About Tailwater Advisors

Fractional CFO and Strategic Finance Consulting:
Turning financial ambiguity into strategic clarity for growth-stage companies.

The gap between where you are and where you’re going is a financial visibility problem.

Our name reflects where we operate best: the point where multiple streams – capital, strategy, operations, and ownership goals – intersect. That’s where the most important decisions get made, and when an experienced, objective perspective matters most.

Joe Magner founded Tailwater Advisors in 2017 to bring Wall Street-caliber expertise in corporate strategic finance and investing to founder-led small and medium-sized businesses – helping them gain the clarity, tools, systems, and advisory needed to unlock new levels of performance and growth.

“I help founder-led companies build systems and tools so they can trust their numbers and see around corners, based on my experiences in banking, investing, and managing companies. Most founders are making growth and capital decisions on incomplete, backward-looking data. I build the analytical infrastructure that fixes that, and then stay on as the strategic partner who helps them act on what they can now see.”
— Joe Magner, Principal, Tailwater Advisors

Our Values

  • Objectivity: We provide honest, independent perspective, even when it’s not what a client hopes to hear.

  • Clarity: We translate complex financial information into clear, actionable insight.

  • Collaborative: We work alongside our client teams, not just for them.

  • Experience-Driven: Our recommendations are grounded in direct experience across investing, operations, and transactions — not theory.

How We Work

Joe Magner

Principal

Too often, what holds a business back isn’t a lack of ambition; it’s a lack of accurate, reliable financial data to identify which levers to pull for growing value.

In a fast-paced environment, the instinct is to keep moving and handle the accounting and finance work later – but “later” rarely comes. Once attention shifts to the next big opportunity, the accounting, financial analysis, and strategic insight needed to sustain that growth gets left behind.

I am the CFO that founder-led and growth-stage companies bring in to build the financial foundation, install forward-looking intelligence, and construct the engaging and credible capital narrative. When a founder or executive team realizes their financials cannot be trusted, growth is outpacing what anyone can see clearly enough to plan for, and capital conversations are starting without a credible story, that is when you call me.

  • B.S. in Business Administration, University of Colorado Boulder

  • M.S., Finance, University of Denver, Daniels College of Business

  • Chartered Financial Analyst (January 2001), Credential ID 635899

  • Every engagement begins with a complimentary, one-hour consultation. There’s no cost and no obligation — just a conversation about your business, current challenges, and strategic objectives. This helps us understand whether and how we can help, and gives you a sense of how we work.

  • Where appropriate, we speak with owners, investors, lenders, and other key stakeholders. These conversations help us understand not just the numbers, but the relationships, expectations, and constraints that shape the business.

  • We conduct a comprehensive review of financial systems, reporting, capital structure, and existing financial relationships — building the foundation for everything that follows.

  • Based on the assessment and stakeholder conversations, we pinpoint the problems, constraints, and opportunities that matter most — prioritized by impact and feasibility.

  • We work with you to create a customized action plan: specific, sequenced, and realistic given your team’s capacity and resources.

  • We coordinate with your internal team and external resources (accountants, attorneys, lenders, investors) to implement the plan. For many clients, this includes ongoing support:

    • Fractional CFO Support — Ongoing senior financial leadership during implementation and beyond, without the cost of a full-time hire.

    • Advisory Support and Business Coaching — An experienced external perspective, available as needed, to support decision-making over time.