“You can’t afford not to hire FocusCFO. You get the benefit of experience across multiple industries, and if they’re able to help your company increase your profitability, as they have for us, they pay for themselves.”
– Mike Cosgrove, President & CEO, Professional Concepts Insurance Agency
The Backstory: From Lending Connection to Strategic CFO Partnership
Mike Cosgrove wasn’t in the market for a fractional CFO when he joined Lesli Matukaitis, an Area President with FocusCFO, for lunch over five years ago.
Mike is the president and CEO of Professional Concepts Insurance Agency, a specialty commercial insurance agency in Brighton, Michigan, that serves more than 1,000 professional firms in Michigan and Chicago. He and Lesli have a professional relationship that goes back to 2008, when Lesli was working in commercial lending and Mike found himself in need of a commercial mortgage just as banks stopped lending.
“We immediately hit it off,” Mike recalled. “She said, ‘I know most banks aren’t doing mortgages right now, but I'm going to see this through and help you get one.’ There are not a lot of people in this world who I would say I'm indebted to, but I am indebted to Lesli. If it had not been for her, we would have had to give our building back to the bank, like so many others during that time.”
In the following years, Lesli and Mike continued to build their professional relationship – one that came to be defined by a deep sense of trust. So, when Lesli moved on to FocusCFO and invited Mike to lunch, he was ready to hear what she had to say.
“She said, ‘You have to get a CFO.’ I said, ‘OK, I’ll have a CFO,’” Mike recalled with a laugh. “She could see things in my business that I couldn’t.”
Lesli introduced Mike to fractional CFO Bob Palmerton, who has now worked with Mike and the team at PCIA for more than five years.
How a Fractional CFO Helped PCIA Achieve Exceptional Profitability
“I’m big on going out and getting the resources that can help drive the company forward. Bob and Lesli are obviously among them,” Mike said. “I think where firms go wrong is not tapping into these outside resources that you have to pay for, but that ultimately will pay for themselves.”
Over the past five years, Bob has become a fully integrated member of the PCIA team, Mike said.
“Bob takes a bird’s eye view to make sure all the right levers are getting pulled at the right times,” Mike said. “One of the big things he’s helped me with is continuing to increase our percentage of profits.”
Beyond the Numbers: An Embedded CFO's Impact on Team and Culture
After Bob started, Mike made the decision to implement a pension plan for his team that Bob helped set up and manage.
“It allows me to give another benefit to the staff. For our young people, it’s the carrot to get them to stay, and it can be some significant dollars,” Mike said.
Bob also provides tremendous support when it comes to budgeting and cash flow management. “Every month, he creates different graphs and bar charts, and it’s always mesmerizing to me,” Mike said. “It’s a very nice visual, and it allows us to see areas that we can tweak and adjust and, overall, how things are working.”
Visualizing Success: Turning Financial Data into Actionable Strategies
The benefit of all this insight, perspective, and experience is that Mike can protect and grow the family business his mother started back in 1988 – one he hopes to one day pass along to his two daughters.
“You can’t afford not to hire FocusCFO,” Mike said. “You get the benefit of experience across multiple industries, and if they’re able to help your company increase your profitability – as they have for us – they pay for themselves.”
