1955 – Mastering the Art of Generating High-Ticket Sales with Trimline’s Michael Wark

0:05Hey there, thoughtful listener. Are you looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers, influencers, influencers, and clients? Well, I've had private conversations with over 2 ,000 leaders asking them where their best business comes from. I've got a free video you can watch with no opt-in required where I'll share the exact steps necessary to be 100 % inbound in your industry over the next six to eight months with no spam, no ads, and no sales. What I teach has worked for me for over 15 years and has helped me create eight figures in revenue for my own companies. Just head to upmyinfluence.com and watch my free class on how to create endless high-ticket sales appointments.

0:51Also, don't forget, the thoughtful entrepreneur is always looking for great guests. Go to upmyinfluence.com and click on podcast. I'd love to have you.

1:05With us right now, it's Michael Walk. Michael, you are a fractional CFO, love that, and you are the founder and CEO of Trimline. You're found on the web at trimline.co. Michael, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks, Josh. Great to be here. Excited for the chat. Yeah, so give us an overview of your work with Trimline and who you serve and kind of what you do as a fractional CFO. Yeah, it's pretty specific. So my niche is helping agency owners scale. So obviously, I'm sure you'd know agency owners is the umbrella term, but that's marketing firms, PR, performance, SEO, you know, the whole range of people who are helping people get found on the web.

1:50I'm helping them grow their business. Yeah. Well, what stage type agency, like how might someone know that they are at the level that they would be ready to start having a conversation and consider bringing someone in that can provide some of that financial leadership? Yeah. Generally, it's a founder with a team already. So they'll generally have, you know, two to three people on their team minimum, and they'll be looking to grow that and navigate the business growth curve. So like a rough rule of thumb for revenue levels, generally, I say I kind of help people from around the half a mil scale up to five mil and beyond.

2:34That's kind of the path or the valley of death that I'm trying to help people get through. And that's the most challenging part of scaling the business, especially a service business. So that's kind of what I focus on. Yeah, that's interesting. So thinking about the folks that might be on the lower end of that, tell me what value a fractional CFO would bring that may be a little bit more challenging. You know, they likely have someone taking care of their taxes. They likely have a bookkeeper. But what does, for them, a fractional CFO bring to the table? I think, especially if you're below that half a mil mark, you're doing maybe a couple hundred thousand a year.

3:19The common challenges that I think a fractional CFO could help you with are actually pricing your goods, your product correctly, paying yourself correctly, and setting up the financial systems to help you scale so you're not going to run out of cash as you grow. I think you can get away with a lot when you're in those small and nimble stages and the founder can, you know, reduce their wage if they need to, or they can kind of, you can paper over the cracks. But as you try and actually grow a proper business, those things get found out. So I think it's about putting the right things in place before you scale so it doesn't break as you start to grow.

3:59You know, I've interviewed a lot of fractional CFOs in my time, and you are working with an audience that I think is typically a little earlier stage, which is kind of exciting because I think that we all deserve good, you know, to make good financial decisions. I just think, you know, I think what most of us think of bringing in a fractional CFO, it's going to be a significant investment. You know, the engagement typically is going to be very large. And so kind of deservedly so of that larger investment. But what might, you know, for someone that might be at those earlier stages and, you know, that might be hovering or getting close to seven figures, but not quite, what does engagement typically look like at that level?

4:46uh so it will depend on obviously each engagement is tailored depending on their needs um so i've got a obviously i've got a spots in my roster and and there's the normal standard packages but i do have i do reserve a few spots for people who like i love and i love their business and i want to help them grow and we do things like maybe meeting quarterly so i might do a video async and then do it quarterly and we can reduce their package. In terms of like rough numbers and ideas, the, you know, a standard might sit around the two to three grand a month for your meeting. But then if you want to not only meet quarterly, maybe there's creative ways that people can find a way around that.

5:28But that's the kind of starting out price. It really depends on the agency, you know? Yeah. You know, I'm not in, you know, Obviously, I don't do fractional CFO work, so I can't say for certain. But I can say that I think that's a huge opportunity, especially if you're working with someone that's pretty growth-focused. And obviously, if you can come in, and if it's nothing else other than just looking at some high-level data and providing some guidance just based on a lower level of engagement, that's a great opportunity to get your foot in the door in a growth-focused company that's going to be growing anyway, and eventually will be needing more and more services.

6:03So very, very exciting. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. My business model is made of long term, profitable, mutually respective relationships. You know, it's not about the quick early sale. It's about actually building relationships for the long term with these founders. So, Michael, if you were to maybe encapsulate a few of the areas that when you begin engagement with a client that are the most common areas that need some attention, what would you say, what buckets would you say that you find yourself tearing into? I wrote an ebook to talk exactly about this, Josh. Number one, when I first walk in the door is to help people fix their margins.

6:55That's the number one reason that people will engage me. And that's what I focus on initially in the early stages of our engagement. So get more profitable, fix your margins. Number two is to solve your cash crunch. So as you navigate the business growth curve, people start running out of cash for various reasons, but really work out how we kind of keep more cash in your business. as you grow. And then number three, once they get a little bit more established is to start to think about building more value and actually thinking about it from like an enterprise value, what makes a valuable business, building them out of it, systems and processes, all that kind of stuff.

7:31And so tell me about Trimline as a company and what, you know, is it just you or do you have ninjas that also are part of your team that your clients work with? Yeah, I've got a couple of team in the background operations that help me. I'm still doing all of the delivery calls. And that's kind of, I guess, my point of difference. I'm a boutique shop. And that means that people will speak to the founder, rather than maybe joining a big accounting practice and getting farmed off from the partner down to someone else who looks after you more regularly. So yeah, I'm still the face and brand of it.

8:11I do have partners in other areas. So I work with a strategic network of other people who are really good at what they do. So that's bookkeepers, tax accountants, might be financial planners. I can plug them in and bring them into the conversation as and when we need them. But I'm a big believer that one person isn't the best at all disciplines. Similar that agencies aren't the best at every single discipline and art. So that's kind of the way I build out my team, if you will. It's through partnerships with people I trust who are good at what they do. Yeah. What's unique about agencies in the CFO world?

8:51I really enjoy working with them. The reason I niche in agencies is because I actually enjoy working with the founders. I've worked with creative people in the film industry world when I was accounting in that world for a while. Do you mean in terms of their challenges or do you mean in terms of their business model? Yeah. Yeah, and I'm unique. Like if there are any trends, you're like, oh yeah, agency owners are just notorious for blank or something that might be a little bit different than let's say an e-com or a SaaS company or some construction company or something. Yeah, look, the one thing that agency owners generally will have when I walk in the door that is the challenge probably is that their staff costs, they're not getting enough juice out of the lemon with their team.

9:36And that is a really, really common one. I think agency owners are great people. They're kind, compassionate. They want to do right by their people. But sometimes there's a tension between that and actually running a profitable business with decent margins in order to help them grow and for the business to sustain in the long-term. And that balance of maybe implementing time tracking if that's not in there. Things like that is a really common one that I see. Yeah. Yeah. Listen, I'll be very frank. That's something that I know that we've had to address because I love the people. And it is easy, I'd say, to to to have a lot of creep or scope creep.

10:17Right. Or, you know, it's like especially if you're really mindful of providing excellent service. A lot of times that might come with additional hourly, you know, budget. And yeah, I can see that being a common issue. Okay, so how do we solve that? Especially if you're dealing with a business owner, they're like, but if I cut these hours back, that might impact our deliverables and a quality of our service. And they're nervous about that. Yeah, you hit the nail on the head. The scope creep or just underpricing or over-servicing, they're all part of the same profitability challenge. generally the way that i try and help people think about this is a make it visible so i actually understand how much these people are costing you and that helps make the decision a bit clearer that you need to change because you can see the dollar value of you're basically paying your staff for unbilled time and your money is walking out the door through your payroll item um so make it visible and then i try and do a one-in-one-out approach so don't try and increase the prices on all your clients at once.

11:29De-risk it. Just find your least profitable client. Once you win a new one, have that hard conversation with one person and think about it like a roster. Improve your roster or your team list for the season and get better one client at a time. You have a free ebook that you give away and I actually just opted in for it so I can get this to my COO. But tell me about the ebook that you give away. uh it's it's everything that i help my clients with there's no fluff in it i've gotten straight to the point with all of these challenges of helping people fix their margins and solve the cash crunch um and i think it's it's a pretty comprehensive way it honestly everyone that i've either spoken to in person so i present on this and also share it everyone says you know what i was guilty of at least two of those things you spoke about in there so they're really really common people.

12:23I've seen a lot of agencies, so I've noticed the patterns and trends amongst them. So I think there's something in there for everyone. Yeah. Tell me, I mean, who should be downloading it? What's the title? You know, let's really sell it. So it's how to scale your agency to 5 million and beyond. And that's the whole through line of the book is to how to do that, how to navigate the steps on that business growth curve and the order. I put a lot of thought into the order that the problems come up that you're going to need to solve. So it's called riding the waves of business growth, your path to a$5 million company.

13:02And it's about what you've got to solve to get to the next level. And then there'll be a new set of problems that present, you need to solve them. You know, it's kind of like Street Fighter, right? You've got to finish the first boss, then you work your way up to the next one. And that's how you kind of stair-step your way up the business growth curve. Yeah. So think of some folks that you've worked with and, you know, over the past six, 12 months or so, tell us a story or two of someone that you've worked with and kind of the before and after is what I'm really hoping for. Yeah. Look, I've got a new-ish client at the moment that we're working on at the, like right now but i think it's a great example of of this founder who they don't know what they don't know and they they almost ticked all of the boxes so they they came to me and they were underpaying themselves in their business so they weren't paying themselves enough so the whole business model was completely out of whack because they were undercharging their services because they were underpaying themselves they were profitable but they weren't paying a market-based wage so that ticked one of the golden rules underpaying yourself and not seeing a true you know having a true look at your what your pnl should be um they were also not time tracking and their team were taking the mickey and spending time on too many other things so that was another you know another one of ticking the box that was another red flag okay we need to start doing that um they were underpricing their services to their client so that was another one that we've got to look at and try and improve and they also had no visibility over their numbers and their finances they weren't looking at their reports they were living kind of week to week month to month with making payroll and things like that and on top of that the founder was too busy putting out fires because the team were underperforming and under delivering he was getting dragged back into operational problems that the founder couldn't actually work on the business and improve the systems and get themselves out of it.

15:01So it's, I call it like a founder trap in the ebook where you're stuck in this rut and you don't know how to get to that next stage of growth because you're so busy just dealing with immediate day-to-day concerns. And those are some of the common challenges that I see across people. And it starts with getting more profitable, holding your team accountable, slowly increasing your prices and finding that margin. And I try and improve the model as it stands right now with the current number of clients. And then we start to try and scale. So we try and fix the business model, then we can add more clients because otherwise you're just adding more clients to an existing problem.

15:38Yeah. Do you ever get pushback from clients about increasing pricing? Definitely. Yeah. Everyone is petrified to do it. That's real. And look, in some situations, it's not always appropriate. Another way I de-risk it, right? Is say, all right, well, let's not increase it until you have another client that you've sold. And so if that person leaves, that's fine. You still have the same number of revenue dollars for this month because one in, one out. But that new client will be way more profitable because we've priced it correctly and we're going to hold ourselves accountable. So there's ways you can do it like that where it's not blast email to everyone increasing it.

16:16But generally, for this particular example, they hadn't increased their prices in over two years. And if you think about what inflation has been doing around the world right now, they've lost 7%, 10 % just going backwards with that. So they were very clear they needed to do that as well. Luckily, this client didn't push back on this. They were kind of aware that we need to fix a bunch of things. Yeah, yeah. All right, Michael. So to our friend that's listening here, maybe they were searching for you. They found this podcast episode and, you know, they've probably been nodding their head a little bit as they've been listening.

16:55And I know I have been. It's easy to do. And listen, I think, you know, some of the reasons for these problems I think are quite noble, really. But it's not fair. It's not fair to you because if you're stressed out, you're kind of living hand to mouth month after month after month, that that impacts you as a founder. You're not able to come into your business with the clear head that you might because you're stressed about your cashflow. So I understand the desire to keep your prices fair and to pay your employees really well. But, you know, if there's not enough cushion there, then, you know, that impacts people being able to keep working with you.

17:40That impacts, you know, your ability to go out and get new business because you're just so stressed and you're taking care of other things, right? Any final thoughts on that before I kind of make sure that folks know where to go from here? No, you hit the nail on the head. And generally what happens is the founder burns out and they don't ever see an exit of their business and they don't ever realize the value of what they've built and they'll burn out and look for something else. So I think that's like a really, really critical point you hit on there, Josh. Let's keep more agency owners in business.

18:14shall we? Your website, Michael, is trimline.co. When somebody goes to your website, what would you recommend to do? By the way, you have some really good videos on your YouTube channel. I want to just shout that out as well. So I'd recommend when you go to Trimline, click on your YouTube icon, bring that up. And there's some really interesting videos and topics that you cover that I think a lot of folks who frequent this podcast may find some great value. Aside from that, what else would you recommend they do? Look, honestly, just go check out the e-book and implement a couple of the things. I try and give all of the IP and the value up front.

18:56That's kind of my model. And so if you go to shroomline.co, up the top, you'll see an e-book link. Click on that. And I'll be very, very surprised if you don't start nodding your head to at least one or two of the things in there. It's really, I've tried to put all the common challenges that I've seen in over five years working full-time with all of my agency clients. And I think it's got something in there that'll help everyone. I love it. Michael Walk, again, fractional CFO and founder and CEO of Trimline, found on the web at trimline.co. Michael, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks, Josh.

19:29It's been fun. Cheers, mate. Bye.

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