Press Releases

• Orlando Sentinel Coverage March 15, 2007
• CFO Strategic Partners Expands in Orlando, Tampa
• CFO Strategic Partners Named a 2007 Working Mother Best Small Company by Working Mother Magazine
• CFO Strategic Partners: Balancing The Books And Life
• CFO Strategic Partners Moves To New Orlando Headquarters
• CFO Strategic Partners Names New Partner
• CFO Strategic Partners Offers CEOs ProActive Approach To Planning, Nurturing Growth That Works
• CFO Strategic Partners: Tailoring Financial Services

Orlando Sentinel Coverage March 15, 2007

Recognize that face?
Orlando Sentinel March 15, 2007

Orlando entrepreneur Shannon Brouillette made the cover of Working Mother magazine's April issue, topping a list of the "best small companies that think big." Brouillette, 34, was the No. 1 choice not just because she runs a strategic-financial consulting firm while raising two young children. Employees at Brouillette's CFO Strategic Partners -- most working parents -- have the ultimate flex time: They are free to work when and where they want. And we're not talking the mommy track here: Strategic Partners' salaries exceed $100,000 a year in some cases, and the company offers health and retirement benefits to full- and part-time workers.

Click here to see the entire article.

Back To Top

CFO Strategic Partners Expands in Orlando, Tampa
Orlando Sentinel, May 10, 2007

Ellen Koon, Laura Webster, Ashley Guyton and Cindy Anderson join firm

Orlando, Fla. – (May 10, 2007) – CFO Strategic Partners (CFOSP.com) has added four new professionals to its growing office  in Orlando and Tampa – including three new associates that serve as part time chief financial officers for  companies throughout Florida.

• Ellen Koon joins the firm as new staff CFO working in the Orlando office. She has 30 years of financial experience. Koon served as controller for Supra Telecommunications & Information Systems, Inc in Orlando before she joined the firm. Prior to that, she was Director of Corporate Accounting for Starwood Vacation Ownership. 
• Laura Webster joins the firm as a new staff CFO working in the Orlando office. She has three decades of financial experience and was most recently the CFO of Rutledge Bradford, Attorneys at Law.
• Ashley Guyton joined the firm as a new staff CFO working in the Tampa office. She has more than two decades experience including time running her own financial business. She recently served as CFO for a Tampa real estate services firm.
• Cindy Anderson joins the firm as Human Resources manager. Anderson will coordinate human resources.  Anderson previously worked in the Human Resources and Community Service offices of the Orlando Magic.

CFO Strategic Partners works with small and medium sized businesses to identify and execute their financial goals. CFO Strategic Partners maintains ongoing chief financial officer services that operate seamlessly with the companies’ full-time accounting staff. Through their partnership, businesses reach a higher level of understanding of their business which  leads to increased profitability and growth.

CFO Strategic Partners uses the collective experience of its CFO team to deliver clients the best financial practices in their industries. CFO Strategic Partners has grown from a start up nearly eight years ago to a position today as a regional leader.

Back To Top

2007 Working Mother Best Small Company by Working Mother Magazine
Working Mother Magazine, April, 2007

ORLANDO, Fla.— March 15, 2007--Working Mother magazine announced that CFO Strategic Partners, a leader in providing chief financial officer services to businesses throughout Florida, is a 2007 Working Mother Best Small Company.

The magazine features CFO Strategic Partners CEO Shannon Brouillette on the cover of its April issue. Working Mother Magazine also has a full-length story about how Brouillette balances work and family life.

Launched in 2006, the Working Mother Best Small Companies initiative honors businesses with between five and 100 employees that are using innovative combinations of traditional and creative benefits to improve work/life balance.

"CFO Strategic Partners is exceptional for its commitment to working mothers, and Working Mother commends it for providing a model to small businesses across the country," said Carol Evans, CEO of Working Mother Media. "The common misconception is that small companies can't afford to provide generous employee benefits, but these innovators are proving that working mom-friendly policies and financial success go hand-in-hand."

CFO Strategic Partners, for example, allows its staff CFOs to select how many hours they would like to work. CFO Strategic Partners also gives its professional staff the opportunity to work from home or the office of their clients. CFO Strategic Partners provides outstanding benefits including bonus packages and offering healthcare coverage to every employee even if they work part-time.

Shannon Brouillette, who founded CFO Strategic Partners nearly nine years ago, was deeply touched by the recognition. “From day one we had set out to build a company that serves both the needs of our clients and our valued employees. I am a working mother. I want an exciting, challenging, and flexible career and time to enjoy what I hold most dear – my family and friends."

CFO Strategic Partners has grown from a start-up to a position today as a regional leader. The firm works with small and medium sized businesses to identify and execute their financial goals. CFO Strategic Partners maintains ongoing chief financial officer services that operate seamlessly with the companies’ full-time accounting staff.

"I congratulate CFO Strategic Partners for recognizing that helping moms balance work and family is a worthy and rewarding endeavor," added Suzanne Riss, Editor-in-Chief of Working Mother magazine.

Methodology:

Working Mother readers nominated small companies with family-friendly benefits and a culture that helps employees balance their work and family needs. Companies were required to have between five and 120 employees. Editors scored more than 250 entries based primarily on three areas of emphasis: work/life benefits, entrepreneurial spirit and programs to help women advance.

The complete list of the 2007 Working Mother Best Small Companies can be found at www.workingmother.com.

About Working Mother Magazine

When Shannon Brouillette hires accountants for her Orlando financial-consulting company, one of her first questions is: "How many hours would you like to work a week?" Brouillette then assigns them clients according to the part- or full-time schedule they choose -- and she turns them loose to work early or late, at home or the office, or wherever else might suit them. "They can do it when they want, how they want," said Brouillette, 34. "They are not slaves to the corporate schedule."

It may sound too good to be true -- like one of those Internet ads for work-at-home jobs -- but Brouillette's approach has helped put her company, CFO Strategic Partners, on a path to rapid growth.

The company that Brouillette launched in 1999 with nothing but a laptop computer now has 32 employees, serves about 150 clients, and has offices in Orlando and Tampa. And Strategic Partners, which provides chief financial officer services to small and mid-size companies, is not offering minimum-wage jobs.

Base pay for the company's CFOs, who are experienced certified public accountants, starts above an annualized $100,000, Brouillette said. Part-time and full-time employees receive a generous benefits package that includes health insurance and retirement savings.

Like most workers at the company -- including Brouillette and her two partners -- CFO Amy Williams has young children at home. The 41-year-old single mother of three said Strategic Partners keeps her professionally challenged without the grueling schedule that executive accounting often requires. She works 20 hours a week. "I thank God every day that I landed this job," said Williams, who stayed home with her children for five years until learning about Strategic Partners two years ago. "If I had known of this I would have been all over it," she said. "I would have gone back [to work] sooner."

Although Brouillette's approach may seem novel, corporate psychologist Mimi Hull said other employers might want to take a closer look. Today's workers, especially 20- and 30-somethings, don't just talk about work-life balance. They demand it. And more employers will have to provide it as the job market tightens with the coming retirement of the baby-boom generation, said Hull, who runs Hull & Associates in Maitland. "People are wanting more flexibility. They don't want to be married to their jobs," Hull said.

For James Coffman, however, Strategic Partner's flexible schedule wasn't the selling point, though as the father of two toddlers he said it's a comfort to know he could scale back if he needed to. Coffman, 35, said he works "very full time." What he likes about the job is the freedom he has to spot an opportunity or problem and tackle it. Like several other employees, Coffman used two words to describe Strategic Partners' open-ended, self-directed culture: 'scary' and 'fun'. "It's uncomfortable at first," Coffman said. "You just sort of roll up your sleeves and get started." Although wary of wading into gender politics, Coffman -- one of only two men at the firm -- said he thinks his company's culture has such a high degree of flexibility in part because it is run by three women with young families, who are used to multitasking while balancing work and family life. "I see it as an inherent strength that a lot of women have," he said.

The high-level of autonomy that CFO Strategic Partners offers its workers does not mean it's a sink-or-swim operation. The CFOs meet regularly for training and for brainstorming sessions, where they work together to find solutions for client companies.

The company prides itself on telling entrepreneurs what they need to hear, not what they want to be told. Often, the problems that the CFOs uncover are not the issues that brought the company to Strategic Partners in the first place.

That is in part why John Elsea, Brouillette's first client, is still with the firm eight years later. Elsea's Peninsula Engineering was profitable but "flying by the seat of our pants" before CFO Strategic Partners helped institute budgeting, project management and other systems to track profits and costs and steer the company's growth, he said. Strategic Partners has helped increase efficiencies and profits, allowing Peninsula Engineering to give its 35 employees higher-than-average salaries as well as health and retirement benefits, Elsea said. "She [Brouillette] tells me stuff I don't want to hear every day," he said. "Entrepreneurs like myself, we're not used to being told what to do. We're not used to taking advice. But I take her advice because she gives me results."

Back To Top

Orlando, Fla. – CFO Strategic Partners, a leader in providing chief financial officer services to businesses throughout Florida, has moved its headquarters to 801 North Orange Avenue in downtown Orlando.

CFO Strategic Partners (www.CFOSP.com) owns 5,500 square feet on the eighth floor of the office condominium being developed by Craig Ustler.  The offices are nearly twice the space the firm leased at their old location on 811 Magnolia Avenue.

The new headquarters provides a roomy work environment for the company’s 32 employees when they are not on location with clients. Most of the company’s employees are highly-qualified part time chief financial officers for companies that do not need a full-time CFO.

“We’re on track for another year of record growth in 2006. We are thankful for all the companies which have allowed our team to become their strategic financial partners over the years,’’ said Founder and President Shannon Brouillette. “This move is a great step for our company. Our new office has the space and executive services our staff CFOs need to better serve their companies effectively.’’

CFO Strategic Partners works with small and medium sized businesses to identify and execute their financial goals. CFO Strategic Partners maintains ongoing chief financial officer services that operate seamlessly with the companies’ full-time accounting staff. Through their partnership, businesses reach a higher level of understanding of their business which often leads to increased profitability and growth.

Back To Top

CFO Strategic Partners, the Orlando-based company that provides firms with highly qualified financial executives on a consulting basis, has named Stacey Haley a partner and principal in the firm.

Shannon B. Brouillette, founder and president of CFO Strategic Partners, said Haley, a CPA, joined the firm three years ago. She now has joined Brouillette and Partner Leigh Ann Horton as partner and principal in the firm, Brouillette said.

CFO Strategic Partners currently employs 16 to serve the needs of more than 90 companies in 25 industry segments in Florida.

Back To Top

CFO Strategic Partners, the five-year old, Orlando-based firm that provides highly qualified financial executives – CFOs on a consulting basis, has cultivated a growing niche market that may be its key to nationwide expansion.

Shannon B. Brouillette, founder and president of CFO Strategic Partners said the firm serves more than 80 clients in 25 industry segments with a pro-active approach to planning and managing each client's growth. "Demand for that approach is itself on a growth curve," Brouillette said. "As a client's chief financial officer, our focus is on how to make the firm more productive, how to make it more profitable and how to make it more valuable," Brouillette said. "We work with CEOs to look at the future, and we use sound, credible measurements to see what that future is," she added.

Brouillette said most chief executives---even CEOs who understand accounting financials---value them as a measure of past performance. "Not all CEOs are good at looking into the future," Brouillette said. "They are exceptional at what they do, they are entrepreneurial and they are successful, but driving proactive growth decisions is a complex specialty. We're the specialists," she said. "For a good chief financial officer, accurate financials are a window to the future," Brouillette explained. "That's the real value of the calculations."

Brouillette said CFO Strategic Partners offers chief executive officers something else that's valuable, even when it hurts. "Our pledge to every client is to give an objective viewpoint," she said, adding, "We don't tell our clients what they want to hear unless it's accurate," Brouillette said. CFO Strategic Partners has seen strong growth since its inception. "We've been experiencing fifty percent, hundred percent, sixty percent annual growth," she explained. The firm has already announced it's expanding to the Tampa Bay and Jacksonville markets this year and Brouillette said she is studying expansion on a larger scope.

"We are creating an industry," Brouillette said. "We don't have any competition in this market at the moment, so in effect the whole country is open to us," Brouillette said.

Back To Top