Start from
what’s real.
We do strategy and financial leadership for owner-led companies doing anywhere from $500K to $200M in revenue. You get the kind of analysis the big firms sell (on your actual numbers), and we stick around to make sure the plan gets done.
Exhibit 1. Year-to-date gross profit, plan against actual. An illustrative example of the kind of gap the Baseline Method is built to find.
A company with 40 employees faces the same hard calls as one with 40,000.
It’s the same list either way: what to charge, whether to buy a competitor, how to pay the people who actually run the work, when to open a second location and who eventually takes over. The difference is that the big company has a whole strategy department working on it and you have you. The national firms aren’t built for a business your size, and a lot of what gets sold to companies like yours is really just coaching with a strategy label on it.
That’s the gap we built this firm to close. We do the analysis on your own numbers, the senior person is the one actually doing the work, and you walk away with a written plan that somebody is accountable for. Most of our clients have been with us for years, and several have brought us a second business.
Three practices, one method
Fractional CFO
Our fractional CFO practice gives you senior financial leadership every month without carrying a full-time salary. In practice that means you know your cash and your margins, your pricing and job costing hold up, your pay plans reward the results you want and your banker picks up when you call.
Pricing and customer strategy
Pricing and customer strategy starts with how your customers actually make decisions (what they compare you to, what they expect to pay and why they stay or leave). From there we set prices, design the offer and build the retention and referral habits that keep the good ones coming back.
Strategic advisory
Strategic advisory is for the big moves that only come up a handful of times, like buying or selling a company, taking on a partner or opening a new location. We build the case, pressure test it against the numbers and then help you actually carry it out.
Fixed-scope ways to start
The Baseline Method
Every engagement runs through the same four steps, and so do the newsletter and the graduate finance course Nunzio teaches.
1Baseline
We start with what’s actually true in your books and with your customers, which is usually not the version you’ve been carrying around in your head.
2Gap
Then we measure the distance between the plan and what’s really happening, in dollars, and trace it back to where it’s coming from.
3Decision
We make the call and put it in writing, with the options, the numbers behind each one and our recommendation.
4Commit
Lastly, we set up the routines and the follow-up (who does what by when, and when we review it) so the decision is still alive a month later.
Exhibit 2. One decision followed through all four steps.
How the method worksSeventeen years of work you can check
“Nunzio’s gifts lie at the intersection of intuition, accountability, expertise and generosity. I wouldn’t want to run any of my businesses without what he brings to the table.”
“Much of our networking, outreach and marketing work based upon Nunzio’s specific and practical advice have resulted in a significant increase in referrals and fees for the Estate Planning segment of our practice.”
Built for the businesses that keep a region running
Most of our clients are privately held, a lot of them run more than one crew or location, and nearly all of them have a management team that still leans pretty heavily on the owner. If it’s your name on the loan, chances are we’ve already worked through a version of what you’re dealing with.
Who you work with
You work with me directly on every engagement, and I do the analysis myself (a lot of larger firms will sell you a partner and then staff the work with junior associates). I started this firm in 2009 after seeing up close what happens to a business with no plan, no reliable numbers and no real sense of what it’s worth, and I didn’t want other owners running their companies that way.
Nunzio Bruno, Founder and Principal
Seventeen years later the work is more focused. It’s fractional CFO engagements, pricing and customer strategy, and the handful of major decisions an owner only faces a few times. That being said, the goal hasn’t changed. We find out what’s true about the business, decide what to do about it and make sure it actually gets done.
What happens after you reach out
A 45-minute call
It starts with a 45-minute call about where the business is right now and what you’re trying to decide. It’s free, and there’s no pitch at the end of it.
The first 90 days
If we decide to work together, the first 90 days are about getting the numbers right. You end up with clean books, the real margin on each line of business, a clear view of cash and a short list of the decisions that will actually move the needle this year.
Retainer, project or sprint
From there most clients keep us on a monthly retainer, and others bring us in for a defined project or start with a Decision Sprint. Whichever way it goes, you’ll know the scope and the fee in writing before any work starts.
What we’re publishing
New articles on pricing, margin, growth and the day-to-day of running a company go up most weeks, and there are years of them in the archive.
We’re also building the Owner-Operator Benchmarks from the actual books of the companies we work with (anonymized and aggregated), and the first edition comes out in early 2027. About the research
All insightsBring us the question you keep coming back to.
Most engagements start with one question an owner has been turning over for months. Bring that one, and on the first call we’ll tell you how we’d go about answering it.
Start a conversation