else is willing to subsidize your mistakes.
  
Today, no one is.
  
Rising CACs, tighter capital, slower consumer demand, and more rational buyers mean that profitability is no longer optional—it’s the price of admission.
  
And not just “profitable someday.”
  
Profitable at the order level.  

Profitable at the contribution margin level.  

Profitable in cash, not just on paper.

--
  
Hi, I'm Jon Blair founder of the DTC Finance and Accounting firm Free to Grow CFO.
  
Want more tips on scaling a profitable DTC brand? 
  
Give me a follow.
  
Want to learn more about how Free to Grow's Accountants and CFO's can help you increase profit and cash flow as you scale?
  
Shoot me a DM.
  
Until next time, scale on!

The most important conversations about scaling in 2026 won’t happen on LinkedIn.

They’ll happen in smaller rooms—where founders can talk honestly about what’s working, what’s bending, and what they’re rethinking before the year really gets going.
 
That’s why Free to Grow CFO is teaming up with Vintti to host a small, in-person founder dinner in Austin to kick off 2026.
 
This isn’t a networking event.  
No panels.  No pitch decks.  No “networking event” energy.
 
Just a table of founders having real conversations about:
• How growth is actually being financed right now
• Where money quietly gets burned (especially ads and headcount)
• How teams are being built—or rebuilt—for 2026
• And which decisions founders are actively rethinking heading into the year

I’ll be sharing what we’re seeing across scaling DTC brands on the finance side.

We’ll also be joined by:
 
• Dean Brennan (Heart & Soil) on using brand as a real growth lever—not just a marketing expense
• Agustín Morrone (Vintti) on how founders are approaching hiring A-players in 2026 without becoming the bottleneck
 
We’re keeping the table intentionally small so the conversation stays high-signal and useful for everyone in the room.

If you’re a DTC founder in and around the Austin area and this sounds like a room you’d want to be part of, you can 𝗿𝗲𝗾𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗮 𝘀𝗽𝗼𝘁 𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲: 
👉 https://lnkd.in/eGnmE3Nf
 
If you can’t make it or Austin isn't the cards this time, be sure to join my weekly newsletter and I’ll share the key themes and insights that come out of the dinner.

Sign up for my newsletter here --> https://lnkd.in/eWt3KhpR

Profit & Cash Flow Consultant for Service Businesses | CEO @ Momentum Accounting

Hi, I’m Nikole.I’m obsessed with businesses and I love working with smart people who want to do meaningful work in accounting.Over the years, I’ve worked with 1,000+ founders, and one thing has become obvious:Accounting isn’t boring. Done right, it’s transformational.It’s the engine that lets companies scale, hire, expand, and sleep at night.Momentum is a financial operations (FinOps) firm where we build and run the financial systems that growing businesses rely on.Industry specialties our team gets to work with:• Restoration companies• Field services• Marketing agencies• Professional service firms• SaaS• And other growing businessesIf you want to do the best work of your career, with better clients, cleaner systems, a supportive team, and the chance to grow into a true operator, I’d love to talk.

Nikole Mackenzie

Trying to decide if vacation is good for your mental health or actually really bad 🤪

CEO @ Momentum | Finance Team For Scaling Restoration, Service & SaaS Companies | We’re Hiring (Remote, US & PH) | Top 50 Modern Firm 2025

So what is a financial operating system?

QuickBooks Online is the hub, not the system.

A financial operating system is the combination of:

People: clear accountability inside the accounting function
Technology: tools that integrate intentionally
Routines: consistent cadences that prevent reactivity
Profit data: financial data that actually tells the truth
Cash visibility: so decisions aren’t made in the dark

When it’s working, the financials actually explain the business.

When it’s missing, founders feel like they’re constantly guessing.

View newsletter: The CEO’s Financial Playbook

I can usually tell within the first 5 minutes whether a business actually has financial control. Not because I’ve looked at their financials yet, but 

Open article: FAQ #5: What Is a Financial Operating System? by Nikole Mackenzie • 5 min read

FAQ #5: What Is a Financial Operating System?

Open video: What's The Key Difference Between Momentum Accounting vs. Traditional Accountants? on youtube.com

What's The Key Difference Between Momentum Accounting vs. Traditional Accountants?

SF Bay Area accounting community-  hope to see you at BTG roadshow on Jan 21st! 

Cancel your meetings, block your calendar, book your spot hero. 

See ya there

Register here: https://lnkd.in/ghaCANPZ

taplio

The Battle

Jon Blair

Nikole Mackenzie

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreJon Blair's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreNikole Mackenzie's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Jon Blair

Nikole Mackenzie

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Jon Blair's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreNikole Mackenzie's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreJon Blair's LinkedIn Performance