Serving St. Louis Businesses Virtually
Fractional CFO and CMO — St. Louis and the Metro East
Local Fractional provides partner-led fractional CFO and CMO services to St. Louis 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 remote-first to St. Louis businesses, with travel for board meetings, planning, and other key on-site moments. Co-founders Chris Gauvin and Taber Wetz lead every engagement directly.
Dallas-based financial and marketing leadership, delivered virtually to St. Louis businesses.
Why would a St. Louis business hire a CFO based in Texas?
It should matter far less than who does the work. We are a Texas firm, we do not keep an office in Missouri, and St. Louis engagements run remote-first with travel for board meetings, lender conversations and diligence — the things that genuinely warrant being in the room.
What is worth interrogating is seniority and continuity. 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. Every Local Fractional 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.
Cloud accounting means a remote CFO sees precisely what an in-office one would. What determines whether the arrangement works is cadence — a standing session where decisions get made — rather than proximity. See how the engagement model works; we price on scope rather than postcode.
St. Louis has an unusually deep base of established manufacturing, distribution and family-held businesses, many of them second or third generation with a finance function built for a smaller company. That is the gap we work in.
The St. Louis Business Landscape
St. Louis has a deep manufacturing and logistics heritage that shapes its business community to this day. The metro area is home to major corporations, but the real backbone of the economy is a thriving SMB community — trades companies, professional services firms, healthcare-adjacent businesses, and a growing number of technology-enabled service providers.
The bi-state metro creates a layer of complexity that many businesses underestimate. Operating across the Missouri-Illinois border means navigating different tax structures, regulatory environments, and incentive programs. That kind of complexity makes experienced financial leadership not just helpful, but critical — especially for companies that are scaling or preparing for a transition.
Private equity activity in the St. Louis region is growing. More business owners are thinking about exit planning earlier, and for good reason. Whether it is positioning for a sale, structuring an ownership transition, or simply building a business that could sell if the right opportunity appeared, that kind of strategic planning requires a financial partner who has been through the process before. Exit planning is increasingly relevant for St. Louis business owners, and it is a core part of what we do.
St. Louis and Metro East Areas We Serve
The metro is served as one market on identical terms — no travel surcharge, and no difference in access between a Clayton client and one in Wentzville.
Downtown & Clayton
Professional services, financial firms and corporate headquarters. Partner distributions, entity-level consolidation and management accounts a lender will accept without a rewrite are the standing asks.
Chesterfield & West County
Healthcare practices, technology and established professional services. Frequently first-time CFO engagements where the immediate need is a close that closes on time and a 13-week cash view.
St. Charles, O'Fallon & Wentzville
Manufacturing, distribution and construction 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.
Kirkwood, Webster Groves & the inner suburbs
Owner-operated businesses, specialty retail and professional services. Multi-location margin comparison is usually the first thing that changes decisions and the first thing missing.
Maryland Heights & Earth City
Logistics, warehousing and light industrial along the river corridor. Inventory timing and customer concentration carry most of the cash risk, and neither is visible on a standard P&L.
Creve Coeur & the plant-science corridor
Agricultural technology, life sciences and their supplier base. Long development cycles and milestone-based revenue make cash timing the central modelling problem.
North County & the industrial base
Metals, transport and second- or third-generation manufacturers. Equipment financing decisions and the cash timing around them drive more of the finance workload than anything on the P&L.
The Metro East, Illinois
Distribution, construction and rural-serving operators across the river. Multi-state payroll and nexus questions arrive early here and are usually handled late, which is an expensive order to do them in.
Services Available to St. Louis Businesses
Fractional CFO
Cash flow planning, forecasting, and strategic financial leadership for St. Louis businesses navigating growth and complexity.
Fractional CMO
Revenue-focused marketing strategy and brand positioning to stand out in a competitive Midwest market.
Exit Planning
Sell-side advisory, buyer-ready positioning, and valuation optimization for St. Louis business owners preparing for a transition.
How Virtual Delivery Works
Dallas and St. Louis are both in the Central time zone. That means no scheduling gymnastics, no awkward overlap windows — just normal business hours, the same as if we were across town. If you can use Zoom, we can be in your office.
Every engagement starts with a deep-dive into your business: financials, operations, competitive landscape, and goals. From there, we build a working rhythm — typically weekly or biweekly calls, shared dashboards, and async communication through Slack or email as needed.
The virtual model is not new for us. It is how we have delivered results for clients across the country since day one. You get the same rigor and responsiveness as a local hire — without the local price tag.
What does a fractional CMO do for a St. Louis business?
Most companies this size have marketing activity but no marketing leadership. The fractional CMO supplies the leadership part: a defensible position in the market, an offer that converts, channels chosen on evidence, and a straight answer about what the spend returned.
Our marketing partner owns this practice. There is no requirement to take the finance side with it, though clients who do get a cleaner answer than either discipline can give alone, since cost and outcome reconcile in one review.
St. Louis engagements often share a shape: growth came from long relationships in a market where reputation travels quickly. That works until a key relationship retires or a better-funded competitor arrives, and the absence of anything repeatable becomes the binding constraint.
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.
St. Louis and the Metro East — Common Questions
What fractional CFO services are available in St. Louis, MO?
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.
Do you have an office in St. Louis?
No, and we would rather say so than imply otherwise. We are a Texas firm serving clients across the country. St. Louis engagements run remote-first with travel for board meetings, lender conversations and diligence. Cloud accounting means a remote CFO sees precisely what an in-office one would.
Do you serve St. Charles, Chesterfield and the Metro East?
Yes, on identical terms. There is no travel surcharge and no difference in access between a Clayton client and one in Wentzville or across the river in Illinois.
We operate on both sides of the river. Does that complicate things?
It adds multi-state payroll and nexus questions, which arrive early and are usually handled late — an expensive order to do them in. It is straightforward to get right once someone is actually looking at it, and genuinely costly to leave alone.
We are a third-generation family business. Is this a fit?
It is one of the most common shapes we see here. 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. The first ninety days are usually unglamorous: a close you can trust, a 13-week cash view, and a short list of the decisions those two things change.
Do you offer fractional CMO services in St. Louis as well?
Yes, and it is a separate discipline led by our marketing partner rather than a CFO wearing a second hat. It runs alongside a CFO engagement or entirely on its own.
How much does a fractional CFO cost in St. Louis?
We price on scope rather than on location, so St. Louis rates match our Texas rates. Most engagements land well below the fully loaded cost of a full-time CFO once salary, bonus, benefits and payroll taxes are counted.
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.
Ready to Talk?
No pitch, just a conversation about your business and where you want to take it. We will figure out together if there is a fit.
Book a Free ConsultationOr email info@localfractional.com