A glowing purple-to-teal line branches into three paths across a dark office desk, one leading to a handwritten ledger and cash, one to a blank offer letter and resumes, one to a signed engagement letter and fee schedule, illustrating the three ways to get a business's capital-side function performed.

Do It, Hire It, or Bring It In: Your Three Options

September 29, 2026•9 min read

The CFO on Your Side | Part Three of Three

You now know two things about the capital-side function, established across The Work Has a Name: The Capital Side of the CFO Function and Whose Side Is Your Capital Read From? It has to be performed, continuously and deliberately, or the business circles. And it has to be performed from your side, by judgment paid by you rather than by the capital, or it is not worth much to you no matter how skilled it is. Put those together and a plain, practical question remains, the one this whole arc has been walking toward: given all that, how do you actually get the work done?

There are three honest answers. You can do it yourself. You can hire someone to do it. Or you can bring in an outside party who does it for you. Each is legitimate, each fits some businesses and not others, and each has a real cost and a real catch. This article lays out all three plainly, because the point is not to push you toward one. It is to let you choose the one that fits your business with your eyes open, holding the two requirements you now know are non-negotiable: real capital-side skill, performed on your side.

Key Points

Once the function is named and the side is settled, an owner has three honest ways to get it performed: do it yourself, hire it, or bring it in.
Doing it yourself puts you inherently on your own side and closest to the business, at the cost of your time and against the limits of doing skilled, specialized work alone.
Hiring it, full-time or fractional, gives you dedicated capacity aligned to the business, at a cost and availability that fit larger businesses more easily than smaller ones.
Bringing it in gives you the skill without the full-time cost, but only serves you if the party is paid by you and not by the capital, which is the filter that matters most.
Every option is judged by the same two tests: is the skill real, and is it on your side.

Option One: Do It Yourself

You are more prepared for this than you were, because the whole framework was built to make the function learnable. An owner who can read the operating cycle, see the gap, match capital, and design and maintain a stack can perform the capital-side function for their own business, and doing so has two real advantages that no outside party can match. You are, by definition, on your own side, with no incentive that competes with the business's interest. And you know the business more intimately than any advisor ever will, its rhythms, its season, its customers, the texture behind the numbers.

The cost is equally real, and it is mostly time and attention. As Karen Berman and Joe Knight, with John Case, write in Financial Intelligence for Entrepreneurs, financial judgment is a learnable skill, not an innate gift, which is exactly what makes doing it yourself a real option and not just a hopeful one. But learnable does not mean free. The capital-side function is ongoing and it is skilled, and doing it yourself means doing it on top of running the business, in the hours that are already spoken for. It also means doing specialized work alone, without the pattern-recognition that comes from having read hundreds of businesses rather than one. Owners who do it themselves and do it well tend to be those who genuinely enjoy the capital side, protect real time for it rather than squeezing it in, and know the edges of their own knowledge well enough to get help at the specific moments it matters. Done that way, it works. Done in spare moments as an afterthought, it becomes exactly the reactive scramble the first article described.

Option Two: Hire It

The second option is to bring the function inside the business as a role, filled by a person. In a larger business that means a chief financial officer. In a smaller one it increasingly means a fractional CFO, an experienced person who performs the function part-time across several businesses, giving a smaller company real capital-side skill without a full-time salary.

Hiring it has a clear strength: a person inside the business, paid by the business, is aligned to it and available to it continuously, and brings the pattern-recognition an owner doing it alone lacks. The considerations are cost and fit. A full-time CFO is a significant, standing expense that a smaller business may not be able to justify for the volume of capital work it actually has. A fractional one lowers that cost and fits many mid-sized businesses well, and the remaining task is finding the right person and confirming the fit, since the quality of this hire varies widely and the function is too consequential to fill casually. For a business with enough ongoing capital complexity to keep such a person genuinely occupied, hiring it is often the cleanest answer.

Option Three: Bring It In

The third option is to engage an outside party who performs the capital-side function for you, without becoming an employee. This gives a business real, experienced capital-side skill, and the pattern-recognition that comes from reading many businesses, without the standing cost of a full-time hire, which is why it fits a great many small and mid-sized businesses that have serious capital questions but not enough of them to justify a dedicated CFO.

But this option carries the catch the entire previous article was about, and it is the one thing to get right. An outside party only serves you if it is paid by you, and not by the capital. The market is full of outside parties who present as capital advisors and are compensated by the lenders whose products they place, which, as you now know, makes them the lender's agent regardless of how they present. So the filter for this option is not primarily expertise, though expertise is required. It is compensation. An outside party paid by the owner, with no stake in which capital gets placed or whether a deal closes, can perform the function on your side. An outside party paid by the capital cannot, whatever its skill. Bringing it in works, and works well, precisely when the party you bring in is on your side by construction, which means paid by you and disinterested in the deal.

Judging each of these three options by the same two tests, real capital-side skill and genuine alignment to your side, is the Capital Intelligence Method™ turned on the decision about who performs it. A Capital Intelligence Report is the output of the function however it is staffed, but only when the function is performed on your side does that output serve you.

Three Options, One Standard

You have the three honest ways to get the capital-side function performed, and you have the single standard that judges all of them. Do it yourself and you are on your own side, at the cost of your time and the limits of working alone. Hire it and you gain dedicated, aligned capacity, at a cost that fits larger businesses more easily. Bring it in and you gain skill without the full-time cost, if and only if the party is paid by you rather than by the capital. There is no universally right answer, only the one that fits your business, your time, and the volume of capital work you actually have, chosen against the two tests that never change: real skill, on your side.

What remains is to see the whole of it together, the function, the side, and the choice, and to name plainly what it looks like to have this done by a party built specifically to be on the owner's side. That is where The CFO on Your Side, and the whole framework, closes.

A Capital Intelligence Report is what bringing it in looks like done correctly: capital-side skill, paid by you, disinterested in any deal. An advisor takes it from there. Find out who your capital advice is really serving.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the three ways to get the capital-side function performed?

Do it yourself, hire it, or bring it in. Doing it yourself means performing the function for your own business, which the framework was built to make learnable. Hiring it means bringing the role inside, full-time or as a fractional CFO. Bringing it in means engaging an outside party who performs the function for you without becoming an employee. Each is legitimate and each is judged by the same two tests: real capital-side skill, and genuine alignment to your side.

Can an owner really perform the CFO function themselves?

Yes, especially an owner who has learned the framework, and doing so carries two real advantages: you are inherently on your own side, and you know the business better than any advisor could. The cost is time and the limits of doing specialized work alone. It works for owners who genuinely engage with the capital side, protect real time for it rather than squeezing it in, and know when to get specific help. Done as an afterthought, it collapses into a reactive scramble.

What is a fractional CFO?

An experienced financial executive who performs the capital-side function part-time, across several businesses, so a smaller company gets real skill without a full-time salary. It lowers the cost of hiring the function inside and fits many mid-sized businesses well. As with any hire, the quality varies and the fit has to be confirmed, since the function is too consequential to fill casually.

Is my outside advisor working for me or for the lender?

Who pays them. An outside party only serves your side if it is paid by you and not by the capital. Many parties who present as capital advisors are compensated by the lenders whose products they place, which makes them the lender's agent regardless of how they present. Expertise is necessary but not sufficient. The filter that decides whether an outside party can perform the function on your side is compensation: paid by you, and disinterested in whether any particular deal closes.