Some problems in a business are shaped like a job. Most of the expensive ones are shaped like a project — and businesses keep solving project-shaped problems with job-shaped answers.
A joint venture to structure. A capital raise to prepare for. An acquisition to underwrite before the money moves. A shareholder split. One big decision — a site, a lease, a second brand — that deserves better analysis than a gut feel and a spreadsheet built at midnight.
None of those needs a person on the payroll. Each needs a senior finance director for somewhere between a fortnight and a quarter — someone who has priced deals, built models that survive scrutiny, and sat in negotiations before. Hiring that person permanently costs a serious six-figure salary plus the eight weeks it takes to find them. By then, the moment that needed them has usually passed.
Borrowing is the honest shape of the need.
A day rate, a defined project, a written scope before anything starts. The work gets senior attention while it matters, and then it stops costing you money — which a salary never does.
Independence is the quiet advantage.
Most advice around a transaction comes from someone paid on the outcome: the broker wants the deal done, the lender wants the loan drawn, the agent wants the lease signed. A day rate has no commission riding on the answer. If the acquisition is a bad one, saying so is the deliverable — and walking away from a bad deal is the cheapest work I will ever do for you.
And you get the person, not the letterhead.
The one who takes the call does the work: builds the model, writes the paper, sits in the room. My background is a decade inside funds-management and private-equity teams — pricing, structuring and negotiating transactions with the firm’s own money at stake. That is the standard your counterparty’s analysis will be built to. Yours should be too.
If it involves a number, a deal, or a decision that matters — it is worth one conversation before you commit. That conversation costs nothing, and there is no pitch attached to the answer.