Episode Ep 200 October 21, 2026 26 min 24s

The CFO Behind Multi-7-Figure Growth: Why Founders Must Learn to Think Like Finance CEOs

From Dawn of a New Era the Podcast Dawn McGruer

Ep 200: The CFO Behind Multi-7-Figure Growth: Why Founders Must Learn to Think Like Finance CEOs

What if growing your revenue is actually making your business poorer?

In this episode of Dawn of a New Era: The Billionaire Brain Podcast, Dawn McGruer is joined by Pam Jordan, founder and CEO of Pivot Business Group, a multi-seven-figure financial strategy firm helping entrepreneurs understand their numbers, improve profitability and scale with greater financial clarity.

Pam’s journey into finance began after the multi-million-dollar company she worked for went bankrupt. The business was growing, had 99 employees and appeared successful from the outside, but the numbers told a very different story.

That experience led Pam to become a fractional CFO and ultimately build Pivot Business Group, where her team now supports growing businesses across bookkeeping, tax strategy, tax filing and financial strategy.

Dawn and Pam explore one of the biggest mistakes founders make when scaling. Focusing on revenue while ignoring profit.

Pam explains why more sales can actually make a business run out of money faster, how underpricing can quietly destroy profitability and why founders need to understand the true cost of delivering their products or services before chasing further growth.

They also discuss the financial numbers every CEO should understand, why your bank balance does not tell you how healthy your business really is, and when it becomes time to bring a fractional CFO into your leadership team.

In this episode, you’ll discover:

• Why increasing sales can actually make an unprofitable business lose money faster

• The importance of understanding your true cost of delivery before setting your prices

• Why gross profit margin is one of the biggest warning signs to watch during growth

• How rapidly increasing overheads can turn exciting growth into dangerous growth

• Why a £10 million business can be less financially successful than a £2 million business

• The key financial numbers every founder should know without asking their accountant

• Why looking at your bank balance alone can give you a completely false sense of security

• How forecasting helps founders stop managing their business through the rear-view mirror

• When a growing company should consider hiring a fractional CFO

• Why founders approaching the £1 million revenue mark need a different level of financial strategy

• The three financial roles Pam believes growing founders need around them

• How childhood experiences and money trauma can create a ceiling on business growth

• Why the team that gets you to one stage of your business may not be the team that takes you to the next

Pam shares the distinction between traditional accounting and CFO-level financial thinking.

While bookkeeping and accounting often focus on what has already happened, a CFO looks forward.

That means understanding forecasts, budgets, cash requirements, profitability, potential investment, lines of credit and the financial decisions required to take the business from where it is today to where the founder wants it to go.

Pam believes that around the $1 million revenue mark, this forward-looking financial strategy becomes increasingly important.

At that level, founders are no longer simply managing money coming in and going out. They are making bigger decisions about people, infrastructure, investment, tax, funding and the future value of the company.

The conversation also goes deeper into the psychology behind money.

Pam explains how beliefs formed in childhood around scarcity, financial instability or the idea that wanting money is somehow wrong can continue to influence founders decades later.

Without recognising those beliefs, ambitious entrepreneurs can unintentionally create their own financial ceiling.

Pam also shares one of the hardest lessons from scaling her own business.

The people who get you here may not be the people who get you there.

After remaining stuck at a particular revenue level, Pam made significant changes to her team. The result was a business that doubled year over year.

Her lesson is not that the original team members were wrong or unsuccessful. They may have been exactly the right people for one season of the business, but scaling sometimes requires founders to recognise when the next stage needs different skills, leadership and experience.

Ultimately, the conversation comes back to a simple financial principle that also forms the basis of Pam’s upcoming book:

It’s not what you make. It’s what you keep that matters.

Because impressive revenue means very little if the business is not creating profit, cash and ultimately wealth for the person who built it.

Connect with Pam Jordan

Website: https://pamjordan.com/

You can also find Pam on social media by searching Pam Jordan CFO.

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