From Harness Racing to Fractional CFO: Why Pace Matters as Much as the Finish Line
Navigating numbers didn’t start for me in a spreadsheet or a classroom. It started at the racetrack.
I grew up in a harness horse racing family. I learned quickly that winning didn’t happen by accident. It took planning, training, discipline, and a deep understanding of pace - when to press, when to wait, and when to back off. Pace figures were not on a screen. You did them in your head. Every quarter-mile split told you whether the leader went out too fast to hold on or the field was setting up a closer’s race.
The real strategy plays out between those poles.
Reading that in real time, and updating your view as the race unfolds, is the actual skill. It’s pattern recognition you build by watching hundreds of races and doing the arithmetic on instinct, fast enough to matter. No one sat me down and taught me that. I absorbed it by being there, constantly, until the numbers and patterns became second nature.
I didn’t stay in the family business. But that same way of thinking runs through everything I do now for small and growing businesses as a fractional CFO:
The odds are a starting estimate, not a destiny. Just as the morning line isn’t the result, a budget based on last year is only a baseline. You still have to test it against what’s happening this month, this week, right now.
Pace tells the story before the finish line does. A horse can look unbeatable halfway through and be exhausted in the stretch. A strong Q1 or a record month means nothing if the underlying pace - margins, cash, pipeline - isn’t sustainable.
The plan is set before the gate folds… then adjusted in real time. Trainers and drivers go in with a clear plan. But the best ones rewrite it on the fly based on how the race is actually unfolding. That’s forecasting in a sentence.
You check your position continuously, not once a year. In racing, you get a read every quarter mile. In business, that’s the difference between monthly visibility and finding out, at tax time, that it’s too late to fix what went wrong.
Growing businesses don’t just want to cross the finish line. They want to get to the winner’s circle - with enough stamina, cash, and confidence to do it again.
NAVIGATE exists to read the pace with you while the race is still on, not just review the results after the photo finish.
If you’re growing fast and want help making sure your pace actually gets you to the winner’s circle, not just the wire, let’s connect.