You built something good. Then it quietly stalled – and you can't quite see why.
Stoneforge Consulting Group: Fractional Revenue Leader (Fractional CRO) and Fractional Financial Leader (Fractional CFO) for owner-led businesses, $1–20M. Sarasota, Florida – national, remote-first.
Growth has flattened, every real decision still runs through you, and pushing harder isn't moving it. The cause is rarely the thing you'd name first.
Where does it feel stuck?
We treat the cause, not the symptom.
Most advice takes the problem you name at face value and starts fixing it. The real cause usually sits a layer underneath – and until you find that, every fix lands on the symptom and the business holds exactly where it was.
The aim you name first is almost always a symptom.
Whichever seat it is, the method is the same.
We find the cause, fix what's broken, and reinforce what works – carried by a standing rhythm, in one seat or both.
Fractional Revenue Leader (Fractional CRO)
Fractional Financial Leader (Fractional CFO)
One business booked a full year's revenue in five months, two more grew twenty-five percent, and the owners have put their names to it.
Outcomes from engagements we've run, and owners who put their names to them.
A well-established marketing firm, around $4M revenue, came to us certain it was losing to competitors. Sixteen of its top twenty losses were really clients deciding to do nothing – so we requalified the , cut the dead deals, and put the energy where it could win. In five months, the business booked a full year's revenue. James tells the whole story.
Pipeline. Every live opportunity the business is working on, with where each one has actually reached. Full entry →- WindowWorks was stuck in neutral. Craig Hauser puts this year's growth at 25%.
- A realty-related services firm lifted revenue and profit by 25% and has sustained it – through sharper owner focus, clearer communication, and better execution.
A professional services firm had been leaning on its owner for cash injections just to keep cash flowing. Within four months it was profitable, cash-flow positive, and sustaining itself.
"Kristina has been supporting FotoFetch as CFO for the past 4 years and has been critical to our daily operations and management. I highly recommend Stoneforge for any businesses financial and business management needs."
"Kristina and James have helped me to institute protocols allowing me to see where my time is being wasted […] If this is what they have accomplished in just two months, I am excited to see where I am in one year!"
"This is my first Business Coach and I am very happy we met. Kristina and James have been very helpful in direction of our business and understanding our financials. […] Highly recommend! Thank you Stoneforge"
You'll get yours, not this one – built around how your buyers actually decide. We fix what's broken, and we don't replace what works.
The questions owners actually ask, answered.
A new one every week – the full answers go deep, the rest are a couple of minutes, and every one leaves you something to do on Monday morning.
Why has my business plateaued when I'm working harder than ever?
The full diagnosis: what a plateau really is, the root cause underneath it, a real business that booked a full year's revenue in five months, and four things to do on Monday morning.
Where am I in this deal, really?
The five stages every real deal moves through, in order – and why putting a price forward before you've earned it means you're selling blind.
Why do good clients leave when the work is good?
Watch · 2 min
Will hiring someone fix the overwhelm?
Watch · 3 min
Why can't I make the change I keep promising myself?
Watch · 3 min
Where the short answers run out.
Longer pieces on winning work, on the numbers, and on what actually moves a business that has flattened out.
Six minutes slower
Elite goalkeepers dive on nine penalties in ten, and save more of the ones where they stand still. Why the pull to act hardest under stress is the same pull that buys a truck in a month whose numbers cannot yet say whether the work is real, and what a stage gate does about it.
Read It →
The art of losing a finger
The worry came to the workshop, the wood twisted, and the joint is fused now. Why an owner ends up running the employee’s job and the owner’s job at once, and how the two labor efficiency ratios read the difference between working harder and working efficiently.
Read It →
Thinking big and small
A $34 undershirt becomes ten shirts at $22 apiece, because every increment costs the seller almost nothing more. Why small work carries the best margin you will book all year, and how chunking a stalled proposal changes the shape of the decision without shrinking the deal.
Read It →Twenty-five years on the revenue. More than twenty on the numbers.
I'm James Walls – a quarter of a century leading revenue inside large, complex businesses, and more than one business of my own built, run and grown since. Estmere is the one I'd point to: built, acquired, scaled, and exited at the end of 2023. I've sat exactly where you're sitting, with the same weight on the same shoulders.
Kristina Walls has spent more than twenty years in strategic financial leadership – founding and running her own financial consulting firm, and holding finance leadership roles inside large technology businesses before that. What owners notice first isn't the résumé. It's the translation: complexity in, clarity out, every single time.
The first conversation is free, and its purpose is not to sell you Stoneforge. It's to help – or to point you to someone who can.
See where you sit, before anyone talks to anyone.
Two free scorecards, a couple of minutes each – one on the selling, one on the numbers. No email asked for, and nothing you answer is saved.
The owner-led sales scorecard
The financial scorecard
Not sure which – the selling or the numbers?
Six statements, 30 seconds – it points you to the right one. No email asked for, nothing you answer is saved.
Or read the whole business at once.
The Anatomy of a Well-Run Business – eleven areas, the specifics under each, and where to focus computed from your own answers. Nothing you answer is saved or sent.
If something in here landed, the next step is a conversation.
Tell us where it feels stuck and we'll tell you plainly whether this is the right fit – and if it isn't, we'll point you to someone who is.
We're based in Sarasota. If you're on the Gulf Coast, there are local pages on a fractional CRO in Sarasota, a fractional CFO in Sarasota, and business growth here.