Local Fractional is a boutique fractional executive services firm based in Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas. We provide fractional CFO, fractional CMO, exit planning, and cash flow analysis services for businesses between $5M and $50M in revenue. Our team specializes in construction and trades (HVAC, plumbing, electrical, roofing) and SaaS/technology companies. Engagements start at $5,000/month.
Led by
Chris Gauvin & Taber Wetz, Co-Founders — fractional CFO/CMO practice based in Dallas.
What does a fractional CFO actually do for your business?
A fractional CFO works inside your leadership team part-time — owning cash flow forecasting, KPI dashboards, capital strategy, and exit readiness — at roughly 40% of the cost of a full-time CFO hire. You get senior financial leadership embedded in weekly decisions, not just monthly reports from an outside consultant.
A full-time CFO in DFW runs $180K–$300K loaded; our engagements start at $5,000/month and scale with the business. The model exists because most growth-stage companies need senior finance leadership before they can justify a senior finance hire.
Financial Clarity
Cash flow planning, forecasting, and analysis that gives you confidence in every decision about growth, hiring, and investment.
Revenue-Focused Marketing
Executive marketing strategy that turns chaotic vendor stacks into a cohesive revenue engine with measurable ROI.
Exit-Ready Positioning
Whether you are scaling or selling, we position your business for maximum value with strategic planning and due diligence preparation.
Our Services
Comprehensive fractional executive services tailored to where you are and where you want to go. New to the model? Start with our complete guide to fractional CFO services.
Fractional CFO
Strategic financial leadership, cash flow planning, and forecasting to drive growth and operational efficiency.
See fractional CFO scope & pricing →Fractional CMO
Executive marketing strategy, team leadership, and sales alignment to scale your brand into a revenue engine.
See fractional CMO scope & pricing →Exit Planning
Sell-side advisory, financial due diligence, and buyer-ready positioning for business owners preparing for a transition.
See our exit-planning roadmap →72-Hour Cash Flow
A complete cash flow analysis in 72 hours. Know where your money is going and get a clear path forward, fast.
Book the 72-hour cash flow analysis →SMB Acquisition
Buy-side advisory for small business acquisitions. Due diligence, deal structuring, and post-acquisition integration.
See SMB acquisition advisory →How we work: audit, roadmap, execute
A proven three-step approach that turns complexity into clarity.
Audit
We start by understanding your current financial and operational position. Where are the gaps, the risks, and the untapped opportunities.
Roadmap
We build a strategic plan tailored to your goals, whether that is aggressive growth, operational efficiency, or preparing for an exit.
Execution
We work alongside your team to implement the plan. Weekly check-ins, real-time adjustments, and measurable outcomes.
Industries We Serve
Deep expertise across the trades, manufacturing, consumer brands, and technology — wherever growth-stage businesses need financial and marketing leadership.
Trades and Home Services
Growth Industries
Trades and Home Services
Growth Industries
Process-Driven. Data-Focused.
Our team is structured to solve even the most complex issues your company may be facing. We understand companies that run on EOS or similar operating systems, and our process-focused, data-driven solutions are a perfect match.
Our team has held the seats we now support — Chris Gauvin led finance and M&A at a national healthcare provider, and Local Fractional has served as interim CFO through a $25M+ HVAC exit and built the financial operating system inside a $15M DFW construction group. We do not hand you a cookie-cutter plan. We work alongside your leadership team to create strategies that fit your business and your goals.
Meet our team →Five signals you need a fractional CFO
These are the challenges our clients face before they work with us.
Bookkeeping is a mess and you cannot trust the numbers coming out of it.
Cash flow is unpredictable and you are making decisions in the dark.
You need professional reports for stakeholders, banks, or investors.
Margins are shrinking and you cannot see which jobs, customers or service lines are responsible.
You do not know when to make that next key hire or investment.
You want to build toward an exit but have no idea where to start.
Our team is available to discuss your situation, give you immediate insights, and provide a proposal within 24 hours.
Book a Free ConsultationFive signals you need a fractional CMO
The finance side is only half of it. These are what we hear before the marketing work starts.
Your marketing is a patchwork of vendors and tools with no cohesive strategy.
You are spending on marketing but cannot say what any of it returns.
Leads come almost entirely from referrals, and that well is running dry.
Your message sounds like every competitor’s and nothing separates you.
You have a website and a logo but no actual demand engine behind them.
You are ready to hire a marketing lead but not ready to pay for a full-time one.
Melissa Valdez leads our fractional CMO work. Two sides, one engagement: finance is CFO-led with controller support underneath it, marketing is CMO-led. Run together they are what actually drives growth — the marketing side decides what growth costs, the finance side decides whether it is worth it.
Explore fractional CMO services →What Onboarding Looks Like
From first conversation to embedded leadership — the path from intro call to an integrated partner on your team.
Discovery Call
50-minute conversation to understand your business, challenges, and goals. No pitch — just listening.
Day 1
Financial Assessment
We review your books, cash flow, KPIs, and operations to build a clear picture of where you stand today.
Week 1
Custom Roadmap
A clear proposal with scope, deliverables, timeline, and pricing. No surprises. You approve before we start.
Week 1-2
Embedded Kickoff
We integrate into your team — attending meetings, accessing systems, and building relationships with your staff.
Week 2-3
Ongoing Execution
Weekly rhythms, monthly reporting, quarterly reviews. We operate as your executive — not an outside consultant dropping off a binder.
Month 1+
Most-read guide: the 13-week cash flow forecast
The 13-Week Cash Flow Forecast: A Fractional CFO's Guide
The single most important tool we build for growth-stage clients. Why it matters, how to build one, and how to actually run the business from it.
Most owner-operators manage cash by checking the bank balance on Monday morning. The 13-week rolling forecast replaces that gut-feel with a disciplined view of every dollar coming in and going out — 90 days ahead. Lenders ask for it. Buyers expect it. And in our experience, every client who has adopted one has avoided a preventable cash crunch within 6 months.
Read the full guideThe Fractional Advantage
Why more growing businesses choose fractional over full-time executive hires.
| Fractional Executive | Full-Time Hire | Agency / Consultant | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Annual Cost | $60K – $120K | $200K – $350K+ | $100K – $250K |
| Commitment | Month-to-month | 2+ year investment | 6-12 month contracts |
| Strategic Depth | C-suite experience | C-suite experience | Varies widely |
| Embedded in Team | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | ✗ External |
| Speed to Impact | 2-3 weeks | 3-6 months | 4-8 weeks |
| Accountability | ✓ Owns outcomes | ✓ Owns outcomes | ✗ Delivers reports |
| Scalability | Scale up/down easily | Fixed overhead | Scope-dependent |
80% of the impact at 40% of the cost — with the flexibility to scale as your business evolves.
When Local Fractional is not the right fit
We are not a good match for every business. Being direct here saves both of us time.
Under $2M in revenue. Below that the math rarely supports a fractional CFO at our level. Between $2M and $5M the Fractional Executive Advisory tier at $2,500/month is usually the right entry point rather than the full CFO Partnership.
You primarily need tax filing. We are not a CPA firm. We will introduce you to CPAs we trust and stay out of your way.
You want transactional bookkeeping done in-house weekly. That is an operations hire, not a fractional executive one.
You need a full-time interim CFO. Fractional and interim are different solutions. Interim means one person, full-time, holding a seat until you fill it permanently — usually through a crisis, a departure or a transaction. We are fractional: part of your leadership team on an ongoing basis, at a fraction of the cost and time. If interim is genuinely what the situation calls for, say so and we will point you toward people who do it well.
You want someone who agrees with everything. We push back when the numbers say so. If that sounds exhausting, we are not the right partner.
DFW economic signals and trade-industry news for owners
Economic trends and local business news that affect your bottom line.
DFW Economy: What the Data Says for Mid-Market
By Chris Gauvin & Taber Wetz · Updated April 2026
Dallas-Fort Worth continues to outpace national growth, but mid-market companies face unique headwinds. Here's what we're watching.
- • DFW job growth +3.2% YoY — strongest in trades and professional services
- • Commercial construction pipeline remains strong through 2027
- • Interest rates stabilizing — SBA and conventional lending loosening slightly
- • PE activity in trades businesses (HVAC, plumbing, electrical) accelerating
From the Dallas Business Journal
Stay connected with what's happening in the DFW business community.
-
Dallas Business Journal — Latest News
Breaking business news, deals, and executive moves in DFW
-
Finance & Banking
Lending trends, PE activity, and capital markets in North Texas
-
Commercial Real Estate
Office, industrial, and multifamily development pipeline
-
Small Business
Growth strategies, exits, and lessons from DFW entrepreneurs
Frequently Asked Questions
Straight answers about fractional executive services in Dallas-Fort Worth.
A fractional CFO is a senior-level finance executive who works with your business part-time, providing the same strategic leadership as a full-time CFO — cash flow planning, forecasting, KPI development, board-ready reporting, capital strategy, and exit readiness — at 30–40% of the cost. Fractional CFOs are the right fit for businesses between $2M and $50M in revenue that need senior finance leadership but not 40 hours a week of it.
The terms overlap, but the emphasis is different. An outsourced CFO typically delivers a productized monthly deliverable — close, reporting, maybe a forecast — with limited embedded involvement. A fractional CFO sits inside your leadership team, owns outcomes, attends your Level 10 or ops meetings, and partners with the CEO on strategy. At Local Fractional, we operate as a fractional partner, not an outsourced vendor.
Local Fractional's Fractional CFO Partnership runs $5,000–$10,000+/month flat retainer for embedded executive leadership: 13-week cash flow modeling, KPI scorecards, EOS/Traction integration, and active leadership-team participation. Bookkeeping and controller-level support are available through strategic partners. A comparable full-time CFO in Dallas-Fort Worth is $180K–$300K+ in salary alone.
Yes — it is half the practice, not an add-on. Melissa Valdez leads our fractional CMO work: positioning and messaging, demand generation, marketing measurement, and building a pipeline that does not rely on referrals alone. Many clients engage both. The pairing works because the marketing side decides what growth costs and the finance side decides whether it is worth it.
Sets marketing strategy and owns the numbers behind it. That means deciding which channels earn their spend, fixing a message that sounds like everyone else’s, building a repeatable way to generate qualified leads, and reporting on it in terms a CEO can act on. It is senior marketing leadership on a part-time basis — not an agency running campaigns, and not a junior marketer executing tactics without a strategy behind them.
Yes — and it sits inside the CFO engagement rather than alongside it. Controller work is the accuracy layer: closing the books, reconciliations, tightening month-end, making the reporting trustworthy. CFO work is what you then do with those numbers: forecasting, pricing, capital strategy, exit readiness. The second depends on the first, so the finance side of our practice is CFO-led with controller capability underneath it. If your books are not yet dependable, that is where we start.
Fractional. Interim means one person full-time, holding a seat until you hire permanently — typically through a crisis, a departure or a transaction. Fractional means we are part of your leadership team on an ongoing basis, at a fraction of the cost and time commitment. They are genuinely different solutions. If interim is what your situation calls for, we will say so and point you toward people who do that work well.
Ready to Talk?
No pitch, just a conversation. Let us understand where you are and see if we can help.
Book a Free ConsultationOr email us at info@localfractional.com