Ask the CFO
Join Fractional CFO Lowell Mora and experienced operators for live, practical conversations on the financial and operational decisions that actually move your business forward.
Live on Zoom | 1st & 3rd Tuesdays | Open Q&A included
Where Business Owners Get Better at Decisions
I'm Lowell Mora, a fractional CFO. Over the past 30-plus years I have worked inside privately held and family-owned businesses, advising companies ranging from $5 million to over $100 million in revenue across manufacturing, construction, and industrial services.
Ask the CFO is a live, twice-monthly conversation where owners, operators, and finance leaders work through the financial and operational decisions that actually move a business forward. Not more theory. Not more information. Better decisions.
How Each Session Works
Each session runs about an hour and follows the same simple structure, so you always know what you are walking into.
Focused topic (about 15 minutes). I open with a practical breakdown of one real issue. No slides full of jargon. Just a clear look at what matters and why.
Guest conversation. I bring in an experienced operator or advisor to talk through what is actually working, what is not, and what they have learned doing the work. These are unscripted conversations, not presentations.
Open Q&A. This is the part that makes it worth showing up live. Bring your situation. We will talk through it together.
When: 1st and 3rd Tuesdays Time: 10 AM CT / 11 AM ET Where: Live on Zoom. The link is sent after you register.
Can't make it live? Register anyway. I send replays to everyone on the list, so you can catch the conversations you miss.
This is the room you want to be in
Most business leaders I talk to are not short on information. They are short on clarity. Every session is grounded in real situations, real numbers, and the way experienced operators actually think. We talk about cash flow, margin, pricing, team structure, growth, and risk in plain language, and we talk about how to make the call. Clarity creates confidence.
This is the room for you if:
You are making decisions that carry real weight, and you want a clearer way to approach them.
You value how other operators think, not just what they did.
You would like to have rather practical perspectives in real time from experts in their field
You want access to experienced voices you can actually ask questions to, live.
Register for Upcoming Sessions:
For many business owners, the 401(k) is something they set up, hand off, and rarely think about again.
But the retirement plan landscape is changing quickly. New state mandates, tax incentives, payroll integrations, plan design options, and administrative requirements mean the plan you have today may not be working as well for your business—or your employees—as you think.
In this session of Ask the CFO, Lowell Mora will be joined by Brandi Cervella, Partner Account Manager at Human Interest, and Stan Francom, Principal Account Executive and 401(k) specialist, for a practical conversation about what business owners and finance leaders should understand about modern retirement plans.
Rather than simply talking about 401(k)s as an employee benefit, we’ll look at them from a business perspective: what they cost, where owners may be leaving money on the table, what makes a plan easier to administer, and how the right structure can support recruiting, retention, and long-term financial strategy.
The conversation will explore:
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What has changed in the 401(k) landscape and why business owners should be paying attention
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How new state retirement mandates may affect employers
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Tax credits and incentives businesses may be able to take advantage of when starting or improving a plan
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What business owners should look for when evaluating their current 401(k) provider
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How plan design can affect participation, employee value, and administrative burden
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Why payroll integration matters more than most owners realize
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Common friction points in traditional 401(k) plans—and how newer models are addressing them
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When it may make sense to start a new plan, redesign an existing one, or consider switching providers
Brandi brings a decade of experience in HR and benefits, specializing exclusively in the 401(k) landscape and working closely with fractional CFOs, financial advisors, accountants, and brokers.
Stan brings more than 12 years of retirement-plan expertise, helping businesses navigate plan design, tax incentives, state mandates, and payroll integration.
Together, they’ll help us get beyond the jargon and look at the questions business owners and CFOs should actually be asking.
This will be a practical, candid conversation for business owners, CFOs, finance leaders, and advisors who want to make sure their retirement plan is doing what they think it is—and understand what better options may now be available.
As always, Ask the CFO is interactive and conversational, with plenty of room for questions and discussion.
About Brandi Cervella
Brandi Cervella is a Partner Account Manager at Human Interest with a decade of experience in the HR and benefits sector. Specializing in the 401(k) landscape, she partners with fractional CFOs, financial advisors, accountants, and brokers to help businesses navigate their retirement-plan needs.
Her work focuses on making complex 401(k) requirements easier to understand while helping partners identify solutions that support both their clients and their businesses.
[Connect with Brandi on LinkedIn]
About Stan Francom
Stan Francom is a Principal Account Executive at Human Interest with more than 12 years of experience in the 401(k) industry.
He works with businesses to navigate retirement-plan design, state mandates, available tax incentives, and payroll integrations, helping employers build plans that fit both their operational needs and their employees.
[Connect with Stan on LinkedIn]
About Human Interest
Human Interest is a full-service 401(k) and 403(b) provider focused on making retirement benefits easier for small and medium-sized businesses to offer and administer.
Most business owners think about depreciation once a year, at tax time, when it's too late to do much about it.
There are three specific places where the right approach to tax incentives can put real cash back into a business: how you depreciate what you already own, how you're rewarded for building or retrofitting energy-efficient space, and how you're compensated for the innovation work your team is already doing.
In this session of Ask the CFO, Lowell Mora will be joined by Ben Jones of Capstan Tax Strategies to break down what he calls the "3D" approach to tax incentives: Depreciation, Design, and Development.
The conversation will explore:
- How cost segregation studies accelerate depreciation and improve cash flow for property owners
- How energy-efficient incentives like the 179D deduction and Investment Tax Credit apply to newly built or retrofitted properties
- How R&D tax credits apply to businesses doing more innovative work than they realize, not just tech companies
- Why the difference isn't the incentive itself, it's how the work is done
- Practical questions to ask before claiming any of these credits
This will be a straightforward, applied conversation for business owners, CFOs, and finance leaders who want to know what's actually available to them.
About Ben Jones
Ben Jones works with Capstan Tax Strategies, helping business owners and CPAs identify and capture tax incentives tied to cost segregation, energy efficiency, and R&D. He brings two decades of leadership experience and a practical, relationship-first approach to helping clients recoup money they've already earned but haven't yet claimed.
Connect with Ben on LinkedIn or through Capstan Tax Strategies.
Most small construction and distribution businesses didn't choose QuickBooks because it was the right long-term system. They chose it because it was what they had when the business was smaller, and nobody has stopped to ask what it's costing them since.
The result is a familiar pattern: disconnected spreadsheets, manual workarounds, and a finance team spending more time reconciling data than using it. The technology hasn't kept pace with the business, and that gap shows up in slower decisions, more errors, and a team that's managing the system instead of the other way around.
In this session of Ask the CFO, Lowell Mora will be joined by Ketan Katariya, Founder and President of Klio Systems, to talk about how growing construction and distribution businesses can move past legacy technology and run a more streamlined operation.
The conversation will explore:
- Why QuickBooks and similar legacy tools tend to break down as a business scales, and what the warning signs look like
- What an ERP system actually solves that a patchwork of spreadsheets and add-ons can't
- A practical look at Acumatica and what makes it well suited to construction and distribution businesses specifically
- How to think about the cost and disruption of switching systems against the cost of staying on outdated technology
- Questions owners should ask before starting an ERP evaluation or implementation
About Ketan Katariya
Ketan Katariya is the Founder and President of Klio Systems, Inc., a full-service technology consulting company that provides small and mid-sized businesses with end-to-end technology solutions, including managed IT, cybersecurity, software development, digital presence, and ERP consulting. Founded in 2015, Klio Systems today serves clients across manufacturing, distribution, construction, real estate, hospitality, finance and accounting, and professional services. The company also owns and operates My ERP Partner, SnapLeased, and SnapConnect.
Ketan has 30 years of technology experience. Before founding Klio Systems, he worked for a nationwide law firm in debt management solutions within the residential mortgage industry. He is a computer engineer by education and lives in Naperville, Illinois, a Chicago suburb, with his wife and young children. His focus is technology enabled solutions that help businesses run better.
Connect with Ketan: LinkedIn | Klio Systems | My ERP Partner | SnapLeased | SnapConnect
Most business owners have a CPA for the business, a lawyer for the business, maybe even a fractional CFO for the business. Far fewer have anyone coordinating their personal financial life: their taxes, their estate plan, their liquidity strategy, the decisions that determine what they actually walk away with.
That gap is exactly where Blake Peterson spends his time. As a Senior Wealth Advisor at Carson Wealth and a Certified Exit Planning Advisor, Blake works with business owners and families who have outgrown simple financial solutions and need coordinated, proactive guidance. He describes his role as a financial quarterback, pulling together a client's CPA, attorney, and lenders so every piece of advice is working toward the same outcome instead of pulling in different directions.
In this session of Ask the CFO, Lowell Mora will be joined by Blake Peterson to talk about why the business decision and the personal financial decision are never really separate, and what happens when owners wait too long to treat them that way.
The conversation will explore:
- Why building wealth inside the business isn't the same as protecting it outside the business
- What a coordinated advisory team (CPA, attorney, lender, wealth advisor) actually looks like in practice, and what falls through the cracks without one
- How personal financial decisions, taxes, estate planning, liquidity, connect directly to business transition planning
- Why waiting until a sale or transition event is already underway is often too late to make the highest-impact moves
Blake Peterson, CEPA, is a Senior Wealth Advisor at Carson Wealth, Co-Founder of the Exit Advisors Coalition, and a Certified Exit Planning Advisor. He's based in Omaha, where he also serves on the board of Breakthrough T1D and is Past Chair of Keep Nebraska Beautiful.
Connect with Blake: LinkedIn | bpeterson@carsonwealth.com | (402) 829-1798
Want to Join as a Guest?
I invite experienced operators and advisors to be part of these conversations.
Great guests are typically:
Business owners or executives
Advisors working closely with companies
People with practical experience—not just theory
Why join:
Share your perspective with an engaged audience
Be part of thoughtful, unscripted conversations
Build relationships with other operators
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