Corbin Cook
Fractional CFO and AI implementation strategist. I sit on leadership teams as the financial voice in the room — pricing, capital, capacity, and the decisions that follow from them — and I build the systems that put current numbers in front of those decisions.
What a fractional CFO actually does
The title gets used loosely, so it's worth being precise. A fractional CFO is not a bookkeeper, a controller, or an outsourced accounting department. Those roles record what happened. This one is part of leadership.
What I own: the financial view of strategy. What a decision costs, what it returns, whether the business can carry it, and what has to be true for it to work. Pricing structure, margin by service line and client, cash and capital planning, hiring and capacity, and the operating cadence that keeps a leadership team looking at the same numbers.
What I don't own: the close, the ledger, the audit, or the tax return. Those belong to the accounting team and the CPA, and the work is better when that line is clear.
Fractional means the time commitment scales with the company. It does not mean advisory-at-arm's-length. I'm in the leadership meetings, in the forecast, and on the hook for the recommendation.
Where I hold the financial seat today
Four companies, four different stages, four different questions. The seat is the same one in each.
Beltline Health
A dual-service specialty practice — bariatric and surgical weight loss alongside vein and vascular care — operating across Atlanta and Newnan, plus The Vein Center at Beltline Health.
My work here is margin and stabilization: understanding profitability by service line and location, building the financial review the leadership team runs on, and setting the sequence for what gets addressed in what order.
Pat Murphy Electric
An established electrical contractor where the financial questions are the ones every growing trades business faces: job-level profitability, crew capacity, pricing discipline, and cash timing against work in progress.
This engagement is also where the financial seat and the systems work meet directly — the field-sales platform their technicians use was built to feed the same picture leadership makes decisions from.
Spot2Bee
An early-stage hospitality technology platform serving venues, workers, and patrons, with a behavioral data layer underneath it. A different financial job entirely from an operating company.
Here the work is unit economics that survive scrutiny, revenue model structure across multiple streams, runway and burn discipline, and financial materials that hold up in front of investors rather than flattering the deck.
The Employment Law Solution
A focused advisory relationship rather than a standing seat — periodic financial guidance on the questions a professional services firm has to get right: pricing, utilization, and what growth actually costs.
Not every company needs a CFO in every leadership meeting. Some need the right judgment at the right decision points, and it's worth saying so plainly.
Most CFOs report on the business. I build the layer the business runs on.
Traditional financial leadership is bounded by how fast information can be assembled. If the numbers take three weeks to produce, leadership makes decisions on three-week-old information — no matter how good the CFO is.
That constraint is gone, and most firms haven't adjusted. I build the financial and operational decision layer directly: connected data, current numbers, and interpretation that says what changed, what likely caused it, and what decision it puts on the table. Then I lead from it.
The judgment stays human. That's the part worth paying for. What changes is how fast it can be applied, and how much of the month gets spent producing information instead of acting on it.
- Financial modeling and forecasting built to be maintained, not rebuilt each quarter
- Margin and unit economics by service line, location, client, or job
- Cash flow architecture and capital planning
- Connected reporting layers built on the company's own systems
- Investor-facing financials and diligence preparation
- Leadership cadence — the meeting, the numbers, and the decisions in one place
How the two halves came together
I founded SMB Strategy Consultants in 2017 after years advising business owners and individuals as a financial advisor. The firm started with cash flow forecasting, bookkeeping, and fractional CFO support, because owners needed a clear view of what was happening and what was coming before pressure turned into chaos.
The work widened as the pattern became obvious. Financial problems were rarely only financial — they connected to operations, team capacity, marketing alignment, systems, and unclear priorities. So the questions widened too: what does this cost, what does it return, and what would actually have to change to get there.
Answering that last question honestly meant being able to build, not just recommend. That's how the AI implementation side of the firm came to exist, and it's why the two halves aren't separate practices. Financial judgment decides what's worth building. Build capability makes the judgment actionable. Sitting in the CFO seat is where I see whether it actually worked.
I'm a member of the American Association of Small Business Consultants (AASBC) and a Certified Exit Planning Advisor (CEPA). I work with companies across the Atlanta area and nationwide.
For boards, investors, and leadership teams.
If you're evaluating me for a financial leadership seat, doing diligence on a company I work with, or weighing whether a fractional CFO is the right call, the fastest path is a direct conversation.
Looking for the firm's AI implementation work instead? See what SMB Strategy Consultants builds →