The Bison Way
Most CFO firms do one thing. We do another.
A story, a way of working, and the convictions that drive both.
A few years back, I went to Yellowstone. Everywhere you turned, bison were grazing in the fields.
At first glance, these animals are intimidating. Big, powerful, horns the size of your forearm. But as you watch them, you notice something else — they spend their days calmly grazing and resting.
Curious, I started reading about them. Bison are steady, smart, and strong. But one trait in particular stood out.
When storms come, cattle turn and run. They drift with the weather, staying inside the storm for as long as it’s moving. Bison turn and walk straight into it.
By facing the storm, they shorten their time in discomfort. They spend less time suffering because they refuse to avoid the hard thing.
Storms come in all shapes. Some are bad — a margin compression you didn’t see, a key customer leaving, a year that goes the wrong direction. Others are good — a growth surge that strains your systems, a new opportunity that demands more capital than you have, a hire that changes the shape of your company. Both are still storms. Both still feel like the ground is moving under you.
Bison walk into both. So do we.
How we’re different
What we do differently.
Most send monthly reports.
We architect the system the reports come from.
Most charge for advice.
We charge for outcomes — and guarantee the diagnostic.
Most lock you in.
We earn every phase. Month-to-month after the build.
Most react to problems.
We diagnose them before they’re urgent.
Most make themselves essential.
We teach you to read your own numbers.
To get the full picture, read our full list of convictions about how work should be done →
Where it started
Two founders. One belief about the work.
Our team consists of analysts, developers, and CFOs who build and run the work on every engagement. But the vision starts with the founders: Kurtis and Travis. Here’s where it began.
Kurtis Hanni · Founder · Oklahoma City
I started Bison because owners weren’t being told the story of their numbers.
I’ve sat in a lot of CFO seats over the last fifteen years. Different industries, different sizes, same scene. The owner had a bookkeeper they’d outgrown and a fractional CFO sending them reports they didn’t open. Nobody had ever sat down to architect the system those numbers were supposed to come out of, or to translate them back into the story of the business. So that’s the firm I built.
I lead sales and marketing here: the first conversations, what we promise, and how we tell the story of the work. I also helped architect our strategic approach, and I stay in the room for the hard calls about where a business is actually heading. The goal is always the same. An owner who can read their own numbers fluently. Without us, eventually.
What drives this work for me is family and faith. I have two boys under five, and how I want to show up for them is the same way I want to show up here: with excellence and focus, because the work we do is representative of us and our Maker. We love to work with owners who think the same way about excellence.
“A real CFO doesn’t just keep score. They architect the information layer the business runs on.”
Travis Woods · Co-owner · Mississippi
I started helping owners with their investments. The bigger impact was in optimizing the businesses themselves.
When I started walking into small businesses, the first thing I noticed was that nobody had done the design work. The lights were on, the books were roughly clean, and the wiring was a mess of disconnected tools. The owners had every right to feel like they were flying blind, because they were.
Today I lead the strategy and operations of every engagement. Strategy is how data flows, where the source of truth lives, what’s manual that should be automated, and how to build something that survives the business outgrowing it. Operations is how each engagement actually runs, week to week, milestone to milestone, until the system is doing the work.
What I love about this work is that we actually get to build the thing. Not advise on it. Not write a memo about it. Build it, hand it over, and then sit beside the owner while they run the business by it. That’s the difference between scorekeeping and architecture.
My house is loud. Twin boys and two girls keep it that way. Every owner I sit across from has a version of that same pull at the end of the day, and we keep that close to how we run.
“The system you leave behind is the value. Everything else is overhead.”
Come meet us.
Spend 30 minutes with Kurtis or Travis. We’ll listen first, ask questions, and tell you honestly whether we’re the right partner for what’s next.
Book an intro call