Welcome to The 6 a.m. CFO, where finance chiefs share how they jump-start their days and engage with the tasks that are in front of them.

Today, Standard Premium Finance’s CFO, Brian Krogol, shares his morning routine.

Be sure to check out the entire 6 a.m. CFO series, and if you’d like to be featured in a future post, please email us here.

Standard Premium Finance

• Specialty finance company that helps spread the cost of commercial property and casualty insurance through premium financing.
• Year founded: 1991
• Number of full-time employees: ​​22 
• Revenue: About $12.5 million in 2025 revenue; 13% revenue growth and 46% net income growth as of Q2 2026

MORNING ROUTINE

Walk us through your normal workday morning routine: My wife and I are up by 6 a.m., generally trying to nudge ahead of our two-year-old son. My morning routine is really in two shifts. The first is that calm stretch with my wife before he wakes up: some coffee and prepping his breakfast. The second shift is feeding him and playtime. That second shift changes every few months as he grows, and it’s the part I’d never trade. After that, I head to the office and switch from “dad mode” to “CFO mode.”

Morning beverage choice: Espresso with a sugar cube. I’m a fan of the sugar cube; it feels like a simple elegance. A less exciting cup from the office Keurig machine is usually added depending on the morning’s workload.

Non-work-related morning activities: Time with my wife and son is the main event: breakfast, building block towers and watching them get demolished, reading his favorite books. Hopefully, we can all sneak in a short walk around the park when the Miami weather permits (i.e., not boiling outside!).

Workday start time: 8 a.m. 

How do you structure your first few hours and what do you prioritize? I start with cash, collections and anything time-sensitive, since in premium finance the day’s activity can shape everything else. Next, I check in with our CEO, William Koppelmann. We function in a collaborative way: bouncing ideas and projects off each other constantly. I also check in with accounting, compliance and collections to see what’s blocked and what they need from me. I try to clear the roadblocks first and save my deep-focus work, like financial reporting, for when the operational questions have calmed down.

What time do you send out your first email? I tend to wait until after 9 a.m. (thank you, Schedule Send!)

Mid-morning snack of choice: Being in Miami, someone at the office or a passing-through sales representative tends to bring some Cuban pastries or “Cafecito” to keep the juices flowing.

Do you have any advice for writing an effective email? Get to the point in the first sentence and follow up with the additional and supporting information.

LEADERSHIP AND INSPIRATION

Favorite leadership lesson: Be the person your team can depend on during hard moments. If your team knows they can bring you a problem without a reaction, you’ll hear about issues while they’re still small.

What is something important to know about you that you wouldn’t know from your business bio? I’m a dad of a toddler, which is nice because he’s a built-in audience for my guitar and piano practice. I hope to pass my love of playing music onto him. He already strums on the guitar strings!

How do you manage work-induced stress? I plan my workdays around reaching meaningful stopping points that allow me to try to leave the work at the office door. Being fully present for dinner and bedtime with my family resets me better than anything else.

Favorite number: As a kid, I always said two was my favorite number because my sister’s favorite number was three and I wanted to pick a different one, but secretly, I always liked three.

Most noteworthy items in your workspace: Family photos and a painting of a horse. My wife and I took a hobby painting class at the community college for one semester. I thought it would be meditative, but I found painting to be quite stressful. I am proud of that horse, though. One evening, the CEO swapped out my horse with a hilarious AI-generated image of him and one of our directors on a runaway horse buggy. He thought I wouldn’t notice, but it was hard to miss.

Favorite phone app that is unrelated to work: I’ve played around with Claude Code to develop some personal-use apps, just to test my skills. I made some functional apps, like personal budget and health trackers. But my favorite was turning a board game I invented into an app where you draw ingredient cards and run a restaurant more efficiently than your opponents. My friends are better at it than me, though. I guess I could invent the rules, but I couldn’t invent victory.

Make and model of your first car: Mazda Protégé. It had a special feature where the whole car shook uncontrollably when idling unless I put it in neutral. The volume knob was also very finicky, so don’t touch it!

Can you share the most important piece of literature you’ve read? During COVID lockdowns, I took an online Intro to Greek and Roman Mythology course with my mom and brother-in-law. We read Homer’s Odyssey. It was amazing to go see the new movie together and reminisce about our little Renaissance.