Ashley Dafel has been the person PE firms call when a portfolio company is in trouble — sometimes before they fully understand how much trouble. As a CFO-turned-CEO across multiple PE-backed organizations, he’s refinanced failing companies, fired half a customer base, shut down manufacturing facilities, and taken EBITDA up tenfold. None of it started with the numbers. It started with the questions he asked before he ever accepted the role. 

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Most finance leaders stepping into a PE-backed role focus on the financials first. Ashley Dafel would tell you that’s already too late. 

Ashley has held CFO and CEO roles across multiple PE-backed organizations — including turnarounds where payroll couldn’t be made in his first two weeks. Over a career that’s spanned private companies generating hundreds of millions in revenue to multi-billion dollar enterprises, he’s developed a clear-eyed framework for how these engagements succeed or fail. It almost never comes down to technical skill. It comes down to what you understand before you walk in the door. 

On this episode of The Next Moves, Joe and Ashley go deep on the real mechanics of PE-backed leadership: how to evaluate a mandate before you accept it, what to do when the team can’t deliver, how to fire your worst customers, and what it actually takes for a CFO to make the leap to CEO. 

Key Takeaways 

The PE firm’s position in the investment cycle tells you everything. Are they a short-term hold or long-term? Where are they in the fund? If they’re replacing management in year six of a seven-year hold, something is wrong — and you need to understand what before you join. 

Understand the mandate with precision. Do they want a technical specialist, a business partner, or the eyes and ears of the PE firm? If what they need doesn’t match what you do, stop there. Ashley’s frame: he was never a CFO. He was always a Chief Business Officer. 

Customer profitability analysis is the first move. Not systems. Not team restructuring. Not strategy decks. Pull contribution margin at the customer level and see who’s actually making you money. Ashley found that their largest-revenue customers had the lowest — often negative — margins. Half were eventually let go. 

Firing bad revenue is harder than it sounds — and more important than it looks. Letting go of customers who are destroying margin feels like shrinking. It’s actually how you create the conditions to grow well. Top line went down. EBITDA went up tenfold. 

Systems are never your constraint. Stop blaming them. In a turnaround, PE is not going to fund a new ERP. Get a proxy. Work with what’s there. The people who wait for better data don’t get the turnaround done. 

Alignment between ownership, board, and leadership isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the variable that determines execution speed. Without it, even a capable leader retreats — decisions slow down, risk tolerance collapses, and the whole engagement stalls. You’ll feel the misalignment before it’s visible. Pay attention. 

The CFO-to-CEO move requires honest self-assessment first. Not confidence — self-awareness. Know your gaps, name them out loud, and go close them. The leaders who make the transition successfully are the ones who can do strategy on themselves before they do it on a company. 

Vulnerability is a leadership tool, not a liability. Ashley shared what he didn’t know with entire teams, across 13 facilities, in three languages. The response was connection and commitment. People don’t need a leader who knows everything. They need one who’s honest about what they’re learning. 

The playbook Ashley describes isn’t theoretical. It’s what he did — repeatedly, in organizations that were running out of road. The details shift by situation. The principles don’t. 

Listen to the full episode and explore more conversations with operators, CFOs, and senior finance leaders on The Next Moves.