When a CFO Becomes a Constraint: Why SendCutSend Is Right to Run Without One
Jim Belosic, Founder and CEO of SendCutSend, recently talked about how he’s scaling a modern U.S. manufacturing company without a CFO. In that interview, he explains why most finance teams unintentionally create drag on operations by chasing efficiency instead of throughput. His comments echo Eliyahu Goldratt’s The Goal in a way that feels remarkably current. This is by no means the theme of the entire interview but was a topic that came up a few times.
“We don’t have a CFO right now — and that probably helps.”
— Jim Belosic, CEO of SendCutSend
Jim Belosic didn’t mean that as a joke. He meant it as an observation about how most finance functions, especially in operations-heavy businesses, end up fighting against the very systems they’re supposed to strengthen.
After listening to Belosic describe how he runs SendCutSend, a U.S. based manufacturer that’s growing fast without outside capital. I couldn’t help but think of Eliyahu Goldratt’s The Goal. Goldratt famously argued that the biggest barrier to performance isn’t the constraint itself, it’s management’s obsession with local optima.
A CFO obsessed with efficiency is exactly that: a local optimum in human form.
The Plant That’s Too Efficient
In The Goal, Goldratt describes how a perfectly efficient plant is a perfectly broken one. When every machine runs at full capacity, parts pile up, orders are late, and chaos follows. It looks good on paper, but the system grinds to a halt because it’s “busy” making the wrong things.
SendCutSend understands this intuitively:
- They keep spare capacity.
- They overstaff customer support.
- They add redundancy, knowing it’s expensive but essential.
They even have a saying: “Don’t save money.” Not because they’re reckless, but because the pursuit of small, localized savings is what kills system-wide performance. That’s the same insight Goldratt used to transform manufacturing theory, Belosic just applies it with modern tools and an online storefront.
The CFO Seen as a Bottleneck
When Belosic says a CFO would hurt, he’s not rejecting finance, he’s rejecting running a business through a spreadsheet. A traditional CFO wmay focus on metrics like utilization, unit cost, or operating expense ratios. Those look great in isolation but often punish the very behaviors that create throughput: buffer capacity, flexible staffing, or overnight shipping to save a customer’s weekend project.
That kind of CFO would see $42,000 spent on “fun coupons” (spot bonuses for FedEx drivers, employees, and suppliers) as waste. Belosic sees it as the human side of throughput accounting.
In his words:
“If I’m overly generous and it doesn’t reciprocate, it’s still fine. I’ve never been wronged by generosity.”
That’s not anti-finance. That’s system optimization.
Misaligned Incentives Are The Enemy
What makes SendCutSend work is that the function of finance still exists, it’s just decentralized:
- They negotiate deferred payments to manage cash flow.
- They understand that millions in inventory tie up cash.
- They make capital investments with real payback logic.
All the disciplines are there. What’s missing is the bureaucracy that often slows them down.
A good CFO doesn’t maximize efficiency, they should maximize flow. They understand that money moves through a business like material through a factory and every unnecessary checkpoint or approval is a constraint. The right CFO asks:
- Does this decision increase throughput?
- Does it reduce operating expense at the system level, not the local one?
- Does it align cash with capacity?
If the answer is yes, that’s finance adding value. If not, it’s just accounting dressed as leadership.
The Modern Manufacturing Mindset
What’s happening at SendCutSend mirrors what many operationally intense businesses are rediscovering: finance has to evolve from governance to guidance.
Belosic isn’t allergic to numbers, he’s allergic to decision-making divorced from reality. He knows you can’t manage a factory from a spreadsheet. You have to walk the floor, see the work, and feel the flow.
That’s Goldratt’s legacy: subordinating every department to the system’s goal. For a modern manufacturer, that goal isn’t margin on paper but it’s speed, reliability, and trust.
Jim Belosic doesn’t reject the CFO role. He rejects the mindset that measures the wrong things. He’s built a company where throughput, not utilization, drives every decision — where generosity is a line item in the business model, and cash is managed with common sense rather than fear.
Eliyahu Goldratt would’ve approved.