Back in 2019, my Fractional CFO firm had me on a leash.

It wasn’t a long one.

I was buried under 60-hour workweeks, barely scraping by financially, and constantly teetering on the edge of burnout. I was resentful. Drained. Disillusioned. And dangerously close to walking away from it all.

The hardest part about that season was the realization that my firm wasn’t broken.

It was doing exactly what I had designed it to do.

The problem was that I hadn’t designed it very well.

The Mistake That Nearly Took Me Out

Like a lot of founders, I built my Fractional CFO firm with ambition and grit - but without a clear vision of how it should support my personal life.

I never stopped to ask common sense questions like:

• What’s non-negotiable for me?
• What kind of life do I actually want?
• What will success look like outside of revenue and growth?

(I guess common sense isn't always common practice.)

Because I skipped that step, my business grew in all the wrong directions.

It consumed everything and gave very little back.

Eventually, I had to hit reset.

This time, I started with personal clarity and, what do you know, everything changed.

Today, I run two businesses that align with the life I want to live. They fuel me instead of draining me. But that didn’t happen by accident. It came from getting radically clear about four specific areas first: Family, Income, Lifestyle, and Community.

Here’s what that looked like and how you can apply the same principles.

1. Family Goals: Schedule Your Priorities, Don’t Prioritize Your Schedule

How many times have you said “Family comes first!”
…only to sacrifice them for work?

• Missed bedtime three nights in a row?
• Skipped your kid’s game for a last-minute client call?
• Realized it’s been over a year since you saw your parents?

No shade. I've done those more times than I'd like to admit.

We tell ourselves it’s just this one time. That we’re doing it for our family. But let’s be honest: if family isn’t showing up on your calendar first, it’s not really first.

When I rebooted my firm, I started by blocking family time on my calendar before anything else. School events, dinner at home, vacations. All of the things.

Business had to fit around those blocks, not the other way around.

2. Income Goals: What You Keep Is What Counts

As Fractional CFOs, we love talking about revenue, margins, and growth targets.

But we tend to ignore the one number that matters most: how much we’re actually taking home.

I used to brag about revenue while quietly sweating bullets over my personal bank balance. “I’m reinvesting in the business,” I’d say. Which was partly true, but mostly a cover for not being disciplined about paying myself first.

If you want peace at home and clarity in your decisions, start with your personal income target. Define what you need to bring home to cover your life not just to survive, but to actually feel secure.

Then reverse engineer the rest: your pricing, your client capacity, your reinvestment plan. Everything starts with the number that hits your personal bank account.

This is probably the approach you take with your clients. Take a little sip of that for yourself.

Pro tip: Bring your spouse or partner into this conversation. Get on the same page about what enough looks like. Future you will be grateful. 

3. Lifestyle Goals: Build the Business That Buys You Freedom

Most of us didn’t start our firms to be chained to a desk. We wanted freedom.

Maybe that looks like:

• Working four-day weeks
• Hitting the gym every morning
• Traveling with your family more
• Spending summers working remotely from somewhere epic

But those things don’t just happen by default.
You have to architect your business to allow for them.

Let’s say you want Fridays off. Great. But that means you need to be ruthlessly efficient Monday through Thursday. Can you fit client calls, deep work, and team meetings into those days and still deliver? If not, maybe it’s time to raise your rates or rethink your client load.

Want to travel more? Cool. But that requires systems that run without you, a team that’s empowered, and clients who respect your boundaries.

Bottom line: lifestyle goals are only possible when your business model supports them.

You can either design your firm with intention or settle for compromise.

4. Community Goals: Give Back Without Burning Out

This one’s easy to overlook especially when you’re in hustle mode.

If you’re wired like me, giving back matters. Whether it’s volunteering, mentoring, or donating to causes you believe in, community involvement feeds your soul.

But guess what? If you don’t carve out space for it intentionally, your business will eat that space alive.

I once had a client who committed to donating $10,000/month to his church. That wasn’t a “nice to have”. It was baked into every cash flow decision. He made it clear: if the business couldn’t support that level of generosity, it wasn’t the right business for him.

That kind of clarity is powerful. It gives your business a compass.

So what fills your heart? What cause, group, or community do you want to serve — and what would it take for your business to make room for that?

Bringing It All Together

If your firm is wearing you out, it’s time to flip the script.

Stop letting it dictate the terms of your life. Start defining what you want and design your firm to meet that.

Here’s how to begin:

• Write down clear goals in these four areas: Family, Income, Lifestyle, Community.
• Be specific. Dates. Dollar amounts. Hours. Frequencies.
• Audit your firm's current model. Does it support those goals or sabotage them?
• Adjust accordingly. Pricing, client load, team structure, systems - all the things.

One of my favorite quotes comes from Alan Cohen:
“When your intention is clear, so is the way.” 

The clearer you get, the easier it becomes to align your firm with the life you actually want.

You don’t have to burn out.
You definitely don’t have to settle.
And you absolutely don’t have to sacrifice everything just to grow your firm.

Isn't that why you started all this in the first place?