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Cary Matthews, Adam Marshall, and Jonathan Bill on Guiding Family Businesses

September 17, 2025 by John Ray

Family Business Radio

Cary Matthews, Adam Marshall, and Jonathan Bill on Guiding Family Businesses

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Cary Matthews, Adam Marshall, and Jonathan Bill on Guiding Family Businesses (Family Business Radio, Episode 68)

On this episode of Family Business Radio, host Anthony Chen sits down with three leaders who specialize in helping family businesses grow, plan, and prepare for the future. Cary Matthews of Opal Partners Group draws on his Fortune 50 and small business background to help companies clarify their identity, strategy, and culture. Adam Marshall of Lorium Law explains how his firm combines technical excellence with a human approach to risk management, transactions, and succession planning. Jonathan Bill of SBS Accounting and Advisors shares how his firm frees entrepreneurs from back-office burdens, delivering accurate books, timely financials, and proactive guidance. Together, they show how strategy, law, and financial discipline intersect to build strong family business legacies.

Family Business Radio is underwritten and brought to you by Anthony Chen with Lighthouse Financial Network. The show is produced by John Ray and the North Fulton affiliate of Business RadioX®.

Key Takeaways from This Episode

Cary Matthews emphasizes clarity on identity and culture as the foundation of strategy.
Adam Marshall shifted from “big law” to client-centered legal practice to focus on relationships and assisting clients in making informed choices.
Jonathan Bill sees accurate, timely financials as essential for growth, lending, and exit planning.
Strategic planning, legal foresight, and sound bookkeeping intersect in family business success.
Host Anthony Chen emphasizes that beyond dollars and cents, family businesses need clarity of purpose and must tie financial planning to personal meaning and legacy.

Topics Discussed in this Episode

00:00 Introduction to Family Business Radio
00:47 Cary Matthews’ Journey from COO to Business Strategist
02:14 The Importance of Organizational Structure
04:05 Common Challenges in Small Businesses
08:36 The Role of Strategy in Business Growth
12:01 Introducing Adam Marshall and His Legal Journey
14:52 Building Client Relationships in Law
18:50 The Importance of Risk Management and Pragmatism
25:21 The Importance of Foundational Documents
26:56 Preparing for Business Exits
28:20 Family Business Transitions
32:03 Introducing Jonathan Bill
32:10 The Origin Story of SBS Accounting
36:30 Unique Aspects of SBS Accounting
45:54 Legacy and Business Values
50:43 Anthony’s Financial Corner

Cary Matthews, Opal Partners Group

Cary Matthews is the Managing Partner of Opal Partners Group, LLC (OPG), where he helps small business owners and leadership teams get unstuck, achieve their goals, and build businesses they enjoy. As a strategy coach and fractional executive, he draws on more than two decades of experience leading operational improvement and growth in small businesses.

Before founding OPG, Cary served as COO and EVP of Operations for several Atlanta-area companies, overseeing project management, support services, accounting, HR, engineering, and logistics. His leadership produced measurable results, including reducing invoicing time by 80%, boosting gross profit by 10% while managing a 30% increase in sales, and cutting training development costs by 30%. Earlier in his career, Cary worked for Fortune 100 companies and a start-up, experiences that built the foundation for his passion and expertise in small business leadership.

Cary holds a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering and an MBA from Auburn University.

Website | LinkedIn

Adam Marshall, Lorium Law

Adam Marshall focuses his practice on matters dealing with corporations, with an emphasis on corporate restructuring, bankruptcy, and distressed M&A. Adam has represented debtors, creditors, corporations, lenders, funds, and buyers and sellers of assets in numerous industries, including retail, food service, real estate, healthcare, automotive, energy, and financial services.

Further, Adam counsels business owners/C-level executives on general corporate matters, including structuring, financing, operational needs, and liquidity events/strategies. Adam began his career as an attorney with several national and international law firms, including White & Case and Greenberg Traurig, working in the restructuring and distressed M&A practice areas.

He has practiced law since 1999 and lived in Florida for 21 years, until recently relocating to the Atlanta area with his wife Stefanie and two sons, Joshua (Duke ’23) and Alexander (University of Michigan LSA Honors ‘26).

Website | LinkedIn

Jonathan Bill, SBS Accounting

Jonathan Bill owns SBS Accounting & Advisors. Jonathan grew up in a small business and seeing his dad struggle to start a new business is what gave him his heart to help entrepreneurs. As a result, Jonathan started his company in 2006 with a passion to free and empower small businesses—”free” by taking their back-office responsibilities off their plate and “empower” by providing them with the key metrics and coaching in order to meet their goals. Since 2006, Jonathan and his companies have had the privilege of bringing this transformation to hundreds of organizations.

Outside of work, Jonathan enjoys spending time with his family and ministering in his church in the area of music.

Website | LinkedIn

Anthony Chen, Host of Family Business Radio

Family Business Radio is sponsored and brought to you by Anthony Chen with Lighthouse Financial Network. Securities and advisory services are offered through OSAIC, member FINRA/SIPC. RAA is separately owned, and other entities and/or marketing names, products, or services referenced here are independent of OSAIC. The main office address is 575 Broadhollow Rd., Melville, NY 11747. You can reach Anthony at 631-465-9090, ext. 5075, or by email at anthonychen@lfnllc.com.

Anthony Chen started his career in financial services with MetLife in Buffalo, NY, in 2008. Born and raised in Elmhurst, Queens, he considers himself a full-blooded New Yorker while now enjoying his Atlanta, GA, home. Specializing in family businesses and their owners, Anthony works to protect what is most important to them. From preserving to creating wealth, Anthony partners with CPAs and attorneys to help address all of the concerns and help clients achieve their goals. By using a combination of financial products ranging from life, disability, and long-term care insurance to many investment options through Royal Alliance, Anthony looks to be the eyes and ears for his client’s financial foundation. In his spare time, Anthony is an avid long-distance runner.

Follow this link to access the complete show archive of Family Business Radio.

Cary Matthews, Opal Partners Group

April 25, 2022 by John Ray

North Fulton Business Radio

Cary Matthews, Opal Partners Group

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Cary Matthews, Opal Partners Group (North Fulton Business Radio, Episode 449)

Cary Matthews, Managing Partner of Opal Partners Group, joined host John Ray to discuss his work as a fractional Chief Operating Officer. Cary shared details on the role of a fractional COO, how he amplifies and improves the operations of his clients, leadership in navigating change, exit planning, success stories, and much more.

North Fulton Business Radio is broadcast from the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX® inside Renasant Bank in Alpharetta.

Opal Partners Group

Opal Partners Group, LLC (OPG) is a Fractional COO and operations consulting firm.

It was founded by Cary Matthews built on his experience leading all aspects of operations in small businesses for more than twenty years.

Our services are structured based on your unique needs. We help most clients using Advisory Services, Projects, and Interim Leadership.

The goal of your operations should be to extract value from every resource you invest in the organization. Our operations assessment helps you determine where you can make improvements.

Our assessment is completed with the leadership team and OPG. During the assessment, we will apply the Operations Hierarchy to all seven essential functions common to every business:

Leadership
Revenue generation
Production
Information Technology
Finance
Human Resource
Business Preparedness

Website | LinkedIn

Cary Matthews, Managing Partner, Opal Partners Group

Prior to starting OPG, Cary was COO and EVP of Operations for several small businesses in the greater Atlanta area.

In those roles, he led the project management, support services, accounting, human resources, engineering, and logistics departments.

Some of the improvements he achieved include reducing time to invoice customers by 80%, improving cash flow, increasing gross profit by 10% while absorbing a 30% increase in sales, shortening training curriculum development time, and reducing training delivery costs by 30%.

Cary earned a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering and a Master of Business Administration, both from Auburn University.

Activities include serving as a member of the MBA Advisory Board for Anderson University, board member and treasurer for Vision USA, and a member of Vistage International.

He has taken professional development classes at MIT and Georgia Tech.

Questions and Topics in this Interview:

For those who aren’t familiar with fractional executives, give us an overview of what you do.
What does a typical client engagement look like?
What is one of the most significant or common issues your clients are dealing with now?
What’s been your experience in dealing with implementing changes in small businesses?
What else are you seeing businesses struggle with or issues they must face in the future?
How do managers and business owners move to results-based management?
How do these things affect the average employee of a small business from their perspective?

North Fulton Business Radio is hosted by John Ray and broadcast and produced from the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX® inside Renasant Bank in Alpharetta. You can find the full archive of shows by following this link. The show is available on all the major podcast apps, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, Amazon, iHeart Radio, Stitcher, TuneIn, and others.

Renasant Bank has humble roots, starting in 1904 as a $100,000 bank in a Lee County, Mississippi, bakery. Since then, Renasant has grown to become one of the Southeast’s strongest financial institutions with over $13 billion in assets and more than 190 banking, lending, wealth management and financial services offices in Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia and Florida. All of Renasant’s success stems from each of their banker’s commitment to investing in their communities as a way of better understanding the people they serve. At Renasant Bank, they understand you because they work and live alongside you every day.

Special thanks to A&S Culinary Concepts for their support of this edition of North Fulton Business Radio. A&S Culinary Concepts, based in Johns Creek, is an award-winning culinary studio, celebrated for corporate catering, corporate team building, Big Green Egg Boot Camps, and private group events. They also provide oven-ready, cooked from scratch meals to go they call “Let Us Cook for You.” To see their menus and events, go to their website or call 678-336-9196.

“How a Fractional Chief Operating Officer Helps Businesses,” with Cary Matthews, Opal Partners Group

July 15, 2020 by John Ray

North Fulton Business Radio

"How a Fractional Chief Operating Officer Helps Businesses," with Cary Matthews, Opal Partners Group

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“How a Fractional Chief Operating Officer Helps Businesses,” with Cary Matthews, Opal Partners Group (North Fulton Business Radio, Episode 259)

Opal Partners Group Founder Cary Matthews joins host John Ray to discuss the value a fractional chief operating officer brings to a business, including helping scale, tackling vital operational projects, and more. “North Fulton Business Radio” is produced virtually by the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX® in Alpharetta.

Opal Partners Group, LLC

Opal Partners Group, LLC (OPG) is an operations consulting firm. They work with business owners to ensure all aspects of their operations are sound and aligned with their strategic and short-term goals.

They break down client challenges into three levels of the operations hierarchy: Process, Structure, and Strategy.

From younger companies that need to add structure and process to support their growing organization to more established firms that need to solve a singular challenge, OPG can help.

For a company struggling with identifying the root of their challenges, Opal can perform an operations audit to help hone in on the areas that need improvement.

Cary Matthews, Managing Partner, Opal Partners Group

Prior to starting OPG, Cary was COO at Trextel, LLC, a multi-technology solutions provider in the Atlanta area that performed installation, project management, and managed services for Fortune 500 companies servicing their edge networking.

In that role, Cary led the project management, support services, accounting, and human resources departments.

At Trextel, he restructured the project management and support services teams to increase employee utilization and efficiency, reduced time to invoice, improved cash flow through new vendor agreements, and formalized employee coaching and other human resources practices.

Cary earned a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering and a Master of Business Administration, both from Auburn University.

Activities include serving as a member of the MBA Advisory Board for Anderson University, board member and treasurer for Vision USA, and a member of Vistage International.

He has taken professional development classes at MIT and Georgia Tech.

Point of Contact for Cary Matthews

Company website

Questions/Topics Discussed in this Show

What is a fractional COO?
What are the characteristics of companies who hire fractional executives?
What types of problems does Opal Partners help clients solve?
Operations can be vary from industry to industry. How does that impact how you help your clients?
What are some of the most common questions or challenges clients bring to you?
From an operations perspective, how has the pandemic changed how companies operate?
What is the biggest takeaway or lesson learned that businesses should be aware of going forward?
How has the rapid move to remote work arrangements affected companies and their operations?

North Fulton Business Radio” is produced virtually from the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX® in Alpharetta. You can find the full archive of shows by following this link. The show is available on all the major podcast apps, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, iHeart Radio, Stitcher, TuneIn, and others.