The overnight theft that wrote this book

Welcome back to It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me on, Micholas.

yeah, so back then there the idea of a fractional CFO, that term hadn't been invented yet. and my story back then was I was in two thousand nine was a the Great Recession, okay, and there were layoffs everywhere. So my job was was reduced at the at the corporate level I was working for a a a great big German company. And and so I started going back to okay, well, you know, just get the resume ready, get out of there and go find a new another new job. And while I did that, one of the the people who was a reference on my resume, when I called and said, Hey, listen, I'm gonna start certain a job search. You're probably, you know, if you get some calls, then you'll know that that's the reason. And he and he told me that he was creating a new business with somebody. this is back, you know, somebody I used to work with when I lived in Charleston, South Carolina. he was starting a new business with somebody who lived in Oregon. And he was telling me more about it and then kind of got to a place where like, you know what, we don't need, you know, somebody with all of your skill set, right? But we do need somebody to just help with bookkeeping. Can can you help us with that and maybe the other things that pop up as this, you know, their little startup company needed? And you know, while I'm looking for a job, I'm like, okay, sure, yeah, I can help out with that. No problem, I'd love to. So I start working with them, doing a little work on the side. and then I come across another group that kind of needed the same sort of thing. And then another group. And I just started kind of working for these different groups as I was really l searching for the next career move and in the corporate world. And and I know I remember was down with my my girlfriend at the time, who's been my wife now for almost fifteen years. and I remember we were sitting on we were we went to mass church and after that we walked out this is in Bluffton South Carolina, we walked out and there was a title creek right next to the church. And I started just talking to her and saying, you know what? The work that I'm starting to do with these groups is really fun. I feel like I'm making a difference, which is a whole lot different than you know what what it's like in you know in in the corporate. and, you know, what if what if I lean harder into this?

And give this my full go for one year. Give it give it a a test run for one year. Everything I got. And you know, she thought that it was a great idea too. So so I did. So I ran with it. those companies grew, you know, we and and that's kind of what happens, right? You get the right people on the bus. And luckily I was the right person to sit in a you can call it a CFO seat, for these early businesses, and helped them grow their companies a ton in that first year to where I said, Okay, cool. This is it. I love this. I love the people that I'm working with. And I'm gonna continue to to drive this and make it a company. so I incorporated, you know, after that first year, after that test proved to be solid, having a lot of a lot of future prospects. And And then started adding clients and then started hiring people. And then you know, sort of figuring out for me who who the best clients were that I could serve the best, right? Certain companies were good, but like inefficient because I'd have to be driving around all the time to meet with them, versus the the digital online-based businesses that I could I can just go, you know, hop on a meeting, hop on a meeting, hop on a meeting. takes geography out of the out of the equation. I can work with anybody in the whole country, right? also hiring. I can hire anybody I want in the anywhere in the world. because they can also just jump right in and and be in the meeting just as if they lived right down the street. You know, like if it was it was the old the old style. You gotta 2009 is a lot different than than it than today. Okay. and you know just entering using the cloud for all of all of your softwares all of your all of your communication like that that was new you know in a sense then you know smartphones were just kind of happening right so you gotta think way back to what that was like at that time and you know as as things change technology matures business model evolves. lots of people start calling themselves fractional CFOs who maybe really aren't. Let's be honest. They're, you know, maybe they're you know not properly qualified, or maybe they're more more of a tax professional or something like that. Maybe more, you know, but like but the the space is getting crowded. You know, there's a lot more folks that have found that, man, This is a really great service that helps a lot of people and and and it's and it's become more competitive from a standpoint of bringing in great new clients. Used to just be word of mouth, right? Used to be word of mouth all the time. That's how we would get new clients. They'd say, wow, I can see the great work that that's being done by your your firm. Can can we sit down and and talk about that too? Absolutely. That doesn't happen as much anymore, you know. So you got to pivot again. Now, what happens? AI starts. Okay. That starts changing some things around too. Different technology, different approach. Speed is is is better. It's faster. We can get more done. we can be more intelligent with the things that that we're delivering to our clients. And they should demand more. Why not? Technology improves, so should we. So staying on the cutting edge of technology from you know over the past what 17 years. That's just been part of our deal. You know, and and now with AI, we've we've got we have our own team of software developers. we've we've created our own softwares, we've created AI powered versions of software and and now we're in that space where it's pretty exciting because the the two two new software programs that we've been beta testing with our existing clients are ready to go live. so, you know, here before the end of the year, we'll actually let those go and start to let let the world jump in there and start using them. And you know, it's it's not something that replaces the human, it enhances the human. It amplifies the human. And that I think is really an important piece too, just to make sure that that doesn't get lost in And any of the you know, anybody listening to this thinking, yeah, I'll just I'll just go rely on AI only to help me with my financial decisions. I I think I think that what you do is you start there, it helps give you some guidelines, some ideas, helps you speed up your research, helps you dig into your numbers faster, better, quicker, right? But then you still have to have that conversation with the the qualified person who's been at it for a long time. Whether that is in your, you know, a financial planner, right? Talking about your retirement, whether that's a a CPA doing working on your taxes, whether it's your s the the fractional CFO that you've hired to help lead your business, you know, from from accounting and and financial analysis. so there you go. That's that's that's kind of my story. I think that that's kind of what you were hoping that might take medical.

Okay, CFO.

Yeah. Okay. Good to learn though. Yeah.

Well it's small and medium-sized businesses that sell their product and service online. Those are our best customers, without a doubt. you know, it could be software as a service, SaaS companies, it can be education, like digital education products, you know, companies that are are specialized in affiliate marketing, direct response marketing. Again, it really if you have a product or a service and you're selling it online, you're using a CRM. Okay. It could be, you know, WooCommerce Keep, it could be Hub Spot, Go High Level. Okay. And then what that allows us to do from the fractional CFO side is be able to see all of the all of the customers, all the orders that are coming in, and the cash that's moving between the customer, okay, the merchant account, gateway, bank account. Right. So that way we can we can manage, we can see it all. Then we then we tie in our our software that helps us be able to see a lot of the KPIs really quickly. Okay. and then we're able to deliver reports. We call them the check your pulse report. So this could be a weekly or a bi weekly report that has a lot of KPIs. It's gonna have the you know, our firm will take care of the bookkeeping too. if if it if it makes sense otherwise. Com some Firms they just keep their bookkeeper because they're great. And that's what's okay, fine, great. But anyway, you know, every every week or every two weeks, we want to sit down with a client and look at look at the the KPIs that make a difference in the short term, right? Because some of those KPIs that are really important to check as you progress through a month are not the same KPIs that you want to look at for a month at. All right. Some of them sometimes they're a little different. You need to you need to keep your your finger on the pulse a little bit more as you move week through week. So that way you If things aren't going the right way, you can address them faster, pivot, right? And then still be able to land your month and stick it, right? And still have a pretty good, you know, there's a lot of things that happen in small businesses that can come that can happen really quick. So you gotta make sure you're really paying attention. so between the a PNL, month to date PNL, some some KPIs, we'll that's kind of our routine with meeting with the business owner. In the in the in the You know, behind the scenes we're handling a lot of different things, right? Cash flow, audit, AP, AR, you know, bookkeeping, stuff that the business owner doesn't want it or care to know about. Just they want to know that it's done properly and they don't have to think or worry about it. So that's where we come in and we handle all of that. That's fine. And then on month end, okay, after the month is closed, we get in to one of our routine meetings. Only this time we're talking about what happened in the prior month. Okay, here's your results. What happened in the rearview mirror? Here's your KPIs. Okay. But you can't stop there, right? You have to push forward, right? You have to say, okay, well, here's what's happening next. All right. We already built this budget this year, we already know what our plan is going to be. You know, so that's part of it. A very variance analysis, right? So every year we build a budget and we want to make sure that we're staying on track. So we can look at the variance analysis of the prior month, we can look at what Projected to do in the future month, and then also do what I like to call the cash management tab. All right, it's part of our month end review. So we're looking at the income statement and so on. And but with this one is gonna be a really hard look of like this is really what's gonna happen over the next 30 days. So we know what to expect to happen in the next 30 days. Unless we change something, unless we do something different, this is where we'll end up. How's that feel? Is that good? Yeah, okay, great. Let's execute it. Is that not good not good enough? All right, well what are the changes that we need to make right now so that when we get here in the same meeting in a month, we're all pretty happy with ourselves.

Yeah, that's what the buttons?

yeah, thanks for asking. let's see. I don't know, about a year and a half ago, I got I got to a point of frustration that I man, there are so many pitfalls that are common that small businesses fall into. You they don't know. It's like it's not taught anywhere, right? a lot of these a lot of the problems that it's like it's like you know, they're making a couple steps forward and then one big step backwards, you know, and 'cause it it's stuff that nobody would normally think of, but it's it's predictable. It you know, if you sat in my seat long enough, you've seen it over and over again for multiple different companies. And you just you just, you know, you want to put in systems into their business to prevent that, minimize problems that happen that are just perfectly common. One one time, Yeah, about a year and a half ago, one of the merchant account gateways just basic almost I I don't know if I can re really use the word stealing, but I I I that's how it felt. hundreds of thousands of dollars out of one of our company's accounts overnight. We just wake up to it. Mistake. Yeah, mistake. All right. But it took it took a ton of extra work to be able to recover and get that money back. And it took a long time. So as that's happening, I am angry, frustrated, and I just start writing. You know, like I'm on in the weekends, evenings, you know, I'm just I just start writing. Like, okay, this is these are the things that I'm that I'm seeing all the time. And it just kept going. And it was several different topics. And it's just like, but this system, once we put it in place, prevents this or minimizes the damage if it's in place. It it it helps these businesses not have to take these big steps backwards that crush their momentum. So you know, came up with turned into twelve twelve dis different systems that you know we're used to putting into place at our for our clients. the created the book as a rubric. what that means is that the end of every chapter the the reader is prompted to go to an ai powered software that we that we built specifically for this book where they can they can grade themselves and say you know on a scale of one to four four being the best how are you doing in in this area of your business right you give it the grade then you tell it why you know you tell the tell the software why you go through the whole thing and now It's great because you just basically had a had an outstanding consulting call in a sense with a CFO, the you know, because the the you know the the the knowledge base of of that software isn't just AI, it's the book itself. So it's pulling all of that, creating an executive summary to be able to say here's your here's strengths and weaknesses and things that you should probably be working on. All right. So that's that comes free with the book. And then, you know, we've created a a a pro version of that as well, which is you know, I mean the the the free version is really nice because it gets it creates self-awareness, it gets the person going. The pro version actually creates a prioritized checklist, right? And it and it sends out accountability emails to be like, hey, this these are the things that you need to do next. This is what you need to do next. This is where your biggest blind spots are. Fix this. Right? Here, email, email every once in a while. Let you know, okay, these are the things you got to do. And then you go back in, checklist, great, I did that one. Check it off. Yes. Check it off. Yes. All right. That one didn't apply to me. Skip it, fine. But then you know that that that checklist keeps renewing its dynamic. It'll keep changing. And then every every week, every month, you can go in and just type into it until, hey, this is what's new in my business. And then it'll just re-design the checklist and make sure that the business owner is keeping keeping those priorities. Front and center, you know, see it right there at the top. Is this advice of what I say you have to do? Absolutely not. What is it? It amplifies your CFO, it amplifies your CEO, right? So now you've got you've got a framework, you've got a plan, you've got a path that you can now go and have the conversations, right? The CEO CFO conversations are gold. Okay, that's where the magic happens. If you can get in a weekly a weekly routine or a bi weekly routine. And you're talking about the right things, you're asking the right questions, then you know you go go to work, figure out, okay, yes, no, maybe we try this, maybe we try that, or you talk to other people in the company, right? Talking to your marketing people, you're talking to your legal people, you're talking to compliance, you're talking to HR. You bring it back to the next meeting, and now it's like, okay, we've we've figured this out. This is gonna be the way that we're gonna go. Thank you, scorecard, scorecard pro. For pointing that out to us, that that's something that maybe we really needed to pay attention to. And now you put a project together, you knock it out, and and now you're better for it. So that when the problems come or when the opportunities come, you're scaling your business, right? You're not failing in your business. So that's why I wrote the book. You know, it's it's pretty cool. It it got published and went up on Amazon earlier this year. And the responses have been great. So, you know, that's that's really That's really been cool. and way to sell the book. And I'll tell you about that if you're interested, but you know, I don't know if that's really

How do we market how do we market the book? Well, it it's it's for sale on Amazon, of course. That's been great, but I I want to I want to do more than just simply sell the book, right? We have got the tools, we've got we've got we've got really great resources, and we have our main core service of fractional CFO work that we'll do you know, for for clients. So for me, the best way to market this book is to basically practice what I preach, okay? So in in chapter one of the book, we're talking about the front-end product that a a customer, a a that a that a company creates, that they're selling out into the public, right? And what are the what are the upsells, you know, the order bumps? What are the what are the additional offers to be able to grow the at that average cart value, right? So you want to be able to have You want to be able to collect a a a good enough amount of revenue up front so that you can pay for your marketing. Okay. And then once once you've been once you have the customer, okay, you once you've proven yourself that what you have is what they need, then you want to be able to take them up to the next levels, right? Give them more of that, right? So that would be where software comes in, where it's a monthly recurring situation, right? So Now now you're not just helping per people once, but you're helping them over and over and over again, right? Week after week, month after month, so that what what you're able to do to bring value to their business just continues to ascend. And maybe, maybe you maybe you get to situations where their their growth can get tied back to the work that you helped them with that unlocked their potential, you know. so right, so then then now you're looking at what's your average back end of revenue per customer. Okay. So that's the next piece to how we're marketing this book. That's the whole strategy. You know, give somebody something of tremendous value as an introduction. to you know I'm gonna start selling this book for one dollar digital the digital book for one dollar on our funnel and I'm gonna toss in some bonuses and you know normally this is gonna come out to over five hundred dollars in value and why it's because it's a it's a way for me to begin a relationship with a new company and how how can I do that better than to to do you know act in it in the most charitable way that I can Which is giving them a lot of myself in in digital and print form. This is the only way you can do that with any kind of leverage, right? but if they if if if that works and that's good for them and it's good for their company, then it makes sense for them to want to to work with us. And then, you know, so the business part of that is customer lifetime value, right? So you can go from selling this right for a dollar, only well, it'd be in the digital form. To you know, a long term decade of a long of a relationship of serving their business and helping them grow their company from the seat that we're best at, which is fractional CFO, bookkeeping, accounting, right? decision making and and consulting. So that that's that's the plan. probably be launching the the dollar book funnel, it's what it what we're calling it, within about a month. So, you know, we're excited for that. hopefully hopefully it'll make a giant impact. all of this work that we're putting into it is is gonna with other people's success.

Well, you know, if you want to get a hold of us directly, you can send an email to contact us at Savvy CFO. our our website is savvycfo.com. There's some some free tools and resources that you can get at tools.savvycfo.com and let's see social media we're posting just about every day so linkedin instagram facebook tick tock youtube and there if you want to tune in and just hear what Basically what I like to do is is share the research that I'm doing that is what's changing in our world. I like to summarize that down into like two or three minute segments and put it out and let people just have that so that they don't have to go out and do all that on their own and they can just get the highlights, you know. So you want to follow you know, that's just you know, look for my name, Tim Corolia, at the on the different platforms. And if you would like to get the book. find savvy cfo scorecard on Amazon. And as soon as we launch the dollar book funnel, you know what? Any one of those social platforms, you can just go to my bio and you'll be able to get the link and buy the book then once it goes live. So there's a lot of different ways you can get a hold of us. That's right.

Thanks, Nicholas.