Mid-Cities
Fractional CFO and CMO — Grapevine and Northeast Tarrant County
Local Fractional provides partner-led fractional CFO and CMO services to Grapevine businesses generating $2M–$50M in revenue. The Fractional CFO Partnership is a flat $5,000–$10,000+/month retainer (with a lighter $2,500/month Fractional Executive Advisory tier for businesses with clean books), delivered in person across Grapevine and the wider Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. Co-founders Chris Gauvin and Taber Wetz lead every engagement directly.
Financial and marketing leadership for businesses in the heart of the DFW metroplex.
Why Grapevine and Southlake operators work with us
Northeast Tarrant County has an unusual concentration of successful owner-operated businesses and an unusual number of owners who have already exited something once. That changes the conversation: the questions here are less often about survival and more often about what the business is worth, what it would take to sell it well, and whether the reporting would survive a buyer reading it.
We are a Dallas–Fort Worth firm and this is home ground — DFW airport is on Grapevine’s doorstep and so are we. Every engagement is led personally by a founding partner, Chris Gauvin or Taber Wetz, with controller-level support underneath where the books need rebuilding rather than just reporting.
The businesses we do our best work with here run roughly $2M–$50M and are profitable enough that nobody has been forced to fix the reporting. The books record what happened; nobody can say what cash looks like in thirteen weeks, which service line earns, or what a buyer would make of the customer concentration. See how the engagement model works.
Exit readiness comes up earlier here than anywhere else in the Metroplex, and it is worth saying plainly that it is years of work rather than a transaction. Starting eighteen months out is worth considerably more than starting at the letter of intent.
Grapevine and Northeast Tarrant Areas We Serve
Northeast Tarrant and the surrounding corridor are served as one market on identical terms — no travel surcharge, and no difference in access between a Grapevine client and one in Coppell.
Grapevine & Main Street
Hospitality, wineries, events and specialty retail. Seasonality and margin by daypart drive the decisions, and neither is usually in the monthly close.
Southlake & Westlake
Professional services, medical practices and holding companies. Multi-entity consolidation, partner distributions and exit readiness are the standing asks.
Colleyville & Trophy Club
Established owner-operated businesses, frequently second-generation. Succession planning comes up here more than anywhere else in the county, and it is a programme rather than an event.
Flower Mound & Highland Village
Technology, professional services and fast-growing local operators. Frequently first-time CFO engagements where the immediate need is a close that closes on time and a 13-week cash view.
Keller & Roanoke
Construction, specialty trades and home services scaling with household growth. Job costing and work-in-progress schedules are almost always the gap between the books and reality — see our construction and contracting practice.
Euless, Bedford & Hurst
Aviation-adjacent suppliers and technical services. Contract accounting and cash timing against milestone billing drive most of the finance workload.
Coppell & the DFW airport corridor
Logistics, distribution and import businesses. Inventory timing, long lead times and customer concentration carry most of the cash risk, and none of it is visible on a standard P&L.
Owners planning an exit, across the corridor
The most common conversation we have in northeast Tarrant. Clean books, a defensible quality-of-earnings position, customer concentration understood before a buyer finds it, and management accounts that survive diligence — see our exit planning practice.
What does a fractional CMO do for a Grapevine or Southlake business?
It is an executive role, held part-time. The fractional CMO sets the positioning, shapes the offer, allocates the channel budget, and reports marketing in the same terms the rest of the leadership team uses: what it cost and what it returned.
Separate practice, separate leader: our marketing partner, not the CFO. It works as a standalone engagement. Clients who also run the finance side get one integrated view of marketing cost against marketing-sourced revenue.
It matters particularly if you are heading toward a sale. A business whose growth depends on the owner’s personal relationships is worth measurably less than one with a repeatable acquisition system, and that gap takes time to close. It is one of the few marketing investments with a direct, arithmetic effect on the multiple.
See how the fractional CMO engagement works, or read about the CFO side if finance is the more urgent gap.
Who you will actually work with
Worth being concrete about, because it is the difference that matters most. A great many firms match you to a consultant from a bench, and the person who wins the engagement is not the person who runs it. Here every engagement is led personally by a founding partner — the same person in month one and in month thirty.
Chris Gauvin
Co-Founder & Fractional CFO
Leads finance engagements personally — monthly close, cash-flow forecasting, lender and board reporting, and exit preparation.
Taber Wetz
Co-Founder & Fractional CFO
Leads finance engagements personally, with a focus on forecasting, pricing and margin work, and preparing a business to be sold.
Melissa Valdez
Fractional CMO
Leads the marketing practice — positioning, channel mix and the funnel maths that says which spend actually produced revenue.
Explainers
The questions that come up before anyone signs anything, answered in one picture each.
Fractional vs Interim vs Full-Time CFO
Three different instruments. Which one your situation actually calls for.
What a Fractional CFO Costs
The three tiers, what each includes, and why we price on scope not location.
CFO + CMO: Who Owns What
Two silos, one bridge. Marketing knows what it spent; finance knows what came back.
Your First 90 Days
Books cleaned, a cash view you can rely on, then the decisions those two change.
The 13-Week Cash Flow Forecast
Cash in, cash out, and the balance week by week — far enough ahead to act.
Grapevine and Northeast Tarrant County — Common Questions
What fractional CFO services are available in Grapevine, TX?
Monthly close and management reporting, 13-week cash-flow forecasting, budgeting and variance analysis, KPI scorecards, lender and board reporting, pricing and margin work, and exit or sale preparation. Engagements run as a fixed monthly scope rather than an hourly rate, so the cost is predictable from month one.
We are thinking about selling in a few years. When should we start?
Earlier than most people do. Exit readiness is years of work rather than a transaction, and the finance side is mostly unglamorous: clean books, a defensible quality-of-earnings position, customer concentration understood before a buyer finds it, and management accounts that survive diligence. Eighteen months out is worth considerably more than starting at the letter of intent.
Are you actually local to Grapevine?
We are a Dallas-Fort Worth firm and northeast Tarrant is home ground rather than an expansion market. In-person is straightforward here. The day-to-day work runs the way it does for all our clients: scheduled working sessions, shared dashboards and direct access to your accounting system.
Do you serve Southlake, Colleyville, Flower Mound and Keller?
Yes, on identical terms. There is no travel surcharge and no difference in access between a Grapevine client and one in Coppell or Trophy Club.
Does marketing actually affect what my business sells for?
Directly and arithmetically. A business whose growth depends on the owner's personal relationships is worth measurably less than one with a repeatable acquisition system, because the first one is harder for a buyer to keep. Closing that gap takes time, which is why it belongs in the exit plan rather than in the final year.
How much does a fractional CFO cost in Grapevine?
We price on scope rather than on location, so Grapevine rates match our Dallas rates. Most engagements land well below the fully loaded cost of a full-time CFO once salary, bonus, benefits and payroll taxes are counted.
We are second-generation family owned. Is this a fit?
It is one of the most common shapes in northeast Tarrant. The honest question is whether you want someone to own the numbers or to validate them — we sit in the leadership team rather than delivering a report from outside it.
What happens in the first ninety days?
Unglamorous things, mostly. A close that closes on time, a 13-week cash view you can rely on, and a short list of the decisions those two change. We would rather earn the strategic conversation than open with it.
What we hear from Grapevine owners
The Grapevine operator profile, in one paragraph
Grapevine sits at the intersection of DFW Airport-adjacent commerce, Main Street tourism, and a deep concentration of mid-market trades and professional services owners who live in the corridor between Colleyville, Southlake, and Keller. The fractional CFO conversation in Grapevine is often about owner wealth — the business is the largest line on the personal balance sheet, and the questions are about how to protect it, scale it, and exit it without rebuilding the whole reporting stack first.
The three questions we hear most from Grapevine owners
I am 3-5 years from a possible exit. What should I be doing right now?
The cleanup work that moves your multiple is the same work you should be doing anyway — clean books, KPI dashboard, recurring-revenue mix, non-owner-dependent ops. We start the work today so you have leverage when the inbound call comes.
My personal wealth is too concentrated in this business. How do I de-risk without selling?
There are real moves: distributions discipline, owner-comp normalization, key-person insurance, ESOP feasibility, partial liquidity events. The right path depends on the business, the family, and the timeline.
How do I make the business less dependent on me showing up every day?
This is the work that compounds. A management layer, a written operating cadence, and KPI ownership pushed to the team. None of it requires hiring a $200K GM on day one — it starts with the reporting that lets you delegate without losing visibility.
Industry-Specific Grapevine Pages
Led by Chris Gauvin and Taber Wetz. See the full about page or client results.
Also Serving Across DFW
Ready to Talk?
No pitch, just a conversation about your Grapevine business.
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