ABOUT US
Come see what we're all about
Scott is a highly experienced senior finance professional with 21 years as the CFO of five small to medium sized businesses. The five businesses included an advertising agency, a fully integrated healthcare PR agency, a speaker’s bureau and two PR/government relations firms. Scott helped a private equity-owned business make a rapid exit in 30 days after being acquired by a firm trading on the London Stock Exchange. Beyond the private equity owned business, Scott has a diverse background including substantial operational experience having worked for seven privately owned and publicly traded businesses including American Airlines and IBM at the start of his business career.
Scott earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Math from the Naval Academy in 1984. After serving in the Navy for six years as a Surface Warfare Officer, Scott graduated from UNC Chapel Hill with a Master of Accounting. He previously completed a BSBA from Chapman University while still on active duty. Scott Chesson founded CFO4VETS in 2020. CFO4VETS offers a wealth of on-demand business finance wisdom and experience at a fraction of the cost of a full-time CFO. He specializes in liberating small business owner’s time from finance entanglement while helping the businesses grow revenue, profits, and value.
Scott has been married to his wife Gail for almost twenty-seven years. They live in Northern Virginia with their two sons, Patrick and Kevin, ages 24 and 22, respectively.
What I Stand For
There are many CFO consulting firms, but very few are led by veterans with my background and an intimate grasp of being a veteran in business. I am building my business on the foundation of being a trusted, ethical advisor to small veteran business owners because ethics are embedded in my DNA. I am outraged by financial fraud, so integrity is the unwavering bedrock of all aspects of my business. I only recommend and provide essential CFO services to my clients. Moreover, integrity matters significantly in life and business. We must trust the people we work with closely inside and outside our company. A CFO must have impeccable integrity to oversee your business' finances and tell you the unvarnished truth about your company.
CFO Case Study # 1
I was hired by the CEO of a prominent government relations firm to upgrade and reengineer the company’s financial operations. The CEO considered all aspects of the financial operations mistake-ridden with the bare minimum amount of reporting. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and insightful analysis were nonexistent, so it was difficult to understand what business segments were succeeding and which parts were struggling. The company grew rapidly during the prior three years, and the CEO was heavily involved in the day-to-day financial processes. Lastly, the finance staff was minimal and an inadequate fit for the needs of the business.
So, the first challenge was to resolve the staffing problem quickly. During the first year, I upgraded and reorganized the finance staff. The revitalized team enabled us to extract the CEO from day-to-day finances while streamlining the accounting workflow and better-segregating duties to improve internal controls.
While the accounting and finance staff was being reconstituted, I was able to begin resolving the central strategic dilemma: the glaring lack of insightful financial analysis and reporting. The financial statements consisted of a tax-based income statement and a balance sheet when I arrived. GAAP financial statements were not prepared, and the tax-based financial statements were inaccurate because they were a hybrid of tax and accrual basis. Within eighteen months, we overhauled financial reporting while engineering a robust KPI and analytical business intelligence package. A sample of the business intelligence package is listed below.
- In-depth analysis of revenues by lines of businesses(LOB) and industry sectors Understanding growth rates, attrition rates, and new business added by sector and LOB compared to the prior year. Finally, understanding the framework for growing the company’s revenues and the optimum blend of revenue generation from existing or new clients.
- Breakdown of time and labor by client, LOB, and sector to maximize staff productivity and facilitate segment profitability analysis.
- Thorough analysis of gross margin by sector incorporating all direct costs. The gross margin analysis underscored the profitability of the twelve business segments.
All the above analyses plus the additional reports referenced shed significant light on the business as a whole and informed our strategies for expansion, targeted investments, and diversifying the company’s service mix. Illuminating client KPIs by sector enabled us to understand how to grow the business profitably by focusing on our non-government relations segments (PR and International). Consequently, we grew 18% overall over the next three years while expanding profits by more than 25%. The PR and International LOBS grew revenues by 90% over the same period.
CFO Case Study #2
I was hired by the leadership and founders of a well-known talent agency to be the CFO and head of operations and solve a host of strategic challenges facing the company. The overarching strategic challenge was taking a private company with very few financial resources or infrastructure and transitioning it into a public company capable of planning for and reporting financial results in GAAP, forecasting, analyzing, optimizing the business, and accounting accurately and efficiently for a high transaction environment.
A small, ill-equipped staff performed finance, accounting, and HR when I started. The team did not have relevant degrees or pertinent experience in any of the three disciplines. The inadequate staff and the problematic condition of the financial statements required prompt overhaul. I immediately implemented a monthly close process and hired experienced financial staff to solidify the accounting function. I re-engineered the financial statements and designed fluid processes to ensure that we could report earnings with confidence. I also replaced the existing financial system as it was archaic and inflexible, and our company needed a modern, efficient approach to handling the prolific number of transactions. These changes enabled us to adapt quickly to the rigors of public company accounting, forecasting, and quarterly reporting.
A secondary strategic challenge was expanding productivity. Paperbound sales processes were an efficiency drag on the staff as issuing a sales agreement required an hour to complete. Within months through automation, the time needed to issue a contract was reduced from an hour to one minute. At the beginning of my tenure, redundant data entry was rampant within finance. Data entry was reduced by 60% within the first nine months through automation, the new finance system, and better-trained staff.
The strategic issue that was most prominent was growing the company. Since we were now part of a public company, increasing revenue and profits were not options but a strategic mandate for success.
After three consecutive flat years, the company grew revenues my first year by 10%. Revenues fell the following year due to a recession as the demand for speakers and events dropped off considerably. We implemented my recommendations to add more sales staff and focus on the top-end talent to help grow the business despite the economic headwinds. I also unbundled accounting functions like invoicing and collections from sales teams as soon as we had the personnel in finance to handle it. This freed up the sales team’s time to sell more and build relationship capital with the speakers and the clients. The positive outcome of the changes resulted in revenue increasing by 100% over the next five years while profits expanded by 160%. Moreover, our average revenue per event grew by 61% during my tenure.
OUR PARTNERS
Re4ormed, LLC is a service-disabled veteran-owned business based in Annapolis, Maryland, that serves the ecosystem of veteran-owned and military-spouse-owned businesses.
Our vision is to create a nationwide enterprise that connects veteran-owned and military-spouse-owned businesses, corporate partners, and municipalities to deliver mutual support, development assistance, and affordable, core tools to those entrepreneurs, enabling them to succeed.
We’ve teamed up with Re4ormed to offer a special discount to members of their community. Learn more at their website: https://re4ormed.com/
The VBN Mission: Your mission may have changed but the people you trust haven’t – Veterans. At VBN it’s our mission to facilitate veterans doing business.
With your membership you will gain access to business advice, deals from other VOB/VSO’s, help with promoting your own business and a supportive community of people who have been in your shoes and still are.
Learn More Here.
