The founder should be a generalist. Knowing a little about sales, marketing, finance, operations, and people gives you a massive advantage when you're responsible for making decisions across all of them. You can hire specialists later.

I spent my first year as a fractional CFO doing work I was overqualified for. Clients were not the problem. My scope was. I had not clearly defined what I owned, what I didn't own, and where the line was. So work filled the gap. Bookkeeping tasks, data cleanup, things that had nothing to do with why they hired me. And I let it happen because I wanted the engagement to go well. So I said yes to things I should have pushed back on from the start. The problem with an unclear scope is that it compounds. One small task outside your lane becomes the expectation. The expectation becomes the norm. By month 3, you're doing the work of 2 people and getting paid for 1. That was on me. The client didn't create the problem. I did, by not being direct about the boundaries of the engagement before we started. A clear scope protects both sides. The client knows what they are getting. You know what you are delivering. Get the scope right before you start. It'll save you countless headaches down the road.

I have a hard time taking business advice seriously from someone who's never had to make payroll. It's easy to recommend aggressive investments, expensive hires, and bold expansion when someone else carries the downside.

No founder has ever looked back and said: “Understanding the P&L was a terrible use of my time.” Financial literacy has a pretty good ROI.