josh whiteabout
Hey, I'm Josh.
Fractional COO: I run growth, operations and finance for $1-10M CPG and wellness brands. Mostly early-stage DTC, health, wellness and supplement brands. I live in St. George, Utah, and most of what I do is help founders see exactly what the money does, with numbers that tie back to the books.
how I got here
I've spent more than a decade on the growth side of consumer brands, working with founders who were scaling fast (a few of them past $50M). Before going fractional I was at Heart & Soil. I'm also the co-founder and COO of VARO, a meat stick company, so I'm living the founder side of this stuff too.
Somewhere along the way I figured out that most of the decisions that make or break a brand are finance decisions that look like marketing ones. How much to spend, what a new customer is actually worth, when the cash comes back. In my book marketing and finance are the same conversation, and that's where I spend my time now.
what I actually do
- Build a driver-based model by channel, with nCAC and payback on every channel, tied to your books with a small, explained variance line
- Forecast cash on when it actually moves, inventory buys and retailer terms included
- Run a weekly growth review so marketing, finance and ops get looked at as one system
- Find the workflows eating your team's time and deploy AI automation to fix them
- Hold agencies and media buyers to numbers that match the P&L
That's spread across three tiers (Advisor, Operator and Integrator), plus the Raise-Readiness Sprint for founders getting ready to raise.
the two numbers I always ask about
nCAC is new-customer marketing spend divided by new customers, with the new customer count from your store data instead of the ad platform. Payback is nCAC divided by the monthly contribution margin a customer brings in, which tells you how many months it takes to earn them back. If those two are right, a lot of other decisions get easier. If they're off, the forecast is already wrong. If you want to check yours, the payback calculator is free.
in their words
What founders say
"Josh brought his years of e-commerce experience into our business and helped us scale from $100k to $500k/mo in 9 months."
"He helped us get from a few hundred thousand dollars a month in revenue to nearly one million and provided amazing guidance and expertise, plus the strategic insight that we needed."
"I've worked alongside Josh for four years across four CPG brands, including one where we helped scale revenue from $15M to $65M+ and another currently growing 30-40% MoM."
the Fractionals Network
I also run the Fractionals Network, a vetted group of independent operators, marketers, creatives and agencies who specialize in early-stage CPG and DTC brands. When you work with me you get access to that bench, so when you need a specific person, I usually already know them.
where to find me
I write about this stuff most weeks in articles and the weekly note, and I'm pretty active on X at @cpgjosh. You can also find me on LinkedIn or just email [email protected].
free 30-minute call
Let's look at your numbers.
Bring the P&L and your ad accounts, or the spreadsheet nobody trusts. We'll look at where your nCAC, payback and cash actually are, and I'll tell you what I'd do next if I were in your seat. Plans start at $2500/mo, and the call is free either way.