Mike Witting

Why this persona fits the audience

Works with five small startups at a time, maintaining monthly close notes, KPI trackers, and advisory memos in spreadsheets and shared documents. He is often the person who reconciles versions before sending a final pack to founders.

• Age: 47
• Location: Chicago, US
• Occupation: Fractional CFO
• Income: USD 170k
• Education: CPA and MBA
• Company size: Self-employed contractor managing 5 client firms simultaneously
• Years in role: 8 years as a fractional executive

“In business, the only thing that matters is what you can prove, not what you believe.”

Michael Witting, 47, is a seasoned Fractional CFO operating out of Chicago, a role he has cultivated over the last eight years after spending nearly two decades in traditional public accounting and corporate finance. Holding both a CPA license and an MBA, Mike transitioned to the fractional model to escape the rigid hierarchy of big firms while retaining the intellectual rigor of high-stakes financial management. He currently serves five early-stage startups, acting as their de facto chief financial officer without ever stepping foot in their offices. His value proposition lies in his ability to bring order to chaos; he frequently inherits disorganized books and must rebuild financial infrastructure from the ground up. Mike's workspace is a hybrid of digital and analog efficiency. While he utilizes cloud-based collaboration tools, his workflow remains deeply rooted in spreadsheet-centric logic. He is known for maintaining meticulous 'monthly close notes' and KPI trackers, often serving as the final arbiter who reconciles conflicting data versions before issuing a financial pack to a founder. This responsibility weighs heavily on him; he views himself as the guardian of truth in organizations that often operate on optimism and guesswork. Despite his technical prowess, Mike struggles with the friction of modern collaborative software. He frequently finds himself fighting against version control issues in shared documents, where multiple stakeholders inadvertently overwrite each other's work. This inefficiency eats into the time he could spend providing strategic advice, forcing him to act more as a data janitor than a financial architect. He is currently exploring ways to streamline these processes but remains skeptical of 'all-in-one' solutions that promise simplicity but lack the granular control he requires for audit compliance. Outside of work, Mike is a devoted family man and a lover of baseball, particularly the Chicago Cubs. He derives satisfaction from the predictability of sports statistics and the structure of team dynamics, which contrasts sharply with the volatility of startup life. He and his wife plan annual road trips, treating travel as a necessary reset from his high-pressure career. Financially, he practices what he preaches: disciplined saving, diversified investing, and a conscious avoidance of debt. For Mike, money is not a tool for status, but a resource for security and freedom, allowing him to focus entirely on the accuracy and integrity of the numbers he manages.

Background & daily life

A day in their life

Mike wakes at 5:30 AM, brewing coffee while reviewing the overnight market news and scanning his email for urgent alerts from any of his five clients. By 6:30 AM, he is driving into downtown Chicago, listening to a podcast on economic history or the latest earnings calls. At the office, his first hour is dedicated to deep work: reconciling the previous day's transactions for his most active client, ensuring every cent matches. Mid-morning involves back-to-back video calls with founders discussing budget variances and hiring plans. Lunch is a quick sandwich eaten at his desk while updating a KPI tracker. Afternoon hours are fragmented, filled with answering Slack messages, preparing draft advisory memos, and debugging spreadsheet formulas that have broken due to someone else's edits. He leaves by 6:00 PM sharp to attend his son's baseball practice, then heads home for dinner and family time, finally reviewing the next day's priorities before bed.

Lifestyle

Mike resides in a renovated brick bungalow in Lincoln Park, a choice that balances professional accessibility with suburban quiet. His weekends are rigidly structured around family obligations: Saturday mornings are reserved for youth baseball coaching, while Sunday afternoons involve planning family road trips to national parks or visiting relatives in Wisconsin. Financially, he lives within his means despite a comfortable income, prioritizing tax-advantaged investments over lifestyle inflation. He maintains a strict separation between work and home, rarely checking email after 7 PM unless an emergency arises. Socially, his circle is small but deep, consisting mostly of other professionals and long-standing friends from his CPA days; he values quality conversation over large networking events.

Work life

Mike operates as a solo practitioner, juggling five distinct startup clients across SaaS, e-commerce, and fintech sectors. His day is a marathon of context switching, where he must mentally shift from one company's cash flow crisis to another's fundraising deck preparation. He relies heavily on Excel and Google Sheets for financial modeling, though he finds himself manually reconciling version control issues when multiple stakeholders edit shared files. The pressure is constant: month-end closes require absolute precision, and he is the final gatekeeper ensuring that the numbers sent to founders are indisputable. He spends significant time cleaning up messy bookkeeping data inherited from previous advisors, acting as both accountant and strategic consultant.

Relationships

Mike is married to Sarah, a high school guidance counselor, whose stability anchors his high-stress career. They have a strong partnership built on mutual respect for each other's professional domains. His children look up to him as the 'number guy' who helps businesses succeed, though they often joke about his obsession with spreadsheets. Professionally, he maintains a tight-knit circle of three other fractional executives in Chicago whom he consults with on difficult valuation questions. He avoids public political discourse, preferring to keep personal relationships strictly apolitical to maintain harmony.

How they decide

Cautious and research-heavy, Mike requires extensive validation before adopting new workflows. He does not make decisions based on marketing hype or social proof alone; instead, he demands to see the logic, security implications, and long-term maintenance costs. He tends to prototype changes in a sandbox environment before rolling them out to live client data. Peer recommendations from trusted industry veterans carry more weight than vendor testimonials. Once he identifies a reliable solution, he sticks with it religiously until a critical flaw emerges, showing low tolerance for frequent interface changes.

How they sound

His speech is measured, precise, and devoid of filler words. He speaks in complete sentences, often using financial terminology like 'runway,' 'burn rate,' and 'liquidity' in casual conversation to describe life situations. He rarely uses slang or hyperbole, preferring terms like 'significant' or 'material' over 'huge' or 'amazing.' When explaining concepts, he structures his thoughts logically, often pausing to ensure accuracy. He avoids emotional outbursts, even in stressful negotiations, maintaining a tone that is calm, authoritative, and slightly detached. He dislikes ambiguity and will gently but firmly correct anyone who uses imprecise language regarding numbers.