Decades of Financial Strategy, Still in the Game and Giving Back | Ted Stone, Ep 36
Episode Summary
Ted Stone, a 72-year-old fractional CFO, discusses his decades-long career in financial leadership, including multiple private equity-backed M&A transactions, integration strategies, and current work helping companies navigate recapitalizations and ESOP transitions. He shares lessons from rolling up businesses, managing post-acquisition culture clashes, and why he continues working seven years past traditional retirement age.
Pull Quotes
“I'm 72 years old. I should have retired seven years ago by quote normal standards. I love what I do. And you heard me talk about my past my sell by date. Yeah, I'm probably never going to have another full-time CFO job because who hires a guy on Medicare to do that? But for what I'm doing as a fractional CFO for companies that need the experience but aren't ready to pay for it five days a week, I get all the satisfaction I got as a full-time CFO and I get it five times over.”
On the Velocity Express acquisition integration
“The integration was a very successful failure. The finance piece of it all came together, standardized processes across 106 locations all around the country. People voluntarily complying with this, embracing, we're all going to do this the same way. We didn't do that on our sales and operations side. It was much more my way or the highway. We drove a substantial fraction of revenue out of the company.”
On founder transitions in M&A deals
“It's one thing to have the hypothetical conversation when it gets really concrete, right? You're going to take your 15 million bucks for selling the business to us, but you're not going to be in charge anymore. You're going to be part of the team, right? If you want to be or not.”
On the cultural benefits of ESOP structures
“One of the problems of a lot of founder-driven businesses is you're asking people to work their buns off to make that guy rich. Wouldn't it be cooler if I were working my buns off to make that guy rich and me a little bit rich?”
On the Executive Forum membership criteria
“The only people who are in it are C-level executives who have been C-level executives for at least 10 years. Our definition of a C-level executive is you're setting policy and then leading large groups of people to execute it. The second thing we look for is this pay it forward DNA. You bump into somebody who has a need, you just want to help them.”
Transcript
Hi, welcome to Tales from the Sky Lounge. It's a podcast about business, consulting, and venture investing. We get out there in the world, we talk to people who are making it happen, and we get their stories. You can like and subscribe. James would be very happy. And he asked me to mention our speedrun sister playlist where we go through current breaking AI topics and we give you very practical examples of how to become personally productive in AI.
So today's guest in the Sky Lounge, Ted Stone. Hey Ted, how are you?
If I were any better, Todd, I would have to be you.
That's awesome. Yeah. Well, thank you Ted. It's great having you here. So, first question, who are you and what are you working on?
I am a career CFO who's found a way to keep doing it long past my sell by date. Working on four, five really interesting clients, cover an incredible breadth of industries right now.
Want to go deeper?
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