From Pierson, CEO

Almost one year ago today, I took the job of building this firm.

A little about how I got here. I studied accounting, and somewhere in the middle of that I fell for finance itself. I spent more than a decade in corporate finance watching how the biggest and best-run companies actually do it, from publicly traded businesses to high-growth tech, with a stint inside a family-run small business along the way. But I’ve always been entrepreneurial. I’ve started a few companies of my own, and every one of them taught me the same lesson from the inside: for a small business, finance isn’t back-office paperwork. It’s the difference between guessing and knowing.

Where this started

The idea started inside Decada Group. Decada owns and operates several small businesses across Utah, and over the years they built an internal finance function most small companies never get anywhere near. This is the part worth sitting with. As owners and operators, they learned firsthand where traditional accounting falls short, and what it actually takes to get an owner the right data, reporting, and analysis to run the business well.

That function did real work, across every one of their companies:

• Cash management
• Month-end close
• Forecasting and budgeting
• Pricing studies and incentive design
• Margin analysis
• Capital advisory
• M&A and diligence, including the acquisition of their four companies
• Working directly with the CEOs and owners who wanted more from their numbers

The insight was simple. What worked across all of Decada’s companies could work for many more. So we spun it out into a firm of its own, and I came on as CEO to build it: fractional CFO, accounting, and bookkeeping for hands-on owners and growth-minded small businesses. We called it Durable Finance.

What the first year taught me

The story of year one is that we exploded. We grew far faster than I expected, and it was a thrill. We got to work with companies across every kind of industry: landscaping, dental, manufacturing, a small retail shop, and owners running several businesses at once with real intercompany complexity. The range was wide and the work was genuinely exciting. We saw everything these businesses had in common, and every place where the answer was to specialize.

Underneath the growth, we were building the firm itself. We stood up systems and a team, and we sharpened everything we do to be the best at it: a month-end close you can set your watch to, and industry-leading software to run client engagements, our Financial Hub among the many tools we put in place this year. We also built a company. Our own culture, our own way of doing the work. More than anything, the year sharpened who we are and who we’re building for, and that clarity mattered more than any single client win. We didn’t only find a fit in the market. We found work we’re passionate about, that resonated deeply with the owners we served and with us.

A new chapter, and a new name

A few months ago, it was clear we had traction. We were going places, and we were going there for the long haul. So we made a deliberate choice: pause, reflect on what we’d spent almost a year building, and make sure we had the right foundation for the several decades ahead. We’re a year in, we know who we are, and it’s time to build for the next decade rather than the next quarter. That called for a new name and a new foundation underneath it. That’s the work we’re unveiling today.

Durable Finance is now Tally & Stone.

The name says the whole job in two plain words. A tally is the count, the honest running number kept out in the open where you can see it. Stone is what you build on once you trust that number: something solid, permanent, meant to hold weight for a long time. We wanted a name that sounded like what we do rather than like accounting, and one that would still fit a decade from now. An honest count, and a foundation you can build on. That’s it.

We speak business, not accounting. We’re owners ourselves, and we use accounting the way an owner should: to see where the cash is going, what the margins are really doing, and what to do next.

What comes next

We plan to spend the next several decades building the best, most trusted finance partner a business owner could ask for. In practice, that means:

• Continuing to build our team, our technology, and our tooling
• New ways to work with us
• New services and new verticals as our owners need them

There’s more coming over the months ahead, and I mostly wanted to say the thing out loud today and tell you who we’re building it for. If you own a business and you’ve never had someone in your corner turning your numbers into decisions, that’s the gap we exist to close.

We chose the name for what we intend to be a decade from now: the honest count you can trust, and the ground you build on. Today we get to start laying it, and I could not be more glad the work has a name worth keeping. Tally & Stone.

Pierson