The CFO-to-Go Career Option

The last few years have seen an explosion of firms that provide interim or part-time CFOs. They're attracting a lot of interest from experienced finance leaders.

What's it like to work for one of these firms?

Tom Azzarelli took the leap a couple of years ago, and he's not looking back. Now an Arizona-based partner with B2B CFO and finance chief at a clutch of small to midsize organizations, Azzarelli talked with Business Finance editor John Cummings about the charms and challenges of the part-time CFO career track.

John Cummings: You seem to be in a booming industry.
Tom Azzarelli: I think many people are going this route. What's happening is that a lot of companies are seeing the value in having a part-time CFO instead of paying $200,000 or $300,000 for a person who's not fully utilized.

Cummings: The kind of work you do, I almost want to call it a consulting CFO position. Would that be an accurate way to describe it?
Azzarelli: Yes, that's one way of looking at it. But we like to think of ourselves as trusted advisors. We are consulting, but we insert ourselves right into the management team.

Cummings: Can you tell me a little about the organizations that you're currently working with?
Azzarelli: Sure. I currently have clients that range from startups to midsize companies in the $80 million to $90 million range. I have one company that's public, a high-tech firm. Smaller entities range from a professional organization, which is about $10 million in sales, to an Internet-based company that's in the $70 million range right now and growing rapidly. I also have a temporary housing relocation company.

So I have a variety of clients. Some of them are really small; I wouldn't call them mom-and-pop, but they're firms that may have revenues under $1 million and really do need some advice, whether it's banking, cash flow, or other issues that they're struggling with. And it may be only a couple of hours a month that I work with those.

Cummings: How did you first get into this kind of work?
Azzarelli: I joined the partnership in May of 2009. I actually researched it for a couple of years before I decided to make the move. I'd been thinking about going out in my own capacity after being in the corporate world as a CFO. I'd held many other positions, even ran companies -- I was the president of companies several times. I decided to do something for myself as I was hitting the 60-year-old mark, and this was the perfect opportunity.

The company is structured in such a way that it provides you with a tremendous amount of support; you're really working independently, but you're still part of a large organization. So I thought it was a great opportunity for me to take my experience in the industries that I've worked in and add value to the firms that would be my clients.

Cummings: Before you made the change, you had worked with some large organizations on the East coast. Do you miss that?
Azzarelli: No, I don't miss that, and I'll tell you why -- I'm having so much fun! I have all kinds of clients with all kinds of problems and issues, and I just use all of my experience that I've gained through the years to help them.

If you work long enough in one organization, even if it's a good company, eventually either the business gets old or it just remains flat. And you kind of reach your level of work. I personally tend to get a little bit bored at that point. So I don't miss that corporate world where everything is running smooth and perfect. I'm always looking for that next exciting opportunity to make a change.

Cummings: And you work with startups. Must be pretty exciting to be involved with something in the early stages.
Azzarelli: I do help startup companies; I help them get their financing and get set up, and I give them advice. The public company that I mentioned is a technology company, and it's now in need of an interim CFO to help it to get some equity or debt financing and help with the filings of registration and so forth. Sales of $1 million, just starting to grow; capitalization of $20 million. It's in the early-stage development time.

Other companies that are strictly startups will ask me to help them with private investor financing and getting set up in the right way -- all the issues that one would be involved with in working with attorneys and outside CPAs to get a business going in the right direction.

Cummings: How difficult was it to make the transition to this career track?
Azzarelli: I'm from the East Coast, metro New Jersey area. I started with B2B in May of 2009 and quickly got clients -- within 30 days -- and was doing well. My wife and I had a vacation home in Arizona and some of our family are in Arizona, so about six or seven months later we started thinking that I could work both sides of the country, so to speak -- Arizona for part of the year, and the rest of the year in New Jersey and New York.

I called our founder and CEO and asked him if he would be okay if I relocated to Arizona. He said he would allow me to do that because there are practices everywhere in the country (we don't have territories).

Well, when I came to Arizona I knew one person. Literally one person. I wasn't ready for the challenge ahead of me, the challenge of not knowing anyone and moving into a new state with a different culture. So it did take me the better part of six to seven months before I was able to land something. It was a very trying and challenging time.

It worked, but that was a piece of my life that I'll never forget -- that challenge and that success. And the success I largely attribute to some of my partners in Arizona who got me introduced to people inside circles of influence.

Cummings: What do you like best about what you're doing now?
Azzarelli: A couple of things. I like knowing that I can add value and create change; that's very rewarding. That's who I am, and the clients' success is my success. I also like the variety.

And I like working in a partnership. With all of the partners in the firm, I can always pick up the phone and ask for help if there's something I bump into that I need some guidance on, or if I feel that I need another opinion. That's very, very important to me.

I like the money, too; I can't complain about that!

Cummings: What about the downside -- anything that's a bit less appealing?
Azzarelli: The one thing that's different when you're independent is that you have to constantly work the business. It's like any other service business. You have to maintain your network, because many times our positions are not permanent. We'd like them to be permanent -- our destiny as a partner with B2B CFO is to be a long-term trusted business advisor. But there are times when your hours with a client will be reduced once you accomplish what we call our Phase 1 clean-up, once you've helped them towards being one of those fine-tuned companies that I mentioned before in my experience of the corporate world.

So then it's time to find other clients. You need to continually make this an evolution of new clients. That was very different, for me, from being in the corporate world, where you go into an office and sit down and there is your job from day to day.

Cummings: And yet the typical CFO tenure is so short these days -- maybe for some finance folks it's not all that different.
Azzarelli: You're right, and that's another reason to do this. I've been blessed; I've been with companies for long periods within the corporate world. But today it's a different time for CFOs. It's two years, three years, and then there's a new CFO coming in. It becomes very difficult to be always in that revolving door, and as you get older it's more difficult to be recognized, even though you have the experience. And if you lose a job as a CFO in the corporate world it may take you two years to find another.

But when you're on your own you're really in charge of your own destiny; the opportunity is there to grow the business if you go out and network.