Tell me about your vision. Hey, nice to be here.
Thank you so much for having me. So my vision
in terms of CFO Pro plus analytics was to be
able to bring very high quality CFO services
to emerging businesses that might otherwise not
really have access to the types of tools and
techniques and capabilities that we're able to
deliver. Our capabilities derive from my own
personal origins in private equity and growth
equity investing, as well as being a professional
CFO. And through that experience, I've been able
to really distill delivering high quality CFO
services using a few key principles. And the
whole objective and the vision is that we can
take these key principles and we can turn them
into a repeatable service that adds a lot of
value to all kinds of emerging businesses. Typically,
we're servicing companies between $3 and $100
million of revenue. And depending on the size
and scale and where they are in their development,
certain aspects of the approach that we take
are more important. different phases of a business's
evolution but what we do is create a customized
uh solution for them that fits their needs exactly
and uh the three things that we focus on as the
main guiding principles are equity value creation
for the owners of the businesses that we serve
all decisions are being made With the thought
of how does this add more value to the shareholders
of the business? The second is a single source
of truth. We try to streamline all the data flows
and information so that the executives of these
businesses are able to make decisions on information
that they know how it's generated and they can
all agree that this is the true information that
we should be using to make decisions. And the
third piece is due diligence readiness, which
means that. We're always building our financial
operation functions in a way that gives the founders
and owner operators of these businesses the ability
to talk to any third party at any point in time
and be able to provide really good information
about their business and kind of where they're
headed. Thank you for sharing that. I'm going
to take a step back on this approach. A lot of
times. at least with my beliefs that the things
I've been learning and things I've been growing,
I really, really love Simon Sinek's talk about
figuring out the why before the how and the what,
right? And we take it a step further. We do it
figuring out the who before the why. So for you,
Sal, what would you say as... who you are and
why you got started doing this the fractional
cfo and got into this industry with your own
um i'm guessing the you have some kind of a background
in this when you do these things so why did you
start doing these kind of services people what
gap did you see um the gap that i saw was that
um emerging businesses. And I happen to have,
because I came out of the venture capital and
growth equity investing world, I have a lot of
relationships and people that I know that are
involved in emerging companies. These are companies
that are growing from like zero revenues to call
it a hundred million. And I saw that there's
a value proposition in terms of Financial operations
and financial strategy where the businesses often
view that as a cost center. And not as a strategic
opportunity to spend money to grow their businesses
more quickly and efficiently. But that's because
they're always thinking about it in terms of
hiring a full team. And obviously taking on all
that overhead is very expensive. The opening
that I saw and why this is. important in the
market is that the services that we deliver can
be really packaged into a permanent part -time
service that are very, very affordable at smaller
sizes of revenue. Businesses that are doing three,
four, five, 10, 15, 20, $30 million of revenue.
There's a way to package this strategic financial.
service as well as the financial operations service
in a way that's affordable for them and and that's
why uh it's been created by my company what would
you say that then how did you get started on
this path like did you get did you have corporate
job before this and then you went into entrepreneurship
or were you So as a private equity, growth equity,
venture capital investor for about 15 years,
and I learned a lot about what it takes to make
emerging businesses grow and succeed. Then after
that, I became a CFO of an operating business
that grew very quickly for about nine years I
was there. And so I packaged together this investing
knowledge and discipline and working with young...
high growth companies with the actual hands -on
training that i i basically you know went through
myself as a as a first time cfo for nine years
very successfully i was i had all this know -how
and knowledge that could be easily translated
into a package service for the types of companies
that I had been working with for, you know, a
couple of decades. You know, these are founder,
family -owned, venture capital -backed companies
trying to grow quickly and stumbling over the
challenge of how do I invest in a finance function
that's going to help me grow my business as efficiently
as possible. And they stumble over that fact
for what I said earlier is that they often view
it as like this. I need a team to do this. You
know, I need a bunch of full time people to do
this. And what I realized from my background
in getting started in all this is really that
it can be packaged into a permanent part time
solution. That's very customized to the situation
that the company is going through and also evolves
with them over time. Thank you for sharing that.
When you say that entrepreneurs are stuck in
this mindset, that they think they need a team
to do this, I am a firm believer that a team
helps you skip a lot of years of learning in
your business journey. It helps you skip a lot
of time that you would have given as a solopreneur.
Clearly, your threshold goes beyond that, going
from $1 to $3 million and over to $100 million
worth in revenue. Usually, it's hard to get there
as being a solopreneur. I would say you probably
need a team of at least a few people to cross
that threshold in revenue. When you say that
you don't need a team, what do you exactly mean
by that? I would love to hear your thoughts.
That's a great question. that you you always
need a great team and a cohesive corporate culture
to grow your business what i am saying when i'm
saying you don't need to think about hiring a
full -time team in finance is what i'm saying
to the entrepreneur is focus in on hiring the
team that is driving your business Don't be confused
that finance has to be a full team also as part
of that journey, because you can actually take
advantage of a fractional CFO service like ours
much earlier on in your development. And it's
going to enable you to do all of the other necessary
team building that you need to do. So when I
speak about not needing a full team, I'm speaking
specifically about thinking, wow I need a CFO
the CFO needs to work with a controller the controller
needs to work with a bookkeeper when we package
it together we deliver all those layers in at
one price on a permanent part -time basis and
we effectively become part of your team but we're
not there full -time but because we're at we
have so much expertise in how to deliver the
service You feel all the capabilities of it in
your business without having to see us every
day of the week. And that gives you a huge amount
of operating leverage in your business. Because
now instead of spending, you know, thinking you
need to spend four, five, six, $700 ,000 a year
on a... on a finance department, you could be
spending 120, 150, maybe even upwards of 200
,000, depending on the scope and the size of
your business. So for 40 % of the cost that you
thought you were going to expect, 30, 40 % of
the cost of what you thought you were going to
spend, you get the full service. What I joke
around with my clients sometimes is like, we
deliver all the meat without the fat, right?
That's awesome. That's amazing. Another thing
that I say to them also is like, you get all
of the capability without the overhead and the
water cooler time. That makes sense. And no bathroom
breaks. Right. Yeah, we're there. We're like
a paratrooper team. We're in there. And we're
delivering high grade services that fit with
your culture. You feel us as part of your team,
but you don't need us there. You know, you don't
need three people there 40 hours a week to get
it done. Yeah. Yeah. You are on point on what
you just mentioned, because if you think about,
let's say, a million dollar company, at least.
They are thinking about bookkeeping. They're
thinking about taxes. They're thinking about
investments. They're thinking about allocation
of resources. They're also thinking about what
they need to do with the money that's getting
wasted. They want to see where the money is going
in and out. And I think a CFO alone costs a lot
of money a year, let alone a whole team to go
through all this that you need. Most businesses,
small businesses that don't make it anyway, they...
They hire a bookkeeper maybe and then a tax guy
at the end of the year to figure it out. And
there's a different level of things that you're
talking about. I think the people that could
understand that would be very beneficial for
them to see what he just mentioned. The bookkeeper
is like a base level service. And I'll be honest
with you, when you are thinking about really
growing your business and transforming it into
something great, um entrepreneurs fall into the
trap of confusing accounting with finance and
what i often say is that you know good finance
people are pretty adept at accounting but it's
very hard to find good accounting people who
are very adept at finance because finance is
so forward -looking and um it's it's really about
the strategy and what you're going to do next
and um The entrepreneurs confuse sometimes bookkeeping
and accounting with finance. It's not really
the same thing. But also what I would mention
is that just in my own experience running this
business, nine out of 10 companies that we get
involved in have serious issues in their bookkeeping
function when we get involved. When you start
thinking about building a forecast and having...
a set of books that are aligned categorically
with how you're going to project the business
and where you're going to invest your money there's
usually an incredible amount of messiness in
there um and uh in in a in a in a very sort of
normal case there's usually a good you know 30
to 60 days of rework in the books in order to
be able to really leverage the historical information
into forward -looking projections yeah for for
most people um the the financial data is is not
as valuable as it could be within five to ten
years like even if their company was going for
let's say If it was the exact same results, but
their company was more five to 10 years down
the road, that data would carry more leverage
than it would than any other company before that
part. Because most times those numbers are bogus
anyway. Yeah, it also depends on how quickly
you're growing. And by the way, you could even
be growing at a modest pace and then hit a five
-year mark. And now all of a sudden you do need
a finance function and you've got very messy
information for the last five years. That doesn't
really help you at that point in time. That actually
makes the process more difficult. And so what
I always advocate is that if you are serious
about growing your business, you really do need
to think about the quality of your data and how
it's being handled from a financial standpoint.
Because that is actually going to become a very
important asset for you as you grow. You're going
to make better decisions. You're going to make
faster decisions. You're going to sleep better
at night. You are going to also be able to talk
about your business more intelligently and credibly
with outsiders. which is a key aspect of being
a successful entrepreneur is being able to tell
a story about your business and knowing what
you're saying is actually backed by really good,
solid financial and operational data. So it's
never too soon, in my opinion. I think you're
absolutely right. Most businesses, they're not
focusing on creating resources, templates, and
procedures. that backs up their departments.
And that goes to all departments. And for your
case, it's the CFO department, the financial
department. Yeah, we get involved in a lot of
other stuff too. But yeah, it is mainly in finance.
But what I would say also to your audience is
when we come in, we are not coming in with an
attitude of... hey, this is the template and
we have to fit it into your business. That would
be a huge mistake. What we say is we have these
three principles that we're trying to guide you
to, right? Single source of truth, due diligence,
readiness, and equity value creation. And we're
going to come up with a solution that fits as
painlessly as possible in your business. And
by the way, if there's anything that's going
to be particularly time consuming and painful,
we're going to let you know right away. And then
we can discuss whether we even want to do it.
An important aspect of how we execute is this
concept of quick wins, right? When we build out
our infrastructure and our templates, we put
them in place the same way software developers
version software. We say. version zero is going
to look like this. And then in 90 days, we're
going to be at version one, and then we're going
to be at version two. And the reason that we
do it that way is that we don't want to walk
into a client and say, it's going to be six months
before you see any results from what we're doing,
right? We know so much about how to execute this,
that we can start delivering things relatively
quickly that provide value to. to the clients.
And so we can start instituting procedures, operational
processes that they can start leveraging pretty
soon in the process. It's not some giant project
that you don't know when the end is going to
be. We don't operate that way. And I don't think
anyone should. I come from the marketing world.
A lot of times when marketers, they're trying
to show businesses, hey, you don't know what
you're talking about. They'll give you numbers.
Hey, what's your ROAS or what's your ad spend
last time? What's your return on investment?
They put some weird numbers in there. I can't
even remember those terms. They make you think
you don't know what you're talking about without
even getting to know the business itself in the
first place. What does the business want? Do
they have goals? Do they have core values? Do
what they're currently revenue at? Are they trying
to go to a certain point? If they are, then are
they willing to do the work that's necessary
to grow to that point? Even if you grow them
with leads, are they able to handle those leads?
Can they successfully have a great experience
with the client or all the clients that you bring
in? Can they close the lease that you give them?
And can they fulfill on those? Those are the
questions most marketing teams don't ask. And
that's when they project their vision onto yours.
And that's not what you want. And I think you're
on the right path when you say that we want to,
instead of giving you a custom, instead of giving
you a solution that's fit for everyone, even
though the principle might work for everyone,
it's important to get to know a business more
before. before you come up with a system and
solution because most cases, it's not the same
case scenario, even though you're building towards
the same thing. I would say every case is different.
And the principles don't change because those
work, you know, I've proven it in my career that
those three things are transformative when they're
executed correctly. I'll just say them again.
It's single source of truth, due diligence, readiness,
and equity value creation. But in order to implement
them for, say, a franchisor who owns three Chick
-fil -A's or to implement them for a digital
marketing agency that has... operates its business
with 20 subcontractors, you know, in India and
sells all this business in the United States.
They both want to do the same thing, right? They
both want to grow and they both want to make
higher profits, but so they fit into my three
principles, but the way I would handle them is
totally different. Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision
Pros Live. I'm looking forward to seeing your
reactions as these episodes continue to move
forward. This is going to get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show.
And thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision
and becoming a vision pro yourself.