Financial Clarity. Strategic Visibility. Confident Decisions.
Most companies don't have a finance function. They have a reporting function.
Sterling Equity Partners is not a typical consulting firm. We drive results, not recommendations. In the first 90 days, we deliver forward cash flow visibility and execute a margin improvement and EBITDA growth plan that turns finance into a profit-driving function. For private and PE-backed companies from $5M to $50M in revenue, from our base in Coral Gables, serving Miami and South Florida.
We serve lower-middle-market companies that need a real finance function: owner-operated businesses ready to professionalize, and newly acquired companies that need one fast. A lot can go wrong before, during, and after an acquisition, and just as much goes wrong without forward cash flow visibility in the everyday. We've sat on every side of it: $3.5B+ in deals advised, interim finance leadership inside PE-backed portfolio companies, and first-100-days done right. Experienced hands. Accurate financials you can trust.
What you get:
- A 13-week cash flow forecast, so you see cash crunches weeks before they hit the bank account.
- A monthly reporting package: budget vs. actual, KPIs, and a three-statement model you can actually run the business on.
- Lender- and buyer-ready financials, so when a bank or buyer asks for numbers, you already have them.
- Growth strategy: pricing, capacity, and expansion plans tested against the numbers before you commit to them.
- Cost reduction programs that find margin in procurement, freight, labor, and overhead, then track the savings into the P&L.
- Cash release programs that turn slow receivables, excess inventory, and loose payment terms into cash you can deploy.
- Working capital improvement: a clear view of the cash locked up in day sales outstanding, inventory turns, and payment terms, and the fixes that free it.
- A finance partner who has sat on the buyer's side: M&A advisory on ~$3.5B+ in transactions and private equity investing.
Why it's worth it: You get the judgment of a seasoned CFO for a fraction of the cost of a full-time hire, and you stop making big decisions off a bank balance.
Book a free cash flow callCompanies are making critical decisions without forward-looking financial visibility.
Finance functions are reactive, focused on reporting, not driving performance or cash flow. The result: cash flow volatility, margin erosion, and unrealized EBITDA upside.
82%
of small-business failures trace to poor cash flow management.
Source: U.S. Bank study
13 days
the total cash buffer held by 1 in 4 small businesses.
Source: JPMorgan Chase Institute
1.5x
the average EBITDA multiple advantage of sellers represented by a transaction advisor, across 4,316 deals.
Source: Northern Trust analysis
Two Ways to Engage.
Built for owner-operators professionalizing the finance function, and for buyers and sellers in the middle of a deal.
Office of the CFO
13-week cash flow, three-statement budgets, FP&A, and board-ready reporting. Your finance function, installed. No deal required.
Explore Office of the CFOTransaction Advisory
Quality of Earnings, valuation, LBO modeling, and deal support, before, during, and after the acquisition.
Explore Transaction AdvisoryBrokers, Lenders and CPAs: referral-partner services that help your deals close.
Partner With UsBased in South Florida? Fractional CFO in Miami & Coral Gables
The real cost of poor financial visibility.
Even well-run companies encounter these scenarios without forward financial visibility. The difference is whether you see them early or react late.
Overhiring Without Cash Visibility
$80K+ emergency cash shortfall
Situation. You hire 3 new techs in March because revenue is up. But you didn't model payroll, equipment, training hitting before the new revenue collects.
Result. You're short $80K in May. Emergency line draw at 12%.
The Project Cash Gap
$150K out-of-pocket float for 6 weeks
Situation. You take on a $2M project but your draw schedule doesn't cover sub payments in weeks 4 to 8.
Result. You're floating $150K out of pocket. One delayed payment from the GC and you're scrambling.
The Bank Surprise
$37K/yr in extra interest
Situation. Your bank asks for covenant compliance. You don't have it. Your controller scrambles for 3 weeks.
Result. The bank gets nervous, and your rate goes up 75bps on a $5M line.
What your operators see weekly. What your board sees monthly.
Two cadences, one financial system.
Weekly Cash Position
CASH BALANCE
$1.72M
+$78K vs. last week
AR DAYS OUTSTANDING
42 days
-3 days vs. prior month
13-WEEK CASH FLOW FORECAST
Monthly Operating Review
REVENUE
$2.4M
+9.1% vs. budget
GROSS MARGIN
38.2%
-1.8pp vs. budget
P and L SUMMARY, JUL 2026
Where Every Dollar Goes
Two entities, one cash picture: intercompany flows eliminated, every dollar mapped from collection to deployment.
Sample 13-week cash map, illustrative data. Delivered as part of the Cash Flow and Full Financial Packages.
Key Insights
- ·Gross margin is 1.8 points below budget despite revenue outperforming. The variance traces to COGS running 7.1% over budget, isolated to two service lines with input cost exposure (concrete labor and equipment rental).
- ·EBITDA upside from revenue is being absorbed by OpEx running 5.5% over plan. Earnings cushion is $6K on $2.4M of revenue. Any revenue softness flips the month negative.
- ·The 13-week model projects a liquidity trough in weeks 7-9, bottoming near $1.28M. Trigger event is a $340K AP concentration in week 7 against decelerating AR collections.
Management Actions
What needs to happen this week.
- ·Approve the AR pull-forward plan: offer 1.5% / Net 10 to top 8 customers (~$420K AR exposure) to bridge the week 7 AP concentration.
- ·Pause the two open hires in operations until the August margin rebuild is verified. Revisit at the September board review.
- ·Authorize the revolver draw trigger at $1.0M cash floor. Draw paperwork pre-staged with the bank, ready for same-day execution.
- ·Hold the discretionary marketing spend ($45K committed for Q4) until November margin trend is confirmed.
Why Sterling Equity Partners
M&A-grade financial modeling. Acquisition feasibility, add-on modeling, and integration cost analysis, built by someone who's done $3.5B+ in transaction advisory.
Institutional rigor, fractional cost. Big 4 and top consulting firm expertise without the overhead, the ramp-up time, or the junior staff.
Growth infrastructure. Every expansion decision, new location, add-on acquisition, new hire, modeled and stress-tested before capital is committed.
Institutional-grade financial infrastructure.
Big-firm expertise. Operator-level execution.
Federico brings institutional-grade M&A, restructuring, and CFO experience, from firms advising on $3.5B+ in aggregate transaction value.
Experience
Impact Point Co.
Senior Associate, Office of the CFO and Corporate Restructuring
- ·Interim VP of Finance for PE-backed companies ($50M to $500M), stabilized liquidity and drove cash visibility.
- ·Built 13-week cash flow models and 3-statement budgets used by lenders and management to drive decisions.
Ark
Private Equity Investor
- ·Originated ~$2.5B pipeline and built institutional-grade underwriting models.
- ·Scaled portfolio from 3.5K to 5K units through acquisitions and asset optimization.
Berkeley Research Group
M&A
- ·Executed diligence on 20+ transactions totaling over ~$3.5B across PE and strategic buyers.
- ·Identified key risks and value drivers impacting pricing and investment decisions.
Changebridge Growth Partners
Search Fund Advisor
- ·Built LBO models and screened acquisition targets for ETA strategy.
- ·Assessed revenue quality, working capital, and concentration risks.
Education
- Georgetown University, M.S. Finance, Merit Scholar.
- Bentley University, B.S. Finance, Capital Markets; Minor in CS, Cum Laude.
- Fluent in English and Spanish.
Institutional-Grade Financial Infrastructure
Granular visibility. See where cash is going and where margin is leaking, at the line-item level.
Smarter growth decisions. Acquisitions, new locations, new hires, every decision modeled before it's made.
Controlled expansion. Growth without the cash crunches. Know your runway before you commit capital.
Lender and investor confidence. Institutional-quality financials, not a QuickBooks printout.
Founder & Managing Partner
Federico advised on M&A transactions at Berkeley Research Group, invested in lower-middle-market companies at Ark, and served as interim VP of Finance for PE-backed companies at Impact Point. He holds an M.S. in Finance from Georgetown University.
More about FedericoWhat operators ask before engaging.
Direct answers to the questions that matter before the call.
How do you bill?
Fixed monthly retainers, scoped to the engagement. We do not bill hourly. Hourly billing punishes efficiency and turns financial advisory into a cost line item to be minimized. Pricing reflects the work and the outcomes, not the clock.
My books are not current or fully organized. Can you still help?
Yes. Many engagements start here, and how this gets handled is one of the things that separates Sterling Equity Partners from typical fractional CFO services. Most firms will either turn you away until your books are clean, or quietly absorb the cleanup into a bloated monthly retainer. We do neither. In Week 1, we assess the state of your books directly. If catch-up work is needed, we either scope a short Financial Foundation engagement (typically 4 to 6 weeks, priced separately and transparently) to bring the financials to the standard CFO work requires, or we coordinate with a qualified bookkeeping partner to handle it in parallel while we begin the strategic work. You do not need to solve this on your own before reaching out, and you do not pay for cleanup hidden inside an advisory fee.
How do engagements typically begin?
One 30 minute call. We review your situation, I show you exactly what we would build, what it costs, and what the first 6 weeks look like. By the end of the call, you have a clear answer on whether to engage and what package fits. Most operators decide on the call. If we move forward, the Cash Flow Package delivers a live 13-week model by Week 3. The Full Financial Package delivers a complete FP&A suite by Week 5 to 6.
Will I work directly with you, or with an analyst?
Directly with Federico Nannini. There are no analyst handoffs and no junior staff buffer. The work is delivered by the same person who scoped the engagement and signed the agreement.
How many clients do you serve at once?
Capacity is intentionally limited. Sterling Equity Partners maintains a small active client roster to ensure each engagement receives senior-level attention without dilution. When capacity is full, we maintain a waitlist.
Who do we work with on your team day to day?
Typically your bookkeeper, who we treat as a working partner. Their context on transactions, classifications, and historical decisions is essential to the work, and the strongest engagements treat the bookkeeper as embedded in the process, not bypassed. If you do not have a bookkeeper, we work directly with your controller, finance lead, or the operator. We require read-only access to your accounting system (QuickBooks, NetSuite, Xero, Sage Intacct), bank accounts (via Plaid or direct download), and AR/AP detail. We do not require write access.
What is the minimum engagement length, and why not just hire a CFO?
Three months minimum on the Cash Flow Package, six months on the Full Financial Package. After the minimum, engagements are month-to-month. We do not lock clients into annual contracts. If the work is not delivering value, you should be free to leave. The deeper question is what you actually get for the cost. A full-time CFO hire is one person's experience, instincts, and bandwidth, scoped to your business and limited by it. Sterling Equity Partners brings a productized methodology built on $3.5B+ of M&A advisory, dozens of 13-week cash flow models built across industries, and pattern recognition that cannot be replicated by a single in-house hire. The implementation roadmap is defined, the deliverables are quantified, and the insights have been pressure-tested against businesses operating at far greater complexity than most middle-market companies face. The result is a level of financial visibility and decision support that a typical CFO hire would take 12 to 18 months to build internally, delivered for about one-fifth of the Year 1 cost.
Do you serve Spanish-speaking businesses and family offices?
Yes. Federico is bilingual in English and Spanish. Engagements with Latin American operators, family offices, and bilingual leadership teams are conducted in either language as needed. Reporting deliverables can be produced in English, Spanish, or both.
Start with a conversation, not a contract.
Federico Nannini, Managing Partner
Federico@Sterling-Equity-Partners.com
Coral Gables, Florida
Serving Miami, Coral Gables, Doral, Brickell, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, and companies across Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties. Monday to Friday, 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM ET.