In this episode of The New F*Word, host Colin Hewitt is joined by Siân Grinter, Founder and Fractional Finance Director of Superstar FD, to dive into how she transformed personal adversity into entrepreneurial growth, built a thriving niche in professional services, and learned to set healthy boundaries while scaling sustainably.

What You’ll Learn:

* How Siân turned personal challenges into motivation for change

* What separates a great fractional CFO from an accounting practice

* Building a business model that aligns with your strengths

* How to transition from doing all the work yourself to building a team

Siân Grinter is the Founder and Fractional Finance Director of Superstar FD, a fractional finance department specializing in professional services firms. With over 25 years of experience progressing from accounts assistant to finance director across law firms and financial services organizations, Siân has built a unique expertise in translating corporate finance leadership into scalable, fractional advisory.

In this episode of The New F*Word, host Colin Hewitt is joined by Mairianne Stewart, Fractional CFO at Plug-In Finance, to discuss her leap from big business to entrepreneurship, what she’s learned helping founders manage cash and growth, and why startups should never wait until it’s too late to bring in a fractional CFO.

What You’ll Learn:

* Why cash blindness is killing your startup faster than a bad product

* How to avoid the two-to-three-month onboarding tax when bringing in fractional finance support

* The hidden skill that fractional CFOs actually need that has nothing to do with accounting

* How to structure a fractional CFO practice so you’re not the bottleneck

* Why the corporate world and startup world are polar opposites

Mairianne Stewart is a fractional CFO with over 20 years of experience in FTSE-100 companies and four years providing strategic CFO services to ambitious SMEs. She helps growing businesses navigate complex financial, operational, and regulatory challenges without the need for a full-time CFO. From cash flow management to governance and scalable operations, Mairianne works with founders to professionalise their businesses and prepare them for the next stage of growth.

In this episode of The New F*Word, host Colin Hewitt is joined by Kevin Jacobs, Fractional CFO at BDO USA, to discuss the unglamorous but critical reality of cash flow management, scaling from $30M to $100M in revenue, and why contractors and manufacturers are leaving money on the table by obsessing over profit instead of cash.

What You’ll Learn:

* Why profit is a vanity metric and cash is your actual business lifeline

* How to implement a 13-week cash flow forecast

* Why diversification of customers and revenue streams prevents the cash flow death spiral

* How to educate field staff and back-office teams to speak the same financial language

* The fractional CFO future

Kevin Jacobs is a Fractional CFO at BDO USA, bringing over 20 years of industry experience spanning construction and manufacturing. With a background that includes scaling a $30M company to over $100M in six years through strategic financial planning, ERP implementation, and working capital management, Kevin specializes in helping contractors and manufacturers gain financial clarity and sustainable growth.