We provide a comprehensive evaluation of your company’s health and breathe new life into tired results.
We are Entrepreneurs that just happen to be CFOs. Because all our CFOs have held CEO, President or General Management operational roles in addition to acting as CFOs, we are uniquely equipped to help CEOs identify opportunities to maximize their growth and profitability. We’ve walked in their shoes and know what keeps them up at night. We also deploy the “Best-in-Class” personality trait profiling system to ensure our CFOs are proactive, driven multi-taskers who can work with executives to both push and encourage.
We develop the insights and implement the action plans they and their team need to realize their greatest potential, getting the CEO back to living the dream he or she envisioned when starting their company.
Our Results: Total Revenue Under Management – $675,000,000
Our Mission
Use our God-given financial and operational gifts to serve business owners through engaging in proactive Care-Frontation so they achieve their goals and achieve prosperity.
Our mission statement was forged in our founder’s experience in managing and turning around his own business.
Our team is comprised of genuinely gifted minds
Burt’s specialties include: strategic planning, process reengineering, EBITDA growth, budgeting and forecasting, contract negotiation, working capital optimization, debt financing and risk management, among others. He also excels in team leadership, having led teams of five to 75 in understanding the challenges and issues at hand, and gaining their commitment to the changes required to reach best-in-class performance. Before creating New Life CFO in October of 2013, Burt served in a number of executive positions, including CEO, CFO, COO, VP of Operations and Controller, working for companies including EFG Companies, Montgomery Coscia Greilich, Corporate Floors, ReSource Flooring Group, Fleet Capital, Fujitsu, PepsiCo and Coopers & Lybrand CPAs.
Burt’s passion is to use his gifts of financial, strategic and operational management to serve others. He created New Life CFO in order to enable growing companies to meet their Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals (BHAGs). By guiding clients through challenges and providing dedicated support, he allows them to focus on using their own gifts to do what they love — not what they have to do.
Burt F. Copeland
CFO Since 1998
[email protected]
(214) 315-2275 cell
Her national awards include a national Reggie Award for a cause-related promotion on behalf of MADD and an IRI Pacesetter innovation award for Mission Life Balance Flour Tortillas.
Lola holds both a bachelor’s degree in marketing from The University of Akron and a Master of Business Administration from the Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University.
In her spare time, Lola enjoys traveling, gardening, cooking and spending time with her family.
Wayne’s core passions relate to customers and taking great care of them. Both external and internal customers are all important and critical to the success of a company. He enjoys engaging in these relationships and creating win-win opportunities. He also believes doing the “right thing” with customers will pay off in the long run.
Wayne’s experiences include working with owners and executives across all business lines to ensure financial integrity and operational ethics. He has successfully staffed and managed both small and large accounting groups, built strategic plans, forecasting and financial reporting. He has created and maintained strong relationships with banks and vendors to ensure best pricing and leveraging, enabling the growth of businesses.
Wayne enjoys getting into the details and yet grasps the big picture to ensure that the company is headed in the right direction. He is a firm believer in using analytics to identify challenging areas and solving them through group buy-in and moving forward to reach profitability.
Wayne is a CPA and received his BSBA in Accounting from The Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas.
Brian understands the value of relationships and taking great care to provide the support needed both professionally and personally. Great vision and values are front and center to creating an environment where business can thrive, and employees can grow and reap those rewards. Partnering with leadership to identify challenges and implement the change needed to operate efficiently and reach or expand profitability is critical. Whether it be determining the best metrics that drive the business, to strategic planning and modeling, to operational overhauls or process creation, Brian has a passion to help businesses succeed.
Brian enjoys spending time with his large growing family and grandchildren, his church community, running and sports in general.
Sandeep has worked with various financial institutions in four different countries. In 2018, she moved to Texas and began working for New Life CFO. She is a proven Financial Analyst with extensive experience in vetting the best decision-driving KPIs and monitoring related performance. Sandeep also has considerable experience in performing What-If analyses on projections, technology integrations, and training and development. She has a passion for helping companies set up and implement financial optimization programs.
In her spare time, Sandeep enjoys recreational activities and giving back to society.
Her attestation experience lends a keen eye to details and a drive to improve internal controls and processes to help best protect and enhance businesses. She desires to create a meaningful relationship with all her clients. Keeping the books clean and accurate is just step one. Understanding the inner workings of you and your business is step two. She enjoys making the numbers talk to you in a way that you understand rather than just sending you spreadsheets every month. She cares about her clients and their success, viewing it as a partnership.
In her spare time, you will find Susie in the kitchen, volunteering with her local Cub Scout Pack, and soaking up as much time with her family as possible.
His specialties include strategic planning, financial and KPI reporting and analysis, accounting and finance process improvements, budgeting and forecasting, client profitability, pricing and financial system implementations, among others. Before joining New Life CFO, Lewen spent 13 years at Parago, Inc. and Blackhawk Network where he held a Sr. Director position and had P&L responsibility for several companies simultaneously issuing more than $1 billion in annual incentives. His previous experience also includes 8 years of P&L planning and reporting responsibility for the U.S., European and Canadian operations at Vartec & Excel Communications.
His core values start with integrity and loyalty. He is here to serve and has a proven record of productive, high-quality results. He believes in truly being a partner with the companies he represents and helping them to each achieve their goals.
Lewen has an MBA from Louisiana State University and a BS of Accounting from Grambling State University.
Eric spent 16 years as SVP Finance/ CFO for four radio broadcasters, during which time he took the lead in taking Chancellor Broadcasting, Inc. public following a spate of acquisitions of 54 large market radio stations valued at $1.6 billion. After Chancellor’s $2.5 billion merger with Evergreen Media, Eric joined Capstar Broadcasting, Inc., where he led the due diligence for another $1 billion in radio station acquisitions and led the special projects team that invested in the development of new technologies to serve the company.
Eric’s finance experience also includes workouts and restructuring of debt and equity. At NextMedia Group, Inc., he restructured $325 million of public debt, which involved renegotiating covenants with a public debt syndicate of more than 60 lenders. He also has worked with a number of technology startups, including a wireless play to cover the 8-milelong Las Vegas Strip with a Wi-Fi canopy before Wi-Fi was ubiquitous.
Always interested in new challenges, Eric served for four years as CFO for a privately held company with a portfolio of restaurants, clubs, and various real estate properties throughout the Denver metro area, and two years as CFO of a historic craft brewery in downtown Denver. Eric and his wife, a Texas native, are raising three teenagers in Dallas.
Joe is a Certified Public Accountant in the State of California and a graduate of California State University Fullerton with degrees in Economics and Accounting. He is currently a facilitator for Gateway Business Leaders with Gateway Church and is involved with the Business Co Hort Program through the Community Development Corporation at Watermark Church. Joe has been married to his wife Kellie for thirty four years and has two daughters that live in Portland, Oregon.
being an entrepreneur, including selling three small businesses of his own. He brings a
passion for serving the private company marketplace and has enjoyed working with
entrepreneurs to build their businesses, including Star Bank (kna US Bank), Lancaster
Pollard and Greystone.
Jim has extensive industry experience across a diverse range of companies, i.e. automotive component manufacturing, automotive rental industry, automotive sales, chemicals, cold storage, commercial computer supply, commercial real estate, consumer goods, heavy equipment distribution and sales, healthcare, insurance, manufacturing, military optics manufacturing, plastics extrusion, restaurant, retail, road construction, trucking, waste management and wholesale goods.
His strengths include business development and client relations, structuring,
negotiating and closing relationship, financial analysis and financial accounting,
P&L responsibility, and growth and operational strategic thinking,
implementation and management.
Jim has been married to Penny for 34 years and has 4 grown children and one
grandchild. They live outside of Austin, TX, enjoying God’s creations.
— Burt Copeland, CEO | Fractional CFO | Founder New Life CFO
Our Story
During his role as CFO and subsequent promotion to CEO of a commercial construction company, the “great recession” of 2008 delivered a wake-up call. “In March of that year, I started receiving a flood of notices from our general contractors,” recalls Copeland. “It amounted to numerous projects being delayed, causing my anxiety to rise with each new notice.”
“I was in full panic mode by June,” remembers Copeland, “It was more than a financial issue. It was a true faith crisis.” After seeking spiritual guidance from his pastor and continual praying, Copeland felt convicted.
“I heard God very clearly telling me, ‘You’ve left me behind, and you’re not using my gifts’” he said, “I really needed to change how I ran things at my company. I had been far too ego driven and needed to realign my priorities.”
After sharing his epiphany with his company leadership, they helped Copeland lead the business to rally back. “We made some very tough decisions in some ways,” he says, “but in a lot of ways, the renewed focus on my faith and principles made some of those decisions as obvious as anything could be.” As a result, in the heart of the recession, Copeland’s company ended up posting one of its best years ever.
“Then it dawned on me,” says Copeland. “A lot of the companies I saw failing, even as we were succeeding, were led by entrepreneurs not too unlike myself, with one important difference: They didn’t have my CFO background.”
That realization, that businesses needed his CFO gifts, led Copeland to found New Life CFO. “I didn’t even know what a fractional CFO was,” he says, “but I knew that there were a lot of companies making bad financial decisions simply out of poor planning and ignorance—things that I, as a CFO, could help them do better. And I didn’t need to work full-time at these companies in order to help them.”
Now a decade—and a lot of planning, praying, and perspiration—in the making, New Life CFO is home to a formidable team of CFOs and other purpose-led, entrepreneurial financial professionals. We’re dedicated to using our financial, strategic, and operational management gifts to serve our clients.