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.
One conversation, no obligation. Scope and price in writing before anything starts.