Jon Blair: Brands Don’t NEED an ERP! (They Need This Instead)

What if your ERP is secretly costing you 4X the price? Jon Blair, Free to Grow CFO founder, reveals the true cost and operational drag of the "NetSuite Trap" plaguing $20M+ ecommerce brands. He details the blueprint for right-sizing to a specialized tech stack (IMS + QuickBooks) and a fractional finance engine to slash costs. In this episode, learn how separating your GL from your operations and using cash-led forecasting helps you scale efficiently and avoid Q4 working capital disaster.

Meet Jon Blair

Jon Blair is an ecommerce finance visionary who founded Free to Grow CFO to fill the massive gap between a bookkeeper and a full-time CFO. His firm provides fractional CFO/Controller services, asserting that lean e-commerce brands can achieve nine-figure revenue without a bloated in-house finance team. Jon specializes in solving "upstream" operational problems that cause "downstream" financial issues, focusing on cash-led forecasting and making smarter, risk-adjusted inventory bets.

00:00 Partners Reunited, Stakes Raised
02:55 Upmarket Shift and Shared ICP
05:16 The NetSuite Trap Explained
11:15 Hidden Costs, Connectors, and “Analytics”
16:47 Ecom Connectors vs. Wholesale Reality
20:07 Five Years Later: All‑In Costs
24:22 Right‑Sizing the Stack: QBO + IMS
29:02 Why You Shouldn’t DIY Migrations
33:42 Peanut Butter, Jelly, and Clean Data
38:18 Who Actually Needs NetSuite
45:12 GL vs. IMS: Keep Them Separate
51:05 First Principles Over “All in One”
57:18 The Finance Talent Gap
1:03:18 What a Fractional CFO Really Does
1:10:20 When to Hire Full‑Time (If Ever)
1:17:05 Forecasting: Momentum vs. Intervention
1:23:52 Cash‑Led Planning and Q4 Pitfalls