Be uniquely you.

We all have a unique abilities—talents, capabilities, and characteristics that distinguish us from others. Therefore, it’s not about being the best, it’s about being unique. The objective is to discover ourselves and avoid the distractions that get in the way of us becoming all that we are designed to become.

Want to explore opportunities together?

I’m Steve Coughran—a business leader, family man, and advocate for financial literacy. I turn around, grow, and invest in high potential companies.

I am the founder of Coltivar, a consulting firm that empowers companies to drive successful financial, operational, and strategic transformations. I am passionate about solving complex and challenging problems, and have advised and served clients across many industries, including technology, renewable energy, construction, and financial services. Through years of working as a strategic CFO, management consultant, and entrepreneur, I have gained experience accelerating growth of SaaS businesses, engaging in mergers and acquisitions, delivering corporate restructurings and turnarounds, raising debt and equity capital, and building high performing teams by connecting with people on an emotional level. My impact extends beyond my role as CFO or turnaround expert. I believe the best way to fight poverty is to help foster market-creating innovation and business growth on a grassroots level. My intent is to make the world a better, more prosperous place by inspiring leaders to build better businesses so they can create abundance and raise the quality of life in their communities.

Unique abilities.

    • Ability to buoy people up and help them get through tough times

    • Influence for good with contagious positive energy

    • Excellent leadership and organization skills

    • A champion and cheerleader that believes in people and their mission when they may not see it for themselves

    • Tender, playful side that makes people feel safe to experiment and inspired to work hard

    • Ability to help the struggling to apply better ways of doing things

    • Genuine care for people and their personal growth

    • Intellectually curious and adventurous. I like to ask questions and explore possibilities

    • Ability to gather knowledge easily and grasp complicated topics

    • Continuous drive to improve and this is inspiring and contagious to others

    • Committed. When I say something, I do it

    • Highly disciplined with routine, which gives me freedom and flexibility to be creative

    • Generous with my resources

    • Ability to take time to first understand people and their situations and challenges without judgement

    • Full of compassion (somewhat rare working in a very hard-science type of field), while empowering accountability and driving impact

    • A safe place for people to turn to for any problem or situation

    • Highly experienced at turning around struggling companies and growing high potential businesses

    • Very creative mind that generates big ideas and the blueprint that will make it a reality

    • Ability to help teams see the big picture and execute successfully

    • Confidence to connect separate but interrelated parts of a business and to execute ambiguous tasks

    • Ability to take the complexity out of strategy and finance and transform abstract concepts into digestible, actionable steps

    • Very specific saying “we need this result, in this timeframe, through these actions”. I am fully transparent and straight to the point

    • A beacon of faith in an unbelieving world

    • Gifted with discernment and the courage to speak up, even when I may be wrong

    • Well prepared for unique and important work

    • Ability to use numbers to predict success and make data-driven decisions

    • Analytical as I think about business and numbers in an amazing way

    • Ability to take complex problems and simplify them easier than most people, which makes me a fast study where I can get to questions and solutions faster

    • Very technical, although I seem chill and relaxed, rarely do details escape me

    • Gift for making presentations on the “fly”. I can quickly transform ideas and concepts into PowerPoint presentations that are compelling and inspire positive action

    • Ability to bring metrics and graphics to help non-financial people understand critical concepts—this is where my design thinking shines

    • Engaging in my conversations and have patience when helping others understand what I’m trying to convey

    • Ability to deliver information that is sometimes difficult to hear in a way that motivates people towards a positive change

    • I don’t blame others, I take full responsibility and own it

    • People appreciate my honesty and love that I have for them

Business experience.

    • Develop business and strategic partnerships worth millions of dollars across multiple specialties, industries, and geographies.

    • Deliver corporate restructurings and turnarounds, resulting in nearly $1B of value creation and cost synergies over the last 5 years.

    • Craft innovative and compelling “go-to-market” strategies that are results driven, action oriented, and realizable.

    • Leverage expertise to power strategic growth in multinational companies with annual revenues up to $3B.

    • Support corporate finance functions of large companies to maximize profitability, drive data insights, and increase throughput by +35%.

    • Create web-based, strategy management software to help organizations clarify their direction, lead high performing teams, measure key results, and build enduring value.

    • Collaborate with software development team in Paris, Australia, and United States to pinpoint customer pain points and deliver SaaS solutions via a user-friendly UX.

    • Provide mentorship and support to business development and sales teams to scale company rapidly and increase user engagement.

    • Engaged in raising $100M+ of equity capital for a financial technology business with strategic partners, family offices, and large financial institutions while growing the company’s post money valuation from $447M to $842M in 6 months.

    • Acquired 6 companies in 5 months to build one of the largest first-party data platforms in investing and to expand multiples from 2X to 15X by transforming financial media properties into a data insights business backed by technology and artificial intelligence.

    • Helped lead the reorganization of a financial media rollup, put in place a matrix structure, enabled a $2.3M revenue expansion strategy, and reduced inefficiencies in workflows to maximize throughput and realize cost synergies of $5.6M.

    • Built an exceptional FinOps team by connecting with individuals on a personal level, supporting their talents, leading with OKRs, and helping them to believe in their talents.

    • Put in place technology and tools from the ground up for financial planning and analysis, reporting, and impactful decision making.

    • Provided ongoing mentorship and leadership to a $1B organization across 4 companies, including an early-stage venture, and 8 departments to ensure strategic initiatives and business activities were maximizing the financial value of the company.

    • Oversaw the overall fiscal functions and activities of EMJ and subsidiary companies including: compliance and financial reporting, modeling/forecasting and analysis, financial performance management, advanced analytics, audits, and other finance operations.

    • Lead the growth and innovation of a billion-dollar portfolio of 2,000MW+ renewable and infrastructure projects throughout North America.

    • Delivered strategic financial input and leadership on decision-making issues affecting the organization; i.e., evaluation of existing subsidiaries, potential alliances and/or mergers and investments, including the acquisition of a $180M utility-scale solar project in Australia.

    • Helped turn around a struggling energy business unit and positioned it for sale to private equity, realizing $60M+ of value creation in 15 months.

    • Provided assurance on financial statements for public and closely held companies with revenues exceeding $10B.

    • Performed key roles in a $1.3B public debt offering and $130M IPO filing.

    • Analyzed and tested complex financial instruments including $11B of interest rate and cross currency swaps.

    • Worked closely with senior leadership to unlock data insights and build robust models in the technology and financial services sectors.

    • Founded company in 1995, prioritized a pipeline of B2B projects resulting in a 4-year revenue CAGR > 35%.

    • Grew average project size from $10K to $340K+ through strategic partnerships with builders, architects, and general contractors within 17 months while putting in place lean construction principles to reduce labor costs by 21% and increase throughput by 38%.

    • Managed cross-business unit collaboration, internal functional BUs and P/L units, for strategic projects and for financial reporting on the company’s investment portfolio.

    • Received 8 Excellence in Landscape Awards for outstanding design and construction.

Education and certificates.

    • MBA, Rigorous academic study with cultural experience in Asia, South America, India, and Europe

    • Graduated December 2016

    • Executive Education: Strategic Financial Leadership

    • Completed May 2015

    • M.S. Accountancy, Honors

    • Graduated August 2011

    • B.S. Accounting & Finance, Cum Laude

    • Graduated May 2010

    • University of Colorado - San Jose, Costa Rica

    • Summer 2009

    • Successfully passed all four exams on first attempt

    • AICPA - Licensed August 2011

Leadership.

    • Host of the Strategic Financial Leadership Podcast.  Actively interview professors from Harvard, Duke, and Tuck along with business leaders and entrepreneurs from top companies

    • Passionate about teaching principles of finance through my Boosting Your Financial IQ podcast

    • Speaker at ENR NYC Global Conference 2017, CFMA National Conference 2017, University of Denver 2014, Colorado State University, AGC National Conference 2015 “Competing on Analytics”, ProGreen Expo 2011 for “Strategic Financial Leadership” and “Global Innovative Leadership” seminars. Keynote speaker for 2 seminars at Mandalay Bay Las Vegas, November 2010 & 2015

    • Adjunct professor at the University of Denver, created new course “Strategic Financial Leadership” 2017

    • Appeared on Channel 7 News, 9News and Fox 31 News as an expert spokesman on industry professionalism

    • Recipient of the Growth at the Edge Value Award at fintech company, TIFIN, for ability to adapt quickly and build out infrastructure to support fast growing business

    • Recognized by CFO Thought Leader magazine among innovative strategic CFOs, Spring/Summer 2019

    • Recipient of 2007 ALCC Outlook Award for noteworthy contributions to the Colorado green industry

A few other personal notes.

  • Family man, 2 children, 6 and 9 years old

  • Proficient in Spanish

  • Volunteered as a parent builder, with 19 youth, for 3-week humanitarian trip for HEFY in Cuenca, Ecuador, building an addiction recovery center for women

  • Big fan of Legos and ice cream